grammaton

"Avoiding harsh words could look like a logical fallacy but it is just being polite."

The logical fallacy is accusing people who consider intolerance unacceptable of themselves being intolerant. That is an example of tu quoque.

"A simple statement on distaste for the individual is perfectly appropriate, and personal, and many people would agree with you on that one."

You seem to be repeatedly missing the point that many people - including Card - are going far beyond a "simple statement on distaste."

"I am pretty sure if I remember right his words against gay people was at a small conference and then was blown up by the lgbt community."

In fact you do not remember right. He has written numerous articles advocating for the treatment of homosexuals as second class citizens and even armed insurrection against the government should they treat homosexuals as equal under the law. You could easily find these articles if you spent two minutes on Google. They make a lovely companion to his article about how Obama is going to recruit an army of "urban thugs" to do is his bidding.

"I see it how it is, Orson Scott Card holds no influence to change laws, the gay movement has won on marriage."

Given the widespread hatred directed at them - which goes beyond mere personal distaste - and the numerous discriminatory laws that still remain on the books around the country, and the fact that there are still 33 states that specifically outlaw gay marriage, I wouldn't say that the issue is "won" by a long shot. Don't confuse some high profile victories with total victory.

No, I really don't. Like I said, he can have whatever opinion he likes, but once he starts advocating that laws should reflect his opinion, it's stepped over a line. The relevant logical fallacy that you and others using this argument, by the way, is the tu quoque fallacy:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

Sure, but this wouldn't be one of them. If a woman even suggested their employer had discriminated against them on the basis of weight, then lawsuit or not, their employer would be crucified. Sorry, but being overweight is no worse on a woman than it is on a man - not that it's peachy for either of them.

Stop reading the abstract and go read the paper.

"but they do cite that control groups had tumors"

Yes, of course they did - they were the same breed of rat, and as I've already mentioned, they almost invariably get tumors.

"cites the tumor rate as compared to control in addition to absolute rates"

So what? The problem is that with a single trial, and such a small sample size, there is no evidence that any differences in observed cancer rates were not simply due to random variation.

"To me that makes this a non-issue considering the target audience."

No offense, but no one really cares how it seems to you. The whole purpose of the scientific method is to get around individual biases. And what do you mean by "the target audience?" What does that have to do with anything? It doesn't matter who the target audience is - that doesn't excuse a poorly designed study. Seralini's study had a small sample size - one sixth the minimum recommended by accepted guidelines for studies of this type using this kind of animal. He's repeatedly refused to make his full data set publicly available. There's some evidence that rat feed may have been contaminated with GMO derived soy products, which would, of course, invalidate the results completely. There's also some question of multiplicity effects as well. In short, there are plenty of problems with this study, and your cursory examination of an abstract isn't going to dig up some smoking gun that invalidates all of the well deserved criticism.

"Also, the ability to get to 100 pounds overweight without only mild loss of professional and social status (instead of the severe loss women face) is a male privilege of sorts."

Women don't face a severe loss of professional status if they put on weight, unless their employer enjoys being cleaned out in court. And as for a loss of social status - try being an obese man for a while and see how that works out for you. They get ripped on just as bad as obese women.

This presumes that every belief and idea occupies an equal plane of legitimacy, and that everything is basically a matter of opinion. It's not.

His views are not acceptable. He's free to voice them all he likes, of course, but choosing to ignore him completely on the basis of some of his unacceptable views is not, in any way, "prejudice." Do keep in mind, please, that on the basis of just one thing - someone's sexual orientation - this guy is willing to give them legal status as second class citizens and incite armed rebellion against any government that would recognize their rights as people. If he's willing to do something that bad to someone solely on the basis of their sexual preferences, why on earth should anyone feel the least bit bad about choosing to simply ignore him on the basis of one of his beliefs?

Maybe because, in every audience, there are some people who have been beaten, or know people who have been beaten or killed, because of beliefs like this? Folks who've watched someone get their teeth kicked out over the sexual orientation tend to get a little...passionate...when a known homophobe's name comes up. They might even mention this out loud!

The problem with this line of argumentation is that you really don't need to invoke vague nominalizations like "power" and "privilege" to argue against this "i'm being oppressed because of my homophobic beliefs" nonsense. When you do, it invariably leads to the sorts of responses you're seeing from the likes of 127 and aaronem below.

/pro forma comment about studies showing people with the most virulently homophobic attitudes tend to have repressed homosexual tendencies

Your argument is nonsense. People can voice intolerant opinions all they like, but when they make laws that affect a specific group of people on the basis of that intolerance, they've gone a long, far step beyond just voicing an opinion. You want to be intolerant? Great, have at it. But you don't get to back your intolerant beliefs up with intolerant laws. Intolerance in this context isn't about personally disliking a group of people, it's about actively discriminating against them on a widespread basis because of that dislike, and yes, there should be zero tolerance for that sort of thing.

It's not really any different from the black movement. People who defend institutionalized hatred of gay people don't seem to understand this, and are forever perplexed as to why people affected by it feel so strongly about the issue.

To go a step further, to those who want to continue denying gays rights on the basis of their sexual orientation, they think that allowing gays to marry is just as bad as jailing someone for expressing a racist opinion. They literally do not understand the difference between these two things, hence the virulence of argument.

I disagree with who you are as a person, and on that basis, I think you should be denied rights that are routinely given to the rest of the population. Additionally, I find you personally foul and repulsive, and your very nature disgusts me. But it's nothing personal!

Wait, what? You're upset? You want to fight back? You think that just because you're a human being you should be given the same basic consideration under the law as anyone else? HOW DARE YOU PERSECUTE ME BECAUSE OF MY BELIEFS!

Just so you know, this is what you - and Orson Scott Card - sound like when you try to use this "argument."

Let me rephrase: by control, what I mean is not "control group," but "statistical control." Their statistical analysis did not properly account for the immensely increased likelihood of cancers given the breed of rat they chose.

Sure, but it's really, really hard to believe it's all so sterile and impersonal.

"Hey, i'm sure you're a really nice person, I just think you should be legally discriminated against and denied certain rights solely on the basis of your sexual orientation because I have some ill-informed and antiquated ideas about The Sanctity Of Marriage (tm). Beer?"

Doesn't really seem realistic to me.

Oh, let's hear what he has to say:

"Furthermore, if we allow ourselves to be intimidated by our fear of the world's censure into silence in the face of attempts by homosexuals to make their sin acceptable under the laws of the polity, then we have abandoned our role as teachers of righteousness."

"The repentant homosexual must be met with forgiveness. Even hypocritical homosexuals must be treated individually with compassion. But the collective behavior of the hypocrites of homosexuality must be met with our most forceful arguments and our complete intolerance of their lies."

"That a few individuals suffer from tragic genetic mixups does not affect the differences between genetically distinct males and females."

Yheaaa, sorry, but he actually is a bigot.

You need to remember - or know - that the Internet and software where THE thing to be writing about in science fiction circles back in the early nineties. See: Sterling, Bruce. Didn't matter if you're actually a writer, not an engineer, and have little idea what you're actually talking about.

> That said, I do share his distaste for the gay rights movement's propensity to attack and attempt to blacklist and attack their opponents.

Uh, what do you think that the gay rights movement's opponents are trying to do to them? That, and in many cases, much worse.

>I'm curious though - Communism has been far more harmful to the world than opposition to gay marriage. Do you also favor bringing back the anti-communist blacklists of the McCarthy era?

Argument from consequences.

Some studies that purport to show certain effects do, and are routinely criticized for the same reason. Proper medical trials, particularly for, say, a new drug use far larger sample sizes.

For starters, the breed of rat used - Sprague-Dawley - is one that routinely develops cancer and tumors, and is, in fact, used in cancer research for exactly this reason. So the fact that they developed tumors is about as surprising as a sunrise, and the study in question did not have any controls or statistical compensation whatsoever for this fact. Then, of course, there's also the sample size.

It literally takes me about five seconds to strip the DRM off of an epub, and then I can have backup copies of my own library. No losing books because a pipe bursts or a trunk gets lost during a move.

Yeah, the ecological benefits of an ereader may or may not be a wash. Sure, you're saving on trees, but most of the trees books are made from are farmed anyway, and electronics are incredibly, outrageously polluting and energy intensive to manufacture.

No, it's really not. A base model Nook can hold about 2000 books. If you have the older simple touch with an SD slot, you can expand that into the realm of....far more books than you'll ever live to read, quite frankly.

First of all, just because you only read one book at a time, doesn't mean that other people are the same way.

Second, even if you only read one book at a time (like yourself, and me as well), an ereader like the Nook or Kindle is still significantly more compact than even a trade paperback. A 700+ page hardcover? Forget it, it's not even a contest.

Ugh, coming up with something "cool" under time constraints, while someone is sitting there and watching my every move, is not exactly a realistic gauge of anything. One of the reasons the hiring process is so broken for so many is that they fail to take in to account the nervousness and pressure the candidate will invariably be feeling. Speaking as someone who has done many interviews, questions like this always make me cringe. Sitting there in a suit, sweating and angling for a job, isn't really the best time for me to come up with something "cool."

I think you're missing a couple of points here. First and foremost, he wouldn't mind being asked "petty questions pertaining to his ability to do the job," but by and large, he is NOT being asked those questions - that's kind of the entire point of his article. Second of all, it's not that he "tolerates" C level execs, he's just making the observation that they seem to conduct better interviews because, when it comes to the value of other people's time, they "get" it.

"What I like to see, is when many countries do studies and they all come up with similar results."

Leaving aside the fact that different countries are basically irrelevant here, what you are describing is a scientific consensus. These are always founded not on a single or even a handful of studies, but rather on many, many studies and mountains of evidence, meta-studies analyzing the studies, independent verification of results, and so forth. Science doesn't move forward by individual studies - that's a common misconception - it moves forward when enough of those studies accrue that a clear consensus emerges and shifts the prevailing paradigm. This is also why the lone brilliant genius who overturns everything with their piercing insight is such a stupid meme - even Einstein had to verify his results and wait for the rest of the community to double check his work.

And that's why it's a fallacy to place too much weight on a single study, and an even bigger fallacy to disregard places where there is, in fact, a clear consensus - e.g. cellphones don't cause cancer, global warming and evolution are real, etc...

I can't upvote this hard enough. If someone is calling me, their name pops up on the screen. What if I don't want to talk to them? I don't answer! If they leave a voicemail? I'll check it when I feel like it, and if it's not important, I won't bother with it. This article does hit one nail right on the head though, and it's the real source of the problems - when did people forget that cellphones serve them, and not the other way around?

This is a known anti-pattern.

One limit as far as production is concerned is the availability of water. Natural gas production in the United States has declined over the last several months due to drought triggered water shortages. As it turns out showing up and proposing to dump a large amount of the local water supply down a hole in the ground in the middle of the drought is not finding many takers.

"by some estimates."

Who's estimates? I notice the article doesn't mention. Personally, I tend to stick to estimates from the likes of BP and Exxon, since I figure they know what they're talking about.

"why is the oil form of energy so important"

Because it meets several requirements for an economy of global scale, not the least of which are extremely high energy density and ease of transport.

"I do wonder why we're not switching from oil to natural gas a lot faster though."

A combination of market forces and the fact that our entire infrastructure is geared towards petroleum - not the sort of thing you can replace with any ease or quickness.