# In the history of the SDMB has anyone ever been wrong about more things than adaher? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 31, 2013, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639 "2013-08-31T04:55:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/161 "2013-09-04T16:40:19Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Bloody hell but you’re an intellectual, moral, ethical and economic lightweight, aren’t you. You really have no idea what actually matters most. You are a living demonstration of [the Dunning-Kruger effect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) > > Here is the bottom line: **the economy takes place inside the environment**. **It doesn’t matter how much it costs to fix the environment so that the economy can continue** , the alternative is worse - economically speaking (as well as in pretty much every other way that matters). You’re right about how it doesn’t matter how much it costs. We need to live on a healthy planet. But scientists cannot tell you what method of preserving the planet works better. As of 2013, there are three government policies designed to reduce greenhouse gases that are plausible: a carbon tax, cap and trade, and just passing regulations limiting emissions. Scientists have no expertise in judging the merits of those three alternatives. Neither do they have expertise in judging which alternatives have the most promise, since getting these alternatives to market is an engineering problem first, and a marketing problem second. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/162 "2013-09-04T16:50:55Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > In the energy sector, everything must turn a profit. And scientists don’t know how to make things profitable. **That’s where businessmen come into the picture.** Real businessmen, not ex-politicians and DNC officials who figured out how to get rich off government subsidies. That one there is where the political scientists explain why government picking winners and losers doesn’t work out very well. > > Chances are it will take one, we just can’t know in advance which one. It seems to take multiple sources now because all the alternative sources are insignificant when compared to fossil fuels. But eventually some dude who didn’t get government subsidies will stumble onto an idea, it will replace fossil fuels, and the government will rush to take credit for the whole shebang because sometime in the 80s some basic research was done. So he didn’t build that. You mean the same businessmen who would happily poison the local water supply just make an extra buck? You think they should have a say anymore? They proved their worth. How do you know it won’t be gov’t funded research that finds the answer? And the need to turn a profit above all else is why we’re in so many messes right now. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/163 "2013-09-04T16:55:59Z")
Businessmen want to make money. Solar panels can make them a lot of money, once viable. And only they can figure out how to make them viable, because they, not scientists, not engineers, not even economists, know what it takes to get people to part with their money. Government funded research will find an answer, or at least a piece of the answer, but it won’t produce a commercial product, because you have to get the costs down and customize it so that consumers will actually want it. Even government has to at least break even. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/164 "2013-09-04T16:58:02Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Neither is FDR or LBJ. Or anyone like them. Those days are gone forever. Unlike conservatives, liberals are not actively waiting for either of them to come back and destroy our enemies. We try to live up to the good policies they did and not repeat the bad. Also, your point? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/165 "2013-09-04T17:03:52Z")
The days of public support for massive expansions of government is long dead and is never coming back. At best, liberals are the new conservatives, trying to save what they can from their legacy accomplishments. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/166 "2013-09-04T17:07:34Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Businessmen want to make money. Solar panels can make them a lot of money, once viable. And only they can figure out how to make them viable, because they, not scientists, not engineers, not even economists, know what it takes to get people to part with their money. > > Government funded research will find an answer, or at least a piece of the answer, but it won’t produce a commercial product, because you have to get the costs down and customize it so that consumers will actually want it. > > Even government has to at least break even. But it takes scientists/research to make any product viable, not businessmen. As you point out, they’re only good for extracting money from consumers. Most likely with a poorly made product and inflated hype. They don’t give a shit about making it better if it lines their pockets today. If an improvement reduces the profit margin, it will get the ax. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/167 "2013-09-04T17:15:59Z")
Scientists can’t make a product. They make discoveries that can lead to products. “We can harness the Sun’s power to provide power here on Earth!” Then the engineers figure out how to design panels. When was that done, 50 years ago? So the last 50 years have been spent trying to make the panels cheap and efficient enough so that you will buy them. I remember an article that’s kind of a joke now, from the 1960s about computers. they predicted that by the year 2000, advancements would get the size of a computer down to one ton, so that every family could have one in their home! But back when computers were mostly the province of universities and government projects, that sounded reasonable. It took businessmen to truly make the dream of home PCs a reality. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/168 "2013-09-04T17:26:32Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > It took businessmen to truly make the dream of home PCs a reality. It took research to make the tech. advancements that made smaller and smaller chips possible. Ditto for hard drives and pretty much every part of a PC. Remember, companies like Apple, Microsoft and HP were not founded by business types. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/169 "2013-09-04T17:30:18Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Scientists can’t make a product. They make discoveries that can lead to products. “We can harness the Sun’s power to provide power here on Earth!” Then the engineers figure out how to design panels. When was that done, 50 years ago? So the last 50 years have been spent trying to make the panels cheap and efficient enough so that you will buy them. Interesting. So I’d better either tell my boss that I can’t program our software any more, or tell the university to take back my PhD, because apparently I’m no longer a scientist. It’s possible for someone to wear more than one hat, Adaher. (In your case, the hat is on a non-traditional body part.) Scientists can be entrepreneurs and engineers and marketeers. Not everyone sees the world in the ridiculous black and white that you perceive. Only someone who primarily gets their model of the world from watching movies on the Syfy channel buys the view of a scientist as an unworldly doofus in a white lab coat. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/170 "2013-09-04T17:30:19Z")
Perhaps not, but even from the beginning they were run as businesses very well, if for no other reason than that they had to to survive. The market is a strict disciplinarian. Governments can produce $100 billion rockets and then get it down to $20 billion in 40 years and call that an accomplishment. Businesses need figure out how to reduce the prices of what they sell by 99% at times or not have a market for their products. The way things are right now, Steve Jobs could have produced a 20-pound Ipod and people would have gone, “ooohhhh, aaahhhhh, he’s such a genius”, and only a few rich people would ever have bought it. That’s what we’re seeing with some of these green energy moguls who rely primarily on subsidies to stay in business. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/171 "2013-09-04T17:34:09Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Interesting. So I’d better either tell my boss that I can’t program our software any more, or tell the university to take back my PhD, because apparently I’m no longer a scientist. > > It’s possible for someone to wear more than one hat, Adaher. (In your case, the hat is on a non-traditional body part.) Scientists can be entrepreneurs and engineers and marketeers. Not everyone sees the world in the ridiculous black and white that you perceive. Only someone who primarily gets their model of the world from watching movies on the Syfy channel buys the view of a scientist as an unworldly doofus in a white lab coat. That’s understood by everyone, even me. But you are overestimating the overlap. Scientists do get into engineering, or in the case of information technology, into developing software. They still don’t get products down in cost enough to be viable on their own, and they definitely don’t do it if they aren’t working in the private sector. I’m glad we’ve gotten away from the idea that experts can manage the whole county. Now we just have to dispense with this foolishness that they can manage an industry. I will concede that they are very good at managing a lab or a classroom. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/172 "2013-09-04T17:35:46Z")
And why shouldn’t new technologies get some help since the established businesses are too busy chasing profits to bother ? And have you forgotten the vast amounts of subsidies that go to long established companies even now? How many companies have been bailed out by gov’t loans? ---
**Author:** ![Karrius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71c47a/32.png) [@Karrius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karrius)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/173 "2013-09-04T17:42:25Z")
In a lot of industries (including my own), the data scientists produce is considered a product, because it is important for companies to continue to work, especially in ways that don’t outright kill people. Also a lot of scientists are the ones who make new products, make them work, etc. Engineers are also a type of scientist if you ask most people, I’d think. Of course, I expect adaher to know about science roughly as much as he knows about polling, that is, not one fucking bit. Still, adaher provides a very useful service to this board - if he agrees with a position, you instantly know it’s wrong and is nothing but conservative propaganda based on lies. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/174 "2013-09-04T17:52:20Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > And why shouldn’t new technologies get some help since the established businesses are too busy chasing profits to bother ? Because the choices of which techs to back are based on politics. > [@](#): > > And have you forgotten the vast amounts of subsidies that go to long established companies even now? How many companies have been bailed out by gov’t loans? That is a case to eliminate corporate subsidies, not to expand them to companies you like. I don’t favor ag subsidies, or oil subsidies. There is never a good reason to give corporations taxpayer money that isn’t a direct purchase. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/175 "2013-09-04T18:01:35Z")
Helping new tech (for instance Tesla) to become more viable can pay off later with more efficient electric cars available to the general public. Subsidizing long established companies is nothing but lining the pockets of the upper management and stockholders. Are these companies so badly run they can’t survive on their own? Supporting new tech based on politics is fucking stupid as politicians seldom have the education to understand. Or the moral fortitude to stand up for what’s right or needed. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/176 "2013-09-04T18:25:51Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You’re right about how it doesn’t matter how much it costs. We need to live on a healthy planet. But scientists cannot tell you what method of preserving the planet works better. As of 2013, there are three government policies designed to reduce greenhouse gases that are plausible: a carbon tax, cap and trade, and just passing regulations limiting emissions. Scientists have no expertise in judging the merits of those three alternatives. Neither do they have expertise in judging which alternatives have the most promise, since getting these alternatives to market is an engineering problem first, and a marketing problem second. Besides the clear avoidance of your Economist howler, this is a gross ignorant thing to say in light of the efforts made by Republicans and specially Tea partiers, most Republicans that were in favor of the cap and trade were removed by a know noting Tea partier that nixed the formerly more accepted plan of cap and trade from the recent past. The result: one viable solution was declared anathema just by ideological reasons and so cap-n-trade is dead now. The point here is that indeed Scientists have no expertise on the merits on how to apply the recommended course of action (there are several available to reduce emissions, in the end that is what it counts), but you are really an ignorant when you omit the context. The current crop of republicans are recklessly ignoring science altogether. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/177 "2013-09-04T18:40:05Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The days of public support for massive expansions of government is long dead and is never coming back. At best, liberals are the new conservatives, trying to save what they can from their legacy accomplishments. LOL! Tell those Tea Baggers waving their signs to get government off their Medicare. The branding may be bad, but people want government programs just as much now as they did before ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/178 "2013-09-04T18:40:53Z")
There are certainly many popular government programs. Just no support for new ones or expanded ones. ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/179 "2013-09-04T18:48:19Z")
I glanced at the name and freaked a little. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639/180 "2013-09-04T19:45:20Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The days of public support for massive expansions of government is long dead and is never coming back. If they are, Medicare Part D was their last hurrah. But I think you’re wrong. If the Republicans get back into power I suspect they’ll find something else to spend trillions on while cutting taxes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-history-of-the-sdmb-has-anyone-ever-been-wrong-about-more-things-than-adaher/667639.md?page=10)