Obama Ends NASA Moon Mission

[Wendigo]

Apocryphal Libertarian

Wendigo

Now they are mundane, mass-produced items - precisely because so much time and money was spent early on when they couldn't be done.

No. Not because.

Saying that ongoing research must have a beginning is tautological.

Nonetheless true. And tautological or not, it seems to be something that you find hard to accept, since you contradict it elsewhere. For example:

Quote:

It's almost as if a substantial amount of innovation happened after the development of the initial mainframe.

You spent much of this post and the last, in fact, behaving as though I deny the existence of recent developments entirely. I actually take it as a given that more money and attention has been spent on computers since we've begun to actually build them, rather than discussing our designs in the drawing room over brandy and cigars as Babbage did. (And since resources unavailable to Babbage have been made available for the research - like Tesla, he suffered from a certain lack of liquidity, although he was ahead of his time. A time sadly obsessed with building new rail lines and speculating in gold, which although worthy pursuits have their limits.)

Don't get me wrong. It is no part of my intention to discount the accomplishments of the teams competing for the X-Prize, say, in achieving space flight using a comparatively modest budget and streamlined organization. Or, for that matter, the major computer hardware manufacturers in miniaturizing a beast like ENIAC into something I could carry in my shirt pocket. As I lack the expertise to do either myself, I find both to be pretty remarkable feats and well worth doing no matter who's actually doing them.

However, the reason the original teams took as long as they did, costed as much as they did, and had results as slipshod as they did was because they didn't have work like theirs to refer to as a baseline. People might be less likely to malign the memory of those distinguished efforts if they were to keep that in mind from time to time. Such as when discussing the amazing powers of the free market and its invisible hands. Because it sure looks to me as though you are still entirely willing to compare apples to oranges in terms of who did what research for how much over what time frame, but not apples to apples in terms of who did it without knowing how it had been done before and therefore could be done again. Because any team of highly trained experts benefits from having the annotated work of other highly trained experts doing the same task to which they can refer from time to time. Really gets the creative juices flowing.

Quote:

My emphasis was on the innovation required to be able to manufacture them quicker and cheaper.

I noticed, and there is generally innovation involved in achieving that goal effectively. I freely grant that. Henry Ford's success was largely built on assembly lines and interchangeable parts, which were novel ideas at the time. Both are widely copied in a variety of fields, including aerospace, because they cut out a lot of unnecessary middlemen in manufacturing and maintenance.

But in the process, you tried to make it appear as though NASA was in some way loosening its belt or dragging its feet when it was treading boldly into almost completely new territory under the custody of multiple penny-pinching administrations. (More than one promising NASA project has been entirely shelved largely because of budget concerns, by the way. My personal pet peeve being the X-33.) Was that not your intent in the post about the previous champion and its budget?

Quote:

(Much) Additional work was needed to proceed from those initial steps to the mundane, mass produced items.

Quote:

Alright, let's make a wild assumption that current mundane, mass-produced product is, and relies on, technology that is distinct from what was initially developed. From there, wouldn't it be logical to assume that "hard work and investment" were integral to the development of the current products?

If you had stuck exclusively to those arguments, I wouldn't have had any reason to contradict you. Since it is an acknowledged fact since at least the Iron Age that mass production is the best model for reducing the cost (at the cost of quality) to get a product into service, and any damn fool could tell that we aren't typing this conversation up on an ENIAC, which lacked an actual keyboard to type it on.

[wildblackfire]

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

antaine

wildblackfire

he can't reduce the military's budget until America is no longer at war. And he has to make sure they aren't going to make themselves look weak by doing it. it's risky business. I don't know if you noticed but America isn't too popular right now. You have to look at it from a global scale. As much as people want peace with other countries they are only doing so because they are looking in their own countries best interest. It's a dog eat dog world out there. If he shows weakness in Americas current state he's making them a target. he has to reestablish America position in the global entity before he can do that, give them some support from other global entities first. or America will be ripped apart in a frenzy. stare

Is a strong military really only meassured in how much money you can throw at it?
Just a thought.

no, but realistically nobody can tell how strong your military is without going to war with it. people don't want to do that without at least a vague idea of what they're dealing with. Money means better equipment, more people, more training, more funding towards research for new weaponry. ect. It's the name of the game. you never let someone you're playing against see you're hand. only the raw you're putting into it. So they can't know exactly what they are getting into. It's a great deterrence for war. does it work? well has America been attacked? stare

did you just elephant gun fallacy yourself?

explain please. stare

The fallacy is as follows:
I have an elephant gun in my room
My room has never had an elephant in it
ergo the gun works

that, of course, is a logical fallacy as it assumes that an elephant was guaranteed to show up without said gun, and that the gun itself kept them away
see your statement and apply it here

oh so your not attacking my actual argument but an example I used in it. huh. the arguments valid without it so if you wanna exempt it that's fine. stare

[agrab0ekim]

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

no, but realistically nobody can tell how strong your military is without going to war with it. people don't want to do that without at least a vague idea of what they're dealing with. Money means better equipment, more people, more training, more funding towards research for new weaponry. ect. It's the name of the game. you never let someone you're playing against see you're hand. only the raw you're putting into it. So they can't know exactly what they are getting into. It's a great deterrence for war. does it work? well has America been attacked? stare

did you just elephant gun fallacy yourself?

explain please. stare

The fallacy is as follows:
I have an elephant gun in my room
My room has never had an elephant in it
ergo the gun works

that, of course, is a logical fallacy as it assumes that an elephant was guaranteed to show up without said gun, and that the gun itself kept them away
see your statement and apply it here

oh so your not attacking my actual argument but an example I used in it. huh. the arguments valid without it so if you wanna exempt it that's fine. stare

I asked a ******** question about something you said, nothing more, nothing less
the answer was 'yes,' and that was it. No need to think that i am attacking your post

[wildblackfire]

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

no, but realistically nobody can tell how strong your military is without going to war with it. people don't want to do that without at least a vague idea of what they're dealing with. Money means better equipment, more people, more training, more funding towards research for new weaponry. ect. It's the name of the game. you never let someone you're playing against see you're hand. only the raw you're putting into it. So they can't know exactly what they are getting into. It's a great deterrence for war. does it work? well has America been attacked? stare

did you just elephant gun fallacy yourself?

explain please. stare

The fallacy is as follows:
I have an elephant gun in my room
My room has never had an elephant in it
ergo the gun works

that, of course, is a logical fallacy as it assumes that an elephant was guaranteed to show up without said gun, and that the gun itself kept them away
see your statement and apply it here

oh so your not attacking my actual argument but an example I used in it. huh. the arguments valid without it so if you wanna exempt it that's fine. stare

I asked a ******** question about something you said, nothing more, nothing less
the answer was 'yes,' and that was it. No need to think that i am attacking your post

eek relaaaxxxx. I just stated that you weren't attacking the argument. no need to get so defensive. I just didn't understand the fallacy, and by saying my arguments still valid without it I was letting you know that I understand what you mean. stare

[agrab0ekim]

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

explain please. stare

The fallacy is as follows:
I have an elephant gun in my room
My room has never had an elephant in it
ergo the gun works

that, of course, is a logical fallacy as it assumes that an elephant was guaranteed to show up without said gun, and that the gun itself kept them away
see your statement and apply it here

oh so your not attacking my actual argument but an example I used in it. huh. the arguments valid without it so if you wanna exempt it that's fine. stare

I asked a ******** question about something you said, nothing more, nothing less
the answer was 'yes,' and that was it. No need to think that i am attacking your post

eek relaaaxxxx. I just stated that you weren't attacking the argument. no need to get so defensive. I just didn't understand the fallacy, and by saying my arguments still valid without it I was letting you know that I understand what you mean. stare

Then I would suggest that you stop using the stare icon. Typically that is used when contending or disagreeing strongly with the post you are quoting.
That said, your argument is not valid for the following reasons:
1) We are not at war, and have not been since 1946
2) The international state is anarchic, but a big stick is not the only means of peace. Quite often, it is considered the worst means of peace, as allying not only eliminates said anarchy, but gives you a bigger stick naturally.
3) You are using your fallacy to prove your point, which is my issue. You can not say that because there is a bigger stick we are not attacked, rather, you must use history to prove it (say 15 cases where the Bigger stick is always the aggressor vs. 1 where it is not the case (of course, one could argue that 9/11 showed it was the exact opposite))

[wildblackfire]

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

explain please. stare

The fallacy is as follows:
I have an elephant gun in my room
My room has never had an elephant in it
ergo the gun works

that, of course, is a logical fallacy as it assumes that an elephant was guaranteed to show up without said gun, and that the gun itself kept them away
see your statement and apply it here

oh so your not attacking my actual argument but an example I used in it. huh. the arguments valid without it so if you wanna exempt it that's fine. stare

I asked a ******** question about something you said, nothing more, nothing less
the answer was 'yes,' and that was it. No need to think that i am attacking your post

eek relaaaxxxx. I just stated that you weren't attacking the argument. no need to get so defensive. I just didn't understand the fallacy, and by saying my arguments still valid without it I was letting you know that I understand what you mean. stare

Then I would suggest that you stop using the stare icon. Typically that is used when contending or disagreeing strongly with the post you are quoting.
That said, your argument is not valid for the following reasons:
1) We are not at war, and have not been since 1946
2) The international state is anarchic, but a big stick is not the only means of peace. Quite often, it is considered the worst means of peace, as allying not only eliminates said anarchy, but gives you a bigger stick naturally.
3) You are using your fallacy to prove your point, which is my issue. You can not say that because there is a bigger stick we are not attacked, rather, you must use history to prove it (say 15 cases where the Bigger stick is always the aggressor vs. 1 where it is not the case (of course, one could argue that 9/11 showed it was the exact opposite))

so in other words you were lying and were attacking my argument. I use the stare icon in almost all of my posts. I signifys my continual boredom. Iraqi, Afghanistan, remember? I think that counts as war. and i don't really care if you think a big stick doesn't prevent war, because it's just common sense that if your going to attack someone it's going to be a person with a little stick not a big one. I didn't disagree that military spending should be cut. I just stated why it's important to do it properly. the only reason countries are at peace is because they are looking in their own countries best interest, not because they like you. a plane isn't a stick. If it was soviet Russia that was responsible for 9/11 do you think the response would have been the same? or do you think people would have stopped and and considered the consequences of declaring a war? And yet there was unbridled support for the war in Iraqi when it was started. The only reason people are pissed now is because it wasn't as quick of a fix as they wanted it to be. the world doesn't play by the rules of American sovereignty and ethics. it really is a dog eat dog. And the dog with the biggest teeth gets the respect. stare

[agrab0ekim]

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

agrab0ekim

wildblackfire

oh so your not attacking my actual argument but an example I used in it. huh. the arguments valid without it so if you wanna exempt it that's fine. stare

I asked a ******** question about something you said, nothing more, nothing less
the answer was 'yes,' and that was it. No need to think that i am attacking your post

eek relaaaxxxx. I just stated that you weren't attacking the argument. no need to get so defensive. I just didn't understand the fallacy, and by saying my arguments still valid without it I was letting you know that I understand what you mean. stare

Then I would suggest that you stop using the stare icon. Typically that is used when contending or disagreeing strongly with the post you are quoting.
That said, your argument is not valid for the following reasons:
1) We are not at war, and have not been since 1946
2) The international state is anarchic, but a big stick is not the only means of peace. Quite often, it is considered the worst means of peace, as allying not only eliminates said anarchy, but gives you a bigger stick naturally.
3) You are using your fallacy to prove your point, which is my issue. You can not say that because there is a bigger stick we are not attacked, rather, you must use history to prove it (say 15 cases where the Bigger stick is always the aggressor vs. 1 where it is not the case (of course, one could argue that 9/11 showed it was the exact opposite))

so in other words you were lying and were attacking my argument. I use the stare icon in almost all of my posts. I signifys my continual boredom. Iraqi, Afghanistan, remember? I think that counts as war. and i don't really care if you think a big stick doesn't prevent war, because it's just common sense that if your going to attack someone it's going to be a person with a little stick not a big one. I didn't disagree that military spending should be cut. I just stated why it's important to do it properly. the only reason countries are at peace is because they are looking in their own countries best interest, not because they like you. a plane isn't a stick. If it was soviet Russia that was responsible for 9/11 do you think the response would have been the same? or do you think people would have stopped and and considered the consequences of declaring a war? And yet there was unbridled support for the war in Iraqi when it was started. The only reason people are pissed now is because it wasn't as quick of a fix as they wanted it to be. the world doesn't play by the rules of American sovereignty and ethics. it really is a dog eat dog. And the dog with the biggest teeth gets the respect. stare

No, at that moment, i was not attacking your post. Now i am.

The term war is an issue, as it requires a declaration. Iraq and Afghanistan do not have one, thus, are not wars.

Why did Japan attack us, what about Spain, or Mexico, or 9/11/other incidents? We had the big stick, but they still attacked. Your logic seems to falter in the face of this.

Their was not unbridled support. I was against the invasion then (though for it now), as were most people I knew. We all knew that 9/11 and Iraq were not connected.

The world doesn't play by any rules, thus the international anarchical state. That said, however, modern political thought views that a peaceful nation is less likely to ire others, and thus stay safe (see japan, France, Germany, and others who are not attacked yet have a rather small military).

[Amongst_many]

agrab0ekim

Their was not unbridled support. I was against the invasion then (though for it now), as were most people I knew. We all knew that 9/11 and Iraq were not connected.

How is it that you changed your mind on the support of the war?

[Black Baoz]

I wish NASA was more productive, I mean, it hurts me to say this, but until we are out of this mess, we do need the money. PS: Anyone read Dan Brown's "Deception Point"?

As for the War in Iraq, we could have went a totally defferent way. But, once you not down the bee hive you can't leave it there. You have to fix the mess.

[Amongst_many]

Black Baoz

I wish NASA was more productive, I mean, it hurts me to say this, but until we are out of this mess, we do need the money. PS: Anyone read Dan Brown's "Deception Point"?

As for the War in Iraq, we could have went a totally defferent way. But, once you not down the bee hive you can't leave it there. You have to fix the mess.

And thus osama was right all along, bring them to a war where they'll spend themselves to death.

[Mokie7]

Amongst_many

Black Baoz

I wish NASA was more productive, I mean, it hurts me to say this, but until we are out of this mess, we do need the money. PS: Anyone read Dan Brown's "Deception Point"?

As for the War in Iraq, we could have went a totally defferent way. But, once you not down the bee hive you can't leave it there. You have to fix the mess.

And thus osama was right all along, bring them to a war where they'll spend themselves to death.

The terrorists have won.

[Wendigo]

Black Baoz

PS: Anyone read Dan Brown's "Deception Point"?

What does he have to do with anything? What, we have to stop the Knights Templar and the Freemasons from hiding the secret that Jesus Christ had a space alien baby?

'Sides, I gather that the villains in Deception Point are the ones who want to abolish NASA so that they can profit from running the show themselves.

[Apocryphal Libertarian]

Wendigo

Apocryphal Libertarian

Wendigo

Now they are mundane, mass-produced items - precisely because so much time and money was spent early on when they couldn't be done.

No. Not because.

Saying that ongoing research must have a beginning is tautological.

Nonetheless true.

...
Yes. That would be the definition of tautological.

Wendigo

And tautological or not, it seems to be something that you find hard to accept, since you contradict it elsewhere. For example:

Quote:

It's almost as if a substantial amount of innovation happened after the development of the initial mainframe.

You're going to have to elaborate how this contradicts that point. I didn't intend to, and simply don't see how you are interpreting this as a denial of the initial innovations by the pioneers.

Wendigo

You spent much of this post and the last, in fact, behaving as though I deny the existence of recent developments entirely.

And you that I deny the hard work required for the initial innovations.

Wendigo

However, the reason the original teams took as long as they did, costed as much as they did, and had results as slipshod as they did was because they didn't have work like theirs to refer to as a baseline.

Yes. Which is why they get credit for being innovative. This does not discount the innovation that occurred after their work.

Wendigo

People might be less likely to malign the memory of those distinguished efforts if they were to keep that in mind from time to time.

You're going to have to elaborate how this "maligns their memory". I wasn't being facetious when I referred to them as "champions" and my comments about their budget are true. They had to overcome technical challenges and time constraints, but they certainly didn't have to worry about money. They had the backing of the US government determined to win the Space Race.

Wendigo

Such as when discussing the amazing powers of the free market and its invisible hands.

By Jupiter, I hate that metaphor. It's just supposed to mean "unintended consequences" (of consensual transactions between two parties for mutual benefit).

Anyway, you're clearly being facetious, but I still don't see how this is relevant.

Wendigo

Because it sure looks to me as though you are still entirely willing to compare apples to oranges in terms of who did what research for how much over what time frame,

Not what I'm doing.

Wendigo

but not apples to apples in terms of who did it without knowing how it had been done before and therefore could be done again.

This is what I'm doing.
Are you mistaken on the definition of innovation?

Wendigo

Because any team of highly trained experts benefits from having the annotated work of other highly trained experts doing the same task to which they can refer from time to time. Really gets the creative juices flowing.

Absolutely true. It allows for further innovation. Which some future team of highly trained experts can build upon.

Wendigo

Quote:

My emphasis was on the innovation required to be able to manufacture them quicker and cheaper.

I noticed, and there is generally innovation involved in achieving that goal effectively. I freely grant that.

Then why are you arguing?

Wendigo

Henry Ford's success was largely built on assembly lines and interchangeable parts, which were novel ideas at the time. Both are widely copied in a variety of fields, including aerospace, because they cut out a lot of unnecessary middlemen in manufacturing and maintenance.

Yes, this is definitely one such example of innovation that occurs after the initial development. In this case economizing the manufacture of cars is innovative, even if the car had already been invented.

Wendigo

But in the process, you tried to make it appear as though NASA was in some way loosening its belt or dragging its feet when it was treading boldly into almost completely new territory under the custody of multiple penny-pinching administrations.

No. This is not what I did at all. Any engineer would have to have a hell of a lot of chutzpah to do so.

Wendigo

(More than one promising NASA project has been entirely shelved largely because of budget concerns, by the way. My personal pet peeve being the X-33.)

Scarcity is an issue, as is poor management and federal budget deficits. However, they have had tremendous support in the past, up to 5.5% of the entire federal budget in 1966, which was more than the government was spending on the army that year. You know, during Vietnam. Are you seriously going to call that "penny-pinching"?

Wendigo

Was that not your intent in the post about the previous champion and its budget?

No, as I have explained.

Wendigo

Quote:

(Much) Additional work was needed to proceed from those initial steps to the mundane, mass produced items.

Quote:

Alright, let's make a wild assumption that current mundane, mass-produced product is, and relies on, technology that is distinct from what was initially developed. From there, wouldn't it be logical to assume that "hard work and investment" were integral to the development of the current products?

If you had stuck exclusively to those arguments, I wouldn't have had any reason to contradict you.

I'm still trying to work how you got what you did out of my posts. I certainly don't believe I have changed arguments.

Wendigo

Since it is an acknowledged fact since at least the Iron Age that mass production is the best model for reducing the cost (at the cost of quality)

I disagree on the tradeoff to quality, and would like you to elucidate on the "mass production" model you are talking about. But that's a tangent we don't need to take. Respond if you care to, I won't have any hurt feelings.

Wendigo

to get a product into service, and any damn fool could tell that we aren't typing this conversation up on an ENIAC, which lacked an actual keyboard to type it on.

Substantial innovation we've had since then, yes? People who work on ENIAC very smart and innovative, yes? Intel engineers since then also very smart and innovative, yes?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, I'm lost as to the exact nature of our argument.

[agrab0ekim]

Amongst_many

agrab0ekim

Their was not unbridled support. I was against the invasion then (though for it now), as were most people I knew. We all knew that 9/11 and Iraq were not connected.

How is it that you changed your mind on the support of the war?

I knew they were not linked and did not support going in there. Now that we are, we need to stabilize it before we leave

[Wendigo]

Apocryphal Libertarian

You're going to have to elaborate how this contradicts that point. I didn't intend to, and simply don't see how you are interpreting this as a denial of the initial innovations by the pioneers.

It's not the argument you imply here that I believe we're having. Clearly you believe that the early innovations in space flight, computing, and so forth did occur, and I believe that the later ones did as well. There is simply no denying it, it's a matter of objective fact both ways that the developments in question did occur.

However, I have seen no indication at all that you understand what I've been arguing - that you're placing a greater amount of subjective importance on later developments using established technology than on the early efforts to make that technology possible. Implying, for example, that NASA's budget was unnecessarily large (a subjective opinion which I would consider revisionist) when making that first reply to Redem, in the process of suggesting that mass production can lead to a streamlined production model (which is just another tautology).

It seems to me that saying that after the dam broke, all the water came rushing out goes without saying.

Quote:

Wendigo

People might be less likely to malign the memory of those distinguished efforts if they were to keep that in mind from time to time.

You're going to have to elaborate how this "maligns their memory".

Let's have a look at what Wendigo zoomed in on while reading the off-the-cuff remark in question.

Quote:

the previous champion (NASA) never had to worry about costs, except staying within a reasonable distance of their multi-billion dollar budget

*lights cigar, pours snifter of brandy*

I say, chaps, let's finally have a go at that moon thing, what? That Verne fellow made it look frightfully easy, all we need is a strapping large cannon and we're off.

Quote:

They had to overcome technical challenges and time constraints, but they certainly didn't have to worry about money. They had the backing of the US government determined to win the Space Race.

This is the first time I've seen you acknowledge the bold during the course of this argument.

And yes, if Gagarin hadn't successfully orbited the earth, the history of NASA would appear starkly different. I suspect that NASA's budget would have stagnated at less than one percent of the federal budget, as it did initially and as it returned to shortly after we successfully landed men on the moon.

Quote:

Wendigo

Such as when discussing the amazing powers of the free market and its invisible hands.

By Jupiter, I hate that metaphor. It's just supposed to mean "unintended consequences" (of consensual transactions between two parties for mutual benefit).

No, it's supposed to be what pulls a businessman's money into his home community again instead of that money being invested abroad where he can no longer keep a close eye on it. (And where the people around him would see no benefit from his acquiring profit personally.) It's an eighteenth century notion about world commerce which has been thoroughly exploded since globalization and the dawn of the Information Age.

The more modern interpretation (re: Spontaneous Order) is just a load of insipid bullshit.

Quote:

Are you mistaken on the definition of innovation?

The introduction of something new? No, I wouldn't say that I am.

Quote:

Wendigo

But in the process, you tried to make it appear as though NASA was in some way loosening its belt or dragging its feet when it was treading boldly into almost completely new territory under the custody of multiple penny-pinching administrations.

No. This is not what I did at all. Any engineer would have to have a hell of a lot of chutzpah to do so.

That was sure what it looked like, man. And what it still looks like, frankly.

Quote:

However, they have had tremendous support in the past, up to 5.5% of the entire federal budget in 1966, which was more than the government was spending on the army that year. You know, during Vietnam. Are you seriously going to call that "penny-pinching"?

Now that's just disingenuous - at this point the "American Phase" has just started heating up, and won't reach its real peak until a couple years later. The real measuring stick, and real policy priority, at the time was Johnson's "Great Society." The war was still supposed to end any time thanks to shock and awe tactics.

Quote:

Wendigo

Since it is an acknowledged fact since at least the Iron Age that mass production is the best model for reducing the cost (at the cost of quality)

I disagree on the tradeoff to quality, and would like you to elucidate on the "mass production" model you are talking about.

In this particular instance?

Bronze is a superior material for armor and weapons than iron is. However, it's an alloy - it requires more time and manpower to get the right materials in the right proportions. The reason that iron weapons began to predominate relative to bronze is that you could arm more men with iron more quickly, and numbers were what mattered. (Which is a paradigm that was to hold for over a thousand years still.)

The same thing is true of, say, factory-produced wooden furniture over work laboriously hand-carved by a carpenter. The carpenter (or the practitioner of most any other cottage industry) produces a very effective product, but it takes him a long time to produce, and it therefore costs a lot for the end user. If I want a really comfortable rocking chair that will last me a long time, I want a carpenter to produce it, and I pay a premium. If I want a really cheap rocking chair, or if for some reason I need several pieces of furniture at once, I go to the factory and its more efficient (at turning out chairs quickly) assembly line. And some people prefer the one, which is why there are still carpenters, while some prefer the other, which is why there is Ikea.

When I say that there's a drop in quality necessitated by mass production, by the way, I don't mean that there is something wrong with mass production as a result. It's the basis of the entire Industrial Revolution; it makes formerly scarce items available much more broadly and cheaply. And that's good. In fact, it's the very phenomenon you're praising at work. However, it is important to recognize both the positive and negative aspects, and it seems like you're only interested in the positive.

Quote:

Substantial innovation we've had since then, yes? People who work on ENIAC very smart and innovative, yes? Intel engineers since then also very smart and innovative, yes?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, I'm lost as to the exact nature of our argument.

The answer is yes to all three questions, and I noticed.