HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Re: EDITED: I'd be interested in your definition of "Trotskyite," since nobody as yet seems to have developed a consistent or sensible one.

We're not arguing about how many angels can dance on the end of a pin.
TB — (archived)

We're talking about things like whether $400 billion in tax increases is enough to deal with a $1.2 trillion deficit. Or whether most of government spending and the debt is social programs. Or what the deficits will be for the next ten years for Obama's proposed budget.

Things that, unlike angel choreography, can be looked up, cross-checked, and confirmed. Kind of like the tensile strength of steel.

If an engineer never heard of steel and builds a bridge out of copper that collapses, that's an error of knowledge. Something corrected by long effort, sometimes generations of it. If a modern engineer still insists on building a bridge out of copper instead of structural steel after he's been shown all the materials and their numbers, then yes, he's stupid.

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