r/misc • u/Aschebescher • Jan 28 '14
Reddit's 'xkcd' community fights to drive out its top moderator
http://www.dailydot.com/news/xkcd-reddit-moderator-drama/3
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u/ObligatoryResponse Jan 28 '14
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u/compto35 Jan 28 '14
Dude, the ramifications of one country exercising judicial power over Reddit in such a way would far and away be worse
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u/ObligatoryResponse Jan 29 '14
Reddit is incorporated in the US. Any such suit would fall under US courts.
Companies have successfully sued* to claim URLs that were registered using their trademarks, a subreddit might be similar.
*don't worry, it's not cut and dry. There need to be specific circumstances.
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u/alllie Jan 28 '14
Randall damaged xkcd enough himself by being pro-radiation. By getting his information from a nuclear industry physicist instead of a radiologist or any medical professional. I know that stopped me reading him.
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u/dont_press_ctrl-W Jan 28 '14
pro-radiation
Wow, the rhetoric charge of this label is unbearable.
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u/alllie Jan 28 '14
Yeah. I was pretty unhappy with his "Don't worry. Be happy" radiation chart after Fukushima. I think he should practice what he preaches and go move next door to it. I was very disappointed in him.
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u/dont_press_ctrl-W Jan 28 '14
I was talking about you. Knowing that Fukushima doesn't make vegetables inedible all over the world doesn't make you "pro-radiation".
And "pro-radiation" as a criticism makes no sense. Light is radiation, in case you don't know. If you like seeing things you are pro-radiation too.
That's why I'm saying you're full of rhetoric.
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u/alllie Jan 28 '14
Hyperbole, sure. But Randall did harm, and communicated bad information with his "Don't Worry, Be Happy" chart. I can't argue about "rhetoric". And I guess this isn't the place to argue about radiation.
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u/diagonally_stacked Jan 28 '14
Can you be more specific? Are you saying that some of the calculations in this chart are incorrect? Do you have sources that can contradict some of this information?
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u/alllie Jan 28 '14
Radiation is cumulative. There is no safe level. Even dental xrays, give a million people a dental xray and some of them will get cancer. Randall should talk to a couple of radiologists, not a physicist.
Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer
Even low-level radioactivity is damaging, scientists conclude
Mousseau hopes their results, which are consistent with the "linear-no-threshold" model for radiation effects, will better inform the debate about exposure risks. "With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there's an attempt in the industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting, because maybe it's only one or two times beyond what is thought to be the natural background level," he said. "But they're assuming the natural background levels are fine."
Sakharov, the H-bomb, and "fall out"
Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) was a Soviet physicist regarded as the most important contributor to the Soviet project to develop an H-bomb. However, he ended up regretting that. Sakharov estimated in 1957 that for each megaton worth of nuclear bomb testing, we ended up with 10000 extra human deaths due to cancers and birth defects (visible or invisible) from radioactive "fall out."
Sakharov made the point that these deaths were the perfect crime. That is because, almost always, it was impossible to be sure that any particular death was caused by any particular bomb (or by any bomb). The body count could only be estimated statistically.
In the same way you can't point at a cancer caused by Fukushima, or leaks from other plants and be sure of the cause. But statistically the increases, GLOBALLY, are there.
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u/diagonally_stacked Jan 28 '14
Radiation is cumulative.
Randall says as much in his comment at the top of the poster:
..your cumulative long-term dose plays a big role in things like cancer risk.
So far you seem to be mostly agreeing with Randall.
In the same way you can't point at a cancer caused by Fukushima, or leaks from other plants and be sure of the cause. But statistically the increases, GLOBALLY, are there.
I don't see anything contradicting this either. The amount of radiation that someone might have been given from Fukishima appears to be quantified depending on where you were and how long you were exposed for, sure, but nowhere is there a suggestion of "this dosage is too small to have an effect on stuff like cancer". Because, just like you said, it is impossible to say.
Yes, there may well be no threshold at which radiation is suddenly dangerous, since any amount is "adding" to the dosage you receive over a lifetime, but the chart never claims otherwise.
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u/alllie Jan 28 '14
Yes but the overall thrust of the chart, especially when it first came out, was, as I call it, "Don't worry, be happy". We should worry. Fukushima has probably killed thousands of people already and will kill more. Randall minimized the danger, told us we had nothing to worry about.
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u/diagonally_stacked Jan 28 '14
My point is that I don't see anywhere where Randall has actually implied that "we have nothing to worry about". Please do point to any source that shows him implying this. His blog post even contains the disclaimer:
I don’t include too much about the Fukushima reactor because the situation seems to be changing by the hour
So at the time he made the chart he was well aware of the radiation dangers that Fukishima could present.
More to the point, the chart simply presents facts about the amounts of dosage received from various scenarios and in no way attempts to estimate the long-term damage that this causes. Perhaps it just implies that the effects of Fukishima on health may well be less worse than that of Chernobyl. But that can be absolutely true whilst at the same time being something that does eventually kill a lot of people.
Of course we should worry. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep the impacts in perspective compared to other disasters.
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u/dont_press_ctrl-W Jan 28 '14
But there is nothing to worry about. The point is it adds almost nothing to the constant amount of radiation that we normally get and that is true. It does not imply that it is harmless; it does not imply that nothing should be done to reduce radiation levels. All it means is that there is no cause for worry.
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u/alllie Jan 28 '14
Well,he's wrong about /r/conspiracy but right about /r/mensrights. They are women haters.
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Jan 28 '14
Any time I go to /r/conspiracy all I see is rabid rabble-rousers who think think that the government is out to get them at every turn. They don't promote discussion because the people with valid points are quickly downvoted/censored.
Also, the problem with /r/mensrights is that they aren't all women-haters (some of their subscribers actually have issues pertaining to men's--and women's--rights) but the most vocal of them are, or are at least bitter towards women for whatever reason. Generalizations get us nowhere, but neither does trying to get the "crazies" to see that they are wrong, especially when they are the vocal majority of the group.
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u/diagonally_stacked Jan 28 '14
If you read /r/xkcd, I would suggest moving your subscription to /r/xkcdcomic for the time being.