5 ms·

A teacher I remember fondly and highly respect once said to the class "there are no dumb questions. The dummy is the one who doesn't ask questions." I'm reliev

A teacher I remember fondly and highly respect once said to the class "there are no dumb questions. The dummy is the one who doesn't ask questions." I'm relieved that Donald put it in the form of a question, yet suprised at the number of things he must be ignorant about to think that this idea might be viable.

DonHopkins 7y ago
It's sad and unnecessary to lower the bar for the President of the United States even lower than we do to keep from hurting little school children's fragile feelings. I don't think Jimmy Carter would have needed to ask such a dumb question. At this point, you really shouldn't be so surprised he's so deeply ignorant about so many things.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  It's not just for school children, it's good advice for everyone all the time. I know plenty of ineffective adults who are constantly on guard defending their image, behaving in pretentious ways, and focused altogether too much on sending social signals (hell I'm probably doing it right now by posting this comment, trying to send a social signal of intelligence). We try to remind each other of wisdom with catch phrases like "think outside the box". I think "ask all the dumb questions" might be a good catch phrase too. As for Jimmy Carter I agree and I have to wonder: why is it that intelligence seems to be strongly inversely coorelated with effectiveness as a president? Jimmy Carter was wildly intelligent and a really nice guy, but couldn't get anything done. Donald Trump is less intelligent and often abrasive, yet he seems to be getting heaps of accomplishments under his belt (not all good ones, but largely so). Is it quantity vs quality? Or paralysis of analysis? There is no definitive answer as these are judgement calls, but I think this is fertile ground for aspiring entrepreneurs to try and grok.
  - TMWNN 7y ago
    >As for Jimmy Carter I agree and I have to wonder: why is it that intelligence seems to be strongly inversely coorelated with effectiveness as a president? Jimmy Carter was wildly intelligent and a really nice guy, but couldn't get anything done. Donald Trump is mentally challenged and kind of a prick, yet he seems to be getting heaps of accomplishments under his belt (not all good ones, but largely so). Is it quantity vs quality? Or paralysis of analysis? There is no definitive answer as these are judgement calls, but I think this is fertile ground for aspiring entrepreneurs to try and grok. Paul Johnson discusses this in his chapter in Heroes about Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II. He has concluded that politicians succeed when they focus on three or four simple ideas. Reagan was very different from Thatcher—he was, according to Johnson (a personal friend of both, mind you), ignorant and poorly educated, while she was an Oxford-educated chemist with a law degree—but they both focused on straightforward goals, reducing government's reach and fighting Soviet Communism being two they shared. They worked very well together, too. Trump's list seems to include * China * Illegal aliens * North Korea * US manufacturing
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> yet suprised at the number of things he must be ignorant about to think that this idea might be viable. What exactly are those things, except a) knowing the difference of scale in energies involved, and b) stability of cyclones? A random person off the street won't know any better, and a random faculty member from a random university won't likely know better either. It's not a dumb question to ask, and the answer requires somewhat specialist knowledge.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  I was thinking more about the issue of fallout. A president ought to know at least a little bit about nuclear fallout. He does have the nuclear football.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Detonating a modern thermonuclear bomb above ocean shouldn't pose much risk in terms of fallout - the kind that we're usually worried about arises from detonations over or on the ground.
    - ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
      That isn't true according to the NOAA article: >this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        What I meant is that the fallout from an air burst is only made of the remnants of the warhead's casing, fission products and un-fissioned material. The extent of this fallout is limited to the mass of the weapon, and from surface knowledge I have, it's minimized in modern nuclear weapons (this fallout is essentially wasted mass and unrealized explosive potential). The end effect of this fallout is primarily raising the global cancer risk a tiny bit. The usual thing people think of as "fallout" is the result of low-altitude detonation, where the explosion draws up dirt/dust/water vapor, makes some of that radioactive, and creates a cloud of radioactive particulates that then settles in a large area downwind of the explosion. This is the massively dangerous fallout that's usually associated with nuclear weapons. TL;DR: air bursts != ground-level bursts, and if one doesn't know about the energy scale difference involved, it doesn't seem so dumb to ask if detonating a nuke high up in the cyclone would be helpful.
nsxwolf 7y ago
Wasn’t this idea originally proposed by a scientist?

DonHopkins 7y ago

It's sad and unnecessary to lower the bar for the President of the United States even lower than we do to keep from hurting little school children's fragile feelings. I don't think Jimmy Carter would have needed to ask such a dumb question. At this point, you really shouldn't be so surprised he's so deeply ignorant about so many things.

mikedilger 7y ago
It's not just for school children, it's good advice for everyone all the time. I know plenty of ineffective adults who are constantly on guard defending their image, behaving in pretentious ways, and focused altogether too much on sending social signals (hell I'm probably doing it right now by posting this comment, trying to send a social signal of intelligence). We try to remind each other of wisdom with catch phrases like "think outside the box". I think "ask all the dumb questions" might be a good catch phrase too. As for Jimmy Carter I agree and I have to wonder: why is it that intelligence seems to be strongly inversely coorelated with effectiveness as a president? Jimmy Carter was wildly intelligent and a really nice guy, but couldn't get anything done. Donald Trump is less intelligent and often abrasive, yet he seems to be getting heaps of accomplishments under his belt (not all good ones, but largely so). Is it quantity vs quality? Or paralysis of analysis? There is no definitive answer as these are judgement calls, but I think this is fertile ground for aspiring entrepreneurs to try and grok.
- TMWNN 7y ago
  >As for Jimmy Carter I agree and I have to wonder: why is it that intelligence seems to be strongly inversely coorelated with effectiveness as a president? Jimmy Carter was wildly intelligent and a really nice guy, but couldn't get anything done. Donald Trump is mentally challenged and kind of a prick, yet he seems to be getting heaps of accomplishments under his belt (not all good ones, but largely so). Is it quantity vs quality? Or paralysis of analysis? There is no definitive answer as these are judgement calls, but I think this is fertile ground for aspiring entrepreneurs to try and grok. Paul Johnson discusses this in his chapter in Heroes about Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II. He has concluded that politicians succeed when they focus on three or four simple ideas. Reagan was very different from Thatcher—he was, according to Johnson (a personal friend of both, mind you), ignorant and poorly educated, while she was an Oxford-educated chemist with a law degree—but they both focused on straightforward goals, reducing government's reach and fighting Soviet Communism being two they shared. They worked very well together, too. Trump's list seems to include * China * Illegal aliens * North Korea * US manufacturing

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> yet suprised at the number of things he must be ignorant about to think that this idea might be viable. What exactly are those things, except a) knowing the difference of scale in energies involved, and b) stability of cyclones? A random person off the street won't know any better, and a random faculty member from a random university won't likely know better either. It's not a dumb question to ask, and the answer requires somewhat specialist knowledge.

mikedilger 7y ago
I was thinking more about the issue of fallout. A president ought to know at least a little bit about nuclear fallout. He does have the nuclear football.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Detonating a modern thermonuclear bomb above ocean shouldn't pose much risk in terms of fallout - the kind that we're usually worried about arises from detonations over or on the ground.
  - ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
    That isn't true according to the NOAA article: >this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      What I meant is that the fallout from an air burst is only made of the remnants of the warhead's casing, fission products and un-fissioned material. The extent of this fallout is limited to the mass of the weapon, and from surface knowledge I have, it's minimized in modern nuclear weapons (this fallout is essentially wasted mass and unrealized explosive potential). The end effect of this fallout is primarily raising the global cancer risk a tiny bit. The usual thing people think of as "fallout" is the result of low-altitude detonation, where the explosion draws up dirt/dust/water vapor, makes some of that radioactive, and creates a cloud of radioactive particulates that then settles in a large area downwind of the explosion. This is the massively dangerous fallout that's usually associated with nuclear weapons. TL;DR: air bursts != ground-level bursts, and if one doesn't know about the energy scale difference involved, it doesn't seem so dumb to ask if detonating a nuke high up in the cyclone would be helpful.

nsxwolf 7y ago

Wasn’t this idea originally proposed by a scientist?