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Pinemarten · #5 (**permalink**) 26-March-2007, 09:38 AM

These statements struck me the most:

Quote:

In short, I'm proposing that the board owners take a second look at what they're standing on, the vast potential they have to become a central point/forum of innovative ideas (within reason), and a place where key innovations in science bubble to the surface that everone can use.

Nearly always, others who've possessed this capability have tried to get rich off it by charging per article admission (almost all these attempts have failed, most notably in the medical world).

Let's go where no man has gone before with this board. Let's not allow crackpot or unsupported crap to proliferate the site, but let's do allow some controversial subjects, provided they're controversial at the appropriate academic level (like global warming, about which many leading and highly respected climatologists still have serious reservations that it's caused by human activity), and salient arguements, while averting the critical eye from time to time if they become a little "heated."

Put simply, while heated conversation puts some people off, it's a very necessary ingredient to human advancement, well-entrenched within our global culture, and a very valuable construct of humankind.

Put simply, it's good, not bad, as it incites us to rising out of whatever muck and mire in which we're become comfortable.

The wise commander in battle knows this, knowing that passion (adrenaline?) often results in a solution that would not have been possible in a sterile enviroment. This goes hand in hand with "necessity is the mother of all inventions."

I would say that desperation has produced more results throughout mankind than any other motivational factor, and quite often over the last 10,000 years, that desparation has been artificially created by some higher-up who said, "I don't care how you get it done, I want it done yesterday!"

As a result, people figure out a way.

Therefore, let's not channelize on whether controvercial subjects should be a part of the BAUT forums.

Rather, let's realize what we have, here - the Internet's single greatest collection of scientists, interested parties, and innovators, that I've ever seen (and trust me when I say I've looked very hard to find any other forum with anything even closely resembling the talent at BAUT).

This is a wonderful opportunity, akin to the US government's pooling of hundreds of the top scientists in a certain place in the American Southwest, who were told, and ridden, to come up with X.

They did. So can we.

This may not be the vision any of you have for the BAUT forums. Regardless, it's a fair anology as to what this collective pool of talent could come up with should we put our minds to it.