Regarding the nanotech article: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2010/09/scott... I was wondering myself why that article got so many upvotes.
Oh, really? The burden of proof lies on your shoulders. More to the point: citation needed.
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/the-case-f...
It's extremely revealing that he suggests Mel Gibson's attitude toward women as exemplary.
His articles on class structure expose a rather violent imagination about how best to conduct social intercourse:
"There are two ways of getting along with a lower class person at least to a limited extent. The first way is to beat the [expletive] out of them. They deserve it anyway, and most people lick the boots that kick them."
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/social-...
Good grief.
Or, by the direct author (and not the one wholly quoted), "It is clear that the few who purchased Black slaves in their day made a lamentable choice." -- and he doesn't mean that, oh, I don't know, slavery is immoral. He means it was a lamentable choice because the goods were bad apples that now will spoil the bunch.
Does this article's presence on the same site invalidate the thesis of another article? No. But does it put everything argued into question? Yes. Because there's no such thing as "the facts." You cannot ever have all the facts. The map is not the territory.
Therefore, you must the consider the motives of anyone who presents "facts" to you -- because they had to pick and choose, and could not represent all facts (map, territory), and why did they pick the ones they picked?
Dry-humping the idea of pure logic doesn't work in a non-platonic world where you can never, ever have all the facts. Context matters. Source matters. Motive, intent, and background matter -- a lot.