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The biggest problem with your first alternative is that in it, not having an opinion is equivalent to being wrong.

A lot of the problems with the financial collapse was that various entities and people got to play with the money of other people, with good payouts if they get it right, but no commensurate hit if they got it wrong. While the best outcome is still being right, this kind of situation is bad because it incentivizes taking risk over not taking it. So, a lot of people making those decisions loaded up on as much risk as they could take, ignoring the downsides.

Tuna-Fish240

Damn near every one of them through the systemical implementation of taxation?

Prior to WW2, Germany was the biggest trading partner of France.

It seems that AN for Ch. 81 is up now, but the chapter isn't. Is this normal?

(the first time I'm waiting for the update frantically hitting refresh...)

Because he wants to. Putting harry in Azkaban would be no minor victory.

Tuna-Fish100

It would appear that you have not yet learned how to lose. :)

The best, easiest solution available to Harry is to confess.

Even without a wand, de doesn't fear dementors, and dementors fear him. Neither Dumbledore nor Quirrel would be willing to let Harry rot in Azkaban, while they would not break Hermione out.

(I cannot claim credit for this, it was posted on xkcd forums.)

So far, this has been a failure -- the test string still isn't found by google, and the previous post doesn't even show up in the custom search yet.

Had to stop polling because google now thinks I'm a bot.

This site uses the google custom search (see sidebar), and it provides a feature for on-demand indexing. I suppose it shares the index it makes with google proper.

alongandunlikelystringtotesthypothesis

This has been done for a while. A few years ago there was some noise about a russian chatbot which impersonated a good-looking girl and tried to scam people to give personal information and/or money.

Every time it succeeded, it passed the turing test.

Tuna-Fish200

Discussing about the probability of wacky conspiracies is absolutely the wrong way to disprove this. The correct method is a telescope, a quite wide sign with a distance scale drawn on it in very visible colours, and the closest 200m+ body of water you can find.

As long as you are close enough to the ground, the curvature of the earth is very visible, even over surprisingly small distances. I have done this as a child.

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