

The Secret Ingredient in Silicon Chips comes from North Carolina - dan_the_welder
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8178580.stm

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seldo
The people interviewed in the article claim that "if we shut the gates... they
wouldn't be able to make computers anymore". But elsewhere in the article it
makes clear that making pure quartz artificially is simply much more expensive
than pulling it out of the ground. So it's not really a secret ingredient,
it's just the cheapest available source.

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billswift
The article is inconsistent. First, it claims that there is something special
and important about the quartz mined there. Then, it turns around and claims
that there is something important and secret about the processes used there.

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gwern
If we're going to logic-chop... no, actually, it is not inconsistent. To be
inconsistent, to be contradictory, it would have to claim both that the sole
important thing is the natural quality of the quartz, and the sole important
thing is the secret processes.

It does neither. It claims the quartz is unique, and the processes important.
This is not a contradiction. (Both could well be necessary: it's common sense
that good material could be ruined by a bad process, or that a good process
can fail on bad material.)

