How to Save the World!
How it could be done:
In terms of the physics of reality - solving the energy issue is the first necessary step to securing a sustainable future. Energy is fundamental because reality is entropic. Entropy is a complex concept from the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the effects of which can be described very simply. It is the tendency of everything in the universe to decline toward its lowest energy state, like water runs downhill, or an old building collapses to the ground over time. Where we need water above the lowest natural point, or to keep the old place from falling down, we must spend energy. Energy is thus fundamental to everything we do. And clean energy is necessary to prevent run-away climate change.
There are two main obstacles to providing the world with bountiful clean energy:
1) an abundance of fossil fuels - still in the ground, and
2) the cost of applying the technology.
The idea that renewable sources of energy are necessarily unreliable or insufficient to the task - is not a genuine obstacle, if applied on a sufficiently large scale. But we'll come to that in due course. First, we must address the question of how to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This may seem like an insurmountable issue - but the solution I devised is very simple, and entirely consistent with the principles of our economic system. Basically, fossil fuels are commodities, and commodities are assets. Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology.
Having overcome these two obstacles, the next question is "what technology?"
Here I would suggest taking on board the next big problem, and solving that at the same time. The next most fundamental need we have is abundant fresh water. 7/10ths of the earth's surface is covered with water, but fresh water is scarce. Only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water, and it's unevenly distributed around the world. That's the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage. Solving these two problems together, would be a tremendous boon to humankind, and is ultimately necessary to sustainability. So how do we do it?
Bearing in mind such issues as transmission loss over long distances, I would suggest that solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, could produce electricity - used to power desalination and electrolysis, producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel at sea, collected by ship, or pumped through pipelines to shore. The geographical area available at sea is incredibly vast, and effectively shading the ocean, with thousands of square kilometers of solar panels would also help combat global warming.
Desalination can be achieved via evaporation - heating sea water and collecting the steam. Steam can drive a turbine, to produce electricity - at voltages, adequate to power electrolysis. Electrolysis is the process of breaking the atomic bonds between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in water, by passing an electric current through it. Thus, these two process work hand in hand - producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen - when compressed into a liquid gas, contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum by weight, but when burnt (oxidized) the hydrogen atoms recombine with an oxygen atom, giving back the energy spent wrenching them apart - and producing no pollutant more volatile than water vapour.
Burning hydrogen in traditional power stations would provide the base load for the energy grid - rather than, depending directly on renewable power sources, and the fresh water could be used to reclaim wasteland for agriculture and habitation - thus protecting environmental resources from over-exploitation. Eventually, this whole technological complex would power itself (as long as the sun shines) without adding a molecule of carbon to the atmosphere. Ships powered by hydrogen, would collect and bring water and fuel ashore.
In terms of the physics of reality - solving the energy issue is the first necessary step to securing a sustainable future. Energy is fundamental because reality is entropic. Entropy is a complex concept from the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the effects of which can be described very simply. It is the tendency of everything in the universe to decline toward its lowest energy state, like water runs downhill, or an old building collapses to the ground over time. Where we need water above the lowest natural point, or to keep the old place from falling down, we must spend energy. Energy is thus fundamental to everything we do. And clean energy is necessary to prevent run-away climate change.
There are two main obstacles to providing the world with bountiful clean energy:
1) an abundance of fossil fuels - still in the ground, and
2) the cost of applying the technology.
The idea that renewable sources of energy are necessarily unreliable or insufficient to the task - is not a genuine obstacle, if applied on a sufficiently large scale. But we'll come to that in due course. First, we must address the question of how to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This may seem like an insurmountable issue - but the solution I devised is very simple, and entirely consistent with the principles of our economic system. Basically, fossil fuels are commodities, and commodities are assets. Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology.
Having overcome these two obstacles, the next question is "what technology?"
Here I would suggest taking on board the next big problem, and solving that at the same time. The next most fundamental need we have is abundant fresh water. 7/10ths of the earth's surface is covered with water, but fresh water is scarce. Only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water, and it's unevenly distributed around the world. That's the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage. Solving these two problems together, would be a tremendous boon to humankind, and is ultimately necessary to sustainability. So how do we do it?
Bearing in mind such issues as transmission loss over long distances, I would suggest that solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, could produce electricity - used to power desalination and electrolysis, producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel at sea, collected by ship, or pumped through pipelines to shore. The geographical area available at sea is incredibly vast, and effectively shading the ocean, with thousands of square kilometers of solar panels would also help combat global warming.
Desalination can be achieved via evaporation - heating sea water and collecting the steam. Steam can drive a turbine, to produce electricity - at voltages, adequate to power electrolysis. Electrolysis is the process of breaking the atomic bonds between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in water, by passing an electric current through it. Thus, these two process work hand in hand - producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen - when compressed into a liquid gas, contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum by weight, but when burnt (oxidized) the hydrogen atoms recombine with an oxygen atom, giving back the energy spent wrenching them apart - and producing no pollutant more volatile than water vapour.
Burning hydrogen in traditional power stations would provide the base load for the energy grid - rather than, depending directly on renewable power sources, and the fresh water could be used to reclaim wasteland for agriculture and habitation - thus protecting environmental resources from over-exploitation. Eventually, this whole technological complex would power itself (as long as the sun shines) without adding a molecule of carbon to the atmosphere. Ships powered by hydrogen, would collect and bring water and fuel ashore.
Comments (489)
Entropy can't be stopped. It's not a matter of if but when.
If they aren't going to be used, now or in the future, how can the fossil fuels be an asset? There's no revenue stream.
Philosophy: blowharding to save the world
How can we save the world then?
Common sense has been proven wrong many-a-times.
Your point?
Unlike philosophy?
"Your point?"
I'm talking about sustainability in the immediate future, and pointing out that entropy implies - the sun will explode and burn the earth to a crisp in five billion years or so, entirely misses the serious purpose of my remarks. I guess my point is - stop being a dick!
Sorry. Didn't realize I was being a dick. Does that make it better or worse? I don't know.
Anyway, the future is so difficult to predict with any degree of certainty. As someone said there are too many variables to factor in.
I suggest we do what is most practical. Act locally, think globally.
I think we need to relook into scientific thought. How we've framed the world in terms of scientific paradigms e.g. seeing the world and all in it in terms of give-take energy-matter interactions may be mathematically modelled and seem to work.
Couldn't it be that there's another point of view that is better and more in line with your thoughts?
Quoting TheMadFool
Much, much worse! I'd really rather it were a matter of choice - and then I could blame you!
Quoting TheMadFool
That's why it took me twenty years thinking about it, to come up with what now seems pretty bloody simple.
Quoting TheMadFool
What does that mean in practical terms? Is it not just a trendy soundbite that has no meaningful implications?
May I point out that covering the oceans will prevent phytoplankton from absorbing CO2. Put your solar panels on coastal deserts instead, and use the desalinated water to irrigate inland and grow some forest.
Having already plugged my sagely wife above, I will now shamelessly plug my own "blowharding to save the world" thread, which can be found here.
While Karl addresses energy and water, my thread addresses another very important component of the world saving project, knowledge.
Karl argues for more knowledge to help manage energy and water resources, a reasonable enough proposition, if one limits the subject to energy and water. There are many challenges before us, and it's very understandable to attempt to leverage the awesome power of knowledge to meet those challenges.
However, when we 1) add all the knowledge growing projects together, and 2) watch as they feed back upon each other, 3) accelerating the overall pace of knowledge development, 4) we arrive at a different picture, which is.....
The solution is the biggest problem.
I know this to be a hard fact, because when I explain this blowharding theory to my wife while we're making dinner she always says, "Ok honey, I'm sure you're right." See? Proof!!!
It's hard to critique the idea, because we would need a lot of numbers and technical details to be able to evaluate it. I mean, i like the idea in theory, but have no idea how feasable it is economically and politically.
How much would the proces cost, say compared to more conventional means of producing energy? What about night and winter times, is battery technology sufficient to suppliment times when solar energy is low?
And how do you solve the political issues? Often times people just ignore those, because well unlike the laws of nature, people can just adapt their behaviour, and therefor should... but it never really happens that way. So what about countries that don't have access to the oceans, or that are situated in areas where there is not a lot of reliable solar energy? Do you think it reasonable to expect countries to just get allong, and give away energy to those that need it?
I think we should go nuclear again, and geothermal. Nuclear can be a temporary solution, not indiffinately ofcourse, but right now CO2 is a far bigger problem then nuclear waste. And maybe in the future we will find better ways of exploiting earth warmth, which is reliable and as good as infinite.
In practice, a mix of all possible low carbon energy sources will probably be needed though.
You might be right, but coastal land is valuable real estate - particularly if it's sunny. Out in the ocean a million square miles of nothing right on the equator - where flotaing solar panels could be soaking up 16 hours sunshine a day and making energy for us - while shading the oceans from accumulating heat. I wouldn't presume to dictate - but ...
Quoting unenlightened
I came up with that idea also, a long time ago. A war for survival - turn over the entire economy to the effort, but found it wasn't necessary. I do not even agree with the scientists who wrote the report published yesterday, when they said:
"Staying below 1.5C will require "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".
I think that approach is wrong, and what we should be doing is defending living standards - by applying the energy technology to afford them, as described in my OP. Another article asks - "Are you prepared to give up beef to save the world?" No. I'm willing apply renewable energy technology so that I can eat beef guilt free. And lots of it!
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/08/photos-along-the-namibian-coast/569041/
See also Chile, Morocco Australia.
Hey, what you do on your own time...
Quoting Jake
Thanks man, I'll have a look, but right now I need to press on with these replies.
Quoting Jake
I'm intrigued, but having not looked - I wonder if you're aware of Enemies of the Open Society by Popper. If not, might I suggest you take a look - I have a feeling it's going to come up. A lot!
Quoting Jake
I'm not going to argue with that as a standard of proof, but I have a feeling that I've solved your problem, because - I don't arrive at that conclusion. In relation to Popper's dire warning that elevating science would require we 'make our representations conform' to science as truth until we're all locked stepped coffee coloured people wearing identical denim overalls - I have shown that there are legitimate limitations on the rightful authority of science, insofar as, beyond sustainability, no implication can be said to be compulsory. Does that solve your problem too?
No, not aware. Explain it if you wish, listening.
Quoting karl stone
Limitations on the rightful authority of science, I can vote for that. I might clarify that by editing to "cultural authority". That is, I agree science has great authority when it comes to the process of developing new knowledge. I don't agree that therefore we should develop as much knowledge as possible, a common assertion of science culture.
Trying to steer back towards the topic of this thread....
Let's say we achieve limitless free clean energy, truly an amazing accomplishment of science, which on purely technical grounds can of course be applauded.
But what's the larger picture? Does limitless free energy result in the economy taking off like a rocket, causing us to burn through other finite resources at an ever faster pace? Does it cause human populations to further expand, resulting in an acceleration of species extinction? And so on...
Also, I would prefer that members refer to me by my official title, Professor Party Pooper. Thank you very much.
Ya think? :smile:
Quoting karl stone
There's another angle to beef eating which perhaps you haven't fully considered? If we are willing to torture and kill entirely innocent defenseless animals for no better reason than that they taste good, do we have the "psychological infrastructure" necessary to save the world?
As example, why would a person who smokes be motivated to protect the environment when they are busy knowingly trashing their own most personal environment?
What if saving the world is, at heart, not really a technical problem but a psychological, moral, emotional problem?
Also Western Sahara, Peru, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and maybe places near the Caspian Sea
Those sound like great environmental ideas. You've shown something that hadn't occurred to me...how water, energy, and temperature can be dealt with and helped as part of the same solution method.
It all sounds very well thought-out, and perfectly plausible and possible.
...but of course there's no reason to believe that improvement of any kind is societally possible, That's a whole other ballgame.
But there's consolation: This physical world that we live in is only one of infinitely-many hypothetical possibility-worlds, and this life is only one temporary life...during which we want and like to live as best we can, while we're here. ...because we like to.
We don't really have needs--We have likes.
...though there's really nothing that we can do to improve the quite-hopeless societal world, or prevent its disastrous consequences.
Michael Ossipoff
Quoting Jake
Well, that is an angle I hadn't considered - not least because, I eat defenslicious animals all the time, and am deeply concerned with the question of sustainability. In nature animals eat eachother alive. Farming is less cruel than nature. Where best practice is observed, animals have a good life, and death is relatively painless. The environmental issues around farming would be mitigated by clean energy used to produce fresh water - and would promote best practice.
The point I was trying to make is that saving the planet doesn't require we hunker around in our hemp kaftans, singing cum by yar - while waiting on a lentil casserole cooking by the heat of a beeswax candle. Technology can afford current living standards for a large population going forward, if it is applied on a sufficiently large scale - in accord with a scientific understanding of reality.
Quoting Jake
I smoke too, and see no connection. I'm mortal, but humankind is not...necessarily doomed to die.
Quoting Jake
In my view, it's an epistemological question. It's about truth. Our problem is that in 1633, Galileo discovered the means to establish valid knowledge by scientific method, and was arrested by the Church, tried and found guilty of heresy. Science as truth was suppressed to maintain religious, political and economic ideology intact - even while science was applied to drive the industrial revolution.
Those religious, political and economic ideologies providing our identities and motives, do not describe the world as it really is, and so we act at odds to the world we live in. There's a relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action, and the consequences of such action. It's cause and effect. This is the problem I address, and it implies the answer I propose - that is, accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common as a basis for the application of technology.
Because individuals are mortal, I just do not believe people will sacrifice their pleasures for the sake of sustainability; but if it can be shown that such sacrifice is not necessary, achieving sustainability hoves into the realms of possibility.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Thank you very much; that's so kind of you to say so - but I'm not derailing my thread discussing the rest of your ideas. That said, I'd enjoy seeing you defend these wild notions. Is there a thread I might visit?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I'd suggest regional government, like the EU - is preferable to world government. Regional government would not be so remote that it lacked perceived legitimacy, and because most trade is conducted between neighbours - and regional government applying science based regulation, would inflict equal costs on direct economic competitors, which is to say, no competitive cost. There would need to be some sort of global coordination; but largely, regional government would address regional interests better than a distant global polity.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I suggest we can mortgage fossil fuels while still in the ground, and use that money to apply sustainable energy technology. I also suggest floating solar panels at the equator, producing hydrogen fuel - did you read the OP? Solar panels would not provide electricity directly. Hydrogen fuel would be burnt in power stations, and electricity transmitted through existing grids. Thus, nighttime etc isn't an issue.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
What political issues in particular are you talking about? Of course, energy and water would be produced and delivered to nations far from the sea. Compressed hydrogen fuel, distributed by hydrogen powered vehicles - just as coal and oil and gas are transported to places that don't have any.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Oh super - you had a thought. I've been thinking about this for many, many years, but you think your off the cuff impressions are more likely to be true? Not! Did you know for example, that a nuclear power station requires about half the energy it will ever produce in the construction phase alone - and that's to say nothing of the carbon cost of managing nuclear waste forever afterward?
Of course we can cut CO2 emissions to practically zero in 12 years (or say 24). When Japan, Germany, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States mobilized for WWII, heaven and earth were moved. Tremendous productive forces were employed to build the capacity to wage massive war. We can do it again for CO2 reduction.
How?
Convert private auto manufacture to mass transit production.
Start a crash wind turbine and solar cell production program; install widely.
Build large energy storage batteries.
Immediately reduce consumption of goods which are not merely unnecessary, but are useless.
Reorganize life for need rather than profit.
Obviously: end coal and petroleum production.
It can be done, but it will almost certainly NOT be done because the short-term costs of saving the planet will cost the rich more money than they can stand losing. It will be necessary to liquidate the wealth of the richest 1%. (Mind, that is liquidate the wealth -- not liquidate the wealthy. Liquidating the wealthy gets too much bad PR.)
Mass mobilization, causally speaking, requires a conjunction of opportunities which I feel is not within the reach of many of us. Add to that the fact that most people with the right number of audience aren't bothered by environmental issues. I'm talking about celebrities.
So, it seems to me, those of us who are concerned about the world are left with no choice but to do our stuff at a much lower social stratum e.g. we can raise te awareness of our family or friends or community. We then hope that our efforts spread out from their.
Yeah my bad, I read the hydrogen part, but didn't think about it writing my post. It was more an example of the type of questions I would have.
I guess the main issue then might be the cost and efficiency of producing hydrogen. I allways hear that it's not particulary energy efficient, but i'm no expert so...
The mortgages and the hydrogen production are two seperate things it seems to me, as mortgages can be used to finance whatever renewable energy source. And the market would presumably favor the one that cost the least.
Quoting karl stone
Though I don't claim to be an expert, I did know that the construction costs were high, and I also know that the production cost itself of nuclear energy are very low. My point was only that the discussion seems more ideological than rational concerning nuclear energy, and that if needed, we should choose nuclear power rather then let CO2 levels rise... until we figure out how to run everything on renewables. But maybe we can allready.
Well, obviously we're not opposed to clean energy and abundant fresh water. If we confine your post to a purely technical analysis of how to solve purely technical problems, your ideas may be worth considering. I don't really feel qualified to analyze your technical ideas, but they are interesting to examine.
I would however decline your larger claim that these technical fixes will "save the world". We tried to "save the world" by implementing the industrial revolution, and what we accomplished was to replace one set of problems with another set of problems that are arguably larger. We tried to "save the world" with the Manhattan project, and what we accomplished was to put human civilization less than an hour away from destruction in every moment of every day.
You're trying to apply technical fixes to a problem which is not fundamentally technical. The real problem can be described with a single four letter word. More.
What the evidence shows is that whatever technical powers we develop we will relentlessly push the envelope in a reckless manner in the endless quest for more, more, and more. And by doing so we continue a process of giving ourselves more power than we can successfully manage.
Your ideas might give us some breathing room, but if successful they just kick the can down the road a little bit and we'll soon find ourselves once again up against the wall. As example, endless free clean energy would result in us burning through other finite resources at an accelerated rate. The problem gets moved from one box to another box, but the real problem doesn't get addressed, or solved.
It appears that, like most of our culture, you've bought in to the science "religion" which has as many or more problems than regular religion.
Explained further here.
I've read articles about the report, but I haven't read the thing itself. "Act now, idiots!" - was the title of one such article. But the last thing we need is an idiotic reaction. Instead, we need to be cleverer than we've ever been.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I thought about that as an approach, a war for sustainability - turn over entire national economies to the effort, but I do not think it would work. In wartime, they shoot deserters - the most graphic example of a much larger negation of freedom. Similarly, I think - a war for sustainability would require the negation of freedom on a grand scale, and that's best avoided - not just because people would hate it, but because the entire political and economic system of the west is built on freedom.
Quoting Bitter Crank
What you seem to be describing here is a centrally planned economy, and that has failed again and again to deliver for people and the planet. If you would argue capitalism is bad for the environment visit Russia or China. Without a market value, resources tend to be abused. The philosophical notion is titled "Tragedy of the Commons" by Harding - if I recall correctly.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It can be done, I agree. And the OP here discusses one possible technological solution - that's also a political and economic solution that respects freedom to the greatest degree possible. If we lose our freedom we will never get it back, so I'm sorry - but in my view, a war for survival is not the way to go.
A crowd sourced future. I have no principled objections - have at it, make some noise. But ultimately, it would be to put pressure on government and industry to take the matter seriously. What I'm trying to do is develop a philosophy of political economy that promotes sustainability - such that, sustainability is a function of those systems; not some extra burden - but the very means of economic progress. I don't see this as a zero sum game - in which, for one to win the other must lose. In my philosophy capitalism is indispensable to the solution - only capitalism directed in the course of a common acceptance of a scientific understanding of reality. That is to say, science first, and profit second.
You're my hero! I love that you straight up admitted it. Kudos!
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
No, you're right. The system I describe has all the thermodynamic efficiency of a steam train. There's an energy loss with conversion from electricity to hydrogen fuel, and from hydrogen fuel back into electrical energy - that's not dissimilar to the heat loss from the fire box and boiler of a steam locomotive. However, it's a clean process, and the sun is blazing down upon millions of square miles of ocean anyway. Capturing that sunlight and turning it into fuel made from seawater - effectively negates that thermodynamic inefficiency, like we'd still be using steam trains if we had an infinite amount of coal that didn't harm the environment.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, arguably, given that applying this technology is premised upon accepting a scientific understanding of reality as authoritative - it follows that the market would put the science before the profit motive. I entirely accept there are experts who know better than me, and while I'd argue for my technological solution relative to others, there are other technologies - and the best scientific and technological advice to the market might not be my advice, in which case - listen to them.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The financial cost of building a nuclear power station is not the point. Climate change is the point. Nuclear power produces carbon free electricity, however, because construction requires as much as half the energy it will ever produce - it is only half as carbon neutral as it appears, and that's without taking into account the carbon costs of looking after the nuclear waste forever afterward.
"Jake!"
Hiya Jake!
That's not exactly what my post is about. I just needed to prove that sustainability was technologically possible - and it is. Rather, my post is about creating the political and economic rationale to apply the technology without over-turning the apple cart of global capitalism.
Quoting Jake
I know. I read your other thread. Interesting thesis. I'm sorry I haven't replied on your thread yet, but I'm hitting this hard - here and elsewhere right now. I get it. You think of technology like the Chinese finger trap - the harder you pull the more it grips. The answer is implicit in my thesis; that we accept a scientific understanding of reality as a basis for the application of technology because, what you don't appreciate is...
Quoting Jake
...that science as truth was suppressed, primarily by religion, and thus technology was applied for power and profit, not as a scientific understanding of reality would suggest. Consider, in reality as described by science, nation states are not real things, money is not a real thing. Those are man made ideological concepts - not eternal truths that describe reality as it really is. So, when we apply technology as directed by ideological motives, it's not technology as science would have it. There's no motive in a scientific understanding of reality to build nuclear weapons, for example. That's a consequence of science as a tool - used by ideologies, in denial of science as a rule.
Quoting Jake
In those terms, what I'm arguing for is: More, and better!
Quoting Jake
Again, science is not just a tool box - it's also an instruction manual. We used the tools but haven't read the instructions. It's a poor workman that blames his tools!
Quoting Jake
I completely disagree with that. By applying technology in the manner I describe, we multiply resources. With fresh water from renewable energy, we can develop wasteland for agriculture and habitation, thereby protecting forests, river and lakes from over-exploitation. Further, mining the sea bed for metals has recently become technologically feasible - such that we have 7/10ths of the earths surface as yet untouched. There's no immediate problem, though eventually, we will be looking to space for resources.
Quoting Jake
Beneath my surface enthusiasm lies the heart of a cynic. I reject the suggestion my critical faculties are not engaged. I always rip a thing to its component pieces, and rebuild it to see how it works, or failing that - cross-check several sources before I commit to an idea. Your assertion depends on your Chinese finger trap view of science and technology - but now I've I've refuted that, maybe you'll reconsider.
Caught by spam filter - restored by mods. Thanks mods!
Caught by spam filter - restored by mods. Thanks mods!
If Karl's posts can't make it through the spam filter, then there is something wrong with the filter.
Hmmm, Odd. If survival is the goal, and there is a real threat to survival, then why wouldn't an all-out effect be the way to go?
Quoting karl stone
Throughout American history, "freedom" has always been somewhat illusory. That's probably true everywhere, and it is certainly true here. Deviation from the norm, or clearly expressed dissatisfaction with the norm, usually meant sustained hostility. Luckily for many dissenters of various kinds, there was always frontier territory where one could go, at least until the frontier came to an end in the latter 19th century. Strong challenges to the status quo, like unionism, socialism, Mormonism, abolition, women's suffrage, civil rights for blacks, and so on have been intensely resisted by the central authorities.
Yes, we have had more freedom than openly despotic states. But Americans have been free like most people elsewhere have been free: if you like the way things are, it seems pretty free. Most Germans felt that the nazi years were good times, because they didn't strongly object to the goals of the Nazi state. Our national narrative is that everyone is free and our history is good. As long as you don't challenge that too forcefully, you'll be OK. But organize a strong union and go on strike against your company employer, and the state is likely to interfere. (And they have interfered. Current law has created numerous barriers to successful organizing.) The central state has frequently interfered with leftist organizations.
Why are suburbs uniformly white? Why do black people mostly live in second or third rate housing? It was very specifically and centrally planned that way. (See the histories of the Federal Home Loan Administration, like The Color of Law by Rothstein.
Quoting karl stone
Not so fast. The American economy, bless it's little coal shoveling petroleum pumping heart, isn't accidental. America was founded on basic principles of exploitation -- begun with the Plymouth Colony and pursued with a vengeance ever since. It didn't just happen by chance. Governmental, financial, regulatory, treaties, religious, military... institutions have propagated the kind of economy we have now and have resisted any deviation from the "free enterprise model". The law, courts, legislatures, religious bodies, education, westward expansion (aka genocide of the native people), suppression of labor rights (or forced labor in slavery), manifest destiny, and so on have all been focused on created the kind of economy we have.
Take railroads, for instance. In most of the 19th century railroads were the prime industrial drivers of the economy. How did it happen that long lines were built across the country, mostly before there was any particular need for the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, etc.? They were built because the central government and financial speculators in New York wanted them built. It didn't just happen by accident.
If the US is going to make it's critical reduction in CO2 and other green house gas emissions, it will be because the central government and centralized corporate powers decided to do it.
Perhaps start with repealing Citizens United vs FEC?
The truth is that facts can be replaced with alternative facts and if the story is believable enough and fits into people's World view, falsehoods prevail. And people tend to listen to the argument they want to hear. Politics can be an obstacle. Discourse about energy policy can get ludicrous very quickly.
Of course the only true way for fossil fuels not to be used is that alternative energy resources come to be truly far cheaper. Rich countries, if they want, can artificially make this happen by subsidies and taxes, but to get true change to happen happen, this should happen in the free market.
The way that solar power is getting more efficient and less costly is a positive trend.
If you don't have time for the academic report, here's the news version.
That is my only reason. I'm not hiding my light under a bushel or anything. I think freedom is an important economic and political principle, that an all out war for survival would necessarily negate. It's easy to be cynical, but the invisible hand of capitalism is a straight up, real world, miracle - without which, production requires people are told what to do and when to do it, in a system that centrally plans what is produced and how it is distributed. In such systems, people are interchangeable - replacement parts for the economic machine that can be, and are discarded when they're no longer useful. It gives me the creeps.
Quoting Bitter Crank
In Russia now, there's an intense homophobia unto this day - as an example of social movements that didn't happen under an oppressive system. You say:
"unionism, socialism, Mormonism, abolition, women's suffrage, civil rights for blacks, and so on have been intensely resisted"
Sure, but at least they happened. Look at Pussy Riot - jailed for dancing in Church. Russians can't scratch their arse without someone wondering what they're hiding up there.
If I might be so bold as to skip over the rest as more or less agreed, I want to get to this last line:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Again, agreed - which is why I believe it's necessary to find a way that allows them to - without demolishing their interests. Otherwise, it won't happen. I suggest they can accept a scientific understanding of reality in common as an authority to direct the application of technology, without undermining their wealth and power. Or, either, making that power absolute.
I wouldn't disagree with the report per se - but merely point out that it's written ceteris paribus, all else being equal, as if food were the only variable in the equation. It assumes continued fossil fuel use - something I aim to overcome within a generation. Instead, you argue - I should go without meat so oil companies can keep pumping the black gold that will kill us anyway. Perhaps a little later, if we all go veggie - but inevitably. Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is necessary to survival - so why not do that first, and then wonder what else we have to cut, rather than cutting living standards to protect the profits of the very corporations that have failed to apply the best technology available?
Yes, if we remove human beings from the equation, then I agree sustainability is likely technologically possible.
Quoting karl stone
No worries on replying, there is no obligation. But sorry, no, you don't get it. Not yet anyway. That's completely normal, especially for science worshipers, no matter how many PhDs they have.
You appear to have an engineer's mind, and you like to talk about reality a lot, but you seem to be completely ignoring the reality of human beings, the central fact in this mechanism you are trying to build. It's like designing a great car in a purely technical manner, leaving out any consideration of the driver.
A better approach is to look at the problem holistically, considering all the factors involved. Then, look for the weak link, the single point of failure, and address that. As example, if I upgraded the engine, transmission and drive train on my car so that it could go 500mph that sounds technically impressive. But if I forget to upgrade the tires too, it's all for nothing.
In the real world of human beings, if your plan was implemented successfully the end result would be that we would continue racing recklessly forward as fast as we can until we hit some other wall. Like all science worshipers you want to give us as much knowledge and power as possible, a well intended plan which ignores the fact that human beings can't successfully manage unlimited power.
It might help to think of us as a mechanical data processing chip inside of the machine you are building. The power of your machine is limited by the power of that chip. You can't just ignore the limitations of the governing mechanism and build anything you want.
Again, as a purely technical exercise I don't feel qualified to complain about your plan. Just saying, in the real world it's not a purely technical issue.
I think I need more discussion of this, which seems central to your plan.
I read your answer to SSU, but don't get it. Or maybe you don't get it either? Not sure. Try again if you want.
Where I live, we just narrowly missed getting hit by a Category 4 hurricane which just ripped through the Gulf of Mexico. Storms on the ocean are, you know, kinda common. Where exactly do we put the panels that won't experience storms?
I really do understand your argument. You believe any technology we invent to solve one problem, necessarily causes other problems, and perhaps, bigger problems. Is that not it?
I do not accept that argument because, I believe, you assume that the application of technology we have is a rational and natural course of events, for a world blind to that problem.
What I'm saying is that the application of technology is perverse - and that the problem you describe is inherent to this perversion of science and technology.
This perversion stems from the suppression of science as truth from the 1630's, and the subsequent use of science as a tool for the pursuit of ideological power and profit.
I get what you're saying, but accepting a scientific understanding of reality as the basis to apply technology, this problem would be subject to redress. Currently, it's not subject to redress because profit and power dictate the application of technology - like clean energy technology. The technology exists - the need to apply it is clear. So why is it not applied?
I read the rest of your post, and I take that on board - while dancing by the light of the holy bunsen burner!
Quoting Jake
I don't know what you don't get about mortgaging an asset. It allows us to monetize fossil fuels without extracting them. SSU asked - 'How would they have value if they are not used?'
It's something known as the 'Stranded Asset problem' - and I can't give a definitive answer, but argue that, in acceptance of a scientific understanding of reality as a basis to apply the technology necessary to secure the future, the surety is inherent in the long term viability of civilization. Essentially, sovereign debt owned by the world. There are a great many variables - not least, who gets the money, I don't want to weigh in on. Big can o' worms. The concept has initiated a new programme at the Smith School of Oxford University which considers stranded assets across a range of sectors from an academic perspective. This link has an interesting precis of the issue:
https://www.carbontracker.org/terms/stranded-assets/
Quoting Jake
One word: submersible!
I don't know what it means, but I think it answers your question.
LOL
Not quite it, but thank you for reading enough to get that far. To quickly summarize my thesis is that scientific progress if pursued without limits will inevitably produce powers which we can't successfully manage. Evidence, we currently have thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats, hardly a case of successful management.
I'm not really objecting to your specific technical proposal as I don't feel qualified to do that. I'm instead objecting to assumptions I see behind your proposal, such as the idea that saving the world is a technical problem requiring technical solutions. My argument is that such a simplistic notion is the very idea which brought us to the problems you are trying to solve, with more of that idea.
Quoting karl stone
Ok, I don't quite get this yet, so perhaps you can expand on it in future posts? I hear something like "we're using science incorrectly" because various religious and commercial powers have subverted it. But I'm not sure that's what you mean.
Quoting karl stone
Well, we've not yet resolved key problems with your proposal, as I understand it so far. How do we derive commercial value from petroleum in the ground which forever remains in the ground? How do we put mass solar panels on an ocean subject to repeated storms. Maybe the technology has not been applied simply because it wouldn't work as you describe it?
Quoting karl stone
Why is a material which can never be used an asset?
Maybe that would work. If the framework on which the solar panels were mounted were sufficiently strong and rigid, it could probably be submerged without being damaged by wave action on the bottom. Or, one would float the panels on small lakes or lagoons where wind wouldn't generate huge waves. Floating panels should be look at as a specialty application.
Wind turbines, however, can be located off shore. But they have to be off a shore that gets enough wind. In Minnesota, at least, wind is providing a substantial share of electrical energy. States from MN to TX down the center of the continent generally have good wind. Texas is a leader in wind energy -- surprising, even though there is an exceptionally large amount of hot air in TX.
Consider the motives for creating nuclear weapons. They are not motives drawn from a scientific understanding of reality, but occur as a consequence of competing pre-scientific ideologies. The nation state as a sovereign political entity dates back to the Treaty of Westphalia (1650).
The nation state is not a scientific fact - it's just made up, yet it is from behind national borders - in competition with other nations, decision are made about how technology is applied - both military technology, and domestic energy policy. The sum of all national energy policies does not amount to a global energy policy. The global reality is externalized by the local ideology.
Similarly, if we had accepted a scientific understanding of reality, instead of maintaining an ideological misunderstanding of the world, there would be no motive to produce nuclear weapons.
(I should add here, this is to illustrate the mistake we made - suppressing science as truth from 1630 onward. Not to propose who we are now, might all join hands and dance around the maypole to the strains of Simon and Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair. I'm not that naive.)
What I'm saying is, what you think is "hardly a case of successful management" - is actually caused by something else; failure to recognize that science is true knowledge of reality - that could easily have been accepted by the Church in 1630, as the word of God the Creator. Instead it was suppressed as heresy - while at the same time, used to drive the Industrial Revolution. We raced ahead technologically while remaining ideologically primitive. That's the mismanagement you identify, but attribute - incorrectly, to the nature of science and technology itself.
Quoting Jake
Hey, it's not me - I've only been here a few decades. It was like that when I found it!
I answered these questions insofar as I'm able - in my previous post. I can really only point you to experts working on this issue - as I did above. I'm not an economist; I did undergraduate modules in micro and macro economics, and that's my answer to the stranded asset question. They're submersible!
7 billion plus people have the capacity to swamp improvements in food production and fresh water supply by merely continuing to reproduce at moderate levels. What we need to do, in the midterm and long term is reduce the number of people on the planet. That means population attrition, not just in Europe or Japan, but everywhere.
It's one of a few technical ideas ...floating around! Another idea is strong plastic spheres, the entire surface of which is one big solar panel, with the electrolysis or desalination machinery inside. These are free floating - and set to drift along relatively predictable ocean currents, soaking up light and creating hydrogen fuel or fresh water stored within. They're also a delivery system - just throw them in the ocean and they arrive some months later, juiced up with fuel or water.
Aesthetically, I like the spheres...they're so, "I am not a prisoner - I am a free man!"
(No? Old TV show! Classic!)
Onshore wind has the bird problem, and noise. I think they're beautiful, but some people think they're an eyesore. Add to that real estate costs - and clearly, there's some advantages to making energy at sea.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I reject the premise. The idea that there's too many people is a pernicious implication from the misapplication of technology for ideological ends. The way technology is applied now there's too many people, but it needn't be the case. We can support massive population going forward - and protect environmental resources from over-exploitation at the same time if we apply technology as directed by scientific rationality.
I don't know if you were aware, but long established research shows that improving living conditions tends to reduce family size. It happened in Europe and Japan - as you indicate. Counter intuitively, poor people tend to have more children - presumably, due in part to a lack of contraception, but also - a rational decision where there's high infant mortality, and parents need looking after in their old age.
The UNDP, assuming continued improvements in living standards - and importantly, women's rights with regard to reproductive health, predicts a leveling off of population growth by 2100, at around 11 billion. I think that's entirely manageable from a scientific and technological perspective.
Jake, I read the whole thing, and a number of comments on the thread.
Also, I didn't miss this:
Quoting Jake
Saw the footage on TV, and wondered if you're okay.
Yes, I am aware of that.
The problem of population, 7-11 billion, is that it is up against an agricultural environment that will be deteriorating, even if we make some progress toward limited CO2/methane/other. Those are:
All the arable land we have is now being used for agriculture. There are no significant idle reserves. (What about northern lands becoming agricultural? The soils that are now very cold or frozen are not, and will not be suitable for agriculture. What about irrigation? All of the fresh water that is suitable for irrigation has been tapped. Drinking water has also passed its peak. The Asian glaciers are shrinking rapidly. In 50 years, the temperature in many agricultural areas will be too hot to work in for much or all of the day. (When the temperature and humidity combined make it impossible to cool off, people start dying from heat.) Fisheries productivity is in decline.
Agriculture, under the best of circumstances, is risky: too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too many insects, not enough bees, plant diseases, soil exhaustion, etc. There is usually enough world production to keep people fed, but an increasingly warm, erratic climate doesn't favor agriculture. Projecting enough production to feed 11 billion ignores erratic and fast climate change.
Not despairing yet? Declining hydrocarbon output: Much of high agricultural productivity depends on cheap, abundant oil and gas for chemicals, fertilizers, and fuel. We are past peak oil. We can not feed 7 billion people, maybe not 5 billion using animal traction, organic farming, and the like. We could do that at maybe 2-3 billion under good conditions. Those days are over.
Getting the population down to 2-3 billion or less will come about if the species crashes. That could happen if global warming becomes too severe in the 22nd century (only 82 years away).
I am pessimistic about all techno-fixes. I like techno-fixes. However, it does not appear that the we have the will or the political means to slam the brakes on CO2/methane/other. If we (the whole world) did have the will, the ways, and the means to abruptly cease CO2/methane/other output, we could, perhaps, solve the problem. But we don't. NO country is meeting even the modest targets set recent agreements.
Why not? Why are they not?
One reason is that major technological changes (like from horse power to machine power, like telephone, radio, television, railroads, highways, airplanes, medicine, engineering, etc. etc. etc.) require around 40 to 50 years to propagate throughout society. It isn't just behavior change; it's all sorts of changes. We have not committed to abandoning fossil fuels, so the 40-50 year change over hasn't begun.
Yes, there are solar panels and windmills here and there. But transportation in the developed world is still predicated on cars and trucks. Heating and cooling still are largely dependent on electricity from fossil fuels. A rising standard of living around the world requires more production of everything, and a lot of waste.
It isn't that I think we can not do anything; theoretically we can. But we run up against time (we waited too long) and material limitations on what is possible in a short period of time, because people generally don't worry about threats unless they are unmistakably visible -- like seeing the tornado about 3 blocks away. That's just the way we are wired.
So, how bad was it where you live? What was it like?
I've never seen a hurricane. Gales, once; tornadoes, one or twice; blizzards, numerous. Long hot droughts, once or twice. Bad floods, a few times. No hurricanes. No earthquakes either.
Apparently you're not that young, either -- Mr. Scarborough fair. And you're being very anachronistic: the heyday of maypoles didn't come close to Simon and Garfunkel. They (S & G) were certainly favorites of mine, back in those dear dead days of long ago. (Well, still are, mostly.)
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me,
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain,
And an island never cries.
A little daunted perhaps - but despairing? No! I believe these challenges are amenable to redress or mitigation. We'd maximize our ability for redress and mitigation by accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common, as a basis to apply technology. But even if we don't - there's a possibility that somehow, science is so powerfully true that it's adequate despite our failure to put the science out front, ahead of the ideology.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, as long as you make it! Eh?
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's why, I argue we need to change our ideological approach - putting the science out front as a guide, with our ideological selves following along behind. I appreciate that requires some degree of sophistication from people who have genuine beliefs that are inimical to science. I appreciate also, that it requires a willingness on the part of the rich and powerful to see their interests served by this approach. I think those are the real obstacles we face, but the technology available is adequate to meet the challenge.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Not necessarily.
New York 1900 - spot the car!
New York 1913 - spot the horse!
https://www.businessinsider.com/5th-ave-1900-vs-1913-2011-3?IR=T
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'd agree with that. People are inherently conservative. methodical - if not hidebound. But we can jump on things and make dramatic changes very quickly when all the stars align. Are they not lining up for you at all?
Nothing much happened here, the storm went around us. A slight change in path would have changed that. We're in the middle of the penisula, so no storm surge etc, but if this one had headed our way it wouldn't have been fun. Thanks for asking!
The nature of science is to develop knowledge, which typically is then converted in to some form of power, ie. an ability to manipulate the environment.
The nature of human beings is that we are imperfect, able to successfully manage some power, but not an unlimited amount of power.
Thus, at some point the nature of science and the nature of human beings come in to conflict. Science keeps developing more and more knowledge/power, and at some point reaches and exceeds the limits of the governing mechanism, human beings.
Your thread argues for the science religion dogma, the "more is better" relationship with knowledge. That dogma is the cause of the problems you are trying to solve.
Perhaps the problem is that people simply dismiss the most obvious sources how changes happen: through the market mechanism and through technical development. If we can produce energy far cheaper than we get from fossil fuels, we simply won't use those fuels as we earlier did. It surely isn't a political correct idea, relying on the market, but we should think about it.
Let me give a historical example: whale oil.
Early industrial societies used whale oil for oil lamps, lubrication, soap, margarine etc. During the 19th Century this lead nearly to the extinction of whales in the seas and fewer whales meant that the rise the price of whale oil went up. By technological advances the role of whale oil was taken over by the modern petroleum industry and also vegetable oils, which could provide far more oil with a far cheaper price than the whaling industry could. Kerosene and petroleum were far more reliable and became more popular than whale oil and basically could provide energy to the combustion engine revolution, which never could be supplied by whaling. And the whales? Their numbers actually bounced back by an unintensional act of environmental protection by the World's most famous vegetarian: Adolf Hitler. By starting WW2 and by unleashing the German Kriegsmarien in an all-out war on the Atlantic, Hitler (and the Japanese) unintensionally saved the whales as this stopped whaling for a few years and gave the whales a well needed chance rebound in numbers even before banning of whaling was introduced. That a lot of countries have banned whaling simply shows the marginal importance of whale oil and whale meat in these countries.
Hence when we try to make up legislation and create complex mechanisms which the industry and the consumer has to adapt to, perhaps we should first look at how we can steer market forces in the right direction that they themselves can make the change. And this steering can be done by technical innovation. Oil companies do understand that they are in the energy business and if fossil fuels cannot compete with other energy sources, that's it. Then there simply is no future for them in the oil and coal business. If they don't make the change, they'll go the path as Kodak. Hence oil companies can even themselves make the hop to alternative energies. They have already changed from the conventional oil fields for example to shale oil, which basically is a totally different operation. Let's not forget that Peak Conventional Oil has already happened.
Above all, once there are far cheaper energy sources than fossil fuels and the recycling of plastics is done on a massive scale, then indeed can the last remnants of fossil fuel reserves be left underground. Then the eco-friendly policy is quite easy to adapt.
That certainly could be said about the nature of science - and how it is employed in society, but much more might also be said about the nature of science, and I would argue - how therefore, science should be employed in society.
Quoting Jake
That certainly can be said about human beings - and how they handle power.
Quoting Jake
Because of what else can be said about the nature of science - and how therefore it should be employed, that doesn't necessarily follow. Fundamentally, I am not asking man to manage the powers science makes available. I suggest they should be managed in relation to a modern day scientific understanding of reality; that is to say, the truth that provides the power should be taken on board in deciding how it is employed. Employing hugely powerful technologies with no regard to the understanding of reality that provided for them is grossly irresponsible. But it's something people are entirely unaware of - and so, it's not blameworthy irresponsibility. Forgive them for they know not what they do. It's a mistake - and a fairly understandable one at that.
Quoting Jake
You have identified the phenomenon, certainly - but the cause is buried deep in the history of the ideological development of civilizations; which arguably, is fantastic for us - because, we can learn the lesson of our error, and thereby claim the full, scientifically advised functionality of technology - to solving the problems we've created charting a course - probably not more than a few degrees off true north, over a very long time.
I've been attempting to say much more on this topic in the other thread, or we could do it here, either is fine.
Quoting karl stone
Ok, how does that work exactly? Can you be more specific?
Quoting karl stone
Ok, yes, it's a philosophical problem, not a science problem. Science is just a machine which does it's job well. It's our relationship with science which is the problem.
Quoting karl stone
What does this mean? My understanding of "scientifically advised" is that we should learn as much as possible, that is, a "more is better" relationship with knowledge.
Well, I can't blame you for not replying. Thanks Jake. Good chat. Thanks everyone. I'm going to leave it there.
Usually humanity has gotten into trouble when it hasn't had the science and technology to overcome it's problems. "Globalization" has then turned backwards and a highly complex society has turned to a less complex society, which has eradicated whole professions and basically scientific and technological knowledge itself. This can be seen how from Antiquity we got to the Middle Ages. For example Rome got to be as big as it had been only in the 1930's. Or that industrial production came up to the level of Antiquity only in the 17th Century.
Take a larger view. in the years of WWII 1939-1945, horses were indispensable. Why? For one, they don't use oil. For two, they are strong. For three, they can be used flexibly. Four, Germany and the USSR still used horses for various purposes in 1938, and horses were part of military planning.
Spot the horse!
Spot the tanks!
How many horses did the Wehrmacht lose in Operation Barabarosa? 179,000. How many horses did the USSR and Reich III use during WWII? About 6,000,000.
Here's a mule helping a US soldier in northern Burma, Nov. 17. 1944
Trains, for instance, didn't replace horses. Trains made horses critically important for short distance hauling to and from the railroad--up until trucks replaced them by 1920 (later in agricultural regions).
The first computer was built in WWII. It took about 40 years for personal computers to make their appearance. By 1995. they were pretty much integrated into business, and people were buying computers for home use. So, about 50 years.
Huh?
Indeed, but if we could build large solar plants in the ocean at the equator, why wouldn't we just run a wire from the complex and plug it into the electrical distribution systems of India, China, SE Asia, Africa, or South America?
Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation by James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler details the nature of the environmental crises. While doing that he also punctures many a delusion about what is possible. For instance: "We'll build huge numbers of windmills and square miles of solar panels." Great idea. But... given that we are past peak oil, what will happen when our million windmills and millions of solar panels wear out? We still have relatively cheap petrochemicals with which to carry out this production. Forty years from now? Sixty? Much less oil available and much more expensive. I am thoroughly enthusiastic about windmills and solar, but a lot of energy is needed to build the steel masts from which the windmills are hung. I assume a fair amount of energy is required to build solar panels too and that they probably don't continue to work forever.
Kunstler's point is that there are no magical solutions to our several interlocked environmental crises.
Sorry for not responding earlier, it's been a busy few days...
Quoting karl stone
Quoting karl stone
I certainly agree that from a scientific point of view it would be preferable to choose the cleaner and renewable energy over the cheapest energy. But I have my doubts that markets would put the science above the profit motive. They typically don't make any value judgements aside from the profit motive, right. Because that's what the stockholders want, more return on investment. And you get more profit when you sell more products or services. So the consumer decides in the end, and he typically will favor the cheaper products and services.
I don't see that dynamic changing any time soon, but one of three things could happen that will make renewable energy more viable economically : 1) the consumer will start to value 'clean and renewable' more as the situation gets more dire 2) governments start imposing more pollution taxes which drives up the price of the old energy sources, and 3) renewable energy becomes cheaper and cheaper in comparison, as technology advances and old energy sources get more expensive because of depletion.
Quoting karl stone
Right, though there are only carbon costs if we assume that the energy used for construction or looking after the nuclear waste is itself carbon energy? Or am I missing something?
I haven't made that argument. I have argued for the necessity of changing that equation, and described a possibly possible means to do so. I have argued that we can keep fossil fuels in the ground at zero sum cost by mortgaging them to the world. I hypothesize that by mortgaging fossil fuels - the world would have the debt in one hand and the money in the other - and it would therefore be a zero total cost.
Current interests are returned at a respectable level, the money is created to apply renewable energy technology, and the planet is saved! Hurrah!
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
If you google the phrase "feduciary duty to maximize shareholder value" the picture is mixed. Some say it's a myth. I don't know, but I suspect it would be legally problematic. Assuming at least it describes the coincidence of interests between investors and traders - I accept that is how the market works, but would point to the trap this makes of fossil fuels. They have enormous value - there's a powerful coincidence of interests, if not an actual legal obligation to liberate. The single investor in the market might choose to make an ethical stand, but that does not imply money will not find the opportunity. The only difference will be between who does what - not what is done.
I do not accept the idea of consumer sovereignty on the grounds of cognitive overload. It's not the individual's responsibility to know, and by consumer choice, decide how things are produced. Consumers are neither qualified nor responsible. As an example, since the climate report was published, there's a rash of video blogs on how veganism can save the world. Individual responsibility. Instead of governmental and corporate responsibility. So they can keep pumping the black gold while I'm filling up on lentils? Another example - I've got six different colored bins in front of my house - and there's morons and criminals sitting idle as I read in the newspaper, (red bin) despite my best efforts most of it goes to landfill anyway. There are things that need doing only government and industry can do.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
So your answer is the same - hope the consumer makes ethical rather than price point choices, tax industry into submission, bankruptcy and consolidation, and pray science provides another miracle! Isn't that how we got here? The solution in my view is responsibility to a scientific understanding of reality at the point of production, not the point of sale. What do I know about how anything's made? And furthermore, I paid my money for a good or a service. I don't want to be inducted into the supply chain as an adviser or a busboy.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes. A reasonable assumption in my view. The main energy cost is concrete, both the production of cement, a massively energy intensive industry, and transport of enormous mass by fossil fuel powered vehicles. There's also steel production and delivery. And that's not even counting the mini-fridge in the workman's cabin! That's so old it doesn't even have a sticker indicating its energy rating!
"The concrete industry is one of two largest producers of carbon dioxide (CO2), creating up to 5% of worldwide man-made emissions of this gas, of which 50% is from the chemical process and 40% from burning fuel." wiki
That is to say, cement is produced by driving off CO2 from calcium carbonate (limestone).
In other news, as I tried to indicate earlier, the ocean is not as empty as it looks; covering it with solar cells is probably not as disastrous as covering a rainforest with solar cells, but not that far off.
Why is life so complicated?
Well, I could say a lot more about my approach too - but I'm not getting that you've fully come to grips with it. Or seek to come to grips with it! How should we proceed, given that - what I'm trying to say is that your conclusions are subsumed within my paradigm? We could talk about your thing exclusively, perhaps. Is there a name, or particular phrase - that sums up your approach?
Quoting Jake
Let's get your thing down first, because your insistence I don't understand, stands as an obstacle to explaining how your conclusions are subsumed under my paradigm.
The short answers are transmission loss over distance, particularly at lower voltages, the night-time problem - and that, powering national grids would only solve that one problem. The approach I've described - solar panels floating on the ocean's surface, making hydrogen fuel and fresh water from sunlight and sea water, solves all those, and a number of other problems at the same time.
And what's more, you can't eat a tank!
Quoting Bitter Crank
It wasn't actually the first computer, but that's another debate - one that ultimately resolves to the question of how one defines a computer. Interesting topic, but a discussion for later perhaps. Did you know the genius and national hero who designed his difference engine at Bletchely Park, Alan Turing, was hounded to suicide by the government for being gay? Tragic story. Another other subject.
I cannot however, accept this supports your conclusion that necessarily, it takes 50 years for innovation to take hold. Not least because there's a long history of computing machines before Turing. (Google Charles Babbage for instance.) Without descending too far into that argument, I'd suggest that you mistake the research and development time of various levels of technology, for the period over which acceptance of innovation takes place. The invention of the transistor was necessary to make home computing possible. It doesn't take 50 years once the technology exists.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Ahhh, the Malthusians - they are persistently gloomy. Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. He's famous for pointing out the discrepency between the geometric rate of population growth 2,4,8,16 etc, against the arithmetic rate 1, 2, 3, 4, etc, at which agricultural land could be increased. He predicted this would inevitably lead to mass starvation. He was wrong. Clearly, people are problem solvers. They multiply resources with knowledge and technological innovation. I don't need to read Knustler's book to know he's wrong. I can see the arithmetic of his argument a mile away - and while seemingly logical, it just doesn't model reality.
Lot of concrete in a nuclear power station.
Quoting unenlightened
Covering the oceans completely would be disastrous - if it were even possible. The oceans are 7/10ths of the world's surface - so you'd pretty much have to scrape everything from every landmass to do it. I'm only suggesting a few thousand square kilometers. That's huge, but in terms of the size of the oceans - it's like putting a postage stamp in a football stadium, and you're worried about how the grass will grow?
There's very little life mid ocean anyway - most oceanic life lives on the continental shelves where there's nutrients washed into the sea. Mid ocean is a veritable desert.
Summary: One can get a profound change through the market mechanism when a new alternative is cheaper and better to the old one. Yet the typical solution is only to believe in regulation, restrictions and international agreements and not that the free market could (or would) change supply and demand itself. Hopefully I'm not confusing here.
Concise is better. Thanks. Fossil fuels ubiquitous position in the energy market relative to renewables makes this an inherently unjust calculus. I was asked - what the range of a hydrogen powered vehicle was, for example. But petroleum powered engines have been in continuous development for over a hundred years. It's rather the same with renewables. Being applied in a piecemeal fashion at the nexus of guilt and economic self interest is stunting the technology. Renewable energy technology doesn't need to be subsidized - it needs to be funded. An infrastructure that needs to be built like the rail network, or the canals, or the Romans and their roads. Only then will it be a fair comparison.
Yes, I know who Malthus was, and that his predictions did not pan out. However, I didn't reference Malthus, and neither did Kunstler. Our situation today isn't a Malthusian problem. Old Thomas has become a stumbling block which we trip over. People in general fall somewhere on the spectrum of optimism and pessimism. Whether their location makes sense or not doesn't seem to have any influence on their thinking.
As I indicated above, I'm favorably disposed towards techno-fixes when, and if, they are appropriate, and when and if they have a good chance of achieving the desired ends. The problem we face with global warming isn't malthusian. Had Malthus had the insight to see that the industrial revolution going on around him would eventually lead to serious problems, he would rank up there with Newton. Someone (I forget, don't know where the reference is) may have detected signs of climate change roughly a century ago, but their observation was isolated, and could not be fit into a pattern at that time.
The problem is CO2, methane, and some other heat trapping gases. They are in the atmosphere now, and won't disappear tomorrow. The solution lies in changing human behavior. Unfortunately, achieving major shifts in human behavior and thinking is much more difficult than turning an air craft carrier or the largest oil tankers around on a dime.
Were we able to change our thinking, our cultures, our behaviors on a dime; make industrial policy based on subtle shifts in the climate 50 years ago; shift to public transit away from private autos and air travel; live much more simply; become vegetarians; and so on and so forth, we could have prevented or solved the problem decades before it became critical, we'd be in good shape now. Alas...
The best we can do at this point is mediate the coming disaster as much as we are able (however much or little that turns out to be). Que será, será.
Hydrogen is simply not a good energy carrier for a few reasons. First, it's not a liquid or solid at ambient temperature, which is a big inconvenience. Second, hydrogen is so small it diffuses through most metals causing micro-fractures leading to failure; solving these problems to power a rocket or in industrial processes can be solved ... but scaling to a transport infrastructure this problem is essentially unsolvable. Third liquid hydrogen boils off and easily slips through the tiniest cracks between parts making it extremely difficult to make a hermetic sealed hydrogen system at a lab level and simply impossible at an infrastructure scale. Hydrogen floats to the top of the atmosphere where it acts as a potent green house gas.
Long story short, if you have a lot of hydrogen you may as well solve all the above problems by reacting with carbon to make hydrocarbons and have all the benefits the energy density of hydrogen without the massive technological hurdles. Since there's excess carbon in the atmosphere it's easy to get to do this and means not only a cheaper infrastructure to build ... but an infrastructure that already exists.
So the thesis of the OP is essentially correct, there's just no reason to use hydrogen by itself as an energy carrier. And since you'd need to make electricity first to make hydrogen to make hydrocarbons (or whatever analogous process), you may as well use that electricity directly for most transport needs. Electric trains, trams and batteries for personal transport is simply far more efficient if you already have electricity. "Synth-hydro-carb" fuel would still be useful for trucks and lorries and airplanes .
Of course, as the OP mentions and thread has discussed, the real problem is the getting all the energy to make hydrogen or whatever your energy carrier is. With the energy problem solved you can then solve water, heating in winter, running an industrial base, space travel, or any other problem on the table.
When you look closer at this problem, it's easy to solve technologically. As Bittercrank points out in the previous post, these problems were solvable decades ago through technological and lifestyle changes. The core of the problem is this pesky western lifestyle.
The amounts of energy consumed by the typical western lifestyle (and that must continuously grow in energy and resource consumption!) is just so enormous that it's simply impractical to live the western lifestyle if convenient energy and minerals are not simply lying in the ground to be dug or pumped out. But if you get rid of waste you get rid or (most) mining, (most) personal large vehicle transport, (most) road construction and maintenance, (most) meat consumption, (most) of suburbia, (most) of the airplane transport and (most) industrial mono-culture farming as (most) people just have a garden and community farm they participate in on the same land area they are currently wasting on lawns and roads (solving many problems). Sure, some of all these things can make sense when needed, but if you look at the numbers there's simply no economic reason to make solar power to make jet fuel to fly people to New Zealand to visit the sets of the Lord of the Rings; so, if you mandated a renewable jet-fuel (through a fossil tax internalizing the true cost of fossil jet fuel into it's price) ... only actually useful flying would tend get done, which if you think about is a very small amount. Likewise, you could mandate less meat consumption overnight (i.e. again, internalizing the real cost into the price people pay for meat) and so people could still eat meat ... they'd just eat a lot less. And so on for every climate or otherwise environmental problem. Nearly every problem can be solved essentially overnight by internalizing it's real cost, people would consume it less or organize their lives to do things for themselves as it just saves too much money not to do it (like a personal garden). Of course, what the true cost is can be debated, but assuming we get it right, then by definition the problem is solved through internalizing the true cost.
What happens the next day? All these industries contract, the capitalist system is thrown into chaos, people's identifies as car riding, suburban house owning, rapacious meat eaters with a job in one of these industries that fly across the globe for a few selfies ... gone. This is the core of the ecological problem and why no politician has done anything about it. Huge push back from existing entrenched industries on one side and on the other identity crisis for a large part of their constituents.
Why (should have) a politician do something given the social upheaval it implies? Because the problems don't go away, and a bunch of social upheaval is far better to live through than the collapse of ecosystems and prolonged global conflicts it will induce (is inducing) and both these factors simply getting continuously worse and worse over time (not some switch that we then adapt to).
The light at the end of the mine shaft is that the system isn't sustainable and so will end.
Quoting karl stone
1) What is your paradigm exactly? It sounds like a science worshiping religion to me, something about how everyone will somehow magically become rational? If you want me to get it, please be as specific as possible.
2) I get that you want to mortgage oil in the ground, but I still don't get how that works.
3) I get that you want to put masses of solar panels on the ocean, but I don't get how that works either.
I'm not at all sure it does. I can really only describe the basic idea as well as I'm able and leave it to people more clever and credible than me.
I'm a little more confident that the technology I described would work. It could be done, and I set out to prove in principle that it could. Similarly however, there are people cleverer and more credible that I am. Is it really my place to dictate in detail how such an audacious broad brush stroke idea would be carried out in practice? Surely that would be for people to work out among themselves. It's their stuff!
I read somewhere it's an indirect greenhouse gas - prolonging the lifetime of other pollutants in the atmosphere, which presumably would be less of a problem over time if we were drastically reducing fossil fuel use. The other issues are matters of materials science. I do not concede it's not possible. We have tried neither at this, nor a wide range of possible alternatives. Even if a hydrogen internal combustion engine HICE were not feasible to mass produce, though BMW have produced the Hydrogen 7 and leased them to prominent figures, there's still hydrogen as a store of energy to be burnt in power stations, cement factories, steel mills and so forth.
Quoting boethius
I watched a video recently on fuel produced from captured carbon, and I would have to admit the incredible advantage of being ready for the tank of already existing vehicles. But at best it's a carbon neutral process - requiring a vast amounts of energy from renewable sources. to produce fuel that when burnt returns the captured carbon to the atmosphere. Is that good? What about the opportunity cost of that renewable energy in terms of other fuels burnt instead?
Quoting boethius
The question is where electricity is produced, and then how energy is stored and transported. Solar panels in deserts for example seem like a great idea until you consider transmission loss. Solar panels close to zones of industry and habitation occupy valuable real estate. Putting solar panels at sea, and using electricity and sea water to produce hydrogen as a store of energy, solves a lot of problems with resources that are available.
I read the rest and simply disagree that would be the implication.
Here is your problem:
You are assuming that "the truth" is crisply, concisely, and clearly stated in clean Helvetica text and that the upshot of seeing the truth is equally obvious. That's not the way truth usually appears. More likely than not it will be laboriously spelled out in obscure language and printed in some barely readable obscure font (figuratively speaking, you understand).
Then one has to figure out how to implement the truth that one has understood (correctly or not).
The value of electricity makes almost any location cost effective. Put a solar farm on that corn field. The electricity will be worth far more than the corn. A wind turbine doesn't take up much space on the ground, maybe 400 square feet. There is nothing you can grow on 400 sq. ft. worth as much as the electricity produced from that one turbine-bearing mast.
No offense, but I understand that this is just too vague to keep my interest. Let's try again in another thread, and thanks for the chat.
None taken. This is a political philosophy forum, and I'm seeking to do political philosophy - not chemistry and technical drawing. I can't give you any better answers than I have in that regard, but I can explain why science is the right answer - and how accepting that a scientific understanding of reality has the authority of truth, provides a political rationale for the application of technology on merit.
Your position, that technology itself is inherently problematic, is a position I've encountered, but haven't argued against before. It's sneaky nihilism - and I only ever found one cure for nihilism. Reject it, because... why not? It's not as if nihilism supports any value that requires one accept nihilism - so just walk away. Dare to hope.
Interesting question. 1633 - Galileo has just published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems - proving, by a ''hypothetico-deductive methodology" that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. He was arrested, tried, and found grievously suspect of heresy - and it's suggested, by the care taken in subsequent works by other philosophers - Descartes, Rousseau - that this had a chilling effect on purely rational inquiry.
In due course, the sum effect was to divorce science as a burgeoning understanding of reality, from science as a means to technological power. However...
The interesting question is whether this was done knowingly, or did they truly not see or understand that Galileo's hypothetico-deductive method was the means to valid knowledge of a reality, they believed was Created by God. I like to believe they were as blind then as we are now, to the significance of valid knowledge of reality - that it was a mistake, and that they were concerned principally with the offense against the prevailing authoritative religious rationale, and did not even glimpse the value of an ability to establish valid knowledge.
In regard to your question, the point is - that it's the method that should have stood out as something cosmically significant, not any particular factoid about who orbits whom.
Even now, a coherent scientific understanding of reality has only really come together in the past fifty years, since the advent of computer technology - allowing for number crunching and the communication of large amounts of data. But there was ample opportunity before then, to recognize the magic in the method - and infer the profound importance of the truth of Creation systematically revealed by these means.
I'm not an electrical engineer - I'm a philosopher. I've pointed out two dozen times that I'm only seeking to prove in principle that it's technologically possible. It's not fair to expect schematics and a business plan. I'm one man trying to correct a 400 year old philosophical error in the political history of my species, as a means of absolving science of the heresy of which it was accused, that in turn made it a whore to capitalism and a lobbyist on the steps of Congress - when it rightfully owns the highest authority, and should command at least some share of the enormous wealth and resources it has made available.
Ok, I get that this is your position. I'm just suggesting that this assertion may need some further clarification. So far, it's just an assertion. As example, a theist might claim "the Bible is the word of God", much as you are claiming "a scientific understanding of reality has the authority of truth". You are "seeking to do political philosophy". Making assertions, on their own, is not really philosophy.
Quoting karl stone
You're helping me better summarize my position concisely. Which is good, because I usually bury it in a mountain of words.
=============
SUMMARY: My position is that
1) the abilities of human beings are limited....
EVIDENCE: Thousands of hair trigger nukes aimed down our own throats, a literal gun in our mouth, which we rarely find interesting enough to discuss.
2)... thus, the powers available to human beings must also be limited.
EXAMPLE: We limit the powers available to children based on the realistic understanding that their ability to manage power is limited.
=============
My position isn't nihilism. As the children example illustrates, it's just common sense.
My primary objection to your thesis is that it appears to be a form of science worship, which I judge to be just as problematic as clergy worship. Both science and religion have their valid uses, but I'm wary of all attempts to paint either as a "one true way".
Life! Of sorts. But life in the sense that, from this point an important principle kicks in - and that is, the organism (or structure of molecules) has to be correct to reality to survive.
We will now jump forward in time, skipping over the cause and effect of the processes by which proteins are formed, and cells are formed, and the incorporation of mitochondria - and so on and on, it's horrendously complex, to how this principle plays out in life as animals. Note however, that development from a mere structure of molecules to animals, took about 3 billion years, was achieved by incremental, generation after generation, causal steps, that entirely transformed the chemical composition of the atmosphere of the planet more than once. The process didn't skip ahead.
By these means we get to animals. Now consider, for instance, how a bird build's a nest before it lays eggs. Is that because it knows and plans ahead? That seems unlikely. Rather, it's because birds not imbued with an instinctual behavioural imperative to build a nest were rendered extinct. Behaviourally, the bird is correct to the chronological direction of events playing out in an entropic reality - and this in turn, is manifest in the correctness of its physiology to reality - built from the atom up in relation to the same principle. Be correct to reality or be rendered extinct.
Now let's skip ahead again to consider homo sapiens - the only intellectually aware animal we're aware of. Do you see where I'm going with this?
:up: Interesting. Thank you for the hydrogen fuel explanation. As you know... as far as vehicles go, the century old Diesel engine can be made to run on vegetable oil, only needing additives to prevent viscosity in cold weather. And newer engines which can run on several different fuels, including ethanol, are an encouraging presence. The fact that this doesn’t seem to be a national priority is certainly NOT encouraging. Oil companies, auto manufacturers... blah blah blah. It makes me think of the recent situation with stevia being labeled as dangerous by soft drink manufacturers. That is, until they were ready to offer some stevia products of their own. I understand industries want to succeed, but when they sabotage progress the results are predictable.
Other technologies that are more energy efficient are happening of course. The recent explosion is the availability of cheap LED light bulbs for personal and commercial use is amazing. Less energy used, longer life of bulb. I just bought a four-pack of study plastic, very bright bulbs at MallMart for about $3.
Nice to see a potential beginning of the end of planned obsolescence.
Quoting boethius
:up: Agree 100%. Intelligently and clearly written. Thank you!
The issue of “true cost” is vital. If people wet their pants when someone suggests regulations for corporations because “the economy is too big and fragile to let fail!”, then we will continue to be stuck in this loop. No, excuse me. Not “loop”... downward spiral rather.
:up: Thanks for adding some interesting historical context and insights to this thread, imho. Spot on as usual. Great photos too!
Good stuff. Thanks for sharing it. Hopefully, it won’t take complete disaster to rouse us from our slumber. Disasters have a strange effect of making us act like humans. But what will open our minds, thaw our heart, and energize our bodies?
:up: Yes, agree. There can be no change in outcome until there is change in action. There will not be a change in actions until there is a change in thinking.
I disagree. I wouldn't suggest internalizing the true cost. But if you did, the very value of money itself would adjust - just as it adapted to oil price shocks in the past. Rather I'd suggest, seeking to limit the implications to a narrowly focused, feasible and necessary endeavor - like funding renewable energy infrastructure.
Thanks for starting this interesting thread with your original post. You do make some good points on what is both an important yet often overlooked topic.
But imho, dismissing a book by its cover like you practically did with Kunstler’s book is sawing off the branch you’re sitting on because you happen to be in a tidying mood. In general, thoughts that are overly dismissive can and probably will be dismissed. But whatever! Carry onward. :blush:
My manners are appalling, and I'd apologize, but I have something to say that's difficult for people to hear. I can't apologize for the tactics employed to put that idea across, but at the same time it's absolutely not my intent or desire to hurt anybody. I'm sure it's a wonderful book! With a dreadful conclusion!!
A good 'mission statement', provided we are not relying only on hope. :chin: If we hope, but carry on as we have been, well, nothing will change, and hope will achieve nothing? By all means hope, but let's hope that the constructive efforts we make will result in worthwhile change? :wink:
He was? There have been many mass starvation events in my lifetime, although none of them took place in my own country.
It would be helpful if you made yourself aware of the argument set out in the thread. It's arguably quite an important argument, and you're doodling on it.
“You are passionate Herr Mozart, but... you do not... persuade.” :wink:
(Just a joke). Seriously though, no problem. I just think you might actually appreciate Kunstler’s writing. I haven’t read the book @Bitter Crank was referring to, but i was impressed and inspired by an earlier book of his, The Geography of Nowhere.
This is a problem we've been aware of for many years. We just can't help ourselves. We can't stop just taking more and more and more.... There's a brick wall ahead, and we should be braking. But we're still accelerating. In some instances, our acceleration is still increasing! Doodling? I hope not. Terrified? Yes, frankly. :fear:
:up: Amen! Agreed. And well-said.
That is exactly what @Bitter Crank did, if you recall.
Quoting karl stone
Huh? Now who is “doodling” on the thread? Care for some brandy? :snicker:
Then it is difficult to see how you can achieve the apparent aims of this thread.... :chin:
Stated aims, I think you'd find if you read it. As are the means, and justifying logics stated. Where have I not been 100% apparent?
Then it is difficult to see how you can achieve the stated aims of this thread.... :chin:
Hey, I'm not an electrical engineer either -- nor do I know anything about finance. (I was an English major.) I think you've brought in quite a few technically possible schemes. Making hydrogen with solar power plants floating on the ocean is technically possible. But I don't think that connects with your mission of absolving science of heresy. If capitalism makes a whore of science, that's not the fault of science; capitalism prostitutes everything.
Granting science the highest authority is debatable because science doesn't produce truth about everything. It has the capacity to give us a truthful report on the physical, natural world. That's no small thing. It is gradually revealing how our brains work--that is most excellent. I trust science.
What science is not equipped to do is tell us what we should do. Science could help launch the industrial revolution by revealing how things work. It could not inform the first industrialists whether they should build steam engines, power looms, and railroads. Science revealed the nature of electricity; it could not reveal whether the telegraph, telephone, and light bulb were good ideas.
What we should do is the province of philosophers.
I don't think science is much encumbered by charges of heresy. What encumbers us all is the grip of capitalist economics and ideology on most of the world. The operation of capitalism is observable and predictable; that's what Karl Marx did. Capitalism is apparently blind to the consequences of its own operation (or at least has major vision problems). Capitalists who are willing to prostitute science probably aren't willing to consult science for advice.
Therein lies a major part of our present problem.
In so many ways this is true. It's true because we are, after all, only very bright primates. We have drives which push our behavior in ways that our higher thought capacities can see are ill advised, but the drives remain in place -- they are deeply woven into our beings. Our drives were tolerable when there were fewer of us -- maybe 7 billion fewer. When we were a few hunter gatherers we could not get into too much trouble.
Then we settled down; we developed agriculture, built cities, organized governments, harnessed the energies of slaves and beasts to produce large surpluses of wealth (which accumulated in few hands), and began our more recent history. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott takes the view that a human urge to control led to the early states, and their exploitation of the people under their control. Scott has a deep libertarian streak, I suspect. I haven't finished the book, but I think he is going to name the State the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.
I'm not at all convinced, but there is certainly unhappy business at the very beginning of our more recent (last 10,000 years) history.
It's difficult to get all the pieces to relate correctly one to another. Thanks for making the effort. But consider the opportunity foregone by the Church, in the stance they adopted on behalf of European thought - bearing in mind they were burning people alive as witches right through to 1792. Had the Church recognized the significance of science from 1630, and pursued it as effectively the word of God the Creator - science would own authority, and be pursued much more rapidly and systematically than it was.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I do not suggest seeking to recreate the consequences of that foregone opportunity overnight - we are who we are, and have to get there from here. Rather, I think we can recognize that a mistake was made, and make use of that realization, insofar as it's useful to us.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I do not accept human beings need telling what they should do. They need telling what's true. But the right and wrong thing is very deeply ingrained. It's a sense, like a sense of humour, or the appreciation of art. The aesthetic sense. I haven't trotted out the ought from is adjustment for a while now. Would you like to go through it?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Marx saved capitalism. And thank goodness because it's close to a miracle. When you think about the billions of people pursuing their rational self interest, and how that all magically conspires to produce and distribute the goods and services people want and need; when you think about the political freedom it affords, and the tolerable injustice of it - to say nothing of the actually quite extraordinary promotion of human welfare worldwide, achieved by capitalism, clearly it must be a major part of any solution.
The reason capitalism is so often cast of the villain of the piece is that it provides one of our main motivations. But what we do is actually decided by a political and legal ideological architecture - in which the authority science rightfully owns goes unrecognized.
Had that happened, that process would have given us more power sooner. How does this solve the problem that adult human beings, like their children, are imperfect creatures who can successfully manage only so much power? Or are you arguing that human beings can successfully manage ANY amount of power?
That's it, well said as usual Mr. Crank.
Yes, that's the equation I'm urging readers to consider.
The reality is that human beings are limited, just like everything else in nature. Theories that argue for the acceleration of knowledge development without limit are not "correct to the reality" of the human condition. To the degree we cling to such theories we are headed for extinction.
Why do we not sell surface to air missiles to ten year old boys? Understand that, and we understand why science can not continue without limits.
Really? Marx was describing the historical processes he saw at work. He didn't save capitalism -- it didn't need saving. Marx predicted, he didn't prescribe. He may have been on the side of the workers. but the workers have tasks that they have to fulfill, from Marx's perspective, and if they didn't fulfill those tasks, then...
He didn't tell anyone to begin the revolution in 1917. Marx--as far as I can tell--predicted the revolution would happen when the working class was fully developed and capable of taking over capitalism. Have we reached that point yet? Maybe -- workers at all levels of the corporate structure have the skills to operate the corporation. In fact, for the most part workers (low level to high level workers) do operate the corporation.
What workers lack is "class-self-consciousness": the kind of consciousness that illuminates their class interests and informs their actions. Most workers in the US, at least, think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed tycoons of some sort. Silly them! Their problem is that they lack class-consciousness, and heaven and earth have been moved to make sure they don't develop class consciousness.
That's not Marx's fault. In the long run, if the working class doesn't fulfill it's destiny (as Marx sees it), then one of the contending classes -- workers or capitalists -- will be destroyed. That is not a desirable conclusion to class conflict.
First, there is some prospect of managing science and technology, we're already doing that. The question I'm raising is, can we successfully manage unlimited science and technology? If not, then it seems reasonable to at least question whether a development such as, say, unlimited free clean energy would on balance be helpful to human flourishing.
Next, you keep saying "the reality science describes" without referencing the imperfect reality of the human condition. I wouldn't harp on this except that it seems to me to be not a failure of your personal perspective so much as a logic flaw which almost defines modern civilization. Yes, if human beings were all rational as you define it then we could handle far more power, that's true. The problem is, we're not that rational, never have been, and there's no realistic prospect of us all joining the science religion and becoming Mr. Spock logic machines.
Quoting karl stone
I'm not technophobic, I'm allergic to our simplistic, outdated and dangerous "more is better" relationship with technology. As example, do you want all citizens to be able to buy nuclear weapons at the Army Navy store? Assuming not, that doesn't make you an enemy of technology, that makes you an enemy of stupidity.
The situation I see is much like what any parent would experience raising teenagers. The parent has to make careful judgments regarding what kinds of powers their teen is ready to handle. It's a complicated situation. The kid is easily ready for a bicycle, but not a Harley chopper. The parent has to decide when the teen can upgrade from a bike to a moped to a regular motorcycle to a Harley. The situation can not be successfully managed with simplistic formulas such as "more is better" or "less is better".
Science culture sees itself as marching brilliantly in to the future, and anyone who wants to slow down the march is branded a technophobe. But the reality is that science culture is actually stuck living in the past, during the long era when we could learn as much as possible without limit because we were operating at a primitive level scientifically. The success of science changes this now outdated paradigm. "More is better" no longer works, unless that is you're content that your next door neighbor can create new life forms in his garage workshop.
Quoting karl stone
I agree with this, with the exception that you're not being "correct with reality", but instead engaging in fantasy, in regards to the central factor in this equation, the human condition.
Assuming the plan in your opening post would work, that doesn't automatically make it a good or bad thing. Your plan, any plan, exists in a larger context which must be taken in to consideration.
Perhaps this is another thread, but I've been impressed by these stats from a Washington Post article.
Point being, you, me and 80% of Americans are squabbling among ourselves over the last 10% of the economy. As Bitter Crank might suggest, it's pretty amazing that we in the 80% seem largely incapable of focusing on this economic reality.
As example, Bernie Sanders suggested free college for everyone paid for by the super rich. What's not to like??? There were a few months of buzz about this and then the idea died. Even those students with huge loans around their necks seem to have forgotten this idea and moved on.
More evidence that we aren't as clever as we typically think we are.
It's an opinion of course, that Marx saved capitalism. It wasn't his intent, but let us assume his critique was correct - then capitalism should have succumbed to its internal contradictions. But it hasn't - at least, not in the west, not yet. Rather what seemed to follow from Marx influence, was mandatory education for minors, acts prohibiting payment in tokens, pension reform from 1900, and a raft of other social reforms leading ultimately to the welfare state and consumer society. In short, capitalism adjusted to Marx critique, and prevailed over collectivism. Hurrah!
Quoting Bitter Crank
Russia prior to the revolution wasn't capitalist as such. It was a feudal society, in which the vast majority of people were serfs. Expertise and government revolved around the Court of the Tsar, then there was a landowner class, and everyone else were serfs. So, it wasn't capitalism against which the serfs were rebelling in 1917 - it was the politics of the middle ages.
Quoting Bitter Crank
There's no-where in the world with a more acute consciousness of social class than Great Britain; and no-where freedom of speech and freedom of political organization is taken more seriously. Indeed, heaven and earth was moved by Marx ideas, but that manifested as reform - stemming largely from the chattering classes. If you're interested in this, look up William Morris - a famous wallpaper designer and social reformer of the era. Joseph Rowntree - the chocolate company founder is another.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Ultimately, I find Marx thesis contradictory - if the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle, how could class consciousness be absent from the working class? It doesn't make sense. And it didn't work out too well for Russia.
Is capitalism dependent upon stupidity? In America today very few people hold the majority of wealth. And the rest of us just go along with that, distracted as we are by our TVs and social media accounts etc.
What if the top 20 percent owned only 30-40%? They'd still be doing great, and vast sums would be liberated to invest in infrastructure, education, affordable health care etc. But, we the 80% are too dumb to effectively challenge the rigged system, and so we swim in an ocean of preventable problems.
The solution would seem to be, socialism at the extremes, and capitalism in the middle. The goal should be to remove the extremes of wealth and poverty and create a largely middle class nation. We can still have capitalism in the middle that so each of us has an incentive to improve our situation.
Here's a very relevant documentary on Netflix.
Quoting Jake
I don't think we are successfully managing technology. We are headed for extinction as a consequence of the particular technologies we've chosen to employ; not least, fossil fuel energy technology. That's a particular quantifiable problem, ostensibly subject to definition and redress. The idea of "unlimited science and technology" is purely hypothetical and somewhat unlikely. Your argument appeals to the unknown absolute to conjure fear. As if the bear trap that is fossil fuels were not scary enough. But I haven't proposed unlimited science and technology - as your absurd example of selling a ten year old boy a heat seeking missile demonstrates - your arguments are those of a straw-man tilting at windmills. Sort of a cross between Don Quixote and Worsel Gummage!
Quoting Jake
Again, this is not something I suggest, would want, or imagine would be beneficial. Had science been adopted by the Church from 1630 - and pursued, and integrated into philosophy, politics, economics and society on an ongoing basis, individuals would be much more rational. But that's not what happened. It's not who we are, and I don't imagine we can become rational overnight. It's illogical!!
Quoting Jake
Where did you get the idea that I'm suggesting giving any technology to anyone anytime? Or that adopting responsibility to science as a coherent understanding of reality implies wholesale deregulation and a lassiez faire attitude? I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm suggesting responsibility of the part of government and industry, such that society can continue - full of muddle headed consumers, eating cheeseburgers, worshiping Gods of their own choosing, and throwing their trash over their shoulder.
If you begin with the genetic lottery that distributes gifts like intelligence unevenly; you are led to the realization that 50% of people are below average intelligence by definition. There's probably something like 10% of people who cannot be trained for any useful work at all. It is inevitable that they should be poor, relative to those granted the gift of intelligence. Insofar as the gifted make use of those talents - and benefit from doing so, it is good for society (and the poor) that they should.
Quoting Jake
This isn't an issue I address at all. I don't believe it matters how rich the rich are relative to the least well off. I do think it matters how poor the poor are, because we should seek to promote greater equality of opportunity. It should be open to people to identify their talents and make themselves useful - and benefit from those talents and efforts. In this way they benefit society as a whole. But if you have no talents, and can't be useful, then you are necessarily dependent on the talents and efforts of others - and cannot in all fairness expect equality of outcome. That would be perverse.
Your view that the Church (already ruptured by Luther, Henry VIII, Calvin, et al,) held so much intellectual sway over Europe in the 17th century that science was a subsection of theology is not sound, imho. The universities had been in business since the 12th century and had been chipping away at the intellectual citadel of the church. True enough, the French Revolution was still 160 years off; Russia, Spain, and various other princedoms didn't get enlightened for a long time. But a secular-scientific view of the world was none-the-less forming among intellectual elites.
Take Giro. Fracastoro (1476-1553) a physician in Padua. In 1546 he proposed his theory that disease, ("infections") were spread by "spores" or some such agent. He was right, but the necessary wherewithal to pursue this theory didn't exist in his lifetime, or until numerous lifetimes later. "Finding scientific reality" was hindered more by the difficulty of the search than interference by religious thinking.
If some bright mind made progress -- like John Hunter the anatomist and physician in the late 18th century -- there were not always bright minds on hand to follow up. The social structure of the scientific enterprise was barely developed. Pasteur, Lister, and Koch didn't have to overcome the church to demonstrate the role of bacteria in disease; they had to overcome conservative doctors who stuck with old theories of "miasmas" causing disease.
Still, the study of nature was producing results that could be turned into technology. Watt's steam engine worked, but it leaded steam badly, reducing its efficiency. It was another Englishman*** who had developed methods of drilling precise cylinders in cast iron that made Watt's engines work much better, leading to bigger and better...
Batteries, photography and telegraphy are further examples of science and technology in the early 19th century. The telegraph was introduced in 1840; by 1862 it had become critical to Lincoln's management of the American Civil War.
By the mid 19th century, our understanding of the natural world was reaching a critical state where knowledge would take off.
In summary: It was the great difficulty of understanding the world without any prior scientific insight that made the task slow and difficult.
***Maybe John Wilkinson, who developed methods of boring precise cylinders in cast iron
It's even worse on a global scale.
That's a reasonable argument. I do seem to be laying blame exclusively with the Church, but rather I'm describing what actually happened to the man who wrote the first formal description of scientific method. If you can do a better job explaining why that happened - I'll find my spectacles, turn off Poirot - Aunt Emily was the victim, going to bed early to be conveniently murdered, and therefore the only person who didn't need an alibi - and sit down and read your book.
In theory, the Church acted as a central coordinating mechanism on a great many levels; political, economic, social i.e. births, deaths, marriages, and professional - through involvement with the universities. Did you know for example that Newton was required to hide his unconventional Unitarian religious beliefs to gain elevation to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge - and that was almost a hundred years later?
If ultimately what you're saying is that it's more complex than any few hundred words thrown together can convey, then I'm in complete agreement. Afterall, there are no straight lines in nature!
Quoting Bitter Crank
If however, you're saying that religious thinking was no obstacle to scientific thinking, then I disagree entirely - and I maintain the essential charge against the Church that is, failing to recognize the truly divine when presented with the formula for its discovery. I think you underestimate the effect of the Church taking such a publicly antithetical stance, that effectively science was branded heretical. Thus, a pall of suspicion was cast upon science one can trace through popular fiction, the obvious example being Frankenstein by Shelley (1823).
Recall, that Darwin was yet to suffer the tortures of the damned at the hands of his own conscience, in contemplation of evolution. He didn't set out on HMS Beagle until 10 years later - and yet this vivid work of popular fiction is wrestling with these themes; science conjuring demons unnatural to God. These are the twisted grains of nature you contrast with my join the dots philosophy, but they say the same.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Wasn't that the corrugated boiler guy? I think I saw a documentary about him. Industrial history is a fascinating subject - it relates to so many of areas of inquiry. But I would point out here that the trick has already been played. We are discussing science as a tool - as opposed to science as truth.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Oops, we've crossed the pond and entered into a different context of religious and political thought. A much freer one than Europe. I'm thinking in terms of Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, cross referenced with accounts in Paul Johnson's 'A History of the American People' of the religiosity of the first phases of settlement - and it rather suggests that the philosophical error was undeclared cargo on the Mayflower.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Back up just a little, because Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859 - a volume not received at all kindly by the religious. An interesting side note is that the one thing missing from Darwin's theory had been discovered a hundred years before by a monk named Mendel, and cast on a dusty shelf in a monastery somewhere; that is, the genetic mechanism by which traits are transmitted one generation to the next. Mendel had it all mapped out statistically - an idea that would have been of immense benefit, and not just to Darwin. Had there been a central coordinating mechanism (following from the Church's welcome of Galileo as revealing God's word set in Creation for us to discover) so to speak, Mendel's ideas would a) have been known - and b) insulted us against the mistaken racial implications of Darwinism as misconceived of by Nazism. That's the path we're not on!
Ok, yes, but should the top 20% own 90% of the wealth? If you answer yes, then what's the limit? 95%? 99%?
Please list for us the scientists and other cultural elites who argue we should be doing less science. The cultural consensus is that we should learn everything we can learn, as fast as we can learn it. Your opening post is part of that consensus.
This consensus is not rational, because it ignores the real world fact that human beings have limited ability, and thus should not be given any and all powers that we can create. As example, we are smart enough to create nuclear weapons, but not smart enough to get rid of them once created. What this demonstrates is the reality that just because we can invent something it doesn't automatically follow that we can also successfully manage what we've created.
My argument addresses itself to the reality of the philosophy of modern civilization as it currently exists today, a "more is better" relationship with knowledge, and thus power.
Quoting karl stone
As I've said above, I'm not really arguing against your specific proposals so much as I am arguing against the "more is better" technology is the solution to everything mindset which they arise from. And I'm not arguing with you personally so much as I am the cultural group consensus which your post illustrates.
Well, of course I'm not saying that religious thinking was no barrier. It was and it still is a barrier, whenever people take faith as fact, doctrine as law, and parochial practice as universally normative. The saving grace was (mostly was, but still somewhat is) that sophisticated thinkers who so wished could entertain heretical scientific ideas and religious ideas at the same time. I'll cite a fundamentalist sister as evidence: She ardently believes all sorts of conservative Baptist 'stuff', like the 6 day creation, but at the same time is quite sophisticated about medical practices. She doesn't expect God to take care of her brakes or oil. She's always on top of that sort of stuff.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Fracastoro died an honored man. He wasn't censored, probably because his theory didn't challenge the dominant paradigm of creation. Subverting dominant paradigms can still make one unpopular, even in SCIENCE! ("He knows more than you do. He has a master's degree--in SCIENCE!" Opening lines of a National Public Radio science comedy routine, "Ask Dr. Science".)
Quoting karl stone
Doesn't matter, because photography and telegraphy also played a role in the Crimean war. So, you can rest in peace on your side of the pond. Lincoln, of course, wasn't managing the British or Russian forces. He was still practicing law in Illinois.
What about Helmholtz, Christian Doppler, Paul Ehrlich (the one born in 1853), Richard Owen, Hinrich Rink (Danish geologist), Max Saenger (had the bright idea of stitching up the uterus after a caesarian), Bell, Pasteur, Lister, Koch, Mendel, Mendeleev, etc.???
Were there riots over them?
I apologize for the brevity of my previous reply. I was just making a note - preparing to answer when it all kicked off. Poirot - double header, the episode(s) where he meets Sherlock! So...
You do not seem to have got to grips with the core concept - that is, science as a tool was pursued as a means to progress, whereas, science as an understanding of reality was suppressed relative to religious dogma, and thereby political and economic ideology.
Quoting Jake
But if, as I would argue, science is both a tool box, and an instruction manual - and our problem is we used the tools without reading the instructions, your criticism is not valid. The bird building a nest before it lays eggs doesn't need to know the future. It is correct to reality; albeit by dint of a veritable mountain of alternate designs discarded by evolution. Similarly, we don't need superhuman powers of prescience to manage technology. All we need, is to know what's true, and do what's right in relation to what's true.
Quoting Jake
Sure, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, does it? It's of absolutely no help whatsoever to man nor beast. Your thesis implies that there is no prospect of successfully managing technology, and so we we cannot survive. Hence, it's nihilism in a wig and a false mustache! What I'm saying is, there was another way - a path we didn't take, but can still learn from.
Quoting Jake
More is inevitable! Whether it's better or not is another question entirely! I believe it can be better, but it requires accepting that science is a true description of reality, superior to the pre-scientific, culturally specific, religious, political and economic ideas that govern societies - as a basis to apply technology. i.e. not primarily for power and profit, but to balance human welfare and environmental sustainability.
Thus proving that humans are of limited ability, limited rationality, limited sanity. It's upon that real world evidence that I'm arguing that the powers available to us must also be limited. You keep selling "science as an understanding of reality" while ignoring the reality of the human condition which is well documented in thousands of years of history in all parts of the world.
Quoting karl stone
In other words, you're arguing for a radical transformation of the human condition, without offering any explanation of how such a thing might come to be.
Quoting karl stone
If we analyze the maturity of a teenager, and decide they are not yet ready to drive the family car, doesn't such an analysis get us somewhere?
My apologies for my impatience, which is my problem alone. I've had this conversation too many times to count, my own form of irrationality.
But (here come the excuses) this is so incredibly SIMPLE!!! that it frustrates me how intelligent well educated people struggle to get it, and rarely succeed. Look how SIMPLE this is...
1) We take it to be an obvious given that the powers available to children should be limited due to a realistic understanding of the limits of their ability and maturity. 99.9% of all sane adults agree with this.
2) On the day the child turns 18 we throw this rational common sense away and the group consensus changes to, "we should have as much power as science can give us, as fast as possible".
This transformation of the group consensus is not even vaguely rational. It blatantly ignores the well documented evidence provided by thousands of years of human history.
And here's why this irrationality takes place. We've transferred the blind faith we used to have in religion in to a blind faith in science.
A "more is better" relationship with knowledge and power is simplistic, outdated and dangerous. It's a childlike philosophy whose time should have already come and gone.
No-one has disputed that human beings are limited; nor has anyone argued for unlimited use of technology. The pertinent point is that human beings are threatened with extinction as a consequence of the disparity between technological ability and ideological motivation. You are like the detective at a murder scene - who having established the victim was stabbed concludes "children shouldn't carry knives" - which may be true, but says nothing at all about the motive for the crime.
Quoting Jake
Not really. In fact, if you are arguing against the "more is better" assumption underlying human behavior, it's you proposing the "radical transformation of the human condition, without offering any explanation..."
I'm still trying to put across the principle of acting responsibly in relation to a scientific understanding of reality - as opposed to applying technology as directed by religious, political and economic ideological misconceptions of reality. The motives drawn from one understanding of reality are different from the motives drawn from the other.
Quoting Jake
No. Exactly the opposite. We are left stood in the driveway with a stroppy teenager. But I do get the point, and arguably, I welcome the note of caution. We should be careful about the technology we apply, and luckily for us - there's an objective, increasingly valid and coherent understanding of reality to act as a far more reliable guide as to what technologies to apply than the maximization of profit.
Quoting Jake
It is simple. I get it.
People are mental and can't be trusted, so padded cells for everyone!
But now what?
Quoting Jake
But we are not talking about children. We're talking about scientists, governments and industries primarily. Some extremely smart and serious people. And all the factors are in play - science, the genie is out of the bottle, we have a technologically based civilization - and we are faced with existential challenges.
Quoting Jake
So how are you going to take those factors - already in play, out of the game? You can't. You've left us stranded in the driveway with a stroppy teenager. And if we don't get across town in the next 20 minuets or so - the world will end, badly!
Quoting Jake
Well it isn't going anywhere Jake - more is inevitable. People need water, food, clothing, housing, heat, light, employment, entertainment - and all you're offering them is less. They'll not have it. King Knut couldn't stop the tide coming in, and you can't either. If you would emphasize limitations upon human abilities, admit that one first. There's no going back. There's no standing still.
Again, which scientists or other cultural leaders are arguing that we should do less science? If you can not name anyone, or only a few, then doesn't it follow that the group consensus is a "more is better" relationship with knowledge?
If you are not arguing for unlimited use of technology, where do you propose we limit it? And how? You won't have answers to these questions, as is normal across the society, because the group consensus takes the "more is better" relationship with knowledge to be an obvious given which doesn't require examination or challenge.
So unless you are prepared to argue for some specific limits on technology, you are indeed arguing that human beings are unlimited in their ability to manage technology, as is the entire culture.
If you were the only person stuck in this outdated "more is better" paradigm I wouldn't harp on it, for I have no beef with you personally. I'm harping on it because the "more is better" position your position is rooted in dominates the entire society. And ANY position accepted without questioning by ANY group consensus requires inspection by philosophy.
Quoting karl stone
I'm arguing that humans should learn, as we've always done. We should learn and adapt to the new environment created by the enormous success of science. You are arguing we should keep on doing the same thing we've been doing for centuries. You position yourself as a spokesman for the bright future but really you are, like the rest of the society, clinging to a dangerously outdated philosophy of the past.
"More is better" made perfect sense in the long era of knowledge scarcity. We are no longer in that era. The era we're in now is characterized by a rapidly accelerating knowledge explosion. New situation, requiring a new relationship with knowledge.
Quoting karl stone
You're not succeeding because you never say anything but repeating that statement. Perhaps you could explain how we get to this imaginary place you are describing, and how we get there before we blow ourselves up.
Quoting karl stone
Like you keep saying, face the reality that we are mental. And then, be rational, and don't give mental people vast new powers at an ever accelerating rate.
Quoting karl stone
Some extremely smart and serious people who have arranged things so that we can now destroy modern civilization at the push of a button in less than an hour. Very smart and serious people who rarely find this insane reality they've created interesting enough to discuss.
Quoting karl stone
You aren't actually interested in reality, but you sincerely feel you are.
Quoting karl stone
We can't, because intelligent well educated people such as yourself all across the culture put all their energy in to defending the outdated status quo, instead of facing the situation we are currently actually in. As example, do you want your next door neighbor to be able to create new life forms in his garage workshop? That's what's coming Karl, that, and more and more and more such vast powers available to ever more people.
Quoting karl stone
Here's how easy it is to utterly demolish the group consensus you are chanting. The Amish have been doing perfectly fine for hundreds of years without participating in the reckless pell mell rush in to more and more and more technology. I've lived 2/3 of my life without the Internet, and somehow I survived. Water, food, clothing, housing, heat, light, employment, entertainment can all be provided without risking everything on a reckless race for more and more and more and more.
I'm offering us a sustainable future. You, the group consensus, are offering us that inevitable day when some vast new power slips from our control and destroys everything. One vast power gone wrong, one time, one bad day, that's all it takes.
There's no magic symmetry that somehow changes the value of money to offset internalizing the true cost of fossil fuel burning. The oil shocks of the past weren't somehow made redundant by money changing value, but rather created massive economic dislocations: incumbent industries shrinking because they don't make economic sense without cheap fossil fuel energy and new investment in renewable energy as they are more competitive if fossil energy is more expensive (i.e. the social upheaval that I alluded to in my post).
By "funding renewable infrastructure" I assume you mean by subsidy. If we view just the comparative cost of energies, it seems that forcing fossil to internalize true costs is the same as subsidizing renewables. However, it's not the same. By simply subsidizing renewables to be cost-comparable to fossil energy is not the same as internalizing the real cost of fossil energy.
First, the real true cost of fossil (pollution, health, deforestation, military bases and patrols of fossil producing regions etc.) is not reflected in a renewable subsidy.
Second, subsidizing cost-parity by definition leaves the market open to fossil as regional and other kinds of arbitrage will make fossil more economic in some places even if renewable is better in other regions.
Third, and most importantly, a subsidy to renewable remains a subsidy to primary energy as a whole, and this has the effect of subsidizing energy intensive industries over energy-efficient industries. For instance, with cheap enough kerosene it's economic to fly fruit around the globe, displacing local fruit production. When gas is cheap enough people can afford to commute longer distances, when gas is more expensive it motivates people to live closer to where they work or buy electric vehicle or use public transportation etc. Likewise any business is motivated to make investments that conserve energy (location, insulation, natural lighting or other passive architecture, reducing supply-chain distances, light-weighting or otherwise redesigning production to consume less energy) -- it is not true that these investments would happen anyway as the return on investment is sensitive to the cost of energy: the money saved overtime must be better than the opportunity cost of other things the business can do, like marketing, or then then the general discount rate (for those unfamiliar with this sort of terminology, if a 100 000 USD investment saves 2500 USD a year in an energy saving, but that same 100 000 USD could generate 3000 USD per year in bonds or the stock market or perhaps even 4000 USD a year through a marketing campaign, the business will do one of these other things if they are "economic rational agents", but if the cost of energy was double and they would save 5000 USD a year then the economic rational thing is the energy economizing investment; and of course the differences don't have to be this large, the energy saving could be 3 999 USD a year and a fixed income investment, i.e. bond, could be 4000 USD and the economic rational thing to do would be the bond).
Edit: forgot to explain the discount rate which just represents the same basic facts but instead of the business having 100 000 USD in profits it is able to borrow 100 000 USD; so, if the cost of borrowing is 3% per year, then the energy saving investment must make more than 3000 USD per year to pay off the interest and the principal over the loan maturity or just "eventually" if the business can roll over their loans.
True. Some technological hurdles have to be done, but I'm optimistic. Especially solar power has become dramatically cheaper. Renewable energy goes down in manufacturing price as it gets more popular, whereas fossil fuel becomes more expensive as it gets more rare.
I assume that the biggest challenge is aircraft and ships as these need to have long endurance and powerfull motors.
NOVA: Search For The Super Battery
https://www.netflix.com/title/80991272
PS: Wow, if you've ever considered pounding a battery with a hammer, or opening it up with your chain saw, this video will definitely talk you out of it.
My beef with you is - this is my thread, and thus far you haven't discussed my ideas at all. You keep putting the same idea forward again and again - and ignoring the massive flaws with it, which I've pointed out. Not least, that more is inevitable. Close second, it doesn't get us anywhere. Third, right now is that my energy proposals don't call for batteries. And your post is way too long to say the same thing again for the fifteenth time.
Not exactly, no - but increased oil costs effect everything else produced or supplied using oil. The ubiquity of oil raises prices on almost everything - a cost of living increase that eventually, wages increase to account for. Now, the original price hike has effectively disappeared. You don't get as many apples for a dollar - but you get more dollars an hour, and work the same hours for the same apples. Effectively therefore, the value of money has changed to accommodate the price hike.
Quoting boethius
In the immediate and short term, sure - a huge economic dislocation you seem to want to cause on purpose, to make renewable energy more competitive. I just don't think that a good idea.
Quoting boethius
No. I said renewable energy doesn't need subsidies - it needs infrastructure funding, like the rail network, the canals, or the Romans and their roads. I also propose a means we can raise the money to apply renewable energy on a massive scale, and keep fossil fuels in the ground at the same time.
I agree with the way you reason out the scenario you describe, but it's not what I'm proposing at all. If you'd read the OP - I'd love to get your opinion.
It's not suitable technology, or knowledge of the problem that we lack. We can do this, but not without some innovative political and economic ideas. Trust in market mechanisms in this case, would in my view be misplaced. The cost of applying renewable energy technology is dependent on the price of fossil fuels, so renewables are effectively running on a treadmill powered by fossil fuels.
1) I've discussed the philosophy behind your ideas because, um, this is a philosophy forum. And not an energy forum.
2) This thread doesn't belong to you. Your posts belong to you.
3) You haven't pointed out any "massive flaws" in my perspective. Instead, you've failed to address the massive flaws in your own ideas, such as how one would mortgage an asset that can never be used, or how we'd install solar panels on a stormy ocean.
I'm asking readers to face the fact that the "smart and serious" people who form the cultural elite of our society don't know what they're doing. I'm asking readers to face the fact that the "more is better" group consensus which they assume to be correct is actually dangerously out of date. I'm asking readers to adapt to the knowledge explosion world we actually live in today, instead of clinging to the old knowledge scarcity world which has long been our past.
I'm asking a lot. Too much. And you can't keep up. And after discussing this obsessively for a decade I can report to you that this is completely normal. You are in very good company in not being able to get it.
I agree with you about one thing. The "more is better" juggernaut will continue to roll on, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Well intended intelligent folks such as yourself will continue to dream the big technology dreams no matter what the logic of such dreaming is, until we hit the wall and the whole thing comes crashing down.
It's not logical to assume that we can create something as enormous and complex as a global technological civilization on the first try. Nor is it logical for me to assume I can do anything at all about what is coming by posting on forums. :smile:
Yes, exactly right. But philosophically speaking, standing still is what doing.
You keep defending a "more is better" relationship with knowledge which was entirely reasonable in the past era of knowledge scarcity, but is unworkable in the new era of an accelerating knowledge explosion.
You're engineer's mind is not grasping that technology and the philosophy behind it are a unified system which needs to be considered as a whole. If we're going to dramatically upgrade the technology, the philosophical component, our relationship with knowledge, has to be updated too.
"More is better" is a primitive, simplistic formula whose day has come and gone. There's no going back, there's no standing still.
Nature is telling us, update your philosophy, adapt to the new reality.
Or die.
What about ships running into the floating solar plants and wrecking them. Ships? What ships? Do you think there will still be shipping once we're reduced to collecting electricity on the surface of the ocean?
We need to think much bigger. The kind of cutting edge thinking we need more of is building the space elevator; electricity can be generated in space and sent down the massive cable holding the space elevator.
Once we have the space elevator in place, we will be able to build the large sun shade for the earth. We'll also be collecting asteroids and dragging them into orbit around the earth. They'll be hollowed out and will become Cities In Space where they will be able to provide for all of their needs and wants without having to rely on earth and its sketchy politics.
Next we'll build the Dyson Sphere and then we'll have all the free energy we could possibly want.
So you see, Jake, that with the right approach, global warming is really nothing to worry about.
I was once having this conversation on a forum of working scientists and one of the "experts" told me in all seriousness that adjusting our relationship with knowledge was impossible, so the only solution was for us to learn how to migrate across the galaxy. I like your hollowed out asteroid plan better though. :smile:
Make that sixteen!
So, your alternative is what? That we have less? How is that achieved?
We dismantle capitalism - is that your plan? And exchange it for what - communism?
Well, firstly: no!
But secondly: "NO!"
And thirdly:
Quoting Jake
If people in government and science don't know what they're doing, how can you imagine they can centrally plan an economy to produce and distribute goods and services people need? Food, socks, toilet paper...?
In order to produce goods and services to a central plan, government must have absolute control of the people, and own all the land, and all the capital. So, you would have us give up freedom, and everything we own - create a massively powerful centralized government, for what? So people who, according to you are fundamentally inept, can tell us what to do? What to produce, how much to produce, where to send it, what those people should do, etc?
Do you have any idea of the processes by which raw materials are turned into something simple like socks? Lets begin by plowing a field - that guy needs food, clothing, housing, medicine, etc - his wife needs food and clothing, housing, his children need clothes and shoes and toys. Oh, no toys - we're trying to save the planet! You don't need toys! We need a tractor...
And here's the thing - all you've achieved, for all the misery you've sown, at best - is buy another trip or two around the sun, with the exact same outcome in the end. Less is not an answer.
How are we going to live in space - if we cannot live sustainably here on earth? This planet is ideally suited to the kind of beings we are - or vice versa, and space is hostile in every possible regard, every breath, every drop of water, extremes of heat and cold, radiation.
How are we going to live there if we can't live here?
I know how we can live here. I know how we can get from here - to a sustainable future, in the least disruptive manner possible - and you don't want to know?
Then why graffiti my thread?
The flaw in my otherwise perfect plan, Ships might run into them! Oh no! I didn't think of that! It's beyond the wit of man and the reach of technology - to prevent ships running into things!
In terms of the physics of reality - solving the energy issue is the first necessary step to securing a sustainable future. Energy is fundamental because reality is entropic. Entropy is a concept from the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the effects of which can be described very simply. It is the tendency of everything in the universe to decline toward its lowest energy state, like water runs downhill, or an old building collapses to the ground over time. To keep the old place from falling down, we must spend energy. Energy is thus fundamental to everything we do. And clean energy is necessary to prevent run-away climate change.
There are two main obstacles to providing the world with bountiful clean energy:
1) an abundance of fossil fuels - still in the ground, and
2) the cost of applying the technology.
The idea that renewable sources of energy are necessarily unreliable or insufficient to the task - is not a genuine obstacle, if applied on a sufficiently large scale. But we'll come to that in due course. First, we must address the question of how to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This may seem like an insurmountable issue - but the solution I devised is very simple, and broadly consistent with the principles of our economic system. Basically, fossil fuels are commodities, and commodities are assets. Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology.
Having overcome these two obstacles, the next question is "what technology?"
Here I would suggest taking on board the next big problem, and solving that at the same time. The next most fundamental need we have is abundant fresh water. 7/10ths of the earth's surface is covered with water, but fresh water is scarce. Only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water, and it's unevenly distributed around the world. That's the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage. Solving these two problems together, would be a tremendous boon to humankind, and is ultimately necessary to sustainability. So how do we do it?
Bearing in mind such issues as transmission loss over long distances, I would suggest that solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, could produce electricity - used to power desalination and electrolysis, producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel at sea, collected by ship. The geographical area available at sea is incredibly vast, such that thousands of square kilometers of solar panels could be deployed without occupying valuable real estate close to inhabited areas - or incurring huge transmission loss over long distances away from inhabited areas, or requiring batteries.
"If we cover an area 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels, it will provide more than 17.5 TW of power."
Desalination can be achieved via evaporation - heating sea water and collecting the steam. Steam can drive a turbine, to produce electricity - at voltages, adequate to power electrolysis. Electrolysis is the process of breaking the atomic bonds between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in water, by passing an electric current through it. Thus, these two process work hand in hand - producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel. Ships powered by hydrogen, would collect and bring water and fuel ashore. Hydrogen - when compressed into a liquid gas, contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum by weight, but when burnt (oxidized) the hydrogen atoms recombine with an oxygen atom, giving back the energy spent wrenching them apart - and producing no pollutant more volatile than water vapour.
"Currently, the world consumes 15 TW of power from a combination of energy sources."
Burning hydrogen in traditional power stations would provide the base load for the energy grid - rather than, depending directly on renewable power sources, and the fresh water could be used to reclaim wasteland for agriculture and habitation - thus protecting environmental resources from over-exploitation.
This is not what happened in the oil shock. Your describing a fairly distributed inflation, where things cost more but you make more so it's the same thing. Oil shocks don't create a fairly distributed inflation.
Quoting karl stone
Internalizing the true cost of fossil fuels would make renewable energy more competitive in the market and it would create social upheaval for a time: entrenched industries that built up based on the assumption they could continue to externalize the real costs of fossil fuels would have their feelings hurt, and people who identify with the fossil guzzling lifestyle would cry like babies for a time. However, it's a mistake to believe this would be "bad"; continuing to burn fossil fuels at cost of extraction rather than the real cost also has a bad impact. The discomfort of adapting to a new economy where true fossil costs are internalized to the price is far less than the discomfort of disrupting the ecosystems down the line. For every investor or used car salesmen that takes a "hit" from the internalization of the real cost of fossil fuels, you have to pair up with people in the future who take a "hit" from a cat 5 hurricane in a higher ocean, or take a "hit" from changing weather patterns that cause drought and famine, or take a "hit" of their environment getting so hot it's basically unlivable there.
Also, internalizing the true cost is not making renewable energies artificially more competitive. Someone is paying the difference between the true cost of fossil burning and the price-cost either now or in the future, just not the person who got the direct benefit from the fossil burning. The negative externalities drag society and economy down; lowering production and efficiency elsewhere (disease, damage to natural resources, smog chasing away tourists etc.). Again, what can be debated is what exactly the true cost is: how much lung disease is due to fossil burning, how much environment damage etc. But it's basically economics 101 that allowing industries to externalize costs is simply a subsidy to that industry from the rest of society and so distorts the economy to be less efficient.
There's lot's of social problems I believe subsidy is the way to solve, such as education and health care. But for fossil burning, this is one thing where the "market mechanism" of just internalizing the true cost solves the issue. "Free-market" economists paid to defend entrenched interests get all knotted up when this is mentioned; this is why the fossil industry had to run a deny everything strategy.
Quoting karl stone
Government funding to an industry that is not on the same terms as available private funding, is a subsidy to that industry. Paying for rail lines to be built is a subsidy to the rail industry, paying for roads to be built is a subsidy for the auto-motive industry, paying for broadband lines to be built is a subsidy for the telecommunications industry, paying for canals to be built is a subsidy to the boating industry. You can say these are worthwhile subsidies to create public utilities that are good for these industries and by extension the rest of society, but they remain subsidies.
A good first recourse is the wikipedia page on subsidies which also mentions "environmental externalities" as a form of subsidy. Internalizing the true cost of fossil fuels is the anti-subsidy program that would allow the market to work efficiently.
Quoting karl stone
Your title is "how to save the world". I already addressed the reasons the hydrogen economy is unlikely to be economic to build. Your response for the leaking of hydrogen and the atmospheric effects of this on a billions-of-tons scale was "it's just a material science issue", but if we can just hand-wave material science at the problem then batteries and solar thermal work for base-load power as well.
Since this is a philosophy forum I think it's much more relevant the subject of whether the general approach is workable or the best. The problem of the general approach of the government paying for huge energy infrastructure is that it still is a subsidy (weather you want to call it subsidy or not) to energy industry as a whole and so pushes out energy-saving technology and business models that would otherwise be competitive if the true cost of energy was reflected in the price (be it renewables or fossil). If hydrogen is the best energy storage media for base-load and ships, then the market would figure that out, if it's batteries then it's batteries, if it's more just using less energy to get the same results (negotiating by voip or vacationing by train instead of flying for instance) then it's that.
I don't see how it's off-topic to discuss whether your approach is optimal, even if technically feasible. If you're concern is only technical feasibility regardless of it being economic or good policy, then I'm sure a physics forum will accommodate that discussion.
SIMPLISTIC PARADIGM: Our children should have as much knowledge and power as possible, as soon as possible! More and more and more power, faster, faster, faster! More is better!!
INTELLIGENT PARADIGM: Let's make some carefully reasoned decisions about what knowledge and power is appropriate for our children at this stage of their development. This will inevitably involve saying no to some knowledge and power, while saying yes to others.
I'm using children in this example to illustrate how absurd our current "more is better" relationship with knowledge is. If we replace the word "children" with the word "adult" nothing changes, the simplistic paradigm remains absurd.
Our culture is making an unwarranted leap from the fact that adults are more capable than children, to the ridiculous assumption that therefore adults can successfully manage any amount of power delivered at any rate.
So my durable friend, my alternative is to replace the outdated simplistic paradigm of the past with an updated intelligent paradigm that is appropriate for an era characterized by an accelerating knowledge explosion. That is, as we update our technology we also update the philosophy behind the technology.
Quoting karl stone
You're the one arguing for a less sophisticated outdated philosophy from the past. You keep talking about evolution, while yourself failing to adapt to the new environment created by the success of science. You're in good company though, most of the culture is marching blindly right along with you, racing proudly towards the cliff.
How do we mortgage an asset which can never be used, and thus has no value? Have you considered that maybe we're not discussing the ideas in your opening post because they make little sense, and we don't wish to continually shove that in your face?
How do we sustain vast solar panel arrays on the ocean, given that oceans routinely experience storms, and sometimes those storms are very powerful?
botheius:
You would take the pain upfront if you would tax fossil fuels to decrease demand, and/or to force technological change. It could be done that way, if the will existed - but to the loss of current fossil fuel interests, the consumer, industry and so forth. If however, it might be possible to mortgage fossil fuel assets to the world, there may be - at some later date a debt to be paid, but it would be paid by a society that had a sustainable energy basis - in addition to all efforts allied to this one vast, and absolutely necessary endeavour. How that might be done - politically and legally, such that sustainable energy infrastructure is funded by the same means fossil fuels are kept in the ground is nothing upon which I might even venture a guess. I merely venture an idea in the hope it might appeal to enough of the relevant interests of which I know nothing. This may seem like an abdication from the authority of my ideas, but far from it. Rather if follows from a recognition that it's not my stuff. We cannot but be who we are, and act in our own considered interests. It's my humble submission that this is in everyone's interests.
Your plan is too complicated, too rococo, too many parts, processes, and potential problems. Back up:
There is sun enough and land which is now, and will remain in the future unproductive. These locations are often near or are the same places that a lot of people live. Put the square kms of solar panels there, and supply the needs for energy at hand. For instance, California (39 million people) has desert land near their large population centers. Texas (28 million) has both sunshine and consistently windy highlands.
Minnesota (population 5.7 million) has a reasonable amount of sun, plenty of roofs, and a steady supply of wind. With wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear we could dispense with fossil fuel (Provided, of course, there was parallel rational use and conservation). Some states like New York and New Jersey (population 30 million) are ill favored for wind, but have solar, hydro, and nuclear. Cities are inherently more efficient than low-density suburban, exurban, and rural. Europe (including UK) have all these resources as well.
Take the simplest possible approach. It may not be as intriguing as hydrogen, but it is faster, cheaper, better.
One of the necessities of the future, whether we like it or not, will be the expenditure of more animal power -- particularly our own esteemed bipedal animal power. We use a lot of energy to avoid expending our own energy and time. The auto is a good example. Even in sprawling suburbs, much of what one needs to travel to obtain (food, clothing, medicine...) is easily reachable by bicycle--especially if we converted to bike/mass transit/and a limited number of cars-on-demand. I'm 72 and can still easily travel a radius of 5 miles on a bike, and can make trips of 12 miles, one way, if it isn't too cold (like below 20º F (-7 C) and its not snowing or raining a lot. (Granted, at some point in the not too distant future the radii are going to shrink).
It isn't just the energy it takes to run cars, appliances, gadgets, and so on; it includes the energy to make the objects in the first place, and build and maintain the factories that produce the stuff. Just take a clothes dryer: hanging clothes to dry outside still works very well. Yes, more work but it uses much less energy. A lot of our clothes can be washed by hand because (at this point) we don't get so dirty that a washing machine is necessary. Yes, more work and more time, but the future doesn't mean dirt. (Well, maybe a little more dirt.) People spend a lot of time and energy traveling to gyms so they can maintain fitness. Well... just do the laundry by hand, mow the totally unnecessary lawn with a push mower, and bicycle or walk to the store and you won't need to go to the gym.
Right: this is pretty extreme. But environmental change is going to push and drag us, kicking and screaming, into this sort of regime. People used to live without extensive energy saving appliances ALL THE TIME and they didn't think they were in hell. Might as well get used to it.
So what sort of method could be used to regulate power & knowledge?
Nazis love a good book burning but they tend to be unpopular in general.
Praxis, surely you see that there are more choices here than between nothing and Nazi book burning?
Societies have generally proscribed some knowledge till children reach a certain age, or limit knowledge to a certain class of people, or the inner clique. In very simple or very dense societies (hunter gatherers, small village dwellers, crowded and disorganized urban environments, and so on) children have been able to acquire all sorts of information as soon as they were able. The victorian gutter snipe knew a lot of stuff that maybe wasn't age-appropriate, but inquiring young minds want to know. The hunter-gatherer child likely learned how his society worked from an early age.
If I were going to proscribe something these days it would be gadgets with screens: Television, game consoles, tablets, phones... None of these things are evil, but they are seductive, and adults and children alike are sucked into the corporate schemes for monitoring access to eyeballs. Adults and children alike ought to spend more time interacting with other people face to face and gathering information from stable sources. (Facebook is not a good place to obtain reliable information on nutrition, weight loss, exercise, politics, and so on BECAUSE it's a highly unstable source -- information flows into FaceFuck, freshwater spring and sewer outlet both, without any vetting or control. A newspaper website even if the newspaper is second rate is better because the information offered there has been vetted by a stable source.
Won't people get brainwashed and brain rotted no matter where they go? Not necessarily. People who can read at all can read diverse materials which present contrasting as well as overlapping information (and not just opinion). Libraries are valuable resources because books' information change overnight, depending on some lunatic-in-chief in Washington, D.C. tweeting bullshit.
I use screens a lot to access what I consider stable, vetted, reliable resources, and books. Lots of books. You may not like the New York Times or the Washington post, the Guardian or Libération, that's fine. Locate newspapers that you like better (maybe not the National Enquirer, even though their slogan is "inquiring minds want to know".)
Of course. It's just the idea of regulating power and information sounds so, well, absurd. For one thing, the regulator would be the super elite, possessing all the power and information. Power tends to corrupt, you may have heard.
But I'm interested in @Jake's plan. I assume he's thought this all out.
My belief is that we need to change our cultural values, specifically less towards the materialistic and more towards the aesthetic and meaningful.
It sounds absurd, until we understand what the alternative is. Do you want your next door neighbor to be able to buy a kit on Amazon which allows him to create new life forms which he then releases in to the environment to see what will happen? If not, then we have to somehow regulate power and information, right?
Quoting praxis
Elected governments already restrict our access to some power and information, and we typically don't object. Please note that I'm not arguing that shifting away from the outdated "more is better" relationship with knowledge will be easy. I'm just arguing it's necessary, like it or not.
Quoting praxis
If you are interested, you won't wait for me to think it through for you. If you are interested, you'll start thinking it through yourself, and perhaps will share what insights you develop with us in one of these threads.
No, you haven't presented an argument for why it's necessary. You need to outline what kinds of information would be regulated and the method of regulation, then explain why this would achieve the intended goal.
Are you suggesting restricting scientific research? policing particular kinds of ideas? or constraining information flow (such as the internet)?
It could be that your idea is counterproductive to the goal of making the world safer and more sustainable.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3728/the-knowledge-explosion
The powerful leaders of the world and the corporations that support them, are but the current guard of a very long (and dubious) tradition of turning the living earth into commodities. And turning the earth into human fodder to produce as many people as possible. Food and commodities are of course necessities for survival. But on the “top levels” survival means continuing to be in absolute power, not mere subsistence. Long ago when there were few humans and lots of untouched land, this conquistador mentality may possibly have had more short term benefits than drawbacks. But now the materialistic conquest of the earth is hitting the wall. The increasing difficulty of finding petroleum, climate change, and overcrowding are just the top of a long list of seemingly intractable problems.
We have to think differently. We must act differently. We can live differently. Soon there will be no other choice, so why not start now? But where to start?
This is not an anti-technology sermon, nor a call to go back to the nomadic hunter-gatherer life. I wouldn’t begin to know how or why to do that. But life is cyclical, and the tallest tree is rooted deep in the rocks and soil. Technology is of course astounding. It is the accumulation of knowledge and skills that started even before there were humans. A bird building a nest has art and skill. (No? Try building one then... and without using your hands!) I wouldn’t go so far to say that technology is completely neutral though, because some things are made to kill as many as possible. Science seems to have become the servant of power. Thankfully, there are some scientists who will do unfunded research and publish unpopular findings. It is critical to focus on the thinking and beliefs behind and beyond the tech and science. We have always been “going forward”. The nature and particulars of how we do so can vary greatly, however.
“The ever-rising gods”
At one time long, long ago, it is said that humans lived with a sense that the gods were all around them. Call it perhaps pantheism, animist, or immanence. Whatever the name for it, we were in touch with the spirits, despite the simple life, painful dentistry, and occasional battles. Then eventually, the gods merged into One, perhaps like how the tributaries of a river seem to merge into one source. This One was not here, perhaps because the One was too good or too big to be just here in a place so common. So the One was thought to be “up there” somewhere, looking down at us. Some thought the One was indifferent, some thought caring. And as the One kept rising farther and farther up in our minds, perhaps inevitably some doubted the existence or the relevance of the One. Even those committed to the belief had little left to do except quibble about the minutiae concerning the characteristics and preferences of the One.
This is not intended be anti-religion, or even anti-monotheism. The point of this story is that with the gods elsewhere, the earth/world was stripped of its sacred significance. It slowly came to be viewed as “stuff” and “things” beneath us in the grand hierarchy. In general, this is the mindset bred into us now. This is us. It is ancient tradition and today’s news, all rolled into one. Quite a dilemma.
What are the solutions? I don’t particularly know, as the situation is so vast, and has such deep roots. How does one repair a moving vehicle? How does one change direction on a downhill sled ride? How do you diffuse a bomb? If one works quickly, can a parachute be knitted by a falling person in time to be of use? The specifics vary with how the question is posed, and with how the situation is framed.
But the very general answer is to do whatever is necessary and inevitable with extreme care, effort, and concentration. It is figuring out what to keep, and what to change. What is working, and what is broken. Our task is both as simple and complicated as that. When will people agree on anything? When the time is right there can be unity of purpose. Not total agreement or homogeneity of thought, but a type of cooperation is necessary. And necessity gives birth to all manner of invention, all of which starts within our minds.
:up: Interesting, thanks. Have the book by James Scott you mentioned on hold at the library. Hadn’t heard of it before.
:up: Interesting. Thanks for sharing that, as well as your other posts. Would be inclined to agree. I think it was perhaps Oscar Wilde who said “I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.” :wink:
Skimming that topic I noticed that ChatteringMonkey put a good deal of effort into helping you out and made the following point that you seemed to have agreed with.
Quoting Jake
People do not have a 'more is better' attitude towards knowledge. If this were true then education would be highly valued and we would all be lifelong learners. People have a limited amount of time and energy and the fact that we tend to spend a relatively small amount of our time and energy acquiring knowledge itself disproves your claim.
Our baseline motivator, to put it as simply as possible, is to pass on our genes. 'More is better' when it helps us accomplish this base goal. More resources (of various kinds, including knowledge) is generally better in helping us pass on our genes. Resources fulfill our various desires which are all ultimately about gene promotion, and more is usually better.
'More is better' isn't always the best strategy for passing on genes or fulfilling out desires, however, and that's why cooperating for mutual benefit (sharing resources sustainably) with others tends to feel meaningful.
Western culture is too materialistic, valuing resources of all kinds, including knowledge, over aesthetics and meaning. Limiting scientific research isn't going to change our materialistic values.
If we reached a point where bioengineering was child's play, with that tech we might have already made ourselves invulnerable to biological threats, or destroyed ourselves with it.
Your theory is that eventually science will lead to such an abundance of dangerous technologies that practically anyone could easily ruin the world?
No Jake. You have either failed or not even tried to get to grips with my ideas. You're just dumping your nonsense on my thread. Start your own thread entitled "Why the world cannot be saved!" Oh, you did - and once everyone heard you say the same thing six times, it died - and now you want to kill my thread too.
My argument is difficult to understand. It suggests a mistake made 400 years ago, in our relationship to science, has had lasting consequences. It requires bearing in mind a distinction between science as truth, and science merely as a basis for technology. Understanding what I'm saying actually requires doing philosophy - that is, holding a set of premises in mind to compare to the current situation to suggest an alternate rationale and course of action. But you haven't understood, or even remembered those premises. Indeed, it's difficult to believe you even read them.
When you understand that argument, you will understand that the current technological basis of civilization is a misapplication of technology. It's technology applied as directed by pre-scientific religious, political and economic ideologies, that, whatever else they are - are not an accurate description of reality as it really is.
Understanding all that is necessary to understanding why technology should be applied as directed by science; a principle we can prove by considering the very nature of life - and how it is built from the atom up by evolution, to be correct to the cause and effect nature of its environment, or was rendered extinct.
To dismiss my argument again and again as some simplistic 'more is better' approach is insulting, and merely sets me up as a strawman for your own arguments. Can I ask you again, please - to discuss my arguments on my thread, or go open your own thread where you can discuss anything you like.
Quoting praxis
If I may just point out that 'how to save the world' is not a question. It's a proposal. I'd like to try and focus discussion on that proposal.
In regard to your comment, consider how the web of knowledge science describes makes it almost impossible to lie. A false fact is like a jigsaw puzzle piece that doesn't fit with all the surrounding pieces. My argument suggests, technology should be regulated in relation to science as truth. Thus, it would be virtually impossible to produce scientifically sound reasons to justify corrupt ends.
Here's an analogy which may help explain my focus in this thread.
Let's say a religious person starts a thread where they want to debate Bible verse interpretations. To them, the Bible is the word of God so, to them, understanding what the verses mean is very important.
You could join them in debating the real meaning of all the verses in the Bible, a process likely to take the rest of your life. Or, you could efficiently end run around all that unnecessary work by asking them to prove the Bible is the word of God. That is, you could take the focus up a level to the assumption which all of their other arguments are based upon. If they can't defend that foundational assumption, then all arguments derived from that assumption can be set aside.
In this thread you're like the religious person who wants us to limit our focus to the level you're comfortable with. You want us to accept as a matter of faith as you do that technology is the solution, and then discuss/debate your particular technology idea.
I'm not doing that because it's a waste of time, because...
1) Your ideas are poorly conceived and you aren't willing to address specific challenges to those ideas I've repeatedly presented to you.
2) There's no point to examining 10,000 different technological solutions until we first determine if this is at heart actually a technical problem.
Perhaps you are new to philosophy forums, but FYI this is what happens in such places. Somebody presents some idea, and everybody else typically tries to rip it to shreds. Please notice that this very same thing happened in my knowledge thread, and in fact happens in most threads whoever started them. As Harry Truman once sort of said, if you can't stand the heat, perhaps philosophy forums are not the right kind of kitchen for you.
Again, you seem to be suffering from the consistent illusion that this thread belongs to you personally. It actually belongs to the forum owner and his team of mods, who are the sole authority on what is appropriate in any thread. Even your own posts don't belong to you in the sense that the mods can delete them at any time for any reason. So please try to get over the notion that this is your house and you make the rules.
Quoting karl stone
You've repeated this many times. It's nothing more than a vague notion that if we all somehow become rational as defined by you then these problems will all be solved. That might be true, but there is no chance of that actually happening any time soon. This idea is equivalent to the notion that if we all became Christians then the world would be a wonderful place. Maybe that's true too, but it's never going to happen. So let's stop wasting time on such dreaminess.
Quoting karl stone
As directed by science. Who exactly are you referring to? Science exists only in the mind of human beings, so you need to point us to the specific human beings who will implement this science in the manner which you feel will "save the world". Who are they? What are their names?
What I see are a millions of smart scientists with good intentions who are ardently determined to give humanity more power than we can successfully manage. They aren't evil, they're just dense when it comes to understanding the implications of a "more is better" relationship with knowledge. Technically they are living in the 21st century, philosophically they are stuck in the 19th century.
You keep saying "technology should be applied as directed by science". Science is just a concept, so science will not be directing technology. HUMAN BEINGS will be directing technology. Which human beings are you referring to specifically?
Quoting karl stone
I'm dismissing your argument because...
1) It need not be addressed until the philosophical foundation of your arguments is proven to be valid.
2) Your arguments are weak.
3) You don't respond to specific challenges presented to your specific proposals.
4) YOU DON'T OWN THIS THREAD.
I am obsessed with hydrogen - that's true, but the rest isn't true. There are good reasons for the particular application of technologies I suggested. Not least of these is the availability of sunlight and sea water. Using these to produce hydrogen (and fresh water) solves both the battery problem, and the transmission loss problem.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So, let us say you produce energy from solar power in the desert. How do you utilize it? It has to be transmitted for many miles, and transmission loss can be significant - upto 10% of power per kilometer. It cannot be used to produce fresh water, because it's in the desert, and so you've occupied land, that in theory, could be irrigated and inhabitable - if you produced energy where you could also produce fresh water, and hydrogen fuel.
How do we mortgage an asset which can never be used, and thus has no value?
How do we protect large scale solar array installations on the surface of stormy oceans?
Which specific human beings will save the world by implementing your vision of "science as truth"?
Quoting Jake
Okay. Go on...
Quoting Jake
It's rude and off topic. Crashing into someone else's thread with a vaguely related idea - contrary to the stated aim of the thread, is exactly what I'd call that - and it's exactly what you're doing here.
Quoting Jake
I just want to discuss the proposal I started this thread to discuss - something you've refused to do.
Quoting Jake
Thanks for the tip!
Who says it can never be used? There may come a time in the future when it will be necessary to burn fossil fuels to regulate the climate in the opposite way - and if we can keep them in the ground now, that will be an option available to us. And, they are currently assets - which, once mortgaged to the world, do not need to have an ongoing commercial value.
Quoting Jake
I'd suggest a submersible design.
Quoting Jake
Not you! If that's what you were wondering. Beyond that, I don't know what you're asking for. Names and addresses?
The premise of this thread which does not belong to you is that this is a technical problem requiring a technical solution. You appear to accept this premise as a matter of faith. You appear to be demanding that we do as well. But not all of us are actually members of the science religion. Some of us may decline to accept the premise "this is a technical problem" as a matter of faith. Some of us may wish to challenge that premise.
You want to draw a tight little circle around the subject to confine it to the narrow zone which you personally are comfortable with. Ok, you are free to do that within your own posts. The rest of us are under no obligation to confine our analysis of the situation to the tight little circle which you prefer.
The real world is also under no obligation to accept the boundaries of your tight little circle. In the real world, human beings will implement whatever solutions are chosen, and they will do so in the midst of many competing agendas such as ego, political power, profit etc. All these different realms are connected and will all feed in to whatever the final outcome is. Your tight little circle is a creation of your imagination.
Quoting karl stone
And you're going to somehow get someone to lend us money using this utterly vague very long term asset as collateral? Is that the plan? Where will you find such investors? Are you going to invest your own personal funds in this project? No way, right?
Quoting karl stone
My wording was insufficient, rhetorical excess, apologies, will try again.
My point was, science is not going to manage technology, because science exists only as a collection of ideas. Human beings are going to manage technology. Thus, you face the burden of explaining how human beings in the real world will acquire the Mr. Spock level of detached objectivity which your "science as truth" plan seems to require.
My argument is that even if we limit the discussion to scientists, ignoring politicians and all other inconvenient people, scientists do not possess this Mr. Spock level of detached objectivity. Instead, like all human beings, their primary interest is in their own situation. They get paid to develop knowledge, and so they understandably reject any notion of limiting knowledge development.
And in the real world, there will be many more humans involved than just the scientists. Technology funding is arises out of a political process which is infected with many competing agendas which have nothing to do with "science as truth". And then there's the public, the source of the funding, who probably wants technology funding to be applied to improving surfboards and ipads.
Welcome to the real world, where the "science as truth" concept which is at the heart of your proposals goes swirling, swirling, swirling down the toilet bowl.
In order for the ideas presented in your opening post to be relevant to the problem you are addressing, all of the above has to be ignored. You want us to ignore it. I chose not to. Get used to it.
Whenever I attempt to inspect those specific ideas with specific questions, you find the inspection inconvenient and either ignore the questions completely, or blow them off with a quick sentence. I think it just might be you who is refusing to discuss your ideas.
No. The premise of this thread is - the particular approach I argue is necessary to save the world, and I want to talk about it. Something you've refused to do - as evidence by the fact you think I'm saying this is a technical problem. It's a philosophical problem - i.e. a failure to recognize scientific method as the means to establish valid knowledge of reality. From this follows a failure to grant scientific knowledge the authority it rightfully owns. This explains the subsequent misapplication of technology; explains how and why we have created these problems, and why, despite availability of better technologies, we refuse to deploy them.
And now, the rest of your ridiculously long post is irrelevant.
Not at all. I'm quite happy to discuss what I've actually proposed, but that's not what you're doing. You dismiss my arguments as scientific religion, and then attack that strawman. You think I'm saying more is better, and attack that. When I explain that's not what I'm saying, you flat out contradict me, insist that what you think I'm saying is what I'm saying, and then repeat yourself. Again, attacking the same STRAWMAN.
I was an English major, so this is way out of my field, but I think you are referencing losses at low voltage. Transmission across long distances is at very high voltage, and losses are low -- less than 10% over long distances. The very high voltage of long distance transmission is stepped way down for distribution to consumers, and the stepping-down occurs in substations not very far from users.
In much of the world, there would be no need to locate solar plants far from users. Indeed, if the solar panels are on one's roof, or near one's urban area, transmission won't be a problem.
And that particular approach is a technical approach. And you chose a technical approach because you see climate change as a technical problem requiring a technical solution.
Quoting karl stone
And in order for this failure to be remedied human beings from the broad voting public, in to the political class, and on to the scientists and engineers, will all have to become far more rational than today and buy in to your "science as truth" religion.
You've failed to provide any evidence that such a thing is possible. You're just chanting a dogma, much as a Christian might chant, "when everyone is Christian the world will be saved!" Without evidence to support the notion that such a radical transformation might take place you aren't doing philosophy or reason, you're doing ideology, a kind of "science religion". That is, by your own actions you're illustrating how illusory such a imagined transformation is.
Quoting karl stone
We refuse to deploy your particular technologies because you've not made a convincing credible case that they are at all realistic. Your ponzi scheme-like funding mechanism has no chance of happening, thus this entire thread is irrelevant.
With the exception that you are demonstrating for us why it's reasonable to question the technological fix paradigm. We had various problems, so we invented the industrial revolution, which gave us climate change. If your scheme worked, the economy would take off like a rocket causing us to chew through other finite resources at an ever faster pace, accelerating species extinction etc. Each technological solution generates another, bigger, crisis. The problem gets moved from one box to another, but it never gets solved.
Because it's not at heart a technical problem, no matter how much the technologists want it to be.
Yes, that's it. I understand what you're saying better than you do. I get that having this revealed to the world in print is annoying to you, and I do regret the dent your ego is experiencing, but again, this is a philosophy forum, and that's what happens in such places.
You want to be an enthusiastic member of a reason religion, but you don't yet quite get how inconvenient reason can be. It's like the religious person who gets all wound up in their faith, before it dawns on them that their faith is going to demand things of them that they aren't ready to do.
Whether reason religion, or regular religion, it's all very exciting and inspiring, if we don't get what the price tag is.
It’s a your question is idiotic. So many other potential developments would need to proceed bioengineering becoming child’s play that it’s silly to consider.
Not a crime, but not interesting either.
How are you going to fund what you've actually proposed?
You give sound bite answers to this, while investing post after post after post in expressing how dented your ego feels etc.
Okay, Jake, do I want my neighbor to create a life form in his garage that will rapidly decompose plastic into environmentaly beneficial material? Yes.
I trust you’ll have an interesting response to this.
Thank you.
I want that too.
And so the next question becomes, are we willing to pay the price tag for what we both want?
If your neighbor can do something that impressive, what could a team of well funded terrorists do with the same technology? If they wipe out the human race or collapse civilization, either with intent or by mistake, do you still care about what's happening with plastic?
The problem we should be focused on is the issue of scale.
WWII is a good example. Conventional explosives, even when used with wild abandon over large areas, just aren't powerful enough to crash civilization. WWII created a huge mess, but a mess that could be cleaned up. But a WWIII with nuclear weapons would likely be a very different story, due to the much larger scale of the technology involved.
So we can chose to embrace DNA technology for the many impressive benefits it will surely bring. But do the benefits really matter if they can all be erased by mistakes and misuse?
The issue of scale. Focus on that. In the past the scale of powers was modest, so problems could be fixed. As the scale of powers grows, sooner or later we hit the "one bad day and it's game over" situation.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Right, but transmission at high voltages requires base load, which is exactly what you have with coal or nuclear, you don't have with solar panels alone. Using solar panels to produce electricity at relatively low voltages, and using that to produce hydrogen - instead of transmitting electrical energy, overcomes that problem - allowing us to utilize solar energy a long way away from where the energy is gathered. The geographical area available for solar panels is thus multiplied tremendously.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It is a problem; one that this approach solves.
You don't even understand your own argument implies there's nothing anyone can do. If you believe that, why go on about it? Are you just trying to rub humanity's nose in their ineptitude and helplessness - unto inevitable extinction? What a perfectly horrible thing to say - over and over and over again.
That's not the case at all. There's nothing stopping us from updating our relationship with knowledge to adapt to the new environment that's been created by science. Well, nothing except grasping that the environment has profoundly changed, thus creating a need to adapt.
But, your point is taken that we're not ready yet to do anything. Reason isn't enough, we're going to need some kind of big crisis to awake us from our philosophical slumbers.
I've answered this question. Mortgage fossil fuels to the world to monetize without extracting them, and use the money raised to fund fossil fuel infrastructure. What is it about that answer do you not understand?
Updating it how?
Who decides?
How much will that cost?
Adapt how? In relation to what? Thoughts and prayers?
What new environment? What's new about it? What does it mean?
"We're not ready to do anything?" I didn't say that.
What do you mean reason isn't enough? Who is depending solely on reason?
Your focus appears to be skewed to fit your belief that knowledge needs to be regulated and this is an expression of intellectual dishonesty. For instance:
Quoting Jake
If my neighbor could do something that impressive it would mean that biotechnology had advanced to a degree that more things are possible than we could imagine. For example, with that advanced biotech, we might have modified our immune systems to withstand any biohazard that a terrorist could unleash, or that we modified our neurology so that we had less fear and aggression and more cooperativeness so that terrorists would no longer exist, or we might have wiped ourselves out with the tech long before my neighbor could get his grubby little hands on it.
Now do you see why your question is silly?
The argument from cause and effect is that there's a relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and the consequences of such action.
The argument from evolution is that life is 'correct to reality' from the atom up, through its DNA, its physiology, its behavior - all crafted by the function or die algorithm of evolution. The implication is that we have to be intellectually correct to reality or be rendered extinct.
The argument from epistemology is that science tells us what we can know, and how we can know it in a methodologically rigorous way - that now constitutes a highly valid and coherent, if incomplete - understanding of reality. It is science as an understanding of reality, particularly as it has coalesced over the past 50 years - that is a new, and epistemically significant factor we have yet to account for.
This leads to a political argument - most basically, that government should be responsible to scientific truth. The longer version of the argument suggests significant limitations on the legitimacy of the principle, to account for the 'realities' of the world we live in. Most basically, existential necessity provides both prior authority to science, and a legitimate limit upon the priority of science over ideology.
Nonetheless, there's a powerful and valuable rationale that follows from accepting science is true, that enables us to overcome the limitations of ideologies without undermining them. These limitations are manifest in the argument we set out with - that explains why we have the knowledge and technology to secure a sustainable future, but at the same time, lack the ability to apply it.
Thank you for characterizing my remarks.
Now, if you don't mind, could you please address the issue of scale. As example, is there not a profound difference between a bomb that blows up a building and a bomb that blows up a city?
The "more is better" paradigm you are defending arose in an era when the powers available to human beings were modest in scale, in comparison to today, and what is coming. That era is over, and my honorable fellow members along with most of the rest of society, are still stuck there philosophically.
Quoting praxis
Or a million things. Or your neighbor might crash the ecosystem before any of that happens. What's your plan, do nothing and wait to see what happens?
Like I've asked about a dozen times now, how do we mortgage an asset which can't be used in any realistic manner or time frame, and thus has no value? Are you going to lend YOUR money to such a hair brained project? No, you're not. Neither is anybody else.
Yes, so for instance, if the environment changes we have to change too. Or we can ignore the need to change, and die.
Your plan for change appears to be that humans will become Super Rational. But you offer no explanation of how that will happen, and blatantly ignore thousands of years of evidence which points in the opposite direction.
To be intellectually correct to reality we either have to scale ourselves up (become Super Rational!) to meet the new power rich environment created by science, or scale down the powers we give to the quite flawed creatures we actually are.
If you have a plan for how we become Super Rational it might be helpful if you'd like to present it.
I do not accept your objection is valid. It's the difference between commercial debt - which you're talking about, and something more akin to sovereign debt. Sovereign debt is valid as a consequence of a political obligation to service it - such that, surety for the debt follows from a political commitment to secure a sustainable future.
You're telling me what I'm saying again. I'm not saying that. You're thus attacking a strawman again. I'm not arguing we need to become super rational. I don't even know what that means - if anything.
A natural tendency toward truth is very deeply ingrained in people. It's closely related to the moral sense. No artificial appeals are necessary, given certain assurances regarding legitimate limitations on the implications of science as truth. Limited to providing a rationale to apply renewable energy technology - we can safely accept that science is true, and thus has authority - in that context. No-one is suggesting re-organizing contemporary society as dictated by science. That would be morally wrong.
I don't think you're getting the point. You talk about scale but fail to appriciate the full potential length of it. Knowledge and technology could potentially equip (via biotech enhancement or whatever) our species to be effectively responsible enough to handle dangerous tech.
Maybe you haven't read enough sci-fi or otherwise lack imagination?
And you're not stuck in it? What is your lifestyle like? Is it eco friendly or reflect an ethic of scientific/technological economy? We know that you value the free exchange of information via the internet, and computerization in general (which is an existential AGI threat to humanity), if nothing else about your true values. Frankly, without knowing anything else about you we know that you’re a fucking hypocrite.
What's your plan? Bitch about the need to limit technology in some vague way? How? It's not about that for you - or you'd be able to say how. It's about putting people down, about rubbing people's noses in it. That's what you're about.
Yes, if technology was able to profoundly transform the human condition for the better, that might solve the problem. But who would be designing such a transformation? The imperfect human designers. What the evidence of history shows is that it's most likely the designers would use whatever this mystery power is to their own advantage.
Or, there would be good intentions that would somehow go wrong. You know, that's how we got in to the climate change mess. The industrial revolution was created with good intentions, but without enough information and maturity to anticipate all the consequences.
Whatever Karl means about "science as truth" or humans becoming supernatural, or whatever he means and I doubt he himself knows, that might work too, whatever it is.
As wonderful as all these dreamy notions are, the fact remains is that civilization is racing towards calamity today, and it is imperfect humans who will have to fix it. You guys don't wish to face this, and so you are escaping in to various futuristic fantasies.
Wow! How would this have come to pass, do you think? :chin:
Then humans will be extinct within a century or so. :cry: Planetary resources are dwindling. Less is inevitable! You can't have more (say) fresh water if there is no more fresh water to be had. Or if not water then food, clothing, shelter, fuel (of whatever sort) ... or air. :chin: :fear:
We are on a helter-skelter. Jake is concerned about the pit filled with sharpened stakes that we reach when we get to the bottom, and you are observing - probably quite correctly - that we humans are just sliding on down, shouting "faster, faster!". Faster is inevitable! :chin: Yeah, right. :roll:
My arguments are a proposal. How to save the world is not some vague sentimental notion - it's a plan. A plan you haven't read, A plan Jake has glanced at, but not really understood. Imagine my frustration...
Thanks for your remarks, but if you believe this:
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Then perhaps you have some reading to do before you do any writing. Google the word 'desalination' - and have a good old read! And thank you again for your interest. Goodbye.
You’re the one who started with the sci-fi story about my neighbor creating new life forms in his garage like a futuristic Frankenstein, and I pointed out how silly or unuseful such wild speculations are. Why are your stupid fantasies valid and ours not?
I’m pretty much convinced you’re trolling, at least for the most part, Jake, given the nonsense you’ve been spewing and your lack of concern for topic subject matter. This topic is titled “How to Save the World!” which in itself shows a recognition of the ‘calamity civilization is racing towards’ and an intention to confront the problem.
I didn't invent this story. That's exactly what's going to happen if DNA manipulation continues on it's present course of rapidly getting easier and easier, cheaper and cheaper. It's just like what happened with computers. First they were primitive and expensive and only governments and big corporations had them. And now everybody has a computer or two in their pocket.
I asked you that question to try to get to the bottom line so we wouldn't have to waste even more time on all this endless blah, blah, blah.
But anyway, you're not even interested in the subject. You're just looking for somebody to argue with. I'm sure you'll find some takers, but I'm going to pass.
It hasn’t happened yet but you didn’t invent the story. Truly remarkable nonsense.
See? This is what you're interested in, squabbling.
To disprove this, start your own thread on these subjects where you attempt to dive deeper in to these topics in a sustained manner.
Jake, try to be sensible. You invented a story about my neighbor creating new life forms in his garage and then claimed that it’s not a story you invented. You must realize how ridiculous that sounds.
Please observe how you're completely ignoring the evidence I offered regarding the history of computing, so you can type the word "ridiculous" again.
Another example. When I first got in to web publishing in 1995 you had to be a kind of NASA scientist power nerd type person to create a website. I could charge people $75 just to upload some images to a web server. These days, your dog can create a web site for free in countless places.
This pattern has been repeated in too many different fields to list. As the technology matures it gets cheaper, easier and more widely available. Why you think the prospect of this happening in the DNA field is ridiculous is beyond me.
But go ahead, type the word ridiculous again Mr. Philosopher. I'd suggest trying all caps, bold and some exclamation points this time, so readers will know you're really trying hard to make a contribution to this subject.
Please note my bolding of the phrase "right now". Not that I know all that much about CRISPR, but I suspect that statement is probably true. Right now CRISPR is probably more trouble than it's worth for the bad guys to bother with. Right now.
How about twenty years from now? By then CRISPR will probably be obsolete, having been replaced by some other more powerful and accessible technology.
Ok, so the government will pass laws about the use of such technologies. The War On Drugs should give us some insight in to how well that will work. Laws mostly serve the purpose of keeping law abiding people from wandering in to areas that they probably don't want to be in anyway.
As example, if I wanted some heroin I'd have no idea where to buy it, because it's illegal. But millions of people who want to do heroin don't seem to be having much trouble finding it. What limits me is not really the law, but my lack of interest in heroin.
Come now! You haven't gotten responses from wankers; you have gotten responses from reasonable thoughtful people who disagree with you. That doesn't make this discussion a circle jerk.
There is nothing "wrong" with your hydrogen plan, in itself. It's novel, sophisticated, probably do-able. The downside of the Stone Hydrogen Plan is this: we don't have the lead time to achieve this kind of solution before things get much worse.
The FIRST thing we have to do is sharply reduce CO2 production, and that means reducing consumption. We don't have something like 1 or 2 hundred years to do this; we have to start doing this immediately, and we must succeed at it or we're screwed.
While we reduce CO2 production and reduce consumption (all kinds) we need to immediately increase generation of electricity by solar, wind, and hydro. Even nuclear power takes too long to get up and running to be an immediate solution.
IF we make it, IF we reduce CO2 production and consumption sufficiently within 50 years, we will then have the opportunity to investigate long-term alternatives, like generating hydrogen at sea through solar power.
As a fuel, hydrogen is workable, but all new technologies require a substantial lead time. A rule of thumb is that it takes 50 years to invent, improve, and install major new technological systems. (Not 50 years to start, 50 years start to finish.) Industries can start preparing for hydrogen economy now, should that be a choice we want to make. The decision won't be made here, in any case. But thanks to our pig-headed short-sightedness, the planetary environment is in a crisis and the IMMEDIATE task is CO2 reduction, and that as much and as fast as is humanly possible.
I don't know who deals with issues like this in the UK, but in the US it would be the Department of Energy and industrial engineers who have the wherewithal to think about major technological implementation.
And so has nature. Not to give anyone any ideas, but ebola would work just fine as a bio-terrorism agent. It's ready to go. There are various bird viruses (e.g. influenza) that can be capable killers. For that matter, just starting forest fires would be very harmful. Or importing novel plant diseases that our monocultures of corn are not resistant to. Or selling heroin and meth. So many ways...
I think we probably are wankers. And blinkered.
Now I feel embarrassed. My neighbor is probably a terrorist as well.
This is a misapprehension or misrepresentation. I wrote that claiming the story you contrived about my neighbor wasn’t a story you contrived was rediculous.
We currently have the industrial capacity, the intelligence, the skills, and the capitalist economic scaffolding in place to implement the technology, something we cannot trust will be within reach subsequent to any conceivable 'catastrophe first' strategy. We must act proactively, and decisively now - while the capacity exists - or lose the opportunity that exists in sustainable markets of 10-12 billion consumers by 2100.
With a sufficiently methodical approach, this figure is entirely manageable. It begins with energy, and follows from water and hydrogen fuel - irrigation, fish farming, agriculture, jobs, ugg boots and iphones. It implies recycling be designed into production, right through to use and disposal - but the potential from a sustainable energy basis for civilization, is for a garden paradise of a world, where rivers run uphill. Imagine, if we had a free hand with the knowledge and technology we have, what could be achieved - and then ask yourself why that's not so.
It's not, as some might imagine that man is innately greedy. It's too shallow an explanation, not least because it doesn't explain civilization. If greed were man's primary motivation - which is not to say it's not a motive at all, but if it were dictatorial then civilization could not exist. In general we find that greed - insofar as it motivates man, is manifest in something productive, and in some sense worthwhile. Rather, I would focus on the needs of man, and how they might be met sustainably. I trust that if it can be shown to be both a rational and possible course - then the same motives dismissed as greed, will compel that course. If indeed, the world's energy needs can be met from a postage stamp of solar panels 350 miles square, on the letter that is the oceans to eternity, and we don't send that letter - we're an empty gesture.
Ah, I get it now, you’re anti-progress because you can’t keep pace with it and lost your livelihood. High end web developers still charge at least that much.
Change isn’t always comfortable, Jake, but it is inevitable.
Your point above is a resting place. Society has to decide whether to commit, and to which technology. (Society as a whole isn't going to decide -- it's international finance that will decide.) "They" haven't decided to do much of anything, yet, so... we will all have to stay tuned.
Quoting karl stone
I can hardly wait for a world with 12 billion people.
No, I don't think it will happen but you are 100% right that we have to act proactively. We should be proactive immediately, like 30 years ago. I do not believe that technology and other human institutions can solve the food/water/energy problem by 2100 for 12 billion people. I find the idea rather like the plot of a science faction novel where human kind somehow manages to establish a footing elsewhere in the solar system or galaxy by 2200. At least in science fiction, one knows one is entering a 'created universe' which one either finds believable or not. If it isn't believable, the book will be tossed into the recycling bin.
I can reject abundance for 12 billion people without rejecting your solar hydrogen plant idea. They are not mutually dependent on each other.
You are as doggéd in your defense of the solar powered hydrogen plant as Schopenhauer1 is of anti-natalism. Doggéd persistence is much more of a virtue than it is a vice, but your abiding interest is likely to outrun other people's enthusiasm. At which point one should move on to another topic.
That's not at all the impression I obtained from Jake.
Conservativism in general seems to be based in fear of change and maintaining the status quo. Problem is that even if progress were somehow obstructed we are still on track for collapse of some kind, the way things are now being so unsustainable.
I've thought about it, but anti-natalism is a misconceived approach in several ways; the most immediate that it is morally objectionable to construe the problem as the existence of people. Second is that it would require dictating women's reproductive rights. Third is the questions of ethnicity such an approach throws up. And then there are complex demographic effects one can hardly predict, but would need to take into account.
As for moving on to another topic, that would be another example of a futile attempt to hold back the tide. This is all I've thought about for years. All these ideas are public domain. It's not like I'm giving away state secrets. Nor is anything I've said twisted into a reason to hate or despair. So really, it's not my place to worry about other people's enthusiasm. Switch the channel if you don't like it - but I aim to succeed, and that's the perspective I'd be judged from.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So you're saying my point is a resting place, I should move on to other issues, and:
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think otherwise. Seven tenths of the earth's surface is still as rich in metals as when the earth was new. There's no immediate resource bottleneck - given a willingness to develop resources, rather than simply exploit them to death. Shifting now to a renewable energy basis for civilization - we are very well situated, even anticipating significant climate consequences already, decisive proactive action could turn all to our advantage yet.
The ability to produce fresh water on a significant scale from renewable energy would solve a lot of problems as those effects manifest. And for that reason alone we should build it - if not so that fossil fuels would be forced to compete on an even playing field. If we can pump rivers of water inland, uphill - we can one day refill those depleted aquifers and empty inland seas at negligible cost. Just build the infrastructure, and set it going - if immediately to counter droughts, increasingly likely across larger parts of the planet - in future to repair environmental damage.
I cannot see that possibility slipping away and not give voice to it. I don't think I should stop talking about it. I'm quite prepared to be rude, to have people hate me, but I'm not trying to hurt anybody. Indeed, I went out of my way to devise a solution that seeks to account for vested interests in general - and doesn't require we do anything we don't already do in some respect.
Philosophically speaking, if one considers the occurrence of a scientific understanding of reality significant, then from that follows an authority, and a rationale for the application of technology. It's not rude to point out we could survive if we tried. We have to talk about it if there's any hope at all we might.
By "resting place" I merely meant that you have gone as far as you can in the logic of promoting H production at sea by solar power. Once you've proved that 2+2=4, people have to either accept the fact or ignore it. There are quite a few examples of 2+2=4 that people seem quite capable of ignoring. Just a simple example here:
The city of Minneapolis, where I live, collects trash, recyclable material (single stream) and compostable material. All that is a plus. We have found that it is very difficult, apparently, for many people to figure out what the difference is between trash, recyclable, and compostable. Signs with words, signs with pictures, signs with actual examples, someone standing behind the bins telling people where the stuff goes -- none of this seems to work with a certain percentage of the population. I think it should be obvious even to morons that a bin with potato peelings, left-over food from plates, moldy bread, carrot tops, spoiled oranges, etc. IS NOT the right bin for plastic cups and aluminum cans. None the less, some otherwise not apparently too-stupid-to-breathe people still don't get it.
If we can't get people to figure out the difference between rotten oranges and aluminum cans...
Quoting karl stone
I would imagine that better than 99.9% of the metals that were ever in the earth are still on earth--somewhere. That doesn't mean that it is even remotely possible (in the imaginable future) to get at these metals for a bearable cost.
How will we overcome the problem of metals becoming harder to find in large, accessible quantities?
Take iron, for example. Iron wasn't extruded by magma or volcanoes. 2 billion years ago iron was mostly suspended in water. As cyanobacteria produced oxygen, the O combined with Fe producing an oxide which settled on the sea floors and, in certain places, was concentrated. Other metal deposits were formed by other geological processes. Other metal deposits are formed more directly by geologic activity, plus precipitation and concentration processes. Large deposits just don't occur everywhere.
True, there may be tiny bits of gold, tin, zinc, silver, rare earths, aluminum, nickel, and so on scattered around the globe, but if they were not concentrated a billion years or two ago (or more) then the chances of us getting our hot little hands on lots of it are exceeding small. We aren't going to run out of iron or aluminum tomorrow, but the reachable supply is by no stretch of the imagination inexhaustible.
Take Uranium as an example of a metal with a limited supply: the available unmined reserves of uranium are reported in "millions of pounds" not millions of tons. Were the world to use nuclear fuel heavily, we would find the supply far short of needs.
And it is you, fellow members of this thread, and most of the society who are resisting that inevitable change. Most of the culture, led by the cultural elites, is determined to cling blindly to a relationship with knowledge straight out of the 19th century.
This is a philosophy forum. I'm arguing that our philosophy needs to be updated to match the technological environment, that we need to adapt philosophically to the new reality. And the group consensus says, "No, no, no and no, we're intent on staying in the past!".
Anti-natalism unto extinction? That's extreme. If the argument were we should have less children - I don't agree we should seek to force that conclusion as a matter of policy, but it's an understandable position. Rather, I would argue, we can expect population to decline from a peak of 10-12 billion in 2100, as a consequence of the noted tendency of populations to limit family sizes in wealthier and healthier conditions. That's happening anyway. The challenge is to sustain that trend.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's not that I'm wedded in an absolute sense to this particular application of technology. I would yield to genuine expertise seeking to address the same issue on an adequate scale. However, it is necessary for me to demonstrate in a convincing way that it's possible to apply renewable energy technology in such a way as to meet world needs. That requires overcoming a number of technical problems, I would argue solar/hydrogen is more than able to account for.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Beyond the fact a nuclear power station uses about half the energy it ever produces in the construction phase, in the form of fossil fuels, and putting aside the terrifically toxic waste we have to store forever afterward, a nuclear power station produces massive temperatures to boil water, to drive a turbine. That's a huge thermodynamic inefficiency - that from a scientific point of view, raises a large red flag.
It's quite difficult to explain, but it's an example of how - for ideological reasons, we cut across the grain of nature. I express the argument very poorly, but solar/hydrogen is implied by the grain of nature in a way that nuclear power is not. Hydrogen is the second most abundant element in the universe, and the energy reaction with oxygen is chemically simple and clean. Thus, we can have, and use enough solar/hydrogen energy to overcome the problem inherent in ever decreasing concentrations of minerals.
The opposition to nuclear energy is exactly that: an ideology. And this ideology can drive us to worse energy policies than otherwise.
The real people killer is coal. Just in China annually coal power plants kill about 300 000 people. Yet somehow the facts and especially the magnitude of difference on the impact is many times not understood. The simple fact is that we have been using for ages coal ...and firewood. How dangerous smoke from fire can be isn't something that rattles peoples minds like the "invisible death" from radiation. And who understands radiation? Simply when nuclear power is discussed, the first image that comes to many peoples mind is Hiroshima. Unfortunately the misinformation (or basically disinformation) has taken root in this area, hence people believe whatever fictional statistic on the perils of nuclear energy.
Globally we get roughly 40% of electricity from coal and in places like China it's still roughly 60%, which has come down from 80% in 2010. Their plan has it's problems: even if China is making a huge investment in alternative energy resources, it is basically using energy from coal (and other fossil fuels) to catch up the industrialized West. The idea simply is to use the coal now to transform to other energy resources. That's the idea. Yet the reality is that coal power plants are still built (see Satellite intelligence shows China in a vast rollout of coal-fired power stations) and what better thing is to sell the coal power plants to other countries when they come to be too dirty in China (see here and here).
However much we build solar and wind power, it's still problematic. For example in 2016 in Germany (one of the leaders in Photovoltaic Power) increased solar power production as it has done year after year, yet the actually gigawatts produced fell. There was a natural reason: it wasn't so sunny as the year before. And the main point is the following. The real danger is that if we run down nuclear energy, we in the end and out of the media limelight, replace nuclear with fossil fuels and especially coal. The ugly fact seems to be that Germany in it's Energiewende, of going off nuclear, has exactly done this.
(See article)
In 1980 after a referendum Sweden made a policy decision to go off nuclear by the year 2010. In 2010 they were producing more energy from nuclear power than in 1980 and the government had silently withdrawn from the planned target. Hence many times energy policy isn't in the end what you wanted.
Don't forget the sea floor. There are quite a lot of raw materials there too. I can just imagine how a big of a ecodisaster we can make to ocean life once we start to mine the ocean floors at an industrial pace.
Knowledge is a valuable resource. That fact hasn't changed over the years. Similarly, fat and sugar are still valuable resources today, although not as valuable as they were through most of human evolution. It would be beneficial to human flourishing if our appetite for sugar and fat were in sync with its current abundance, or if we all had the discipline to suppress our appetite for them. But it's common knowledge that our relationship with fat and sugar is unhealthy, for the most part at least.
Cultural elites didn't make fat, sugar, or knowledge valuable to anyone. They're naturally valuable to us. Many people have 'adapted philosophically' and regulate their consumption of fat, sugar, and knowledge to healthy amounts.
I think what you may have been trying to say is that cultural elites in Western society promote a materialistic value system and that knowledge can be a valuable aid in developing a materialistic lifestyle. However you put it, the underlying problem isn't knowledge but the values that utilize it. Knowledge can be used for human flourishing or selfish and unsustainable hoarding of wealth and power, depending on the underlying values of the users.
And what thousands of years of human history clearly shows is that knowledge, and the power that flows it, will always be used for both noble and selfish ends. And sometimes the law of unintended consequences will convert noble efforts in to problem situations.
And so there is no escaping the question, how much power do we want to be available when people have bad motives, or fail to fully think through the consequences of well intended uses? More is better, as much as possible, delivered as soon as possible?
The question is moot because enough power to ruin the world is already available to people with bad motives or those who are too shortsighted. Our Western materialistic lifestyle is unsustainable. Obstructing scientific research won't stop that. Even if it were possible to restrict scientific research globally, one result could be hampering research that might help with the many challenges that future generations will face because of our bad motives and shortsightedness.
No one would say that progress doesn't have risks, but what is the alternative? Stagnation in a globally locked-down police state? Security may be that important to you but I don't think it is for most people.
Say more about that, would you, please.
And so we should build even MORE such power, as fast as possible. That is the logic, or rather illogic, of the group consensus.
As example, Professor Crank has a "more is better" relationship with my posts on this topic. That's so wrong, we're all gonna die if we hear any more! :smile:
Only if one continues with an ideologically dictated, backward and piecemeal application of technology - I identify as the real underlying problem. By ideology, I mean the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of societies - not just some unsubstantiated belief, but ideas in terms of which we parse the world, construe our identities, derive our purposes, and make moral judgments.
An ideology is rather more than a misbegotten belief - its a misbegotten conception of reality. Its lenses cover both eyes completely, which is what makes science a stranger.
Quoting ssu
I'd agree there's widespread ignorance and fear - but that fear is not entirely baseless. Radiation is dangerous, and in the event of a nuclear accident - can be carried a long way by the wind, contaminating vast swathes of land with a toxin that continues to be hazardous for a long time. Particles of radioactive material can be breathed in, and cause cancer. It can get into the food chain, and be passed on and on.
Quoting ssu
It's not just China. 75% of India's electricity production is from fossil fuels - that's almost 3 billion people in total, dependent on coal for power. The only saving grace is that they are as yet, relatively poor. In terms of energy consumption, the average Chinese person uses approximately one third of the energy an American uses. The average Indian person, uses less than one tenth of the energy an American uses. And this disparity, between a rich country like the US, and poorer countries but with much larger populations - is at the heart of disagreements about how to tackle climate change. That's always going to be a problem with a "pain up front" strategy.
Quoting ssu
I disagree. In Germany, the share of renewable electricity rose from just 3.4% of gross electricity consumption in 1990 to exceed 10% by 2005, 20% by 2011 and 30% by 2015, reaching 36.2% of consumption by year end 2017. They are not reverting to coal. Further, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident was coincidental with regard to the policy. There was no fear driven rejection of nuclear on the part of Germany. If you look at the sector, it has proved hugely costly, as well as potentially very dangerous - on the rare occasions things go wrong, they can go very wrong. Germany rejected nuclear on its own merits, quite some time before the accident in Japan.
It's in consideration of all this, and a lot more like this - I've proposed a global scale approach based on a common agreement that science is true, and therefore authoritative - particularly on a subject like this, which is:
1) an existential necessity - i.e. if we don't solve this problem humankind will be rendered extinct.
2) a global scale problem, that throws partisan ideological approaches into conflict.
3) is a purely technical problem - entirely subject to a technological solution.
And I'm not the first to propose it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy
50 years ago!
It may be helpful if you can distinguish between science, and science culture, ie. the group consensus of the scientific community regarding their relationship with science. A fact developed by science can be reasonably declared authoritative, while at the same time the culture which decided to develop that fact can be declared misguided.
As example, it's scientifically true that the atom can be split. That's an entirely different matter than leading scientists agreeing to work on the Manhattan project, and agreeing to further develop these weapons etc.
Repeatedly chanting "science is truth" doesn't really solve much.
Quoting karl stone
Apologies, but this is actually argument with your own position. As example, if I've understood you've argued that nuclear weapons arise from a philosophical problem.
You are approaching upon the idea central to my thesis, but keep slipping past it.
Consider humankind, developing from animal ignorance into human knowledge over time. We developed the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of societies first - long before science was discovered. Because science contradicted ideology - science as an understanding of reality was suppressed, even while science provided technology to be used as directed by primitive ideologies.
Thus, the Manhattan Project is not a truly scientific endeavor. The motives are purely ideological. The scientists were employees of ideological interests. The was no scientific rationale for developing nuclear weapons - less yet spending the massive resources to build over 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War.
It is the difference between science as a tool box, and science as an instruction manual. We've used the tools, but failed to read the instructions. That's what's wrong - with everything! It's why we're burning rain-forests to clear land for palm oil production, and cattle ranching. It makes sense ideologically - but in terms of a scientific conception of reality, it's insane, unnecessary, and ultimately fatal behavior.
Right. The Manhattan Project was very "scientish" but was essentially a tremendous technological nuts and bolts project. There was, of course, an ideological goal. The Manhattan Project was intended to build an atomic weapon before Germany did. Germany could have, maybe, built an atomic weapon, but they decided they couldn't produce conventional weapons and atomic weapons at the same time. We didn't know that in 1942 (when the project was conceived). By the time the Manhattan Project was finished, Germany was no longer a threat.
"Saving lives by not invading the home islands of Japan" is a claim undermined by the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared heavy bombing--something most Japanese cities were not spared. The were left in a "pristine" state so they could better serve as a test site to measure the destructiveness of the new weapon.
Having achieved the initial goal, it was decided that we needed to go forward with plutonium/U235 bombs and to build a hydrogen bomb (Edward Teller's favorite project) and achieve world dominance in nuclear weapons. So we did. Our monopoly on nukes was very short. Tens of thousands of bombs later...
Quoting karl stone
Exactly.
"Read the instructions as a last resort". Now that we have made a colossal mess of things, we've opened the manual and discovered the really bad news.
What you’re apparently failing to see is that the “more is better” impulse applies to any valuable resource and not just knowledge. You can’t cure the disease by treating a symptom, and knowledge or research may aid in finding a cure. That’s the logic.
There's a indirect, but definite relationship between the Manhattan Project, and the mistake made by the Church in relation to the discovery of scientific method by Galileo in 1630. That seems like a crazy idea on the surface of it - but Galileo's arrest, imprisonment and trial set a precedent that's never been overturned. Not even by the so-called Enlightenment. It's a blind-spot that's been carried forward for 400 years - and has led us to the brink of extinction.
Consider Mendel - the monk who did the work on genetic inheritance using pea plants, long before Darwin. That mechanism was the one thing missing from Darwin's Origin of Species. Had the statistics of inheritance been understood earlier, the racial element of Nazism might not have occurred. And subsequently, the Second World War, the Manhattan Project, and the Cold War might also have been averted.
It is the difference between science as a tool box, and science as an instruction manual. We've used the tools, but failed to read the instructions. That's what's wrong - with everything! It's why we're burning rain-forests to clear land for palm oil production, and cattle ranching. It makes sense ideologically - but in terms of a scientific conception of reality, it's insane, unnecessary, and ultimately fatal behavior.
— karl stone
Quoting Bitter Crank
First, sorry for quoting my own quote. Second, I'm delighted you agree. But thirdly, it's not all bad news. We're actually pretty well situated if we can recognize the mistake now, and very carefully - begin to correct it. It begins with energy and water - and results in sustainable markets, and a garden paradise of a world by 2100. It's either that, or we'll go through Hell - before we all, eventually die out.
And how many people have been killed due to nuclear accidents compared to the hundreds of thousands being killed every year by coal power plants and fossil fuels? Fukushima? 0 deaths. Chernobyl? Here's the conclusions that the United Nations, WHO and IAEA among other came to:
See from UN homepages, CHERNOBYL: THE TRUE SCALE OF THE ACCIDENT
How can 4000 deaths in all compare to hundreds of thousands killed annually? After all, with Chernobul you did have radiation equivalent of hundreds of nuclear weapons detonated. But then of course you have the anti-nuclear claiming totally other kind of figures (that basically put the worst accident to be in it's entirety equivalent to a scale of deaths in one year in China by coal power). But here alternative facts are cherished and hence I'm not convinced that scientific facts will win in the end. Yet the fact is that even if we take the WORST estimates that surely are propaganda, the simple fact is that nuclear power doesn't produce carbon emissions (which actually not many do know), and still is far safer than coal.
Quoting karl stone
Wrong. They are building new coal power stations. Period. That the share renewable electricity has grown doesn't at all refute this fact. See from June of 2018 this article: Germany still constructing new coal power stations. Naturally the German government and it's media doesn't want to highlight this. And of course one thing they have turned to is to import electricity from Poland. Germany still has alongside Poland a huge coal power plant infrastructure and some of the biggest polluting coal power plants in Europe, that can be seen from the emissions.
CO2 emissions value=gCO2eq/kwh. (Data extracted January 8 2017. Source: electricitymap.tmrow.co)
Belgium 174
Bulgaria 438
Czech Republic 518
Denmark 399
Germany 597
Estonia 664
Ireland 477
Greece 464
Spain 254
France 105
Italy 325
Latvia 289
Lithuania 251
Hungary 289
Austria 358
Poland 746
Portugal 385
Romania 347
Slovenia 329
Slovakia 389
Finland 189
Sweden 60
United Kingdom 388
(Btw, the electricity map is interesting to see from the above link)
Or as one article puts it:
See article "Mixed Mandate: Germany’s new coal commission struggles to balance environment and jobs" from June 2018.
I grew up in the upper midwestern part of the US during the entire period of atmospheric nuclear bomb testing Of course fall out from the tests drifted across the continent given prevailing westerly winds. The Soviets were also doing atmospheric nuclear bomb testing during the same period.
As I recollect, people worried about radiation, but we didn't think we were doomed, and no one was getting sick from radiation. We didn't drink less milk (strontium-90 or not). Minnesota has the best overall health outcomes of all the other states, except Hawaii and Massachusetts, with whom we trade off first place position. Good health outcomes are not owing to more radiation, of course, but to social policies and community norms which have brought about less smoking, less drinking, less fried food, better dentistry and better health care.
As annoying as the facts are, animals do seem to be able to tolerate more radiation than I thought. There are some adverse effects on animals living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, but nothing approaching catastrophic consequences. Wolves--the top predator--seem to be doing well there, despite feeding at the top of the food chain. Some birds have, if I remember correctly, developed a mal-aligned beak, not a beneficial mutation. The wolves may not be attaining the same upper age as they would elsewhere.
I wouldn't for a minute suggest that we should be blasé about radiation. Most mass radiation exposure results from sloppy, incompetent, or "public be damned" behavior in the nuclear plants. A good example is a fire at the Rocky Flats plutonium plant near Denver (maybe 30 years ago). The fire spread to the roof and burnt up a number of big filters which were supposed to capture plutonium dust. The fire resulted in quite a bit of plutonium being scattered over much of the Denver area.
Statistical comparisons like this can be misleading. For example, did you know far more people die in hospital than in McDonald's. But if I fell ill - my first thought wouldn't be, I've got to get myself a happy meal. In that sense, I'd be willing to bet more people are killed by solar than nuclear energy, installers falling off roofs. I'm not defending fossil fuels, but rather pointing out that total number of deaths is no indication of the inherent dangers associated with any technology.
Quoting ssu
Nuclear power doesn't produce carbon emissions, but it takes half the energy a nuclear power station will ever produce - to build a nuclear power station. All that concrete and steel is incredibly energy intensive to produce, and that's almost certainly going to be fossil fuel energy. Further, nuclear power stations create massive amounts of heat - they have to shed, or explode. This is far more difficult in hot weather - and power output drops in relation to the heat that can be shed into the environment. Climate change is therefore an obstacle to nuclear power.
"We're going to have to solve the climate-change problem if we're going to have nuclear power, not the other way around," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who is with the Union of Concerned Scientists."
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.5788480.html
On the whole however, I think we're pretty much on the same page here. I agree fossil fuels are a massive problem. I just don't believe nuclear power is the answer, and designed my solar/hydrogen approach with these ideas in mind; not some overblown fear of radiation, but environmental costs of construction, running costs, and nuclear waste storage costs - against the type, amount and utility of the energy it produces. Solar/hydrogen is the best all round solution.
Ok, true enough, but the Manhattan Project was possible because somebody doing pure science discovered that the atom could be split, right? Could we say that the pure science was hijacked by ideological interests? Would that work for you?
If yes, then before we rush headlong in to more and more and more pure science shouldn't we be figuring how to prevent such ideological hijackings from occurring? And if we can't come up with a reliable mechanism for preventing such hijackings is it not logical that we should therefore at least slow down on the pure science research?
This is part of the problem that James Howard Kunstler points out: a lot of chemicals go into making solar and wind power and all the associated equipment--chemicals derived from petroleum. Once petroleum becomes too scarce and expensive to obtain, it will be very difficult to replace all the infrastructure that was made from and with petroleum: plastics, lubricants, solvents, raw chemicals, finishes, and so on. Things wear out, break, burn up, are smashed, and so forth.
It isn't that nothing will or can be done in the future; it's just that manufacturing will have to re-invented for many products (if it can be).
Making the essential ingredients of concrete, like calcium obtained by heating limestone to a high temperature -- are very energy intensive and extensive. I don't see making the large amounts of portland cement with solar or wind.
There is a reason why we used so much coal and oil: It takes a hell of a lot of energy to build all the infrastructure you see around you. We can not rebuild all of it, or even half of it, on a meagre energy budget. We'll get along, but it will be on much different terms than we operate with now.
You probably know this story already:
We could say that the pure science took place in a setting that was inherently ideological: Academic physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered the principle of fission in 1939. Meitner fled Germany in 1938 to escape the murderous anti-Jewish Nazi regime. Meitner and Hahn met secretly once after she fled Germany to plan the experiments that Hahn carried out in Berlin proving the theory. It was Meitner who identified and named the process 'nuclear fission'.
Once the results of Meitner and Hahn's experiments were published, a committee of physicists alerted Roosevelt to the discovery.
Who would make the bomb that Germany, Britain, USA, and USSR now knew was possible?
Some research was conducted beginning in 1939 on nuclear fission. But the US was not at war with the Axis powers, and the mood in the country was still isolationist. After Pearl Harbor, the situation changed, of course. There was some evidence (the business with heavy water from Norsk Hydro, for instance) that Germany was seriously pursuing a bomb. In 1942, when the Manhattan Project was conceived, it was not clear that the Allies would be victorious.
Further, not all of the scientists that were asked were willing to work on the project (several guessed what it was probably about), and quite a few of the scientists who did work on it were quite unhappy about it by the end of the war.
General Groves, the superintendent of the project, insisted on very tight partitions of information about the project. Each participant -- top scientist or lowly lab tech -- was only told as much as they needed to know to perform their job. (This was an anti espionage strategy). Quite a few of the scientists did not know exactly what they were working on till late in the game. For instance, the polonium team in Ohio who were working on making the "trigger" for the bomb, a ping pong sized ball of purified polonium, did not know what the little ball was for. A very few of the managing scientists at Los Alamos knew about the ball, and what it was for. Most of the scientists didn't know until the winter of 1945, when they were closing in on the construction of the two bombs.
Well before the first two bombs were ready, it became apparent that Japan would be the target for the nuclear bombs. This was entirely ideological. Initially, a German atomic weapon was an existential threat. By 1945, neither Japan nor Germany posed existential threats to the Allies.
If we were trying to explain what happened very simply - we could say that, but the reality is far more complex. I have construed the Church's reaction to Galileo's 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems' - in which he set out the first formal statement of scientific method, as instrumental in the divorce of science as a tool - from science as an understanding of reality.
Science could have been welcomed by the Church as the true word of God; i.e. in the beginning there was the word. Pursued in a worshipful manner - and integrated into religion, politics and economics on an ongoing basis - it would have been as if a red carpet unfurled at our feet. There's a strong sense somehow, that's what should have happened, and certainly, at that moment - the Church had the power to make that happen. But then - one has to ask, why was that mistake not rectified by anyone else?
For instance, America effectively had a clean slate - once they threw off British rule. They wrote the Constitution in 1776, on a blank page - from an enlightenment perspective, and still didn't address the question of the priority of scientific knowledge, relative to religious, political and economic ideology. What we can say, is that the Manhattan Project in itself, wasn't where this mistaken relationship began. It merely repeated a pattern that has far deeper roots. So they didn't hijack science and use it for illegitimate ends as such, but rather, employed science - divorced from its meaningful implications, within an ideological context. In effect, they gave a rocket launcher to a caveman - i.e. they put advanced technology in the hands of the ideologically primitive.
Sorry about going on so long.
Quoting Jake
As a philosopher, I'm driven by my subject. I couldn't shut up if I tried. I imagine research scientists are similarly driven by their specialist interests - to discover the truth. So the question would be - how do you put a cork in that kind of intellectual curiosity? The Church tried to control intellectual curiosity - and the consequences bring humankind to the brink of extinction, and you'd repeat the same failed strategy? No!
We need to do now what we should have done 400 years ago - and that is, accept that science is the means to establish true knowledge of reality, and honor that knowledge - particularly as a rationale for the application of technology.
Your view of solar/wind energy seems to me colored by the piecemeal application of technology you see around you - but the full potential of the technology is yet to be realized. The entire world's total energy needs can be met from a solar farm 350 miles square - which is about the size of Switzerland. That's approximately 17.5 TW of electrical energy.
We could build that - and phase it in over time, such that we could combat climate change while allowing for sensible divestment from fossil fuels. And then build another one the same. In that case, I don't see scarcity of oil as a basis for other products becoming a problem in the foreseeable future. Even if oil were all gone somehow, there's no shortage of hydrocarbons. We could mine the frozen tundra of the Russian steppes for methane - or the anaerobic sludge that sits on the sea floor, and make plastics with that. The only thing we absolutely can't do is burn it for fuel.
There's no problem powering energy intensive processes with renewable energy. As a liquefied gas, hydrogen contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum per kilo - such that it can power industrial processes. For example:
Swedish steel boss: 'Our pilot plant will only emit water vapour' - EurActiv
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/interview/hybrit-ceo-our-pilot-steel-plant-will-only-emit-water-vapour/
"A new pilot facility under construction in northern Sweden will produce steel using hydrogen from renewable electricity. The only emissions will be water vapour, explains Mårten Görnerup, CEO of Hybrit, the company behind the process, which seeks to revolutionise steelmaking."
The world needs to follow that man's example.
Where is the evidence that this utopian vision is possible?
To me, this part of your message is equivalent to the utopian vision "once we all become good Christians then we will live in peace". These utopian visions might be true IN THEORY, but it's not going to happen, so...
Whatever new rocket launchers which emerge from the quest for knowledge are going to be given to we cave men...
...just has always been true for thousands of years, since long before the emergence of science and the church.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, and isn't this true of any science which reveals new powers? That is, at the point some research uncovers a power which gives somebody an advantage over somebody else, the process automatically becomes inherently ideological.
Yes, that would be a good question.
The first essential step in that process would be to understand that such a thing is necessary. There's no point is asking "how to do it" until we grasp that it has to be done. If we don't grasp that it has to be done, like it or not, then we'll never get around to aiming our intelligence at working out how it is to be done.
It seems clear that reason alone will not be sufficient to bring us to the understanding that the power available to human beings has to be limited for the simple reason that human judgment and maturity are limited.
So my guess is that we are racing towards some kind of technology driven calamity and that only when the pain reaches a high enough threshold will we be ready to address your question in a serious manner. As example...
The Europeans engaged in pointless wars for centuries, even though Europe was home to the great philosophers, high culture etc. It was only when the pain of those wars reached a near existential level in WWII that the Europeans changed course and gave up the pattern of repetitive warring. Intelligence wasn't enough, reason wasn't enough, common sense wasn't enough, it took pain at a high level to bring the Europeans to their senses.
The best way to debunk my posts is to point to the fact that no amount of reasoning is going to be sufficient to wean us off of the outdated "more is better" relationship with knowledge. Thus, as the evidence clearly suggests, all my typing on the subject is basically a waste of time.
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time - all human beings were hunter-gatherers, living in tribal groups of about 40-120 individuals. Ruled by an alpha male and one or two lieutenants, who ruled the tribe by threat and use of violence, they monopolized food and mating opportunities within the tribe.
For tens of thousands of years after human beings had achieved the kind of intellectual awareness evidenced in improved tools, burial of the dead, cave art, jewelry - they continued living as hunter gatherers, until approximately 15,000 years ago - when they joined together to form multi-tribal society, leading to civilization.
The question is - how? This is not a trivial question. They went against millions of years of evolutionary habit, and the power structure of tribal society - to form multi-tribal society, with no idea of the relative utopia they would thus create. They did this by agreeing to God as an objective authority for law. Similarly, I would argue - a scientific understanding of reality is objective with respect to all ideological interests. So, it has happened before. It is something of which human beings are capable.
Again, like I said, this is a utopian vision with no prospect of occurring in the real world any time soon. And while we're waiting for your utopia to arrive, we're busy, busy, busy giving ourselves ever greater powers at an ever faster rate.
I'm sure you're aware of the Peter Principle, which suggests that people will rise in their careers until they finally arrive at a job that they can't handle. That's basically what I'm suggesting, that we will continue to develop greater and greater powers until we inevitably create one that we can't manage. It's reasonable to argue that this has already happened with nuclear weapons.
My argument is that this Peter Principle process will reach it's climax long before your utopia arrives.
Then I'm sorry to have wasted your time. Rest assured, I'll waste no more of it.
Well, no problem, because I'm wasting your time too. There appears to be no chance we will avoid what I'm pointing through via a process of reason, so there really isn't any point to me typing on the subject. Like you, I'm lost in my own little imaginary utopia.
1) an abundance of fossil fuels - still in the ground, and
2) the cost of applying the technology.
The idea that renewable sources of energy are necessarily unreliable or insufficient to the task - is not a genuine obstacle, if applied on a sufficiently large scale. But we'll come to that in due course. First, we must address the question of how to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This may seem like an insurmountable issue - but the solution I devised is very simple, and entirely consistent with the principles of our economic system. Basically, fossil fuels are commodities, and commodities are assets. Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology.
Having overcome these two obstacles, the next question is "what technology?"
Here I would suggest taking on board the next big problem, and solving that at the same time. The next most fundamental need we have is abundant fresh water. 7/10ths of the earth's surface is covered with water, but fresh water is scarce. Only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water, and it's unevenly distributed around the world. That's the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage. Solving these two problems together, would be a tremendous boon to humankind, and is ultimately necessary to sustainability. So how do we do it?
Bearing in mind such issues as transmission loss over long distances, I would suggest that solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, could produce electricity - used to power desalination and electrolysis, producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel at sea, collected by ship, or pumped through pipelines to shore. The geographical area available at sea is incredibly vast, and effectively shading the ocean, with thousands of square kilometers of solar panels would also help combat global warming.
Desalination can be achieved via evaporation - heating sea water and collecting the steam. Steam can drive a turbine, to produce electricity - at voltages, adequate to power electrolysis. Electrolysis is the process of breaking the atomic bonds between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in water, by passing an electric current through it. Thus, these two process work hand in hand - producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen - when compressed into a liquid gas, contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum by weight, but when burnt (oxidized) the hydrogen atoms recombine with an oxygen atom, giving back the energy spent wrenching them apart - and producing no pollutant more volatile than water vapour.
Burning hydrogen in traditional power stations would provide the base load for the energy grid - rather than, depending directly on renewable power sources, and the fresh water could be used to reclaim wasteland for agriculture and habitation - thus protecting environmental resources from over-exploitation. Eventually, this whole technological complex would power itself (as long as the sun shines) without adding a molecule of carbon to the atmosphere. Ships powered by hydrogen, would collect and bring water and fuel ashore.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The reason for animals to prosper in Chernobyl exclusion zone is very natural: life in the wild is short and radiation effects in the long term. Hence the animals can reproduce before radiation effects kick in. This is btw the similar reason NASA basically opts for older astronauts for long term space missions: younger one's could fall ill to radiation during their lifetime, older astronauts die naturally.
And lets remember that the Chernobyl accident's radiation was equivalent to the radiation of 500 nuclear weapons being detonated. The exclusion zone itself basically shows how wildlife springs back once humans are taken out of the environment.
Ok then, let's all repeat our posts yet again. Here's mine.
1) Assets which can't be used have no market value.
2) Assets without a market value can not be mortgaged.
3) You have no funding source for all your grand plans.
4) Your utopian dream is dead.
To debunk the claims above, prove to us that you would invest YOUR money in to a buried asset which can not be used until maybe some vague time way off in the distant future, long after you'll be dead.
Or...
Be honest enough to admit that you've built your entire scheme on a foundation made of sand that you were too lazy to think through for yourself, thus requiring others to do the homework for you, a process which you seem to deeply resent.
Quoting Jake
If I respected your intelligence in the least - that might matter, but I haven't got time for the closed minded, less yet the unpleasant. We're done. I will not speak to you again.
Whatever CO2 we put up will be scrubbed out of the atmosphere by the oceans. If we burn all the coal, the atmosphere will be back to normal in around 100,000 years.
If something unforeseen pops up and makes us extinct, there will still be life. The world doesn't need to be saved. :smile:
Quoting karl stone
Really? And how much energy one has to need for the steel plant in Sweden using hydrogen you referred to? Energy infrastructure needs energy to be built, yet 90 percent of the carbon emissions from electricity generation in the United States come from coal-fired power plants.
Quoting karl stone
My basic point is that our energy policies have to be tuned to reality and not wishfull thinking or the ignorance of the masses. The basic line is that when Coal power far kills hundred fold more people (basically counted in the millions) than nuclear and nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases, why are we then giving up first on nuclear? And taking off a energy source that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses has meant that then fossil fuels are used because the renewable energy infrastructure is not there yet. Sure, there are risks, but these risks have to put in some kind of rational scale to the danger of others. The problem is that environmental friendly administrations in many countries (perhaps with the exception of the US) can make too ambitious goals like Sweden did, and then fall totally flat on those goals as those goals simply were not realistic in the first place. Then as the energy policy has basically failed, we use the old energy resources, namely fossil fuels.
I don't have anything against a hydrogen economy, yet that still begs the question of where the electricity to produce hydrogen fuels comes from. Nowdays global hydrogen production is 90% done by fossil fuels.
We might need to Frank. Climate change can also go the other way. We might need to stave off an ice age someday - if only we survive our technological adolescence.
Quoting frank
Are you unaware of the dire warnings issued by thousands of scientists? Or do you have solid grounds to disagree with specialists in this particular field?
Quoting frank
The world? No! Humankind - the only intellectually intelligent animal we're aware of, the knowledge we've gained, the art and literature, the music and cuisine, the comedy - the tragedy, is in my view worth saving.
I understand. You love us.
That, or fewer people? :chin: If there were no humans none of the issues we're discussing would have become problematic, would they? So focus clearly on the elephant in this topic: humans are the problem. The topic asks "how to save the world?", and there is an obvious answer.... :gasp:
Antinatalism? :roll:
VHEMT
I think we're incredibly conscious of the dangers of nuclear power and go to extraordinary lengths to contain it. That's not so with fossil fuels. So, it's not really a fair comparison - or rather, such a comparison only carries one so far.
Quoting ssu
It's powered by hydrogen made from renewable electricity - exactly what I'm proposing we do on a global scale.
Quoting ssu
We would need to use existing fossil fuel infrastructure to overcome the need for fossil fuels, that's true - but surely that's a better use of fossil fuels than building new nuclear power stations, that wouldn't provide a comprehensive solution for domestic, industrial and transport energy needs. Further, they cost vast amounts of money and energy to build, they're potentially dangerous, there's no solution to the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste already stored in decaying bunkers all over the US, and no doubt - other countries. Compare that to 350 square miles of solar panels - used to produce hydrogen - broken down any way you like:
350 x 1 mile square
175 x 2 miles square etc..
700 x 1/2 mile square.
any part of which breaks, causes no environmental damage, and can be replaced very easily. Nuclear is no contest.
Quoting ssu
Are you accusing me of either wishful thinking or playing upon the ignorance of the masses? I just want to be clear before I tell you where to go to do something unpleasant with a particular object.
Quoting ssu
I don't know that we are. I know Germany and Japan are - but the French company EDF want to build a nuclear power station in the UK, and agreed an electricity price with the government about 3 times the market price. Make of that what you will!
Quoting ssu
I mentioned before something before called 'base load.' It's a tricky concept, but basically refers the "umph" necessary to power the electricity grid. With a piecemeal application of renewable energy technology like German wind and solar farms, you can get still and cloudy days that don't provide the "umph" necessary to power the grid. I rather suspect that if Germany is building new coal power plants, they are as a backup. Because there can be little doubt as to the efforts they've gone to promote renewables. It's conceivable that divesting from nuclear created a shortfall - they are supplementing with coal, but their direction of travel is clear.
Quoting ssu
Really? What happened in Sweden?
Quoting ssu
Oh, I see - you mean, you having dismissed my plan for floating solar farms producing hydrogen fuel as wishful thinking - and/or preying upon the ignorance of the masses. That is a head scratcher. Good luck with that!
If that's what you truly believe - kill yourself! You are the only person on earth you have a right to say shouldn't exist. No? Hypocrite!
I pm'd you. :smile:
Erm... Of course I love us. I love me. I want my genetic, intellectual and economic legacy to be carried forward. I want human inquiry and creativity to reach its full potential - whatever that may be. If there's a way to travel to the stars - we'll find it. It might be alternate dimensions, or uploading our minds into machines. It might even be God. But whatever it is, I'd belong to that legacy - and thus my life now would have meaning. I don't think there's any meaning to life if we chart off the edge of the map in the near future. It's just masturbation. An empty gesture.
p.s. I read your PM and I'll keep an eye out! Thanks!
So it gives your life meaning now to work for the well-being of your descendents. So you know your ancestors felt the same way about you. They blessed your life without knowing you.
I would say remember to honor them by looking on this world with a loving eye. So many people who engage this issue come to it with abiding hatred for humanity. It's a breath of fresh air to meet someone who comes to it with love.
:blush:
You've nailed it. This is the main problem. Public opinion is prone to scares and ignorance and politicians actually won't go against it. Hence energy policy can be out of touch of reality.
Quoting karl stoneThat's the whole problem! Nobody is against renewable energy, but just how we get out of using fossil fuels is the question. And why wouldn't we use nuclear energy as a stop gap energy resource rather than coal, which is many times deadlier and is one of the main sources to the greenhouse effect?
Quoting karl stone
No. But energy policies in general can be based on whishful thinking and hence be basically decietful.
Quoting karl stone
Explained it earlier, but I'll tell it again. In 1980s Sweden made a public referendum on it's energy policy and after the anti-nuclear result the goverment vowed to close down all of it's nuclear power plants by 2010 and be using renewable energy. In 2010 Sweden was producing more energy from it's nuclear power plants than in 1980 and the government had silently given up it's agenda of a non-nuclear Sweden.
This is an example of energy policy falling totally flat on it's goals. Especially with coal power this can happen too as the public isn't at all so afraid of coal power as they are of nuclear power. Add to the form that it's typically an domestic resource employing many people on coal mines and you get the picture why people wouldn't be so enthusiastic to drop coal. The real "devil in the details" is what you said: we use existing fossil fuels for the change to renewables. Is there really going to be the change? How long will this change really take? Are here the objectives and goals made realistically or not?
And no small measure of self regard! But thank you Frank. That's a kind thing to say and a lovely thing to hear. I do think there's a natural moral duty to the struggles of past generations, to make good on what evolution, hard work and sacrifice have provided - to use our abilities and our knowledge to further the cause of future generations. To not give it our all is the most egregious betrayal, not just of future generations who will suffer for our failure, but of past generations who built all this. Giants upon whose shoulders we stand.
No. We fit nicely into our cities. The best way to decrease population growth is to make people to be more affluent. Rich people have less kids than poor people universally. It might happen that in our lifetime we see the peak of humanity, and then a global population decrease.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Who sees us like this?
I think that we are just a very successfull very adaptive and resourceful animal species and hence part of life in this planet. Typically the "human haters" see us as not a part of life making a huge divide between "us" and "nature". We can have an influence on events, but we don't pose a threat to life on this planet just as an asteroid hitting the planet won't pose a threat to the existence of life on this planet. The sun in it's end of it's life cycle will cause the death of life in this planet. And that's not something that is going to happen very soon.
Quoting karl stone
Philosophers, mind your manners! Gentlemen never walk off in a huff.
You both recognize that we face grave problems. You disagree about methods of avoiding catastrophe. Situation: Normal.
If the way forward were so obvious, and were we so dispassionate as to see with perfect clarity, we would have avoided all our problems. As it happens the way forward has usually not been at all obvious at the moment. That's why we spend so much time hacking our way through dense thorns and nettles, not knowing if we are even hacking in the right direction.
A part of our primate heritage has endured through the stone age of hunting and gathering, through the first grain harvest, through the age of bronze and iron, through the dawn of civilization, on into the present moment: the ape's inability to think about long term consequences. Only with great difficulty can we plan 25 or 30 years into the future. 50 years seems to be about the limit. Hundreds of years is out of the question. And 50 years planning assumes that we even see the necessity to plan that far in advance. Usually we don't.
The oil mortgage plank in your platform needs clarification.
A mortgage is given by a bank because the value of the property can be cashed out if the loan is not paid. Oil in the ground can indeed be mortgaged as long as there is no barrier to its extraction and sale. IF society decides to leave the rest of the oil in the ground, then it ceases to be a mortgageable property.
Once we pump up the last barrel of obtainable oil, there will still be lots of oil in the ground. It just won't be practically obtainable by fracking or any other method. The unobtainable oil has no more value than the immense and lovely diamonds produced on a planet orbiting a distant star.
We can observe that you again declined to respond to a specific concise challenge to the funding scheme for your utopian vision.
Each of the following simple, concise, direct to the point statements are true.
1) Assets which can't be used have no market value.
2) Assets without a market value can not be mortgaged.
3) You have no funding source for all your grand plans.
4) Your utopian dream is dead.
If anyone feels one or more of these statements are not true, they are of course free to explain why they feel that is so, and hopefully will do so with equal concise directness. No wandering walls of text I hope.
What might make your utopian dreams take on some reality would be to drop poorly conceived ideas your ego has become attached to, and try again. So you didn't get it right on the first try. So what? Nobody is stopping you from getting over it, rolling up your sleeves, and taking another shot at the problem.
We might, that's true. But nobody is going to invest today's money in such a remote distant possibility, especially given that we are currently racing hard in the opposite direction.
Quoting karl stone
If solar generated hydrogen is a practical energy source (and let's say it is) then the logical place from which to obtain capital finance is the market. Since the technology is scalable, you don't have to finance the final stage before the first stage is built. IF you built the final stage of the project today, had 300 square miles of solar panels and a plant cranking out hydrogen, and freighters lined up to take it away you wouldn't be able to sell much of it because the industrial base isn't ready to receive and use H. What you would do is finance a 10 square mile solar panel set up, located near the right shore, and start producing electricity, drinking water, and some H. The electricity and water could be sold to the nearby shore (i.e., India). The H would have to find its market. The profit could be plowed back into the operation, or used to pay dividends. When you were ready to expand, additional shares could be sold to finance enlarging the plant. And so on down the line.
The usual way to pay for capital projects is either a national subsidy or the capital market.
I would summarize the difference in our perspectives this way.
We're building a global technological machine. As the engine of a machine is made more powerful the guidance system for that machine has to be updated as well.
KARL: Karl seems to feel that the human guidance system for the global technological machine can be successfully updated by some vague method that he can't seem to articulate beyond repeating "science as truth". Such vagueness seems acceptable to Karl, so he is up for full speed ahead on further construction of the global technological machine.
JAKE: Given that neither Karl or anybody else has presented a credible plan for how human maturity will be upgraded to successfully manage an ever accelerating array of ever greater powers, I've suggested we slow the growth of the machine while we figure this out.
We can surely have reasonable disagreements about how much power human beings can successfully manage, and at what rate we can successfully receive new powers.
The "more is better" relationship with knowledge and power doesn't seem reasonable, because such a paradigm seems to assume that human beings can successfully manage ANY amount of power delivered at ANY rate.
When Lise Meitner was walking through the winter park thinking about whether the atom could be fissioned, it did occur to her that a great deal of power would be released. She, being a very smart primate, was pleased to see that the equations she had sketched out worked. It didn't occur to her to burn her notes and say nothing about it. She reasoned her way to identifying fission as a possibility; others could and would do the same thing, sooner or later. People like Meitner or Rutherford, who discovered the proton earlier in the 20th Century, weren't thinking about bombs. They were just doing their physicist thing. Which is of course what your are pointing out: smart people just doing their thing risks our undoing. That, and completely ill-willed assholes doing their thing...
We primates are capable of worrying about our present situation, and maybe the immediate future of our children -- but we are not capable of practically thinking 100 years or a thousand years into the future. Most of us are "detail" people. Even people who see the Big Picture fail to see a big enough view of what's happening.
Our deficiencies are not personal: they are a feature of the species. If we had 20/20 vision into the future, we'd be paralyzed with fear. We wouldn't be able to do anything. We know that we are primates, but being primates prevents us from fully utilizing that knowledge. Just because we know we belong to the primate family, doesn't mean that we can do anything much about ourselves.
I'm hoping that Karl will see there is a real alternative to mortgaging oil in the ground.
Visionaries very often work alone. When they start working with other people, they start receiving annoying (but very useful) new information, and their vision or invention improves. I suspect Karl has spent a lot of time working on this alone. It seemed like a compete and perfect idea. The trouble with sharing one's bright ideas is that they aren't always immediately recognized as brilliant. Quite annoying, really.
That seems like a reasonable argument, from a certain perspective - but in fact it's not. It doesn't recognize that ideological motives for action cut across the grain of nature. Your comments demonstrate quite clearly how an assumption that ideologies are true and authoritative, limits the application of technology. But we have followed those ideas to this point, where we now know we are under threat, and though we have the knowledge and technology to meet the challenge, we lack the will to apply it. We have to transcend that rationale.
If renewable energy could displace fossil fuels through market mechanisms alone, it would have happened already. But the ubiquitous position of fossil fuels in the market makes it more economically rational to continue using fossil fuels, than it does to change. Inelasticity of demand for energy - basically ensures that, whatever the price - we'll pay it. Even at the vast expense of building oil rigs, and towing them miles out to sea, to drill holes in the seabed, two miles down - it's more economically rational to do that, than it is to collect free radiant energy from the sun. It's a trap - and one that will strangle us to death!
Bearing in mind the dire warnings issued by scientists in recent weeks and months - a more comprehensive approach is warranted. I do not insist it be my approach - but it's the best idea of which I'm aware, that addresses all the relevant factors (of which I'm aware.) Describing this approach illustrates the relevant issues - issues which must be addressed by any other idea. Your argument, reasonable as it may seem - doesn't address the one reason we're doing this at all: climate change!
If I were merely trying to start a business - I'd use mirrors to heat sea water, to produce clean water and steam to drive a turbine to produce electricity, and irrigate wasteland for agriculture. But I'm trying to save the world from a fossil fuel addiction, built into the very infrastructure of society. And that's like... the end of Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus fires an arrow through a dozen axe heads.
The particular approach I describe - mortgaging fossil fuels to provide funding to build floating solar farms, producing hydrogen and fresh water, is quite simply, the cheese at the end of the maze. When you work the problem - it's there. And it maintains, and works with the larger part of existing energy infrastructure. Hydrogen can be burnt in power stations, and distributed at petrol stations with fairly minimal adaptions to existing technology. I think we can do a little better than this:
If you'll forgive me for going on at such great length - I want to address again, this question of mortgaging an asset that cannot be used, so has no value. I think we're getting hung up on the word mortgage. I cannot think of a more apt word - but the economic logic of commercial assets that follows from the word, is unwelcome baggage. Funding on such a scale could only be had with government assurances; essentially, sovereign debt. Sovereign debt is not secured by the mortgaging of an asset with a commercial value. It is however, necessary to monetize fossil fuels to keep them in the ground. There is no political will to simply ban them, and so this is where we came in, with transcending the rationale. Surety for the debt follows from an explicit political commitment to ensure the continued viability of civilization.
I hear you, that's true, and I've had that experience myself. In the end it boils down to where one's true loyalty lies, with the ideas, or with the person typing the ideas.
A related problem is that forum software presents each of us as if we're all standing on the same ground. But, some of us have been using philosophy forums for years and expect to be challenged no matter what we say, while the culture of philosophy forums may be a new experience for others.
I'm in favor of Karl continuing his quest, and feel that will go better if he doesn't get too attached to any particular scheme. If one idea is debunked, just try again, on to the next idea.
Yes, scientists are not evil, they're just doing what they were born to do with typically good intentions. The problem is that while we can be very smart technologically, we aren't very smart philosophically. Technologically we're going 100mph, philosophically we're going 5mph, and thus a dangerous gap is opening up between the two.
I disagree. The reason has been that the technology hasn't been there earlier to make renewable energy like wind and solar competitive compared to fossil fuels. Once it's far cheaper to produce renewable energy than produce energy with fossil fuels, then the market mechanism takes over.
It's as simple as that.
Quoting karl stone
Perhaps the thing is about using oil and coal to produce energy and this is the big issue. Yet there are a variety of other uses for oil like making plastics.
My understanding is that the real obstacle is that renewables can not yet fully power our civilization. If they could provide the power we want we could simply tax fossil fuels out of the market.
A useful focus might be the question, what are the key obstacles preventing a full transition to renewable clean energy?
Why isn't it already far cheaper? What's the obstacle there?
As I said, technology, production costs. Take for example solar power. Battery technology has been one thing and the obvious reality that the sun doesn't shine always and the intensity is different around the World, hence there has to be some stop-gap power production nowdays. Then there is photovoltaic effieciency: how much the solar panel can transform sunlight into electricity. Let's remember that the whole technology of silicon solar cells was basically invented as late as the 1950's.
Nuclear weapons have been around for about 75 years and we haven't blown ourselves up yet. Their existence may in effect have prevented war between nuclear powers.
No new technology springs out of the box and takes over the market. It tends to take around 50 years (rough figure) for a new technology to fulfill its market potential. Take automobiles: The first autos had few roads designed for autos. There were few service facilities. The machines were not terribly reliable, and in crashes they just shattered (talk about unsafe at any speed). They were not terribly easy to use. One had to turn a crank to get them started. It took more than 30 years for everything to fall 1/2 way into place. A really good auto-friendly highway system wasn't built in this country until starting in the 1950s.
Passenger trains followed a slower course: The good old days of passenger travel were terrible. The railroads didn't make passenger travel comfortable or convenient. Where transfers were necessary one often had to walk quite a ways from one station to another. One might have to stay overnight to catch the next train. Dining cars didn't exist until late in the game. Ditto for comfortable Pullmans. We're talking... roughly 50 years between the first trains and comfortable trains (at least for the hoi polloi.)
The really luxurious trains waited until after WWII. It was a short-lived paradise. Roomettes rather than bunk beds; splendid dining cars; cocktail lounges; sightseeing domes (west of Chicago) and air conditioning were the new standard. this regime starting running down almost as soon as it began. The railroads never made a lot of money hauling passengers, and by the 1960s a lot of the roads were going broke hauling anything. (A long history of bad management finally killed a lot of railroad companies off.)
By 1970? Amtrak was created to take over a ghost of passenger travel. The promise of railroad travel began around 1840. It took about a century to finally become really nice, and then it died (all this only applies to the US.)
Indeed one could do that. But solar-thermal power hasn't taken off. Mirrors can focus a lot of heat, but not on cloudy days, and not at night.
Your solar to H plan is better.
Quoting karl stone
Right; I would just drop "mortgage" from your description. It has too many specific connotations connected to purchasing property or getting consumer loans.
Quoting karl stone
Where there is no political will, nothing happens. Period. Your plan is going to require plenty of political will too. I don't know exactly when political will is scheduled to arrive. It had better be pretty damn quick or we are totally screwed.
Right. So if I walked around with a hair trigger loaded gun in my mouth all day long every day, but the gun had never gone off, people such as yourself would say that I'm successfully managing my firearm.
So fossil fuels are still cheaper than renewables, and we don't have a good method of storing the energy generated by renewables? Is that a fair summary?
Quoting ssu
I don't believe that's correct. I think there's a massive 'hidden' advantage for fossil fuels in the fact that we've developed and applied the infrastructure - oil rigs, tanker ships, chemical refineries, cars and petrol stations etc, coal mines, railways, power stations - all of which enjoyed vast government support in the early days - that it seems, renewable energy is denied today. Subsidies for piecemeal application of renewable energy technology merely cement that structural disadvantage. If renewable energy is even nearly competitive - it's actually out performing fossil fuels by a huge margin. Given the kind of support for renewables, fossil fuels historically received - i.e. on a level playing field, renewable energy would easily win out.
Quoting ssu
That's true, and those are things we are going to need, assuming we secure a sustainable future now. We are past "peak oil" - and still burning a non-renewable resource at a rate of 100 million barrels a day, from which we derive thousands of products vital to civilized life. However:
"On average, U.S. refineries produce, from a 42-gallon barrel of crude oil, about 20 gallons of gasoline, 12 gallons of distillate fuel, most of which is sold as diesel fuel, and 4 gallons of jet fuel."
That adds up to 36 gallons of fuel, from a 42 gallon barrel of crude oil - leaving six gallons of waste, from which thousands of products are made. But do you think those products account for 600 million gallons of non-fuel waste per day? Assuming incorrectly, this waste only has the density of water, that's easily a trillion tons per year - about 300 million tons of which is made into plastic, and plastic is everywhere. It's choking the rivers and the oceans. So where's the other 700 million tons of non-fuel waste going? Someone should probably look into that.
Right, but it was a counter example to your suggestion that renewable energy should be applied piecemeal, and on a commercial basis, to compete with fossil fuels. If I were starting a business - I wouldn't go for solar/hydrogen. The start up costs are prohibitive. So I'd go for an ultimately less effective, but cheaper alternative. And this is the very dilemma renewable energy faces. It's subject to commercial demands (fossil fuels were not subject to in the early days) where prices are dictated by its main competitor.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Maybe you're right, but we're talking about it. The essential idea has been communicated, and now - we're talking about how oil could be monetized without being extracted. (That's a clumsy turn of phrase.) The one thing that hasn't come up yet, is that besides oil - there's about 2000 years worth of coal we can't burn either, and massive amounts of natural gas. I don't have an answer for that - other than, once renewable energy infrastructure is in place - there will be no economic motive to dig for coal.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I accept that's true - but politics is often the art of the possible. If we can prove it's possible - it might happen. If we can jigger the economics so that it's profitable, the chances of the political will manifesting are improved considerably. It's not an easy circle to square. (Theoretically, it would require a near infinite number of non-Euclidean geometric operations!) But seriously, this is either an incredibly difficult problem to solve - or it's very simple. Do we value human existence or not? I think we do - mostly our own, admittedly, but I think there's a number - a cost we're willing to bear for the continued existence of our species, and I'm trying to show we can meet with that number.
First of all, that's not a hidden fact. Secondly, all those factors you mention make fossil fuels cheap and the supply ample. Our transport fleet, ships, aircraft, trucks and personal cars won't immediately be replaced either. One has to count also this to the equation: it's not only that we are adding renewable to the mix, it's that we would be scrapping existing infrastructure that would still work for a long time. It's a huge task to replace and grow the sector when you are reducing energy production simultaneously.
Let's not forget that Germany is already paying the highest price for electricity in the EU (alongside Denmark). In my country (Finland) the price per KW/h is half of that in Germany. The cost has risen all the decade and this does start to have an effect for example on industry:
Even if a bit off the subject, this is a wonderfull example of how American transport policy (and the lack of it) has made a once fairly good transport system very insignificant and weak. Not the cargo and freight sector of it, but passenger rail.
Eisenhower opted for the highways and the focus was automobiles as the method of transportation. Likely a very American choice for the individualist US consumer. And while the railroad network was owned by private companies and they stuck to what was (is) profitable and that's freight, no wonder that passenger rail withered away. Without the government focusing on rail as in other countries, the passenger rail system is now so frail in the US. The niche of high speed passenger rail is now basically filled with passenger aircraft.
You reap what you sow.
I'm sorry, but the answer is no. If we valued human existence we wouldn't have thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats. Evidence. It can be so inconvenient.
We want to answer yes, we sincerely feel that we value human existence, but if we are to make it very simple and boil the answer down to a yes or a no, the evidence is telling us the answer is no.
The most important factor in the equation is us, a fact typically overlooked by all conversations that look upon climate change as a technical problem requiring a technical solution. The real problem is, we don't really give a shit. We want to avoid climate change, but only if it doesn't upset the modern consumer culture apple cart too much.
As example, imagine that some future president (there's no hope for the current one obviously) were to come on the TV and say that the only way we can avoid catastrophic climate change would be to turn off the Internet (just a simple example). There'd be a revolution, even though we got along just fine without the Internet for thousands of years, including most of my life.
If we somehow did develop abundant free clean energy the result would be that the economy would take off like a rocket, leading to an acceleration of species extinction, consumption of finite resources, more dangerous technologies etc. That is, the problem wouldn't be solved, it would just be moved from one box to another box.
Ultimately we can't solve climate change with technical fixes because at it's root it's not a technical problem, but a human philosophy problem. All we can do technically is convert the climate change problem in to another equally threatening array of problems.
We are a race of nerds. We are superficially quite savvy, but emotionally we are like little children. One need to look no farther than the nearest philosophy forum to see this phenomena in action.
I would say that climate change is a management problem; we need to stop making destructive exploitation profitable and incentivise sustainable production. And one crucial aspect to address is short term-ism in the economy. To plant a forest is to make a 50- 100 year investment, whereas to cut down a forest is to make an immediate profit. A democratic government has a hard time thinking further ahead than the next election. Fertilising the oceans is simple and cheap, and would make a huge contribution, but needs to be globally financed because it only has global benefits.
I didn't say it's a hidden fact. I said it's a 'hidden' advantage. I do not mean to suggest 'shhhh! - people don't know we have fossil fuel infrastructure' - but rather that enormous government aid in establishing fossil fuel infrastructure - is not reflected in the price of fossil fuel energy, with which - it was argued, renewable energy should compete.
You apparently understand the principle - because you say: "all those factors you mention make fossil fuels cheap and the supply ample." That's exactly what I meant - so how can renewable energy compete? I also agree: "Our transport fleet, ships, aircraft, trucks and personal cars won't immediately be replaced either." Which is why, I expect we will experience significant climate change - and have suggested building renewable energy infrastructure to produce fresh water and hydrogen. Abundant fresh water will be necessary for irrigation and habitation, and hydrogen can be used, with minimal adaptions, in power stations, cement and steel plants, while transport technology adjusts.
Quoting ssu
I have read the following passages - but I'm not reproducing them here. To me, the plight of the Mittelstand speaks of the need for abundant clean energy. The example of the wind turbine factory with a $100k hike in energy bills precisely illustrates my point, that renewable energy is a price taker - and not a price maker. The price of energy is set by the fossil fuel market - as is clearly stated:
Economic effects like this are complex, because arguably - that should make renewable energy more attractive, but at the same time - imposes costs on the industry that eat away at operating capital, and make for a stunted application of technology. In face of the existential threat climate change poses - I find it very difficult to understand why a comprehensive renewable energy infrastructure isn't government funded. Instead, they want me to stop eating meat, cycle to work and wear my overcoat indoors - just so they can keep pumping the black gold!
For the reason you cite in your paragraph:
Capital finance (embodied in a few hundred people who make major investment decisions) and fossil fuel owners don't care (can't care) about the environment, the various species, and whether you and I freeze or not. They pretty much MUST focus on perpetuating the life of the gold-egg laying goose and generating a steady stream of profits for hundreds of thousands stock holders.
You and I would experience too much cognitive dissonance to be worrying about the future of the species and at the same time doing business as usual.
The situation is reflected in the statements of some business leaders traveling to Saudi Arabia who were asked about their presence, considering the Saudi crowned thug's recent chopping up a journalist in their Turkish embassy. "I'm here to make deals; I'm not concerned about anything else."
That's really quite hopeful. Those people are on the frontline of climate change, and they're acting now - with some really quite amazing efforts. Below the great green wall story - there's a dozen other stories, all similarly hopeful. Solar farms, irrigation, agriculture. I'm almost ashamed to strike a pessimistic note - but facts are facts. The GRACE satellite conducted a major study of aquifer depletion, published in 2009, and the news was not good. About 2 billion people are dependent on water from aquifers - and they are being used up fast:
According to Jay Famiglietti, director of UCI’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling, “Most of the places that we see with the GRACE where groundwater is being depleted are the arid and semi-arid regions in those mid-latitudes,” he added. Many of these areas tend to be big population hubs. “Most of those are agricultural regions — the North China Plain, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Middle East, some southern Europe and North Africa. In the U.S., we see the Ogallala Aquifer and the Central Valley. Even the southeastern U.S. — you think of it as being very humid, but they are in the grips of a long-term drought, and so they are using groundwater, too.”
https://www.circleofblue.org/2012/world/satellite-perspectives-nasas-grace-program-sees-groundwater-from-space/
Like I've said above, we need to start making huge amounts of fresh water, and only with a renewable energy infrastructure can we do that. Otherwise, those 2 billion people will migrate in ever increasing numbers - and migration is already becoming a contentious political issue.
A lot of business leaders didn't go to Davos in the desert though - did they? Admittedly, it was mainly companies who's business model requires they give a crap about their public image - but nonetheless, it's a little simplistic to give me the Scrooge McDuck theory of capitalism as an explanation of our existential dilemma - particularly after I've given you an exquisite epistemic theory, identifying the fundamental problem as our relationship to science. Capitalism has achieved extraordinary things, and could do so much more. Focused by a science based political rationale on solving our problems, capitalism would solve them.
Scrooge McDuck vs. exquisite epistemic theory... Indeed capitalism could do more; much more. People like the Koch Brothers and the whole oil/coal industry are doing their capitalistic damnedest to do much much more.
I'm in the UK, and consider myself centrist. I liked Tony Blair - Labour Prime Minister from 1997- 2007, and I generally dislike the Conservatives. But I'm very suspicious of Jeremy Corbyn. He's too far left for my liking. I'm fine with capitalism with a social conscience - but dragging down the successful to make everyone equal is where I draw the line. One has to remember, I think - that production is fundamental to human welfare, and it's only in addition to productive activity that socialist values have any meaning whatsoever.
A capitalist economy - as opposed to a command economy, allows for personal and political freedom, a command economy must necessarily prohibit. In order to design production, a command economy must tell people what to do, when to do it, and cannot stand dissent of any kind - because the State manages production.
The miracle at the core of capitalism is the invisible hand - described by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations as the coincidence of rationally self interested actions that marry like the cogs of a wheel, to drive society forward. And it's real. It's a genuine miracle, that the goods and services people want and need are produced and distributed without any central planning whatsoever. It's rather ironic actually, that capitalism affords you the political freedom to be socialist!
In relation to our bigger problem, I honestly do not see capitalism as the guilty party, but rather - place blame with the failure to recognize science as truth from 1630, which had the effect of divorcing science as a valid understanding of reality, from science as a cornucopia of cool gadgets and neat ways to kill people. Had science as truth been integrated politically over the past 400 years - rather than decried at every turn as heresy, it would have provided a valid regulatory context for the conduct of capitalism - that would have outlawed the excesses, many assume paint capitalism as the villain of the piece.
In my view, capitalism is indispensable to any possible solution - and it's my aim to convince capitalist interests that they are best served - ending the race to the bottom by adopting scientifically valid standards of production. You might ask - "Why would they take on these regulatory burdens? It will reduce profits!" But not necessarily. If all companies are required to adopt the same standards, and all pay the same opportunity cost in regards existentially necessary environmental welfare regulations, there's no competitive disadvantage.
The USSR was a command economy sometimes described as "state capitalism". What the hell does that mean, you ask?
In state capitalism there is one corporation: the state. The state corporation runs industry, commerce, politics, religion, whatever there is to run. That is not "socialism" or "communism" as Marx defined it. It's just a totalitarian society. Marx described a system where all the institutions of capitalism (including the state) were replaced by a bottom-up system of social management.
The American socialist Daniel DeLeon felt that in democratic countries violent revolution was unnecessary and counterproductive, Rather, use the machinery of democracy (unionized work force, the ballot, political organization, education, etc.) to prepare the citizens to assume political and economic control of society.
Marx expected the bourgeoisie (the owning class) to inadvertently prepare the working class to take over the management and operation of production. How would this happen? By workers doing more and more skilled management type work. Employees perform most of the work involved in both managing and running British companies. Per Marx.
Of course, the owners don't expect the employees to take the company away from them. (That happens when the socialists are in power; the ownership of industries, capital property (like office buildings, warehouses, etc.) and so on are transferred to the employees of the companies. The primary task of governing a non-capitalist, socialist society is deciding economic matters: what to produce, how much, where to get the raw materials, and so forth, under the guidance of "production for need".
So and and so forth. I don't expect to convince you that this is what should or will happen. Now, the UK is not the US. Our political and class systems and history are quite different. Workers in the US have tended to have harsher experiences than workers in the UK have had, at least under the post-war labor governments. The same goes for much of Europe, which has had a longer history of social welfare programs than the US.
The US has done a much better job than you Brits of camouflaging the fault lines of class differences. Both the UK and the US have a ruling class, and an overlapping very wealthy class. Most American workers have been taught to not see class. That 5% of the population owns more wealth than the rest of the population is unbelievable to many Americans. Credit that to pervasive miseducation. Americans have drunk the kool aid that "Anyone can get rich in America." Your are poor because you just didn't try hard enough. ETC.
Ah, the "not real communism" defense. It never is, is it? Russia wasn't communist, Venezuela wasn't socialist - nor was Cuba, or anywhere else you care to mention. I don't suppose you've seen The Colony - with Emma Watson. (Harry Potter) It's about General Pinochet's Chile - which I don't suppose was real communism either. People, places and events in the film really happened though - and watching that film it's a good way to get inside what always seem to transpire when you convince people they are being disenfranchised for their own good.
I've read Marx, of course. I think he's plain wrong in the claim 'the history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggle.' If that were true - how could the working class lack the class consciousness necessary for his glorious revolution? Miseducation? His theory of historical materialism is fundamentally misconceived. But I don't agree with Karl Popper's assessment that it's unfalsifiable - in that it can explain away any fact brought before it, and is therefore pseudo-scientific.
Historical materialism can't explain the fact that hunter gatherer tribes agreed to join together to form societies - and didn't achieve that by overthrowing the alpha male dominated hierarchy. Rather it was achieved by inventing/discovering God as an objective authority for law. That wouldn't have been necessary if Marx's historical materialism were correct - there would be no need to account for the natural conflict of tribal hierarchies, by creating an objective authority - and laws that apply to everyone. Yet we find that all early civilizations had Gods - and world's apart, Egypt and South America for instance - built temples to their Gods in the shape of symbolic representations of hierarchical society, i.e. pyramids.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Overwhelmingly, hierarchies are hierarchies of competence. There's an intergenerational element - where the success of an ancestor can hand privilege to an utter buffoon, which explains the decline of the aristocracy in Europe, leaving little more than the occasional monarch symbolically hanging around. There's intergenerational disadvantage too - but a truly competent individual will tend to overcome that, and a capitalist society will gladly look past class differences where there's talent and tenacity that can be translated into profit. And here we come back to socialism.
The essential problem with revolutionary socialism is an artificial upturning of hierarchies of competence - i.e. a bottom-up system of social management. I don't agree that's what Marx was proposing exactly, he was talking about property held in common ownership for the common good. That's a command economy. The problem is that the natural hierarchy of competence will reassert itself over time - and so pogroms against the intelligent and talented are consistent features of communist societies. Pol Pot - for example, went around killing people who wore glasses, or who spoke a foreign language. But I guess he wasn't a real communist either. They never are!
You are quite right, though more careful use has a role also. But forests make their own water, or their neighbour's. There is a complex relationship, not fully understandable, between vegetation and aquifers, and there would be some effect also from large scale solar cells cooling the atmosphere and increasing rainfall. But enough is known about the cycle of desertification to understand that the loss of vegetation leads to erosion, faster runoff, and sets up a vicious cycle that can be reversed with careful management. It's not called 'the green movement' for nothing - caring for our green brothers that form the 'other' side of the carbon cycle that we are the consumer side of, has got to be the backbone of the solution.
As a side note, to answer some of the criticism of your scheme to use hydrogen, it is quite possible to produce fairly conventional fuel from solar. This would have advantages in not requiring a total transformation of present infrastructure.
There's a fair amount of unravelling to do here. This topic asks "How to save the world?". The question that sits just before that one is: WHY does the world need saving? And I don't think that answer to that one is contentious, or one that anyone here would argue with: humans are the problem.
No-one mention killing anyone, although that is certainly one possibility. VHEMT, for example, ask people not to breed, they don't recommend mass extermination. Nor do I. Oh, and please don't ask me questions, then answer them yourself. As straw-man attacks go, I suppose it's efficient, but it's usually considered necessary/appropriate for your correspondent(s) to make their own mistakes, not for you to make them on their behalf, and then debunk them! :razz:
I've seen something like this recently; it might even have been you who brought it up before - I'd have to check. I argued against it - not because I think it's a bad idea per se. It's a carbon neutral fuel that works in an internal combustion engine - and that's a good thing. We get the fuel without adding any carbon to the atmosphere. Rather, I was arguing for the approach I favour - which as you know, is a vast array of solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, producing hydrogen fuel and fresh water.
One of the reasons I chose that approach is, first - because it could provide the world's energy needs sustainably, but secondly, because it doesn't require a total transformation of existing energy infrastructure. I considered a number of ways to utilize hydrogen, including piping hydrogen into the home as a gas, for use in hydrogen fuels cells - producing electricity. That would require a total transformation of infrastructure - and that's why I ruled it out. But beyond the solar/hydrogen production infrastructure, using hydrogen in power stations - energy is distributed through existing grids, and for transport, hydrogen distributed at gas stations - only requires modification of the ICE - (internal combustion engine.) Given that BMW's limited production of an 187 mph HICE - I know it's possible.
Quoting unenlightened
Well, this is another reason I favour the approach I described - the increasingly desperate need to produce fresh water in vast quantities. Desalination is an energy intensive process however you do it. Electrolysis is the method I favour - and that works well with floating solar panels. But am I going to argue against planting trees? Hell, no! It's precisely to break man's dependence on deforestation for agriculture - often, subsistence agriculture, we need to produce fresh water. Re-planting trees is great - obviously, but logically, might we not want to stop burning forests to clear land for agriculture first? To develop wasteland for agriculture - we need to produce fresh water.
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being a dick about it - but that's not my intention. I'm merely explaining my reasons for picking this particular approach. I love the great green wall - I'm all for planting things; you plant them, and fingers crossed - I'll water them!
I'd argue against it. It's too simplistic. It implies we have no choice but to destroy the environment, but that's not so. The reason we have had such a detrimental impact on the environment is because our relationship to science is wrong, as explained above.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I don't think so. Technically, it would be very difficult. Eight years of World War Two only killed 50-80 million people. That may seem like a lot, and it is - but in terms of human population as a whole, it's a fraction of a fraction. Besides, how could anyone live with that afterward? We might try, but it would be utterly corrosive to have murdered billions of innocent people for our own gain. And imagine the smell!
Quoting Pattern-chaser
So, besides not eating meat, cycling to work, wearing my overcoat indoors - now you're telling me my kids are a problem. I say this without malice - but fuck you. Live your life as you choose - and bon voyage, but don't tell me that I'm not worthy of existence - because I fucking well am. Part of that existence is a genetic legacy. Not only do I have a natural right to seek to further my genetic legacy - but I have a moral duty to the struggles of all previous generations, to make good on what they suffered to provide me with. From the evolution of my physical form, to the knowledge they gained, and the society they built - that I may make good for future generations - and thereby perpetuate my genetic legacy.
Sorry Pattern, we're not allowed to look behind the curtain at the assumptions the thread is built upon. That would be philosophy, and we all know philosophy is wrong, bad, rude, etc etc blah, blah, blah.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
In another thread awhile back I suggested that an important method for saving the world would be to produce far fewer men (never did I mention extermination), given that men cause 90%+ of the crime and violence in the world. However, choosing to produce fewer men was deemed genocide by the mods and the thread was deleted.
Imho, that's the real threat from climate change. Climate change will destabilize weak societies, leading to geopolitical instability, and then wars. It will be mostly men who will decide to go to war, and mostly men who will do the fighting, just as it is overwhelmingly men who conduct endless wars on philosophy forums.
Turning science in to yet another "one true way" religion is swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.
Oh goodie, now we can yell fuck you at each other. And here I was holding back all this time for nothing. Whoopee! :smile:
In 1750, when the world had about 10% the population it has now, it was hell bent on going through the industrial revolution which began the accelerated deterioration to the ecosystems and contributing largely to the present climatic conditions. I don't think the answer is fewer men, it should be smarter men. The better question is, what would contribute to increased social intelligence?
Quoting karl stone
I'm neither telling nor asking you to do anything at all. Why do you think I am? :chin:
I especially didn't tell you that you are not worthy of existence. I think you are worthy of existence, but I've been wrong before....
I have observed that humans are the cause of the world's problems - which we are, sadly :fear: - and that one way to sure most of the world's problems would be to get rid of us. [N.B. getting rid of us is most easily achieved by stopping us from breeding, not by killing us all. As you say, this is impractical.] But that's not the only possible solution, and it's not one that I personally recommend. But you have created a thread asking how to save the world. Some things that would save the world provoke anger and insults from you. Why is this? Do you mean to ask how the world might be saved if we all stick to your beliefs?
You'd argue against it .. by pointing out that, while it's actually true, and you aren't and can't argue against it, it's all our fault for not treating science correctly. :chin: Is that it? :chin:
It's the natural inference of your position, as set out in a thread entitled - How to Save the World. You're making people the problem - and that's always wrong. If it's something you believe - fine, but don't publish it - because you are suggesting I should adopt that approach too. You are implying that my existence, and my children's existence is not worthwhile.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
To be frank, it's not your call.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I don't dispute that, but that's not all you're saying.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
It's not the right answer. Consider philosophical conundrums like - "If a tree falls in forest.." and you might begin to understand why it's not the right answer. We matter. Intelligent life is the first addition to the universe in 15 billion years - an emergent property that should reach its full potential.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
You fooled me! I thought you were serious. In that case, thank you for bringing this issue up - despite my angry reaction, it's actually been useful to argue against this view.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I'm just passionate. I don't mean to cause anyone pain or harm. But there are times when it's necessary to bang on the table. I'm sorry if I offended you.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
No. I mean to say that adopting my "beliefs" will save the world. I'm not asking - I'm telling. This is a proposal, not a question - a broad brushstrokes plan, that explains from philosophical premises where we went wrong, and how to correct it without turning the world upside down. Or killing everyone!
Come up with a way to make men only as violent as women, and you've got a plan worth talking about. Until then, violent men threaten to crash civilization with all this power we're giving them.
Women pose about 10% of the threat that men pose. Just turn on your TV and look. Who is it on the screen doing all the carnage? Not your Aunt Betty! :smile:
A species which deliberately aims thousands of hydrogen bombs down it's own throat qualifies as "intelligent life"??
There you go. And if you're going to claim the right to bang on the table, that right has to be extended to your conversation partners as well.
There's exactly no chance that humanity will adopt your beliefs. So where do we go from there? Are we still interested in saving the world? Or is it your beliefs that we're really saving here?
By the way, it was Salvador Allende who was the democratic socialist in Chile; General Pinochet was a run of the mill South American dictator after Allende. The US helped kill Allende in 1973.
By men, I mean human beings, both men and women, who also equally succumb to power trips. I think the major difference has been the persistence of gender roles over most people's personas. With time, greater realisation of equality between men and women will result in greater diffusion of previous gender-defined roles and attitudes.
I cannot promise I'll be there soon - I have my hands fairly full, and while I thought it was important to state a position here, I'm not out to spread the message. The moderate left has achieved an enormous amount for ordinary people - and plays an important role balancing out oligarchic power. Personally, I'd have a political spectrum ranging from ideologue to scientist - but left to right will have to do for now!!
Quoting Bitter Crank
I may have got it wrong - I didn't research the film after I saw it - The Colony with Emma Watson, for the benefit of readers. Astonishing film based closely on real events. I got the impression it was Pinochet - but I could be mistaken.
Apologies, but this is just trendy political correctness fad of the day stuff, which ignores literally millions of years of human evolution. Not a theory. Turn on your TV. See for yourself who is, and who long has been since the dawn of time, doing the violence.
Personally, you would endorse a science worshiping ideology. You are the spectrum! :smile:
Thank you for acknowledging my doom mongering trolling while at the same time claiming not to.
Your comment here is a classic example of the true believer mindset. You keep assuming that if only I was reading your posts then I would obviously see the genius of your position and join the religion you are selling. What's happened instead is that I've read all your posts and presented an effective philosophical rebuttal, which you are unable to handle emotionally, and so you are running from further engagement.
My ideas are NOT subsumed under your paradigm, because you don't even really know what your paradigm is other than to repeat the phrase "science as truth". Speaking of explanatory potential, please explain to us how you will convert humanity to your "science as truth" religion. How about those climate change denier Trump voters, what will you say to them to win them over? Even if your "science as truth" religion really is the "one true way" that doesn't matter unless you can somehow convert much of humanity over to your point of view. And that's not going to happen any time soon, or ever.
And meanwhile, the clock is ticking, as we race at ever faster speeds towards some power which we won't be able to successfully manage, just as is predicted by the Peter Principle. It's not doom mongering to point to this reality, just as it's not doom mongering to inform your neighbor that they're about to catch their house on fire with those leaves they are burning in the front yard. My position is just simple common sense, no more complicated than how we routinely limit the powers available to children.
The problem you're experiencing is that you've bought lock, stock and barrel in to a simplistic "more is better" group consensus which is not capable of common sense. The group consensus says, "Of course we should limit the powers available to teens!" and then on the teen's 18th birthday the tune changes to "Of course we should have as much power as we can possibly get, as fast as possible!" This mindset is just NONSENSE which I'm attempting to liberate you from.
I'm sorry. I really have no personal beef with you. But you're living in a dream land, and you've brought your dream to a philosophy forum, an Internet service which specializes in ripping things to shreds. Hey, my stuff gets ripped to shreds too, it's not personal, it's not about you.
So, you're saying science doesn't establish valid knowledge of reality. It hasn't built, fact by hard won fact into a highly valid and coherent understanding of reality, as it really is - to compare to ideological conceptions of reality. You're saying the world did come with nation states borders painted on it - and that money does grow on trees, naturally. You're saying that thousands of conflicting religious ideologies are all true, and not at all made up - but that science is voodoo? You're saying if we destroyed every religious text and every science book today - it would be religion that was back in 100 years, exactly the same, and not the science books? Well, hallelujah, God Save the Queen, and get your hands off my stack!
If women were better suited to saving the world, they would not be passive by-standers as men sank everything into oblivion. Let's face it, neither men nor women know better when it comes to saving the world. Which brings me back to my point that, what's needed is more intelligence about managing human affairs. We need to be able to collectively realise the greater need, be able to collectively organise our priorities appropriately, be able to collectively overcome our personal limitations for the greater good, develop greater collective self-control to avoid unnecessary antagonism, etc, etc.
Women may seem like better choices from certain points of view in social interactions but from a leadership stance, history shows how fickle they've been compared to men. From my perspective, everything considered, I'll call it a tie between them. It's an unholy balance between men who've been too ambitious to realise the limit to their capacities and women who've been too submissive to exert any significant orientation to the overall course of human progress especially against the mire we currently find ourselves in. Just like a bicycle would stop regardless of whether the brakes were applied to the front or back wheels, so also negative impulses in human development could have been extensively diminished by either men or women, leaders or followers. The fact that none has been any the wiser to fully realise their role to the greater society, speaks volumes about the application of human intelligence thus far.
Quoting karl stone
I agree to this, no problem. But that doesn't automatically equal more science being better in every case. My complaint is not with science which I see as being an effective tool, which like any tool is neither good nor bad in and of itself. My complaint is with our relationship with science.
Valid knowledge of reality is not a "one true way", imho. It is instead a powerful tool to be used with discerning judgment. As I've explained ad nauseam, we already deliberately limit the powers available to children, and all I'm doing is extending that concept to adults. Obviously adults can handle more power than children. But that doesn't automatically equal adults being able to successfully manage any amount of power delivered at any rate.
And yet, that is what the group consensus requests from science, ever more power delivered at an ever accelerating rate.
What does this have to do with your opening post? Your proposal, whatever it's specific merits may be as a technical solution, arises out of this flawed group consensus assumption, ie. more=better. I'm not ignoring your proposal, I'm addressing the assumption it's built upon because, you know, this is a philosophy forum and digging below the surface is the kind of thing philosophers tend to do.
The group consensus, the majority of us, don't see a need to examine the "more is better" assumption because the validity of that assumption is taken to be an obvious given. This is understandable because the "more is better" assumption has been very valid for a very long time.
However, due to the awesome power of science which you correctly point to, the world is changing, and changing at an ever accelerating rate. And some of the cherished assumptions of the past are not going to find a happy home in the new environment which is emerging.
If we cling to outdated assumptions and try to build solutions upon them, we are likely to create more problems than we solve.
I've always found One Truthers scary. :scream: Discussion is pointless. :fear: Shame. :roll:
I'm not claiming that women are gods with all the answers, only that they aren't as violent as men, a factor which grows in importance as we fill the world with ever larger powers.
Quoting BrianW
I agree with all this of course. My point is that we're not likely to complete such a centuries long process because violent men will use the awesome powers now available to us to crash the system long before we get there. You know, thousands of hydrogen bombs, locked, loaded and ready to go at a moment's notice. A single press of a button by a single person, and it's game over.
I note just one last time: no-one has suggested killing. Except you. The human race could be got rid of, if that is our aim, by simply preventing us breeding. There is no need/call for piles of bodies. Straw man. :roll:
Ditto. I'm sorry too. For my over-reaction - just to be crystal clear.
So, you're saying science doesn't establish valid knowledge of reality.
— karl stone
Quoting Jake
But it's only indiscriminately more - if you ignore science as truth, and only apply technology for profit and power. If you accept there's a natural responsibility owed to valid knowledge of reality, because it's valid, it will guide us in applying technology in a valid way.
I'll try and give you a metaphor to explain the principle. Imagine yourself in the middle of a city with a map of that city - and you want to get to... the train station. But you're holding the map upside down. You follow the directions - left, right, straight on - but don't get to the train station. Why not? Because there's a cause and effect relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action - and the consequences of that action. i.e. if your info is wrong, you can do the right thing - but you won't get where you're going. And that's us - doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.
I'm going to stop there - because I need to know you have understood this concept.
I've always found emojis childish - particularly in a forum such as this. That aside, I'm not a "one truther." I am however arguing that science constitutes a highly valid and coherent understanding of reality - we need government and industry to be responsible to, or we're all going to die.
Otherwise, I don't care what people in general believe in. I have no desire to go around disabusing little old ladies of their belief in God. But we're philosophers - and government and industry similarly, have profound responsibilities that transcend those of the man on the Clapham omnibus.
Really? A strawman? Okay Pattern, tell me - what happens when enough people don't sign up for your approach? All those who have signed up to the view that people are the problem - aren't going to migrate toward a policy of involuntary extermination? After what they've sacrificed - they won't drop the "V" from VHEM?
Would this include a detached, objective, impartial, evidence based observation of the human condition, built upon the thousands of years of history we have available to examine? Are human beings part of the reality which we should seek to develop a coherent understanding of?
Nothing. This is a discussion forum. I'm not out to convert anyone to a radical course. This topic asks how to save the world, and I (and others) have offered alternatives that you seem unwilling to consider. So tell me, what happens when enough people don't sign up for your approach? Nothing, I imagine...? :chin:
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Quoting karl stone
Then why are you 'telling, not asking', as you say? :chin: You are not open to comments that don't support your preferred course. You are not open to anything that doesn't support your preferred course. Is this not your One Truth, alternatives to which you will not discuss or consider? That's how it looks.
You know very well you are taking that line out of context. You suggested I was asking you and other people generally How to Save the World. Well no, I'm telling you how. I started this thread to discuss my plan. I'm quite happy to discuss other people's ideas on the subject, but it can only be in relation to the ideas I've presented. Don't try making the superiority of my long thought out ideas - a problem because its better than your off the cuff thoughtlets!
No, it doesn't 'ask how to save the world.' It presents a plan. A plan you haven't read.
No. Absolutely not. Freedom baby! There's a principle that both limits the legitimate implications of science as truth - and lends science the authority to overrule ideology, and that is existential necessity! i.e. if we don't we'll die!
OK. There is to be no discussion. So why're you wasting time posting here? You should be out there in the world, implementing your plans. The world is in a parlous state. You'd better get to it! Good luck.
I disagree. I think this is the perfect place to present my ideas - that is, from the lowest possible platform.
Should an engineer building a faster race car take in to account the abilities and limitations of the driver? Would doing so tend to make the car safer? Or is the human driver irrelevant to the subject of auto mechanics?
I kind of understand your argument, but there is a real danger, described in Karl Popper's 1947 treatise 'Enemies of an Open Society' - he describes as "making our representations conform" to science as truth. In other words, the danger that science will become dictatorial of the human condition. No-one wants that. The approach I devised specifically accounts for this potential threat - such that we can claim the functionality of science, to afford the delightfully irrational human condition.
If men shouldn't because they're too violent, should women, who are too timid be trusted with power. I think there has to be a better balance.
Or that basically many Americans understand "class" as "caste". A caste system goes against the idea of America, yet class is different and far more elusive. A genuine well functioning meritocracy does produce classes of people. Class simply sounds too leftist and Americans have problems with word. One example is that sociology sounded too much socialist, hence Americans started to use the term "behaviourism".
I remember this whimsically hypocrite argument thrown around when talking about what to do with the domesticated animals when everybody is ordered to be a vegan and we get rid of the animals that we farm. It becomes quite absurd when talking about preventing people to have babies.
Historically some autocratic governments, notably China and Singapore, were so afraid of population growth that they enforced dramatic legislation to prevent "out of control" population growth. The reality is that with these policies they just population ageing a far bigger problem than otherwise. Affluence has universally lowered fertility rates and now for example Singapore is desperate about it's women bearing so few babies. This can be seen from the fertility rate in India, which never did much to enforce birth control:
But oh well, anti-natalism and the eradication of the human race as the solution to save the World is a bit tongue in cheek discourse.
So who are these ‘adults’ (enlightened folk like yourself?) that will limit the powers available to the ‘children’?
Common sense can be frightening.
If you're interested in this question, you'll try to answer it yourself. If you don't try, you're not interested, and thus it wouldn't be a good use of our time to engage on the subject.
I suspect you're just looking for something you can reject. If true, you can look forward to me saying the above a lot.
All kinds of arguments like this will go round and round and round to nowhere, until the day the violent men do something to get our attention, like nuke a city or something of that scale. Reason isn't going to work here, so we'll just have to wait for pain to do the job. And so it has probably always been.
Your claim was that this is a matter of common sense and yet you appear unable to make any sense out of it.
For children, there are adults who can responsibly handle dangerous substances and technologies and effectively limit the access children have to them for the children's safety. For adults, there is no more mature class that may reliably act as ‘adult-adults’.
I’m not looking for something to reject. I asking who these adult-adults are. This is the lynchpin to your whole notion. Maybe you haven’t thought it through even this far? Maybe you actually do have some idea but fear of further ridicule prevents you from daring to mention it?
I have begun with the evolutionary nature of life, and discussed the causal relationship that exists on many levels between surviving organisms, and reality. From the structure of DNA, to the physiology, behavior, and intellectual awareness of surviving organisms - the implication drawn, is that all life must be essentially correct to reality, else be rendered extinct.
I have discussed the evolutionary history of humankind, and the transition from a hunter-gatherer tribal way of life to multi-tribal society, leading unto civilization. I have suggested this required inventing/discovering God as an objective authority for law - to overcome the obstacle inherent in conflicting tribal hierarchies.
I have discussed the first formal presentation of scientific method by Galileo - and the reaction of the Church to that discovery - identifying this as the root cause of a mistaken relationship to scientific truth that persists unto this day.
I've sought to explain how this wrongful relationship to science, explains the existential dilemma we find ourselves in, wherein - we have the knowledge and the technology to address climate change, among other issues - but lack the political will, or economic rationale to apply it.
I have argued that, only by correcting our relationship to science - as valid knowledge of reality, to compare to the religious, political and economic ideologies we assume are true, can we hope to avoid being rendered extinct in the near future.
I have acknowledged the difficulties such a conclusion presents to ideologically arranged societies, and suggested we limit the implications of science as truth, to tackling the existentially necessary challenges we face first and foremost. I have identified the key challenge as producing renewable clean energy on a scale sufficient to meet the world's energy needs, plus the ability to produce abundant amounts of fresh water from sea water.
I have discussed at length - the particular technologies I believe should be applied forthwith, and described means to find the money to do so, in such a manner that fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted and burnt.
I believe that acting upon these ideas will set humankind on a sound footing for a long and glorious future - in the least disruptive manner possible, and I commend my arguments to my species. If the world is to be saved, this is how it can, and must be done. I believe it will work - and no other approach can, because, fundamentally - we must be correct to reality, else we shall be rendered extinct.
Are any of the proposals posted here easy ones? No. The problems we have are Big Problems. There are no easy fixes. To save the world, we will have to do things we'd prefer not to do. Whether that means controlling our own numbers, or something else. I do not recommend eradicating the human race, but I confess that I don't know what else to do. How to save the world? Will fuel from hydrogen solve all our problems, even if we can implement it quickly? I suspect not. Not without quite a number of other radical changes. What are these changes, the ones that will/could "save the world"?
Who do you think they are?
Please note how you made NO EFFORT to address the question yourself. That's because you're not actually interested in the subject, and are indeed looking for something to reject.
I look forward to your upcoming thread where you attempt to solve the problem which you have identified.
In practical terms, much has already been mentioned here, reduce meat consumption, improve insulation, reverse desertification, seed the oceans, travel less, stabilise and start to reduce the population, etc.
But psychologically, the requirement that would make all these things happen is an end to the divisive religion of Me. Humanity cannot survive divorced from the ecosystem, and the failure of thinking that runs from the op through the thread is to assume that our love of technology - our love of our possessions does not need to be extended to the whole environment. The green world is our body, it is our breath, and an iron lung is no solution.
Yes! :up: The things we need to do are many and urgent. Although recycling is a Good Thing, it is very far from enough. We must reduce cycling (if you see what I mean :wink: ) to an absolute minimum. We need to find a way of being content with less. We need to consume less. If we can't moderate what we take from the world, we will never 'save the world'. It's on us; we humans need to stop being the problem, and maybe even start working on the solution(s).
???
I wrote:
Did you not read this the first time around?
Do you think anyone is falling for your bullcrap?
Do we need to be correct to the reality of human beings?
Yes, I read your post in it's entirety. You presented a problem. I'm waiting to see if you are interested enough in this problem to try to address it yourself. You're under no obligation to do so, but should you choose not to, I'm not interested in discussing this further with you.
Thank you, I was hoping you might add your insights, your understanding that this is fundamentally a human problem, not just a technical problem.
If the "religion of Me" as you put it could be substantially edited for the better that would presumably make us saner and wiser, and thus more capable of successfully managing more powerful technologies.
This would be an ideal outcome, but so far at least nobody seems to have a credible plan for such a transformation that can be scaled up to the degree necessary, in the shrinking time available. This is what I mean when I asked Karl "Do we need to be correct to the reality of human beings?"
Until such a plan for psychological transformation is available, it seems the only option left is to limit the powers we give to our highly imperfect selves. Thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats, not evidence we're ready for more vast powers.
Unfortunately, the plan to become saner and wiser, is the plan of the insane and unwise. And the plan to limit our powers, requires the powers we wish to limit. Plans and powers are the tools of science, and science works wonderfully well on everything except scientists. So another approach is needed.
Just to be clear, if you want to stop climate change, science is the key; study, plan, experiment, act. But if you want us all to behave better, science is as useless as a sheepdog to herd cats - plans and controls drive folks mad.
"So what's the answer, oh unenlightened one?" I hear you cry. And I do not quite have the wisdom to remain silent. If you look back at this thread, you will see places where it departed from wisdom and sanity, and not much can be done about that. But there is no plan for the posts that come below this one; if they are wise and sane, they will respond to whatever is wise and sane above, and if they are foolish and insane, they will latch onto and amplify whatever is foolish and insane with echo or opposition. In human affairs, a plan does not work, one has to respond.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/17/germany-launches-worlds-first-hydrogen-powered-train
If you look at the whole discourse about the future of the environment about the subject during the last 40 years, same is true.
The fact is that proclaiming imminent doom and an oncoming eco-catastrophy sells in the media and is totally accepted and basically encouraged as to "get people to notice the problems and active". In 1970 George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University had predicted that “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Another prominent American academician Paul Ehrlich projected at the same time that population growth would lead to the death rate increasing "until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.” Many of the important raw materials, copper, sinc, tin, oil have been forcasted to have run out far before than now. There is a multitude of these kind of dire warnings given to us. So it's not only those believing the anti-climate change lobby that might be a little sceptic of the impending doom-scenario. Problems, yes, disaster, perhaps not.
Still fatalism and scare tactics work far better than views that could be interpreted as a "Cornucopian" view of future that seems to underrate the problems. This is more because of an ideological zeal than trying to be as realistic as possible.
It's not a problem, it's a correction. There is no type of person, discipline, organization, or government that can reliably take a parental role for the human race. You're wrong to claim that there is and your unwillingness to acknowledge this fact is both intellectually dishonest and, quite frankly, pathetic.
To make an error of prediction is not a departure from wisdom and sanity. We understand that prediction is prone to error. An error of 50 years in the timing of a catastrophe is important to those of us who will be safely dead in 50 years, but otherwise trivial.
Reading through this thread it is clear that what you utterly fail to see is that "the global technological machine" cannot be slowed (except by dire circumstances beyond human control of course), and so @karl stone is right to propose that the only hope for humanity's future lies in technological redirection to more sustainable technologies.
Karl has been humble enough to admit that what he proposes may not be the best solution; in stark contrast you have been arrogant enough to attempt to deflect the whole debate away from considering what should be done to most effectively manage economic, energy and mineral resources, to repeating a mantra of irrelevant anti-intellectualist dogma.
But to say that civilization will end in 15 or 30 years? Really? Just a prediction error on timing? That was nearly 50 years ago, actually. (And do note the timetable, you don't get publicity for estimates about 50 to 100 years or more, it has to be something now, immediately.)
These kind of alarmist predictions do not just activate people (which I assume is the intention), but also spread fatalism and the typical "everything will be worse in the future" attitude. And if you are younger and confronted with them the first time, you might think the end is near. Now if you have lived for longer and noticed how this discourse of imminent catastrophy has been around for 50 years, you might start having doubts about the hype. This alarmism also makes more realistic predictions, which don't forecast utter doom immediately in a decade or two, as to be as understating the problems and hence looking as basically "anti-environmentalist".
This is what interests you.
The only thing that's needed to slow the rate of technological development is for us to grasp what's going to happen if we don't.
I would agree that we're not going to grasp this through the processes of reason. As example, even though the Europeans enjoyed high culture and are the home of western philosophy etc, they weren't able to escape a centuries old pattern of constant warfare until the price of that pattern finally became too much to bear in WWII.
So if members want to stamp their feet, debunk my posts, and tell me what I "utterly fail to see" here's how to do that. Keep reminding me that what I utterly fail to see and accept is that attempting to address challenges of this scale through the processes of philosophy is a waste of everyone's time.
In summary, I'm smart enough to see that we are racing towards a cliff, and stupid enough to think that me typing about this to anyone who will listen is going to accomplish anything at all. See? There is a way to debunk me, and I've just handed it to you on a silver platter.
It's not "anti-intellectualist" to get that the success of science has created a revolutionary new environment which we are now required to adapt to, like it or not.
What's "anti-intellectualist" is clinging stubbornly to a "more is better" relationship with knowledge which was valid in the 19th century and earlier, but which has been made obsolete in our time.
People of your persuasion (most of the culture) aren't being intellectual or forward leaning, you are instead stuck in the past. The group consensus is unable or unwilling to adapt to the reality of the modern era, which illustrates my point of why we need to slow down.
Technologically we can go 100mph. Philosophically (and please do remember this is a philosophy forum) we can go 10mph. If you have some method by which we can dramatically accelerate up our ability to adapt philosophically to new environments, that would be a solution. Without such a plan, we have no choice but to slow down the technology, or die.
Karl has spoken repeatedly throughout the thread about the need for any organism to align itself with reality if it wants to survive. I agree with this principle and am attempting to apply it. The reality is that human judgment and maturity are limited, and thus technological development can not be unlimited, which is what's implied by the "more is better" relationship with knowledge.
The entire culture easily gets the concept that I'm selling when we are discussing humans under the age of 18. But once that child reaches their 18th birthday, we get hopelessly confused.
What is it about the fact that the collapse of modern civilization could literally happen right now today in the next few minutes that you don't get?
An elaborate mechanism is in place which allows either of two individual human beings to destroy modern civilization almost instantly at the push of a button. And neither of these individuals are known for their high moral character.
If this is not a situation which justifies alarmist calls to action, what would be?
I do. Even though I have been hearing the stories for 50 years. Even though I know that millennialism and doomsayers have been around forever. It seems to me that the scientific consensus makes a better prophet than biblical calculators of the second coming, as it is based on trends that are actually observed to be happening. Like this: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2cdzQn0hOHRWG1npyDI_fNpzCjvoEWwTLLpeJfRpG8biCkTwsZJTtsImA
Except that I never did make that claim.
Here's how you might proceed, if you are actually interested in the topic.
1) You could argue that humanity can successfully manage any amount of power delivered at any rate. If you feel you can make that case, please do.
2) You could argue that humanity can NOT handle any amount of power delivered at any rate, and then apply yourself to constructively addressing that limitation.
If you can make a compelling case for #1, there then is no need for "Super Adults".
If you can't make a compelling case for #1, then some governing mechanism is required, and you could explore what that might be.
Lol
Only two simple steps to saving the world:
Step 1
Suggest that some mechanisms will cure cancer, feed the world, end war, fix climate change, etc etc.
Step 2
Declare yourself philosopher king!
Who is "clinging" to a "more is better relationship with knowledge"? It's not a matter of "clinging"; when it comes to managing the environment, the economy and the body politic, more practicable knowledge obviously is better.
But the increase of knowledge is not the problem, it is rather the reverse; the increase in technological capability is not paralleled by an increase in the appropriate knowledge required to manage it.
The element of truth in your assertions seems to be that the problem really is the notion that more is better when it comes to consuming. If people would stop consuming so much then things would inevitably slow down. But the point is that modern civilization is like a racing train; no one knows how to stop it, and everyone is afraid to alight since it never stops, and we fear we would come to grief if we jump off.
The train is, under one perspective, driven by greed and desire for power of a few, but it is also driven by everyone's aspirations to live more prosperous and comfortable lives, with all the benefits of medical technologies, entertainment and cultural riches that come with it, and on the negative side it is driven by almost ubiquitous fears and insecurities. If it be acknowledged that we cannot simply stop the train or even deliberately slow it down, then obviously the best strategy would seem to be to intelligently redirect it as much as the circumstances allow.
The group consensus, including yourself apparently.
Quoting Janus
This is the simplistic, outdated and dangerous "more is better" mindset left over from a past era characterized by knowledge scarcity. We no longer live in that era, but instead now live in an era characterized by a knowledge explosion. Assumptions that were valid in one era do not automatically remain valid in a radically different era.
You will rightly point to all the benefits which come with more knowledge, which I don't dispute at all. But that's only part of the story. More knowledge, power and benefits comes with a price tag. More knowledge, power and benefits also accrue to those who wish us harm, and to those who haven't fully thought through the new technologies.
As example, the industrial revolution was launched with the best of intentions, and has come with a great many benefits. But the price tag has been species extinction, nuclear weapons, climate change each a threat to the existence of the human species.
The key thing to focus on is the issue of scale. As the scale of the accumulated powers grows the room for error steadily shrinks while the price tag for mistakes steadily grows. If the "more is better" philosophy remains in place it's only a matter of time until the one bad day when one or more of such powers slips from our control. As example, should we ever have a global nuclear war, or climate change spinning out of control, then none of the benefits of the industrial revolution will have been worth the price we had to pay for those benefits.
Quoting Janus
Right, if we had some credible plan for accelerating the abilities of the "governing mechanism" of human maturity, judgment and sanity etc to match the accelerating growth of technological power then this would be a very different conversation. But the reality is that we have no such credible plan for human transformation.
What the group consensus is attempting to do might be compared to upgrading a race car engine to go 1,000mph, without bothering to also upgrade the tires. Point being, a good engineer looks for the weakest link, the single point of failure, and in this case that is us.
Quoting Janus
Yes, true, no one knows how to slow down the racing train, because we adamantly refuse to try to learn this new skill. Instead, the group consensus invests all it's energy and intelligence in to trying to prove it can't be done. The cliche here is, if we think we can, or think we can't, either way we're probably right.
Quoting Janus
Yes, this is surely true. We very reasonably cherish all the benefits past progress has provided and want to enjoy more such benefits. And further knowledge will provide more benefits. So, the group consensus is not insane, they aren't being ridiculous, they've just failed to think through where the racing train is taking us. If we continue to speed up the train without limit, sooner or later the train goes off the track and then all the benefits we love are erased.
Quoting Janus
There's no reason to make such an acknowledgement when we've not even begun to try to slow down technological development. There's no reason to make such an acknowledgement when the group consensus basically refuses to even think about trying. You're preemptively declaring failure before any serious effort has been made.
Yes, intelligently directing the knowledge explosion is obviously a good plan. What you're not getting is that there is a limit to human ability, thus we can't simply project ever accelerating knowledge and power development in to the future without limit.
We will successfully direct much or most of technological development, but as the scale of powers grows that's simply no longer enough. Example, one bad day with nuclear weapons and it's game over, no matter how many brilliant benefits are being delivered elsewhere.
In the past when the scale of powers was modest, we could afford to make mistakes. As the scale of powers grows, such room for error is ever less available.
Well, the recipe for that is simple: education, the accepatnce of what science tells us about the natural world and the elimination of dogma and ideology from the curriculum for a start. What else could work?
Quoting Jake
What you're not getting is that it is irrational to project current limits of understanding into the future. The future remains unknown. Apart from the obvious natural constraints, humans are mainly limited by their blind tendencies to cling to dogma and ideology. It is arguable that "species extinction, nuclear weapons, climate change each a threat to the existence of the human species" come form a combination of clinging to outworn dogmas and ignorance or rejection of what the science tells us.
Quoting Jake
Sure, but the point is that the shift to alternative sustainable technologies will inevitably slow down the train. So, it's not clear what you're actually disagreeing with, or what you are proposing as a practical alterantive.
Quoting Jake
This is nothing more than unjustified alarmism. Alarmism is never going to be helpful, if only because most people cannot stomach it. The persistence of nuclear weapons is on account of neurotic nationaistic ideologies and cultural paranoias. It is lack of education and the alarmism that results that has caused, and sustains, the problem of nuclear weapons in the first place.
.
Burning fossil fuel is pretty low tech and modest in power. Can we afford the results? People tend to abuse all valuable resources and not just knowledge, so restricting this one resource is not a solution. And speaking of power, some “governing mechanism” would require an immodest amount to effectively regulate scientific reasearch and technology on a global scale. Developing it would be antithetical your theory.
Generally speaking, scientists already meet the criteria you've set. And they can't figure out how to design any technology that would make nuclear weapons obsolete. They're rushing headlong in to AI and genetic engineering without any real idea where that path takes us. And by inventing the industrial revolution they've created the threat of climate change, because they weren't able to think through where the industrial revolution would take us.
I'm not demonizing scientists here, who I see as smart people with generally good intentions. The point is instead that even those people who best fit your prescription aren't up to the job.
Quoting Janus
Um, it was science that invented species extinction, nuclear weapons and climate change. And it is science culture that is leading the charge in clinging to the outdated "more is better" dogma. What science tells us is to keep on rushing ahead in a reckless pell mell fashion without any real idea of where that takes us, willfully ignoring the real world fact that it was this very process which has given us species extinction, nuclear weapons and climate change. No offense, by like Karl and most of our culture, you appear to have bought in to the science religion.
Quoting Janus
How so?
What I see is that if we obtained free clean energy the economy would take off like a rocket, which would accelerate the depletion of finite resources, species extinction, human population growth, the further expansion of mega-cities, further invasion of the Amazon etc.
Quoting Janus
And this is characterizing an argument instead of meeting the argument.
Quoting Janus
And so given that we have no credible solution to these longstanding human problems, we should give our highly imperfect selves more and more power at an ever faster rate? You're making my argument for me here.
True, but knowledge is the source of the powers that we abuse. The fact that people tend to abuse all resources should suggest to us that perhaps we shouldn't be giving people ever greater powers at an ever accelerating rate.
At the least we might test ourselves before proceeding to see if we are ready for more power. Can we get rid of nuclear weapons? Can we decisively solve climate change? Can we clean up the messes we've already made? If yes, that would be evidence that we may be mature enough to handle new powers.
I agree with this, but I do not understand what you think might be done about it. On a personal level, I cannot unlearn even my times tables. And on a social level, closing university departments and burning books would be abhorrent and ineffective. More knowledge will not answer, but more ignorance even less.
That's an odd thought, and you haven't yet addressed the issue of the need for advanced knowledge in the development of "some governing mechanism" that could enable your grand plan of knowledge suppression. As I pointed out, it would require an immodest amount of power, to put it mildly, in order to regulate all scientific research and technology across the globe. You'd need some pretty big guns to force your policies on every nation in the world, as well as some kind of advanced surveillance system like a powerful AGI. It would basically require technologies that are far more dangerous than anything that exists today.
A self-defeating plan is a stupid plan.
Quoting Jake
We've had nuclear weapons for around 75 years and haven't blown ourselves up yet. Maybe this is sufficient evidence that we can handle more powerful technologies.
The continuing existence and/ or proliferation of nuclear weapons is not the result of a lack of ability of scientists to figure out alternative technologies. Scientists can only research what the political economies within which they work enable them to.
Scientists also did not "invent the industrial revolution"; it was enabled by the discovery of fossil fuels, and the inventions that allowed them to be exploited.
Quoting Jake
I think you are demonizing scientists and science, even though you disingenuously claim not to be doing so.
Quoting Jake
Here is a prime example of your disingenousness; you know very well that scientists did not invent these things. They are the unforeseen consequences of industrialization, of the ignorant economic exploitation of resources. Of course scientists have played a part, just as we all have who enjoy the benefits of modern civilization, including you.
The culture is driven, not primarily by scientists (although of course its technological advancement is enabled in part by their research and invention) but by the greed and ambition of a few and the desire for comfort, convenience, entertainment and security of the many, including you. No offence, but you appear to have bought into these things, just like most everyone else; the difference being that you appear also to be a hypocrite insofar as you descry the very things you are using.
Quoting Jake
If all those negative effects you predict would actually result, then it would not be "free clean energy" would it? Whether resources of one kind or another are depleted, species brought to extinction and environments degraded and so on, depends on whether they are managed intelligently, which depends on scientific understanding. You seem to have nothing positive to offer, just a bunch of empty assertions; so don't be surprised if others don't take what you say seriously.
The second is that in 1970 - there were very few computers. Scientists communicated through journals and correspondence - (that's snail mail to you and I.) It's difficult to overstate the benefits personal computing and the internet have brought to scientific endeavor; less yet large computers capable of crunching numbers on a massive scale. The quality of scientific information is thus much improved since 1970.
The second thing I'd dispute is this:
Quoting unenlightened
For me, my life isn't confined to my current biological existence. It has a metaphysical dimension as a consequence of intellectual awareness. People have construed this dimension in many ways throughout the ages; but accepting a scientific understanding of reality, I'd suggest it implies the significance of genetic, intellectual and economic legacy carried forward by future generations. I believe this follows from a moral duty to the evolutionary struggle of previous generations that makes us who we are, and implies a moral obligation to use those abilities to further the interests of future generations.
I won't belabor the point by relating this back to the remarks above.
Next is this exchange between Jake and Janus:
I'm proposing a political course of action to correct our mistaken relationship to science and technology. I argue that nation states should accept a scientific understanding of reality in common as a basis to apply technology. At the same time however, I don't want to upturn the ideological apple-cart upon which billions of people depend. I do want to claim the functionality inherent in the relationship between valid knowledge and causal reality - but I also want people, politics and economics to be able to accept it. So it's a very delicate matter. There are religious sensitivities, political and economic interests, and a not entirely spurious fear that science as truth will turn us all into robots, marching foursquare in identical denim overalls. We don't want that!
In my arguments, the prior authority science owns as a consequence of epistemic superiority to primitive ideologies is limited by the principle of existential necessity; i.e. if we don't address this - we'll die. Beyond that, science has no authoritative political implication. That established, we can safely accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, in place of our various ideological misconceptions of reality, as a basis for the application of technology - to address scientifically conceived problems like climate change, deforestation, over-fishing, pollution etc. In the simplest possible terms - I'd describe this strategy as 'knowing what's true, and doing what's right in terms of what's true.'
The last thing I want to address is this:
Quoting praxis
Although this comment is offered in relation to Jake's suggestion that we 'stop the world while he gets off' - I think it's a reasonable criticism to take on board and address in relation to my own ideas. It's entirely central to my plan that political and capitalist economic interests see the advantages in this approach - and adopt it voluntarily. There are vast potential benefits unlocked by recognizing the relation between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and the consequences of such action. i.e. knowing what's true and doing what's right - and it's important they do not feel it's a threat to the bottom line - else it just won't happen.
I need to point out that capitalist economic interests do not equate to vast benefits. For us peasants, we float on the economic tide, and go up when the economy grows, and down when it contracts. But well managed capital prospers from downturns even more than from booms. When you can't pay the mortgage, someone else gets a cash bargain. So capitalists see advantages in conflict, war, and catastrophe, and not so much in stability, which explains why they should not be left in charge of things.
I could not disagree more without swearing!
First, consider the political and personal freedom provided for by a capitalist economy - compared to a command economy. In a command economy the state owns everything, and designs the production and distribution of goods and services from start to finish. This is necessarily oppressive. Any dissent requires the harshest of responses precisely because it's a threat to production upon which people depend. People are told what to do and when to do it, what to eat and wear - right down to what they think and say, must be controlled as a consequence of the economic model.
In a capitalist economy, it's a genuine miracle - that goods and services are produced and distributed as a consequence of people's free, and 'rationally self interested' choices. It's called the 'invisible hand' - an idea described by Adam Smith in 'The Wealth of Nations" (1776.) I appreciate - it's not much fun being poor in a capitalist economy - but that's why one has to develop skills, or specialist knowledge - required by the market. It's that imperative that promotes the general good.
Third is an off-hand observation - but more or less valid nonetheless, that even the poor in modern capitalist societies have a better standard of living than medieval Kings - precisely because everyone is pursuing their rational self interest.
The fact remains..
We built them.
And can't get rid of them.
Thus, it's not logical to give ourselves ever greater powers at an ever faster rate.
Let me spell it out for you with a purely hypothetical example. I am a property developer called Grump, and you are a humble bricky. When times are good, I pay you well to build houses for me, and then lend you and your mates the money to buy one each. Times are good, so the value of the houses is high - everyone wants to own their own home. I pay your wages, and you pay me the mortgage, and everyone is happy. Then there is a downturn. I stop building houses, so you lose your job, and cannot pay your mortgage, and nor can your mates. You all have to sell up. Unfortunately (for you) no one is buying at the moment, and the value of the houses has gone down. They all go to auction, and I end up buying them at a very low price. Now I have the houses, the profit from selling high and buying low, and you still owe me the difference, plus you have to pay me rent. But don't worry, there are good times coming, and we can do it all again, because now I have even more money and I need to put it to work, and that means employing you again.
I understand that this makes you angry, I understand that you don't want to believe it works this way, but wise up dude, it does.
I'm not angry at all. The crack about swearing was only for emphasis and hopefully, a chuckle. Sorry if it was misjudged.
I do not doubt that in individual transactions between parties in a capitalist economy there can be winners and losers, but there are mechanisms we invent to account for these like laws, and insurance. If what Grump did wasn't actually illegal - it probably should be illegal to offer a mortgage to an employee without insurance against redundancy.
In terms of the ideas I've put forward however, I'd argue that the ideological context of capitalism - as opposed to the scientific context that would ideally follow, had we accepted science as truth from 1630 - lends the motives for the disaster capitalism you allude to.
Take brexit as an example - a wildly false and divisive propaganda campaign incited the British to leave the EU in a manner that will very likely crash the economy, and provide the excuse for a rabidly right wing policy proscription to deal with the crisis.
Had we accepted science as truth, and integrated it on an ongoing basis since 1630 however - we'd be very different people in a very different world. It wouldn't be like this. We'd be more rational and honest - because science is rational and honest, and maybe such things wouldn't occur. Who can say? It's not what we did, and not who we are. We don't worship science as the revealed word of God made manifest in reality. But if we are to survive, we have to get there from here - and harnessing capitalist forces is indispensable to any possible solution to our problems.
For starters, what we're doing now, philosophy. Using reason to examine and challenge the "more is better" group consensus to see if it can withstand scrutiny. If we can come to understand what the price tag will be for continuing on the "more is better" path we'll stop endlessly repeating "nothing can be done" and start applying ourselves to the challenge. We're currently chanting "nothing can be done" because we don't want to do anything, and think we can get by continuing the patterns of the past.
Let's consider examples of "what might be done".
Gun Control: Although we endlessly argue about what the exact nature of gun control should be, there is wide agreement that civilians should not be able to buy surface to air missiles at the Army Navy store. That is, the group consensus has rejected "more is better" in regards to the lethal powers available to civilians (and many other issues).
The Paris Agreement: Most nations of the Earth, except those currently being led by stupid people, have perceived the threat from climate change and have agreed to implement sweeping changes in order to respond to it. A very imperfect process, but a step in the right direction.
The Amish: The group consensus keeps saying that modifying "more is better" is impossible, while blatantly ignoring the real world evidence that some among us have already long ago done so, and continue to do so successfully. While it's very unlikely that we'll all become Amish, what the Amish have proven is that it's possible to have fulfilling human lives without totally surrendering to the dangerous pursuit of more and more and more without limit.
However, to argue against everything I've just typed above....
The evidence also clearly shows that the odds that we'll adapt to the new reality of the knowledge explosion era through reason alone are quite slim. It's too big of a philosophical paradigm shift to be accomplished with just philosophy.
So the best that "can be done" for now may be to educate ourselves to the limited degree possible while we await some huge historical event(s) which will blast us out of our philosophical slumbers. The example I've used here is to point to the European relationship with warfare, which changed only when the price tag for repetitive warfare became too high to bear. Philosophy alone was not sufficient to reveal the insanity of repetitive warring, it took mass doses of pain to get the job done.
But, for now at least, it appears the Europeans have indeed learned the lesson. So if the coming calamity doesn't kill us off, we will learn the lessons we need to learn as well.
Except that in a "more is better" knowledge economy characterized by accelerating social and technological change, whatever skills you develop are likely to go out of date before you're done needing them. As example, I just watched a documentary showing how robots are taking over many surgical tasks. It's not just factory workers who are at risk.
What this accelerating change does is infuse the society with considerable uncertainty, which generates fear, which eventually leads to masses of people doing stupid things like voting for President Dumpster. Dangerous right wing wackos are rising to power all over the world, which illustrates that at least some of the forces at play are global, and not the result of local conditions.
Some of us will be able to develop skills that aren't quickly made obsolete by the market, that's true. That doesn't matter if large numbers of other people can't keep up, and thus become susceptible to persuasion by crackpot ideologues promising to "make America great again". Example, some of us are indeed thriving in this economy, while those who aren't thriving give us a leader who pulls us out of the Paris Agreement, humanity's best hope to avoid catastrophic climate change.
We see things quite differently, you and I - but it's not like I don't understand where you're coming from, nor indeed, where people voting for increasingly insular regimes are coming from either. I think you're right that it's fear based. The world is becoming an increasingly scary place as we progress down the wrong path - and if we continue, it'll only get worse.
It's cause and effect - the natural consequence of acting at odds to the actual nature of reality, best described by science, and mis-characterized by religious and political ideologies, as a context for economics. For example, it's a simple matter of fact we are unable - (and it would be unwise and premature) to accept, that the earth is a single planetary environment, and humankind is a single species. As a matter of fact, nation states are not real things - they're socially constructed. The world didn't come with borders painted on it, and similarly - an indigenous population is actually a somewhat random collection of hunter-gatherer tribes cobbled together into a civilization by all agreeing to convenient lies.
However, because we believe nation states are real things - we fear 'the other' - particularly in face of climate change, again caused by not acting in relation to scientific truth. We fear they will be driven by climate change to invade us, and thereby dilute our identity and prosperity. We see limits to resources, and imagine it's a zero sum game. But I would argue that by correcting the mistake we made way back when, we can multiply resources exponentially - tackle climate change and alleviate those fears.
Your approach is therefore in my view, hugely counter productive. More is better. Not indiscriminately more, as you seem to think I'm suggesting - but a careful more, where technology is applied in relation to science as truth to achieve sustainability.
Well, more philosophy, more reason, more cooperation, more knowledge, less greed, less competition, less material accumulation. That sounds like a plan.
Quoting karl stone
I can go along with that. But with the emphasis on a good robust harness. At the moment, capitalist forces are at the wrong end of the harness - in the driving seat.
How do we correct the mistake...
At the scale necessary...
In the time frame necessary?
I generally agree with you that IF human beings could be fundamentally transformed for the better by some method or another, that would make us much more capable of successfully managing the ever greater powers to emerge from the knowledge explosion. IF that were to happen, I would be happy to agree to more knowledge and power to the degree it could be proven that we can manage it.
But given that aligning ourselves with reality is one of your key points, a point I agree with, I have to remind you that there is no credible plan currently available which would accomplish the needed human transformation on the needed scale.
To compare humanity to teenagers, we may someday grow up, mature, evolve and become more sophisticated and intelligent beings. If we survive, that is likely over the long term, just as it is with teenagers.
But we aren't there yet. Evidence: thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats.
We give our teenage son the keys to the car when he is ready to successfully manage that level of power. We adults aren't ready for more power yet. Maybe someday, probably someday, not today.
We should say to our teenage son....
"Get rid of nuclear weapons, solve climate change, and then come back and we'll have this conversation about you driving the family car again. But first, prove that you are ready."
That's something we can work on, but it probably won't be enough on it's own. A big dose of pain is likely going to be required too.
The wrong path is changing the environment we inhabit faster than human beings can adapt to that environment.
If you can reflect on this a bit, I think you will see this premise is actually not in conflict with your own premise. You feel we must align ourselves with reality or we will perish, for this is the law of nature. I agree with that.
The problem, as seen from here, is that the group consensus you are speaking on behalf of doesn't have a very sophisticated understanding of reality, specifically human reality. You observe the landscape and see a technical problem, because you like technical challenges. But fundamentally what we face is not a technical problem, but a human problem. Unlimited free clean energy would simply empower us to do more of the stupid stuff we are already doing.
The next problem, as seen from here, is that the group consensus has shifted the blind faith we used to have in religious clerics in to a blind faith in what I call the "science clergy". The obstacle here is that while scientists are indeed expert in the technical aspects of reality, they are really no better at understanding the human reality than any of the rest of us. And, the human reality is a very important component of the reality equation.
Nor does science culture have a superior understanding of reason, given that they are still selling us an outdated "more is better" paradigm from the 19th century in spite of clear compelling evidence (thousands of hydrogen bombs) that we simply aren't ready for more and more power without limit. You can blame the weapons on religion or politicians or whoever you want, but the REALITY is that they exist, and we don't know how to get rid of them. And that "we" includes the science clergy.
Thus, blind faith in science or scientists is not warranted, just as it wasn't warranted in regards to religious clerics.
Pain is not transformative; it's not even much of an aid to learning. It may likely happen, but it certainly isn't required. At the individual level in the developed world, there is no pain in eating less meat, it's healthier; no pain in turning down the heating and wearing more clothes; no pain in forgoing flights abroad; no pain in recycling. At the social level, the benefits of promoting house insulation, green energy, public transport, recycling, better diet, will largely pay for themselves, and reduce the pain of pollution, obesity, etc. It makes good sense even without global warming.
These policies are not implemented because society is driven by profit, as I mentioned above, and there is no profit in contentment.
Imagine you are capitalism. Does that sound attractive to you? I'm trying to describe an opportunity - not a diet regime, or a prison sentence. I'm trying to explain that we don't have to back down, have less, go vegan - and see everything fall apart anyway, only slightly less rapidly.
Aha, you've given me an easy target! :smile:
I would agree that reason is sufficient for many things, primarily easy things that we want to hear. Reason starts to reach it's limits when we arrive at realities we don't want to face.
Science culture tells us that things can get better, better and better, faster, faster and faster. Of course we'd like this to be true. It's a great story which as you can see is quite difficult to dislodge, just as the story of eternal reward in heaven has had long legs.
I do agree that things can get better over the long run, but not at speeds which exceed the human ability to adapt. And by "human" I mean humanity not particular individuals.
An engineering approach looks at the system as a whole, and seeks out single points of failure, weak links, which have the potential to crash the system. As example, your car may have the very latest most powerful engine, but if you blow a tire on the highway death may still be the result.
As the Trump phenomena should illustrate, if any sizable percentage of us go off the deep end that has the potential to ruin things for everyone. And so it's not enough that brilliant huge brained philosophers such as ourselves get it (and we don't) the understanding has to be fairly widespread for reason alone to be sufficient to accomplish any major paradigm shift. Again, the horror of WWII brought the insanity of war home to European culture, not centuries of reason and philosophy.
Thus, my typing on the subject is likely an irrational waste of time, as few are going to be willing to give up the "more is better" without limit dream until something forces them to.
Less meat is not vegan, wearing a sweater is not a prison sentence.
You have to have a car, because you have to live a long way from work because you don't get paid enough to afford to live where the work is and public transport is revolting and even more expensive than a car. So you contribute to the pollution that makes the city air so poisonous that you have to have an inhaler to survive in it. The travel time on congested roads and work leaves you neither time nor energy to cook your own food, so you have to eat prepackaged ready meals or takeaways, and so cannot properly control your own diet. So you have to buy supplement pills.
And you are so browbeaten by the propaganda you are subjected to day and night that you think this is freedom, and a healthy and contented existence a prison sentence.
The problem here is that there is no limit to how much more we want. We're already the richest people ever to walk the face of the Earth, but the thought of not always having more and more and more frightens us. And that fear interferes with our ability to make rational choices.
To make rational choices we the rich should first achieve a state where we are content with what we already have. In that circumstance, further enhancements would be a choice, and not a NEED. When it is a choice and not a need, then we can observe the situation in a much more detached and objective manner, which it seems is much of what you're arguing for.
I don't think it does. That sounds more like politics.
Ok, I'll rephrase. Science culture tells us that we should obtain as much knowledge as possible, and we buy this proposal because we and our politicians understandably want things to get better, better and better, faster, faster and faster.
More or less, but I don't agree we are unable to adapt quickly enough. If I thought that I wouldn't say anything. What would be the point? I'd just plaster on my smile and hope it lasted my lifetime. I'm speaking out because there's huge opportunity - because this technological adolescence is just the beginning, if it is not the end.
Quoting Jake
What group consensus? I'm not in your head - and I don't agree with you. I don't know what this vague term 'group consensus' refers to. Humankind? Science? Politics? Capitalism? Philosophy? Please be specific.
Actually, the technical challenge is the least part of what I'm saying. It's not my area of expertise, and is not at all how I came to this issue. It began as a need to know what's true - a philosophical problem. And fundamentally, I'm saying the problem is a philosophical one: i.e. we devalue science relative to ideology.
Quoting Jake
I don't get this at all. You're saying that scientists are at the same time myopic specialists with a somewhat stereotypical lack of knowledge of the real world - and also the salesmen of a more is better paradigm? Something you've said 20 times already - without taking on board a single devastating criticism offered by anyone else. In the previous post for example, I spoke of how your ideas feed into right wing fears and insular politics, and you keep banging the same drum? Praxis showed there's no adult in the room to govern we so called children. I've put it to you that, because people have needs and wants - there's no stopping progress, yet here we are again. Talking about your ideas to the exclusion of my own. Jake - you have made no effort to understand what I'm saying, what you're saying is not right, and you're not helping.
Quoting Jake
Science isn't about faith - it's precisely the opposite. It's about forming ideas and testing them to destruction, and only keeping the ones that cannot be destroyed. It's not blind, and it's not faith. But you don't even understand this. I've answered your beliefs several times. I have nothing else to say on the subject! I don't like being rude - so please, if it's your belief we are helpless - consider plastering a smile on your face and just hoping it lasts your lifetime.
We have thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat. Do you consider this a successful adaptation which increases our chances of survival? We see climate change threatening to spin out of control as a result of the industrial revolution. We're risking everything so that we can have iPads. Do you consider this evidence of our ability to adapt?
Quoting karl stone
Yes, that's it, you get it now. To be more precise, they (as a group) have a lack of knowledge about the HUMAN reality, just as you do. The "more is better" paradigm assumes that humans can successfully manage any power which arises out of that process, irregardless of what rate that power emerges. That's simply false.
Knowledge can be developed faster than maturity. The mismatch between these two rates is dangerous. That's simply true.
Quoting karl stone
There have been no devastating criticisms. I understand this particular issue (not all issues!) better than the rest of you. Sorry, not trying to be insulting, just providing a reality check.
Quoting karl stone
Praxis showed he has no interest in trying to meet that challenge, because he's not actually interested in this subject at all. As is his right.
Quoting karl stone
Yes, and one of our "needs and wants" is for a stable civilization which can well serve our descendants, instead of blowing up in our face due to arrogance, greed, and philosophical stubbornness.
Quoting karl stone
Sorry, you don't own this thread. Not going to bother to explain that again. The mods own this thread. If they find my posts inappropriate they will delete them. Nothing for you to do!
Quoting karl stone
Science is not about faith, agreed. Your RELATIONSHIP with science is faith based, and you are in very good company, as many smart people also embrace that faith. It's a common logic mistake to assume that because we've rejected religion that automatically equals rejecting faith. It's closer to the truth to say that we've transferred our faith from one target to another.
Quoting karl stone
What so annoys you about me is that I understand all of this far better than you do, which is publicly denying you what you most want here, recognition as a technological sage. My apologies, I have no personal beef with you, and I'm not unsympathetic to your personal ego situation, as I have one of my own. But again...
THIS IS A PHILOSOPHY FORUM....
...and relentlessly challenging is what happens in such places. You are challenging certain philosophies as well, which is good.
No, but it's not a solution either. It is a hardship for a significant number of people in the world who have very little meat in their diet. And, like I told my mother - kids starving in Africa will gain no benefit from me eating my sprouts! Seriously though, our problems are not the consequence of too many people or insufficient resources. Malthus's famously incorrect prediction of mass starvation following from the disparity between the geometric rate of population growth, (2, 4, 8, 16 etc) and the arithmetic rate agricultural land can be developed (1, 2, 3, etc) proved incorrect. People are problem solvers - and to paraphrase the Martian we can "science the shit out of this!"
Quoting unenlightened
To paraphrase Job - Woe is me! I get where you're coming from but consider the possibilities that follow from abundant clean energy and producing fresh water. We can develop wastelands for agriculture and habitation - where previously, we had to gather in the river valleys, and burn down the forests. Consider telecommuting, and hydrogen powered vehicles, fish farming instead of trawling the oceans to death, warm homes from renewable energy, cool homes from renewable energy! Imagine automated hydroponic farms in the desert - using solar energy to produce as much food as anyone can eat. Think on what's possible if we can overcome this philosophical obstacle wherein, we have the knowledge and technology but are unable to apply it.
Quoting unenlightened
No. I think it's a giant mess in a lot of ways - a moral victory in others. It's not the point. We cannot tear it all down and start again from scratch. That would be as bad or worse than carrying on as we are. We have to 'get there from here' - us, as who we are. The description of the error and its consequences is not a basis to junk everything, or anything. It's about reaching beyond ourselves to learn a lesson - and then bringing that lesson home and applying it very carefully. It's not about changing anything. It's about changing everything by looking at it differently.
“Science culture” is selling us an outdated paradigm of greed???
No. Absolutely not. I consider it an ideologically driven misapplication of technology. Science as a tool, and not as a rule for the conduct of human affairs. I consider it using the tools without reading the instructions. Am I going to run out of ways to say this before it clicks? It's the consequence of an historical error - exemplified by the Church imprisoning Galileo for saying the earth orbits the sun. Science as an understanding of reality was suppressed relative to religious, political and economic ideology, even while science was used by the industrial revolution, and by military powers.
Quoting Jake
I understand it - but it's wrong. You identify a phenomenon, but do not identify the cause. The cause is described above.
Quoting Jake
Praxis spotted something I missed - and he's right. You say we are children playing with ever more dangerous toys - and so we should limit scientific progress. But who decides? Who is the adult in the room? You? No! It doesn't work, but you won't have it.
Quoting Jake
So you think 7 billion people are all going to get into farming - do you? Sit around singing cum-by-yar while waiting on a giant pot of lentils to cook by the heat of a beeswax candle? If that appeals to you - go right ahead, but it's not an answer. People won't have it. They have needs and wants - like sending their children to a good school. So they have to make money. They gain knowledge and skills and sell them in the market - and it's a social good. Maybe they gain the knowledge and skills to improve crop yields - feeding more people from less land and water. The whole world benefits. You can't stop that. So why are you trying?
Is it because you get some cheap thrill from doom mongering - and hide that gross appetite behind the facade of anti-scientism?
Have you heard of the ocean cleanup project? (https://www.theoceancleanup.com)
I think it's at least partly funded by recycling, but in any case, I believe it's a relatively low cost and high benefit solution.
I have, but last time I heard of it - not too long ago, it was still in the test phase. In theory, I think it a wonderful idea. Whether it works in practice is another question. I'm sorry to have to say this, but that assessment should be really quite brutal. There's a tendency to conflate the virtue of the aim with the effectiveness of the technology - producing ostensibly virtuous white elephants. It was designed by young people too, I seem to recall - and so there's a lot of people wanting it to work. Including me - but if it doesn't work, I'd scrap it without a moment's hesitation.
No one has said it's impossible, and most people know there are cultures who possess values not based in materialism. We may even recognize that such a way of life may be happier and more fulfilling or meaningful, in addition to it being sustainable.
What you're unwilling to admit is that you can't force a cultural reformation by restricting a valuable resource like knowledge.
Argument by ridicule is a really pathetic, short-sighted tactic. Please just stop. You are talking to concerned serious and intelligent people who are at bottom your allies. Stop being a prat.
That's the second time today I've been taken to task for my sense of humor. In my estimation you're free to think I'm a prat, and free to say so. A little edge is no bad thing - we are human afteral. If you'd argue I should treat ridiculous ideas seriously - can you tell me why, and convince me it's a good idea to do so? Or is this just about people's feelings? Because if it is - let me assure you, Jake isn't nearly as pissed off at what I said to him as I am at having to address his doom mongering nonsense over and over and over and over... without being able to effect it in the least by anything I say. Maybe taking the piss is the only strategy left to me - did you think of that?
Yes, that's exactly what it looks like.
See, you're getting it! And there was I thinking you were utterly humorless!
Oh, I was right the first time!
To be fair, the doom part isn’t nonsensical. The alleged cause and hint of a solution (“some governing mechanism”) is.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’m glad there are people like you thinking of solutions. And on that note I’ll take my leave of the topic. Sorry if I’ve muddied the water by engaging the nonsense.
Think nothing of it - you wouldn't have stopped Jake banging his drum of doom if you'd ignored it. I tried that. You kept him occupied if anything, and sank his battleship with your precision remarks. Please don't flee on my account. You're capable of philosophical reflection, and not mere repetition of prejudicial assumption! But if you have to go - So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Quoting unenlightened
Besides what Karl mentioned, it can be a tactic to try getting to know someone better by seeing how they respond to taunting, in a situation where they're unresponsive to reasoning. Jake is remarkably unresponsive to both reasoning and provocation. To me that may indicate a clarity of purpose, which could be admirable if the commitment wasn't to the fault that it appears to be. In other words, it's questionable what he's really committed to.
Do we agree that nuclear weapons exist, and that so far, we've found no way to get rid of them?
Could we maybe agree that you actually have no credible plan for how we might arrive at a utopian fantasy world where we don't get sucked in to "ideologically driven misapplication of technology", and that nobody else has such a credible plan either?
Yes, of course, there are many wonderful theories about human transformation. We should all meditate, we should all become good Christians, we should join the Marxist revolution, we should accept science as truth, etc etc. We've been working on these projects for literally thousands of years, and guess what, we still aimed a bunch of huge bombs down our throats.
Your intentions are excellent, and you pursue them with determination and durability, which merits our respect. But as an engineer, you've fallen victim to sloppiness. You've failed to think holistically, and thus you've failed to account realistically for a very important component of the situation you are attempting to address. Us. Humans.
As wannabe engineers we should be looking for the weak link, the single point of failure which will cause our invention to crash. If we don't identify that single point of failure, then all the fantastic work we've done on the rest of our invention is for nothing.
The group consensus you are speaking on behalf of wants to strap a rocket to a bicycle so the bike can go 300mph. The group consensus is very proud of the rocket and the speeds it can reach. And it's forgotten all about the 10 year old kid who will have to steer the bike.
Good intentions.
Sloppy engineering.
Well, it's true that only the mods can stop me from banging this drum, agreed there.
But is the drum a "drum of doom"? (catchy phrase, points for that!)
Would it be a "drum of doom" to realistically recognize that our eight year old child is not ready to drive the family car? Would such a recognition be negative defeatism?
Or would it perhaps be...
Common sense, backed up by extensive evidence from the real world?
It's called "philosophy". You could look it up on Google if you wanted, pretty interesting stuff really. :smile:
Because poster Jake Blowhard on some tiny net forum has not immediately provided the solution of a governing mechanism, you take this as evidence that such a solution is impossible and can never be found by any group of human beings who might apply themselves to the challenge.
Your assumption is quite flattering, and I thank you for the complement, even though the assumption is um, you know, pretty silly.
Correct. I am not pissed off at anybody. Overly enthusiastic more often than necessary for sure, but not pissed off. Speaking only for myself, I don't object to jibes, taunts, poking in the ribs, and the occasional hysterical outburst. I agree with Karl, we're human, and all of this comes with the territory. The Nanny Mods will spank us where necessary, let the party continue.
Actually I have admitted this, though the admission may understandably become lost in the walls of typoholic text. I agree that I personally can't force a cultural revolution, and that it's likely that nobody else can either.
But the cultural revolution will indeed come, and pain will be our teacher.
Please reference my many mentions of the European wars example. That's what we're looking at. We're waiting for sufficient pain to arrive.
No reputable scientist says AGW (anthropogenic global warming) will end civilization or the human species, but every reputable scientists will affirm that the right meteor impact could, and it appears that there are things we could be doing to defend the earth.
How would you analyze the differences in popular response to these to issues?
One significant difference is that one has been politicized and the other hasn't. Perhaps Trump will try to politicize the threat of meteor impacts in an effort to fund his Space Force :nerd: and the issue will become championed by conservatives.
Where are you going with this?
I was thinking about the warnings of scientists that antibiotic use is breeding antibiotic-resistant organisms and every day we're approximately one mutation away from a resistant and plague- producing superbug. Then I started thinking about all the things that could cause the end of the world and I just landed on asteroid. How did global warming climb to the top of the pile? That's what I was wondering about.
Quoting praxis
That's a great idea. I think we probably need a Mars colony for that. Only conservative astronauts will be allowed.
The top of the pile today is the invasion force (destitute asylum seekers) header for the US Southern border. Trump wants to send 15,000 troops to stop this imminent threat to our great country.
Don’t worry, the threat will be forgotten after Tuesday.
You wanted to discuss public perception of existential threats. My point is that it can be largely shaped by the media and influential figures who may use these perceived threats to pursue unrelated goals. Is a lot of this irrational? Yes, welcome to the human race.
So you have to look at who can use the issue. Nobody can really do much with the superbug issue. It doesn't sell right now. If we have a little epidemic that wipes out California, and threatens further damage, then it will be all about the superbugs, and global warming will wane in significance (even if it's a possible contributor to the plague situation.) The superbug will be a cause for fear, so it will make people malleable for political agendas, and therefore it's a significant issue.
I think that's it.
The truth is that there do exist threats, but the media and the public discourse focuses on some of them. And of course, some push an ideological agenda with it, some can have another agendas. One's own knowledge about the subject is the best way to separate the underlying facts from the various agendas.
I guess I'm only saying that people tend to pursue shortsighted goals, despite how irrational that may be. Do we need to look any farther than ourselves for evidence of this?
:up:
We usually don't try to fix things until it's already destroyed the neighborhood. We can get a collective freak-out going though. Did you see the PBS special about eugenics? It gathered all fears unto itself. There was talk of building a wall around the US to keep the genetically inferior hoards out. I think that's why they broadcast, actually.
That was before my time. Sorry you had to live through it, you old geezer.
Cute, but shouldn't they have designed you to be a bit more... how can I say this delicately, smart.
Ah. Love will conquer all, so they say.
I don't believe in nuclear weapons. That's the level of denial I'm dealing with. But can we agree that science is - for all intents and purposes, a true description of reality - and thus far, we barely pay lip service to that truth?
Quoting Jake
Could we maybe agree that if we recognized the fact that science is a true description of reality, we'd have no good reason to build nuclear weapons? That indeed, the fundamental motive for building nuclear weapons is ideological disagreement?
Quoting Jake
If we agree to the above - then setting 'accepting science as truth' among religious and political ideologies would be absurd. Science is objectively true - and that's not a matter of belief. To consider scientific truth on a par with religious and political ideology is just as absurd as it is for me to say I don't believe nuclear weapons exist.
Quoting Jake
Here's something about us humans you don't know. We are drawn to truth. Truth is powerfully compelling - precisely because we are built by the function or die algorithm of evolution, in relation to causal reality - from the DNA up, to be correct to reality. That's a fundamentally truthful relation to reality that pre-dates intellectual awareness by a very long way. Consider, for example - the way a bird builds a nest before it lays eggs. Is that because it knows - and plans ahead? No! It's because those birds that didn't build a nest before they laid eggs are extinct. Surviving birds necessarily account for this temporal dimension of reality in their unconscious behavior.
That's how deeply truth is ingrained in surviving organisms - and fundamentally, that's why we are drawn to truth. We know in our bones truth is important - and it is to this human being I make my appeal. Not the ideologically confused identities we wear - but the animal underneath, because that animal is right. That animal has been tested from the DNA up through to its physiology and behavior to be correct to reality - else be rendered extinct.
The problem is intellectual awareness is limited. We have the same inherent compulsion toward truth, as demonstrated by the astonishing increase in knowledge over the past 15,000 years or so, of civilization. But the world is big and complex; and until very recently, we had little idea what was true. It's only 400 years ago we discovered the method to ascertain and distinguish reliable knowledge, from the wide - if not infinite range of hypothetical possibilities. In lieu of the ability to reliably establish truth - we made stuff up, and called it true. We built our civilizations on made up ideas we called truth, and then - this was our big mistake, when we discovered the method for establishing truth - we suppressed it to protect those made up ideas.
Quoting Jake
We have used science in many ways. It's difficult to ignore the fact science surrounds us with technological miracles - and horrors like nuclear weapons. What we have not done however, is believe science is true. We continue to believe the ideas we just made up - and draw from those ideas our identities and purposes. We tap into the power of truth, but then use it as directed by made up ideas. It's those made up ideas that provide us with the motive to build nuclear weapons. This is where your rocket bike analogy comes in - but accepting that science is a true description of reality, and drawing our identities and purposes from truth, there's no reason to apply science in such a manner.
So I don't believe in nuclear weapons. You do. They are the product of your false belief - not of science, but of science disbelieved.
What is your plan to remove such ideological irrationality from the equation?
Ok, we need to accept "science as truth". But how? Unless you have some kind of specific credible plan for human transformation to share with us, then your "science as truth" religion is really little different than "the world will be saved when we all become good Christians". That is, so far it appears to be little more than just another vague utopian dream with little chance of ever occurring to the degree necessary.
You keep saying that we need to align ourselves with reality, which is a valid concept in theory, but then you decline to align your theories with the reality of the human condition.
Reality: Nuclear weapons exist, and nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening, nor seems capable of fixing the problem. Real world fact Karl.
If you are proposing that your utopian dream can accomplish what none other in history has succeeded in doing, ok, make that argument in some detail.
I have no plan. Do you imagine I need one? I rather think I don't. I think that people know truth when they see it, and it compels them. They will compel themselves and eachother. How could one plan that? You mention Christianity - but if it weren't for a long series of unplanned and somewhat unlikely events, it would have been plowed under by time, and we'd all be worshiping Sol Invictus - or more probably, science as revealing the word of Sol made manifest in Creation.
Quoting Jake
I wrote three paragraphs together above on the subject; which support the conclusion that truth is utterly compelling. What 'human condition' do you speak of? Are you attempting to claim there's some more fundamental naturalistic reality than that?
Quoting Jake
Not real. Nation states are not real things. They're just made up. There's no such thing as an indigenous population - we're all random collections of hunter gatherer tribes who formed civilization by agreeing to believe convenient lies. Those lies bring us within sight of our end - and you think I need a plan to compel people to embrace the truth? They will embrace it or die.
Quoting Jake
Shall I make it so long no-one reads it? Least of all you!
You're not obligated to have a plan for human transformation of course. But the "more is better" philosophy your technological suggestions are built upon depend upon such a transformation, for the simple reason that in our current state of maturity we can't handle more power.
If you, or anyone, had a credible plan for how a critical mass of the human population might come to accept "science as truth", that enhanced human maturity might make it safe for us to continue to acquire new powers, including your technological suggestions. Your "science as truth" idea has value in that is shows that you realize that human transformation is necessary, but so far it's just another utopian theory.
You're intent on aligning yourself with reality, which is good, and so I'm attempting to show you that at the current time the reality is that human beings show every sign of being significantly insane (nukes etc) and thus proposals which aim to give us even more power are irrational. If you, or anyone, had a credible plan for how to cure the insanity at the scale necessary, then that would obviously create a new situation where more things are possible.
Quoting Jake
Karl, please read the quoted sentence again.
1) Nuclear weapons exist. FACT!
2) Nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening. FACT!
3) Nobody seems capable of fixing the problem. FACT!
It is in to this factual reality that you wish to introduce even more power with your technological proposals.
Yes, we can handle it. If we know what's true, and do what's right in terms of what's true - if we value the sustainability of our existence, by those principles alone, we can handle everything technology has to offer.
But let us be more specific. Consider smallpox. A terrible disease. So incredibly virulent - it was once weaponized, and then it was banned - and recently, utterly destroyed. It no longer exists anywhere on the planet. We did that despite being divided by various pre-scientific - religious, political and economic ideologies, into competing factions. The opportunity existed to do what was good and right for everyone, and we took it. A clear case of - less is better. And it's not the only such case. We routinely ban things because they're bad - CFC's for instance. How does 'more is better' explain that. DDT - another example. Your thesis seems to have a lot of holes in it.
Quoting Jake
It's not Utopian in the least. That implies how the world is now - is how it cannot but be, and the ideas I'm putting forward are unrealistic. What I'm saying is quite different. This isn't how the world should be, as demonstrated by the fact we are barreling toward extinction - fully conscious of the fact, and with the ability to prevent it - but are somehow unable to apply the technology we have. That's wrong. I only seek to put right what is wrong.
Quoting Jake
I disagree. Consider a traffic jam. By your analysis, you consider each motorist insane - but they're not. They are all behaving perfectly rationally. It's the situation that's insane - a collective irrationality. The nuclear stand-off is insane, but that's not because those involved are insane. They are behaving rationally to create an irrational situation. It's the ideological divisions between them that provide the motives - ideas that are contrary to a scientific understanding of reality.
In reality, we all evolved on this planet - and are all members of the same species. The evolution of our particular branch of life is millions of years old. Civilization is 15,000 years old at the most - a veritable blink of an eye. Science is a few hundred years old - but it is the older truth. It was true before we evolved, before we developed civilization, it's eternally and universally true. Our mistake is to suppress that truth relative to ideas we made up in the blink of an eye, a moment ago.
That is the basis of our collective irrationality, that's the reason we can't apply the technology we have - to avoid what we can clearly see coming. If you're telling me that setting out that truth - humankind will not see that it's true, and take it on board as a rationale to apply the technology we need to apply to survive - then maybe you're insane, but humankind is not.
All we need, in my view - is an assurance we can do so safely, and that it won't transform everything and everyone - as you seem to imagine is necessary. It's neither necessary nor desirable that we turn the world upside down - and this leads to the principle of existential necessity I described earlier. Given that principle, we can safely accept a scientific understanding of reality in common as the basis to apply technology "insofar as is necessary to avoid extinction." All else remains equal - at least in the medium term. Longer term, I think we'll come to rely more and more on science as a lingua franca and level playing field for dealing with global issues, but that's for future generations to decide. Immediately, we can safely limit the implications, and should do so.
My opinion is that science tries to uncover the truth, aims for an objective truth, yet what we do and what we want is a subjective question and objective facts simply cannot give us answers to the subjective decisions we have to make.
It simply is false to say that by understanding objective reality we can decide what we want to do with that reality, how we should alter it to improve it. To think there would be an obvious guideline what to do is totally false, is an example of extreme hubris and very naive. This attitude simply leads to some Panglossian view where people actually deny that they are making subjective decisions (because they will at worst fall back on the idea that "science says so").
We have to acknowledge that we make normative statements and in the end make political decisions and that those political decisions are open for debate by challenging political views.
I think that Karl's point is important when scientific facts are thought to be opinions, to be cultural constructs or conspiracies of some evil people pushing their sinister agenda or something similarly hilarious. If that happens, then we are truly lost.
We have thousands of nukes aimed down our own throats. Are we handling it?
Quoting karl stone
Except that there is no plan to take us to this level of sanity, and vague dreamy utopian visions have proven incapable of taking us there.
No offense Karl, but I give up, you are too willing to blatantly ignore reality to take your theories seriously. I'm glad you're on the forum though.
Well, we haven't used them in anger but once. Two bombs - but part of the same offensive. Terrible thing - haven't done it again. So, given the collective irrationality argument - yes, we're handling it so far.
Quoting Jake
Thanks for your opinion, but you haven't really come clean, have you? I've asked about your motives for relentlessly banging your doom drum, and you've been less than forthcoming. It's not intellectual merit, because both Praxis and I have destroyed your argument. That's what tends happen on forums like this. Yet here you are, still banging your drum. Are you religious - and anti science? Are you simply misanthropic - you hate people? What is it with you?
Quoting Jake
I do find your views offensive - as I've already told you. I find your lack of effort, and hope, and your unwillingness to change your mind offensive. I find your shallow mischaracterization of my arguments offensive - this repeated utopian mantra for example. Your ostensible politeness doesn't make up for any of that. So saying no offense - stands in stark contrast to the fact that you're the most offensive person imaginable. A closed minded doom monger - who's underlying message is don't hope and don't try. That's offensive. Goodbye.
So if I were to walk around all day every day with a loaded gun in my mouth you would consider that a successful management of my handgun, given that the gun hasn't gone off.
See? It's not possible to have a rational discussion with true believers of any stripe.
It always makes me smile when people yell at me for not typing enough. :smile:
Why am I relentlessly addressing the subject of our relationship with knowledge? Because the future of human civilization will be determined by that relationship.
My message is that we can adapt to the revolutionary new era which the success of science has created if we try. But as your posts illustrate, a great many people instead invest all of their intelligence and effort in to trying to cling to the past.
Look. You're shooting the messenger here. It's not my fault that the long era of knowledge scarcity has become a new era characterized by a knowledge explosion. It's not my fault that, just as your words constantly remind us, we have to adapt to reality if we want to survive. I didn't create these situations, I'm just reporting on them.
You have good intentions. You just don't understand that an era of knowledge explosion is an environment very different than an era of knowledge scarcity, requiring a different adaptive response. The "more is better" response which was entirely appropriate in an era of knowledge scarcity can not be automagically transferred to a knowledge explosion era just because it's a routine that we're comfortable with.
Your ideas would have fit nicely in the 19th century. But we're not in that century any more, a reality I had nothing to do with.
Is that a rational argument? It's not an accurate analogy. Why have you got a handgun in your mouth? There are reasons we created nuclear weapons. There are reasons for the arms race. They're not good reasons. They're an ideologically premised misapplication of technology. But accepting those ideological concepts as true for the purposes of this argument, it's not insane to match your enemy's military capabilities. It's collective irrationality - not insanity.
Quoting Jake
I agree. I'm addressing the same issue - and explaining the phenomena you describe, in a way that offers the opportunity of a sustainable future. You seem angered by that - like I've broken your spear. The spear with which you stabbed people in the heart.
Quoting Jake
It wasn't a page ago where you said - we cannot adapt fast enough. It's not what you're saying if you would seek to put the brakes on progress in some vague undefined way - and it isn't what you're saying if you imagine there's an adult in the room who will tell we children to stop playing with fire. Really - what you're saying is, you're playing God, and will get your comeuppance. It's the Prometheus story. You would chain us to a rock and have an eagle eat our liver. It's an old, old story - and if you still don't understand the way in which I account for this issue - there's little hope you'll ever understand.
Quoting Jake
Yes, but no! I have good intentions and good ideas. I do not have the kind of stupid good intentions that pave the path to hell.
Quoting Jake
Yes, I do. My entire argument describes the correct adaptive response to a new kind of knowledge, and explains why it's the correct response.
Quoting Jake
"More is better" does not describe my argument at all. It barely describes what's happening in the world right now. I gave you three examples of 'less is better' human beings have put into practice you simply haven't acknowledged. Your cogniphobia is not uncommon. It's a tale as old as the hills - and it's updated in every era, Prometheus, Pandora, Frankenstein, Transcendence (film with Johnny Depp.) The mad scientist theme is big in Hollywood - and is ultimately part of the suppression of science by religious, political and economic ideology.
What I'm arguing for is responsibility to science as a true description of reality, as the basis for the application of technology.
That's not "more is better" - is it? It's a means of discriminating good from bad. So why do you keep saying it is? Is it so you can pretend your cruel spear does not lie broken at your feet?
This is regarding the paragraph where you discussed solar power.
I believe a large solar power plant should be positioned in the deserts of a particular country - preferably Australia, where there are no wars or much other troubles to be dealt with. A solar power plant only requires a reasonably small amount of land to power our entire planet, so it would be no trouble keeping these renewable power stations on land (and out of the rough and dangerous seas).
Climate change is a topic that interests me very much, and has done for many years, so it was fascinating reading your views on this detrimental subject. I will be both incredibly fearful and curious to see what happens to both our own species and the life around us as a result of an ever rapidly warming planet.
A patch of solar panels 450 miles square - would provide the same amount of energy used in the world, and not just electricity, but all the oil, coal and gas too. The problem with placing them in the Australian desert, as per your suggestion - is transmitting that energy. There's a significant energy loss over long distances - particularly at lower voltages, due to resistance in transmission cables.
The reason I suggest floating solar panels is that using electricity to convert sea water into hydrogen, stores that energy in a convenient form, which can be used both to power traditional power stations - producing electricity transmitted by the normal means, but can also be used for transport, aluminium, cement and steel works - big users of energy, with little in the way of adaptation. Furthermore, it overcomes the 'night-time' issue.
I have addressed the question of rough and stormy seas by suggesting a submersible design - but clearly, they would need to be quite robust regardless of that issue.
There's a calculation for the world's energy needs in solar panels here:
https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
That includes this shocking, but illustrative comparison:
"According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometers of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years."
Beyond the opening post on page one - I explain the mistake that brings us to a place where we are destroying forests at such a rate, but are unable to apply the technologies we have - which we need to apply to secure a sustainable future. But it is technologically possible to supply the world's energy needs from renewable sources without breaking a sweat!
Don't forget the need for water.