I think we need to start with what 'meaning' means. If I say 'cat' I expect an English speaker to know that I'm talking about a furry animal with retractable claws. Cat 'means' the animal. If someone says 'what is the meaning of life' it presupposes that life is a signifier of something else, a symbol of something else. But this gets it backwards: Life is, and it's a deeper mystery than the cheap words we attach to it when we sing or pray. Life isn't a symbol that means something, it is the definition that the symbols seek to explain. Life is the meaning, falling in love with the words is just looking down the big end of the telescope.I think you definitely CAN logically derive ethics, Hume and Lewis notwithstanding. All you need to start with is some very basic assumptions- that some things hurt and other things are nice, and that other people have feelings broadly similar to your own- and you can get the golden rule without any supernatural-ness whatever. The second commandment is this way derivable, and, as Jesus apparently said, from this hangs the law and the prophets. By contrast, religions tend to ban arbitrary things like wearing wool blends and eating ferrets and define morality on the basis of divine will. This inverts the believers' concept of ethics; rather than a morality driven by consequences and natural repositories of moral value - people , planet, critters, knowledge and art- some supernatural personality's will (as revealed by magical Hebrews or Arab warlords) gets to decide what is good and evil.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Give me Bernie or Give me Trump
I am beginning to think that we need to try some experiments in Basic Income here in the US.
The Federal government spends 1.8 Trillion per year on Welfare and Medicine alone, more than double the total Military spend; Healthcare alone costs the US taxpayer $8000 dollars per person per year, which is a public health spend higher per capita than any other nation on Earth.
I'm fairly sure that giving people 15k per annum and letting them pay for their own services would be dramatically better for the economy and for efficiency of service delivery than the current system; Its more than many Americans earn. With the cost differential of services across borders, it is legitimate to contemplate driving to Mexico and paying cash rather than paying 100,000 bucks for a hip replacement that actually costs more like 10 grand nearly anywhere else in the world.
If the US worker is to be subject to the competitive pressures of free trade, they ought to share in the Upside as well.
It's not OK to use the tax system to create protected private industries that everyone must pay for, while at the same time opening borders to imports and workers that compete directly in areas other than things like Government services, Health and Education. There are complicating factors; the US effectively subsidises much of the drug discovery and surgical research that benefits the whole planet, and US Universities do lots of good research work, but the bottom line is that the US system is not cost effective in the delivery of basic healthcare or education services.
I'm actually quite happy with either system: either have a National Health Service and remove cost of insurance and profit margins and most of the cost of litigation from the US system, which would enable comprehensive, lifelong, free medicine like in Europe on the existing budget, or let's get all Laissez-faire up in here and make the industries compete in a real capitalist system; give people their money and let the chose.
If that means going to China to get their teeth fixed or Germany for University, so be it. When America's medicos and college professors can then see their salaries cutting the same downward curve as Industrial workers, this may change their feelings about how well the current system works.
Give me an FDR or give me a Reagan, but enough of Privatised/corporatised profits and Nationalised/personalised debts. We're basically in a low point between two functional systems.
The Federal government spends 1.8 Trillion per year on Welfare and Medicine alone, more than double the total Military spend; Healthcare alone costs the US taxpayer $8000 dollars per person per year, which is a public health spend higher per capita than any other nation on Earth.
I'm fairly sure that giving people 15k per annum and letting them pay for their own services would be dramatically better for the economy and for efficiency of service delivery than the current system; Its more than many Americans earn. With the cost differential of services across borders, it is legitimate to contemplate driving to Mexico and paying cash rather than paying 100,000 bucks for a hip replacement that actually costs more like 10 grand nearly anywhere else in the world.
If the US worker is to be subject to the competitive pressures of free trade, they ought to share in the Upside as well.
It's not OK to use the tax system to create protected private industries that everyone must pay for, while at the same time opening borders to imports and workers that compete directly in areas other than things like Government services, Health and Education. There are complicating factors; the US effectively subsidises much of the drug discovery and surgical research that benefits the whole planet, and US Universities do lots of good research work, but the bottom line is that the US system is not cost effective in the delivery of basic healthcare or education services.
I'm actually quite happy with either system: either have a National Health Service and remove cost of insurance and profit margins and most of the cost of litigation from the US system, which would enable comprehensive, lifelong, free medicine like in Europe on the existing budget, or let's get all Laissez-faire up in here and make the industries compete in a real capitalist system; give people their money and let the chose.
If that means going to China to get their teeth fixed or Germany for University, so be it. When America's medicos and college professors can then see their salaries cutting the same downward curve as Industrial workers, this may change their feelings about how well the current system works.
Give me an FDR or give me a Reagan, but enough of Privatised/corporatised profits and Nationalised/personalised debts. We're basically in a low point between two functional systems.
Friday, July 24, 2015
There is a significant problem that can affect government decision making that I have not heard much about before.
This might be because Conservatives are not looking for it, and the Left are seriously taciturn about anything that critiques decision making processes within political, rather than commercial organisations? I don't know exactly. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.
I would argue that decisions made for large numbers of people cannot be rationally based without recourse to statistical methods; from here the problems are two-fold.
Firstly, statistical methods work on the basis of best fit. Which is immensely useful in the design process, ergonomics and so forth, for its ability to turn an incomprehensible mass of data into a single number that can be used in a design. My main objection to it is that the number of outliers can be large or small, and the decision about how many outliers is acceptable comes down to assumptions which may or may not be stated.
In short, a highly anatomical chair design will injure people whom it fits poorly. How badly they are affected is largely a function of how much clearance, or slack, there is in the design. This is essentially the extent to which the ergonomic design is modified to accommodate those who differ from the mean case that was the original basis for the design. The most egalitarian design is a straight backed chair, which could be said to fit everyone equally badly.
There are definitely times when a less anatomical design may cause less suffering in total, even if the straight-backed chair is less comfortable for someone within half a standard deviation of the mean, depending only on the lack of diversity of the sample. In short, the more diverse the population, the more un-tailored must be the solution to minimise the dis-ergonomic effect on those not close to the designated mean.
This extends to a variety of policy decisions, some of which fit a great many people very badly indeed.
Which brings us to the second problem: most people are intuitively very poor at understanding base-rate statistics even when technically trained, and appallingly bad when untrained. My experience with government in Australia suggests that in the public sector, Arts majors predominate, whereas in business, quantitive skills are far more prevalent.
This leads to policy being informed by officially sanctioned narratives rather than empirical data, and often, by heavily dialectic reasoning, bordering on reasoning by analogy.
There is no way to to quantify fit with a qualitative narrative. If the policy starts that way, it may be subject to numerical analysis only when it is being budgeted for; at this point, it is all about costing, the quantity most measured is monetary.
This excludes a lot of very important variables from consideration, especially those variables significant to the design.
This might be because Conservatives are not looking for it, and the Left are seriously taciturn about anything that critiques decision making processes within political, rather than commercial organisations? I don't know exactly. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.
I would argue that decisions made for large numbers of people cannot be rationally based without recourse to statistical methods; from here the problems are two-fold.
Firstly, statistical methods work on the basis of best fit. Which is immensely useful in the design process, ergonomics and so forth, for its ability to turn an incomprehensible mass of data into a single number that can be used in a design. My main objection to it is that the number of outliers can be large or small, and the decision about how many outliers is acceptable comes down to assumptions which may or may not be stated.
In short, a highly anatomical chair design will injure people whom it fits poorly. How badly they are affected is largely a function of how much clearance, or slack, there is in the design. This is essentially the extent to which the ergonomic design is modified to accommodate those who differ from the mean case that was the original basis for the design. The most egalitarian design is a straight backed chair, which could be said to fit everyone equally badly.
There are definitely times when a less anatomical design may cause less suffering in total, even if the straight-backed chair is less comfortable for someone within half a standard deviation of the mean, depending only on the lack of diversity of the sample. In short, the more diverse the population, the more un-tailored must be the solution to minimise the dis-ergonomic effect on those not close to the designated mean.
This extends to a variety of policy decisions, some of which fit a great many people very badly indeed.
Which brings us to the second problem: most people are intuitively very poor at understanding base-rate statistics even when technically trained, and appallingly bad when untrained. My experience with government in Australia suggests that in the public sector, Arts majors predominate, whereas in business, quantitive skills are far more prevalent.
This leads to policy being informed by officially sanctioned narratives rather than empirical data, and often, by heavily dialectic reasoning, bordering on reasoning by analogy.
There is no way to to quantify fit with a qualitative narrative. If the policy starts that way, it may be subject to numerical analysis only when it is being budgeted for; at this point, it is all about costing, the quantity most measured is monetary.
This excludes a lot of very important variables from consideration, especially those variables significant to the design.
Monday, June 22, 2015
In Praise of the Millennial Hipster
It's no secret that I both admire and envy the younger crew, the cohort that gets tagged Gen Y or 'the millennials'.
They cop a lot of flack but that's frankly just sour grapes.
In fairness, they have a tough gig, but they are a lot less fucked up than my cohort, who were wearing grunge flannel and listening to Nirvana in the early 90's.
The difference, to some extent, is that we were raised by Baby Boomers, and they mostly weren't. This is a significant advantage.
The main beef I have with Boomers as parents was their annoying tendency to try to make the world a better place by means of social change. Making the World Better By Changing the Culture of the Rising Generation. We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones to make a brighter day so let's start giving. For fuck's sake.
Which of course just created the most guilt-ridden and suicidal teenagers in history, and changed absolutely nothing, that being the very job that the hedonists turned moralists turned capitalists turned doomsayers of that generation diligently shirked for the past sixty years, while talking a game that could blister paint.
The main issue was the idea that you could sidestep physics, economics, engineering and even ecology and do something useful by grasping the social levers: "changing ourselves", which really meant telling your kids to be eco-messiahs AND fiscally responsible. At the same fucking time.
Folding paper cranes for World Peace is the best example i can think of to exemplify this insanity. It didn't work.
It was as futile and as weird as the empty promises of an 18-year old Miss America in swimsuit and stilettos; standing, nearly naked in front of a clothed crowd, aping beautiful sentiments in a display of heartbreaking hope and slightly erotic cultural submission.
One with absolutely zero probability of coming to fruition, because there was no mechanism behind the beautiful clock face, that would turn the wheels and bring the ship around.
They taught her to say these things, but never gave her the captain's chair.
And now, Gen Y are rolling their own way. They dress better, travel more, grow beards, watch porn, have fewer abortions and use less drugs than their parents. They ride bicycles, and try to live in whatever fragments remain of the Transit Cities.
The remnants of the Pre-War urban landscape, built by the Great-grandparents that the "Greatest" generation and the Boomers rebelled against; whatever fragments of sound urban planning escaped the Suburban Apocalypse, has Trains, dense urban form, walkable plazas: That kinda space is where Gen Y want to live.
They have to rent, of course, but that's ok.
And yeah, they are a bit flaky at work, and they like their toys, but they're all right, these kids. I think we need to give them a go, and see how they pull up. I'm betting it will be considerably better than the Boomer cohort or the guilt ridden, preachy Gen X crew.
So Go Kids, lets see how you do. I'm barracking for you, anyway.
May the FSM be with you.
They cop a lot of flack but that's frankly just sour grapes.
In fairness, they have a tough gig, but they are a lot less fucked up than my cohort, who were wearing grunge flannel and listening to Nirvana in the early 90's.
The difference, to some extent, is that we were raised by Baby Boomers, and they mostly weren't. This is a significant advantage.
The main beef I have with Boomers as parents was their annoying tendency to try to make the world a better place by means of social change. Making the World Better By Changing the Culture of the Rising Generation. We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones to make a brighter day so let's start giving. For fuck's sake.
Which of course just created the most guilt-ridden and suicidal teenagers in history, and changed absolutely nothing, that being the very job that the hedonists turned moralists turned capitalists turned doomsayers of that generation diligently shirked for the past sixty years, while talking a game that could blister paint.
The main issue was the idea that you could sidestep physics, economics, engineering and even ecology and do something useful by grasping the social levers: "changing ourselves", which really meant telling your kids to be eco-messiahs AND fiscally responsible. At the same fucking time.
Folding paper cranes for World Peace is the best example i can think of to exemplify this insanity. It didn't work.
It was as futile and as weird as the empty promises of an 18-year old Miss America in swimsuit and stilettos; standing, nearly naked in front of a clothed crowd, aping beautiful sentiments in a display of heartbreaking hope and slightly erotic cultural submission.
One with absolutely zero probability of coming to fruition, because there was no mechanism behind the beautiful clock face, that would turn the wheels and bring the ship around.
They taught her to say these things, but never gave her the captain's chair.
And now, Gen Y are rolling their own way. They dress better, travel more, grow beards, watch porn, have fewer abortions and use less drugs than their parents. They ride bicycles, and try to live in whatever fragments remain of the Transit Cities.
The remnants of the Pre-War urban landscape, built by the Great-grandparents that the "Greatest" generation and the Boomers rebelled against; whatever fragments of sound urban planning escaped the Suburban Apocalypse, has Trains, dense urban form, walkable plazas: That kinda space is where Gen Y want to live.
They have to rent, of course, but that's ok.
And yeah, they are a bit flaky at work, and they like their toys, but they're all right, these kids. I think we need to give them a go, and see how they pull up. I'm betting it will be considerably better than the Boomer cohort or the guilt ridden, preachy Gen X crew.
So Go Kids, lets see how you do. I'm barracking for you, anyway.
May the FSM be with you.
Monday, April 6, 2015
One of the mixed blessings of the human condition is our ability to doubt.
Without Doubt, orthodoxies would simply be handed down from one generation to another, and we would be stuck with whatever mental tool kit we were given by our parents.
Beliefs tend to be conservative: Someone once catches something nasty from eating mussels and three thousand years later they stay un-Kosher. And that sort of thing.
Our ability to doubt is a dangerous and powerful force for change. It can question anything. It undresses Emperors and it barbecues Holy Cows. Mixed with curiosity, it underpins the scientific disposition.
It is also, ironically, able to leave us stranded at a crossroads, paralysed with indecision.
Our ability to doubt is most powerful when we are in the belly of a highly organised system; in a train on a track, it is perfectly suitable to ask "is this the right way? Is this the best way?"
But when the scope of what is possible opens up into a plain before us, "are we going the right way?" is almost meaningless. Because there are nearly infinite choices, and no Rails, no roads, no gods or kings, just the vastness of the Possible.
Among the doubtful, there are those whose Doubt is really Fear, and they respond to this situation with a kind of Possibility Agoraphobia. In company, they will form a pile with their heads in the middle, like a mob of sleeping turkeys, and recite comforting platitudes at one another to block out the awful silence of the open plain. They don't reason too vigorously, because for them the instinct to flock is stronger than the instinct to navigate. I have never been able to stand that way of thinking; let me be clear: In the Environmental movement, this is a Fucking Bad Habit.
Its time to look at the vast space of the possible and just pick some things that are worth doing. And then sodding get on with them already.
This necessitates the realism of accepting that every course of action in the real world will have some negative consequences. Doubt and fear are not going to help lead to good decisions if someone has a inability to risk, and an inability to assess and accept the reality of the Downside. Every course of action has one.
For example: Wind Turbines.
Wind turbines will kill some birds. Fewer than cars, fewer than cats, fewer than plate glass windows, fewer than power lines, but some birds are gonna die.
And its OK.
Because if we let Climate Change turn their habitat into a dust bowl, they are ALL fucked. They can learn to avoid flying into turbines and most will, but they cannot learn to avoid habitat loss. We are gonna need a lot of wind to make decarbonising the economy work. So fucking deal with it, hippies, or stop pretending that you are environmentalists.
Ditto Solar. I read some Ass who seriously suggested that the solid waste from solar was a "dirty little secret" but when you run the numbers, the waste was about the size of a Wall Mart parking lot to the depth of 10 feet. That's it. Big fucking deal. The Fly Ash mountains of radioactive crap heaping up from Coal are vastly more of an issue, as well as being far larger in volume. As in, by orders of magnitude. Some cardboard boxes are not going to make me think the Status Quo is the best we can do. For Fucks Sake.
And electric transport: Jesus the crap I have heard surrounding this. Yeah, they use Lithium. There's a lot of it. And when the battery is dead...we recycle it. Its an element, not a compound like the Hydrocarbons in Oil that we burn and that float non-renewably into the Atmosphere. Its a battery. All the stuff stays inside. For Fuck's wee pious sake.
If we link these three technologies together and run the numbers, something amazing happens: we have a different kind of economy with chance of actually working. 4 kWh of electricity can propel a Tesla nearly as far as an SUV can go on a Gallon of gasoline. And here is the kicker: the refining of Oil into Gasoline requires nearly 4kWh/Gallon.
Displacing the Gasoline not only allows you to do something better with the Oil (like international air travel, yeeeehaaaa!) but the downside for the energy budget is minimal.
1KW of solar panels is now about 5-600 bucks on the word market. This will propel a car some 15 miles on a summer day. The numbers work.
I suspect sometimes that the relative straightforwardness of a solution is what upsets those that have a longstanding emotional commitment to Doom. A future in which Mad Max just plugs his road warrior-mobile into a charge point and drinks a few coffees as his batteries top off is not as compelling somehow as him battling leather-clad fetish enthusiasts for the petroleum lifeblood of the Post Apocalypse.
Selling Sane Max to the masses is not going particularly well, either.
For some reason, you tell people, guys, we have made some cool things that allow us to drive around and run air conditioning and have electronic gadgets AND we can have clean air too....whaddaya say? And you hear crickets.
Don't get me wrong, there is an immense amount of work to do. To give everyone enough power to have lights and computing and a bit of air con means we need about 20 billion solar panels installed and probably 10 million wind turbines. That there is a shitload of work.
But frankly, work doesn't scare me. We CAN do this. Big Business has pulled its head out of its backside and has joined the party, and they are doing some pretty cool things. There are a bazillion startups trying to be the grease in the gears of the new energy economy, including mine.
We got this. This is something that humanity is going to be proud of in 50 years.
So lets put Mad Max to rest already. He's a pain in the arse.
Our ability to doubt is a dangerous and powerful force for change. It can question anything. It undresses Emperors and it barbecues Holy Cows. Mixed with curiosity, it underpins the scientific disposition.
It is also, ironically, able to leave us stranded at a crossroads, paralysed with indecision.
Our ability to doubt is most powerful when we are in the belly of a highly organised system; in a train on a track, it is perfectly suitable to ask "is this the right way? Is this the best way?"
But when the scope of what is possible opens up into a plain before us, "are we going the right way?" is almost meaningless. Because there are nearly infinite choices, and no Rails, no roads, no gods or kings, just the vastness of the Possible.
Among the doubtful, there are those whose Doubt is really Fear, and they respond to this situation with a kind of Possibility Agoraphobia. In company, they will form a pile with their heads in the middle, like a mob of sleeping turkeys, and recite comforting platitudes at one another to block out the awful silence of the open plain. They don't reason too vigorously, because for them the instinct to flock is stronger than the instinct to navigate. I have never been able to stand that way of thinking; let me be clear: In the Environmental movement, this is a Fucking Bad Habit.
Its time to look at the vast space of the possible and just pick some things that are worth doing. And then sodding get on with them already.
This necessitates the realism of accepting that every course of action in the real world will have some negative consequences. Doubt and fear are not going to help lead to good decisions if someone has a inability to risk, and an inability to assess and accept the reality of the Downside. Every course of action has one.
For example: Wind Turbines.
Wind turbines will kill some birds. Fewer than cars, fewer than cats, fewer than plate glass windows, fewer than power lines, but some birds are gonna die.
And its OK.
Because if we let Climate Change turn their habitat into a dust bowl, they are ALL fucked. They can learn to avoid flying into turbines and most will, but they cannot learn to avoid habitat loss. We are gonna need a lot of wind to make decarbonising the economy work. So fucking deal with it, hippies, or stop pretending that you are environmentalists.
Ditto Solar. I read some Ass who seriously suggested that the solid waste from solar was a "dirty little secret" but when you run the numbers, the waste was about the size of a Wall Mart parking lot to the depth of 10 feet. That's it. Big fucking deal. The Fly Ash mountains of radioactive crap heaping up from Coal are vastly more of an issue, as well as being far larger in volume. As in, by orders of magnitude. Some cardboard boxes are not going to make me think the Status Quo is the best we can do. For Fucks Sake.
And electric transport: Jesus the crap I have heard surrounding this. Yeah, they use Lithium. There's a lot of it. And when the battery is dead...we recycle it. Its an element, not a compound like the Hydrocarbons in Oil that we burn and that float non-renewably into the Atmosphere. Its a battery. All the stuff stays inside. For Fuck's wee pious sake.
If we link these three technologies together and run the numbers, something amazing happens: we have a different kind of economy with chance of actually working. 4 kWh of electricity can propel a Tesla nearly as far as an SUV can go on a Gallon of gasoline. And here is the kicker: the refining of Oil into Gasoline requires nearly 4kWh/Gallon.
Displacing the Gasoline not only allows you to do something better with the Oil (like international air travel, yeeeehaaaa!) but the downside for the energy budget is minimal.
1KW of solar panels is now about 5-600 bucks on the word market. This will propel a car some 15 miles on a summer day. The numbers work.
I suspect sometimes that the relative straightforwardness of a solution is what upsets those that have a longstanding emotional commitment to Doom. A future in which Mad Max just plugs his road warrior-mobile into a charge point and drinks a few coffees as his batteries top off is not as compelling somehow as him battling leather-clad fetish enthusiasts for the petroleum lifeblood of the Post Apocalypse.
Selling Sane Max to the masses is not going particularly well, either.
For some reason, you tell people, guys, we have made some cool things that allow us to drive around and run air conditioning and have electronic gadgets AND we can have clean air too....whaddaya say? And you hear crickets.
Don't get me wrong, there is an immense amount of work to do. To give everyone enough power to have lights and computing and a bit of air con means we need about 20 billion solar panels installed and probably 10 million wind turbines. That there is a shitload of work.
But frankly, work doesn't scare me. We CAN do this. Big Business has pulled its head out of its backside and has joined the party, and they are doing some pretty cool things. There are a bazillion startups trying to be the grease in the gears of the new energy economy, including mine.
We got this. This is something that humanity is going to be proud of in 50 years.
So lets put Mad Max to rest already. He's a pain in the arse.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
I have come suddenly to realize why I love science, even though the maths is heavy going for me and the subjects often dry as hell: what sets my soul free is that words and symbols have agreed-upon meanings and the logical relationships between them are respected in discourse. This Rigidity upsets some people but it is this very thing that allows scientists to build diverse equations, with lots of complex parts, with enough accuracy and precision that the relationships will hold even when there are many subunits of argument joined together.
Trying to have a rational conversation with a postmodernist, by contrast, is like trying to knit a clock: without the ability to define component parts, there is zero chance of making the mechanism function.
And every ideologue I have ever met has been guilty of the same thing; deliberately degrading the ability of language to hold meaning. Refusing to agree on the definition of significant terms even for the purposes of one conversation. The left create wiggle room with the mechanistic/dialectic furphy, deconstructionism denies that correlation between word and meaning can exist and religious types just employ spectacularly floppy definitions that lead to defiensible logical dead-ends. Charity is the Pure Love of Christ.....mmmKay?
So hear/here is a (post)'modern koan for y'all: What is the sound of one hand slapping its own forhead in a perfect journalistic vacuum?
Trying to have a rational conversation with a postmodernist, by contrast, is like trying to knit a clock: without the ability to define component parts, there is zero chance of making the mechanism function.
And every ideologue I have ever met has been guilty of the same thing; deliberately degrading the ability of language to hold meaning. Refusing to agree on the definition of significant terms even for the purposes of one conversation. The left create wiggle room with the mechanistic/dialectic furphy, deconstructionism denies that correlation between word and meaning can exist and religious types just employ spectacularly floppy definitions that lead to defiensible logical dead-ends. Charity is the Pure Love of Christ.....mmmKay?
So hear/here is a (post)'modern koan for y'all: What is the sound of one hand slapping its own forhead in a perfect journalistic vacuum?
Commandments for Atheists: I had a bash at some on Quora.
1.Thou shalt not write any commandments unto thee in pseudo-Elizabethan save it be thou hast an understanding of the ways in which thou must alter also the endy-thingys on thy Verbs. Don't mess with this, for I am a grammar Nazi, and did write these commandments with mine own finger (not a touch typist).
2. Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you, but only after a) Being quite sure they want you to do anything unto them, and
b) making sure that you are both into the same kinda stuff, since tastes vary. A LOT. And look out for:
c) Assuming that everyone has the same interests and likes as you is a sign that you are on the Spectrum
3. The world is real. If you are into solipsism, grow up. Assuming that you are the only sentient being in a giant simulation/dream/matrix thingy assumes the existence of an intelligence so colossal that you/the matrix thingy wrote every line of code, every strand of DNA, invented every gadget, wrote Shakespeare and Defoe, as well as every mathematical theorem ever devised. HINT: No you didn't. The second law of thermodynamics works with information too. Therefore: Be modest, believe that the world is real and therefore people, nature and living creatures exist and can suffer, just like you.
4. Observation is the way to learn about the universe. The scientific method helps condense that into actionable principles. It pretty much rocks.
5. Intent is only "a thing" to social animals like primates and dogs. Your dog will forgive you if you step on it accidentally and then make it clear you didn't mean it. The atmosphere is not a pack animal, and does not give a toss about how you feel about it. Nor do endangered species. For non-human, non-canine entities, primate morality is irrelevant. Talk to the biosphere in the language it understands, by not polluting the shit out of it/their habitat. They won't thank you. cos they're not that smart, but you are.
6. If you have an opportunity to do good at little cost to yourself, DO IT. The line of real morality starts at the 0-sum. If an action takes more from the world than it gives the Taker, we call that Evil. Like stealing a tradesman's tools to buy a reefer. EVIL. Like raping someone: 5 minutes of creepy fun that leaves the victim with a lot of emotional shit to deal with, that may take years. EVIL. If you really want to give on a zero sum basis, that's your call, but what we need to look for is ways to make things better that return more than they cost. Small investments in people can change the world.
7. Work. Real self esteem is not given by others, it happens when you feel like you are on your own journey and succeeding. If you've had a tough start, set modest goals and keep trying.
8. Try not to think in terms of sunk costs or lost opportunities. Neither count for shit. Future focused decision making is the only way to go.
9. We are creatures that evolved to live in small groups, and this is still our defining vice. Try not to be tribal and exclude people for silly reasons.
10. Use reason and kindness together as a kind of 2-part putty. It works for me
2. Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you, but only after a) Being quite sure they want you to do anything unto them, and
b) making sure that you are both into the same kinda stuff, since tastes vary. A LOT. And look out for:
c) Assuming that everyone has the same interests and likes as you is a sign that you are on the Spectrum
3. The world is real. If you are into solipsism, grow up. Assuming that you are the only sentient being in a giant simulation/dream/matrix thingy assumes the existence of an intelligence so colossal that you/the matrix thingy wrote every line of code, every strand of DNA, invented every gadget, wrote Shakespeare and Defoe, as well as every mathematical theorem ever devised. HINT: No you didn't. The second law of thermodynamics works with information too. Therefore: Be modest, believe that the world is real and therefore people, nature and living creatures exist and can suffer, just like you.
4. Observation is the way to learn about the universe. The scientific method helps condense that into actionable principles. It pretty much rocks.
5. Intent is only "a thing" to social animals like primates and dogs. Your dog will forgive you if you step on it accidentally and then make it clear you didn't mean it. The atmosphere is not a pack animal, and does not give a toss about how you feel about it. Nor do endangered species. For non-human, non-canine entities, primate morality is irrelevant. Talk to the biosphere in the language it understands, by not polluting the shit out of it/their habitat. They won't thank you. cos they're not that smart, but you are.
6. If you have an opportunity to do good at little cost to yourself, DO IT. The line of real morality starts at the 0-sum. If an action takes more from the world than it gives the Taker, we call that Evil. Like stealing a tradesman's tools to buy a reefer. EVIL. Like raping someone: 5 minutes of creepy fun that leaves the victim with a lot of emotional shit to deal with, that may take years. EVIL. If you really want to give on a zero sum basis, that's your call, but what we need to look for is ways to make things better that return more than they cost. Small investments in people can change the world.
7. Work. Real self esteem is not given by others, it happens when you feel like you are on your own journey and succeeding. If you've had a tough start, set modest goals and keep trying.
8. Try not to think in terms of sunk costs or lost opportunities. Neither count for shit. Future focused decision making is the only way to go.
9. We are creatures that evolved to live in small groups, and this is still our defining vice. Try not to be tribal and exclude people for silly reasons.
10. Use reason and kindness together as a kind of 2-part putty. It works for me
Sunday, September 21, 2014
The Eco Spartan is Dead, and will not be missed.
When I say The Eco Spartan, what I mean the heroic ideal of the Green Movement.
S/he is seldom painted in plain relief, but if you immerse yourself in Green literature long enough, the Ideal, the Vanishing Point from which the construction lines must radiate becomes clear. The invisible point that lends an appearance of depth to the perspective of that worldview, is most definitely a Person.
(from http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/hello_cad/)
Someone who uses little, contributes much, recycles everything, eats vegan and reads recycled counterculture books in the perpetual twilight of a low-energy globe; adopts needy non-European children instead of bearing her own, spends his/her free time advocating for those less fortunate, works with people for governments or NGO's, and is a leader, too, somehow.
S/he advocates for Peace, without taking sides. S/he plants things. S/he is the friend of the downtrodden.
But this ideal is not a Platonic Ideal, a phantasm of qualia that define the Perfect example of its type; no, this is a Vanishing Point, a righteous immolation of the Self around which the great wheel of an Ideology turns!
I think it's time to call Bullshit.
No human can actually do this, and the dissonance of real life is clear if you look at his/her transaction record.
Lots of short haul air travel, producing a greater CO2 footprint than the average. Nearly as much household energy use as the Average Bastard. Suspect vegan foods like Chia that impact poor communities.
Biodiesel, then No Biodiesel, then Biodiesel again. Unclear commitment to Renewable energy. Ambiguous position on Nuclear energy. Ignorance of Thorium.
Ignorance of agriculture in practice. Ignorance of animal welfare in practice.
Advocacy for Refugees from the Middle East, then advocacy against the Ritual Slaughter of animals.
Anti-Israel, but silent on Syria. Pro-headscarf, but unwilling to unpack the ideology that goes with.
No-one ought to feel bad for being done with this ideal. It is a recipe for discontent.
We do need to reduce CO2, it would seem.
So lets just DO that.
Solarize your house, and your hot water. Then stop fucking worrying about it. Really. Leave your damn lights on.
It's now OK.
Size your solar to your Air-con. Take the name plate rating on your AC, then add 100%. You will be right. It will cost less than a fancy watch.
Get an electric car, then stop worrying about fucking buses. Life is too goddamn short for that shit. A basic Prius is not that dear, and you can get plug in packs for them.
If we are going to fix our environmental issues, it is going to be with Science, not by Grasping the Social Levers.
I bloody guarantee it.
S/he is seldom painted in plain relief, but if you immerse yourself in Green literature long enough, the Ideal, the Vanishing Point from which the construction lines must radiate becomes clear. The invisible point that lends an appearance of depth to the perspective of that worldview, is most definitely a Person.
(from http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/hello_cad/)
Someone who uses little, contributes much, recycles everything, eats vegan and reads recycled counterculture books in the perpetual twilight of a low-energy globe; adopts needy non-European children instead of bearing her own, spends his/her free time advocating for those less fortunate, works with people for governments or NGO's, and is a leader, too, somehow.
S/he advocates for Peace, without taking sides. S/he plants things. S/he is the friend of the downtrodden.
But this ideal is not a Platonic Ideal, a phantasm of qualia that define the Perfect example of its type; no, this is a Vanishing Point, a righteous immolation of the Self around which the great wheel of an Ideology turns!
I think it's time to call Bullshit.
No human can actually do this, and the dissonance of real life is clear if you look at his/her transaction record.
Lots of short haul air travel, producing a greater CO2 footprint than the average. Nearly as much household energy use as the Average Bastard. Suspect vegan foods like Chia that impact poor communities.
Biodiesel, then No Biodiesel, then Biodiesel again. Unclear commitment to Renewable energy. Ambiguous position on Nuclear energy. Ignorance of Thorium.
Ignorance of agriculture in practice. Ignorance of animal welfare in practice.
Advocacy for Refugees from the Middle East, then advocacy against the Ritual Slaughter of animals.
Anti-Israel, but silent on Syria. Pro-headscarf, but unwilling to unpack the ideology that goes with.
No-one ought to feel bad for being done with this ideal. It is a recipe for discontent.
We do need to reduce CO2, it would seem.
So lets just DO that.
Solarize your house, and your hot water. Then stop fucking worrying about it. Really. Leave your damn lights on.
It's now OK.
Size your solar to your Air-con. Take the name plate rating on your AC, then add 100%. You will be right. It will cost less than a fancy watch.
Get an electric car, then stop worrying about fucking buses. Life is too goddamn short for that shit. A basic Prius is not that dear, and you can get plug in packs for them.
If we are going to fix our environmental issues, it is going to be with Science, not by Grasping the Social Levers.
I bloody guarantee it.
Freedom Is Phlogiston
I have been thinking about a line from John Ralston Saul's splendid little book, The Doubters Companion. It goes something like:
"Freedom is an empty space, that needs to be re-occupied each day."
This struck me as quite insightful. At first it led me to think about hippies in Guy Fawkes masks loitering in a financial district, but on deeper reflection it made more sense: Freedom, as a Thing, does not exist of itself; you cannot fetch a pound of it, any more than you can obtain a sack of Vacuum, or darkness, or cold. We all know what these things are, we all need them to survive, but in actual fact these values are really just the absence of their supposed opposite.
Vacuum is a space with less pressure than its surroundings, darkness is a condition of less light, cold is the absence of heat energy. And Freedom, I would assert, is a space that is somewhat reduced in political power.
The little bubble of personal autonomy, we have asserted as our right in long and tedious conflicts with kings, presidents, priests, parents and vagabonds; we have asserted that there exists a social space from which we will not be moved, without a damned good reason.
I think that from this perspective, it becomes clear that Freedom is in fact like Phlogiston. It was invoked to balance an equation; the mass suggested is correct, but the value is itself on the wrong side of the equality, with it's sign reversed.
When we say freedom we either mean the political autonomy that is a manifestation of Power, or we mean the limitation on political power placed there by the collective might of the polity as a whole to keep locally concentrated power from seeping into the spaces that we have assigned the powerless individual: the small void in the power block afforded every citizen by way of right.
It becomes clear that from this perspective certain kinds of rights cannot exist, since it is impossible to negate a negative by subtraction. A good example is the Rights of the Child from the UN, which includes lots of fine ideas, but under a false premise. Children have a right to be Loved, it asserts; but if Rights are themselves a negation of power, it is impossible to create Love by prohibiting Not-Loving. It simply fails.
Rights must therefore be underwritten by positive obligations, which will inevitably negate other Rights. And if it is not possible to assign a binding positive obligation to underwrite a Right, it is easy to demonstrate that that right does not exist.
This perspective further calls into question the legitimacy of violent protest; put simply, if the essence of freedom is the restraint of power, it a intolerable to exploit the space afforded by freedom to attack that power, rather than seeking to restrain it by lawful means.
A guard dog must frequently be chained up during business hours to prevent legitimate customers getting chewed on, but it is intolerable to allow the dog so restrained to be kicked. And if the dog meets the kicker in the hours of darkness, it is almost inevitable that the reaction will be unpleasant.
I would assert, therefore, that unless the power is absolutely evil. seeking to annihilate a guiltless group who are not at arms against it. that there is no excuse for violent protest. I simply do not believe that it is justified. The obligation of every member of a democracy is to speak reasonably, as loud as is needed to be heard. If violence is first categorically and absolutely disavowed, then shouting is not an act of violence.
We need to make a rational noise, in defense of Democratic values, that will be heard. And restore the contention of Ideas, and not of people, races, parties.
"Freedom is an empty space, that needs to be re-occupied each day."
This struck me as quite insightful. At first it led me to think about hippies in Guy Fawkes masks loitering in a financial district, but on deeper reflection it made more sense: Freedom, as a Thing, does not exist of itself; you cannot fetch a pound of it, any more than you can obtain a sack of Vacuum, or darkness, or cold. We all know what these things are, we all need them to survive, but in actual fact these values are really just the absence of their supposed opposite.
Vacuum is a space with less pressure than its surroundings, darkness is a condition of less light, cold is the absence of heat energy. And Freedom, I would assert, is a space that is somewhat reduced in political power.
The little bubble of personal autonomy, we have asserted as our right in long and tedious conflicts with kings, presidents, priests, parents and vagabonds; we have asserted that there exists a social space from which we will not be moved, without a damned good reason.
I think that from this perspective, it becomes clear that Freedom is in fact like Phlogiston. It was invoked to balance an equation; the mass suggested is correct, but the value is itself on the wrong side of the equality, with it's sign reversed.
When we say freedom we either mean the political autonomy that is a manifestation of Power, or we mean the limitation on political power placed there by the collective might of the polity as a whole to keep locally concentrated power from seeping into the spaces that we have assigned the powerless individual: the small void in the power block afforded every citizen by way of right.
It becomes clear that from this perspective certain kinds of rights cannot exist, since it is impossible to negate a negative by subtraction. A good example is the Rights of the Child from the UN, which includes lots of fine ideas, but under a false premise. Children have a right to be Loved, it asserts; but if Rights are themselves a negation of power, it is impossible to create Love by prohibiting Not-Loving. It simply fails.
Rights must therefore be underwritten by positive obligations, which will inevitably negate other Rights. And if it is not possible to assign a binding positive obligation to underwrite a Right, it is easy to demonstrate that that right does not exist.
This perspective further calls into question the legitimacy of violent protest; put simply, if the essence of freedom is the restraint of power, it a intolerable to exploit the space afforded by freedom to attack that power, rather than seeking to restrain it by lawful means.
A guard dog must frequently be chained up during business hours to prevent legitimate customers getting chewed on, but it is intolerable to allow the dog so restrained to be kicked. And if the dog meets the kicker in the hours of darkness, it is almost inevitable that the reaction will be unpleasant.
I would assert, therefore, that unless the power is absolutely evil. seeking to annihilate a guiltless group who are not at arms against it. that there is no excuse for violent protest. I simply do not believe that it is justified. The obligation of every member of a democracy is to speak reasonably, as loud as is needed to be heard. If violence is first categorically and absolutely disavowed, then shouting is not an act of violence.
We need to make a rational noise, in defense of Democratic values, that will be heard. And restore the contention of Ideas, and not of people, races, parties.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Criticising Israel: A Guide for Non-Racists
I have had more than one person state, as though they were saying something original and clever:
"But its not Anti-Semitic to criticize Israel!"
Which is totally fair enough.
Of course, there are many legitimate criticisms of Israel to be made!
Some of the most poignant, and specific criticisms come from print media originating with the Israeli press itself, like Ha'aretz, for example. They know whereof they speak, and they tell it how they see it. I have read very strong criticisms of the Israeli State that I would call excellent journalism, and I think it is an important thing that nations are held accountable for their actions.
But to put it simply: Of course not every Israel Critic is a Jew-Hater. But many a Jew-Hater IS an Israel Critic, and plenty hide behind that label.
I suggest that legitimate criticism of Israel has most of the following attributes:
1. It relates to specific events, the account of which is supported by evidence.
2. It makes specific criticisms and opposes specific policies and people, rather than sweeping condemnation of an entire country or all Jews in the world.
3. It avoids gross generalizations about Jewish character, such as "greedy" "thieving" "money loving" and all the other straight-up racist attributions that seem to get under the radar these days. It defines terms like Zionist, and respects the usual meaning of the terms that it applies to people.
4. It tells both sides of the story. For example, the tragedy of Palestinian dispossession does not mean that there is only one side to the story. The expulsion of a million Jews from Arab lands needs mentioning, since it happened at the same time, to greater numbers of people, than the Palestinian tragedy. The context does nothing to lessen the tragedy to the Palestinians, but helps to lead people to demand a fair solution for both parties; one-sided narratives lead to demonetization of the other side, and help not at all.
5. It does not engage in the deliberate falsification facts about the Jewish people. The repetition of persistent propaganda, such as the Blood Libel, the Khazar Theory, which holds that modern Jews are all "fake" and have no links to the Middle east, the falsification of history about the killing of Jewish people in WW2- these things are straight up Racist falsehoods, and need to be decried as such. Legitimate criticism has no room for this.
6. It uses meaningful analogies. For e.g: If one was to compare the Israeli fight against Palestine with the fight of Russia against the Chechens, it allows meaningful parallels to be drawn, and serious questions raised about the acceptability of civilian deaths in such conflicts. It involved an Islamic militant group within a civilian population opposing the rule of a more powerful state that had occupied the territory. This is a helpful analogy. Comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, by contrast, is not so useful. The Germans imported people to the Ghetto by train from various bits of Europe into an area 1/100th the size of Gaza, then deported and gassed 7000 inmates of the ghetto per week, from a population of 400,000, such that shortly the entire population was dead. If the Israelis had pursued such a policy, the entire population of Palestine would have been killed in 26 months, and extinct by the spring of 1951. The analogy is not meant to inform, it is meant to demonize, and it is not legitimate.
7. The use of the terms Nazi and Fascist to describe the Jewish state are similarly not meant to be informative. The Palestinian leadership at the time of Israel's foundation were in fact legitimate Fascists, as the Mufti of Jerusalem had spent WW2 in Berlin, met Hitler, and had been part of the Waffen SS. He visited extermination camps, and agreed (in writing) to assist in the murder of Palestine's existing Jewish population if the Axis powers had won the war. Throwing this term at an Israeli is calculated to anger and demonize the Jew or Israeli Arab it is used against, and is historically quite offensive. Israel is a democracy, and has over a million Arab and Muslim citizens, who can vote, trade, serve in the Army and stand for elections like any other citizen. There have been Arabs in positions as high as the Vice President in the government of Israel, and there are Black, Muslim, Christian and Thai people in government roles. It is not likely that Nazi Germany would have made a Jew or a Black person the Vice President of the Third Reich, I respectfully suggest, and there are more appropriate terms to describe a democratic state that has get itself involved in a dubious conflict.
8. If it must delve into the Legitimacy of the Israeli state, it uses fair context, and does not create narratives that rely on selectively edited histories.
For example, suggesting that the partition of the British Mandate to create a Jewish homeland was unprecedented and cruel is possible only if neglecting the context of the partition of Pakistan, which created a Muslim homeland in Hindu India, in the same decades, also in a previously British dominion. The partition of Jordan from the Mandate of Palestine is also significant, as the creation of Jordan reduced Palestine by far more area than the creation of Israel did. This gives historical context. It is not a simple story of Greedy Jews From Europe Came and Stole Everything, and those who limit the narrative to such are being dishonest.
9. Be honest about Hamas. These guys are not characters out of a Victor Hugo novel, no matter how much French Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre would like them to be swarthy archetypes of Jean Val Jean, with headscarves instead of Tricolor. Discuss their Charter, and insist they clarify their position on killing Jews. As in, all of them, all over the world. Because that is really not cool, and makes it very hard to be friends.
So. Be specific, avoid repeating modern reiterations of old racist propaganda, give historical context, and be fair.
That's it, really.
Oh....and don't be a fuck-wit like Leunig, and use literary allusions to call Israel a Nazi state, without ever coming out and saying it. Really, don't do that. "And then they came for me...sniff, sniff..."
Get your hand off it, mate.
It's not cool. Even if you draws awesome ducks.
"But its not Anti-Semitic to criticize Israel!"
Which is totally fair enough.
Of course, there are many legitimate criticisms of Israel to be made!
Some of the most poignant, and specific criticisms come from print media originating with the Israeli press itself, like Ha'aretz, for example. They know whereof they speak, and they tell it how they see it. I have read very strong criticisms of the Israeli State that I would call excellent journalism, and I think it is an important thing that nations are held accountable for their actions.
But to put it simply: Of course not every Israel Critic is a Jew-Hater. But many a Jew-Hater IS an Israel Critic, and plenty hide behind that label.
I suggest that legitimate criticism of Israel has most of the following attributes:
1. It relates to specific events, the account of which is supported by evidence.
2. It makes specific criticisms and opposes specific policies and people, rather than sweeping condemnation of an entire country or all Jews in the world.
3. It avoids gross generalizations about Jewish character, such as "greedy" "thieving" "money loving" and all the other straight-up racist attributions that seem to get under the radar these days. It defines terms like Zionist, and respects the usual meaning of the terms that it applies to people.
4. It tells both sides of the story. For example, the tragedy of Palestinian dispossession does not mean that there is only one side to the story. The expulsion of a million Jews from Arab lands needs mentioning, since it happened at the same time, to greater numbers of people, than the Palestinian tragedy. The context does nothing to lessen the tragedy to the Palestinians, but helps to lead people to demand a fair solution for both parties; one-sided narratives lead to demonetization of the other side, and help not at all.
5. It does not engage in the deliberate falsification facts about the Jewish people. The repetition of persistent propaganda, such as the Blood Libel, the Khazar Theory, which holds that modern Jews are all "fake" and have no links to the Middle east, the falsification of history about the killing of Jewish people in WW2- these things are straight up Racist falsehoods, and need to be decried as such. Legitimate criticism has no room for this.
6. It uses meaningful analogies. For e.g: If one was to compare the Israeli fight against Palestine with the fight of Russia against the Chechens, it allows meaningful parallels to be drawn, and serious questions raised about the acceptability of civilian deaths in such conflicts. It involved an Islamic militant group within a civilian population opposing the rule of a more powerful state that had occupied the territory. This is a helpful analogy. Comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, by contrast, is not so useful. The Germans imported people to the Ghetto by train from various bits of Europe into an area 1/100th the size of Gaza, then deported and gassed 7000 inmates of the ghetto per week, from a population of 400,000, such that shortly the entire population was dead. If the Israelis had pursued such a policy, the entire population of Palestine would have been killed in 26 months, and extinct by the spring of 1951. The analogy is not meant to inform, it is meant to demonize, and it is not legitimate.
7. The use of the terms Nazi and Fascist to describe the Jewish state are similarly not meant to be informative. The Palestinian leadership at the time of Israel's foundation were in fact legitimate Fascists, as the Mufti of Jerusalem had spent WW2 in Berlin, met Hitler, and had been part of the Waffen SS. He visited extermination camps, and agreed (in writing) to assist in the murder of Palestine's existing Jewish population if the Axis powers had won the war. Throwing this term at an Israeli is calculated to anger and demonize the Jew or Israeli Arab it is used against, and is historically quite offensive. Israel is a democracy, and has over a million Arab and Muslim citizens, who can vote, trade, serve in the Army and stand for elections like any other citizen. There have been Arabs in positions as high as the Vice President in the government of Israel, and there are Black, Muslim, Christian and Thai people in government roles. It is not likely that Nazi Germany would have made a Jew or a Black person the Vice President of the Third Reich, I respectfully suggest, and there are more appropriate terms to describe a democratic state that has get itself involved in a dubious conflict.
8. If it must delve into the Legitimacy of the Israeli state, it uses fair context, and does not create narratives that rely on selectively edited histories.
For example, suggesting that the partition of the British Mandate to create a Jewish homeland was unprecedented and cruel is possible only if neglecting the context of the partition of Pakistan, which created a Muslim homeland in Hindu India, in the same decades, also in a previously British dominion. The partition of Jordan from the Mandate of Palestine is also significant, as the creation of Jordan reduced Palestine by far more area than the creation of Israel did. This gives historical context. It is not a simple story of Greedy Jews From Europe Came and Stole Everything, and those who limit the narrative to such are being dishonest.
9. Be honest about Hamas. These guys are not characters out of a Victor Hugo novel, no matter how much French Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre would like them to be swarthy archetypes of Jean Val Jean, with headscarves instead of Tricolor. Discuss their Charter, and insist they clarify their position on killing Jews. As in, all of them, all over the world. Because that is really not cool, and makes it very hard to be friends.
So. Be specific, avoid repeating modern reiterations of old racist propaganda, give historical context, and be fair.
That's it, really.
Oh....and don't be a fuck-wit like Leunig, and use literary allusions to call Israel a Nazi state, without ever coming out and saying it. Really, don't do that. "And then they came for me...sniff, sniff..."
Get your hand off it, mate.
It's not cool. Even if you draws awesome ducks.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
What one Atheist believes
Can I say that I believe in God?
(I was asked, by someone who seemed to think that was important.)
Can I define God as Einstein and Spinoza did?
What?
Well then I can, actually, I can.
What I mean, and what they meant by "God" is the creative potential of the Universe, excluding nothing. Every particle of matter, every quantum of energy. The physical laws that give order to the Universe, written in the fabric of matter itself.
That I believe in, because I cannot know it all, I believe in it. This kind of God is all around us. Within us. Is us.
With this kind of god, there is and can be no priest, no holy book. We reason our way to understanding; must experiment, observe, and proceed with the intellectual humility of knowing that sometimes a new experiment will fill in details that we didn't expect, and erase things that we thought we knew.
And every now and again, a pillar will fall, as new research undermines it. We will flinch and fear a rock fall, and the Dome of Science will show us once again that the span of it's arch is greater than Plato, greater than Newton, greater than Einstein; it will stay up, even as we shovel out ignorance with all the tools that we build.
The weird tribe of scientists and engineers will keep excavating the rubble out of the Cathedral that was our ignorance, leaving more and more room for our knowledge of the world. And we will see the majesty of this Universe, this Cathedral of un-created wonder, as more superstition, and more fear, and more ignorance are shoveled out of our future, into our history.
To me, this makes understanding science a kind of religious obligation. It makes learning a spiritual journey. It makes the life and death of stars and galaxies somehow personal, and makes the personal tragedies and triumphs of us little creatures seem less cosmic. We are part of this God, and never, for a second, are we separated from this.
This kind of Faith places greater demands of those that hold it than a faith of Supernatural miracles and an eternal Afterlife. As we get just one shot at this, we need to get it right.
There is no eternity of cloud-sitting to tell our loved ones that we love them. No recourse to good intentions. We need to show our respect and love today.
Our dog knows we love him when we take him for walks, and show affection in the tactile, physical way that canine species appreciate. I have no idea how to please a cat, as they seem not to like me. I try not to take it personally.
The only meaningful way to show affection for the natural world is by preserving habitat and reducing waste; there is no Personal God looking inside your mind to see what you intended; an endangered species understands only the kind of gestures that allow it to survive. Intentions, good or bad, are quite perfectly meaningless to any species that does not know us well enough to forgive. (Dogs know when we didn't mean to step on them, and accept our apologies. Not sure about Cats, I think they plot revenge. Rain-forests just don't understand us at all.)
So what I am getting at, is that we have to speak to people, to animals, and to the natural world in the language that they understand. This means verbal and physical respect and affection toward humans, physical affection and care towards animals that are the friends of our species, and appropriate regard for the welfare of animals and ecosystems that are wild, or even a bit pestilential.
Its a physical morality, from physical souls.
And I think Spirituality exists too, in its way. When we die, those who remember us, can still hear our voices. They can still feel the warmth of our affections, or the hurt of our wrongs. The consequences of our actions linger. Our thoughts linger on paper.
These fossils of our thoughts are impressed into the world, and into other minds.
The Beatitudes of Jesus of Nazareth, the works of Brahms, the words of William Shakespeare and the Epic of Gilgamesh speak to us; the thoughts of one mind, shine out into the future as long as there are people who understand.
So, while i reject the Supernatural, to the greatest extent possible, I can say that I do have a spiritual life. Hope for the future. And a God, into whose oneness I will dissolve when my time comes.
One who will create new life, out of the matter that used to be me. The matter that used to be stars, and which I was lucky enough to have at my command for a little while, in this most improbable of worlds.
Much love.
Brett
(I was asked, by someone who seemed to think that was important.)
Can I define God as Einstein and Spinoza did?
What?
Well then I can, actually, I can.
What I mean, and what they meant by "God" is the creative potential of the Universe, excluding nothing. Every particle of matter, every quantum of energy. The physical laws that give order to the Universe, written in the fabric of matter itself.
That I believe in, because I cannot know it all, I believe in it. This kind of God is all around us. Within us. Is us.
With this kind of god, there is and can be no priest, no holy book. We reason our way to understanding; must experiment, observe, and proceed with the intellectual humility of knowing that sometimes a new experiment will fill in details that we didn't expect, and erase things that we thought we knew.
And every now and again, a pillar will fall, as new research undermines it. We will flinch and fear a rock fall, and the Dome of Science will show us once again that the span of it's arch is greater than Plato, greater than Newton, greater than Einstein; it will stay up, even as we shovel out ignorance with all the tools that we build.
The weird tribe of scientists and engineers will keep excavating the rubble out of the Cathedral that was our ignorance, leaving more and more room for our knowledge of the world. And we will see the majesty of this Universe, this Cathedral of un-created wonder, as more superstition, and more fear, and more ignorance are shoveled out of our future, into our history.
To me, this makes understanding science a kind of religious obligation. It makes learning a spiritual journey. It makes the life and death of stars and galaxies somehow personal, and makes the personal tragedies and triumphs of us little creatures seem less cosmic. We are part of this God, and never, for a second, are we separated from this.
This kind of Faith places greater demands of those that hold it than a faith of Supernatural miracles and an eternal Afterlife. As we get just one shot at this, we need to get it right.
There is no eternity of cloud-sitting to tell our loved ones that we love them. No recourse to good intentions. We need to show our respect and love today.
Our dog knows we love him when we take him for walks, and show affection in the tactile, physical way that canine species appreciate. I have no idea how to please a cat, as they seem not to like me. I try not to take it personally.
The only meaningful way to show affection for the natural world is by preserving habitat and reducing waste; there is no Personal God looking inside your mind to see what you intended; an endangered species understands only the kind of gestures that allow it to survive. Intentions, good or bad, are quite perfectly meaningless to any species that does not know us well enough to forgive. (Dogs know when we didn't mean to step on them, and accept our apologies. Not sure about Cats, I think they plot revenge. Rain-forests just don't understand us at all.)
So what I am getting at, is that we have to speak to people, to animals, and to the natural world in the language that they understand. This means verbal and physical respect and affection toward humans, physical affection and care towards animals that are the friends of our species, and appropriate regard for the welfare of animals and ecosystems that are wild, or even a bit pestilential.
Its a physical morality, from physical souls.
And I think Spirituality exists too, in its way. When we die, those who remember us, can still hear our voices. They can still feel the warmth of our affections, or the hurt of our wrongs. The consequences of our actions linger. Our thoughts linger on paper.
These fossils of our thoughts are impressed into the world, and into other minds.
The Beatitudes of Jesus of Nazareth, the works of Brahms, the words of William Shakespeare and the Epic of Gilgamesh speak to us; the thoughts of one mind, shine out into the future as long as there are people who understand.
So, while i reject the Supernatural, to the greatest extent possible, I can say that I do have a spiritual life. Hope for the future. And a God, into whose oneness I will dissolve when my time comes.
One who will create new life, out of the matter that used to be me. The matter that used to be stars, and which I was lucky enough to have at my command for a little while, in this most improbable of worlds.
Much love.
Brett
I have been here in Nuremberg, Germany, for the past couple of months.
It's a place where history has a way of following you around, especially if you have the kind of memory that catches hold of shapes.
I walk across a market square, and feel intense deja vu. And it dawns suddenly: Of course I know this market. I have seen it on a dozen news-reels, filled with buxom girls in dirndls and strong men in boots, who for some reason are pleased to see a small angry man with a mustache.
And there is no way around this but through. I know there were eagles chiseled off the hotel across the street, and I know that the Fraunekirche is built on the foundations of a burned synagogue, and the Hauptmarkt lies over the ruins of the Ghetto.
There is no pretending this city is a saint. There is a rough history here, it has prior form for everything from animal cruelty to stealing Art. All I can say in the city's defense, is that there was a lot of peer pressure, and it was a pretty fucked up party, the early 20th century. Shit happens when highly organized people get high.
So I have taken a month to look at Nuremberg. To relax into it. I DIG certain things about it. Transport planning, the Fascists actually rocked at that. And the buildings just work. There is something wholesome about orderly societies, that keep things in order. It provides the potential for serious endeavors to get into motion, like the Solar initiative: Germany as a first mover, provided the capital and the scale for the early solar industry to grow into a competitive business. No-one else was willing to do that. A+, Germans.
So I'm loving on it, for what there is to love, dealing with the past as it comes up, without deliberately looking for something to take exception to, 'cos life's too short, right?
And I do have a thing for the well-built girls in dirndls carrying beer. So un-subtle, but so awesome, like the 4 story houses with sensibly located windows and large sections of timber as architectural highlights.
No way is it surprising, but it works. I really just does.
I think that is what this culture is all about. You find A way, not necessarily THE way, but you find something that works pretty well and then you just do it better, and better, until is it is as smooth as glass.
Its all right.
I do sincerely believe that German culture has a role to play in the world. The world needs it. Not just nice cars with angry headlights, and good power tools, the mercantile and civic culture that makes all this possible. It ain't bad.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
I think that one of the most splendid confidence tricks of all history has been played on the West. I say ONE of, because the great Man in the Sky con of the late Bronze Age still holds the title, but this one alsorates.
It is audacious in its scope and marvelous in it's simplicity. I would call it, Can't Buy Me Love.
In essence: We have agreed, somehow, to buy our dreams back, from people who do not have them to sell to us.
There is of course, much in this world to be bought, and rightly so. We need shoes for our feet, clothes for our backs and rubber for our wheels. I see no mischief in this kind of transaction. Nor do I see anything wrong with an advert that says: here are good tyres, good shoes, good shirts. We need them, and we should be grateful to the unseen hands that work hard to make them for us.
What makes me stare in wonder is the way that we pay money for goods, when what we crave is closeness to other human beings.
It is audacious in its scope and marvelous in it's simplicity. I would call it, Can't Buy Me Love.
In essence: We have agreed, somehow, to buy our dreams back, from people who do not have them to sell to us.
There is of course, much in this world to be bought, and rightly so. We need shoes for our feet, clothes for our backs and rubber for our wheels. I see no mischief in this kind of transaction. Nor do I see anything wrong with an advert that says: here are good tyres, good shoes, good shirts. We need them, and we should be grateful to the unseen hands that work hard to make them for us.
What makes me stare in wonder is the way that we pay money for goods, when what we crave is closeness to other human beings.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Leaving Trieste
Trieste, for those who don't know the city, is a little pearl of a place on the edge of the Adriatic, far closer to the Former Yugoslavia than to most of Italy, and quite apart from them both.
It's a city of German buildings painted in Italian colors, the Adria profoundly flat, its old docks perfectly empty but with the elegance of a crumbling stately home.
It was Austro-hungarian all its prosperous days, and its prejudices still lean that way among the older families.
Its always been a mix, a Babel, where James Joyce wrote Ulysses, and where blonde ethnic Slovenes with their long shins and freckles make easy strides up impossible hills, cobbled in the overlapping rays of a Roman road.
There is no new money here, no young wealth. On the beach, fat older men display with their trophy wives, with a look of pride and anxiety.
The biggest Synagogue in Europe sits resplendent in the heart of a city mostly without Jews. They stayed on here during the war, feeling secure in their long residence, though thousands fleeing fascism left through this very port, including Albert Einstein.
But in the end, Mussolini went and the Nazis proper came, and the Jews of Trieste were gone.
It's streets are lovely, its people also; like kletzmer music, the sadness of the past is there, but the joy of the moment is too, and it's this that stays with you when the music stops.
A girl in bad, 80's stone-wash jeans and worn ballet flats looks up at me as I pass, with the face of a Renaissance angel and a Czech beer, beside her fat friend on the front step of an old building. I have to turn my shoulder to let past a bald 40 year old riding past on a rusted women's fixie. He passes tourists in Gucci, and patricians of his own city, politely swerving with a look of benevolent Imperium, and precisely half a smile.
It's a city of German buildings painted in Italian colors, the Adria profoundly flat, its old docks perfectly empty but with the elegance of a crumbling stately home.
It was Austro-hungarian all its prosperous days, and its prejudices still lean that way among the older families.
Its always been a mix, a Babel, where James Joyce wrote Ulysses, and where blonde ethnic Slovenes with their long shins and freckles make easy strides up impossible hills, cobbled in the overlapping rays of a Roman road.
There is no new money here, no young wealth. On the beach, fat older men display with their trophy wives, with a look of pride and anxiety.
The biggest Synagogue in Europe sits resplendent in the heart of a city mostly without Jews. They stayed on here during the war, feeling secure in their long residence, though thousands fleeing fascism left through this very port, including Albert Einstein.
But in the end, Mussolini went and the Nazis proper came, and the Jews of Trieste were gone.
It's streets are lovely, its people also; like kletzmer music, the sadness of the past is there, but the joy of the moment is too, and it's this that stays with you when the music stops.
A girl in bad, 80's stone-wash jeans and worn ballet flats looks up at me as I pass, with the face of a Renaissance angel and a Czech beer, beside her fat friend on the front step of an old building. I have to turn my shoulder to let past a bald 40 year old riding past on a rusted women's fixie. He passes tourists in Gucci, and patricians of his own city, politely swerving with a look of benevolent Imperium, and precisely half a smile.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
I have come to believe that the mental habits acquired from thinking along the lines of Theology and the Critical Dialectic are among the major barriers that presently exist to thinking well about subjects for which our intuition is not a reliable guide.
I refer, of course, to statistical methods, quantitative analysis, and the scientific method generally. In particular, the interaction between these and public policy.
We are not doing a very good job of this.
There are so many laws and policies that just don't add up quantitatively, and so many arguments put about in defence of them that show those making them have absolutely no respect for reason or evidence.
Drug laws are an excellent example. In Australia, I am reliably informed, close to 10,000 people die each year because of adverse reactions to legal pharmaceuticals, either alone or in combination with each other. This is viewed as quite normal. In contrast, deaths directly attributable to Cannabis are extremely few, and, in spite of lots of assertions to the contrary, the prevalence of schizophrenia has remained steady through the decades, even as cannabis users' numbers have climbed from nearly zero to about eight million Australians presently. If cannabis caused it to any detectable extent, there should be more of it now than 1955. But we don't see that.
Genes, and influenza infection during gestation do seem to play a part. Low IQ, and being the child of an older father all seem to increase the risk somewhat. But let's not confuse the issue with facts and science and rubbish. Lets make a "dialectic", not a "mechanistic" argument.
Legalizing cannabis would send a bad message to our children.
I have to restrain myself from profane incivility when I hear arguments like this.
The Criminal Justice System is not there to send messages to children. It is society's last line of defence against criminal behaviour. One does not put a seven year old into an iron cage with a violent offender to teach him about his parents' preferences for recreational drugs (Nicotine and Ethanol good, Cannabis and Peyote bad).
One does it when a person poses such a risk to the community that we cannot let him walk the streets and need to protect society from him. Thats fucking it, people. That's what it is, thats what it's for.
Similarly statistics and crime, immigration and culture, gay rights and Jesus, end up in the most absurd arguments. Its because we do not often call the unreasonable, the deceptive, and the ideologically hallucinating to account for their frequent departures from evidence based reasoning.
I am bloody tired of it. Especially I am sick of cowardly, precious little groups who pile into their stinking foxholes, and reassure one another that they are the keepers of a noble truth, invulnerable to understanding by the evil, linear, rationalizing, newtonian science bigots.
They 'debunk' true things that they never do disprove, and one suspects often do not even really understand, because they explain the world through untestable assumptions, that they defend instead of examining.
This goes for the religious right and the illiberal left in equal measure. It is the same bad conduct, with different mythologies and prejudices.
We need statistical measures in order to know what the fuck is going on with large populations. We need genetics to understand disease. We need Evolutionary psychology to understand human behaviour, including crime. We need history and accurate reporting to understand geopolitics. And we need science to inform policy at the highest levels.
And now would be a good time.
I refer, of course, to statistical methods, quantitative analysis, and the scientific method generally. In particular, the interaction between these and public policy.
We are not doing a very good job of this.
There are so many laws and policies that just don't add up quantitatively, and so many arguments put about in defence of them that show those making them have absolutely no respect for reason or evidence.
Drug laws are an excellent example. In Australia, I am reliably informed, close to 10,000 people die each year because of adverse reactions to legal pharmaceuticals, either alone or in combination with each other. This is viewed as quite normal. In contrast, deaths directly attributable to Cannabis are extremely few, and, in spite of lots of assertions to the contrary, the prevalence of schizophrenia has remained steady through the decades, even as cannabis users' numbers have climbed from nearly zero to about eight million Australians presently. If cannabis caused it to any detectable extent, there should be more of it now than 1955. But we don't see that.
Genes, and influenza infection during gestation do seem to play a part. Low IQ, and being the child of an older father all seem to increase the risk somewhat. But let's not confuse the issue with facts and science and rubbish. Lets make a "dialectic", not a "mechanistic" argument.
Legalizing cannabis would send a bad message to our children.
I have to restrain myself from profane incivility when I hear arguments like this.
The Criminal Justice System is not there to send messages to children. It is society's last line of defence against criminal behaviour. One does not put a seven year old into an iron cage with a violent offender to teach him about his parents' preferences for recreational drugs (Nicotine and Ethanol good, Cannabis and Peyote bad).
One does it when a person poses such a risk to the community that we cannot let him walk the streets and need to protect society from him. Thats fucking it, people. That's what it is, thats what it's for.
Similarly statistics and crime, immigration and culture, gay rights and Jesus, end up in the most absurd arguments. Its because we do not often call the unreasonable, the deceptive, and the ideologically hallucinating to account for their frequent departures from evidence based reasoning.
I am bloody tired of it. Especially I am sick of cowardly, precious little groups who pile into their stinking foxholes, and reassure one another that they are the keepers of a noble truth, invulnerable to understanding by the evil, linear, rationalizing, newtonian science bigots.
They 'debunk' true things that they never do disprove, and one suspects often do not even really understand, because they explain the world through untestable assumptions, that they defend instead of examining.
This goes for the religious right and the illiberal left in equal measure. It is the same bad conduct, with different mythologies and prejudices.
We need statistical measures in order to know what the fuck is going on with large populations. We need genetics to understand disease. We need Evolutionary psychology to understand human behaviour, including crime. We need history and accurate reporting to understand geopolitics. And we need science to inform policy at the highest levels.
And now would be a good time.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
I am feeling acutely aware of the pressures on my time these days.
There are SO many things that I want to build, and everywhere I look there are opportunities for technology to do things better. Especially in our use of Energy in industry and HVAC.
The little load switch we built is growing legs and turning into a real business before my eyes, but looks like it will occupy a vast amount of my time as well.
Life truly needs to be a cooperative effort. I cannot do this alone. But now, I believe in money more than ever before. Not in some absolute sense, but because it allows us to keep track of who does what for whom accurately, if not always fairly.
Honestly, I have tried all the informal, bartering, mates-and-family helping-each-other-out kind of thing, and I hate it.
I tell you what: some skills are valuable. Construction, electrical trades, auto mechanics, the ability to move heavy objects, and the ability to do complex logistical tasks: the demand for these massively outstrips the supply in a normal community.
If you are swapping hour for hour, then anyone with these skills ends up with a broken back and almost nothing of value in exchange for it.
People can always think up random ways of chewing up your time, in ways that are important to them. Not productive endeavors that lead to greater welfare for the whole community, just prettying up their patch.
I'm over it. Let people pay their way. Lets have fair exchange, equitable wages, and use money to keep track of who is pulling their weight and who is having a lend.
Of course, this breaks down when you have absurd salaries and government spending making a mockery out of people's wages. That distorts the shit out the whole arrangement, and makes mooching after governments and corporate types into substitute for actual industry. It needs to stop.
There are SO many things that I want to build, and everywhere I look there are opportunities for technology to do things better. Especially in our use of Energy in industry and HVAC.
The little load switch we built is growing legs and turning into a real business before my eyes, but looks like it will occupy a vast amount of my time as well.
Life truly needs to be a cooperative effort. I cannot do this alone. But now, I believe in money more than ever before. Not in some absolute sense, but because it allows us to keep track of who does what for whom accurately, if not always fairly.
Honestly, I have tried all the informal, bartering, mates-and-family helping-each-other-out kind of thing, and I hate it.
I tell you what: some skills are valuable. Construction, electrical trades, auto mechanics, the ability to move heavy objects, and the ability to do complex logistical tasks: the demand for these massively outstrips the supply in a normal community.
If you are swapping hour for hour, then anyone with these skills ends up with a broken back and almost nothing of value in exchange for it.
People can always think up random ways of chewing up your time, in ways that are important to them. Not productive endeavors that lead to greater welfare for the whole community, just prettying up their patch.
I'm over it. Let people pay their way. Lets have fair exchange, equitable wages, and use money to keep track of who is pulling their weight and who is having a lend.
Of course, this breaks down when you have absurd salaries and government spending making a mockery out of people's wages. That distorts the shit out the whole arrangement, and makes mooching after governments and corporate types into substitute for actual industry. It needs to stop.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
My dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?
To me, being liberal means, most directly, believing that people
ought to be free to live their lives as they see fit, being subject only to the
limitation that their actions must not take away others’ freedoms. It is thus a
declaration that the liberal wants the greatest freedom that can exist without
one person’s freedom oppressing another.
In practical terms, though, people do impact on one another,
constantly. We share space, resources, common goods including even the air we
breathe. So realistically speaking we
need to curtail our freedoms to some extent in order to live together peaceably.
Liberal thought has tended to seek out the sweet spot in the
political spectrum that exists between many intersecting political dichotomies.
Somewhere between the far left and the far right is a space
that allows business to flourish but also respects human rights and the
environment. Somewhere between Totalitarianism and anarchy, there is a
government powerful enough to do its job but not so empowered that it turns to
interfering with its citizens because it has more resources than work to do,
and is big enough to provide services without getting so big that we struggle
to afford to feed it.
Real liberals have thusly put themselves in the No-Man’s
Land of a 100 years’ war between the Left and the Right, and get shelled by
both routinely, by accident and on
purpose. It is hardest to maintain a
position in the Centre, as both sides seek to recruit or destroy you.
It’s also really hard to know quite where one is in such a
space. Disagreements about exactly where that sweet spot is can turn nasty. When
there is hard fighting on two fronts, a call to give ground on one of them can
get characterised as betrayal by allies with sympathies lying further into the
opposite frontier. I have lost friends
this way, whose goals, beliefs and values were absolutely no different from my
own, to my regret.
It’s a tough gig to maintain liberal beliefs and keep
friends. To run a country according to liberal values and keep office is One Really
Tough Gig.
Hats off to Mr O for selling it to America in a time of high
unemployment and global uncertainty. Well done, Sir.
I think that perhaps the greatest failing of liberalism in the
last century has stemmed from tolerating intolerant systems of belief.
Many liberals have been too kind to politics and politicians
whose beliefs lay to the extreme Left and were highly Authoritarian. These days, they are also finding false
friends among religious extremists of various types, and amongst peoples with some
truly awful cultural hangnails, dating straight from the Middle Ages.
One suspects a reaction- a word with a good Left wing
pedigree-to the excesses of the Right, which leads people who really ought to
know better, to see allies in Powerful Lefties Living and Dead.
Be they ever so dreadful, they end up on t-shirts worn by
liberals’ kids.
This is unfortunate, because the far Left has a lot wrong
with it, morally and practically, as a brief tour of 20th century
history will demonstrate. Revolutions shed lots of blood and then elevate
(inevitably Male) despots, who behave horribly until they die of natural causes
considerably later.
Religious fundamentalism too has a lot wrong with it,
morally and practically, as a visit to Utah will demonstrate. A visit to many of the 4 dozen or so Sharia
countries of the world might do the same. At least Utah doesn’t legislate the
death sentence for being Hindu, Gay or atheist, but merely creates a city
without pubs or coffee shops or fun. Or public transport. Or dense urban
centres. Or nightlife.
But I digress.
I hope to see a Centrist liberalism with some teeth in the
near future, that will keep the Left and the Right from each other’s throats
and their boots and berets reserved for kinky parties. Lets be tolerant of
anyone who will tolerate others, respect anyone who will respect others, and give a shit about the environment
without shame.
Its time. Again.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Physical Morality- a language problem.
I have a theory! No, really, I do.
I should add that my research is nowhere near good enough to be sure if it is actually new or previously expressed by someone else of whom I am unaware. And with that caveat I would like to spell it out here.
I think that humans, and possibly other social animals like dogs, place massive value on Intent when assessing how to respond to an action by a conspecific.
An act taken that has negative results, but was intended to be positive, will be most readily forgiven; an act that was taken without malice, but caused harm by accident, is also somewhat lightly forgiven, but an act that was taken with some degree of ill intent will be resented intensely, even if it comparatively trifling.
A friend of mine once hit me in the face so hard that it nearly broke my nose, but as we were just fooling about and he meant no harm, we were both laughing about it before I had stopped seeing stars.
On the other hand, and spite of trying to forget them, I continue to resent some unkind words that have been directed at me years ago, which objectively, hurt an order of magnitude less than my mate's epic backhand while we were playing some daft teenage game.
This makes sense for creatures that live in groups and rely on each other a lot, as you would not want to alienate an ally for hurting you accidentally, nor to tolerate abuse from a real enemy, however small the injury. Even if you could not retaliate at the time, tit for tat is a strategy that we use a lot, and remembering and keeping track of such slights is something that we are disturbingly good at, as we would be at avenging them too, if social strictures didn't keep our nano-vendettas under control for the most part.
This is all well and good when the issue at stake is social interactions between primates, but when, as has happened recently, we extend our notions of worth to other creatures and indeed to landforms and ecosystems, we are now trying to apply a very specific, primate-and-maybe-dog small group moral instinct to repositories of moral value which frankly don't give a toss about intent.
this can lead to some truly disturbing logic, in which all kinds of pointless acts are justified and even suggested: Its the principle of the thing, every bit counts, it sets a good example, etc etc, which in a more human context would amount to the social theatre of demonstrating good will; even if the results were inadequate, one could appease the wronged by demonstrating some effort in the right direction. The gods that we propriate seem to have a moral sense that is very remarkable in being so close to that of the higher primates; it matters to Him if you meant well/are sorry/do some nice things to compensate, or some pointless things to demonstrate loyalty.
But the physical world is neither a fellow ape, nor an Anthropomorphic God, to whom this kind of crap matters. The only language that an endangered species understands is undisturbed habitat.
This leads us to the unexpected conclusion that the only kind of moral reasoning that can be justified in relation to environmental goals is consequentialist. What matters is the end result, and nothing else, if we are looking at environmental actions.
I would welcome an argument on this point, should anyone wish to bring one.
Regards,
Brutus
This leads us to the unexpected conclusion that the only kind of moral reasoning that can be justified in relation to environmental goals is consequentialist. What matters is the end result, and nothing else, if we are looking at environmental actions.
I would welcome an argument on this point, should anyone wish to bring one.
Regards,
Brutus
(a member of the same species, as the term is used by Lorenz, I feel happy to use it here too:)
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
On Being Ephemeral
I have had 2 close friends and 2 close relatives diagnosed with aggressive cancers in the space of a year. All of them are under under 35, 3 of them under 30. I firmly believe that they are all going to make it.
For me, learning this was like the childhood experience of feeling the outlines of one's own skull through the skin, and realising of a sudden that one's beloved meat puppet, happily dancing on its bones, is not a permanent fixture of the landscape, this, or any other.
There is an odd feeling of dread, which quickly gives way to a rush of awareness that life, as it is, is a gift of sorts, and something that, if ignored, will go away by itself all too quickly.
It has not been enough to terrify me back into the stinking rat-holes of faith, that the religious have dug to shelter them from the terror of the daylight.
I rather commit myself afresh to making my life, and those of my loved ones, as much fun as possible.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Mr T.L. Cardwell, WHAT do you Do?
Recently there was a letter to the Editor of the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, that bastion of Journalism! Reposted around the Interweb as:
reheaters that heat the air and water before entering the boilers."
kilowatt and cost-wise that is very low"
CARBON TRADING FIASCO by someone who should know (capitals not added)
The fellow introduces himself as someone who has worked in a power station. In what capacity we are not told. Forklift driver? Boiler Attendant? Occupation unspecified.
His big claim is "Debunking the Myth" that 65-70% of the energy consumed by a coal fired power station goes "up the chimney". He then gives some numbers for boiler efficiency and for the efficiency of the particulate scrubbers, which are both well into the 90's. DEBUNKED!
Sceptics rejoice. Better, learn some thermodynamics, people.
His language is emphatic:
"First coal fired power stations do NOT send 60 to 70% of the energy up the chimney. The boilers of
modern power station are 96% efficient and the exhaust heat is captured by the economisers andreheaters that heat the air and water before entering the boilers."
The only trouble is, this Muppet at no time actually tells you what the conversion efficiency of his power station was.
So how much of the energy of a thermal power station is recovered from the fuel ? Its sure ain't 96%, which is the number we are left with.
His own numbers call him a liar a little later on:
"Coal-fired Power Stations are highly efficient with very little heat loss and can generate a massive
amount of energy for our needs. They can generate power at efficiency of less than 10,000 b.t.u. perkilowatt and cost-wise that is very low"
Well, those numbers sound reasonable. Now convert the units to a common one, and divide the output (1kWh) by the Input (10,000BTU) and there you have the efficiency.
1 kWh = 1000W * 60min * 60 sec = 3,600,000J
1BTU =1055J, so 10,000BTU = 10,550,000J
N= 3.6 MJ /10.55MJ = 0.341, i.e. 34.1%
Which means that in Mr Cardwells Highly Efficient Power Station, 65.9% of the heating value of the fuel is dissipated as waste heat.
If a lay person describes this as "lost up the chimney" as opposed to " dissipated as lost heat as the cumulative losses of the equipment, plus the heat rejected into the condensers as Carnot's equation dictates that it must be" then I will not hold this against them.
Mr Cardwell presumes to teach us all about basic mathematics, but fails to teach us any basic thermodynamics. I am unsure if he knows but isn't saying, or welds for a living and avoids reading about what he welds. In either case, his argument is either ignorant or dishonest.
He then goes on with a lot of blather about renewables, which he clearly doesn't know much about, in spite of the hubris of his opening paragraph, and fails to give numbers too, other than diving the total load by the nameplate rating of a very large wind turbine.
No Renewable energy proponent that I am aware of is suggesting 100% wind generation. Its a red herring of note. 10% would be fine, and cause no hassle whatever. Isolated communities like Esperence in WA have far higher wind fractions than this, and it saves them millions of litres of Diesel, and with it millions of dollars, each an every year.
The only technology that doesn't like wind is Coal. Gas compliments it well, and buddy, Gas is coming on strong. They use Brayton cycle turbines and CCGTs to achieve higher efficiencies than your coal burning dinosaur, and they follow load, which for all customers other than aluminium refineries, is the real measure of a technologies usefulness in supporting the grid.
I don't have an aluminium smelter, and frankly I'm tired of paying the cost of orienting electrical industries towards this class of customer before then rest of us.
Wake up and smell the future, Mr Cardwell.
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