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 

(a member of the same species, as the term is used by Lorenz, I feel happy to use it here too:)

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.

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:

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 and
reheaters 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. per
kilowatt 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.

Out And Proud, and I don't mean that in a Gay way.

I live in a place that is packed full of Christian Goodness. There are times when it feels like I am stuck in an episode of the Brady Bunch; the other choice is to head out beyond the Flannel Curtain to the outer suburbs, which resembles Shameless.

And the trouble is, in a community this small, you need everyone on side, because there aren't enough people here to have sectarian strife. Except for those tossers in Hobart, we don't need them for anything.

We all have to get along with each other, 'cos if you pissed too many people off your social circle would shrink down to your relatives, and that would make dating and infidelity far more awkward.

But even here, I am finding it hard to be polite about people's religious beliefs. I don't believe in:

1. The Undead Flying Hebrew Construction Worker Who Said to Be Nice, or

2. The Sacred and Unquestionable (in spite of all the nasty shit he did in the Hadith) Prophet Mohammet with the Flying Horse, or,

3. Moses of the Profound and Notable Absence from the Historical and Archaeological Record.

And as I write this, I am actually feeling really creeped out to be criticizing these Abrahamic faiths even so far. That is probably because, until recent times, the Terrifying Faithful could kill you in Very Nasty Ways for even thinking such things.

Well, here goes. I am outing myself.

I don't believe in the Supernatural, and that goes for any and all Gods, Demons, Ghouls, Angels, Pixies, Reiki, Crystal healing, Spirit Guides, the Entire Hindu Pantheon, all 40, 000 of them or so.

I Believe that things happen because space, time, energy and matter interact with each other in very complex, but ultimately knowable ways.

And I believe that I am a part of that, for as long as my matter is so arranged that the energy of the universe, made available in my body as it breaks down complex molecules and reacts them exothermically with oxygen, powers the matter that is my body to wander about thinking, eating and on rare occasions when the opportunity presents itself, shagging.

I believe that I am a piece of carbon based Darwinian life, and i am extraordinarily grateful to exist, in light of the odds against me being born and the ease with which my body can cease to function.

I am seriously fucking grateful to the universe for my consciousness, not because it is an eternal Soul, but because it is an ephemeral Effect, as the prism of the physical brain 'refracts' the energy of sunlight stored in my food, and shines my consciousness out into the slightly warm almost-nothingness that is the great expanse of space, for just a very little while.

My thanks for this are deeper than can be expressed by saying thank-you to a god that I have made in my own image. I exist, for now. So do you. For now.

And as Now is all we have, lets make it a damned good Now, with as much kindness and charity and good engineering and splendid music as possible.

If you love someone, I don't mind how, so long as everyone has a nice time and no-one catches anything nasty. If you are into weird games, like S+M or Rugby Leauge, you're welcome to it, just wear protective equipment, and try not to dislocate anything.

All my love, peoples. Have a Blast.

B.

The Urge to get High

One of the things that I cannot find in the literature about young people and substance abuse is an acknowledgement that people -and I mean all of us- have at some stage, wanted to get loaded.

I'm not talking about two glasses of bubbly after work, I mean that feeling, after 40 hours in an office, where your threshold of self restraint has been busted like a banner gets busted when a football team runs through it. You want excess of SOMETHING.

Booze, Sex, downhill Skiing, it doesn't matter a damn how you get there, you just need the dopamine.

It's that cranky combination of claustrophobia, habituation to the smell in the office air conditioning, physical jitteryness from lots of inactivity and caffeine, sexual frustration and mental fatigue. And, Boredom.

Capitalised, proper-noun, weapons-grade Boredom of the ordinary kind, refined in the workplace into something that can etch glass. Its as bad as being back in high school.

It was fucking dull to be a teenager, as I recall, if you weren't beautiful, sporty and/or had parents that could (and) would dress you in a way that wasn't socially debilitating.

My nickname, for example, was Sargent Obesity because I wore so many clothes from Surplus stores and was, indeed, a proper fat bastard.

It was shit. I found my way through it later in life by loosing 30Kg and buying some proper fucking clothes as soon as I was free of the family home and financially able, but more importantly I came across ideas that inspired me and made me feel that life was worth living.

That, and I finally got laid.

The next guy that tells me that high-school was the best time of his life is going to have me tell him that he is either terribly sad, or was very, very lucky, in addition to the standard Go Fuck Yourself that will accompany either option.

Young people need something to believe in and something useful to do. Until we can give them one or both, I am not going to bitch about it if they smoke a bit of weed and listen to heavy music. Really, this is a symptom, and unless we have something to offer I cannot bring myself to feel overly righteous and/or scandalised.

In fact, I might just ask them for a joint, if they have one going spare.

western Liberal Democracy: Get it Up Ya.

In Certain Terms.

This blog is to be written as a response to many statements that have been made about the West, from within and without, to the effect that we have become a group of people that lack belief, and lack principles.

It is at times suggested that the decline of organized religion, and religiousness generally, is leaving us anchorless and lost, in contrast to the fundamental-religious faithful, who would like to portray themselves as being believers, and not infidel.

I would counter that Western communities do in fact have sophisticated systems of belief, that have succeeded, and continue to succeed, in creating organized, functioning, relatively safe, and exceptionally tolerant places to live. They are not perfect, but it is not fair to compare a real society to a Utopia, which, as it’s name suggests, exists only as an ideal. The only meaningful comparison to be made is against other real societies, as they represent the outcomes of other systems of belief, and other ways of organizing a society.

And this brings us to exactly the point I wish to make: That the principles that keep Western Liberal Democracy ticking are in fact subjective values, that are believed in, rather than known. And that the behaviour of citizens in living those values is actually what makes a society function as it does.

I have come to believe that unlike religions, which have all sorts of texts declaring in absolute terms the beliefs that constitute them, and in them plenty of natural-born slogans to quote as points of reference, Western democratic values are, in practice, more of an unwritten code.

This is not to assert that there are not many writings embodying beliefs that we find current in Western societies. Locke, Mill, Dickens, Hugo, the Constitution of the United States, and the Holy Bible amongst countless others have all contributed. But I would argue that I held many of the beliefs that these texts emphasize long before I read them, and that they were acquired socially at a young age. I didn’t notice at the time, and it only became apparent that I had them when I came across someone that didn’t.

This is, of course, how values are actually transmitted, by people, to people. I never studied a document at school called The Bogan’s Manifesto, for example. I never read a passage that went: “And Dave-o the Welder said unto them: Thou shalt give all thy Cobbers a Fair Go, that there may be no cause for Whinging and Blueing amongst us…”

Someone more academic than myself could probably tease this value apart into its historical roots, and make astute comments about its origins and limitations. For me, I am happy to accept it as an artefact of a common sort, that you can find on any street corner. It doesn't matter to me if its origins are the Christian bible or Oliver Twist, its all the same. There isn’t an objective Truth, that we can consult, measure with a Micrometer and say: Yes, Dave-o, you're right. It’s a fact.
We choose to believe in this idea, and some live by it.

Our values are just things that we believe in.

It’s not the same as a Religion that has (relatively) fixed dogmas and creeds. Its more of a de-facto faith. It’s there, so it’s real. But it can change, and you can’t argue that it has left the One True Path, because it never claimed to be one in the first place.

What I’m worried about, is that this easy-going way might loose ground to hardline religion, simply because it doesn't have the structure and practice that religions have to keep people in their way of doing things. And honestly, if Western Democracy did have the equivalent of a Sunday School class, I would likely assert my democratic right to vote with my feet and stay away. But I do think that a little wee book with some pro-western democratic writing in it would be handy from time to time.

I know its presumptuous to write about the values of the two thousand million sentient beings living in democracies, but that isn’t what I am trying to do. Think of a cookbook from a very small country: I can say, in my part of the world, some of us like to cook snails like this…and I am not making any claims that it’s the only way, the best way, or that you should throw rocks at people who cook ‘em differently. This is my snapshot of what my communities values look like, through my eyes. I make no further claims for it, and hope that someone might find it enjoyable to read.