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Scientist Forced To Remove Earthquake Prediction
Hugh Pickens writes to mention that Italian scientist Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, recently gave warning about an earthquake that was to happen on March 29th of this year near L'Aquilla. Based on radon gas emissions and a series of observed tremors he tried to convince residents to evacuate, drawing much criticism from the city's mayor and others. Giuliani was forced to take down warnings he had posted on the internet. The researcher had said that a 'disastrous' earthquake would strike on March 29, but when it didn't, Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency, last week officially denounced Giuliani in court for false alarm. 'These imbeciles enjoy spreading false news,' Bertalaso was quoted as saying. 'Everyone knows that you can't predict earthquakes.' Giuliani, it turns out, was partially right. A much smaller seismic shift struck on the day he said it would, with the truly disastrous one arriving just one week later. 'Someone owes me an apology,' said Giuliani, who is also a resident of L'Aquila. 'The situation here is dramatic. I am devastated, but also angry.'"
So, your an american to?
The research put forward by Giuliani is from the 1980s and 1990s and was found to be completely unusable as a predictor. People make predictions of quakes all the time and some of those will be correct just by chance, which is likely the case here. Furthermore, finding correlation with radon does not mean it can be used as a predictor. You cannot evacuate cities for long periods just to find out that it was a false alarm.
That is heard quite often: "even with science, you can't..."
You know, some day we just might. Maybe not today, maybe never, but please, when someone who knows more than you about a certain topic warns you, listen!
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
My immediate reaction is to say, "Ha! Science, bitches: It works!" and laugh at the officials who denounced the prediction. However, the very fact that the prediction was *so* precise, saying that the devastation would strike on a certain day, seems particularly irresponsible.
My thoughts go to those hurt in this incident. As the official says, though, it's not a habit to plan for stuff like this---perhaps it should become so.
Does anyone have data on how many truly false predictions have been made? Because one out of X might not be enough to condemn the politicos and glorify the scientist. Clearly these things do need to be managed carefully.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
This is almost as ironic as when Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana and one-time preznitial hopeful) mocked funds for volcano monitoring in the federal budget, and a week later an Alaskan (monitored) volcano blew up, with an orderly response since the eruption had been predicted for some time. Attention politicians: science is not negotiable. It's part of that reality thing not on your side.
Remain calm! All is well!
That seems like a pretty good improvement in earthquake prediction. If this guy can consistantly predict earthquakes with a +/- of one week, I'd say he's doing something right, and should be listened to. But he has to do it consistantly. One out of one is a good start.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
If indeed, it is "impossible to predict earthquakes, it seems to me that getting a minor quake on-the-day of prediction, and the major quake hitting a week later is pretty much as good as could possibly have been expected.
Now if all he did was guess, it'd be a whole different ball-game, but as far as I remember, doing this "science" thingy involves recognising a problem, taking measurements, postulating a theory to fit those measurements, and (sadly, in this case) testing that theory against further predictions it made. Seems like he followed the rule-book on that one...
Part of the problem, of course, is that people (including, one might say *especially*, elected officals) aren't good at assessing risk. They consider risk to be the consequences of an event, whereas really it's the consequences of an event multiplied by the probability of that event. It's why we look out for "global killer" meteorites, even though they are incredibly unlikely. The risk inherent in such a strike makes it worthwhile to keep putting in the effort at detecting them. It's easiest to illustrate when the fate of the whole world lies in balance, but the principle remains the same even for localised disasters such as this one...
So often, it comes down to better education being the key to good decision-making. Why is it that we let people who only want to run for power take on the mantle of power over us ? I recall a Sci-Fi story where on election, all a (wo)man's worldly goods were forcibly sold, and the cash amount held in trust. Once the successor appeared, the departing official was given access to his/her trust fund again - the implication being that you had to do well by everyone else before you could do well for yourself. I'm not suggesting this is workable, but perhaps an element of personal stake might be a useful thing for a politician to have... Perhaps then they'd listen to the scientist, and not just go on gut instinct...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
this man can pretty much go to any city on the planet right now, make an excitable announcement, and cause a mass exdodus
that's a rather interesting gift
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you cant be right once and be believed,
you have to be right twice.
i look forward to any future seismic prediction technology.
complete with references.
of which this event will most likely be a hard data point.
the government force you to take down posts on the internet? I know little of the Italian legal system, but even if he was pretending to be an expert, wouldn't that fall under some form of freedom of speech? We have pseudo-experts on /. all the time, wouldn't this fall under a similar "just ignore him" sentiment?
Yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Crying earthquake in a volcanically active region.
I think the issue isn't that he posted predictions, but that he called for evactuations.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
How dare you be inaccurate in your warning about the timing of a natural disaster? You caused me to be outraged and dismissive on record in the media! Now people think I'm a douchebag, and it's all your fault!
Must be a European thing. I'm sure nothing like that could ever happen here in the good ol' US of A.
'These imbeciles enjoy spreading false news,' Bertalaso was quoted as saying. 'Everyone knows that you can't predict the release of Duke Nukem Forever.'
If he was legally compelled to fall silent in his warnings, whoever silenced him should be jailed for involuntary manslaughter or at least criminal negligence causing death. There should be equal consequences both for yelling "fire!" when there is none, and for yelling "no fire!" when there is.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Anyone who can claim "horologist" as an official title earns my respect.
Particularly brain dead politicians. Wasn't it also a local Italian prosecutor that decided the best way of dealing with a video of some kids bullying another one, was to sue Google?
I'm not saying Italy has a monopoly on boneheaded politico's but their particular brand of antics seem to stick on my mind.
Please. He didn't predict it with enough certainty? He was off by a week. I would gladly evacuate my home for a month if it saves my life or that of my family. You sir, have an odd definition of accuracy when attempting to predict something that has heretofor been considered impossible to predict.
Weak analogy. Getting within a few weeks of correct on an event that occurs irregularly on the scale of decades to centuries seems pretty good to me.
Now, given that the economic and logistical viability of moving a large number of people out of their homes and to somewhere else plummets after just a few days, his prediction wasn't good enough for use; but equating him with the boy who cried wolf(who, you'll remember, was deliberately dishonest, not merely wrong) is a bit much.
Unless the quality of earthquake prediction gets considerably better, the punchline is that the money is better spent on decent architects and engineers. Building structures that won't collapse and crush everybody inside isn't trivial; but it is doable now, which makes it a better investment.
Giuliani was off by a week. He wasn't off by a month or a year. But a week. And he was right about the location (L'Aquila). That's more than a proverbial broken watch.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Hey that's my mother you're talking about...she only horoed because she was young and needed the money.
I'm a satanic clam.
Has anyone recorded earthquake prediction measurements and compared them? I would be curious to know which ones have been closest to the mark and on what frequency? I suspect different measurements are likely to be right some of the time, but not all the time, because the seismic triggers may vary from region to region.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Read it again, he was very correct. A LOT more so than anyone has ever been in the past. The devastating event did happen. His models were saying that a devastating earthquake was imminent. A small quake relieved some of the stresses last week, which postponed the major event a few days. But his models also detected that the event was going to happen again with enough time to warn people, but he was not allowed to raise the alarm because they would have arrested him.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Remember the Prophet units in the Empire Earth games? In ancient times they started out as religious shamans. But once you played up to modern times they were nutjobs wearing "The End Is Near!" sandwich boards. They could cause earthquakes.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
This is more like a guy (boy) who has spent years researching wolves to a degree that he has wolf detection methods that pick up on wolf phermones and indicators that systematically suggest when the wolf might *actually* show up.
I think the problem here is saying ludicrous things like "It will happen on March 29th". That's simply trying to get one's name in the paper, so to speak. A more rational approach, if the underlying science fits (and I don't think seismology or vulcanology is at the point where you can say anything definite like this) is to say "Look, I'm getting some very troubling readings here that suggest that a major earthquake is imminent."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It sounds like the guy kinda went about it the wrong way. He should have just had a note or a webpage up with his current data and predictions with chance of an event happening on any given day. Folks would treat it sort of like a weather forecast.
Heck, when it comes to weather, we like to look at the live radar maps and make our own decisions. Hey it's going to be raining for the next hour or two... ;) We aren't quiet there for earthquakes, yet.
would you also leave your job? would you close the hospital and all the schools for a month as well? and what if, after a month, there hasn't been any earthquake? do you keep the schools & hospitals closed, would you stay away from home?
in this case, the scientist made his prediction for a specific day. According to the article the people of the town were warned, and the earthquake didn't happen.
He was close, kudos to him, but not close enough.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
"Italy earthquake leaves 130 dead and scores more trapped under rubble" http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/06/italy-earthquake-victims I'd say being off by a week or so in this case isn't bad science at all.
to say "Look, I'm getting some very troubling readings here that suggest that a major earthquake is imminent."
Which would have been met with, at best, polite disinterest. So, in practical terms, the result would have been the same.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Weak analogy. Getting within a few weeks of correct on an event that occurs irregularly on the scale of decades to centuries seems pretty good to me.
The funny part is, he was *immediately* labeled an imbecile when the earthquake was late.
I shouldn't be making jokes at a time like this. I'm sorry. Please mod my previous comment down. Thank you.
Yes, but he said "the earthquake is going to happen in 6 to 24 hours".
And he was right, just not about the magnitude. According to another comment after the smaller quake he re-ran the numbers and predicted the larger one that hit a week later but was barred from telling anyone about it.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Science demands more than a single data point of "within a week". He needs to get more data points so we determine whether he was just lucky or whether his predictions have some real value.
If you throw out predictions left and right, well sooner or later you may get lucky. That doesn't mean you are actually any good at predicting. The predictive value of a model doesn't come from getting a single answer right or near right, it comes from accurately modeling reality. That means having a track record of predicting events, and not making predictions when there are no events.
As an extreme example I could make a computer program that predicts a major earthquake every single day. You input a day, it says "Major quake will happen." Well, that program would occasionally be right. Any time an earthquake happened I could claim my software predicted it. However that wouldn't me meaningful, in the face of the massive number of false positives, the thousands upon thousands of days where it was wrong.
So ya, I need to see some real data that shows that his software had a reasonable prediction rate, not just that he happened to get lucky this time.
Unless the quality of earthquake prediction gets considerably better, the punchline is that the money is better spent on decent architects and engineers. Building structures that won't collapse and crush everybody inside isn't trivial; but it is doable now, which makes it a better investment.
Add disaster recovery to that list. When you can't predict a disaster, you make sure you'll be handle it efficiently after the fact.
Also, investing in disaster recovery is great because it helps you against a lot of different threats. Mass terrorism, earthquake, etc. all involve more or less the same logistical considerations about moving lots of people/food/water/medicine quickly.
Since people died, they should also be charged with homocide.
Come on, man. Just because Italians are always well groomed and impeccably dressed, doesn't mean they are all gay.
Here's quote from a USAToday article.
Pezzopane, the provincial president, said residents may have been lulled into complacency because so many smaller quakes had jolted the area, including two or three earlier in the night.
"Considering what happened, a bit more concern, more attention might have saved lives," she said.
National officials insisted no quake can ever be predicted and that no evacuation could have been ordered on the basis of the recent jolts.
"There is no possibility of making any predictions on earthquakes. This is a fact in the world's scientific community," Civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso told reporters
Talk about saving face...
They're not completely wrong - there currently is no scientifically acceptable method of predicting earthquakes that is time-tested, but at the very least, they could give some credit to Giuliani for seemingly predicting this earthquake, and offer him a full apology for calling him an imbecile.
Best "String" Ever!
There's a guy in the Bay Area who claims he can predict earthquakes with high accuracy and offers up the fact that he has predicted every recent large earthquake. But as one scientist commented (borrowing from somewhere, I believe) that, "indeed, he has predicted 150 of the last 8 earthquakes."
Based on what we know so-far, he predicted a destructive quake on March 29. This did not happen. Prediction failed.
But there was another earthquake that day. Big deal - isn't that what "seismically active" means?
Just looking at the current Northern California map I see over 170 quakes listed. And that's only the last 7 days where this predicted event was 9 days before the quake. I'm not surprised there was a "smaller" quake that day. There are usually quite a few every day.
As to the charge of "silenced", I'll wait and see what that really means. If he was ordered to destroy scientific publications with his claims or cease his research discussions it's one thing. If they declined to once-again drive vans with bullhorns around town having falsely reported an imminent quake just a month earlier, it's another thing entirely. It will probably end up being somewhere between those extremes.
Radon emission changes have preceded earthquakes. But they have also "preceded" non-quakes. And quakes have been preceded by the lack of change in radon as well. Hardly a reliable predictor, so far.
One should not lambaste officials without looking at the scientist's track-record. I have yet to see a single item suggesting that he had a serious track-record of predicting with any reasonable level of accuracy the time, place and magnitude of an event as well as "safe" periods.
I think it would have been more responsible to just lay out the facts. There is evidence that certain events we are monitoring (radon, ground-water changes, full/new-moon, ...) tend to precede an earthquake. We feel the risk is higher than normal. Please be sure you are as prepared as possible with the usual recommended supplies of food, water, tools, etc. and consider training if you haven't done-so in the past.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I don't recall that the Vatican was in the business of predicting earthquakes.
A more scientific conclusion would have been to use error bars in his prediction; "There is a 95% chance that an earthquake on this date, and a 99% that it will occur within seven days after this date".
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Building structures that won't collapse and crush everybody inside isn't trivial; but it is doable now
It was doable 600 years ago.
Just go visit Machu Picchu, and you'll see.
It lays abandoned for half a millennium in a land of frequent earthquakes, and it's walls are still intact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incan_architecture
factor 966971: 966971
The funny part is, he was *immediately* labeled an imbecile when the earthquake was late.
Oh no - don't tell me the next thing that will happen there is they elect a new government that will make sure the the earthquakes arrive on time
Given the state of the art of earthquake prediction, he was pretty good - probably a bit better than Italian railroad arrival predictions. -)
Doesn't that prove he wasn't so sure about his own results then?
If he was sure there was going to be an earthquake, then he'd put out the warning, get arrested, and be vindicated when the earthquake hit as he predicted.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L6566682.htm
yep, that might piss a few people off!
I just wanted to point out that people are quick to jump to conclusions if it reinforces their reality model.
Giuilani: "Hey guys, earthquake is coming." ... ...
Everyone else: "No it's not, idiot"
Giuilani "Yes it is, look at my research!"
Everyone else: "See, it didn't come. We knew you are an idiot!"
Earthquake: "Sorry, I was held up at the border"
Everyone else: "OH SHI-"
The problem is the guy has been predicting an earthquake for the past umpteen years. This is very common will all kinds of crackpots who keep foretelling doom and when something does happen they rush to show their "predictions" as hitting bullseye. It's like creating a device that detects 100% of all tumors. I can build such a device today. It will just tell everyone using it that they have cancer.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
A broken watch is right twice a day, that does not make it a scientist.
I always hated that expression, a completely broken watch may be right twice a day, but a slightly slow one may only be actually right once a decade. Even so, I'd rather have the slightly slow one than the completely broken one.
If he was sure there was going to be an earthquake, then he'd put out the warning, get arrested, and be vindicated when the earthquake hit as he predicted.
Depends on how earthquake-safe he thought the jail was.
This is a critical component to any good disaster movie from the 70s.
- Towering Inferno: Building developer refuses to cancel dedication party after bad wiring is found and fire starts.
- Jaws: Town mayor refuses to close beach after attack from big shark.
Come to think of it, Tommy Lee Jones's and Pierce Brosnan's Volcano movies were the same deal...
let me tell you as a citizen, i would go to kick that mayor in the face.
Read radical news here
Yeah, well, it's a lot easier to make something structurally sound if it's not expected to have the same occupancy load that would be required for a modern western city. There weren't nearly as many Incans as there are Italians. Particularly since the former weren't Catholics.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. -- Richard Bandler
Given the topic of this article, your sig just got rather scary.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
His problem is that people are just smart enough to go "You can't possibly know exactly when this is going to happen." And it's the truth, he couldn't possibly know the exact date, the science just isn't that good. What one can know is, with a certain degree of probability, that an event could be about to occur. Whether it's an increase in certain gas emissions from a volcano suggesting an eruption, or an increase in smaller earthquakes suggesting pressure build-up at a fault that could lead to an earthquake, you can only speak in probabilities.
It's a tough call for any government. Even where the seismologists are saying "Hey, I think there's something big time bad gonna happen", there's always the possibility that the activity will die down. Sadly, public officials want certainty, but science usually can only deliver statistical likelihoods.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
let me add according to http://www.earthquake.it/ultimi-terremoti.php it's since december that small earthquake are occurring in that zone, and they are still going, so it wasn't a single strike but rather the big one . giuliani predicted a devastating earthquake on 29 th of march in sulmona. the earthquake was yesterday in l'aquila, so one week later and 70 km far away from where giuliani predicted. Also he's not a scientist but a guy who work for infn which is nuclear physic and he's not even graduated. Civil Protection Agency looked to their data and with a pool of geophysics decided that there was not enough evidence to know if a big earthquake would strike and where would strike. they can't evacuate people just on assumptions of someone who already failed to predict that earthquake. however they were on "defcon 1" so when the earthquake striked they were ready to go for help as soon as possible. Yes building were inadequate because people tends to ignore that they live over seismic terrain and they prefer to look for a cheaper house without antiseismic structure so they have some money to enjoy their favourite soccer team on a big plasma screen. guess what they are enjoying now ... but this is their faul or rather a big darwing award for the whole zone.
I really hate this idea that the individual overrides the social, it's a very narrow minded view that causes no end of grief. Sure, we would like to believe we're all unique and special, but it's just not true. We're part of a bigger "machine", just cogs. Sure, we can have individual ideas and attitudes, but we aren't here to merely satisfy our own individual wants. If that's the case we'd be solitary creatures.
The problem with this that has cropped up again and again throughout history is that when humans attempt to place the society's needs over the individual as an ethos of governance, individual ideas and attitudes are, and must be, suppressed.
The more emphasis placed on society's wants and needs over the individual, the more thorough and brutal the repression, indeed oppression, of individual ideas and attitudes. Especially when it comes to criticism of the society's leaders and their laws.
I really hate this idea that society outweighs the individual. It's been proven repeatedly throughout history up to the present day that it causes no end of grief including genocide, wars of aggression, and brutal oppression.
A healthy society and its' governance should impact as little as possible on individual freedoms, ideas, and attitudes.
"That government is best that governs least."-Thomas Paine
Sadly, we have forgotten Thomas Paine and are the worse for it.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Oh no - don't tell me the next thing that will happen there is they elect a new government that will make sure the the earthquakes arrive on time
Next thing you know people will be repeating the anti-fascist quote that, "Mussolini made the earthquakes arrive on time."
Type "radon earthquake" into google.
Towns and even major city streets get shut down just to shoot a movie let alone risk of a catastrophe.
Only if he's an import. A true 'merkin would have been several hundred miles north.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
True, he was born 17 years after the South Sea Bubble had its dramatic collapse...
In fairness, if he hadn't've called his earthquake prediction machines "cassandra", it might've been taken more seriously.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Even if you can't predict earthquakes with enough precision to move populations out of risk areas, you still can raise emergency preparation. A lot of damage can be prevented if you can cut power and gas lines quickly enough and have emergency personnel from nearby locations on heightened alert and hospitals fully supplied for disasters. Many of those supplies have lng shelf lives and can be taken from emergency to emergency.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
In other news many still deny global warming despite what these so-called 'scientists' are telling us.
Sigh.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
So it's OK if someone poisons your water by pouring toxic waste into the river (to save a few bucks), thereby forcing the entire populace to import their water / install expensive systems to clean it up (thousands of people multiplied by much more than you saved) ???
So it's OK if you hire armed gun-men and snipers (because you have the money) to dominate a good fishing river and place gill-nets across the river to catch 100% of the fish for personal profit even if it destroys that resource forever ???
So it's OK if your burn down the next 10 houses around you because you didn't want to have trash handled properly and you decided to put up a home-built incinerator that let fly-ash go uncontrolled.... too bad that they didn't leave their yard as bare dirt and chop down their trees for your convenience ???
Sorry, but the only 'repression' here is _NOT_ having (at least some) areas where society outweighs the individual. I can't believe your at +5 for that drivel.
Well to be fair they called him imbecile not idiot. You cretin.
I really hate this idea that society outweighs the individual.
So it's OK if someone poisons your water by pouring toxic waste into the river (to save a few bucks), thereby forcing the entire populace to import their water / install expensive systems to clean it up (thousands of people multiplied by much more than you saved) ???
So it's OK if you hire armed gun-men and snipers (because you have the money) to dominate a good fishing river and place gill-nets across the river to catch 100% of the fish for personal profit even if it destroys that resource forever ???
So it's OK if your burn down the next 10 houses around you because you didn't want to have trash handled properly and you decided to put up a home-built incinerator that let fly-ash go uncontrolled.... too bad that they didn't leave their yard as bare dirt and chop down their trees for your convenience ???
Sorry, but the only 'repression' here is _NOT_ having (at least some) areas where society outweighs the individual. I can't believe your at +5 for that drivel.
Look, nobody is saying there doesn't need to be rules. Those rules however need to be the absolute minimum needed for society to function in order for individuals to have freedom.
When a society gets to the point where there are so many laws, rules, regulations, codes, etc etc, on and on, to the point where no human can possibly live a normal life without being in violation of something, usually multiple-somethings, or when a government punishes its' citizens for voicing dissent, or uses its' punitive powers (criminal, financial, or otherwise) to do social engineering in an attempt to change peoples' beliefs and behaviors to what *it* considers "acceptable", then that's much, much too far and that government has far, far too much power.
That was the whole premise for the structure of the US government originally. Just enough short of anarchy to maintain order and a functioning nation, nothing more. This is what Thomas Paine meant with that quote in my previous post. *That* is what the US has forgotten.
That is why we in the US have been steadily losing our freedoms for a long time. That is 95% (or more) of the reason for the troubles in the US we see today. That is why it will only get worse as time goes on unless there are radical changes in how the government works and how & what the citizens think about and expect from government.
The more a government can provide, the more it can take away. The more it protects, the more it can destroy. It is up to the people. They have been conditioned and dumbed-down, their abilities for independent critical thinking dulled, so as to expect all things from government so therefor government now has the power to take all things away.
The more power a government is given to do "good things", the more power it has to do bad. This is not not right-left, liberal-conservative, or any other political credo. It's just the way governments work because they are ultimately run by flawed, imperfect people.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Wow. I know tragedy inspires emotion in people, but you take it to the next level and completely shut down any part of your brain that wasn't formed as a small child throwing toys out of your pram. You're pure reaction huh, no thought behind it at all. Voi idiota.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Maybe we could agree that both theories have their own share of credibility?
After all, modern political theory tends to be heavily concerned with reconciling the needs of the individual with the "greater good" of society.
Humans can indeed be fiercely individualistic, though you could just as easily argue that we're inherently social creatures under certain circumstances. (You'd also be daft to argue that the overall condition of society doesn't affect the individual -- even if you're a subsistence farmer living alone in the wilderness)
I would argue that, by historic standards, both the US and Europe are far better off now than they have ever been, both in terms of personal liberties, as well as the general health of society as a whole.
Sure, we pay a lot of taxes. However, our post-tax income is still pretty darn high, in terms of the purchasing power that it carries. Similarly, we do receive tangible benefits from those taxes (even though you might argue that those benefits might not be a good value for the money)
We can't carry guns, but have powerful mechanisms for resolving personal conflicts in a peaceful manner. If the government is corrupt, 20th Century history contains numerous examples of peaceful revolutions taking place under non-democratic governments (India, and the fall of the USSR most notably come to mind)
Are there improvements to be made? Sure!
Is the answer to swing far to the left, or far to the right? Probably not. It's been tried repeatedly on both ends of the spectrum, and has never been particularly successful.*
*I'm going to ignore ancient Sparta for the sake of this discussion. Although it makes a great case study, it's a single data point, and a bit of a paradoxical one at that.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
That's how scientific progress works. The real geniuses are usually thought of as imbeciles.
Of course, the imbeciles are also thought of as imbeciles, and it's often hard to differentiate the two. :3
I thought that adding some local view would add some colour, so here's my 2âc
There's been some back and forth on the national papers about this earthquake prediction, liberally mixed with rumors about stray dogs wailing, etc etc. I fully expect this to continue, since basic scientific method is not the order of the day here.
As much as I think that further research by the guy in question will be valuable, the history of earthquake prediction has been rather dismal, insofar as many times over, after a quake, it's been relatively easy to find some scientist having predicted it, while the actual "before the fact " experience has materially changed in the ability to foresee what ( we do have seismic maps, etc.), but not the when.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
If the government is corrupt, 20th Century history contains numerous examples of peaceful revolutions taking place under non-democratic governments (India, and the fall of the USSR most notably come to mind)
I'm not really a general advocate of armed revolt or anything (certainly not in democratic western nations), but historically the examples you cite are more exceptions than the rule.
In both cases the revolts were only effective because those in power chose to lay down their authority peacefully. Essentially the oppressed appealed to the oppressors and the oppressors said "ok, you have a point." There are far more examples of tyrranical rulers where those in charge simply wiped out the protestors, or where they were so clearly interested in only their own power that the people never bothered to stage a mass demonstration in the first place. Could you see something like this working in half of the Middle East or in a place like North Korea? It already failed once in China - I'd think that as China becomes more influenced by Western culture it might be more likely to actually work there now or in the future.
Don't get me wrong - peaceful resistance does work sometimes. I suspect that it would have eventually worked in the formation of the US since the English Parliament was at least sympathetic to their aims. Even nations that you think would be basically peaceful have at times in history become very suppressive and warlike. Just look at WWI - half of Europe was just looking for an excuse to go to war and one guy getting shot in a very minor country was enough of a pretense to end up getting 37 million people killed.
On the other hand, most armed revolts only succeed when those in charge willingly lay down their arms, or if some external power intervenes. It wasn't like the Continental Army actually destroyed the British's ability to make war - if anything the US campaign was more of a series of defeats, but the cost to the British was enough to make them have to keep thinking twice about the issues until they gave in. The intervention of the French had a huge impact as well.
That's a fine beginning, and I don't think there are many people who disagree with it.
The problem is when you take it too far. Then you get much stranger laws, such as "protecting the institution of marriage", making it illegal to have homosexual sex, prohibition, criminalization of victimless crimes, and calls for anybody acting "suspiciously" to be reported.
Those things don't really favor society. It doesn't benefit society as a whole when laws tell you to look at an amateur chemist as a new unabomber in the making. It does however benefit some paranoid politician who will get credit for passing laws that are completely counterproductive to society.
And that's the real problem. Too far down that road it's not longer really for society's benefit. It's all full things done for the carreer of politicians under the guise of benefit for the society. And unfortunately many of the society's members can't look far ahead enough to see what they're getting into.
it took them 40 years to find a place nice enough to be worth invading instead.
Worth invading? They spent 40 years wandering around in the desert and finally picked the one spot in the whole middle east that doesn't have any oil.
The funny part is, he was *immediately* labeled an imbecile when the earthquake was late.
And everytime some girl is late there is a guy who feels like an imbecile too! That's gotta mean that girls = earthquakes...maybe she was right when she said "I'm gonna rock your world"
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
You forget the biggest reason: specialization. Individuals can't be experts in everything, and there are far too many subtle things to cheat on that even an expert might not notice. These things can cause disproportionate harm down the road. Rules are one way to try to avoid having people cheated on something in which they aren't expert. Look where trusting in too loosely policed financial experts got us.
It's not always The Government making these rules. One example is the Underwriter's Laboratories. The UL was started by insurance companies seeking to reduce the damages they paid thanks to products with obvious defects. Would a manufacturer knowingly choose an option that was far more dangerous, if it saved them a few pennies up front? Especially if the consequences wouldn't show up for some years, and if they do, could probably be blamed on the buyers? Some would! A gas appliance could do all kinds of nasty things if poorly designed. Might shoot flames out and ignite the house. Might leak gas or combustion byproducts and poison and suffocate everyone inside. And there are all kinds of rules concerning electrical appliances, so they don't spontaneously short out and start a fire.
And buildings? Tons of codes so that when the contractors skimp, they're in trouble. Have to have codes and professional building inspectors. Otherwise, the builders would cheat every time, and we'd all end up with housing that looks great at first but which falls right down in the first windstorm or earthquake. Or falls down all by itself in 10 years thanks to poor foundations. Or in 10 years the wiring gives out and starts a fire. And then they get to sell the victims another cheap building!
I don't want manufacturers making decisions like that. Freedom to design and manufacture product any way they want, so long as it doesn't involve hazards the public would not have knowingly chosen. (We know cars are dangerous, but that we go into with eyes open, for the most part.) Manufacturers are inherently biased towards their bottom line, as they should be, but that often doesn't correlate with my bottom line. Too many would save themselves a few pennies doing things people would not accept but will not be able to see until it is too late. If nothing reins in the cheaters, the rest would feel compelled to do the same things, to stay "competitive". The smarter manufacturers want rules and enforcement too. Look at the ridiculous irresponsibility shown by those trailer home manufacturers, in selling formaldehyde tainted trailers. They hurt customers, and ultimately themselves. They gave the entire manufactured housing industry a black eye. Very unfair to the responsible members.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"