The LCHF Paleo Primal Banting community, the people who have been reading Taubes' review of the literature going back pre-war, and so on, and who have tried this stuff for themselves, the basic insight is that it is the carbohydrates that are the problem.
The grain growers wanted to mass produce and sell the stuff, and some politicians liked a "heart healthy" message (despite scientists protesting that more research was needed before jumping to conclusions) and so the whole "heart healthy" movement was born, which emphasised high carb foods like cereals, by demonising fat.
Well after some decades, and people trying it for themselves, people are now realising that it was pretty much completely wrong. And manufacturers, because fatless food tastes of cardboard, knew they had to increase the sugar content to make up for the lack of taste. Low fat yoghurts loaded with sugar. Healthy smoothies, loaded with sugar.
The carbs create cravings, signal the body to store fat, and overwork your insulin production until it breaks.
But dietary fat? Good natural fats are good for you. They are good for the guts, the heart, and the brain. Well, you can read books and various docs on this, and try it for yourself. See if their claims seem to work out. It isn't a short term diet, it is a lifestyle.
Interesting, I oft wonder that the future of the world is going to be about China and India, both making a huge transition into modern urbanised industrialised powers. India seems very chaotic, whereas China worries more about social order. Or at least that's the view from the West. Also, I got the impression China thinks on the time span of civilisations. Like, China is watching the West and making notes and still wondering how it'll turn out for us. Plus the West has monotheistic cultural origins, whilst China is philosophically different. China has been investing a lot in Africa, building infrastructure. Africa is where most of the future population growth will come from, and also the vast continent where, in Spiral Dynamics terms, there are still the most wide ranging levels of cultural organisation to move through. China's notion of social order and progress could really turn out interesting there. So USA did China a favour nuking Japan? And I gather USA also had a pretty serious cultural change programme to get rid of all the Japanese fascistic imperialistic elements?
Yes well the "spiral" reflects that things can move "up" (serfs become smarter and more empowered, thus moving things up to democracy) but things can also fall apart and move "down" (a fascist group gets power, perhaps they are voted in like the Nazis).
So what Machiavelli says, that democracy can devolve, is true. What wouldn't have existed at his time though, is any system that was higher than democracy, or at least, any system where the people were even smarter and could continue to develop democracy, rather than let it stagnate and fall apart.
If history was truly cyclical, we'd all still be hunter gatherers mostly, we'd keep going back to that, yet somehow, over history, some new systems appear.
It is a bit like building a tower, you keep adding floors until it falls down. Then you start again using whatever you learnt from the last collapse. Gradually you work out what's needed for each level to become stable.
It is interesting to wonder what the SD meme colour coded/named turquise will look like, but that may be far in the future. Something always stuck in my mind was what Wilber wrote, perhaps even back in Up From Eden, that the biggest change and advance for humanity and the planet would be if everyone simply grew to having a mature modern ego. Where our sense of winning in life, is about doing something worthwhile so that we can get respect for our contribution, and likewise respect others for their contributions. But if 70% of the world still resonates more with raw power, survival, empire building, ethnic cleansing, and people are unable to see outside their own cultural norms, then yeah, scary.
As for testing people, I heard vaguely they wanted to do that at Intergal Institute, but Cook-Greuter said it would be unethical. Ther are some really tricky issues I think, trying to see how to reintroduce systems that work into diversity, yellow after green, without becoming a bit nazi about it:-D
I don't know what really matters behind the scenes. But whilst they are standing and speaking, then this about resonating with people's values can matter. I am still wondering to this day what was the real reason for the Iraq invasion. I mean the really real reason.
Regards China, can I ask, there were some documentaries that China of late is becoming more passionate about nationalism, is that true?
There is a theory, used in South Africa to help ease the transition away from Apartheid, called Spiral Dynamics. It models human development as going through about 6 worldwiews, each with their own sense of morality/justice/values. It spans history, so the first worldview is of a hunter gatherer. The most recent worldview is of an educated Western post-modern cultural relative intellectual interested in minority rights and the environment. Anyway, between those two worldviews you have the view of warlords, then the view of religious-empire-order, and then the view of individualistic achievement/playing to win in a competitive world individualism. That last one by the way was the start of modernity and freedom in the French revolution sense of the word, it recognises that EVERY human is equal and has their won brain and is an equal player and should not be oppressed by religious-empire-orders (Communism is similar in that it is also a single empire order which oppresses individual freedom and ingenuity).
OK so, this relates to politics because the politicians do, as you say, simply have to FRAME a proposal in language which RESONATES with the worldview of the people being targeted. The point is that when you are born, you are basically at the hunter-gatherer level. Culturally and intellectually and morally you then grow up and somewhere along the way, tend to stop or focus on one of the worldview levels. If you are currently living in a Nigerian bad land, you're probably hovering around warlordism. That's fine, that's just the most appropriate adaption to your environment. A pomo sensitive type will merely become a target in that environment. So whatever level people are at, that's just the best they can manage. Anyway, Spiral Dynamics might not be 100% true, but it is a useful distilling of some of the major differences.
So yes, the tradition-valuing, we are one nation, one flag, NCIS TV show committed marine of honour and purpose, holy order type worldview is about half of America, I forget the exact percentage they estimate, and so anything that speaks about being a responsible individual who self-sacrifices their own selfish needs for the sake of serving the lager community, any issue framed in that way, will gain a lot of voter approval. People like W. Bush, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton know all about Spiral Dynamics and such theories (various institutes and advisors etc.) and it is anybody's guess how much they are using them.
Where it gets "religious" is where researchers amongst themselves discuss the uncertainties in carefully considered scientific language, and then decide that these nuances are too complex for the public to understand, so they decide that the public message needs to simplify the message because otherwise, the public might fail to act, so they figure, if they lead the public to failing to act, they would be "unethical", likewise, letting any "denier" get access to data which they might seize upon to highlight uncertainty, thus leading the public to ignore the problem would also be "unethical", so they opt to promote an image of ever greater confidence, ever increasing certainty, worse than we thought, a science field that is always improving, always painting a clearer and clearer picture, where there are no "paradigms", just ever-building on more and more knowledge.
But the problem is, ethics is not a science topic. If you are making an ethical decision on behalf of others, there is some ethical imperative that you ask them whether __they__ think it is ethical. It isn't just about democracy, but about an OPEN society where we know all views are fallible, all views are limited by our own perceptual ability and bias, so we don't go round making decisions for others without them knowing, because it is quite likely that despite our own best intentions, our purest and smartest of ideals and knowledge, our perceptions are in error, and hiding those decisions and ethical judgments from the public only means it takes far longer for the problems to be corrected.
We trust science because it is self correcting. If it stops being self correcting, or that self correction is delayed by say, 50 years, there is no reason to trust it. The AGW stuff is doing some rather extensive damage, unfortunately.
Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature mentioned some research: they sent a job application letter to employers, the letter said something like, "... one more thing, I feel you should know that I once committed a murder. The situation was that I was in a bar, and a guy wouldn't stop so we took it outside, and suddenly he had a knife, and I defended myself." They reported that employers in the south of USA were sympathetic to him and even invited him to pop in if he was even in town. In the north of USA, they were not sympathetic. A second letter, where the story was that "I stole a car, blah, because I was poor" got sympathy in the north, and none in the south. The researchers also note that the murder rate goes down the further north you go, even before you actually cross into Canada. So yes, people kill people, the gun helps, but a man's code of honour which says he should stand his ground, really helps.
It is like comparing Switzerland and Pakistan. Real men don't compromise, and a bloodbath ensues.
Awesome post. I am all for a global system where all children are born equal and have equal opportunities in life, and health is for all, and we live healthy in a healthy ecosystem.
How to get there? All humans have to become wiser.
We won't get there by creating a new myth, on the back of post modern education which says there are no real truths, so we may as well invent a truth and use that to motivate people by changing their worldview -- "catastrophe/you must act". On the social level it is very dumb to try to create a new myth. We need less myths, not more myths.
And that means, everyone needs to think for themselves and all claims need people to think them through. I used to believe global warming, oh gosh we are in big trouble. But thinking about it to the best of my ability, I don't see how their scenarios are even vaguely right. If temps had been shooting up and their scenarios coming true in a testable way (not just the "chaotic weather/climate" smoke screen and murky "it is somewhere in the deep unmeasured oceans") then I would see it and accept it. I am a pretty depressed guy, depressing news fits my worldview. I don't have an SUV and IO have never owned a car, I live in a small house and I fly once in 10 years, which makes it like, 4 times now. I wear lots of jumpers round the house to keep the heating off. I feel the guilt of being born in the comfortable relatively safe developed world.
If people want to create a social movement, like the Suffragettes, which maintains on principle that the world should be organised differently, fine. Justify it with moral arguments. Don't muddy science by claiming it is all facts and beyond doubt and irrationally play propaganda games, smearing those you can't logically refute as "deniers", when even the most basic bit of core evidence contradicts AGW. Oh yeah it is my own lying eyes, mustn't believe it.
Honestly, the most scary thing in the world is social movements because we have a whole bunch of them coming at us from different levels of development in humanity's own history and spread over 7 billion humans, you have the 2000 year old stuff, the 1000 year old stuff, the 200 year old stuff, the 60 year old stuff, etc. All these social movements are at war with each other.
Environmentalism isn't going to help if they just set up yet another social movement that everyone is supposed to buy into. Fine if you are sensitive and live in California. Not fine if you are genuinely wondering how it can work for a farmer in Kenya. A lot of work all over the world goes into gradually improving things, reducing violence, reducing greed, increasing health, etc. What does your average environmentalist activist achieve?
The never-attainable struggle for perfection and certainty is the source of much of human suffering.
People try to attain enlightenment, in the hope of finding ultimate peace, but the struggle to attain perfect peace, itself reinforces the feeling that life as it is has to be rejected and avoided. But the way you put it is simpler and better.
Yes TV often shows ads for breakfast cereals, margarine, meat substitutes, etc. I rarely see one for eggs, or butter, or steak. Somehow I don't need convincing to buy a piece of liver.
I gather in the USA around the time that fake stuff became "heart healthy" there was a senator who represented a lot of big cereals farmers, and he said to the advising scientists, "we don't have time to wait for more research".
Time. Good point. Many building architects defend bad designs with, "but that's all the time we had."
Either the original developers have time to iterate to a cleaner design, or the maintainers have to do it, or the original developers had lots of experience with similar frameworks that they already have better designs in mind—acquired over time.
No the problem for the general public is that there is always risk. Look at nutrition. 50 years ago some sort of consensus was formed that eating fat is bad for your heart. It was a sort of consensus, with politicians, health officials, and manufacturers. You know, all the "stakeholders" as is custom to call them today. And well science, as you know, the reason to trust science more than the next thing, is that it is supposed to be self-correcting. Ie. we expect mistakes will be made but that they will be corrected. But there's the rub, with nutrition, it is taking over 50 years for that correction to take place. 50 years! So the problem for the public is, science is self correcting but that process takes time, so there is always a risk. And what with obesity skyrocketing, apparently because the consensus got everyone to start eating the kind of food that does make them fat and is bad for their heart, the risk wasn't theoretical, it has had a huge negative outcome. That's "consensus". IT IS STILL RISK.
AGW/CC/GCD* is a social movement. It is as if the Suffragettes had decided they needed some science to prove to the world that women should be treated equal. But they didn't need science, they simply had to say that certain principles would be good for everyone, and debate that in a peaceful way. Let science be science, and ethics be ethics.
Find a definition of extreme which the AGW people are happy to stick to for 60 years.
Besides if air temps haven't been going up as fast as they were scenario'd as going up, what's causing the "freak" weather? The energy disappearing into the deep oceans where nobody can measure it? That's why it is windy today?
An African witch-doctor has a more refined sense of causality than that.
I wonder how often the men and women of small coastal villages in Scotland thought to themselves, you know, that other villages' entire menfolk were all wiped out by a storm in one night, so perhaps we should all give up fishing.
Something kept them going back out to sea in their boats, knowing the risks.
Oh I agree, and I suppose the big problem today is that we have to rethink our whole education system. We can't afford to be producing people dumb enough to take literally the word of some 7th or 3rd century manuscript. It is the 21st century and Jehova's Witnesses come to the door saying that the laws of man are wrong, only God can make laws. And they mean this LITERALLY. Same with Saudi Clerics who preach hatred and expect followers to not question it because their holy scriptures are "unwritten" (literally the mind of their god and forever excluded from any attempt to question it or reinterpret it on account of it having been written at a historical point in time -- nay, it is "unwritten", forever outside of any context, historical period, and questioning).
The assertion about needing religion though is... well it is a bit more complex. Historically, religion can play that role. And I think a more mature outlook is to say, well, I have no evidence for what happens after death, one way or the other. I have no evidence for claims about what is consciousness and sentience. They are currently unknown areas. I also have no evidence for a god figure. I mean, even if the universe is a simulation, that doesn't mean it was created by a god figure as we usually think of it. Zoroaster basically said, hey, we have lots of gods, but I'm going to revise that and say ONLY ONE is the real one. So now we have each monotheistic religion fighting the other because they each insist it is their god that's the right one.
No we need to strip it all back and say, look, X Y Z are not known. Why would any child coming out of our education system not ask themselves, hey, dude, what's your basis for that claim? And then just laugh and walk out.
Unfortunately it is a social peer pressure thing and we all copy each other, a sort of mass-mind, culture comes through us and we end up parroting thoughts of others. Kids come out LESS able to question things for themselves. I'm atheist because my parents said, hm, what about religion? Oh let him decide when he grows up.
But I'm also not a "scientism" atheist who insists on having an opinion on the nature of reality and existence. Those are open questions.
But the golden rule of ethics, put yourself in others' place and ask whether you'd like it, well those are the basic ethical things we need, in a stripped down, think about it for yourself, kind of way. Parents should not feel they have the right to send kids to their own little brand of religious indoctrination camp -- like the followers of Apartheid still do in South Africa today, send the kids to camps so the kids can learn that "black people have smaller brains", and other such idiocy.
Whilst I am open to questions about the meaning of life, I think Sam Harris is right, we are as a planet running out of time. Religious extremism is spreading and so is nuclear proliferation.
The world's big religions and empires have in common that it is about organising a mass of people into a group, using rules or myths about supremacy. Maybe Jesus was a wonderful man, but the big business that came after was more about power. But that power and order was also law and order and that's what some would say made life orderly and safe enough and rich enough for people to sit around and invent things, ie. progress.
Multiculturalism, big in Europe, solves some problems whilst creating others. Skin colour or race or any of that does not matter. What matters is rights, equal rights, human rights, free speech, etc. The things which make a modern open society, as opposed to a mere empire of powerful forces. So what happens when 1000 Jehova's Witnesses move into your neighbourhood and they all agree that the laws of man are wrong, and that only God's laws should be followed? What happens when they all picket the local hospital decrying the ungodly acts of blood transfusion? What if Jehova's Witnesses gained political power?
So that's a problem with naive multiculturalism. It has this implied assumption that everyone else will just magically see the superiority of a free open tolerant society with gay marriage and rights for animals and the rights of future ecosystems over the profits of current corps., and just "want to be like us".
Well, it is up to people whether they want to change. And who is to say which way is superior. But the history of the world is different groups meeting and interacting and sometimes it works out well and sometimes not so well. Europe has had two major wars over countries fighting each other and I'm sure we are not there yet for world peace. But things are changing fast and nobody's predictions about "gene pools" will be of any use, there is far too much change going on for anyone to know what will happen.
I distinguish between blind belief "my community told me the moon is made of cheese", and thinking about thought "they say it is made of cheese but what is their basis for that claim, what method did they use?". Most religion is blind belief. Still it can serve a purpose. If the community says that killing is wrong, then whether it is understood or not, there is a benefit. Likewise if happiness and peace are aided by a sense of meaning and purpose, you don't have to understand it to gain some benefit, just like I don't have to understand how a pill works when I take it. But progress depends on people and communities getting smarter and today we all need more of that. We are past the "be good to your neighbour" problems, mainly. That might not be due to religion but due to urbanisation by the way. People living close in cities. Anyway, the host is helped up to a point but it is only one factor. The invention of soap probably did a lot too. There are still question to be asked. Are we clever apes who arose out of randomness and selection? That can be questioned. Perhaps as a view, mortality, causes some stress but we don't actually know what happens to sentience. There is no reason I can think of why our brains which do everything, would have any evolutionary advantage in also producing sentience. So death is an open question. But that's the point, it is an unknown and a question. Not something to have yet more blind beliefs about.
Educate the chimps, then you can distribute the burden of making decisions. That's why democracy with education on the back of reasoned thinking and questioning, defending free speech, and all that, are needed, so that most people can make a useful contribution to making things work. You could be the most benevolent dictator but simply not have the mind capacity to organise a large nation. It isn't about power for the sake of power and greed. If it was that, who cares if one chimp wins over the rest? Revolt so a different chimp can take over? So what if workers take over the means of production. What happens when an individual then invents something which obsoletes the stuff made at the factory by the workers? Should the workers protect the staus quo? So then that one guy or gal ends up with a lot of wealth because they've just replaced a more expensive to make product with a cheaper alternative. So now his workers have to revolt and take over that new gizmo. Life just doesn't happen in a smooth simple continuously fair way.
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Also known as Banting.
The LCHF Paleo Primal Banting community, the people who have been reading Taubes' review of the literature going back pre-war, and so on, and who have tried this stuff for themselves, the basic insight is that it is the carbohydrates that are the problem.
The grain growers wanted to mass produce and sell the stuff, and some politicians liked a "heart healthy" message (despite scientists protesting that more research was needed before jumping to conclusions) and so the whole "heart healthy" movement was born, which emphasised high carb foods like cereals, by demonising fat.
Well after some decades, and people trying it for themselves, people are now realising that it was pretty much completely wrong. And manufacturers, because fatless food tastes of cardboard, knew they had to increase the sugar content to make up for the lack of taste. Low fat yoghurts loaded with sugar. Healthy smoothies, loaded with sugar.
The carbs create cravings, signal the body to store fat, and overwork your insulin production until it breaks.
But dietary fat? Good natural fats are good for you. They are good for the guts, the heart, and the brain. Well, you can read books and various docs on this, and try it for yourself. See if their claims seem to work out. It isn't a short term diet, it is a lifestyle.
Interesting, I oft wonder that the future of the world is going to be about China and India, both making a huge transition into modern urbanised industrialised powers. India seems very chaotic, whereas China worries more about social order. Or at least that's the view from the West. Also, I got the impression China thinks on the time span of civilisations. Like, China is watching the West and making notes and still wondering how it'll turn out for us. Plus the West has monotheistic cultural origins, whilst China is philosophically different. China has been investing a lot in Africa, building infrastructure. Africa is where most of the future population growth will come from, and also the vast continent where, in Spiral Dynamics terms, there are still the most wide ranging levels of cultural organisation to move through. China's notion of social order and progress could really turn out interesting there. So USA did China a favour nuking Japan? And I gather USA also had a pretty serious cultural change programme to get rid of all the Japanese fascistic imperialistic elements?
Yes well the "spiral" reflects that things can move "up" (serfs become smarter and more empowered, thus moving things up to democracy) but things can also fall apart and move "down" (a fascist group gets power, perhaps they are voted in like the Nazis).
So what Machiavelli says, that democracy can devolve, is true. What wouldn't have existed at his time though, is any system that was higher than democracy, or at least, any system where the people were even smarter and could continue to develop democracy, rather than let it stagnate and fall apart.
If history was truly cyclical, we'd all still be hunter gatherers mostly, we'd keep going back to that, yet somehow, over history, some new systems appear.
It is a bit like building a tower, you keep adding floors until it falls down. Then you start again using whatever you learnt from the last collapse. Gradually you work out what's needed for each level to become stable.
It is interesting to wonder what the SD meme colour coded/named turquise will look like, but that may be far in the future. Something always stuck in my mind was what Wilber wrote, perhaps even back in Up From Eden, that the biggest change and advance for humanity and the planet would be if everyone simply grew to having a mature modern ego. Where our sense of winning in life, is about doing something worthwhile so that we can get respect for our contribution, and likewise respect others for their contributions. But if 70% of the world still resonates more with raw power, survival, empire building, ethnic cleansing, and people are unable to see outside their own cultural norms, then yeah, scary.
As for testing people, I heard vaguely they wanted to do that at Intergal Institute, but Cook-Greuter said it would be unethical. Ther are some really tricky issues I think, trying to see how to reintroduce systems that work into diversity, yellow after green, without becoming a bit nazi about it :-D
I don't know what really matters behind the scenes. But whilst they are standing and speaking, then this about resonating with people's values can matter. I am still wondering to this day what was the real reason for the Iraq invasion. I mean the really real reason.
Regards China, can I ask, there were some documentaries that China of late is becoming more passionate about nationalism, is that true?
There is a theory, used in South Africa to help ease the transition away from Apartheid, called Spiral Dynamics. It models human development as going through about 6 worldwiews, each with their own sense of morality/justice/values. It spans history, so the first worldview is of a hunter gatherer. The most recent worldview is of an educated Western post-modern cultural relative intellectual interested in minority rights and the environment. Anyway, between those two worldviews you have the view of warlords, then the view of religious-empire-order, and then the view of individualistic achievement/playing to win in a competitive world individualism. That last one by the way was the start of modernity and freedom in the French revolution sense of the word, it recognises that EVERY human is equal and has their won brain and is an equal player and should not be oppressed by religious-empire-orders (Communism is similar in that it is also a single empire order which oppresses individual freedom and ingenuity).
OK so, this relates to politics because the politicians do, as you say, simply have to FRAME a proposal in language which RESONATES with the worldview of the people being targeted. The point is that when you are born, you are basically at the hunter-gatherer level. Culturally and intellectually and morally you then grow up and somewhere along the way, tend to stop or focus on one of the worldview levels. If you are currently living in a Nigerian bad land, you're probably hovering around warlordism. That's fine, that's just the most appropriate adaption to your environment. A pomo sensitive type will merely become a target in that environment. So whatever level people are at, that's just the best they can manage. Anyway, Spiral Dynamics might not be 100% true, but it is a useful distilling of some of the major differences.
So yes, the tradition-valuing, we are one nation, one flag, NCIS TV show committed marine of honour and purpose, holy order type worldview is about half of America, I forget the exact percentage they estimate, and so anything that speaks about being a responsible individual who self-sacrifices their own selfish needs for the sake of serving the lager community, any issue framed in that way, will gain a lot of voter approval. People like W. Bush, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton know all about Spiral Dynamics and such theories (various institutes and advisors etc.) and it is anybody's guess how much they are using them.
Where it gets "religious" is where researchers amongst themselves discuss the uncertainties in carefully considered scientific language, and then decide that these nuances are too complex for the public to understand, so they decide that the public message needs to simplify the message because otherwise, the public might fail to act, so they figure, if they lead the public to failing to act, they would be "unethical", likewise, letting any "denier" get access to data which they might seize upon to highlight uncertainty, thus leading the public to ignore the problem would also be "unethical", so they opt to promote an image of ever greater confidence, ever increasing certainty, worse than we thought, a science field that is always improving, always painting a clearer and clearer picture, where there are no "paradigms", just ever-building on more and more knowledge.
But the problem is, ethics is not a science topic. If you are making an ethical decision on behalf of others, there is some ethical imperative that you ask them whether __they__ think it is ethical. It isn't just about democracy, but about an OPEN society where we know all views are fallible, all views are limited by our own perceptual ability and bias, so we don't go round making decisions for others without them knowing, because it is quite likely that despite our own best intentions, our purest and smartest of ideals and knowledge, our perceptions are in error, and hiding those decisions and ethical judgments from the public only means it takes far longer for the problems to be corrected.
We trust science because it is self correcting. If it stops being self correcting, or that self correction is delayed by say, 50 years, there is no reason to trust it. The AGW stuff is doing some rather extensive damage, unfortunately.
Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature mentioned some research: they sent a job application letter to employers, the letter said something like, "... one more thing, I feel you should know that I once committed a murder. The situation was that I was in a bar, and a guy wouldn't stop so we took it outside, and suddenly he had a knife, and I defended myself." They reported that employers in the south of USA were sympathetic to him and even invited him to pop in if he was even in town. In the north of USA, they were not sympathetic. A second letter, where the story was that "I stole a car, blah, because I was poor" got sympathy in the north, and none in the south. The researchers also note that the murder rate goes down the further north you go, even before you actually cross into Canada. So yes, people kill people, the gun helps, but a man's code of honour which says he should stand his ground, really helps.
It is like comparing Switzerland and Pakistan. Real men don't compromise, and a bloodbath ensues.
How about mandatory pee breaks?
You should't be required to answer the phone then either.
Awesome post. I am all for a global system where all children are born equal and have equal opportunities in life, and health is for all, and we live healthy in a healthy ecosystem.
How to get there? All humans have to become wiser.
We won't get there by creating a new myth, on the back of post modern education which says there are no real truths, so we may as well invent a truth and use that to motivate people by changing their worldview -- "catastrophe/you must act". On the social level it is very dumb to try to create a new myth. We need less myths, not more myths.
And that means, everyone needs to think for themselves and all claims need people to think them through. I used to believe global warming, oh gosh we are in big trouble. But thinking about it to the best of my ability, I don't see how their scenarios are even vaguely right. If temps had been shooting up and their scenarios coming true in a testable way (not just the "chaotic weather/climate" smoke screen and murky "it is somewhere in the deep unmeasured oceans") then I would see it and accept it. I am a pretty depressed guy, depressing news fits my worldview. I don't have an SUV and IO have never owned a car, I live in a small house and I fly once in 10 years, which makes it like, 4 times now. I wear lots of jumpers round the house to keep the heating off. I feel the guilt of being born in the comfortable relatively safe developed world.
If people want to create a social movement, like the Suffragettes, which maintains on principle that the world should be organised differently, fine. Justify it with moral arguments. Don't muddy science by claiming it is all facts and beyond doubt and irrationally play propaganda games, smearing those you can't logically refute as "deniers", when even the most basic bit of core evidence contradicts AGW. Oh yeah it is my own lying eyes, mustn't believe it.
Honestly, the most scary thing in the world is social movements because we have a whole bunch of them coming at us from different levels of development in humanity's own history and spread over 7 billion humans, you have the 2000 year old stuff, the 1000 year old stuff, the 200 year old stuff, the 60 year old stuff, etc. All these social movements are at war with each other.
Environmentalism isn't going to help if they just set up yet another social movement that everyone is supposed to buy into. Fine if you are sensitive and live in California. Not fine if you are genuinely wondering how it can work for a farmer in Kenya. A lot of work all over the world goes into gradually improving things, reducing violence, reducing greed, increasing health, etc. What does your average environmentalist activist achieve?
The never-attainable struggle for perfection and certainty is the source of much of human suffering.
People try to attain enlightenment, in the hope of finding ultimate peace, but the struggle to attain perfect peace, itself reinforces the feeling that life as it is has to be rejected and avoided. But the way you put it is simpler and better.
Aha, right you are, thanks. Yeah, funny thing about abstraction, somewhere somehow, there still has to be an implementation anyway.
Yes TV often shows ads for breakfast cereals, margarine, meat substitutes, etc. I rarely see one for eggs, or butter, or steak. Somehow I don't need convincing to buy a piece of liver.
I gather in the USA around the time that fake stuff became "heart healthy" there was a senator who represented a lot of big cereals farmers, and he said to the advising scientists, "we don't have time to wait for more research".
Time. Good point. Many building architects defend bad designs with, "but that's all the time we had."
Either the original developers have time to iterate to a cleaner design, or the maintainers have to do it, or the original developers had lots of experience with similar frameworks that they already have better designs in mind—acquired over time.
No the problem for the general public is that there is always risk. Look at nutrition. 50 years ago some sort of consensus was formed that eating fat is bad for your heart. It was a sort of consensus, with politicians, health officials, and manufacturers. You know, all the "stakeholders" as is custom to call them today. And well science, as you know, the reason to trust science more than the next thing, is that it is supposed to be self-correcting. Ie. we expect mistakes will be made but that they will be corrected. But there's the rub, with nutrition, it is taking over 50 years for that correction to take place. 50 years! So the problem for the public is, science is self correcting but that process takes time, so there is always a risk. And what with obesity skyrocketing, apparently because the consensus got everyone to start eating the kind of food that does make them fat and is bad for their heart, the risk wasn't theoretical, it has had a huge negative outcome. That's "consensus". IT IS STILL RISK.
AGW/CC/GCD* is a social movement. It is as if the Suffragettes had decided they needed some science to prove to the world that women should be treated equal. But they didn't need science, they simply had to say that certain principles would be good for everyone, and debate that in a peaceful way. Let science be science, and ethics be ethics.
* Global Climate Disruption
Find a definition of extreme which the AGW people are happy to stick to for 60 years.
Besides if air temps haven't been going up as fast as they were scenario'd as going up, what's causing the "freak" weather? The energy disappearing into the deep oceans where nobody can measure it? That's why it is windy today?
An African witch-doctor has a more refined sense of causality than that.
I wonder how often the men and women of small coastal villages in Scotland thought to themselves, you know, that other villages' entire menfolk were all wiped out by a storm in one night, so perhaps we should all give up fishing.
Something kept them going back out to sea in their boats, knowing the risks.
hey today we have the internet. forget god's eye, all your people on social media will see what you've been doing.
Oh I agree, and I suppose the big problem today is that we have to rethink our whole education system. We can't afford to be producing people dumb enough to take literally the word of some 7th or 3rd century manuscript. It is the 21st century and Jehova's Witnesses come to the door saying that the laws of man are wrong, only God can make laws. And they mean this LITERALLY. Same with Saudi Clerics who preach hatred and expect followers to not question it because their holy scriptures are "unwritten" (literally the mind of their god and forever excluded from any attempt to question it or reinterpret it on account of it having been written at a historical point in time -- nay, it is "unwritten", forever outside of any context, historical period, and questioning).
The assertion about needing religion though is ... well it is a bit more complex. Historically, religion can play that role. And I think a more mature outlook is to say, well, I have no evidence for what happens after death, one way or the other. I have no evidence for claims about what is consciousness and sentience. They are currently unknown areas. I also have no evidence for a god figure. I mean, even if the universe is a simulation, that doesn't mean it was created by a god figure as we usually think of it. Zoroaster basically said, hey, we have lots of gods, but I'm going to revise that and say ONLY ONE is the real one. So now we have each monotheistic religion fighting the other because they each insist it is their god that's the right one.
No we need to strip it all back and say, look, X Y Z are not known. Why would any child coming out of our education system not ask themselves, hey, dude, what's your basis for that claim? And then just laugh and walk out.
Unfortunately it is a social peer pressure thing and we all copy each other, a sort of mass-mind, culture comes through us and we end up parroting thoughts of others. Kids come out LESS able to question things for themselves. I'm atheist because my parents said, hm, what about religion? Oh let him decide when he grows up.
But I'm also not a "scientism" atheist who insists on having an opinion on the nature of reality and existence. Those are open questions.
But the golden rule of ethics, put yourself in others' place and ask whether you'd like it, well those are the basic ethical things we need, in a stripped down, think about it for yourself, kind of way. Parents should not feel they have the right to send kids to their own little brand of religious indoctrination camp -- like the followers of Apartheid still do in South Africa today, send the kids to camps so the kids can learn that "black people have smaller brains", and other such idiocy.
Whilst I am open to questions about the meaning of life, I think Sam Harris is right, we are as a planet running out of time. Religious extremism is spreading and so is nuclear proliferation.
The world's big religions and empires have in common that it is about organising a mass of people into a group, using rules or myths about supremacy. Maybe Jesus was a wonderful man, but the big business that came after was more about power. But that power and order was also law and order and that's what some would say made life orderly and safe enough and rich enough for people to sit around and invent things, ie. progress.
Multiculturalism, big in Europe, solves some problems whilst creating others. Skin colour or race or any of that does not matter. What matters is rights, equal rights, human rights, free speech, etc. The things which make a modern open society, as opposed to a mere empire of powerful forces. So what happens when 1000 Jehova's Witnesses move into your neighbourhood and they all agree that the laws of man are wrong, and that only God's laws should be followed? What happens when they all picket the local hospital decrying the ungodly acts of blood transfusion? What if Jehova's Witnesses gained political power?
So that's a problem with naive multiculturalism. It has this implied assumption that everyone else will just magically see the superiority of a free open tolerant society with gay marriage and rights for animals and the rights of future ecosystems over the profits of current corps., and just "want to be like us".
Well, it is up to people whether they want to change. And who is to say which way is superior. But the history of the world is different groups meeting and interacting and sometimes it works out well and sometimes not so well. Europe has had two major wars over countries fighting each other and I'm sure we are not there yet for world peace. But things are changing fast and nobody's predictions about "gene pools" will be of any use, there is far too much change going on for anyone to know what will happen.
I distinguish between blind belief "my community told me the moon is made of cheese", and thinking about thought "they say it is made of cheese but what is their basis for that claim, what method did they use?". Most religion is blind belief. Still it can serve a purpose. If the community says that killing is wrong, then whether it is understood or not, there is a benefit. Likewise if happiness and peace are aided by a sense of meaning and purpose, you don't have to understand it to gain some benefit, just like I don't have to understand how a pill works when I take it. But progress depends on people and communities getting smarter and today we all need more of that. We are past the "be good to your neighbour" problems, mainly. That might not be due to religion but due to urbanisation by the way. People living close in cities. Anyway, the host is helped up to a point but it is only one factor. The invention of soap probably did a lot too. There are still question to be asked. Are we clever apes who arose out of randomness and selection? That can be questioned. Perhaps as a view, mortality, causes some stress but we don't actually know what happens to sentience. There is no reason I can think of why our brains which do everything, would have any evolutionary advantage in also producing sentience. So death is an open question. But that's the point, it is an unknown and a question. Not something to have yet more blind beliefs about.
desk - 24"
sofa - 10"
bus - 7"
walking - 4"
Thanks, I've been wondering about this problem for a while. I'd seen ZFS as the technical part, but didn't know what to do about the "no money" part.
Educate the chimps, then you can distribute the burden of making decisions. That's why democracy with education on the back of reasoned thinking and questioning, defending free speech, and all that, are needed, so that most people can make a useful contribution to making things work. You could be the most benevolent dictator but simply not have the mind capacity to organise a large nation. It isn't about power for the sake of power and greed. If it was that, who cares if one chimp wins over the rest? Revolt so a different chimp can take over? So what if workers take over the means of production. What happens when an individual then invents something which obsoletes the stuff made at the factory by the workers? Should the workers protect the staus quo? So then that one guy or gal ends up with a lot of wealth because they've just replaced a more expensive to make product with a cheaper alternative. So now his workers have to revolt and take over that new gizmo. Life just doesn't happen in a smooth simple continuously fair way.