Perhaps that’s a trend. But as an analogy, I remember early smart phones which had such awful interfaces, that if you’d asked me, I would have thought they had no future. Then one company got together the right mix of ingredients, and suddenly it all changed. Likewise, space rockets.
The public are right to be highly skeptical of nucler, but maybe the problems will be solved with new designs.
George Monbiot, in The Guardian, to his credit, did point out that the greens assume wind and solar will benefit from progress, whilst denying the same progress advantages for nuclear.
We all need energy. All energy companies are vested interests. Sixty years ago the British Coal Board put out a video saying nuclear was not here yet, not a reliable option. Money, politics, vested interests all round, all trying to sway public opinion.
Wind and solar are still in their early phase where it all looks full of future promise.
We, as the public, have not yet seen from experience the downsides, whatever they might be.
Take Britain, which arguably, runs its infrastructure into the ground, and then dumps the bill on the public, like the trains and extortionate ticket prices. Will we one day be footing ever increasing bills for repairs to ageing wind farms? Who knows.
I'm an apple fan, and their not making the info available right up front, "hey guys, new feature! we call it replicant-survival mode, where the candle which burns half as bright burns... ah whatever you get it, anyway, it is there", was definitely an oversight/bad decision/rubbish.
A lot of people will sensibly think, yeah ok, that feature makes sense, even if there was no way to turn it off. If you have an old phone, you are probably into "conserving" anyway, so it makes lots of sense.
It is a negative of the "walled garden" -- my Apple TV was losing track of some TV episodes, and on a Mac you might think, well I can try deleting some caches. Instead, it is cloud weirdness, where the instant I went to report the problem with that TV show, using Apple's iTunes problems website, I received a message saying that the, now two weeks old, and missing, episode, was suddenly available. All I did was select that show on the report page... I didn't even get as far as clicking to submit the issue. *Boom* your ep is ready.
Likewise I have been trying to figure out why my iPhone 6 had been getting different kinds of slowness. I like my phone, I do not do contracts, and I like to buy a new one when I am satisfied the balance of cost and new stuff is worth it for me. Anyway, it would indeed be nice to have more diagnostics to hand, so as to, as you say, make an informed consumer decision.
Doing a full backup, reset, and restore, has gotten rid of the worst of the lags. I guess that is maybe more down to the flash. But I still have the weird screen refresh artefact, where I can see it draw the top of the frame, and then the bottom of the screen frame, as two separate events, sometimes. I guess that is the GPU or whatever running deliberately slower. And again, it would be nice to have some numbers, even if most people won't know what they mean.
And likewise with the flash performance. Because otherwise I spend a lot of time wondering if it is just my imagination. Like when I started listening to podcasts about a year ago, later I felt like the podcasts had slowed down my phone, and I guess it was the flash being overused, with all those new downloads, near filling the phone. But some *actual* numbers would be great for just like, knowing.
People go to the doctor and they can quickly understand what say, an HbA1c means -- why not more health metrics for the phone device?
I think people view them as the toys they are. After tablets became popular and everyone realized they're not actually that useful beyond entertaining kids, I think people are more wary of the "usefulness" of technology... the Echo/etc stuff falls under this too imho... it's kind of neat but not really that useful. It's not like people couldn't play music before.
True in a way, but what has also changed is the fact of "one computer". We are surrounded by computing devices, and they all have certain functions. It is "ubiquitous computing". And everyone can pick and choose what combination of computers suits their needs. And it gets quite subtle, actually.
For example, I work out of the office a lot, I don't have a car, I sit on the sofa a lot at home, and I rarely go running or to a gym. I also like to read a lot online, and in books, and sometimes podcasts. So for me, a laptop for work, a phone for reading and podcasts on the bus, and no need for smartwatches. An iPad for the sofa, which overlaps with reading, but also with browsing Netflix faster than I can on the Apple TV.
And the iPad is for me, perfect on travel and city breaks where I want to study local maps, and the photos I just took, but on something bigger than a phone, but without dragging a laptop everywhere. Whilst also being a last resort for ssh access to servers, in case of emergency.
So I think what you are saying is more that, we are having to, as consumers, think through our choices more, as there's more things suited to different needs. And yes, Alexa is perhaps not going to fit a lot of people's needs -- I for one have no need for one, and to me is seems a crappy interface, but if I am 80 years old then maybe that will change.
I mean there's definitely stuff which is poorly designed and just unusable in any scenario. There's also the problem that we are now buying maybe five gadgets and paying for all that gear.
I'm sure people could say that phones are not real computers, yet they are the best available fit for many scenarios.
Was it the same phone unit? When I asked to replace my battery a year ago, they gave me a (refurbised?) new unit. Maybe he is seeing new flash performance.
Bongo, great writeup, but do you have information on "systemic integrative" ? Thanks.
Systemic integrative is when you look at that list of values, and it clicks / makes sense to you. Because once you start to see that different people have different worldviews, these broad patterns, then I think it also leads to feeling more accepting of those other values, and so your own ideas start to become more about solving problems by acknowledging those other values, rather that trying to solve problems by blowing those other values away (a huge example of that was the notion that you could bomb Iraq and install ballot boxes and so make it democratic -- it simply ignored the existing values and social structures of those lands). So integrative starts to wind down the culture wars, and accepts that different people have a right to be who they are, So then the question is, how to design solutions which work with that.
Anyway, that's in my own words. I'm actually just getting all this from a few books which deal with these models. There's a few different models, but they allude to the same notion that, people develop over time, so their cognition develops, their values develop, their worldviews develop...
In Over Our Heads, by Robert Kegan
Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, by Beck and Cowan
The Kegan book looks more at individuals, in education, and in families, whilst the Beck one looks more at large scale change, like designing cities or political institutions for newly emerging nations, or company structures. I like the Kegan one as it is a more convoluted read, with more nuance, but I also like the Beck one for all the simple catchy descriptions.
A thing with people that's often overlooked is that different people have different values. The main ones are
traditional authoritarian individualistic achiever egalitarian community and systemic integrative [1]
For example, the traditional mindset is happy so long as there is a hierarchy which is dictating what needs doing, with a sense of loyalty and appreciation. So change for change's sake is not welcome, but change in the context of stability and loyalty, can be welcome. The core point is, safety and loyalty and conforming to the norms.
Whereas, the individualistic achiever is happier being able to do independently driven, the typical "modern thinker", the self-made man, etc. Here you might be more concerned with, asking people what do they want? Where do they want to go with this job? What are their interested? What do they personally want to develop? And then just letting them get on with developing any opportunity which appeals to them and which is useful for the company.
The egalitarian community type is motivated somewhat differently to the first two. This is anti-hierarchy and is looking more for meaning and purpose in the job. This person want to work for a charity which is devoted to a good humanitarian cause. They have a need for personal meaning and a sense of being equally valued as everyone else. Their own voice matters. The group is important, and so it is about helping people to voice their own experience and do so in a way which helps them relate to the group more, in a more meaningful way.
So that's three main "values" and there is one more crucial point: people's values change over decades. So you might find that, people who were happy in the same job doing the same standard thing for 30 years -- which would suit them if they were traditional authoritarian ie. they valued stability and being told what to do -- may by now be in the achiever value or the egalitarian value, simply because as individuals, they grew as people and now have new needs.
So part of retraining isn't just swapping out one set of work tasks for another -- that may be done perfectly well, yet kinda fail -- because as a person one may now wish for a different kind of expression of values in their work, and in their training.
Another way to out this is that as people grow they tend to become more complex and have more complex aspirations.
Actually my reason for writing this is that the article description suggests that the "problem" is how to deal with people who seem stuck in old patterns and unable to change... so I thought it worth mentioning that the people may have indeed changed... they have become more complex individuals, but the work itself hadn't changed... so the opportunity here is to tap into whatever new complexities these individuals may now be capable of. Older may well mean wiser.
I'm not trying to blame individuals, or use a right-wing "personal responsibility" notion.
I gather the 20 billion figure is indeed inflation adjusted. And the UK population is not 5 times bigger now, far from it.
The problem is that diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity are growing like epidemics. It is not the natural state of affairs to have so many sick people.
There is also what they call the "food environment" (and lifestyle pressures like stress and pollution), and people do not have much choice in what they eat, if the food industry is only making certain kinds of products.
As for modern medical tech, yes there are the wonders of CT scanners, but there are also the big drug companies and "overly cleverly spun research findings" which get those drugs adopted and which cost the tax payer billions. Acute care is terrific, but chronic conditions are well, if it is chronic, it isn't cured is it?
Basically there is the model of "ancestral health" and what your great great great grandma used to eat, and it has little resemblance to what people eat today.
I think most people, given the choice between modern crap and health food from earlier generations, would choose the healthy food. Nobody really wants to eat crap. And the healthy stuff like butter, actually tastes better. We are sold lots of crap, and sugar is addictive. But take that out of the picture and people can eat good food which won't make them chronically sick and then you can probably wipe a large percentage of the health care bill away.
As well as the propaganda of personal responsibility, there is the propaganda from food companies that sugar laden low fat yoghurts are good for you, and that eating 20 teaspoons of added sugar in your food everyday is "normal". That's the propaganda we should be worrying about. Or the propaganda that people want to eat highly processed bread. Or the propaganda that saturated fat is bad for you.
I agree the people really are the victims here. But nobody wants to be sick and die sick.
A small quibble over the "don't exercise" point: after decades of being told we get fat due to not burning it off with activity, people are starting to change their minds. South African sports scientist Tim Noakes who wrote The Lore of Running says he could run 120K a week and he still put on weight and he still got diabetes -- it was the food, not the activity, which was to blame, he came to realise. He now says you cannot outrun a bad diet. But the sugar industry likes to promote blaming laziness to draw attention away from all the sugar that goes into its products. Anyway, small point. Main point is people need a healthy lifestyle so they can avoid the long, expensive, chronic conditions.
...Europe is falling far behind the United States in productivity and wealth.
No, this is why Europe has a different definition of "wealth".
Wealth gained from unrealistic productivity goals become pointless if you ultimately end up pissing it away fixing the medical issues caused by pushing yourself too hard. Retirement goals also become pointless if you're dead before then.
Even TFS makes the detriment to health very clear, and I have zero fucking desire to hand over half a century of retirement nest egg to the Medical Industrial Complex. I guarantee that maintaining good physical and mental health will become your most valuable asset later in life.
Besides, humans better start accepting a 20-hour workweek as normal, especially as automation and AI march on to decimate human employment.
Absolutely. Health is real wealth. I saw a figure the other day that USA spends 3 trillion on medical problems. I dunno if that's a made up figure, but even if only a quarter of that...
I mean, I gather in UK, when the NHS was founded, it cost, in today's money, 20 billion. Now it is costing 120 billion... and basically, there is no more money, nor any sign of that rise stopping anytime soon.
And here I don't particularly care about left or right politics -- the politics of how to fund that bill is hardly relevant when the main problem is that the bill is crippling, whether public or private. Neocons can bang on about the NHS being "inefficient" and meanwhile the socially-conscious can go on about "cuts" -- but if everyone in the country is sick, who is going to look after them? Half of NHS workers are obese.
Heart disease is linked to stress. Diabetes, obesity, and dementia are becoming more linked to diet (a diet full of processed cheap carbs and seed oils for the profit of multinationals).
And we work ourselves to a miserable decrepit age. Instead of dying healthy, we drag our our remaining years at incredible expense to society.
I mean, I could go on.
Doctors are starting to say that the NHS needs to become about health, wellbeing, and prevention, rather than trying to cure the results of bad lifestyle with expensive interventions and drugs.
There's a case that that's driven by child mortality. When child mortality is high, women have lots of children. Then as conditions improve, there's an overshoot in population. But women do not want to spend all their time having babies. When child mortality is minimal, they return to a replacement rate of 2 per couple -- "even" a land like Bangladesh has reduced its child rate to around 2. Hence the predictions now that the world population will stabilise at about 9 or 10 billion. And on the plus side, that is a lot of new brain power. So there can be hope, if the predictions of catastrophe are over-confident. Incidentally, I am a pessimist. Watch out for that rock from space.
We are going to have to reduce our wastefulness, mostly the creating things nobody needs. The biosphere can't sustain what we're doing to it.
Well then the biosphere is fucked. Sorry, it just is. Human technology advances way faster than human psychology and culture. If you are banking on change "because we must", well people "must" nothing.
What is your view on climate change versus say, Genghis Khan's? For you, climate change may mean people will naturally start living better and caring for their environment more. For Khan, climate change is a way to crush your enemies, see their peoples starve, and their lands ruined. What you see as a problem,Khan sees as an opportunity.
Now that's a silly example but essentially this is the problem. 95% of humanity does not give a shit about "the environment" and they are not about to start just because the climate is going to become harder to live in. For many in the world, the environment is already hard to live in. There is poverty, disease, lack of education, and so on. And look at the West -- people won't stop whining about how all the moneys are going to big evil corps, as if people in the West were living in poverty, rather that notice that in the West all our lives are already rich compared to previous generations 200 years ago. Like, people have mobile phones but think they are poor.
The kind of change in attitudes and values and beliefs which you are advocating, are going to happen very very slowly. They only happen in the West AFTER people have a high enough standard of living. When people's material means go down, get reduced, they turn to fascism and strong-men and move bigoted outlooks. They go back to puritanical religion and nationalism.
So what we "must" do, if you want that word, is to find technology which makes everything better for everyone, and THEN people will become more caring about the ecosystem. It is a race. And this is why you "must" use whichever tech can get you there sooner. And 50 years ago that could have been nuclear, but it didn't happen.
Believe it or not, I am open to learning new things, and I don't like pollution, or poverty.
But right in that conceptual mix graph on that report you linked, it shows
hydro + wind + gas
in roughly equal thirds.
And recently I am hearing news that "gas" is a fossil fuel which should be phased out.
To me, "base load" just means, generate enough energy for what's needed. Yes you can make it up in any proportion you can manage, if you can manage it. That conceptual graph still shows gas as one third of the mix at night time. Call it base load, call it demand. But it is still conceptually the same as saying
1. fossil + whatever renewables like wind / solar / hydro
I recently saw a documentary by the British Coal Board, made in late sixties or so. Their economist went on to explain that the difference between "this" (pictures of Western developed industry manufacturing big things like ships) and "that" (pictures of developing world poor, surviving by making stuff with their bare hands) was ENERGY, and LOTS OF IT.
Then they went on to explain that although nuclear had a lot of promise, it wasn't here yet, for various reasons they did not appear to want to dwell on, and that therefore coal would remain the heart of industry.
I now nobody likes nuclear, and nobody likes consumerism, and we all want a quiet life in the countryside, until we need a hospital and emergency chopper ride, but essentially, there seems to be only one choice, between two kinds of energy:
1. coal, oil, gas, wind, solar
2. nuclear
And the world keeps often choosing option 1. Which must be to the delight of all those vested interests in the oil and gas (and somewhat lesser extent coal) industries.
I've seen various estimates showing that Japan could have nukes in short order if they desired. They have all of the relevant tech, the expertise, the money, and the raw materials. Certainly not advocated for them to build them, but it would likely be a relatively trivial exercise for them to develop nuclear arms.
I just came back from Asia and, according to Singapore TV news, Japan indicated last week that they can build over a thousand nuclear weapons in less than 3 months. They have everything ready to go, they have just not chosen to do so due to the fact that many of the citizens of Japan are strongly against nuclear weapons.
Presumably, all of them with 3D face scanner targeting, set for NK's Dictator.
And after they blow up Humpty Humpty, the Japanese will go over and carefully piece Humpty Dumpty back together again with very fine craftsmanship and glue.
And then we will all acknowledge it to be a very great work of Wabi.
The post I wrote was aimed at one group of people.
It's the people who spin science as being the antidote to religion and superstition. And that meme also shows up in climate change, where advocates claim that, if you don't accept "the science" then you are an irrational blind believer — I see articles which "point out" that Evangelical Christians are one of the largest groups which reject climate change. And so it is like how climate change "denialists" are often described as "flat Earthers".
So when I was writing that post, I was trying to address that view. But to do that, perhaps clumsily, I was trying to make clear, by exaggerating, that I was definitely not in the blind belief camp, even though, yeah, I was posting about the issue of fallibility in science.
Ie. that people can actually be rational and question consensus science, without being flat earthers, or for that matter, being the same people who believe the world is 6000 years old. Which is why I kept mentioning the "it's 6000 years old" part of religion. Like how we qualify "Muslim extremist" rather than just "Muslim".
So I went with the exaggerated separation of the two, but that largely because it is already so separated in many people's minds, and that's because of all the deliberate political spin, which is trying to throw all climate change critics into the "irrational", "right wing", "religious fundamentalists" bucket.
Now rather, to your point, which I accept. And actually I not only agree, I'd like to elaborate on it if I may.
See, religion is very old, and that presents a difficulty whenever religion is mentioned in conversation and debate.
Humanity is arguably 200,000 to 2 million years old, and we have developed through time, through a number of distinct cultural stages. The philosopher Jean Gebser for example, splits it into six stages: archaic, magic, mythic, mental, integral.
But we can use just three: pre-modern, modern, and post-post-modern (I skip post-modern as that deconstruction was a messed up, false start, blind alley).
Point is, the structure of our thinking and perceiving and judging and valuing, changed and allowed more complex forms of social grouping to emerge. We didn't just go from small tribes of 150 people, to living in megacities of 20 million, without altering how our minds worked.
So here's the thing: religion is old and has been around through all these stages, and consequently, the world's religions contain all these stages, within them, in one form or another.
So for example, the age of Abraham, which is the age of giving laws -- that law-giving function was a new way to organise social systems. It was a huge advancement over pagan ways, and this law-giving shows up in other parts of the world also, albeit in different guises. Social order, harmony, and submitting to the good of the group, and repressing one's selfish impulses, and becoming of service. Which yes, can be in the spirit of service to a higher power.
So religion is old, and people who reject it, can always point to the archaic (although technically, the mythic-membership parts, which arose a few thousand years ago), and claim that, see, religion is irrational blind faith and something to be eradicated. Hellooo Dawkins.
So religion is old, yes, but then came modernity -- the Western Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, yadda yadda. And around the time that happened, the Church was powerful, and, in part, what the new doctors and philosophers of modernity were rebelling against, were the rigid dogmatic and oppressive aspects of the dominant institutions -- including the Church. So whilst these new thinkers were busy creating modern art (the Renaissance) and modern science, and modern medicine, they simply skipped over altogether the concept of modern religion -- and so in the West, religion, at that moment, was thrown in the trash can.
That was an unfortunate move, as it blocked religion at the pre-modern stage, trapping it in the past. The reject
Kinda, but also, people have embraced the technology so fast that we can now do things we did not imagine -- and therein lies the rub, because whilst we didn't imagine what positives would be possible, we also didn't imagine what negatives would be possible. It is something of a blind process.
So, now we start to get experience of the negatives, and like anything else, we have to start trying to remedy them, just like with cars, where everyone who could, got one, and then we were horrified at how badly they mangled bodies in accidents. So then they started adding safety features. And people still die in accidents, but nobody is going to stop driving. And that is the cost.
I'm not sure which spiritual aspects you mean, maybe more about integrity, but imagination and creativity and play are also spiritual qualities, and there is a certain amount of egg-breaking involved.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.
The preponderance of evidence... which if all science was done by people of 100% integrity, would indeed be reassuring.
But scientists are very clever, and after they do all the hard and skilled research work, comes time to interpret and report results. And now we are into the realm of funding, and influence, and politics, and so on, where spin and bias may rear their ugly heads. For example, the filing cabinet effect, where evidence which contradicts the preferred hypothesis, simply gets interpreted as mistaken and left in the filing cabinet.
So the preponderance of published evidence, is not really in itself reassuring.
It is odd, because there are many institutions in society which used to be authorities and assumed to be right, and should be trusted, like the police. But eventually, we grew to learn that institutions may have problems, like for example, institutional racism in the police. Now science is generally still held with high regard, as it in a way, ought to be, but it is still something practiced by people, and human nature and bias and survival are still factors, so it would be odd if they did not exert influence over the institution of science as they do over other institutions.
The other weird thing is that people seem to have a hard time holding in mind these two notions at the same time:
1. pre-modern religious fundamentalists who believe their thousand year old book is absolutely true, are indeed irrational and should be criticised.
2. modern science is very successful at producing knowledge, and nevertheless, it is not all the same quality across all fields, and within fields, there are some things which are in fact better understood than others, and the social and political side of human practice does influence things, sometimes a little, or negligibly, and sometimes a lot, and you can't really know either way just basing it on one's preferred views and beliefs -- only time can tell, and sometimes, a lot of time.
And lastly:
3. the details matter, and they matter a lot -- citing consensus on climate change is very vague, as what matters is exactly what effect it will have and how severe it will be, and here you would have to look at how they actually survey the consensus and what exactly people think they are agreeing to and why -- these details matter yet climate change is politically turned into this big us vs them, "scientists vs denialists" claptrap which helps nobody -- that polarisation is deliberate and meant to make people feel bad for being on the "wrong" side -- and if you think that is scientific, then we all know of the famous bridge for sale. it is unfortunate... but many many vested interests in society are all vying for our support.
That is really for me the take home message of these "big science fraud" stories. Humanity has problems with integrity, with "removing the log from one's own eye" to put it one way, or philosophically, the issue of fallibility -- you cannot know if you are right (a fact the CC people try to get around by with saying "well gee you just want to wait while the planet burns" -- which is wrong, it does not mean waiting, but it does mean you include the risks of being wrong in your analysis, especially when unintended consequences rear their ugly head) -- so we must all proceed with humility.
And not to worry this does not put anyone into the fundamentalist 6000-year old Earth idiocy -- for they are the last people to admit their own fallibility.
Those who hold a deep green philosophy would be against nuclear, and well anything which might allow for current rates of consumption to continue. The point of cutting carbon is to force a reduction in production of, well, everything.
And of course these are people who do not live what they preach.
As an environmentalist working in carbon credits explained to me, it does not matter what the truth about CO2 may be - as long as it forces a reduction in production of everything, a reduction in consumption and greed.
Environmentalism is being dragged backwards into the realms of irrationality and ideology. Meanwhile the big companies can use it to their own profit. So we never get a sane energy policy.
Although I am seeing the term “ecomodernist” appear, maybe in reaction to the “eco romantics” and “deep greens”.
The problem with talking about "radical Islam" is it's usually done in the context of talking about terrorism, and it implies that terrorism is caused by being really Muslim.
But there you can be a really, really devout Muslim and be totally opposed to violence. And you can be a really crappy non-devout Muslim and be a terrorist. It's not a great correlation.
So this ends up causing a bunch of really peaceful non-terrorist Muslims to be unfairly suspected of terrorism and exposes them to all sorts of harassment.
It also means some Muslims are going to hear you keep equating Muslim with terrorist and they're going to make the same association and be more likely to embrace terrorism. I suspect this has played a role in some of the "lone wolf" attacks in the west, people who didn't have a strong Islamic identity embraced terrorism because the media told them that's what true Muslim's did.
I haven't followed the thread so am just commenting on this one point. The thinking, decades ago, was that, to help social cohesion, we should not have labels for groups, especially when those labels become fuel for bigots, for bigots to hate those groups. The idea, and it sorta comes from PostModernist thought, is that culture is made up of the words and language which people use, so if you could just remove all racist labels from language, then racism would disappear. And that's why we have been taught to be careful with language, and why saying "Islamic terrorist" or "radical Islamist" or even "political Islam" is seen as problematic, and frowned upon.
Now some thinkers, people who have worked for human rights and equality for decades, are starting to see that this method is flawed. The problem is that sometimes, a particular group really does have, objectively speaking, a problem. For example, Glaswegians with drugs and knife crime (take that as an example for sake of argument, I haven't looked it up). There is something going on in that situation (assume there are stats to back it up), but if your concern was to NOT paint a fine Scottish city with the same brush, and to not invite more bigotry against Scottish people, and so on, it would be fair to say that we should NOT use those terms, "Glaswegian drug and violent crime epidemic". But that would not solve the problem.
Also, if we are trying to reduce bigotry, well the people who are bigoted are often kinda stupid, but they are not that stupid. If they notice you avoiding saying certain things, like, avoiding using the term "Islamist attack", when in fact, the attackers were shouting God is Great and picking out people who could not recite a holy verse and shooting them on the spot, and there you are avoiding the term "Islamist attack", then the dumb but not so dumb bigot is going to take that as evidence that there is a conspiracy to support Islamists. So by not talking in plain terms, this can fuel the bigotry even more. And then people like Trump get elected **ducks**
Also, there is no shortage of Islamic intellectuals now, and people from various Islamic backgrounds, who are actively criticising Islam and saying that Islam does indeed have a problem. And yes, the vast majority of Muslims are not radicals. And yet, also, it is a dangerous thing, the ones who are radicals, because, and I hate to compare with Nazis, but it isn't like all Germans were Nazis, and actually it was a case of a particularly nasty bunch getting power. Plus the whole Mecca/Media thing, and the rules of abrogation, and so people can, if they want to, emphasise the warlord aspects of their religion's founder, as it is there. I mean, it gets much more complex. But the lack of open mindedness in Islamic culture and education is probably a bigger problem than what a few nuts with guns do. In Pakistan, they actively persecute the Ahmadis and declare them to be not Muslims, and this is an example of the closed minded, intolerant culture which is a bit too common. And Islamic intellectuals will decry this lack of open mindedn
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Perhaps that’s a trend. But as an analogy, I remember early smart phones which had such awful interfaces, that if you’d asked me, I would have thought they had no future. Then one company got together the right mix of ingredients, and suddenly it all changed. Likewise, space rockets.
The public are right to be highly skeptical of nucler, but maybe the problems will be solved with new designs.
George Monbiot, in The Guardian, to his credit, did point out that the greens assume wind and solar will benefit from progress, whilst denying the same progress advantages for nuclear.
We all need energy. All energy companies are vested interests. Sixty years ago the British Coal Board put out a video saying nuclear was not here yet, not a reliable option. Money, politics, vested interests all round, all trying to sway public opinion.
Wind and solar are still in their early phase where it all looks full of future promise.
We, as the public, have not yet seen from experience the downsides, whatever they might be.
Take Britain, which arguably, runs its infrastructure into the ground, and then dumps the bill on the public, like the trains and extortionate ticket prices. Will we one day be footing ever increasing bills for repairs to ageing wind farms? Who knows.
But for now, wind and solar are the new shiny.
I'm an apple fan, and their not making the info available right up front, "hey guys, new feature! we call it replicant-survival mode, where the candle which burns half as bright burns... ah whatever you get it, anyway, it is there", was definitely an oversight/bad decision/rubbish.
A lot of people will sensibly think, yeah ok, that feature makes sense, even if there was no way to turn it off. If you have an old phone, you are probably into "conserving" anyway, so it makes lots of sense.
It is a negative of the "walled garden" -- my Apple TV was losing track of some TV episodes, and on a Mac you might think, well I can try deleting some caches. Instead, it is cloud weirdness, where the instant I went to report the problem with that TV show, using Apple's iTunes problems website, I received a message saying that the, now two weeks old, and missing, episode, was suddenly available. All I did was select that show on the report page... I didn't even get as far as clicking to submit the issue. *Boom* your ep is ready.
Likewise I have been trying to figure out why my iPhone 6 had been getting different kinds of slowness. I like my phone, I do not do contracts, and I like to buy a new one when I am satisfied the balance of cost and new stuff is worth it for me. Anyway, it would indeed be nice to have more diagnostics to hand, so as to, as you say, make an informed consumer decision.
Doing a full backup, reset, and restore, has gotten rid of the worst of the lags. I guess that is maybe more down to the flash. But I still have the weird screen refresh artefact, where I can see it draw the top of the frame, and then the bottom of the screen frame, as two separate events, sometimes. I guess that is the GPU or whatever running deliberately slower. And again, it would be nice to have some numbers, even if most people won't know what they mean.
And likewise with the flash performance. Because otherwise I spend a lot of time wondering if it is just my imagination. Like when I started listening to podcasts about a year ago, later I felt like the podcasts had slowed down my phone, and I guess it was the flash being overused, with all those new downloads, near filling the phone. But some *actual* numbers would be great for just like, knowing.
People go to the doctor and they can quickly understand what say, an HbA1c means -- why not more health metrics for the phone device?
I think people view them as the toys they are. After tablets became popular and everyone realized they're not actually that useful beyond entertaining kids, I think people are more wary of the "usefulness" of technology... the Echo/etc stuff falls under this too imho... it's kind of neat but not really that useful. It's not like people couldn't play music before.
True in a way, but what has also changed is the fact of "one computer". We are surrounded by computing devices, and they all have certain functions. It is "ubiquitous computing". And everyone can pick and choose what combination of computers suits their needs. And it gets quite subtle, actually.
For example, I work out of the office a lot, I don't have a car, I sit on the sofa a lot at home, and I rarely go running or to a gym. I also like to read a lot online, and in books, and sometimes podcasts. So for me, a laptop for work, a phone for reading and podcasts on the bus, and no need for smartwatches. An iPad for the sofa, which overlaps with reading, but also with browsing Netflix faster than I can on the Apple TV.
And the iPad is for me, perfect on travel and city breaks where I want to study local maps, and the photos I just took, but on something bigger than a phone, but without dragging a laptop everywhere. Whilst also being a last resort for ssh access to servers, in case of emergency.
So I think what you are saying is more that, we are having to, as consumers, think through our choices more, as there's more things suited to different needs. And yes, Alexa is perhaps not going to fit a lot of people's needs -- I for one have no need for one, and to me is seems a crappy interface, but if I am 80 years old then maybe that will change.
I mean there's definitely stuff which is poorly designed and just unusable in any scenario.
There's also the problem that we are now buying maybe five gadgets and paying for all that gear.
I'm sure people could say that phones are not real computers, yet they are the best available fit for many scenarios.
Was it the same phone unit? When I asked to replace my battery a year ago, they gave me a (refurbised?) new unit. Maybe he is seeing new flash performance.
Bongo, great writeup, but do you have information on "systemic integrative" ? Thanks.
Systemic integrative is when you look at that list of values, and it clicks / makes sense to you.
Because once you start to see that different people have different worldviews, these broad patterns, then I think it also leads to feeling more accepting of those other values, and so your own ideas start to become more about solving problems by acknowledging those other values, rather that trying to solve problems by blowing those other values away (a huge example of that was the notion that you could bomb Iraq and install ballot boxes and so make it democratic -- it simply ignored the existing values and social structures of those lands). So integrative starts to wind down the culture wars, and accepts that different people have a right to be who they are, So then the question is, how to design solutions which work with that.
Anyway, that's in my own words. I'm actually just getting all this from a few books which deal with these models. There's a few different models, but they allude to the same notion that, people develop over time, so their cognition develops, their values develop, their worldviews develop...
In Over Our Heads, by Robert Kegan
Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change, by Beck and Cowan
The Kegan book looks more at individuals, in education, and in families, whilst the Beck one looks more at large scale change, like designing cities or political institutions for newly emerging nations, or company structures. I like the Kegan one as it is a more convoluted read, with more nuance, but I also like the Beck one for all the simple catchy descriptions.
Thanks, interesting, and thanks for the Gentoo recommendation.
A thing with people that's often overlooked is that different people have different values. The main ones are
traditional authoritarian
individualistic achiever
egalitarian community
and systemic integrative [1]
For example, the traditional mindset is happy so long as there is a hierarchy which is dictating what needs doing, with a sense of loyalty and appreciation. So change for change's sake is not welcome, but change in the context of stability and loyalty, can be welcome. The core point is, safety and loyalty and conforming to the norms.
Whereas, the individualistic achiever is happier being able to do independently driven, the typical "modern thinker", the self-made man, etc. Here you might be more concerned with, asking people what do they want? Where do they want to go with this job? What are their interested? What do they personally want to develop? And then just letting them get on with developing any opportunity which appeals to them and which is useful for the company.
The egalitarian community type is motivated somewhat differently to the first two. This is anti-hierarchy and is looking more for meaning and purpose in the job. This person want to work for a charity which is devoted to a good humanitarian cause. They have a need for personal meaning and a sense of being equally valued as everyone else. Their own voice matters. The group is important, and so it is about helping people to voice their own experience and do so in a way which helps them relate to the group more, in a more meaningful way.
So that's three main "values" and there is one more crucial point: people's values change over decades. So you might find that, people who were happy in the same job doing the same standard thing for 30 years -- which would suit them if they were traditional authoritarian ie. they valued stability and being told what to do -- may by now be in the achiever value or the egalitarian value, simply because as individuals, they grew as people and now have new needs.
So part of retraining isn't just swapping out one set of work tasks for another -- that may be done perfectly well, yet kinda fail -- because as a person one may now wish for a different kind of expression of values in their work, and in their training.
Another way to out this is that as people grow they tend to become more complex and have more complex aspirations.
Actually my reason for writing this is that the article description suggests that the "problem" is how to deal with people who seem stuck in old patterns and unable to change... so I thought it worth mentioning that the people may have indeed changed... they have become more complex individuals, but the work itself hadn't changed... so the opportunity here is to tap into whatever new complexities these individuals may now be capable of. Older may well mean wiser.
When someone tells you something will happen in more than 80 years the only sane choice you have is to ignore. Same thing goes for the past.
Population growth will become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026
I'm not trying to blame individuals, or use a right-wing "personal responsibility" notion.
I gather the 20 billion figure is indeed inflation adjusted. And the UK population is not 5 times bigger now, far from it.
The problem is that diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity are growing like epidemics. It is not the natural state of affairs to have so many sick people.
There is also what they call the "food environment" (and lifestyle pressures like stress and pollution), and people do not have much choice in what they eat, if the food industry is only making certain kinds of products.
As for modern medical tech, yes there are the wonders of CT scanners, but there are also the big drug companies and "overly cleverly spun research findings" which get those drugs adopted and which cost the tax payer billions. Acute care is terrific, but chronic conditions are well, if it is chronic, it isn't cured is it?
Basically there is the model of "ancestral health" and what your great great great grandma used to eat, and it has little resemblance to what people eat today.
I think most people, given the choice between modern crap and health food from earlier generations, would choose the healthy food. Nobody really wants to eat crap. And the healthy stuff like butter, actually tastes better. We are sold lots of crap, and sugar is addictive. But take that out of the picture and people can eat good food which won't make them chronically sick and then you can probably wipe a large percentage of the health care bill away.
As well as the propaganda of personal responsibility, there is the propaganda from food companies that sugar laden low fat yoghurts are good for you, and that eating 20 teaspoons of added sugar in your food everyday is "normal". That's the propaganda we should be worrying about. Or the propaganda that people want to eat highly processed bread. Or the propaganda that saturated fat is bad for you.
I agree the people really are the victims here. But nobody wants to be sick and die sick.
A small quibble over the "don't exercise" point: after decades of being told we get fat due to not burning it off with activity, people are starting to change their minds. South African sports scientist Tim Noakes who wrote The Lore of Running says he could run 120K a week and he still put on weight and he still got diabetes -- it was the food, not the activity, which was to blame, he came to realise. He now says you cannot outrun a bad diet. But the sugar industry likes to promote blaming laziness to draw attention away from all the sugar that goes into its products. Anyway, small point. Main point is people need a healthy lifestyle so they can avoid the long, expensive, chronic conditions.
...Europe is falling far behind the United States in productivity and wealth.
No, this is why Europe has a different definition of "wealth".
Wealth gained from unrealistic productivity goals become pointless if you ultimately end up pissing it away fixing the medical issues caused by pushing yourself too hard. Retirement goals also become pointless if you're dead before then.
Even TFS makes the detriment to health very clear, and I have zero fucking desire to hand over half a century of retirement nest egg to the Medical Industrial Complex. I guarantee that maintaining good physical and mental health will become your most valuable asset later in life.
Besides, humans better start accepting a 20-hour workweek as normal, especially as automation and AI march on to decimate human employment.
Absolutely. Health is real wealth. I saw a figure the other day that USA spends 3 trillion on medical problems. I dunno if that's a made up figure, but even if only a quarter of that...
I mean, I gather in UK, when the NHS was founded, it cost, in today's money, 20 billion. Now it is costing 120 billion... and basically, there is no more money, nor any sign of that rise stopping anytime soon.
And here I don't particularly care about left or right politics -- the politics of how to fund that bill is hardly relevant when the main problem is that the bill is crippling, whether public or private. Neocons can bang on about the NHS being "inefficient" and meanwhile the socially-conscious can go on about "cuts" -- but if everyone in the country is sick, who is going to look after them? Half of NHS workers are obese.
Heart disease is linked to stress. Diabetes, obesity, and dementia are becoming more linked to diet (a diet full of processed cheap carbs and seed oils for the profit of multinationals).
And we work ourselves to a miserable decrepit age. Instead of dying healthy, we drag our our remaining years at incredible expense to society.
I mean, I could go on.
Doctors are starting to say that the NHS needs to become about health, wellbeing, and prevention, rather than trying to cure the results of bad lifestyle with expensive interventions and drugs.
There's a case that that's driven by child mortality. When child mortality is high, women have lots of children. Then as conditions improve, there's an overshoot in population. But women do not want to spend all their time having babies. When child mortality is minimal, they return to a replacement rate of 2 per couple -- "even" a land like Bangladesh has reduced its child rate to around 2. Hence the predictions now that the world population will stabilise at about 9 or 10 billion. And on the plus side, that is a lot of new brain power. So there can be hope, if the predictions of catastrophe are over-confident. Incidentally, I am a pessimist. Watch out for that rock from space.
Thanks, very interesting reading.
We are going to have to reduce our wastefulness, mostly the creating things nobody needs. The biosphere can't sustain what we're doing to it.
Well then the biosphere is fucked. Sorry, it just is. Human technology advances way faster than human psychology and culture. If you are banking on change "because we must", well people "must" nothing.
What is your view on climate change versus say, Genghis Khan's? For you, climate change may mean people will naturally start living better and caring for their environment more. For Khan, climate change is a way to crush your enemies, see their peoples starve, and their lands ruined. What you see as a problem ,Khan sees as an opportunity.
Now that's a silly example but essentially this is the problem. 95% of humanity does not give a shit about "the environment" and they are not about to start just because the climate is going to become harder to live in. For many in the world, the environment is already hard to live in. There is poverty, disease, lack of education, and so on. And look at the West -- people won't stop whining about how all the moneys are going to big evil corps, as if people in the West were living in poverty, rather that notice that in the West all our lives are already rich compared to previous generations 200 years ago. Like, people have mobile phones but think they are poor.
The kind of change in attitudes and values and beliefs which you are advocating, are going to happen very very slowly. They only happen in the West AFTER people have a high enough standard of living. When people's material means go down, get reduced, they turn to fascism and strong-men and move bigoted outlooks. They go back to puritanical religion and nationalism.
So what we "must" do, if you want that word, is to find technology which makes everything better for everyone, and THEN people will become more caring about the ecosystem. It is a race. And this is why you "must" use whichever tech can get you there sooner. And 50 years ago that could have been nuclear, but it didn't happen.
Wind and solar are at #1 because both require a base load.
That is a lie...
Believe it or not, I am open to learning new things, and I don't like pollution, or poverty.
But right in that conceptual mix graph on that report you linked, it shows
hydro + wind + gas
in roughly equal thirds.
And recently I am hearing news that "gas" is a fossil fuel which should be phased out.
To me, "base load" just means, generate enough energy for what's needed. Yes you can make it up in any proportion you can manage, if you can manage it. That conceptual graph still shows gas as one third of the mix at night time. Call it base load, call it demand. But it is still conceptually the same as saying
1. fossil + whatever renewables like wind / solar / hydro
I recently saw a documentary by the British Coal Board, made in late sixties or so. Their economist went on to explain that the difference between "this" (pictures of Western developed industry manufacturing big things like ships) and "that" (pictures of developing world poor, surviving by making stuff with their bare hands) was ENERGY, and LOTS OF IT.
Then they went on to explain that although nuclear had a lot of promise, it wasn't here yet, for various reasons they did not appear to want to dwell on, and that therefore coal would remain the heart of industry.
I now nobody likes nuclear, and nobody likes consumerism, and we all want a quiet life in the countryside, until we need a hospital and emergency chopper ride, but essentially, there seems to be only one choice, between two kinds of energy:
1. coal, oil, gas, wind, solar
2. nuclear
And the world keeps often choosing option 1.
Which must be to the delight of all those vested interests in the oil and gas (and somewhat lesser extent coal) industries.
I've seen various estimates showing that Japan could have nukes in short order if they desired. They have all of the relevant tech, the expertise, the money, and the raw materials. Certainly not advocated for them to build them, but it would likely be a relatively trivial exercise for them to develop nuclear arms.
I just came back from Asia and, according to Singapore TV news, Japan indicated last week that they can build over a thousand nuclear weapons in less than 3 months. They have everything ready to go, they have just not chosen to do so due to the fact that many of the citizens of Japan are strongly against nuclear weapons.
Presumably, all of them with 3D face scanner targeting, set for NK's Dictator.
And after they blow up Humpty Humpty, the Japanese will go over and carefully piece Humpty Dumpty back together again with very fine craftsmanship and glue.
And then we will all acknowledge it to be a very great work of Wabi.
Sure, but have you actually made a real effort, and tried to find the best arguments and evidence against global warming, which may be out there?
Well, I apologise.
The post I wrote was aimed at one group of people.
It's the people who spin science as being the antidote to religion and superstition. And that meme also shows up in climate change, where advocates claim that, if you don't accept "the science" then you are an irrational blind believer — I see articles which "point out" that Evangelical Christians are one of the largest groups which reject climate change. And so it is like how climate change "denialists" are often described as "flat Earthers".
So when I was writing that post, I was trying to address that view. But to do that, perhaps clumsily, I was trying to make clear, by exaggerating, that I was definitely not in the blind belief camp, even though, yeah, I was posting about the issue of fallibility in science.
Ie. that people can actually be rational and question consensus science, without being flat earthers, or for that matter, being the same people who believe the world is 6000 years old. Which is why I kept mentioning the "it's 6000 years old" part of religion. Like how we qualify "Muslim extremist" rather than just "Muslim".
So I went with the exaggerated separation of the two, but that largely because it is already so separated in many people's minds, and that's because of all the deliberate political spin, which is trying to throw all climate change critics into the "irrational", "right wing", "religious fundamentalists" bucket.
Now rather, to your point, which I accept. And actually I not only agree, I'd like to elaborate on it if I may.
See, religion is very old, and that presents a difficulty whenever religion is mentioned in conversation and debate.
Humanity is arguably 200,000 to 2 million years old, and we have developed through time, through a number of distinct cultural stages. The philosopher Jean Gebser for example, splits it into six stages: archaic, magic, mythic, mental, integral.
But we can use just three: pre-modern, modern, and post-post-modern (I skip post-modern as that deconstruction was a messed up, false start, blind alley).
Point is, the structure of our thinking and perceiving and judging and valuing, changed and allowed more complex forms of social grouping to emerge. We didn't just go from small tribes of 150 people, to living in megacities of 20 million, without altering how our minds worked.
So here's the thing: religion is old and has been around through all these stages, and consequently, the world's religions contain all these stages, within them, in one form or another.
So for example, the age of Abraham, which is the age of giving laws -- that law-giving function was a new way to organise social systems. It was a huge advancement over pagan ways, and this law-giving shows up in other parts of the world also, albeit in different guises. Social order, harmony, and submitting to the good of the group, and repressing one's selfish impulses, and becoming of service. Which yes, can be in the spirit of service to a higher power.
So religion is old, and people who reject it, can always point to the archaic (although technically, the mythic-membership parts, which arose a few thousand years ago), and claim that, see, religion is irrational blind faith and something to be eradicated. Hellooo Dawkins.
So religion is old, yes, but then came modernity -- the Western Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, yadda yadda. And around the time that happened, the Church was powerful, and, in part, what the new doctors and philosophers of modernity were rebelling against, were the rigid dogmatic and oppressive aspects of the dominant institutions -- including the Church. So whilst these new thinkers were busy creating modern art (the Renaissance) and modern science, and modern medicine, they simply skipped over altogether the concept of modern religion -- and so in the West, religion, at that moment, was thrown in the trash can.
That was an unfortunate move, as it blocked religion at the pre-modern stage, trapping it in the past. The reject
Kinda, but also, people have embraced the technology so fast that we can now do things we did not imagine -- and therein lies the rub, because whilst we didn't imagine what positives would be possible, we also didn't imagine what negatives would be possible. It is something of a blind process.
So, now we start to get experience of the negatives, and like anything else, we have to start trying to remedy them, just like with cars, where everyone who could, got one, and then we were horrified at how badly they mangled bodies in accidents. So then they started adding safety features. And people still die in accidents, but nobody is going to stop driving. And that is the cost.
I'm not sure which spiritual aspects you mean, maybe more about integrity, but imagination and creativity and play are also spiritual qualities, and there is a certain amount of egg-breaking involved.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.
The preponderance of evidence... which if all science was done by people of 100% integrity, would indeed be reassuring.
But scientists are very clever, and after they do all the hard and skilled research work, comes time to interpret and report results. And now we are into the realm of funding, and influence, and politics, and so on, where spin and bias may rear their ugly heads. For example, the filing cabinet effect, where evidence which contradicts the preferred hypothesis, simply gets interpreted as mistaken and left in the filing cabinet.
So the preponderance of published evidence, is not really in itself reassuring.
It is odd, because there are many institutions in society which used to be authorities and assumed to be right, and should be trusted, like the police. But eventually, we grew to learn that institutions may have problems, like for example, institutional racism in the police. Now science is generally still held with high regard, as it in a way, ought to be, but it is still something practiced by people, and human nature and bias and survival are still factors, so it would be odd if they did not exert influence over the institution of science as they do over other institutions.
The other weird thing is that people seem to have a hard time holding in mind these two notions at the same time:
1. pre-modern religious fundamentalists who believe their thousand year old book is absolutely true, are indeed irrational and should be criticised.
2. modern science is very successful at producing knowledge, and nevertheless, it is not all the same quality across all fields, and within fields, there are some things which are in fact better understood than others, and the social and political side of human practice does influence things, sometimes a little, or negligibly, and sometimes a lot, and you can't really know either way just basing it on one's preferred views and beliefs -- only time can tell, and sometimes, a lot of time.
And lastly:
3. the details matter, and they matter a lot -- citing consensus on climate change is very vague, as what matters is exactly what effect it will have and how severe it will be, and here you would have to look at how they actually survey the consensus and what exactly people think they are agreeing to and why -- these details matter yet climate change is politically turned into this big us vs them, "scientists vs denialists" claptrap which helps nobody -- that polarisation is deliberate and meant to make people feel bad for being on the "wrong" side -- and if you think that is scientific, then we all know of the famous bridge for sale. it is unfortunate... but many many vested interests in society are all vying for our support.
That is really for me the take home message of these "big science fraud" stories. Humanity has problems with integrity, with "removing the log from one's own eye" to put it one way, or philosophically, the issue of fallibility -- you cannot know if you are right (a fact the CC people try to get around by with saying "well gee you just want to wait while the planet burns" -- which is wrong, it does not mean waiting, but it does mean you include the risks of being wrong in your analysis, especially when unintended consequences rear their ugly head) -- so we must all proceed with humility.
And not to worry this does not put anyone into the fundamentalist 6000-year old Earth idiocy -- for they are the last people to admit their own fallibility.
Those who hold a deep green philosophy would be against nuclear, and well anything which might allow for current rates of consumption to continue. The point of cutting carbon is to force a reduction in production of, well, everything.
And of course these are people who do not live what they preach.
As an environmentalist working in carbon credits explained to me, it does not matter what the truth about CO2 may be - as long as it forces a reduction in production of everything, a reduction in consumption and greed.
Environmentalism is being dragged backwards into the realms of irrationality and ideology.
Meanwhile the big companies can use it to their own profit.
So we never get a sane energy policy.
Although I am seeing the term “ecomodernist” appear, maybe in reaction to the “eco romantics” and “deep greens”.
The problem with talking about "radical Islam" is it's usually done in the context of talking about terrorism, and it implies that terrorism is caused by being really Muslim.
But there you can be a really, really devout Muslim and be totally opposed to violence. And you can be a really crappy non-devout Muslim and be a terrorist. It's not a great correlation.
So this ends up causing a bunch of really peaceful non-terrorist Muslims to be unfairly suspected of terrorism and exposes them to all sorts of harassment.
It also means some Muslims are going to hear you keep equating Muslim with terrorist and they're going to make the same association and be more likely to embrace terrorism. I suspect this has played a role in some of the "lone wolf" attacks in the west, people who didn't have a strong Islamic identity embraced terrorism because the media told them that's what true Muslim's did.
I haven't followed the thread so am just commenting on this one point. The thinking, decades ago, was that, to help social cohesion, we should not have labels for groups, especially when those labels become fuel for bigots, for bigots to hate those groups. The idea, and it sorta comes from PostModernist thought, is that culture is made up of the words and language which people use, so if you could just remove all racist labels from language, then racism would disappear. And that's why we have been taught to be careful with language, and why saying "Islamic terrorist" or "radical Islamist" or even "political Islam" is seen as problematic, and frowned upon.
Now some thinkers, people who have worked for human rights and equality for decades, are starting to see that this method is flawed. The problem is that sometimes, a particular group really does have, objectively speaking, a problem. For example, Glaswegians with drugs and knife crime (take that as an example for sake of argument, I haven't looked it up). There is something going on in that situation (assume there are stats to back it up), but if your concern was to NOT paint a fine Scottish city with the same brush, and to not invite more bigotry against Scottish people, and so on, it would be fair to say that we should NOT use those terms, "Glaswegian drug and violent crime epidemic". But that would not solve the problem.
Also, if we are trying to reduce bigotry, well the people who are bigoted are often kinda stupid, but they are not that stupid. If they notice you avoiding saying certain things, like, avoiding using the term "Islamist attack", when in fact, the attackers were shouting God is Great and picking out people who could not recite a holy verse and shooting them on the spot, and there you are avoiding the term "Islamist attack", then the dumb but not so dumb bigot is going to take that as evidence that there is a conspiracy to support Islamists. So by not talking in plain terms, this can fuel the bigotry even more. And then people like Trump get elected **ducks**
Also, there is no shortage of Islamic intellectuals now, and people from various Islamic backgrounds, who are actively criticising Islam and saying that Islam does indeed have a problem. And yes, the vast majority of Muslims are not radicals. And yet, also, it is a dangerous thing, the ones who are radicals, because, and I hate to compare with Nazis, but it isn't like all Germans were Nazis, and actually it was a case of a particularly nasty bunch getting power. Plus the whole Mecca/Media thing, and the rules of abrogation, and so people can, if they want to, emphasise the warlord aspects of their religion's founder, as it is there. I mean, it gets much more complex. But the lack of open mindedness in Islamic culture and education is probably a bigger problem than what a few nuts with guns do. In Pakistan, they actively persecute the Ahmadis and declare them to be not Muslims, and this is an example of the closed minded, intolerant culture which is a bit too common. And Islamic intellectuals will decry this lack of open mindedn