Buddhists believe in karma, which is why they are against violence. Destroying people and taking their land is not a sane way of seeking happiness and stability. Your children will grow up thinking that they can solve problems by destroying others. The chinese people are sowing the seeds of conflict in their own lives. There is a tragic quality to all of this.
I wonder if anyone outside of China will have enough balls to stand up and say, "Hey China, you're all a bunch of ass-hats" with sufficient clarity and force that they (China) is put in a position where red-faced or not, they have to account for their actions.
As nice as that sounds, it is impossible. It is impossible to tell someone (a country) what you think of them and then get them to explain their actions. China will just say "this is an internal matter". We should call them uncivilized barbarians and put a "human-rights & environment" tariff on all imports. Problem is that it'd be too hard to enforce, and we're too greedy anyway.
Perhaps you should talk to a bona-fide tantric buddhist practitioner before you paint them all with one brush, based on some bizarre cooks collection of papers.
Those very same tantric buddhists, from the very highest levels, have been saying: "Don't let recent events in Tibet let anger increase in the mind through discussion or action." Obviously very dangerous people, right?
Buddhism is about non-violence. A core precept is not committing sexual misconduct. In Tibet - if you want to talk to a girl you have to ask the parents for marriage.
The Chinese people have committed such a heinous crime against these people. Mao's army committed massive acts of rape. THE CHINESE ARMY FORCED TEENAGE GIRLS INTO SEX SERVICE. Mao's army murdered, conquered, and burnt the Tibetan "savages".
Shame on you. Ignorance is not a source of happiness.
Um, ah, are you calling the Dalai Lama a lier then? Be cause he says it himself *repeatedly*.
Despite what the Chinese have done to *his* country: the rape, murder, and willful and blatant destruction of the institutions most precious to Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama does not see independence from China as possible because he recognizes a hard case when he sees it.
The Chinese constitution guarantees some sort of autonomy, and within autonomy there is no reason why the Tibetan people can not move forward and have some sort of normal existence. The Dalai Lama sees that as a win-win situation. Tibetans get to live unoppressed, and the Han Chinese can still say to themselves proudly "Look, Tibet is ours!".
So the Dalai Lama is more concerned with the livelihood of his people than reptilian territoriality. China has placed such a pathetically small value on human life, that I'm sure they struggle with that concept. Sad really.
I tried Silverlight, lots of features, bloaty and complex.
Flex is pretty clean, fast, and the language is great. Lots of pretty stuff, as well as lots of scope to create great platforms.
Screw Silverlight. Why muck around with unnecessary complexity and vendor locking. Flex is comparatively elegant and simple. Just my opinion for having used both.
Artificially keep prices high
on
Blu-ray BD+ Cracked
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
#1 is crucially for me. I've consolidated all of my media for convenience. I don't want bookshelves full of plastic boxes - my house is only so big. Furthermore, when I play my media, I don't want to sit through corporate marketing and propaganda. I just want to play my movie. So I *always* rip and encode a movie, and never bother with the DVD player software. If media companies can't bring themselves to sell me the product that *I* want, then I'm going to put a little effort into converting the product into something that *I* want. The free market should be about empowering consumers.
#2 is also important, because it limits the amount of price gouging that media companies can engage in. DVDs are "good-enough", and will keep price pressure on blue-ray. In the distant future, movies will only be released on blue-ray, and we need to keep the price pressure.
Furthermore, a lot of media is simply overpriced. There's a glut of it on the market - so media companies *must* be making money out of it. I wouldn't bother with torrents at all if I could pay $1-$2 for a legit download. Watermark it if you want, but let me take control of the media, so I can use it however I like.
Regardless of torrents, I spend a certain amount of media each year. Trying to control the distribution channel is a vain attempt to artificially keep prices high.
Do you assert that you know more about CO2 emissions than climate scientists?
Furthermore, do you not acknowledge that an ozone whole formed over Antarctica and NZ? The whole is no longer growing precisely *because* of international action that didn't really cost that much at all.
Finally, would you prefer to have a few more hundred dollars in your pocket now, at the cost of gambling with the stability of the human race in 50 years?
If you have already thought all that through, and you really do know best about CO2 emissions, then you should publish a paper. Perhaps you'll win the Nobel Prize for setting so many scientists straight. Or maybe you believe that the scientists will ignore your paper when they know they can't refute it, and get their powerful political cronies to shut you down. Oh wait, I'm describing Exxon's public relations campaign about global warming.
There is an old expression: fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Once upon a time some lobbyists were spreading disinformation on behalf of the tobacco companies about the science of lung cancer. Cynics would say that they murderously didn't want the public to know that smoking could kill them. The very same lobbyists are doing the same job with climate science.
So either:
You didn't know this, and you're going to re-examine climate change evidence with an open mind
You did know this, and believed that these very same people were right about both smoking not being bad for your health, and climate change not being anthropogenic
You were fooled the first time, but believe them now (*shame on you!*)
These lobbyists have not shaped your opinion at all. You already understand climate science and scientists are just wrong. However, because of a conspiracy, it's impossible for you to refute any of their scientific papers. You are not sure what the scientists motives are, but you distrust them, and think that their ideas are threatening, and not helpful.
The scientific belief is that the universe is ordered according to principles and that those principles are knowable. Science tells us both how things work, and why we know. Science also has a lot to say about why things are the way they are.
For example: We might be able to say why air has weight - but not at the ultimate level. Weight is associated with mass and gravity. The elementary particles of air have mass. Since the air particles are in a gravity field, they have "weight". But our "why" reasoning breaks down at fundamental levels, such as why things have mass altogether. At this point, we point to intrinsic properties, and how it is that we know them.
So science does goes a great distance with the "why". Ultimately this is the exploration of the natural world that kicks off when a child first starts to ask the question.
What I'm getting at is that you can't communicate to some people, regardless of how good your data is, your evidence, or your argument.
That is not strictly true. You can't communicate with argument, true, but you can always communicate. When you meet a real hard case, then perhaps you can flatly say "Oh yeah." and smile mysteriously.
If a person flat out refuses to hear counter to their belief because of "faith", there is nothing you can do. Faith is, after all, accepting something as fact which observation and evidence prove to be false.
I know this is a common idea of faith. I can't disagree because language has a democratic quality to it. Nonetheless, I believe that the root of faith is about being strictly true to your own experience of things at a deep level. Since their is a painful quality to expressing arrogant behaviour, if one is strictly true to their experience, one will let go of arrogance of all kinds. That pretty much negates beliefs of all kinds, since it's impossible to "know" something. One can only have ideas about things.
Perhaps it would be helpful if there was a *clear* distinction between scientists and their political action groups. This is clearly impossible, since those political action groups represent scientists.
If some scientists decide to form political actions groups to try and stop perceived misguided idiocy, then we have no choice to accept them unless we either ban political opinion, or assert that for example, oil executives have opinions about the environment that are equally valid as scientists. If this is the case then we must also accept that either greed has nothing to do oil executive's opinions, or that greed shaping political opinion is just as valid as intelligence shaping political opinion.
Ultimately, what we choose fundamentally shapes our society. If it shapes our society for the better, then our actions are "good". And vice-versa.
Good work uniting the creationist understanding of thermodynamics with the socialist understanding of scientific progress!
I would like to commend you on your amazingly clear statement.
In fact, it cannot be said to be a statement. Nor can it be said to not be a statement. Furthermore, you can't assert that both of those statements are true, and neither can you assert that both of them are false.
You are 100% correct. Going after the companies that profit from sale would cut of the air supply for the industry. It would be just like the internation ban on the trade of ivory that pretty much halted poaching.
Bubonic plague is transported in the body in a similar way to HIV. There is a recessive gene that provides immunity, so you can be born flat-out immune to aids. It works by changing the shape of white blood cells.
Just because poor nations produce more babies doesn't mean that perpetual-growth-economics might not precipitate population collapse. In fact, if you think about it, the fact that the poorest nations produce more babies is evidence of peoples abilities to balance their desires with economic realities.
Western women have been freed by birth control, and politics made possible by our cultural notion of our intrinsic equalness. Education, wealth and technology is the reason why the richest countries don't produce more babies. Thus, it should be possible to stabilize the world population by bring the world's poorest out of poverty and establishing educational institutions.
Nonetheless, the richest countries consume most of the natural resources. On a per-person basis, the amount we consume in tremendous. That production of goods is based on a system that is drawing down on natural resources that we don't know how to replace. This includes fish stocks, arable land, fresh water resources, forest usage, air pollution, general pollution and energy resources.
Do you think it will be possible to bring this level of consumption to the world's poorest? Yet that is exactly what they are trying to do with a lot of success in India and China. That's why it's *exponential* growth. We are shaping our environment with *exponential* proportions. This approach is likely to trigger an environmental collapse at some time in the future, unless we can work out how to make *sustainable* use of our environment.
In short - exponential growth coupled with unsustainable procedures is destined for failure.
It seems to me we have a large amount of 'we don't really understand what the fuck is going on in China', that frequently gets combined with a bunch of preconceptions which are probably quite inaccurate.
Can it be argued that chinese actions in Tibet and their language with regards to Taiwan is a model of enlightened society? What a joke.
China is powerful, and fear is futile ground for inaccurate and negative preconceptions. Most westerners would abhor living in such an authoritarian regime, yet it was only a few generations ago when westerners themselves were the purveyors of the most human rights abuses. Heck, the thought of genocide in a place like Australia today is absurd, yet it was practiced just a 100 years ago.
It's impossible to say that things never change. That society will always be the same. That's not true. For the vast amount of our history, we've lived subsidence lifestyles. The invention of writing changed all of that, and very quickly. 6000 years later and society is still learning about itself. We've reduced violence with trail-by-jury, and enabled a political structure that strives for constant and peaceful transition of regime.
I believe that anger is based watching a society the needlessly makes itself suffer. It's not just the Tibetans that are suffering... do you really think all of those soldiers in tibet are making themselves happy by beating people up? They are just sowing the seeds of more conflict in their own lives. If punching someone in the face is the way you deal with conflict, then you'll end up with a broken nose on day.
There is a lot we don't understand about China - there is a vast cultural divide. Just because they are powerful does not mean they are right. Their actions against their own people are a disgrace to themselves.
Just because you take it as propaganda doesn't mean that others don't have a more leveled response to this statement. For example, you could take it as saying: "what is going on with this type of morality?". If a person condones authoritarian rule, what is the need for censorship? Yet these people seem to do both? This statement is about the human condition, and not politics. Personally I think a lot of official chinese statements express an embarrassingly amorale attitude.
As intelligent tool users, the question we should ask ourselves about climate change is at what point the economic tradeoff of stopping it outweighs the economic costs of letting it continue.
While this is true, the situation is that we aren't having that discussion, but instead the very same people who were spreading disinformation about smoking and bad health are doing the same thing with the science of climate change. Now that the case of anthropogenic climate change has become more compelling, deniers are reaching for the adaptation argument. Adaptation *must* be explored because that is what we'll end up doing - despite are best scientific understanding, which is extraordinarily limited. We will choose adaption even if it means sea levels rising 20m, and billions of refugees. The reason for this is because of the extra-ordinary momentum of our perpetual growth based economic tradition, which is founded on primeval drives to consume.
My point is that, at some point, that perpetual growth machine will meet its limitations, and that won't look pretty. Those very same smart-tool-wielding mammels will probably go to war with each other. We were intelligent enough to make tools, but the question remains as to whether we'll be smarter than bacteria spreading across an agar jell.
I didn't say you could have population growth without economic growth. My claim was the exact inverse -- you can have economic growth without population growth.
While economic growth doesn't rely on population growth - population growth relies on economic growth. Not in the strictest sense - because we can have more people with less to go around - but in the sense of traditions that are far more powerful than rational thought.
Humans aren't so limited -- as tool users, we can optimize our use of the environment with technology. The hard-limits of physics -- the amount of phosphorous -- are a long way away.
This is true, there is no argument there from me.
The point is that if we really were such clever tool-wielding mammals, then we wouldn't (for example) gamble with highly unpredictable and potentially catastrophic climate change, because of a need to temporarily satiate ourselves. This justification through faith in an economic tradition should not fly in the face of what we *know* about the natural world. I've heard right-wing economists argue that the economy can fundamentally do without natural resources. It is not a sign of intelligence to destroy forests, topsoil, pollute the air and vast tracks of land, and then somehow think we'll cope with the consequences in ways we do not yet understand.
It's quite possible that human population will trend nicely towards an equilibrium, however, our very economic system is based on perpetual growth and not equilibrium.
Economic growth doesn't necessarily require population growth.
This strikes me as a bit disingenuous. Population growth with a shrinking economy will mean less to go around. The very economic fundamentals are food, water, clothing, heat and housing. Less of these essential items will be an easy catalyst for those who would beat the drums of war. It does not paint a picture of a stable and peaceful future.
The earth is a closed eco-system, unless we head for the stars. There have been many studies of population growth in closed systems. They end with a lot of suffering.
It's quite possible that human population will trend nicely towards an equilibrium, however, our very economic system is based on perpetual growth and not equilibrium. It is a matter of time until we see some limiting factor in the natural world, that will prevent that magic 5% year-on-year growth. At this point, investment will collapse, and we'll be forced to develop equilibrium based economics.
It is worrying that we are tending more and more to keep our system going by drawing down on our resources faster, instead of being conservative and clever about our use of the planet. If human population is going to gently move to towards equilibrium, then there must be careful consideration of sustainable development. If we continue our hack-n-slash approach, we may well end up with a disaster on our hands. We are already seeing signs of imminent future problems with arable land, energy resources, fresh water and climate change.
Perhaps it would be sane to penalize obviously myopic economic activities, like mining oil-sands, trawler fishing, and massive deforestation. Unfortutely, our economic system is structured such that companies can gain "growth" by hiding costs in externalities. That is precisely the problem with "next-quarter" economics, and characterizes much of the mentality of wall-street.
Our growth based economic system is a tradition that has grown out of the folkways of antiquity. It is no more or less wise than bacteria growing exponentially across an agar jell. This economic system co-exists with, and is ultimately subordinate to the matter-energy relationship that we have with the planet. This is analogous to the bacterial growth hitting the edge of the petri dish.
Perhaps you could try to argue that we'll just find cleverer and cleverer ways of doing things. Blind faith in the genius inventor is an excuse for pillaging the world right now. It's just that the scientific method that gave us the industrial revolution is the same scientific method that is saying we need to curb carbon emissions. The problem isn't with science, but with myopic greed and stubborn ignorance about our relationship with the world.
Expect human society to behave no wiser than the bacteria on the agar jell. We'll consume ever faster, and change our ways only after significant insurmountable problems arise. This situation is analogous to how a person sinks into depression, and then resolves to significant change after they realize that depression is not living.
We learnt nothing from the extinction of the dodo. There will be many more dodos in the future.
People have been saying that since Malthus and predicting a massive population collapse. The funny thing is, civilization keeps finding ways to accommodate larger numbers.
So therefore: the world will never suffer population collapse. Good thinking 86.
If there were a whole in the Earth and you jumped in it, then 42 minutes later you'd appear momentarily still at the other side of the planet. AFAIK, that's where Douglas Adams got the number 42.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the grand-parent was being glib.
Buddhists believe in karma, which is why they are against violence. Destroying people and taking their land is not a sane way of seeking happiness and stability. Your children will grow up thinking that they can solve problems by destroying others. The chinese people are sowing the seeds of conflict in their own lives. There is a tragic quality to all of this.
I wonder if anyone outside of China will have enough balls to stand up and say, "Hey China, you're all a bunch of ass-hats" with sufficient clarity and force that they (China) is put in a position where red-faced or not, they have to account for their actions.
As nice as that sounds, it is impossible. It is impossible to tell someone (a country) what you think of them and then get them to explain their actions. China will just say "this is an internal matter". We should call them uncivilized barbarians and put a "human-rights & environment" tariff on all imports. Problem is that it'd be too hard to enforce, and we're too greedy anyway.
Idealistic, and unrealistic. Olympic athletes are interested in careers, sponsorship endorsements etc... and NOT politics.
Since when where athletes too greedy to think for themselves? If athletes don't speak out, it will because of some threat over their career,
The US owes china a lot of money.
Envy is the weakness of china.
Greed is the weakness of the US.
You do know what sophistry is don't you?
Perhaps you should talk to a bona-fide tantric buddhist practitioner before you paint them all with one brush, based on some bizarre cooks collection of papers.
Those very same tantric buddhists, from the very highest levels, have been saying: "Don't let recent events in Tibet let anger increase in the mind through discussion or action." Obviously very dangerous people, right?
You are WRONG.
Buddhism is about non-violence. A core precept is not committing sexual misconduct. In Tibet - if you want to talk to a girl you have to ask the parents for marriage.
The Chinese people have committed such a heinous crime against these people. Mao's army committed massive acts of rape. THE CHINESE ARMY FORCED TEENAGE GIRLS INTO SEX SERVICE. Mao's army murdered, conquered, and burnt the Tibetan "savages".
Shame on you. Ignorance is not a source of happiness.
Believe what you will.
Um, ah, are you calling the Dalai Lama a lier then? Be cause he says it himself *repeatedly*.
Despite what the Chinese have done to *his* country: the rape, murder, and willful and blatant destruction of the institutions most precious to Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama does not see independence from China as possible because he recognizes a hard case when he sees it.
The Chinese constitution guarantees some sort of autonomy, and within autonomy there is no reason why the Tibetan people can not move forward and have some sort of normal existence. The Dalai Lama sees that as a win-win situation. Tibetans get to live unoppressed, and the Han Chinese can still say to themselves proudly "Look, Tibet is ours!".
So the Dalai Lama is more concerned with the livelihood of his people than reptilian territoriality. China has placed such a pathetically small value on human life, that I'm sure they struggle with that concept. Sad really.
I tried Silverlight, lots of features, bloaty and complex.
Flex is pretty clean, fast, and the language is great. Lots of pretty stuff, as well as lots of scope to create great platforms.
Screw Silverlight. Why muck around with unnecessary complexity and vendor locking. Flex is comparatively elegant and simple. Just my opinion for having used both.
#1 is crucially for me. I've consolidated all of my media for convenience. I don't want bookshelves full of plastic boxes - my house is only so big. Furthermore, when I play my media, I don't want to sit through corporate marketing and propaganda. I just want to play my movie. So I *always* rip and encode a movie, and never bother with the DVD player software. If media companies can't bring themselves to sell me the product that *I* want, then I'm going to put a little effort into converting the product into something that *I* want. The free market should be about empowering consumers.
#2 is also important, because it limits the amount of price gouging that media companies can engage in. DVDs are "good-enough", and will keep price pressure on blue-ray. In the distant future, movies will only be released on blue-ray, and we need to keep the price pressure.
Furthermore, a lot of media is simply overpriced. There's a glut of it on the market - so media companies *must* be making money out of it. I wouldn't bother with torrents at all if I could pay $1-$2 for a legit download. Watermark it if you want, but let me take control of the media, so I can use it however I like.
Regardless of torrents, I spend a certain amount of media each year. Trying to control the distribution channel is a vain attempt to artificially keep prices high.
It is neither faith nor belief.
It is a supposition.
Do you assert that you know more about CO2 emissions than climate scientists?
Furthermore, do you not acknowledge that an ozone whole formed over Antarctica and NZ? The whole is no longer growing precisely *because* of international action that didn't really cost that much at all.
Finally, would you prefer to have a few more hundred dollars in your pocket now, at the cost of gambling with the stability of the human race in 50 years?
If you have already thought all that through, and you really do know best about CO2 emissions, then you should publish a paper. Perhaps you'll win the Nobel Prize for setting so many scientists straight. Or maybe you believe that the scientists will ignore your paper when they know they can't refute it, and get their powerful political cronies to shut you down. Oh wait, I'm describing Exxon's public relations campaign about global warming.
There is an old expression: fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Once upon a time some lobbyists were spreading disinformation on behalf of the tobacco companies about the science of lung cancer. Cynics would say that they murderously didn't want the public to know that smoking could kill them. The very same lobbyists are doing the same job with climate science.
So either:
So, which is it?
The scientific belief is that the universe is ordered according to principles and that those principles are knowable. Science tells us both how things work, and why we know. Science also has a lot to say about why things are the way they are.
For example:
We might be able to say why air has weight - but not at the ultimate level. Weight is associated with mass and gravity. The elementary particles of air have mass. Since the air particles are in a gravity field, they have "weight". But our "why" reasoning breaks down at fundamental levels, such as why things have mass altogether. At this point, we point to intrinsic properties, and how it is that we know them.
So science does goes a great distance with the "why". Ultimately this is the exploration of the natural world that kicks off when a child first starts to ask the question.
What I'm getting at is that you can't communicate to some people, regardless of how good your data is, your evidence, or your argument.
That is not strictly true. You can't communicate with argument, true, but you can always communicate. When you meet a real hard case, then perhaps you can flatly say "Oh yeah." and smile mysteriously.
If a person flat out refuses to hear counter to their belief because of "faith", there is nothing you can do. Faith is, after all, accepting something as fact which observation and evidence prove to be false.
I know this is a common idea of faith. I can't disagree because language has a democratic quality to it. Nonetheless, I believe that the root of faith is about being strictly true to your own experience of things at a deep level. Since their is a painful quality to expressing arrogant behaviour, if one is strictly true to their experience, one will let go of arrogance of all kinds. That pretty much negates beliefs of all kinds, since it's impossible to "know" something. One can only have ideas about things.
Perhaps it would be helpful if there was a *clear* distinction between scientists and their political action groups. This is clearly impossible, since those political action groups represent scientists.
If some scientists decide to form political actions groups to try and stop perceived misguided idiocy, then we have no choice to accept them unless we either ban political opinion, or assert that for example, oil executives have opinions about the environment that are equally valid as scientists. If this is the case then we must also accept that either greed has nothing to do oil executive's opinions, or that greed shaping political opinion is just as valid as intelligence shaping political opinion.
Ultimately, what we choose fundamentally shapes our society. If it shapes our society for the better, then our actions are "good". And vice-versa.
Toddhisattva,
Good work uniting the creationist understanding of thermodynamics with the socialist understanding of scientific progress!
I would like to commend you on your amazingly clear statement.
In fact, it cannot be said to be a statement. Nor can it be said to not be a statement. Furthermore, you can't assert that both of those statements are true, and neither can you assert that both of them are false.
You like, stopped my mind or something.
You are 100% correct. Going after the companies that profit from sale would cut of the air supply for the industry. It would be just like the internation ban on the trade of ivory that pretty much halted poaching.
Bubonic plague is transported in the body in a similar way to HIV. There is a recessive gene that provides immunity, so you can be born flat-out immune to aids. It works by changing the shape of white blood cells.
Just because poor nations produce more babies doesn't mean that perpetual-growth-economics might not precipitate population collapse. In fact, if you think about it, the fact that the poorest nations produce more babies is evidence of peoples abilities to balance their desires with economic realities.
Western women have been freed by birth control, and politics made possible by our cultural notion of our intrinsic equalness. Education, wealth and technology is the reason why the richest countries don't produce more babies. Thus, it should be possible to stabilize the world population by bring the world's poorest out of poverty and establishing educational institutions.
Nonetheless, the richest countries consume most of the natural resources. On a per-person basis, the amount we consume in tremendous. That production of goods is based on a system that is drawing down on natural resources that we don't know how to replace. This includes fish stocks, arable land, fresh water resources, forest usage, air pollution, general pollution and energy resources.
Do you think it will be possible to bring this level of consumption to the world's poorest? Yet that is exactly what they are trying to do with a lot of success in India and China. That's why it's *exponential* growth. We are shaping our environment with *exponential* proportions. This approach is likely to trigger an environmental collapse at some time in the future, unless we can work out how to make *sustainable* use of our environment.
In short - exponential growth coupled with unsustainable procedures is destined for failure.
It seems to me we have a large amount of 'we don't really understand what the fuck is going on in China', that frequently gets combined with a bunch of preconceptions which are probably quite inaccurate.
Can it be argued that chinese actions in Tibet and their language with regards to Taiwan is a model of enlightened society? What a joke.
China is powerful, and fear is futile ground for inaccurate and negative preconceptions. Most westerners would abhor living in such an authoritarian regime, yet it was only a few generations ago when westerners themselves were the purveyors of the most human rights abuses. Heck, the thought of genocide in a place like Australia today is absurd, yet it was practiced just a 100 years ago.
It's impossible to say that things never change. That society will always be the same. That's not true. For the vast amount of our history, we've lived subsidence lifestyles. The invention of writing changed all of that, and very quickly. 6000 years later and society is still learning about itself. We've reduced violence with trail-by-jury, and enabled a political structure that strives for constant and peaceful transition of regime.
I believe that anger is based watching a society the needlessly makes itself suffer. It's not just the Tibetans that are suffering... do you really think all of those soldiers in tibet are making themselves happy by beating people up? They are just sowing the seeds of more conflict in their own lives. If punching someone in the face is the way you deal with conflict, then you'll end up with a broken nose on day.
There is a lot we don't understand about China - there is a vast cultural divide. Just because they are powerful does not mean they are right. Their actions against their own people are a disgrace to themselves.
Just because you take it as propaganda doesn't mean that others don't have a more leveled response to this statement. For example, you could take it as saying: "what is going on with this type of morality?". If a person condones authoritarian rule, what is the need for censorship? Yet these people seem to do both? This statement is about the human condition, and not politics. Personally I think a lot of official chinese statements express an embarrassingly amorale attitude.
As intelligent tool users, the question we should ask ourselves about climate change is at what point the economic tradeoff of stopping it outweighs the economic costs of letting it continue.
While this is true, the situation is that we aren't having that discussion, but instead the very same people who were spreading disinformation about smoking and bad health are doing the same thing with the science of climate change. Now that the case of anthropogenic climate change has become more compelling, deniers are reaching for the adaptation argument. Adaptation *must* be explored because that is what we'll end up doing - despite are best scientific understanding, which is extraordinarily limited. We will choose adaption even if it means sea levels rising 20m, and billions of refugees. The reason for this is because of the extra-ordinary momentum of our perpetual growth based economic tradition, which is founded on primeval drives to consume.
My point is that, at some point, that perpetual growth machine will meet its limitations, and that won't look pretty. Those very same smart-tool-wielding mammels will probably go to war with each other. We were intelligent enough to make tools, but the question remains as to whether we'll be smarter than bacteria spreading across an agar jell.
I didn't say you could have population growth without economic growth. My claim was the exact inverse -- you can have economic growth without population growth.
While economic growth doesn't rely on population growth - population growth relies on economic growth. Not in the strictest sense - because we can have more people with less to go around - but in the sense of traditions that are far more powerful than rational thought.
Humans aren't so limited -- as tool users, we can optimize our use of the environment with technology. The hard-limits of physics -- the amount of phosphorous -- are a long way away.
This is true, there is no argument there from me.
The point is that if we really were such clever tool-wielding mammals, then we wouldn't (for example) gamble with highly unpredictable and potentially catastrophic climate change, because of a need to temporarily satiate ourselves. This justification through faith in an economic tradition should not fly in the face of what we *know* about the natural world. I've heard right-wing economists argue that the economy can fundamentally do without natural resources. It is not a sign of intelligence to destroy forests, topsoil, pollute the air and vast tracks of land, and then somehow think we'll cope with the consequences in ways we do not yet understand.
It's quite possible that human population will trend nicely towards an equilibrium, however, our very economic system is based on perpetual growth and not equilibrium.
Economic growth doesn't necessarily require population growth.
This strikes me as a bit disingenuous. Population growth with a shrinking economy will mean less to go around. The very economic fundamentals are food, water, clothing, heat and housing. Less of these essential items will be an easy catalyst for those who would beat the drums of war. It does not paint a picture of a stable and peaceful future.
The earth is a closed eco-system, unless we head for the stars. There have been many studies of population growth in closed systems. They end with a lot of suffering.
It's quite possible that human population will trend nicely towards an equilibrium, however, our very economic system is based on perpetual growth and not equilibrium. It is a matter of time until we see some limiting factor in the natural world, that will prevent that magic 5% year-on-year growth. At this point, investment will collapse, and we'll be forced to develop equilibrium based economics.
It is worrying that we are tending more and more to keep our system going by drawing down on our resources faster, instead of being conservative and clever about our use of the planet. If human population is going to gently move to towards equilibrium, then there must be careful consideration of sustainable development. If we continue our hack-n-slash approach, we may well end up with a disaster on our hands. We are already seeing signs of imminent future problems with arable land, energy resources, fresh water and climate change.
Perhaps it would be sane to penalize obviously myopic economic activities, like mining oil-sands, trawler fishing, and massive deforestation. Unfortutely, our economic system is structured such that companies can gain "growth" by hiding costs in externalities. That is precisely the problem with "next-quarter" economics, and characterizes much of the mentality of wall-street.
Our growth based economic system is a tradition that has grown out of the folkways of antiquity. It is no more or less wise than bacteria growing exponentially across an agar jell. This economic system co-exists with, and is ultimately subordinate to the matter-energy relationship that we have with the planet. This is analogous to the bacterial growth hitting the edge of the petri dish.
Perhaps you could try to argue that we'll just find cleverer and cleverer ways of doing things. Blind faith in the genius inventor is an excuse for pillaging the world right now. It's just that the scientific method that gave us the industrial revolution is the same scientific method that is saying we need to curb carbon emissions. The problem isn't with science, but with myopic greed and stubborn ignorance about our relationship with the world.
Expect human society to behave no wiser than the bacteria on the agar jell. We'll consume ever faster, and change our ways only after significant insurmountable problems arise. This situation is analogous to how a person sinks into depression, and then resolves to significant change after they realize that depression is not living.
We learnt nothing from the extinction of the dodo. There will be many more dodos in the future.
People have been saying that since Malthus and predicting a massive population collapse. The funny thing is, civilization keeps finding ways to accommodate larger numbers.
So therefore: the world will never suffer population collapse. Good thinking 86.
If there were a whole in the Earth and you jumped in it, then 42 minutes later you'd appear momentarily still at the other side of the planet. AFAIK, that's where Douglas Adams got the number 42.