Climate Change and Societal Collapse

[stumpy]

mobile phones with touch screens will probably die out, due to the chemical needed to make the screen touchable and interactive, is in limited supply, so unless they find a substitute for that chemical then they will go kurput, also the chemical is only availabe in one place on the planet and thats china, its available elsewhere in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter but its a bit far to go currently, then again it isn't on all asteroids. So the need for that metal might be the last straw that forces humans to go into space and work there.

 

you don't want to get rid of all co2 as plants need co2 to live, plants convert co2 into oxygen., so if you get rid of co2 you kill everything that needs to breathe oxygen to live. its something weird when you read a co2 report that they want to cut co2 output to zero, its like these scientists don't seem to know how things work. then again are those scientists real scientist or fake ones who have jumpped onto a band wagon to get their warped theories across. Apparently biologists have been complaining about this very thing, but are being ignored by the people in power as they know better, or worse they believe the fake scientist are telling the truth.

 

although trying to reduced the output of co2 and so2 so3 so4 to absolute zero is impossible as all these gasses are produced by volcano's, and there are a hell of alot of underwater volcano's all the mid atlantic ridge that are active 100 percent of the time, so from iceland in the north to somewhere near antartica in the south you have thousands of invisible volcano's just pumping out co2 and sulphur dioxide in vast quantities, and you've got the ring of fire around the pacific doing the same thing, and volcano's on and near Hawaii, and that semi active supervolcano under Yellowstone park, and the midly active supervolcano under Naples, Italy, its so big that Vesuvius is just a vent on the side of that thing. Can't see Italy ever reducing their co2 output to the levels the EU want, its pratically impossible. With a monster supervolcano spewing loads of co2 daily. then there's those volcano's in africa and elsewhere in the world.

Edited August 12, 2018 by stumpy

[Oktokolo]

mobile phones with touch screens will probably die out, due to the chemical needed to make the screen touchable and interactive, is in limited supply, so unless they find a substitute for that chemical then they will go kurput, also the chemical is only availabe in one place on the planet and thats china, its available elsewhere in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter but its a bit far to go currently, then again it isn't on all asteroids. So the need for that metal might be the last straw that forces humans to go into space and work there.

Or they just start to get the stuff from the old phones containing it - what they indeed already do for some metals.

 

you don't want to get rid of all co2 as plants need co2 to live, plants convert co2 into oxygen.

It is not about getting rid of all CO², but only the human-caused part of it.

Also, if we somehow suddenly have enough energy to get rid of all CO², we should not have any problems with making our own O² (maybe getting it from the CO²) to breath too

[Springheel]

its like these scientists don't seem to know how things work.

 

 

If scientists are speaking about something in their area of study and it doesn't appear to make sense, the odds are better that you have missed something, than the scientists not knowing "how things work" in their own field.

[Outlooker]

 

If scientists are speaking about something in their area of study and it doesn't appear to make sense, the odds are better that you have missed something, than the scientists not knowing "how things work" in their own field.

It's not quite that simple.

Chances that scientists report fabricated or misleading findings rise with the economic and political impact of their subject of study.

 

Fraud and misleading studies are less likely in scientific fields of "hard science", in which any other scientists easily and quickly can attempt to confirm or disconfirm a finding just by trying to recreate an experiment.

Conversely,

cheating and fraud can be expected to happen in fields where the exact recreation of an experiment is impossible (e.g. medicine, when it is impossible to redo the exact same experimental setting with the same kind of patients) or

too difficult/expensive.

 

And there is no shortage of already exposed academic fraud and systematic problems in the scientific process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publish_or_perish

This leads to p-hacking (deliberately choosing experimental results so that they support a finding), or just slicing up a finding into multiple studies, so that the publication list of a scientist is longer and he looks more productive and important.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

This is probably known generally already, just as an reminder than most of "social science" is not science, but a political cult (exploited by socialists/Marxists)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

In many fields of science, especially social science (including psychology), but also medicine and climate science, attempts to recreate old experiments lead to zero-effect findings or even opposite results.

This proves that many scientists in the past produced false or even fraudulent science.

 

https://twitter.com/RetractionWatch

This is an somewhat regularly updated thread of some findings that failed replication.

 

https://twitter.com/realpeerreview

This is an account that exposes outright fake science (gender studies etc.), which openly abuses the reputation of science as a means to reveal truth for political machinations.

 

 

Science has the reputation from past successes that it produces magical results - and truth. This reputation is exploited presently to further economic and political ends of interested parties by abusing science and scientists to provide public justifications for political measures or to sell economic products - at least some scientists have become prostitutes than can be simply bought.

Therefore, science as a human activity can not any longer be generally trusted.

 

Additionally, much that carries with it the dignity of being "science" is outright comical garbage, because it was abused for political and ideological ends, example pictures above.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Outlooker

[Springheel]

Therefore, science as a human activity can not any longer be generally trusted.

 

 

 

Obviously science is a human activity and human activities are prone to misuse and error. However, there is no logical connection between that fact and the conclusion that "science" can no longer be "generally trusted".

 

It is not at all uncommon for computers to crash. It is not especially uncommon for hard drives to fail. Everyone has a story of how they once lost something they were working on. However, computers can and are still "generally trusted" to work properly, because they do in the vast majority of instances.

[Anderson]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

This is probably known generally already, just as an reminder than most of "social science" is not science, but a political cult (exploited by socialists/Marxists)

 

Most people today agree that communism doesn't work.

 

But making Marx = socialism = to a political cult is downright absurd.

 

Marx/Engels were just doing their political theory just like Liberalism or anything else.

 

The conspiracies on them are nonsense.

 

Also please take the time to read that everything went batshit crazy starting with Lenin on this front.

 

European/Western socialism (albeit sometimes too cosmopolitcal for my taste (especially Simone de Beauvoir)) has nothing to do with this Russian slaughterhouse.

 

Also, technically just because certain people with a ph.D pump out 150 articles per year doesn't mean those are all good. Even if they find funds from a German/Russian drujba committee/NGO/grant for life support. Really though, they're just old senile, delusional people that exist only because their Uni allows it. But for the most part the modern world doesn't need them anymore realistically. Their time will pass too. As everything does in life.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Anderson

[Sotha]

After this discussion (thanks everyone!) I think I am revising my position towards "less worried" in terms of climate change.

 

Some thoughts, briefly:

1) Climate change has been identified as a real problem by science, but now there is fortunately at least some building momentum to tackle it.

 

2) what will happen during our lifetime is probably something between two extremeties: a) Venus-like greenhouse-effect-outta-control (very unlikely), or b ) no significant change (very unlikely).

 

Highest probability event is loss of inhabitable land in some areas (floods, drought, extreme weather). Food supply get hit, economy may go into recession.

 

3) The effects will hit poor regions of the world hardest. Western societies are so ultra wealthy, we will probably just take economic impact and then adapt. We will probably need to have harsh immigration control because people will flee areas affected areas (famine, wars, etc). The hardest impact in western countries will hit the poor population (food, fuel, etc prices go up.) Those who are well-off take the smallest impact.

 

4) As long as one is among the well-off westerners, you are relatively safe. But that should not mean one should ignore the environmental effects entirely.

 

We all should learn to conserve resources, consume less and teach our children to value the Better Things in life (I.e. things you can not buy). This is useful even now, because when you consume less and waste less, you save money, which is always a good idea.

 

5) I think my personal strategy would be: work hard to remain among privileged westerners, but also -in everyday life- reduce ecological footprint and research ways to save energy, conserve resources and recycle/reuse as much stuff as possible instead of throw-away culture. Buy robust and repairable items instead of cheap disposable ones.

 

The most important prepper -thing I might do is to buy are big Jerry can of fuel to the garage for emergencies. A water purifier might be a good idea too, because extreme weather may increase probabilities of the drinking water to go temporarily non-potable (via sewage floods, etc). Good quality hiking equipment and wilderness survival skills are also good to be available (if you like hiking and being in nature like I do, I need them anyway.)

 

6) For solving the climate change, there is not much more an individual can do. In western democracies, scary amount of responsibility is put into the hands to the voters. Instead for voting populists or people who only drive the interests of your power group, we should vote for well-informed people who make decisions backed up by science, not just random thoughts of the day.

 

7) What will be to our detriment is Being Confused. This means following our random thoughts and believing our thoughts to be always true.

Conspiracy theories ("the climate change is a hoax by the XYZ") or religious nonsense ("God is our armor: pollute as much as you like, he will save us") are things that get us easily confused.

Stopping trusting science (our only tool for gaining clarity) gets us confused.

Believing populists who offer ultra-simple solutions to ultra-complex problems ("everything is the EUs/immigrants'/jews/nazis/used car salesmens fault") gets us confused.

Staying in the social media echo-chamber get us confused ("everyone agrees with me so it must be true!")

Using "othering" gets us confused ("everything is the elites/researchers fault." or "the elites/scientist conspire against the common people.") Fact is that humans are mostly the same: they have the same needs, the same fears, the same biases. When you see an elite or other "othering" group and want to hate them, it might be a good idea to remember that they are human just like you.

Closed mind gets us confused ("I'm not gonna listen to this data because the source is an expert, and I do not like experts nor the message. I prefer to listen what matches with my pre-existing beliefs.")

Being distrustful towards leaders and specialists gets us confused. (If you distrust sources with detailed information (specialist) or sources with broad big-picture or information (leader), you only have your own cognition to rely on and will probably get incorrect results. For most reliable results, always use multiple sources and know that all sources are not as equally reliable.)

 

The only way to get clarity is to rely on science. The thoughts in your mind may be true, or they might be totally (utterly and horribly) wrong, and you cannot know which is the case.

 

The only way to know which thought is true is to test them using the methods given by science. Not everyone is a specialist in complicated fields of science, and like Spring said if the message of the specialist does not make sense to you, it probably means you do not understand the topic, rather than the specialist does not understand their own field of expertise.

 

The problem of our era is that nobody listens anymore. It's about echo chamber frenzy, cherry picking the story that catches your fancy and not about what is really true. This is a big threat to the western democracies and also to our ability cope with climate change. But I am fairly hopeful that things are going to go fine. The humanity has made it thus far, so we are probably doing something right, so perhaps we will endure these obstacles like we have endured all the previous ones.

[Destined]

I was away on the weekend, so I could not answer to this thread anymore, but a couple of points, I still want to get out there:

I especially agree with a subpoint of Sotha's point 4 in teh last post: One of the greatest problems we have is our attitude towards consumption. It is true that we do not lack recources to feed the world population and even much more people (not sure who stated that before). The problem is that we want to eat what we fancy right now. And if we spontaniously decide, we don't want it, we throw it away and buy something else. This way do we not only waste the stuff we bought, but force shops to have a giant stock of food that spoils for the most part, because it does not hit the daily fancy of enough people. Thus, we waste tons of recources on stuff that is ultimatley thrown away. Another point that goes in a similar direction is pressuring people into buying later versions of products they already have. Apple releases a new phone every year, which forces people who want to be "up to date" to buy it every year, even though their current phone works perfectly find (I myself have a smartphome that I bought over five years ago and it still works with the first battery). The clothing firm H&M had (if I remember correctly; I can ask a colleague of mine for the exact number, if someone is interested) seven new lines of clothing in one year, which means that the old clothes (unbought as well as (at least in part) bought) were thrown out. Much stuff is produced with a limited lifespan, so people will keep on buying new stuff. These are examples of wasted recources, but it is in line with our current cunsumerism and is one of the most important threats to our recources.

 

@stumpy: I am not sure, which element you meant that is so important for the touch-screens. Could you please tell me? I am just curious.

Regarding CO₂ I could imagine that not the total absolute emission was meant, but the CO₂ balance; i.e. we try to reduce our emission to a value that can actually be compensated by plants. And one smartass comment on photosynthesis: O₂ does not come from CO₂. It is true that CO₂ is consumed and O₂ is released during photosynthesis, but the elemental oxygen actually comes from water that is oxidised, while the complete CO₂ is stored in the form of carbonhydrates.

 

@Outlooker: to pick up a quite old post: I am well aware that a catalyst is not used up (especially, with turnover numbers over 2000; these are really impressive). I am a chemist myself, so I understand the science behind it quite well (just wanted to clarify, as I sometimes got the impression, you doubted that I knew what I was talking about), but even if ruthenium is used as a catalyst, you would need several tons of it in an industrial process. As I said: I am not 100% sure how much ruthenium we have on earth (and I would exclude future recources in space for now until they can actually be harvested), but limited amounts, especially of rare elements, is a factor we should keep in mind regarding recources. Additionally, as I do not have access to the article, I have no idea how the ruthenium has to be treated to function as a catalyst. It is very rare that you can simply throw the metal in there as is. Commonly, you would need some organic framework or at least a high surface etc., wich would need further recources (be it chemicals or energy). Also, out of curiosity: May I ask in which field you work? You appear to be neither stupid nor uneducated, so I assume that you also work as a scientist and given your opinion on "soft" sciences and even medicine, I assume that these are not your fields of study. I am just curious, which background you have.

Regarding the trustworthyness of studies: if the study is done properly (i.e. the whole process is properly documented and the statistics are done right), it should be trustworthy. It is true that it is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to reproduce, but if it is comprehensible, that is not a problem. The great problem is, when articles inflate statistically insignificant results and more importantly: if these results are then spread. Especially, among people who have no idea how to interpret / check these results, but only read the headline. A common example is the "vaccines cause autism" discussion. It was spread and is still in the head of many people, even though it was debunked years ago.

[Sotha]

@Destined, I think Stumpy is referring to Indium, which is needed in transparent, but conductive ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) films. Indium is expensive, relatively rare and China is the biggest producer (deposits exist elsewhere in the world, too though). Since it is applied on substrate as a really thin film, it is difficult to recycle from the devices.

 

Last time I looked, there is a furious ongoing effort to replace ITO with variety of methods. It would be so cool if they succeeded...

 

I'm a chemist too, by the way...

[Outlooker]

 

However, there is no logical connection between that fact and the conclusion that "science" can no longer be "generally trusted".

I see a logical connection, though: True science, pure and perfect scientific process, is just an inaccessible ideal, because science does not exist outside of human brains as a model of or tool to understand reality.

And humans are biased, make errors, and, most importantly, can be motivated to produce untrue results presented as science deliberately.

It has happened, is happening, and will keep on happening.

Simple examples:

The tobacco industry influenced research, researchers and public reporting and presentation of research significantly, to facilitate selling their product.

This is now more or less generally known. At the time, however, many people believed in the fraudulent science that appeared to have proved that cigarette consumption is not unhealthy; and the matter was confused further by findings that turned out to be true that nicotine itself had indeed positive effects on at least some health parameters.

Another better known example is the work of the scientist-prostitute Ancel Keys who deliberately misrepresented scientific findings in ways so that the public was kept unaware of the fact that sugar consumption is associated with disease, like cancer, heart disease and atherosclerosis, so that the sugar industry was able to keep selling their addictive drug - sugar - to the public. The sugar war still wages in public propaganda, while the actual science has been settled long ago: Regular consumption of significant amounts of sugar causes multiple deadly diseases, sugar is a full-blown addictive drug, and this is true in laboratory test mammals as well as humans.

And the same as with cigarettes happens again: An alliance of addicts who hope to find absolution of their drug use and an industry that influences science and media reports leads to generating a wrong idea in the heads of the public that is the opposite of scientific evidence.

And if that happened and happens so easily in those examples, it is prone to happen in other cases, too.

 

 

1) Climate change has been identified as a real problem by science, but now there is fortunately at least some building momentum to tackle it.

Yes, by climate engineering. Just stopping to use fossil fuels will not happen, until other energy sources are utilized. Even then, fossil fuel is just too cheap, unless you can offer people free energy in other forms, they will just dig out and burn free energy from the ground.

2) what will happen during our lifetime is probably something between two extremeties: a) Venus-like greenhouse-effect-outta-control (very unlikely), or b ) no significant change (very unlikely).

Change is certain, change is the only sure thing, the only constant.

The question is if humans cause some of that change - which is settled: Yes. By building infrastructure, we change the albedo (roads, houses, cities) and cause many other examples of changed microclimate at least.

The next question how much of the overall change is from human activity. Probably impossible to tell.

The next question is if climate change will hurt human interests. Probably impossible to tell, too, because we cannot predict the scale and effects of future climate change.

The next question is if potential negative effects on humans from climate change can be minimized by actions we hope (but cannot know) to minimize climate change caused by human activity. The answer is a clear No! because much of the CO2 has already been generated, and humanity will not stop burning fossil fuel until other, at least just as cheaply available energy sources are available. Just cutting back a little on fossil fuel use will not do anything, only spread the CO2 production over a somewhat longer time.

Electric cars or higher taxes on fossil fuel etc. will not change anything. "Climate change" as a political slogan is just used to sell such cars or facilitate tax increases - a pretext for making people accept and do things certain interest groups want.

Highest probability event is loss of inhabitable land in some areas (floods, drought, extreme weather). Food supply get hit, economy may go into recession.

Too difficult to predict. We only can try to adapt. Desertification etc. happens, and did happen. Loss of farmable land happens. But as the climate changes and makes some parts of the world unfarmable, other areas of land open up,

for example the rising temperatures in Greenland open up vast spaces of fertile lands for agriculture:

https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/04/world/greenland-secrets/index.html

3) The effects will hit poor regions of the world hardest. Western societies are so ultra wealthy, we will probably just take economic impact and then adapt. We will probably need to have harsh immigration control because people will flee areas affected areas (famine, wars, etc). The hardest impact in western countries will hit the poor population (food, fuel, etc prices go up.) Those who are well-off take the smallest impact.

So what? Outside the industrialized countries misery and death were and are quite the norm. I do not worry about, for example, whole of Africa. If 90% of them died, I would not care.

And, I feel I should point out, most people in the West would not.

See, how did you feel about the news reports about the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

I am sure you were not significantly stirred by the deaths of millions of Negroes. In comparison, if you had suffered a dent or big scratch in your car, or bumped and broke your toe, or broke your TV, you would have felt a much higher emotional

activation than just learning that a few millions of Negroes died by killing each other.

Or, every day, for over a decade, the US alone drone-bombs and kills people all over the world, amounting to dozens killed every single day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._drone_strikes

Again, you do not care, and I don't either.

It's just facts, and we can ignore it, because those people are irrelevant to us.

The situation changes for most people if propaganda is activated and their emotions, sentimentality exploited:

Say, this are killed Africans:

 

Emotional reaction: Fear and disgust. Most people do not care for them, only want to be sure they stay away.

 

Compare the effect of this picture for public reporting of Negro affairs:

 

The big eyes and other child features as well as the other emotional cues trigger sentimentality in the observer of the picture, activating instincts that lead to a much higher probability to accept personal costs to help those blacks,

for example by accepting higher taxes for foreign aid or donating money to charities.

 

But both picture show the same kind of people, the same basic problem. Being exposed through by media of the first, people will not do much, while being exposed of the 2nd, will feel sentimental emotions and open their wallet or accept political actions they would not otherwise agree to.

But both pictures show the same kind of people - those poor, little children will grow into the dangerous and unreasonable predators in the first picture.

By aiding them, one would just feed the snake that would late bite you.

 

Remember:

There have been great and many "humanitarian crises" in the recent past, killing, even genociding millions - and the gates of the West stayed shut!

Only now, as elites decided we must have mass immigration due to economic needs, suddenly they found their dear hearts, and not having mass immigration, even protecting borders, is suddenly impossible, immoral, "Nazi".

Moral feelings can be exploited by media, empathy being prevented or enforced, to make people accept political measures of their leaders.

 

4) As long as one is among the well-off westerners, you are relatively safe. But that should not mean one should ignore the environmental effects entirely.

Governments watch and analyze world affairs very carefully and sophisticatedly, have no doubt about that.

 

We all should learn to conserve resources, consume less and teach our children to value the Better Things in life (I.e. things you can not buy). This is useful even now, because when you consume less and waste less, you save money, which is always a good idea.

No. I do not want to "conserve resources", just so some people I do not care for elsewhere have it maybe somewhat better. I want to live and expand, and that means using up resources, in competition for those resources with other people,

and the loser in that competition will get exterminated. This cannot be prevented, ultimately, anyhow.

And the saving of money is only a thing because of high taxes, for example, for using water. Water is never used up, only eternally recycled. We have more than enough water, but it is artificially made expensive by taxes, which are then used not on the water supply, but for other things. In Northern Europe, saving water is idiocy, we have more of it than we could ever waste, it literally falls out of the sky. Saving water here will not even prevent people to die of thirst elsewhere.

 

Also:

If you want to reduce significantly the ecologic impact of humanity, then cull humanity. I will not accept a falling or just slower rise of my living standard so that billions of Africans and Asians can rise theirs.

If you remove those Africans, or at least isolate them on their continent, you prevent another billion of people having an environmental impact from consumerism.

Ideally, we should reduce humans being alive to perhaps just one billion, who then could live with high living standards and consumption levels while having minimum ecologic impact.

But if you have ten billion humans, as we are headed to, they will even have a huge ecological impact even when their average living standard were very low, compared to current Western standards.

So, if you care for environmental aspects or human life quality, the best policy is the same: Reduce the number of humans. Implications should be clear.

 

 

5) I think my personal strategy would be: work hard to remain among privileged westerners,

No hard work even necessary: Just by being born in Europe you have won the jackpot. Our social welfare system will make sure you will do quite well even if you, individually, should become lazy.

It's unjust, but this is how reality is. Other people are born crippled just by luck, and some people have been born as Africans. We have been lucky and successful. We should not feel guilty for it,

not feel guilty to be better, better off, even genetically superior. Let not guilt-trip other to manipulate you into submission, into defeat - they are not doing it for "justice" or "morality", but for their own

selfish gain.

 

but also -in everyday life- reduce ecological footprint and research ways to save energy, conserve resources and recycle/reuse as much stuff as possible instead of throw-away culture. Buy robust and repairable items instead of cheap disposable ones.

Again:

Why? You seem to me to kind of feeling guilty that you even exist! Get rid of that guilt! Is it inborn or has it been educated, "brain-washed" into you by leftists?

You have an unalienable right to exist, to try to keep existing, to try to keep reproducing - by preventing others from achieving survival and reproduction, if need be.

Do not restrict yourself of necessary resources to facilitate the well-being or even survival of others! They would not reciprocate, especially if they are genetically very different to you - invest in yourself, your own people, your family; not in those who are not like you, who hate you for being better, as this is the usual attitude of the inferior towards the superior.

This is what life, including human life is! Why are you attempting to move towards suicide by caring too much for others unrelated to you?

You are the descendant of a long line of ancestors, from the beginning of life itself, who successfully managed to beat other organisms and humans for survival and reproduction, by killing them by being stronger or more clever than them!

If you accept harm to yourself or your family because they can guilt-trip you for being superior into defeat, you are acting most wrong, I think.

I feel you should be more self-confidently selfish.

As I posted elsewhere,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest

makes sense, but only after one's own needs, one's own optimized survival is maximized.

Sure, wasting resources should be minimized absent free energy, but there is a limit to it, and to live, to exist, to reproduce, we just need resources, and more are better than less, and because there is a war for resources and mates, for life and survival, anyway, I, at least, will not accept restricting myself significantly just to further the survival of others, especially others I could not care less for because I think they are or will become enemies, if treated well.

 

The most important prepper -thing I might do is to buy are big Jerry can of fuel to the garage for emergencies. A water purifier might be a good idea too, because extreme weather may increase probabilities of the drinking water to go temporarily non-potable (via sewage floods, etc). Good quality hiking equipment and wilderness survival skills are also good to be available (if you like hiking and being in nature like I do, I need them anyway.)

All reasonable generally, to a degree. A huge catastrophe nobody could survive, because we need a working economy and industry, medical supplies, food and energy. Just getting over temporary problems by having some stored resources, energy etc. is generally a good idea; but overdoing it would be a waste of resources, because resources spent preparing for a low-chance catastrophic event are resources that are wasted if the event never materializes. Another argument I heard from others:

Those in a good bunker surviving a global nuclear holocaust are going to be the most miserable, because they will just die most slowly. Therefore, do not invest in huge bunkers, invest in prevention of such a catastrophic event - which, individually is rather impossible, but I feel we have mostly competent governments, especially in the West.

 

In the OP you wondered if you should prepare to kill other humans:

Should one invest in guns and ammo instead of stocks and funds?

 

I think some weaponry is good to have, otherwise others that know of your stock of supplies in an emergencies could just take them away from you easily by force.

Resources you cannot protect are resources you not really have.

Especially with the widespread rioting, criminal shootings, hand grenade attacks, Muslim and Negro ghettos full of guns, and mass arson and mass rapes going on in Sweden due to low-quality human mass immigration you should be safer to be in a remote area, with secret supplies of your own, and equipped with deadly guns.

Swedish dark-skinned immigrants are on a killing spree even now, in a time of plenty of resources and social welfare - I think you know what to expect from them if resources were to dry up: Sotha and his family becomes their prey - so prepare, but wisely so: What nobody knows you own is very difficult to take away from you, the aggressor being neighbors, the government, or the immigrant brutes.

Whatever you have to do, in the end, only survival counts; getting exterminated for acting moral is insanity, slave mentality. The winner takes it all! Such is reality.

 

6) For solving the climate change, there is not much more an individual can do

Exactly. So do not get manipulated into accepting higher taxes, or stopping to want to use plastic bags.

Even if the whole West were to vanish suddenly, the problem would persist.

Better prevent using other regions of the world from using fossil fuels, sabotaging or warring them, so that they cannot rise to the level of wealth, and thus economic impact, we ourselves enjoy.

If not anybody can have it, I want to be among those who can, by any means.

 

In western democracies, scary amount of responsibility is put into the hands to the voters. Instead for voting populists or people who only drive the interests of your power group, we should vote for well-informed people who make decisions backed up by science, not just random thoughts of the day.

Does not work like that, voters are egoistic and stupid, because the majority is, because human nature is so. If you doubt this, experiment yourself: Make a list of easy issues you feel everybody should understand. Then go in a public place, like a shopping street, and ask random people about those things. You will find an astounding level of ignorance.

Many higher-cognitive-ability people do not really understand how it is to be on the other side of the bell curve. Do not think those people are just like you, can do what you can intuitively. They are more like you were if you were extremely tired or drunk. People with IQs in the 60s to 80s, like Africans, are practically hopeless.

(Note that highly capable people of African descent indeed exist - they are just very rare, and therefore cannot be the basis for one's general judgments on dealing with racial issues.)

And those people are voters. Neither their ignorance or their voting power can be taken from them - but it can be dealt with, through propaganda.

Not one single political issue in a modern democracy was ever really decided by the voters, and much less understood completely by them.

In propaganda, in democracy, you can only work to control voting with extreme oversimplifications of issues in public discourse; and it works, because the ignorant and lower-IQ people are always in the majority. This is how democracy really works - without the majority being easily manipulated ignorants democracy would be unstable or even impossible, because the very high level of complexity underlying actual political and economical decisions is impossible to explain to the public.

7) Believing populists who offer ultra-simple solutions to ultra-complex problems ("everything is the EUs/immigrants'/jews/nazis/used car salesmens fault") gets us confused.

But this is how democracy works, it cannot be different. Without oversimplification of issues, there can be no public discussion of issues.

And "populism" is exactly what, according the naive definition of democracy, political leaders should be: "Populus" means people, nation, community - exactly those who are officially the deciders in democracy, and populists are those who carry through with the opinions of the people. If you want to avoid having populists, you must avoid having a democracy, at least on the outside.

 

Using "othering" gets us confused ("everything is the elites/researchers fault." or "the elites/scientist conspire against the common people.") Fact is that humans are mostly the same: they have the same needs, the same fears, the same biases. When you see an elite or other "othering" group and want to hate them, it might be a good idea to remember that they are human just like you.

Yes, human like me, and therefore prone to want to kill them if need be just like I am prone to kill them. People often have opposing interests. Then there is conflict, and it may become deadly.

 

Closed mind gets us confused ("I'm not gonna listen to this data because the source is an expert, and I do not like experts nor the message. I prefer to listen what matches with my pre-existing beliefs.")

Yes,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Being distrustful towards leaders and specialists gets us confused.

No. You cannot just trust them, because they have biases and interests of their own, therefore consciously or unconsciously hurting your own interests.

Never really trust naively.

Or, in Reagan's words: "Trust, but verify."

Trust is only good when dealing with honest people, and you only know if they are really honest after the event, and if they turned out not honest, you may well end up dead.

 

(If you distrust sources with detailed information (specialist) or sources with broad big-picture or information (leader), you only have your own cognition to rely on and will probably get incorrect results.

Perhaps, perhaps not. I prefer to try to do the thinking myself, and rely on "authority" as little as possible. That has, until now, served me very well.

 

For most reliable results, always use multiple sources and know that all sources are not as equally reliable.)

With current internet surveillance and manipulation technology, even just from regular marketing or public relations people, much of a wide range of information and search results is already manipulated.

There are whole companies specializing in making information disappear on the internet, or making things so that a very one-sided information environment is presented even to the skilled user of search engines.

For example, the West's "hornet nest" strategy papers for dealing with the Middle East surge of young Muslim men by making them go at war with each other (ISIS etc.) to let them kill each other to remove them as a threat to the West have been wiped almost completely, even from Wikileaks; the evidence that the West delivered large amounts of weaponry to them and stirred up hatred among them to make them kill off each other more quickly was wiped from the net as well, etc.

 

The only way to get clarity is to rely on science. The thoughts in your mind may be true, or they might be totally (utterly and horribly) wrong, and you cannot know which is the case.

True science is indeed best, but only an ideal. In reality you only deal with science through human activity, and this is often biased or motivated to deceive.

 

The only way to know which thought is true is to test them using the methods given by science. Not everyone is a specialist in complicated fields of science, and like Spring said if the message of the specialist does not make sense to you, it probably means you do not understand the topic, rather than the specialist does not understand their own field of expertise.

Dangerous, I think, because you leave the "critical critical thinking" to others.

And, usually, in reality of science, there is no bifurcation into "what all scientists think is true" and "what everybody else thinks is true"; actually, on a great many issues, you have different scientists holding conflicting opinions on what is the truth.

It's about echo chamber frenzy, cherry picking the story that catches your fancy and not about what is really true.

Wishful thinking is human nature, and was always been in effect. Rationality is going after truth and acting on it even if it makes one uncomfortable.

 

 

 

One of the greatest problems we have is our attitude towards consumption.

The best fundamental way, I think, to deal with that, absent free energy, is to limit the number of humans. This will, while allowing all existing humans a high standard of living, minimize economic impact of humanity so we can achieve sustainability.

This means that billions of Asians and Africans have to vanish, in my opinion, or at least get prevented from enjoying rising wealth.

 

 

Another point that goes in a similar direction is pressuring people into buying later versions of products they already have. Apple releases a new phone every year, which forces people who want to be "up to date" to buy it every year, even though their current phone works perfectly find

Apple grew to being the biggest company of human history by exploiting envy and the universal human trait of status competition.

Apple products are luxury products. Being wasteful is exactly the purpose of luxury products, to signal high social status.

Actually, of course, most Apple products are bought by poor people who desperately attempt to signal to be rich people, thereby making the really rich people rich and richer by the actions of poor people attempting to appear rich.

 

Much stuff is produced with a limited lifespan, so people will keep on buying new stuff. These are examples of wasted recources, but it is in line with our current cunsumerism and is one of the most important threats to our recources.

If it is all recycled consumerism is nothing bad, and even useful or necessary to drive the economy!

Imagine you had a car, phone, TV that were "perfect". You only had to buy it once. Good for you.

But ten, forever, all researchers, engineers and factories that make products would have to close down forever, people getting unemployed forever, just because they did the "moral", but insanely stupid decision to produce a perfect product that never breaks. No thanks, I prefer even the most extreme forms of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

over such a system.

 

 

@Outlooker: to pick up a quite old post: I am well aware that a catalyst is not used up (especially, with turnover numbers over 2000; these are really impressive). I am a chemist myself, so I understand the science behind it quite well (just wanted to clarify, as I sometimes got the impression, you doubted that I knew what I was talking about), but even if ruthenium is used as a catalyst, you would need several tons of it in an industrial process. As I said: I am not 100% sure how much ruthenium we have on earth (and I would exclude future recources in space for now until they can actually be harvested), but limited amounts, especially of rare elements, is a factor we should keep in mind regarding recources. Additionally, as I do not have access to the article, I have no idea how the ruthenium has to be treated to function as a catalyst. It is very rare that you can simply throw the metal in there as is. Commonly, you would need some organic framework or at least a high surface etc., wich would need further recources (be it chemicals or energy).

Again, this is exactly my point: Yields, efficiency and availability of some limited-supply catalyst are irrelevant if energy becomes "free", because we can easily afford even low-yield methods for air-to-fuel technology.

The ruthenium-catalyzed pathway is just one of many methods available, so no need to concentrate on it so much. Many different, though mostly less efficient, methods already exist.

 

Also, out of curiosity: May I ask in which field you work? You appear to be neither stupid nor uneducated, so I assume that you also work as a scientist and given your opinion on "soft" sciences and even medicine, I assume that these are not your fields of study. I am just curious, which background you have.

Short:

Studied physics, became ill (autoimmune liver disease) which ended studies. I looked for a cure, and found one, out of sheer luck, by combining some findings from unrelated studies on animal experiments that modeled the liver disease.

I experimented on myself with the treatment, and managed to get better, most importantly avoiding need for a liver transplant. I sold the treatment for quite a lot of money, and received additional income from its application from a licencing agreement allowing its application.

I then studied chemistry, mainly to get into weapons research, as this was a long-time interest I held. I did my diploma on (then) exotic boron-based propellant chemistry. It turned out to not be as exciting or interesting as I had hoped, and I got quite frustrated, but pushed through. Due to the quite specialized kind of research work I ended up doing I was selected to work with this company:

https://bayern-chemie.com/

contributing a little bit to build that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(missile),

concretely parts of it's novel hybrid boron-based engine design, which allowed for much higher ranges at higher speeds, but was very challenging due to the nature of boron-organic compounds combusting very differently from hydrocarbon-based fuels, causing all kinds of problems with corrosion, including clogging of fuel lines exposed to higher temperatures necessitating additives and actively cooled fuel valves, RF-reflectance of the exhaust particles (important for military application) etc.

After 1,5 years, however, I decided to quit that job, because I wanted to return home to Saxony, where I was born and live now, and because working for a wage made no longer much sense, because the income from my liver-disease treatment license and capital income is greater than I could ever get from a regular job.

I was always interested in investing theory and practice, from being an early teen, and invested in stocks, and while not becoming exactly rich, I managed to make it a bit profitable for me even while in school; now, this is all that I do anymore, basically only caring about my investments.

While I just like learning and keep up doing it just because I like it, and a more general understanding of the world and its affairs also helps with investment, I desired to do something with my hands, too, and have got a wood working shop built in my house, and now learn and practice wood working, for example trying to build furniture and improving my house with wood-paneling to cover the walls and and build other things, too - currently I am fascinating with CNC wood working.

 

A common example is the "vaccines cause autism" discussion. It was spread and is still in the head of many people, even though it was debunked years ago.

But autism incidence increases indeed, and there must be some cause.

And while I do not know much about vaccines, or even their association with autism, it is established fact that vaccination causes crippling diseases and even death;

the net benefit from vaccination is just much larger than the tragic, rather rare, side effects vaccines have in a few people (like the ambulance car analogy I gave in an earlier post).

[stumpy]

rare metal is Indium, its used to make Indium Tin Oxide, used in the coating on glass that makes a touchscreen touch sensitive.

 

the only thing i remember about plants, like trees was that they needed carbon dioxide to live.

 

I just wonder how they work out what carbon dioxide was produced by industry, and what carbon dioxide is produced, by lifeforms, volcano's, as volcano's under the sea will be harder to work out as some of the co2 produced will dissolve into the sea water, and some taken by underwater lifeforms to turn into food.

Edited August 14, 2018 by stumpy

[Outlooker]

Because it seems to me many here do not question the honesty of the scientific process, just let me add a study I happened to come about just today:

 

 

 

More:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/health/obesity-malaysia-nestle.html

https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3472.full

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/07/18/629575118/medicaid-under-the-influence-how-drugmakers-sway-medication-options-for-patients

 

 

Beware those scientific studies -- most are wrong, researcher warns

https://www.yahoo.com/news/beware-those-scientific-studies-most-wrong-researcher-warns-164336076.html

 

 

Hidden conflicts in FDA drug approvals? pharma $ to FDA advisors – before and after advisory meetings that recommended drug approvals. “Pay-later conflicts of interest” have gone largely unnoticed & entirely unpoliced.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6397/16

 

 

 

 

FDA repays drug industry by rushing risky meds to market

As pharma companies underwrite three-fourths of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s budget for scientific reviews, the agency is increasingly fast-tracking expensive drugs with significant side effects and unproven health benefits.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/07/01/fda-repays-drug-industry-by-rushing-risky-meds-to-market.html

 

https://idmprogram.com/scientific-opinions-for-sale/

 

 

 

 

And on and on it goes, endlessly.

Many scientists have become prostitutes, just like journalists, and therefore the once-noble institution of science has become a cesspool of falsehoods.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Outlooker

[Springheel]

Many scientists have become prostitutes, just like journalists, and therefore the once-noble institution of science has become a cesspool of falsehoods.

 

 

"Many computers crash, and therefore the once noble computer is now a useless unreliable piece of garbage."

 

You're making both a spotlight fallacy and a category error.

 

The fact that you can demonstrate flaws in a system does not mean the system itself is inherently flawed. Many systems (including science) are designed to self-correct for flaws.

[Outlooker]

 

"Many computers crash, and therefore the once noble computer is now a useless unreliable piece of garbage."

You're making both a spotlight fallacy and a category error.

The fact that you can demonstrate flaws in a system does not mean the system itself is inherently flawed. Many systems (including science) are designed to self-correct for flaws.

I said "many scientists"; and I did not say that all of science is flawed, or that the principle of science is flawed generally; and indeed, as you say, it is self-correcting, as long as it is not totally corrupted, which it is not.

But if you mix a bit of feces in a cake, the whole cake becomes like feces.

And if there is some fraudulent science, we cannot trust scientific results generally anymore naively for making our decisions, which we have to make in the present, and endure their effects right now or soon,

while the hopefully auto-corrective principles of the scientific process may take much longer to produce the corrections, the truth, at last.

Therefore, 100% trust in scientific findings and reports is not sensible, and cannot spare us being sceptical, that is, to try to think for ourselves.

Indeed, one method for this, an easy 1st step, is to try to base one's judging on a broader base of scientific data, hoping that it's probable that only a minority of it is fraudulent or just wrong.

But this is often already quite a lot of work - it questions scientific results to get closer to the truth.

Which, incidentally, is a core aspect of the actual scientific method - not trusting results and prevailing data and explanations, and attempting to gather one's own, and to verify oneself.

But, realistically, this is impossible with a great many of scientific findings, because for lack of resources or the impossibility to recreate the exact conditions of past experiments (like in social science or medicine).

 

I feel we work ourselves up over semantics; we think alike in that the scientific method is indeed superior, and, in it's idealized form, as an idea, is optimal, at least the best we have for finding truth.

I just want to stress that until it produces truth, it temporarily can (and often, perhaps usually in some fields) produces falsehoods; and that this problem is amplified by incentives of some scientists to knowingly produce false science.

But the central usefulness of science is for helping us to make more successful decisions, and those have to be done right now or soon, and we have very often not the time to wait for science to produce perfect truth.

For example, a doctor has to try to save the life of his cancer patient now, and the only options he has, from all of science, are all imperfect, a mix of truthful correct findings on the efficacy of a treatment option, along with wrong or fraudulent findings.

Science will take it's course, all right, but we cannot wait until then in practice, until truth and untruth are perfectly proven.

Therefore, in executing decisions, we cannot attribute a 100% chance that scientific finding or even consensus among scientists is actually 100% true.

The - ideally temporary - flaws in actual science available in the present make it necessary to weigh probabilities and value of evidence ourselves;

unless real objective truths are found in the very end of applying the scientific process, real-world decisions are therefore still subjective and may ignore or contradict at least some of current scientific findings and prevailing scientists` opinions.

 

Example:

Quite a lot scientists predicted a catastrophic mass epidemic from mad cow disease, about 20 years ago, that would destroy the brains of millions of people that had eaten beef.

There was no scientific consensus.

Still, governments and industry had to make a decision, on destroying the cattle stock and meat products or not. They weighed probabilities, NOT scientific results, as there was no agreed-on science available, and it appears today their decision was correct.

 

 

[Sotha]

"I feel we work ourselves up over semantics; we think alike in that the scientific method is indeed superior, and, in it's idealized form, as an idea, is optimal, at least the best we have for finding truth.

 

I just want to stress that until it produces truth, it temporarily can (and often, perhaps usually in some fields) produces falsehoods; [...]

 

But the central usefulness of science is for helping us to make more successful decisions, and those have to be done right now or soon, and we have very often not the time to wait for science to produce perfect truth."

 

I think we are in perfect agreement here. Points I want to make are:

*In life we have to accept high level of uncertainty all the time. Is it even fair to ever expect The Perfect Truth, or 100% certainty from science? I would not expect that. 70-90% is pretty awesome/impressive already.

*There are rogue elements in every trade. That's why I suggested to always check the source reliability and check multiple references. Find the consensus data. Disregard unreliable sources, emphasize reliable sources. Scientific mainstream is a good place to be, but not always right. It is true that sometimes being right condemns you to the minority.

*If one adjusts their view according to current mainstream scientific consensus, they have probably the most accurate and reliable view the humanity can provide. But it also means one has to be prepared to change views as the consensus views start to shift as new studies are completed. In reality normal people are not going do this struggle all the time. But when Important Decisions are made, the decision makers should check the science, see the options and choose the optimum one available at the time. Like you buy something expensive: you do your homework, you check reviews (from good source), you ask around (good sources), you list your options and you buy the optimum, not the best, not the cheapest. Information will ALWAYS be incomplete, but this way you at least did your best to make a wise choice.

*It is good to be sceptical, and it is good to think to yourselves. The problem is that the issues are often so complicated that we are helpless in arriving to correct conclusions on our own:make one little mistake and you could end up far away from the truth, while thinking you are correct, and them make a horrible mistake. That's why we have experts. They know the topics better and have a better shot in arriving to correct conclusions. If you build a house, you ask the construction professionals for advice, not the economist. When you invest to the stock market, you ask the economists for advice, not the construction professionals. After gathering the information, you should be enlightened enough to make the correct decisions. (All this assuming the experts were trained according to the most recent up-tp-date scientific knowledge, which is not always the case, sadly.)

[peter_spy]

IMO, you'd really spend that time better by making props or missions, instead of writing huge walls of text. While anti-intellectualism and general distrust towards science might be very common in USA, it's just one influential power in the world.

 

In Europe, the structure and mechanisms behind studies and grants aren't so commercialized. In many countries, universities are public and free, and it's the independent bodies that decide who gets grants. Sure, there are always some favored groups, or even political influences, but everything isn't about commerce and corporations, and that's how the state should work. It's not always about immediate profitability and business, that's not how majority of public life works. Thus even graduates of "less marketable" faculties like philosophy will get their grants. That's even more true for art faculties.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Judith

[Anderson]

So what? Outside the industrialized countries misery and death were and are quite the norm. I do not worry about, for example, whole of Africa. If 90% of them died, I would not care.

 

 

Operating with Citizen Kane clichés is highly disturbing Mr Outlooker.

 

But I tell you only this: everybody can say so until things hit the fan in your life personally.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

No. I do not want to "conserve resources", just so some people I do not care for elsewhere have it maybe somewhat better. I want to live and expand, and that means using up resources, in competition for those resources with other people,

and the loser in that competition will get exterminated. This cannot be prevented, ultimately, anyhow.

And the saving of money is only a thing because of high taxes, for example, for using water. Water is never used up, only eternally recycled. We have more than enough water, but it is artificially made expensive by taxes, which are then used not on the water supply, but for other things. In Northern Europe, saving water is idiocy, we have more of it than we could ever waste, it literally falls out of the sky. Saving water here will not even prevent people to die of thirst elsewhere.

 

 

 

Falsehood. Because that potable water of ours gets potable only because it goes through filtering in the process of water fluoridation (your region may have other methods too) so that we can't get cholera and other things that claimed many lives in history. This process requires expenses. Therefore the less water you consume, the less money the state wastes for that process.

Moreover, we aren't even discussing the costs of heating water at thermoelectrical plants or other infrastructure buildings to have water at higher tempertatures for household use which of course uses electricity.

So, you're wrong. Using up those resources has an effect upon environment.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

 

Why? You seem to me to kind of feeling guilty that you even exist! Get rid of that guilt! Is it inborn or has it been educated, "brain-washed" into you by leftists?

You have an unalienable right to exist, to try to keep existing, to try to keep reproducing - by preventing others from achieving survival and reproduction, if need be.

Do not restrict yourself of necessary resources to facilitate the well-being or even survival of others! They would not reciprocate, especially if they are genetically very different to you - invest in yourself, your own people, your family; not in those who are not like you, who hate you for being better, as this is the usual attitude of the inferior towards the superior.

This is what life, including human life is! Why are you attempting to move towards suicide by caring too much for others unrelated to you?

You are the descendant of a long line of ancestors, from the beginning of life itself, who successfully managed to beat other organisms and humans for survival and reproduction, by killing them by being stronger or more clever than them!

If you accept harm to yourself or your family because they can guilt-trip you for being superior into defeat, you are acting most wrong, I think.

I feel you should be more self-confidently selfish.

As I posted elsewhere,

https://en.wikipedia...d_self-interest

makes sense, but only after one's own needs, one's own optimized survival is maximized.

Sure, wasting resources should be minimized absent free energy, but there is a limit to it, and to live, to exist, to reproduce, we just need resources, and more are better than less, and because there is a war for resources and mates, for life and survival, anyway, I, at least, will not accept restricting myself significantly just to further the survival of others, especially others I could not care less for because I think they are or will become enemies, if treated well.

 

 

What if your children will be assholes who'll kill each other over your inheritance and in the end it will just be owned by the state? Or some immigrant polishing children's shoes to get a will with the aforementioned inheritance, that will get because those children were too selfish, leading to being alone, rich and miserable? Isn't that even more pointless to fight so selfishly for life only within your family? It's Santa Barbara type stories but they do happen.

You can't stop the emigration of poor people to rich countries either. The same way that colonists raped natives in Africa, Asia, things will always backfire into gypsies, arabs, robbing, killing Europeans who once enslaved them. It's only logical because colonists never cared to give them a fair life in their own countries. So you're right, it's the problems of Europeans, among whom Germans as well of those that recklessly assumed themselves to be superior. Every former imperial country gets a slice of it. But karma has a way I guess. Unless you're willing to buy a handgun for self-defense. Most people don't, so there you go.

 

The catch is that as time passes we not only get more advanced modern democracies, but also more advanced, sophisticated and ruthless totalitarian dictatorships. So let's grab popcorn and enjoy the show if humanity never learns.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

There's 3 stages of accepting any truth if there's a sincere desire to find it - at first it's a knee jerk reaction of denying, then it's anger and then finally accepting it.

We're kind of ridiculous how this happens all the time in our psychology but we should strive all the same to find truth. But any of us claims absolute truth in some categorical terms, we are farther away then when we stood upon starting in relation to where we're supposed to be going to.

[Sotha]

"What if your children will be assholes who'll kill each other over your inheritance and in the end it will just be owned by the state? Or some immigrant polishing children's shoes to get a will with the aforementioned inheritance, that will get because those children were too selfish, leading to being alone, rich and miserable? Isn't that even more pointless to fight so selfishly for life only within your family? It's Santa Barbara type stories but they do happen. "

 

Exactly. If humans really did pointlessly fight each other, we could have never progressed this far. We progressed this far because we stopped being selfish bastards and we banded together and collaborated. One could of course call this being selfish, too: you help others only because you benefit from it yourself.

 

So maybe we are selfish and help others for mutual benefit, or maybe we are self-sacrificing heroes who help others altruistically, the net effect is the same: everyone benefits and progress progresses and the world is not as shitty place as it would be if everyone were really fighting each other brutally all the time.

 

I like to help because helping makes me feel good and it gives life meaning. A nice bonus is that when you have a track record of "helper" rather than A "selfish bastard", others are more likely to help me back. It is sort of an win-win situation.

 

I am sorry, but I sort of missed something: what makes Anderson believe we (humanity in general) progress towards dictatorships? Or did you mean your own country? Some countries are, and some countries are not.

 

I think democracies slip into dictatorships when people are Confused (see my earlier post) and because of their confusion, they vote populists, religious or other groups into power, who then start to systematically change the political, juridical and media systems to permanently enforce their own power.

 

One more reason why we should combat the Confusion and those who wish to promote it.

[Destined]

*If one adjusts their view according to current mainstream scientific consensus, they have probably the most accurate and reliable view the humanity can provide. But it also means one has to be prepared to change views as the consensus views start to shift as new studies are completed. In reality normal people are not going do this struggle all the time. But when Important Decisions are made, the decision makers should check the science, see the options and choose the optimum one available at the time. Like you buy something expensive: you do your homework, you check reviews (from good source), you ask around (good sources), you list your options and you buy the optimum, not the best, not the cheapest. Information will ALWAYS be incomplete, but this way you at least did your best to make a wise choice.

 

I strongly agree with that statement. And I also agree that politics should make use of this (ideally by having specialists of the respective fields, not like in Germany have the former Minister of familiy affairs suddenly be the Minister of defense; I know that they have their staff that advises them, but still it feels wrong). Unfortunately, experience shows that politicians fear that they would "lose face", when they admit that they were wrong before. Thus, they rather see a wrong decision through to the end at all cost before admitting they were wrong. This is mainly due to negative repercussions from their party, who will exploit the "weakness" of a wrong decision to forward their own career. Personally, I would have more respect for a politician admitting that he/she was wrong than I have for one who sees through an obviously wrong decision and would wish that he/she stays in power.

 

 

Falsehood. Because that potable water of ours gets potable only because it goes through filtering in the process of water fluoridation (your region may have other methods too) so that we can't get cholera and other things that claimed many lives in history. This process requires expenses. Therefore the less water you consume, the less money the state wastes for that process.

Moreover, we aren't even discussing the costs of heating water at thermoelectrical plants or other infrastructure buildings to have water at higher tempertatures for household use which of course uses electricity.

So, you're wrong. Using up those resources has an effect upon environment.

This is only partly true. Conserving water makes only sense to a certain degree, as our sewers are built for a minimum amount of water. If there is not sufficient water, water works will have to directly pump water into the sewers to prevent them from drying up and taking damage from it. This does not mean that I will leave my tap running all the time just because I can, but I am not as concerned with saving water than I am with other environmental issues.

[peter_spy]

I think democracies slip into dictatorships when people are Confused (see my earlier post) and because of their confusion, they vote populists, religious or other groups into power, who then start to systematically change the political, juridical and media systems to permanently enforce their own power.

 

And that's what's happening in USA, but also in Poland, and it already happened in Hungary. "Conservative" politicians gained votes of the frustrated, those looking for fast results and easy victims to blame for their life disappointments. When they got the mandate, they started dismantling major democratic mechanisms, changing constitution and other fundamental bills of rights to rule undisputed, regardless of elections. Nobody expected that, as democratic mechanisms kind of assume that all sides have to play nice, otherwise the system collapses. Noone expected such brutish, primitive, and borderline deranged politicians to emerge and just take what they think is theirs.

[Anderson]

 

I am sorry, but I sort of missed something: what makes Anderson believe we (humanity in general) progress towards dictatorships? Or did you mean your own country? Some countries are, and some countries are not.

 

I think democracies slip into dictatorships when people are Confused (see my earlier post) and because of their confusion, they vote populists, religious or other groups into power, who then start to systematically change the political, juridical and media systems to permanently enforce their own power.

 

One more reason why we should combat the Confusion and those who wish to promote it.

Apologies.

 

What I mean is that African countries under apartheid were full of injustice and order, organized slavery. But what followed was very often the biggest chaos the world has known and regimes ferocious enough to compete with Hitler or Mussolini's regimes.

What I mean is that as developed countries prosper today, with equal potency the anachronic, brutal dictatorships that still remain in the world become more bloody to manage surviving all over the world (North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China, Nicaragua).

 

It's plainly depressing that countries with common heritage, many of them latin speaking countries - Italy, Spain, France and former colonies in America and Africa, Romania still have those totalitarian reflexes when police acts, when mafia does what it wills. What are the odds things can improve without people losing their minds back into anarchy?

 

It's wishful thinking but lack of any institutional capacity pretty much = to anarchy in Haiti, Angola and elsewhere.

 

If we're still on a game forum, the best illustration is the Tropico games showing countries in eternal transition, on the edge of authoritarianism.

[Anderson]

 

And that's what's happening in USA, but also in Poland, and it already happened in Hungary. "Conservative" politicians gained votes of the frustrated, those looking for fast results and easy victims to blame for their life disappointments. When they got the mandate, they started dismantling major democratic mechanisms, changing constitution and other fundamental bills of rights to rule undisputed, regardless of elections. Nobody expected that, as democratic mechanisms kind of assume that all sides have to play nice, otherwise the system collapses. Noone expected such brutish, primitive, and borderline deranged politicians to emerge and just take what they think is theirs.

 

At least neither Poland, nor Hungary can't change the fact emigration is a reality for years which limits their powers. On the other hand, if Italy can slip into cheap nationalism (again) than anything goes probably. Temporary I hope.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Anderson