Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

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[we_are_toast]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

The FIRE economy is not an appropriate analogy, as you are comparing scarcity in a man-made system with scarcity in systems of Nature. Man controls the former, but does not control the latter.

Your statement that "A 90% reduction in population is inevitable" is quite bold, and I would expect one to be able to demonstrate tangible scientific evidence in Nature to support such a conclusion.

Actually I'm not trying to compare the 2 systems. I'm trying to compare the failure of the arguments to convince people of the unsustainability of the FIRE economy with the failure of the arguments to convince people of the unsustainability of a population which has exceeded the survivable carrying capacity of the resources of the planet.

We could take a historic approach and look at cultures such as on Easter Island, or the Mayans, or the Anasazi, where the populations crashed by at least 90% when they exceeded the carrying capacity of their immediate environments.

Or we could take a modern day approach and look at what the future looks like when the climate has melted much of the ice in the world and where the weather patterns that sustain the worlds largest agricultural areas have shifted so as to cause a crash in world food production. Or maybe we could take a look at top soil erosion or ground water depletion or salinization of agricultural soils and extrapolate a future from those trends. Or maybe just take a look around at the agricultural areas in Africa that are experincing desertification and see how their populations have crashed by 90%.

Or maybe we could just explore here at itulip on the peak cheap oil threads and wonder what happens to the green revolution when oil spikes beyond $200 and we see another replay of what happened to fertalizer prices like this past spring.

How about the oceans? Maybe we can look at the crashing fish populations. Or maybe we can look at other species. Most bioligists now believe we are seeing the largest extinction of species on the planet since an astroid hit the planet 60 million years ago.

But would any of these arguments make a difference? Did the arguments warning of the pain and suffering from a collapsing FIRE economy make a difference?

[ASH]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

But what folly it is to imagine a bunch of scientists and engineers can run a country.

What's with all the hatin'?

[GRG55]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

Hanson on drugs?
Ha, he makes a lot of sense.

But what folly it is to imagine a bunch of scientists and engineers can run a country.

The real folly is that we continue to think a bunch of lawyers and career politicians can run a country [with a little help from their banker friends during the periodic and inevitable financial crises]...:rolleyes:

[Yaowarat]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

The real folly is that we continue to think a bunch of lawyers and career politicians can run a country [with a little help from their banker friends during the periodic and inevitable financial crises]...:rolleyes:

Read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" if you want to know what scientists and engineers would do for us. Now that is a hateful vision.

As for banksters, lawyers, and venal politicians, ya, I prefer them to scientists and engineers. Politicians are venal, they aren't absolutists convinced of their mental perfection.

Don't forget the Soviet Union thought itself to be a "scientific state".

Is observing the truth hateful? ASH? You sound like an Obama voter?

[ASH]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

Read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" if you want to know what scientists and engineers would do for us. Now that is a hateful vision.

Don't forget the Soviet Union thought itself to be a "scientific state".

Is observing the truth hateful? ASH? You sound like an Obama voter?

Nah -- I'm a scientist/engineer who is trying to be comic by inappropriately adopting the idiomatic slang of a group that perceives wrongful persecution in just about everything. It would be like an afluent WASP railing against "the Man."

Still, I think you may entertain an unreasonably stereotyped view of the personalities of scientists and engineers. I'm especially concerned that you seem to be confused by the difference between fictional caricatures and historical imposters who appropriated the word "science" to lend prestige to their ideologies -- and the real thing.

First of all, a science fiction book is not the best basis upon which to construct an argument. As for your example of the Soviet Union -- they called themselves a "scientific state" for the same reason that Scientologists use the root. Non-scientists and non-scientific movements have long tried to cloth dubious ideas ranging from the farcical to the genocidal in respectability by telling other non-scientists that their particular brand of crazy was "scientific". You are well to be suspicious of anyone who tells you they are going to "lead you scientifically", but this is very much different from needing to fear actual scientists and engineers in leadership positions.

Here's one real-world example. President Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer. Now, I know that the Simpsons have refered to President Carter as history's greatest monster, but he's hardly Pol Pot.

Observing the truth isn't hateful. I don't think you were observing the truth or being hateful.

[Guest]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

I side with Yaowarat on this. Give unlimited executive power to scientists and engineers and you'll discover an innate propensity to drift away from a humanistic interpretation of political philosophy. Not all, but taken into a collective, their "rationalistic" approach to things like "triage", or "optimization" of economic parameters can rapidly become unmoored from the more humanistic concerns. They regard the humanistic as merely another component among many, not always too readily understanding that it must always remain the anchor at the core.

Put a bunch of engineers together to design a constitutional system with checks and balances. What's to say they'll give preeminence in their formulas to notions of social justice? They'll be in hot pursuit of formulas which give the greatest "dynamic thrust" to the whole of course, but are "dynamic thrust" and "social justice" natural offshoots or corrolaries of each other? Not necessarily, and this concept may become entirely lost in their ensuing method. I share the same deep distrust as does Yaowarat of the "purely scientifically optimized" approach to social organization.

It is not hostility. It is rather caution, born of history. Scientific Socialism on both the left and the right are prime examples of the extent to which these enthusiasms can be abused. Political philosophy must be at the core, and that is a humanistic discipline, not a scientific one.

[sadsack]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

Whether it's scientists, "scientists," politicians or lawyers leading the country, Lord Acton's fundamental observation still holds (emphasis mine):

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

--- Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward (1949), Essays on Freedom and Power, Boston:The Becon Press, p. 364

[ASH]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

I side with Yaowarat on this. Give unlimited executive power to scientists and engineers and you'll discover an innate propensity to drift away from a humanistic interpretation of political philosophy.

Well, if we're talking about giving unlimited executive power to anyone, then I'm having the wrong conversation. Are you, Lukester, actually arguing that giving unlimited executive power to some type of person is okay -- and that there is something specific about scientists and engineers that would make only them dangerous in wielding unlimited power? I think you are indulging in a specious argument, because any type of person given absolute power would result in a terrible outcome.

I thought we were talking about whether scientists and engineers were unsuitable for realistic leadership positions. You know -- one colloquially talks about the President "leading" the nation, despite the fact that his power is not absolute. In this context, my example of Jimmy Carter -- not our best President, but not our worst, either -- is still a good example of disaster failing to strike.

If we really are talking about giving someone or some group absolute power, then I submit to you that the danger fundamentally lies in the nature of absolute power, and not the selection of the individual or group.

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

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[Chomsky]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing ⦠a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."

-- Aldous Huxley[/quote]


It's called television.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

Crazy. He thinks the world has become so complex that only scientists and engineers can understand it. In fact he states that they should be the only people to make decisions about the future of the human race.

I don't rate him as knowledgeable AT ALL.

It's called Google..

Anyways, scientists and engineers are only slightly smarter than the rest of the human race.

I find it laughable to think that somehow they are going to be that much better than anyone else at solving the complex problems we face.

I have a better idea - let's simplify the world and educate its populace.

Come up with policies which reduce consumption (ie, stop people buying expensive cars, big houses, luxury items, etc).

The more educated people are, the fewer babies they will have as well, helping the population problem.

The world needs to become an enlightened place where we draw happiness from self improvement, taking care of our health/living long lives, and interconnecting with others through communication and mentoring.

And not from buying toys or burning fuels that destroy the planet we live on.

[Guest]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

You post historical and pro-forma data about World population and when asked for a source you tell the requester to find his own source. What is this about?

Doubtless in your estimation, the global population explosion question is all about hyperbole and obfuscation, right? You were born with the blood of the rugged frontiersmen coursing through your veins and all that? :rolleyes: Look I'm not interested in a "heated debate" about the numbers involved in the global population exponent. That it is indeed exponential and currently progressing into largish numbers would appear to be the consensus already old sport. I doubt there is very much leeway for ideologically predicated arguments on these numbers, as they are fairly cut and dried at least in terms of the history already elapsed? You, I, or any tom dick or harry can dig up 20 sources for global population stats in about fifteen minutes of research. Find something serious to question. This is not a serious question. Your other objections below appear to be even more whimsical.

Quote:

Originally Posted by we_are_toast Actually I'm not trying to compare the 2 systems. I'm trying to compare the failure of the arguments to convince people of the unsustainability of the FIRE economy with the failure of the arguments to convince people of the unsustainability of a population which has exceeded the survivable carrying capacity of the resources of the planet. We could take a historic approach and look at cultures such as on Easter Island, or the Mayans, or the Anasazi, where the populations crashed by at least 90% when they exceeded the carrying capacity of their immediate environments. Or we could take a modern day approach and look at what the future looks like when the climate has melted much of the ice in the world and where the weather patterns that sustain the worlds largest agricultural areas have shifted so as to cause a crash in world food production. Or maybe we could take a look at top soil erosion or ground water depletion or salinization of agricultural soils and extrapolate a future from those trends. Or maybe just take a look around at the agricultural areas in Africa that are experincing desertification and see how their populations have crashed by 90%. Or maybe we could just explore here at itulip on the peak cheap oil threads and wonder what happens to the green revolution when oil spikes beyond $200 and we see another replay of what happened to fertalizer prices like this past spring. How about the oceans? Maybe we can look at the crashing fish populations. Or maybe we can look at other species. Most bioligists now believe we are seeing the largest extinction of species on the planet since an astroid hit the planet 60 million years ago. But would any of these arguments make a difference? Did the arguments warning of the pain and suffering from a collapsing FIRE economy make a difference?

Quite honestly, I look at this post and I just slump in my chair and wonder how one is supposed to combat a lifetime of propaganda.

Quite honestly "politicalfootballfan", I look at your glib retorts and wonder why anyone would bother debating these issues with you. Have it your way. Given the stupefying extent of your summary denials, I will surmise that the majority of people who choose to recognize the above issues as grounded in some truth will have little interest in bringing you up to speed.

The 21st Century will likely dawn on you all in an unpleasant rush, one day many years from now, when you are a retiree. Enjoy your idyll!

[Guest]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

We_are_toast - I do not remotely buy that the peak of global petroleum production will result in a 90% reduction in global population. This sort of wild eyed speculation gives those who recognize the real issues a bad name, and worse, it gives people like Politicalfootballfan a football to kick around. Having said that in my estimation his blanket denial of the entirety of points you raise is truly stunning. One of the most singularly "un-clued-in" contributors on these pages of all time, if he's denying any basis of truth in every last one of these points you raised.

Send him packing to desertifying Somalia or Chad, I would suggest. Let him develop his rugged self-sufficiency there for a six month sabbatical. America has been so rich in natural resources that it has imparted a stunning degree of conceit into some of us, the tenth or eleventh generation since our founding. We consider bursting abundance to be a natural birthright, all suggestions as to it's being finite a grave threat to our liberties, and we are bearing this conceit into a new century where it can ultimately raise the hackles of a good many other peoples should we begin to glance a little more interestedly at resources of theirs.

[GRG55]

Re: Peak Oil: Interview with Jay Hanson (Nov. 3, 2008)

Read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" if you want to know what scientists and engineers would do for us. Now that is a hateful vision.

As for banksters, lawyers, and venal politicians, ya, I prefer them to scientists and engineers. Politicians are venal, they aren't absolutists convinced of their mental perfection.

Don't forget the Soviet Union thought itself to be a "scientific state".

Is observing the truth hateful? ASH? You sound like an Obama voter?

I side with Yaowarat on this. Give unlimited executive power to scientists and engineers and you'll discover an innate propensity to drift away from a humanistic interpretation of political philosophy. Not all, but taken into a collective, their "rationalistic" approach to things like "triage", or "optimization" of economic parameters can rapidly become unmoored from the more humanistic concerns. They regard the humanistic as merely another component among many, not always too readily understanding that it must always remain the anchor at the core.

Put a bunch of engineers together to design a constitutional system with checks and balances. What's to say they'll give preeminence in their formulas to notions of social justice? They'll be in hot pursuit of formulas which give the greatest "dynamic thrust" to the whole of course, but are "dynamic thrust" and "social justice" natural offshoots or corrolaries of each other? Not necessarily, and this concept may become entirely lost in their ensuing method. I share the same deep distrust as does Yaowarat of the "purely scientifically optimized" approach to social organization.

It is not hostility. It is rather caution, born of history. Scientific Socialism on both the left and the right are prime examples of the extent to which these enthusiasms can be abused. Political philosophy must be at the core, and that is a humanistic discipline, not a scientific one.

My turn to laugh. Perhaps you both should remind yourselves that the last engineer to hold the office of President of the United States of America is the only one who managed to keep that splendid country OUT of war. The current incumbent is probably as far from a scientist or engineer as one can be. Did you enjoy the ride?