There are so many reasons why we ought to refuse and reject the propaganda-against-confidence, out there. A better-than-expected economy? Dropping crime rates? A working vaccine against malaria and looming extinction for both the Guinea worm and polio? Uneven but steady, incremental steps toward justice... and even progress toward saving the planet!
Please look at these! https://www.abundance360.com/ and https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/
But above all, incredible science! So today let's deal with the science that's actually above it all. In space!
== Let's live up to Ingenuity ==
The little Mars helicopter that could. It's mission is now officially over, due to damaged blades. This may not be the very last hurrah. But still... hurrah little guy.
Meanwhile Japan's SLIM lunar lander bots - a mostly successful ensemble! Though one little pike on top coulda prevented the showoff headstand.... Some of the design concepts emerged from studies funded by NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).
== Looking out there ==
The Webb Telescope took spectra as a sub-Neptune planet passed in front of its star, letting Webb detect the presence of methane and carbon dioxide in the exoplanet atmosphere, which supported the theory that K2-18 b could indeed be a Hycean (highly oceanic) world… plus evidence of the rare molecule dimethyl sulfide, which might be a strong indicator for the presence of life. On Earth, dimethyl sulfide is created solely as a byproduct of life, most commonly by marine bacteria and phytoplankton.
An infant star! A new image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured what Earth's sun may have looked like when it was only a few tens of thousands of years old. Enhanced images of this newborns are gorgeous!
Also from Webb: carbon, an essential component of life on Earth, is also present within Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon that's believed to hold huge oceans of liquid salt water beneath its icy surface.
The riches pouring from the Webb are amazing: a cornucopia! For example, Tellurium, an element rarer than platinum on Earth, was just found in the aftermath of a violent cosmic kilonova 1 billion light-years away, thanks to Webb.
See the James Webb Space Telescopes's views of galaxy M51. And again wow. YOU are a member of a civilization that does this sort of thing. Yet you dare to wallow in gloom and killed confidence? Look at this! You helped pay for the wonder, the competence, the wisdom. Do more.
LIGO my ego! Humanity’s new gravity wave detectors, led by LIGO, are so spectacularly precise that they could parse the tiny difference of arrival time between the g-waves emitted by a neutron star collision 130 million light years away and the subsequent (by just a 2.7 second delay!) arrival of gamma rays then visible light from the same event. Truly wonderful stuff. And humbling that I cannot operate at that plane!
== Space travel & colonization ==
Just getting big rockets to push more stuff out of the Earth’s grip will not be enough for Mars colonization. Other absolutely necessary ingredients will include ISRU facilities robotically utilizing local water to make fuel and air and drinkables, with full tanks before any human departs Earth-Luna space. Also vastly better recycling. And solutions to zero-g and radiation health dangers. And – above all – nuclear interplanetary rockets for shorter transit times.
Speaking of which… this Fission Fragment Rocket Design is one of our projects at NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).
The one – and only one – verified-likely “lunar resource’ – other than the hot air of Artemis-booster blowhards – is a few somewhat-verified deposits of water-ice in some permanently shaded polar crater areas. Alas, even that attractive bonanza seems to be downgraded. “Deposits of nearly pure ice tens to hundreds of meters thick are no longer expected” according to new research in Physics World. “The outlook for would-be lunar water prospectors isn’t entirely negative, though. “We now have more accurate maps for where the largest concentrations of ice can be expected on the Moon.”
There might also (maybe) be debris fields of collectable iron bits from past meteorites. And if someone develops a very efficient solar smelter, maybe a couple other metals. Someday. But if you want water out there in space… and just about anything else… lift your gaze!
NASA and Japan and the EU should explore the riches of asteroids and leave that dusty plain of poison lunar dust – to the kiddies, tourists and Apollo-wannabes.
Okay… time to cue the insipid Helium Three cult! Over to you guys.
== Look up! But with judgement & skepticism? ==
This BigThink photo-essay by Ethan Siegel does a terrific job illustrating the 'distance ladder' method for measuring the 'Hubble Constant' rate of expansion of the universe, now double checked by the Webb Telescope. This method's metric differs from one got from the microwave background, a conundrum! one you'll understand much better from this excellent piece of sci-journalism.
Failure to find a giant ‘planet X' way out there, perturbing into the inner solar system, has led to models suggesting a smaller one, orbiting closer in. This world, frozen and dark, would be no greater than 3 times the mass of Earth, and orbiting at high inclination no farther than 500 astronomical units from the Sun. Which happens also to be the boundary of the Sun’s gravity-lens zone described in Existence. Hence such a world might (maybe) become an incredible base for making a myriad super telescopes.
Speaking of the outer system… the New Horizons Science Team hopes to use the spacecraft to precisely measure the darkness of space itself. Since it's so dark where New Horizons is – billions of miles beyond the sunlit dust of the inner solar system.
A new study reports ‘conclusive evidence’ for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars. If verified, this might – maybe – confirm a conjecture of the late physicist Jacob Bekenstein.
A new paper explores a concept closely related to my novel Existence. “Capture of Interstellar Objects in Near Earth Orbit.” Are many near Earth Objects (e.g. close passing asteroids) actually interstellar arrivals (Like ‘Oumuamua) that Jupiter captured into the solar system? I show such a trajectory-event happening (with a little assist from the object itself!) in that epic tale!
== Black Hole ‘Eaters’ inside the sun? Or the Earth? ==
My friend and colleague John Cramer was working on the latest of his wonderful “Alternate View” columns for ANALOG, this time regarding a new paper out there… “Is there a black hole in the center of the Sun?”
Here’s an excerpt from that article’s abstract: “There is probably not a black hole in the center of the sun. Despite this detail, our goal in this work to convince the reader that this question is interesting and that work studying stars with central black holes is well motivated. If primordial black holes exist then they may exist in sufficiently large numbers to explain the dark matter in the universe. While primordial black holes may form at almost any mass, the asteroid-mass window between 10−16−10−10 M⊙ remains a viable dark matter candidate and these black holes could be captured by stars upon formation. Such a star, partially powered by accretion luminosity from a microscopic black hole in its core, has been called a `Hawking star.'”
Phew! John wrote for my opinion, given that my novel Earth is pertinent. Here’s some of my response:
John, your Analog columns are a principal reason to stay subscribed! And this is a fascinating topic! And yes, in Earth the very diverse and eclectic plot is centrally propelled by one protagonist having accidentally dropped his lab-made singularity into the planet. Nearly all physicists are sure it will dissipate... he's not so sure and leads a secret effort to build gravity resonators to 'ping' the planetary interior… and he does find it... and realizes it IS dissipating... but there's another one down there. A more deadly variety of singularity that's been growing since 1908.
Moreover, his ping triggers something unexpected. His surface resonator and the mystery singularity serve as 'mirrors' that excite stimulated, coherent radiation from the energy-rich core and mantle in between. In other words… a gravity laser! Or gazer. The potential range of beneficial uses - like spaceflight or saving the world from getting eaten from within - fall aside as it is used by various groups as a weapon. Till someone notices that all these beams are also doing very strange things to the Earth's mantle... So sure, Earth is relevant to the topic. (It also came in 2nd for a Hugo.)
As for one inside the sun - an intriguing idea that demands compatibility with fundamental observations.
Amid billions of observed stars, we are witnessing no effects of runaway eating of dense stellar interiors, which ought to cause a rather peculiar kind of supernova in its final stages. (This is also an answer to the question of whether super-high-energy cosmic rays - vastly more powerful than any produced by the LHC - could make dangerous black holes.) Hence, if a solar core primordial BH does not do runaway eating, not even when an elderly star shrinks to a super-dense white dwarf or neutron star, then what prevents that?And if growth doesn't happen, they why won't it shrink?
Of course, using asteroid size BH to explain Dark Matter is a version of the MACHO theory. If there's that many of them, it certainly could help explain the Fermi Paradox! Making interstellar travel pretty damn hard because of the Minefield Problem. The problem with this is that they oughta interact with Jupiter pretty often. And wouldn't some get captured into solar orbit? They'd have to all be below a certain mass not to be noticed.
Okay, you can see why I saved that part of my conversation with John Cramer to share with you last.
Keep looking up... and continue fighting those who would sabotage your can-do spirit and confidence!
222 comments:
1 – 200 of 222 Newer› Newest»And how about Solar System scale VLBI (from NIAC):
https://www.nasa.gov/general/solar_system_scale_vlbi/
Searching for Water
Here on earth we deal with compounds
In space with copious solar energy we should be thinking about elements
Water is Hydrogen and Oxygen - both of which are common in compounds making up almost all space rocks
DC: Please translate that 'copious energy' into practical machinery. Yes! You are totally correct in 50 years if we push. 30 if we push hard and are very good at robotics. 20(???) if both and VERY lucky...
...NONE of which justifies the 'resource 'justifications' for Artemis.
Yes scidata. tho some niacs are better near term than others.
Roaring winds pushed passenger plane to record speed — and early landing. An exceptional jet stream boosted a China Airlines flight over the Pacific to 826 mph Thursday. Pure Galilean relativity, of course. The speed of sound is NOT like the speed of light!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/01/26/airplane-flight-record-speed-pacific-jetstream/
Dr Brin:
Roaring winds pushed passenger plane to record speed — and early landing.
Then they probably had to wait on the ground for several hours for their gate to be available.
Duncan,
In space with copious solar energy we should be thinking about elements.
Uh... Why?
Much of the fanciest stuff we do on Earth involves fibers, glasses, long-chain plastics, alloys/aggregates, and "foams".
We reduce elements to simplify the cooking recipes for some things, but MUCH of what we do doesn't require it.
Alfred
Because the required elements are abundant - but the chemical compounds that we use here on earth are rare or absent
We have learned how to manipulate certain compounds in a 1G oxy/nitrogen atmosphere
Where we CAN use the compounds that we find we should do so
But we don't NEED water to get Hydrogen and Oxygen - if its available GREAT - if not then the lion's share of the mass we need for fuel is Oxygen - and almost every damn thing is an oxide
Expanding on the Elements v Compounds bit
This is important when it comes to Mars
Mars ORBIT has the solar energy and copious materials - otherwise known as Phobos and Deimos - but it probably does not have Water and CO2
You can use the materials that are there in orbit - or go down a deep hole in order to get the chemical compounds that we are familiar with and have your power source hide half the time
If you think "Water, CO2" then you go down the hole
If you think Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon - then there are billions of tons just sitting there
How to split up the oxides??
I'm not a chemist - I'm thinking melt the stuff and then electrolyze the molten rock
Ah. Well. Martian orbit isn't such a great place either. You'd get about 43% of the sunlight you get here and the nearby resources ARE it's carbonaceous chondrite moons that have been baking below the frostline for a while.
Before you get too far down the "smelt it all" rabbit hole, hook up with a chemist and bring in an engineering buddy who isn't enamored with space. They'll look at this all with a big dose of skepticism.
1. We've never smelted stuff out there in an essentially zero-gee environment where we don't have cheap heat SINKS. Sure... sunlight is available (source), but look at refinement technologies and you'll find we need sinks as well.
2. Reducing oxides still tends to be energy intensive. It might be cheaper to dig a 100 meter hole on a Martian moon to find water than to construct it from more easily available regolith.
------
If you find a neat technical approach to handling ore and separating the valuable parts, you've still got to look at competing approaches and ask about the time cost of money for hypothetical projects involving all of them. No money for you if you can't make the case that the business case closes in the black.
Oh? You think government will do this? US government? Then the case you have to make is how this makes our defense contractors rich, fat, and happy while they pretend to work on all this.
Hi Alfred
Comparing like for like - yep Mars would be easier
But you need to get your mining equipment and your solar mirrors and all that down there
And when you do you have an atmosphere that is thick enough to be a problem and too thin for anything else
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_chondrite
Up to 22% water - and that was meteors that had been "baking" at least as close as Mars for Billions of years
Solar energy 43% per area - but mirrors can be incredibly light and as big as you like
I tend to agree it will be difficult to make money - I'm kind of hoping that Elon Musk sees sense and concentrates on Mars orbit
Or if he doesn't then he may be the "customer" that makes the Mars orbit habitat financially viable
c. 10k nukes to melt the poles:
https://medium.com/predict/is-elon-musk-right-should-we-nuke-mars-1cec8b6093af#:~:text=Despite%20Mars's%20cold%20temperature%2C%20the,planet%20would%20be%20catastrophically%20high.
Alan Brooks
10,000 of our biggest nukes is probably less than one ten thousandth of the Nukes needed to do that
CB always takes me back to my physics classes. What a lovely bunch.
"Consider a sphere."
I doubt that Europe will have much to contribute to the race for the asteroids unless you get the big mining cartels to invest in space companies. I rather expect a revival of the policies negating renewable energies and electric vehicles, and could imagine that they will use their political influence and media to sabotage efforts. Or even, in a darker possible history, use mercenaries (which whom they have ties) and dictators to achieve their goals.
Besides, what would certain African states do (now more and more in the Russia/China than in the US/EU camp) if their sole source of income vanishes?
Duncan,
I suspect it would be easier to put a 100 meter hole in a Martian moon than drop to the surface, mine water there, and then haul it back up. The only reason to drop equipment down there will be to get refinement processes working for equipment (SpaceX stuff most likely) to get back off the ground.
As for where to focus, I think that is the ONLY thing we should be considering in the earliest days. The ONLY metric that matters is what can be done for money from people on Earth. You know how much investment is needed to drive engineering efforts that have a lag time before their outputs hit the market. THAT'S what matters in the early days.
I don't really care where they get the water, energy, habitable volume, etc. I care that people are buying and selling. I'm the guy who notices when someone wants to set up operations way over there and asks how they'll be supplied. How does the path turn into a trail and eventually a road. What about the wells? Grain stores? How do we lure a "blacksmith" to set up there? Water matters, but they'll figure it out and set a price for it once we have an idea of how the outpost will function.
I'm not that concerned with any one resource.
I pay attention to the economics.
What are people trading for and where are the trades happening?
Civilization is built with those bricks.
Der Oger,
A fellow from Australia taught me and my friends a few things about how mining companies see things. He had direct experience as a mining engineer dealing with uranium, but the economic lessons applied broadly. He wrote a master's thesis on extending those ideas to asteroids that was eye-opening for guys like me.
We have a lot of work before mining companies will be interested. LOTS. The business cases for all the futuristic visions we have right now do NOT close in the black.
One of my friends got so discouraged by one particular point that he shifted his attention back to the Moon even though we all agreed it is a poisonous dust pit. The point took the form of a question.
"I can get a better return on my money for projects here on Earth, so why shouldn't I?"
Alfred,
So the SF story I was thinking of writing, set hundreds of years in the future, where the inner solar system is littered with the half-finished vanity engineering programs of visionary 'titans of industry' who always run out of money/lifespan/backers, could be our likely path? The cold equations of accountants keeping us tied to a declining Earth?
"We have a lot of work before mining companies will be interested." What parameters do you see as needing to be met? Cheaper Earth-to LEO launches? More efficient interplanetary drives? Development of autonomous AI able to manage without humans? A lot could be done, faster and cheaper, if you didn't actually need humans to be there with our high-expense support systems that can't stand to be interrupted - of course, that might begin to resemble a Charles Stross novel, where humans just kinda die out and our silicon buddies keep on manufacturing living space for an extinct species...
Pappenheimer
Checked out Stross's page btw, which bears on the below:
Germany, and now England, are making noises about bringing back military conscription; this is probably linked to the US failure to continue, let alone increase, military support to Ukraine...thanks to our local Quisling Brigade, the GOP, as their jewels are in Trump's pocket and his are in Putin's.
Problem is, in England at least (and I suspect in Germany as well) there's no infrastructure left to expand their militaries with. They'd be looking at 5-10 years of investment, and years of tax hikes - which the Tories at least would rather peddle their own grannies than do.
Pappenheimer
"10,000 of our biggest nukes is probably less than one ten thousandth of the Nukes needed to do that"
But one retargeted asteroid could do the job.
The yammerers are claiming Nikki Haley is a Democrat donkey tool. Riiiight. In fact, it is all BUSH-ITES and their oligarch lords who are funding her, hoping for another Bush.
DT was their great asset (and Putin's). But the Don has since declared that in the Trump-II term he will go full brownshirt on Day One. And the oligs know what happened in 1934, when their tool and asset in Berlin escaped their puppet strings. He killed enough Prussian lords, in the Night of the Long Knives to make them HIS servants, not vice versa. (Exactly as Putin has done with on the Russian 'oligarchs.') Hence the Kochs and casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon sheiks and inheritance brats want a tool they can control. Like Bushe-Cheney. Like Trump I. Like Nikki.
The UK and Germany are talking about expanding their military
Yes - because the USA cannot be trusted
But its a bit silly - we used to think that Russia was more powerful than any one European Nation - but less powerful than any two of the larger ones
We used to think that Russia could defeat Poland and then be rolled back
Then Ukraine happened and Russia was stopped by a nation that was weaker than most European nations
Today its clear that Russia is less powerful than Spain - with about six European nations above that level
When the dust settles the sensible thing to do would be to REDUCE European military spending
Since we're back at least briefly to politics, this site agrees with me on this:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Jan27-2.html
We have written this before, and we will presumably write it again, but it is simply not the case that if Biden were to stap aside, some candidate would emerge who would be impervious to right-wing attacks and who would promptly unify the Democratic Party. That person does not exist. Any Biden replacement would just trigger a different group of attack lines from the right, while triggering a different group of anxieties, and a different game of jockeying between factions, from the left.
@Duncan
When the dust settles the sensible thing to do would be to REDUCE European military spending
Except that Russia has been fighting for two years. Despite its initial (and ongoing) ineptitudes, it's been learning, and its current production capacity for artllery shells outstrips Europe's. (That might include NK, although that apparently has QA issues...)
Even before the Congress shenanigans the US has been keeping Ukraine on a supply leash. They're fearful of what will happen in Russia if the strong man is toppled. Ditto Israel: which doesn't make Biden look good, given the carnage the IDF has inflicted on Palestinian civilians.
So, yes, Europe needs to lift its military game now, rather than later.
Complacency has lost many a war.
It's the Appointments, Stupid.
ITAS
Biden appointed 10,000 skilled, dedicated, smart and knoweledgeable and un-corrupt professionals to positions that Trump had filled with morons, criminals or kremlin shills. And a (very) few 'grownups for show' who proved too cowardly to stand up when needed.
At that point Biden had only to make some phone calls supporting the Pelosi 2021 Miracle Bills and sign some vetted and consensus designed executive orders and we were on a road to being back in business.
Assuming he does the same thing, this time next year... then as far as I am concerned, JoBee can spend the next 4 years taking a lot of naps. Assuming we can keep the left from bolting and we get back a Congress to give us another Miracle year. Beloved Grampa and patriarch of an argumentative but highly functional family.
Tony
The Russians SAY that they can make more shells than the west - but they say a LOT - mostly bollocks
They are scraping the bottom of the barrel - and there ARE no new barrels
Pappenheimer,
Our first review of what needed to be done occurred right near the turn of the century, so events have overtaken us somewhat. There is still a lot of work to do, but the initial pieces are being tackled.
1. CATS - Cheap access to space… meaning LEO mostly. Once you get up there many other places are in reach.
2. FATS - Frequent access to space… meaning launch cadence. Frequent flight opportunities means frequent tests, options to fix things, and basically anything other than sitting around on the ground. Low frequency launches tempts people to digitally model everything down to fine detail and while the hardware and software for that has become much cheaper, the staff one usually hires to do it all is still expensive.
3. Business problems to solve… meaning stuff in orbit that helps businesses do things they can't otherwise do and NEED to do to be competitive. Businesses spend stupid amounts of money buying things they think will solve their problems. They waste stupid amounts too even though they think of it as investment. They have WAY more money to risk than investors and governments combined with only their owners to hold them in check.
4. Engineering experience handling materials and resources in space. None of that simulated nonsense done in a 1-G gravity field. Actual experience proves whether technical hurdles have been surpassed and has a dramatic impact on the rate of return demanded by investors putting their money at risk.
5. Fuel Depots. I shouldn't have to explain their value.
6. Communication network IN SPACE to link assets in the inner solar system to our web. Antennae on the ground are important parts of the network, but they aren't facing the right way at times. We need gear out there in a number of places and a way to manage and fix it all.
7. Trade hubs. These are the 'crossroads' where people set up their tents, stop their carts, and trade things before moving on. These simply must exist because many of the initial resources of any value will BE valuable at certain locations and worthless at others. This expands on the notion of fuel depots and is just how humans do things when we trade.
The list goes on, but I think this is enough for you to see that they all fit together in the context of a "Frontier".
________
One thing I purposely don't mention is a need to attract investors.
If #3 exists, investors will come knocking on doors.
I also don't worry about those vanity projects. Musk's roadster will be in solar orbit for a while, but I suspect someone will go get it eventually.
If not it will be because we've chosen not to go out there and that roadster will just bake in the UV until it is a husk of its original form flying around and around with essentially no competition.
Alfred
The key one you missed is refueling in orbit
THAT is the one that enables a 150 ton cargo to be delivered almost anywhere in the solar system
Fuel depots would be placed where they make sense.
Plural. always.
@duncan It's not Russia saying it can produce more shells, it's Estonia.
Source is not Russia's (non)Pravda.
Artillery *barrels* are another matter.
People and nations are not purely rational actors. Hope, fear, greed, curiosity, and romanticism were big drivers of all previous Great Expansions, not just pure economics. "Das Kapital" could learn a thing or two from "Foundation".
Humanity behaves like simpler Life, writ large and augmented by intelligence and passion. It very quickly and automatically exploits any new opportunity, adaptation, niche, technology, and even constraint. There's no need to argue from Federation Fantasy about this almost self-evident truth.
Kim Stanley Robinson explored & solved the fuel problems of extraplanetary colonization, his solution being the transshipment of unshielded nuclear reactor cores that use local mass (as in a deep dark hole) for shielding when operating, since there is no appreciable short or long-term radiation risk to lifeless non-terrestrial environments.
Problems like these are easily solved because they lack the twitchy human variable, you know the one of which I speak, as in the case of our freeloading European allies (1) who have always supplied prohibited technologies to hostile powers despite ongoing embargoes, (2) who have always betrayed US trust by failing to contribute their fair share of resources & manpower to NATO, (3) who continue to purchase the bulk of the fossil fuel needs from their Russian arch enemy & chief energy trading partner, yet (4) who have the audacity to declare that it is the US majority NATO partner which is the untrustworthy one.
That's their problem, not the USA's, as it's been common knowledge that "Si vis pacem, para bellum" since the late 4th Century and our so-called 'allies' chose to party like it was still 1999 rather than rearm or secure themselves, as if they were the proverbial grasshopper who remains unconcerned about the onset of winter.
Screw those European surrender monkeys and leave them to their own devices, at least until the USA can secure its own borders & get its own socioeconomic house in order, lest the last great Enlightenment Society also succumb to the invading hordes of savages, jihadists & public defecators who have already conquered Europe.
Best
No appreciable radiation risk to lifeless non-terrestrial environments?
How could there be any risk at all?
Alan,
Don't worry about it, it's "Europe has already been conquered by invading hordes of savages, jihadists & public defecators" territory. Boy, my planned trip to Scotland is going to be interesting...
Pappenheimer
P.S. from the point of view of your average upper class Briton, importing savages to Scotland might be like importing coals to Newcastle
Thanks L for voicing one of the top Putin-commanded yammers of your now-cult. Destroy NATO! One of Trump's top priorities after his meetings with his master with no US witnesses. And after the giddy joy-glee session with Lavrov & Kisliak in the oval office. The most unforgettable and unforgivable photo of the entire Trump era.)
Funny how your cult's every priority overlaps perfectly with what's sought by Putin's clade of "ex" commissars you used to hate. Your enemies list is the very same as theirs, since they switched a few lapel pins and erected some statues to czars. Not just NATO but the IRS, so there will be no tracking of secret graft around the world and into the GOP.
It's true that we maintained the world's protective umbrella for 80 years, under which American Pax most nations could transfer most of the %$ that ALL nations used to devote to defense, switching those $$$ over to the fastest rate development ever seen by humanity...
...and yes, in some cases like Europe and Japan, it was time to shift, to helping out. Clinton was the 1st to ask but everyone said "defend against what?"
Obama started the Euros shifting but gradually. Trump's yammers made little difference because he did not WANT to actually scucceed at Europe re-arming. But they are doing it now. Bigtime.
None of which alters the pure fact. That your cult wages all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. Everything we have, that Putin fears and hates, is now what YOU fear and hate.
Now who would want that?
You suckle your memes from the Fox glass teat.
But when Putin stands in front of you, you drop lower down and open wide.
@ article
Simon Whistler made an edutainment video about Psyche and the planned mission on his Astrographics channel.
@ pappenheimer, duncan:
The debate of the reintroduction of the draft in Germany is not only about the military service, but also about what we would call "Zivildienst" or civilian service. If the same laws are used unchanged when the draft was paused, you can refuse a military draft on the grounds of reasons of conscience, and instead serve in a variety of other areas: As an aide in healthcare institutions, emergency services, nursing homes, schools, environmental agencies, in projects in developing countries or in the care of war memorials all over Europe. (You can do this now in joining the Bundesfreiwilligendienst or Federal Voluntary Service, but the numbers serving there do not fill the holes created when the draft was paused in 2011.) You are paid minimum wages, and the current ideas are a duration of one year and making it mandatory for males and females equally.
The arguments pro draft are the current geostrategic situation, the loss of skilled workers in the social and healthcare systems, an idea of somehow unifying the country, and "giving something back".
The arguments against it are that it is practically forced labor, that core problems in said sectors are not addressed, costs, and that current politics favor old, not young people, plus the already mentioned loss of training facilities and capabilities.
Also, the draft would not address the core problem of our military: a bureaucracy of byzantine structures and well-maintained inefficiency. If corruption is Putins problem, ours is the excess of laws, regulations, and processes to procure a single bullet.
@Alfred: Thank you for that space frontier development roadmap. It is great.
But still:
I assume that when we come 10 years or so within extracting metals from asteroids, there will be persons and institutions who will start to get nervous. Maybe they jump ship and invest in space companies. Maybe they don't and invest in media outlets, corrupt politicians and treason. Most likely, we'll have both.
Just think of all the gold and silver that suddenly becomes worthless...
Only the Lincoln Project is hitting hard enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Y-9C6ox1Y
Der Oger,
Maybe they jump ship and invest in space companies.
We figured we were going to need that. It's not like they all like each other, so the plan would have required playing to their competitive egos. (That should sound familiar because we practiced on a few multi-millionaires when facing the CATS hurdle.)
It might not be strictly necessary here in the US, though. Musk had to sue NASA and DoD (I'm pretty sure) in order to get them to follow federal law with respect to bidding. Even with those wins, his people have had to crash down several barriers because our Senate was mostly content with NASA being a jobs program for the old defense contractors. IF those kinds of lawsuits can be won in the future, we might not need to play to rich egos as much.
Just think of all the gold and silver that suddenly becomes worthless…
Heh. It won't be all that sudden, but it will be visible for all to see. We sell those and most every other commodity in futures markets. What we'd see before prices collapse is an attempt by current contract owners to talk-up their commodities. It's mostly illegal to do that over here, but suckers buy on those signals and get left holding assets the sharks want to sell.
We've seen this with gold and silver down through the years and it's still happening. Watch some of the ads on the FOX channels and they pitch precious metals at exactly the wrong time.
The world's 3 largest democracies are having national elections this year; India, the USA, and Indonesia.
In India, Modi is likely to cruise to victory over divided opposition. Bad news for Indian minorities.
In Indonesia, a popular reformer is being term limited out - likely to see a return to business as usual.
In the USA, our antiquated election 'system' has a 30-35% chance of bringing to power the guy who tried to overthrow the government the last time he lost.
Still better than no democracy at all
Pappenheimer
P.S. Annus Mirabilis or Annus Horribilis? Place your bets...
I give even odds on horrible, but not because Trump gets re-elected. That won't happen. What I fear is that the smart rich don't wake up in time to ally themselves with the sane citizenry and skilled classes against the loopy oligarchs who are bent on bringing the whole thing crashing.
Since Putin has likely already tried every kind of hack or sabotage, thwarted by our skilled services, my fears swing to a flood of Tim McVeighs, esp if something happens to Trump... or if his howls bring them out. God bless the FBI undercover guys out there. Hang in there, guys.
Journalistic toxic waste:
https://spectator.org/a-letter-from-lincoln/
It's an interesting coincidence how US & Russian political interests can coincide like that, as a US military withdrawal from NATO will most likely result in a Russian military draw down & the Putin regime's complete collapse following the elimination of the domestically unifying threat that keeps it in power.
Dr. Brin also seems to agree with me when I say that NATO is empty suit that will indubitably collapse without majority US funding, staffing, coordination & self-sacrifice. Der_Oger seems to concur, too.
Pappenheimer jokes about the fait accompli that is a fallen United Kingdom, as Ireland, England & Scotland are are now ruled by Prime Ministers of either Hindi or Paki extraction, while almost 20% of the total English & Irish populations are now non-native, although Scotland still seems to be mostly Scottish for now.
The US is not far behind with slightly less than 14% of its total population being foreign born as of 2022, but we should surpass the 20% population tipping point by 2031 if the US Democrats continue to allow unrestricted foreign immigration totaling more than 2% of the total US population every 3 years.
Then, Dr. Brin & other left-leaning 'useful idiots' can celebrate the President-for-Life election of Putin & Xi's love child and the death of 'american exceptionalism', made possible by ongoing demographic replacement, followed shortly thereafter by the complete elimination of the gene pool legacy left to the US by the now-extinct Greatest Generation.
Best
______
Found praiseworthy by Dr. Brin, the Lincoln Project is a bad joke made up of crazy GOP & Republican neofeudalists:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/10/29/lincoln-project-says-it-planted-white-supremacist-impersonators-at-event-for-virginia-republican-candidate/
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/10/30/youngkin-rally-tiki-stunt-lincoln-project-cpt-sot-vpx.cnn
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/30/lincoln-project-glenn-youngkin-virginia-event
Kudos to Larry_H, btw, as Chicago has been ranked #1 in the US for both rat & bedbug infestations for 4 years running. #1! #1! For vermin Chicago is #1!
You aim too high, a perfectionist; however such must have made you a competent physician.
Perhaps life was better in the ‘50s, yet the population was much lower and now that the avg life expectancy is c 80, we need new blood—meaning young immigrants to do the grunt jobs no one else wants to do.
Conservatives want limited government—for Someone Else’s family. They dislike govt so much, they want to run for public office, so they can [not] do something about it. And get the goodies while they’re at it.
You remind me of Christians, (albeit you’re much smarter): they want everything, they want it ALL!
They want the Good Life, but they also want the hairshirt life.
They want the simple life; but they want to live in the fast lane.
It’s like the old wine commercials:
mild, yet Wild.
Tart, yet subtle.
Old, yet New.
Bold, yet demure...
Locum is a pip! Much smarter now (the water?) though still utterly loco. I showed how his cult now obsessively hates every single thing that Putin hates, including all US science, skilled professions, the FBI and intel agencies and military officers who won the Cold War and the War on Terror, with perfect overlap…
… So does he concede that point? Yes he does! Only, instead of seeing a problem there, he dodges with “It's an interesting coincidence how US & Russian political interests can coincide like that,”
Clever! But no, you confederates do not get to call your treason cult “the US.” VPutin and the SAME guys you hated, when they wore hammers & sickles, now get blowjobs from you because they have suborned Rupert Murdoch and switched a few symbols. The same guys, the same KGB, the same goal (our downfall) and you are their tool and a traitor.
“as a US military withdrawal from NATO will most likely result in a Russian military draw down & the Putin regime's complete collapse following the elimination of the domestically unifying threat that keeps it in power.”
Okay, I get it! You are having us on. Hahahaha. I used to stop midway through because of strawmanning. Now I must… I simply must cause I am choking on a peanut skin. Gawd what a species we are.
We’re about to learn what ‘small’ fraction of congressional republicans are not suborned or blackmailed or gutless. If enough exist, the border+Ukraine bill will pass and 2500 new border agents and new stretches and wall and refugee limits should accompany Putin’s nightmare. Those bitching about ‘replacement’ who do not vote for this bill are nothing but poser buffoons.
Dr. Brin also seems to agree with me when I say that NATO is empty suit that will indubitably collapse without majority US funding, staffing, coordination & self-sacrifice. Der_Oger seems to concur, too.
Not so fast, my little brown-shirted friend.
For Germany, there is a little thing called the Defense Case. If it is announced, our DoD is bypassed, and all decisions are directly made by the Chancellory. Also, legislation is streamlined and de-diluted, executive powers broadened and so on. One could argue that all decisions made would come too late, or useless if the office-holder does not use the constitutionally granted powers.
And there is Poland, Sweden and Finnland, as well as the Baltic state themselves. Even if France does not commit to the war and we and the rest only give symbolic support, what would remain is still a large, well trained, technologically superior army with a high morale (and hatred for Russians).
And finally, the condition of the Russian army itself. If the Invasion of Ukraine had been such a debacle, what do you think an attack on the baltics, or on the Suwalki corridor would mean? Currently, the state of Russian defense is so worrysome, that a gang of boy- and girlscouts armed with spoons could take Karelia in one day, and Moscow in seven. (In addition, a growing number of citizens of the Kaliningrad exclave are talking loud about secession.) Even if the war and all sanctions end tomorrow, it would at least take 3 years for Russia to recover.
The only thing we would currently miss is the nuclear shield. The current discussion is wether we should construct our own nuclear weapons, or pay France and the UK for doing so.
The far bigger threat we face is from the likes of you, L., people who betray democracy and freedom in the name of völkische (nationalist-racist-sexist) ideas and/or what little money the Kremlin has left to spend for you. You wail of loosing "genetic purity" (which never existed, even in the most inbred societies) while being totally blind of what made America "great": Immigrants, who mixed and mingled. (Okay, after committing genocide multiple times and atrocities, but, still.) Economic and personal freedoms (though they are in conflict with each other.) Industry, Science. A bit of tranquility, peace and justice for all.
I do not say we win. But I do say we fight you, and your kind. 2.5 million on our streets the last week, AfD poll numbers dropping, the ban of that party and the forfeiture of certain rights being discussed. Splinter parties forming. Democratic parties unifying behind candidates in run-off elections.
We fight you.
Naturally, as if it needs to be written, Trump doesn’t want a deal that improves Biden’s re-election prospects. His followers are the sort who cut off their noses to spite themselves. (as if That needs to be written.)
But here’s an anecdote to illustrate one reason I have nothing against Loc:
a GP doctor cousin argued with me once and his wife said, “he was studying other things at school.”
Der Oger:
"Dr. Brin also seems to agree with me...
Der_Oger seems to concur, too..."
Not so fast, my little brown-shirted friend.
I think you're too new here to recognize that whenever locumranch begins a sentence with "So-and-so is correct about...," he's about to assert that you've said a different thing, often the opposite thing, of what you actually said.
Back before I wrote off reading his posts permanently, I always followed those with, "Help me, Jesus." even before I got to reading the part about me.
Der Oger:
The far bigger threat we face is from the likes of you, L., people who betray democracy and freedom in the name of völkische (nationalist-racist-sexist) ideas and/or what little money the Kremlin has left to spend for you.
The irony has not been lost on me that Germany might be required to save democracy from the United States, Britain, and Russia.
Larry,
The irony has not been lost on me that Germany might be required to save democracy from the United States, Britain, and Russia.
That's why I think it best to call us "The West". We are all in on it. We all need each other to provide occasional sanity checks.
Locumranch,
...as a US military withdrawal from NATO will most likely result in a Russian military draw down...
Ha ha! As if that has EVER happened. Someone obviously isn't a student of Russian history... or even the Russian present. They have four conflicts going on right now. (Must be f@#$%ng expensive.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia
On a slightly divergent subject I am part way through reading
The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World
I had always thought that Heinlein had invented something new with this "Starship Troopers" limiting the vote to veterans
But a LOT (possibly most) of the early constitutions did just that - you had to join the Army to be able to vote!!
There were hundreds - possibly thousands - of different constitutions back in the 1700's and 1800's
But a LOT (possibly most) of the early constitutions did just that - you had to join the Army to be able to vote!!
I am absolutely for awarding citizenship to migrants who faithfully serve in a nation's military and civilian services for a number of years, including those who serve our interests in foreign countries.
The irony has not been lost on me that Germany might be required to save democracy from the United States, Britain, and Russia.
Oh, don't forget France, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Italy, Switzerland, Argentinia, and our Eastern States.
It is like that everywhere you look, new little Hitlers pop up. The good news is, they don't get along with each other.
But yes, I hope the trend reverses.
My recommendation to ease world conflict:
more maple syrup consumption (counter-intuitive, but it seems to work up here :)
"The irony has not been lost on me that Germany might be required to save democracy from the United States, Britain, and Russia."
Germany and Japan.
Der Oger please do not include Switzerland. I am still taking odds re my Helvetian War.
Der Oger:
Oh, don't forget France, the Netherlands, Poland, ...
Poland surprised me recently by essentially repudiating their autocrat.
Now, I have to ask my fellow Americans, "How does it feel to be dumber than a P****k?"
@Larry Hart
On Friday, Bill Maher suggested that all grade-schoolers should study the Constitution. Brazil's Constitution. They seem to know how to deal with tyrants.
Armchair generalling: In light of the biggest minefields ever laid anywhere, including during WWII, along with trench warfare of a brutal WWI -style... and RF forces crowing 'liberation' of towns and cities they have leveled into dust... can one speculate how the stalemate might be broken?
1. For months I have wondered how winter fogs might enable the more technologically advanced force to simply fly over such minefields, despite the era of shoulder launched guided missiles.
2. While Turkey cannot allow belligerant vessels through the dardanelles, is there any reason Ukraine cannot purchase vessels elsehwere, arm them and flag them and set them loose on RF vessels under existing rules of war, anyhwere in the world? (It might demand a formal declaration of war.)
3. Will General Winter allow crossing of the Dnipro, at any point along the lightly defended banks upriver?
4. The one that could end it all, and that Putin has mentioned in fear, in many speeches, is a new version of the revolution of the trenches in 1917, when Russian soldiers turned away from the front and headed for Moscow. Maybe Prigozhin hoped to incite that. And it might happen, yet.
Of course much depends on whether there's a critical mass of Republican Senators and Reps who are neither fanatics nor blanckmailed. It would not take many, ten or so in each house who actually want those 2500 more border agents and more wall than Trump ever built... and and to defy the very same KGB/Kremlin plotters who plotted against us under hamer-sickle banners... the very same guys who took over today's GOP with blackmail, bribery and a vision they now share with oligarchs of the GOP.
Dr. Brin,
Are you suggesting letters of marque and reprisal? That hasn't been done for a while, but is still legal as far as I know.
Pappenheimer
It's not something I'd recommend, exactly...Russia could just reflag its vessels and then claim piracy if they were attacked. And they'd be right.
Pappenheimer
You miss the point. The small US navy in the War of 1812 disrupted British assumptions and commerce. If insurance rates for RF vessels skyrocket, that can mess up the frail bottom line. And their Great Power pretensions evaporate.
It's a version of what I think a dozen poor nations should do. Demand return of the hidden bank $$$ that their former dictators stole, on pain of war vs the Caymans etc... and ultimately Helvetia, allowing them to seize airliners, and whole schmears of other things under the rules of war.
Re: Armchair Generalling:
What the Ukraine has attempted during the last few weeks looks promising: Targeting industrial complexes, military structures, oil refineries and drilling platforms with swarms of long-range drones as far as St.Petersburg. The infrastructure is in a state of decay, so attacking the electric power grid and centralized heating installations could help, too. And, of course, the mansions of Putin and his oligarchs. They just need enough drones.
I believe it is already done, but use the children and spouses of the oligarchs abroad.
Confiscate property and donate it to Ukraine (as already proposed).
Look for Russian dissidents to support. Some are on You Tube and still reporting from Russia. Some are in exile.
Oh, and there is an interesting conspiracy theory floating around that could be enhanced:
Putin is already dead. He has been replaced by doppelgangers and those are controlled by a cabal of oligarchs. This was the reason his wive divorced from him, or why he used that long tables during pre-war negotiations, or why FSB agents always have to carry a portable toilet with them.
Der Oger:
Putin is already dead. He has been replaced by doppelgangers and those are controlled by a cabal of oligarchs.
I'm not sure what that gets us, though. If the pseudo-Putin's iron grip on the country is just as strong as real-Putin's was, then what's the difference? Just as in 1984, it hardly matters whether or not Big Brother is an actual person.
Where their autocrat had actually no official government position and as far as I can see is not personally corrupt. More Iran than Russia. Fanaticism.
"If everyone skied, there'd be no more war." WW1 vet Hannes Schneider
"If wishes were horses, all men would ride free.
If Huntley were Cronkite, we'd watch NBC."
- Mad Magazine
Alfred contends that a unilateral military withdrawal resulting in a similar military draw down by the opposition is something that has never "EVER happened" in the history of the world, even though this is EXACTLY what happened when the USSR folded & unilaterally ended the Cold_War in 1989, once described by Jackson Browne as "The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them", and I see no reason why the same approach can't work for NATO in reverse.
But, I will tell you one approach to military conflict which has never ever resulted in a bloodless peace in the entire history of the world:
Remilitarization & mutual saber rattling has NEVER EVER led to either military deescalation or mutual disarmament without bloodshed.
Likewise, the very idea that any EU nation can somehow 'save western democracy' on their own initiative is absurd because (1) they've spent the last 50 years squandering their military budgets on enervating social programs, (2) they've recently resorted to anti-democratic tactics in attempt to save 'their democracies' from their own citizens and (3) their own citizens hate their own leaders so much that they're busy spraying fertilizer on them as we speak.
Similarly, you'd have to be certifiable if you expect the Biden Administration to extricate us from these conflicts, especially when the Biden Administration can only escalate by threatening to "hold Iran directly responsible for their proxy attacks on the US military", and this after spending the last 3 years insisting that neither the US nor NATO can be held responsible for their proxy attacks upon Russia, Syria & Iran, even as a US-led NATO engages in the largest anti-Russian & anti-Iranian military exercise since the USSR's collapse, proving only that the West is currently ruled by illogical fools & retards.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240115-uk-announces-biggest-military-deployment-to-nato-exercises-in-decades
Best
Der Oger, Ukraine is being even more clever. They are allowing Bad Infrastructure to be responsible for a lot of the winter problems for Russians, before swarming in on the civilian power grid. What I woulda done by now is set up a dozen forest bases deep inside the RF, so heaps of drones could be sent in one-way to land and get their fuel and explosives… both easily acquired on RF black markets. VERY hazardous duty. But there’ve been no reports of such bases, so: either I am imagining things or they are very good… or Vlad has ruled it would be demoralizing to admit they exist. We’ll likely see soon.
Apparently my helicopters + fog notion was sci fi. Alas.
PART of Putin still lives… the nose. Seriously we are endangered by his “Downfall” tantrums and we must pray he has secret grownups near him. Though Trump’s later-self-proclaimed “secret grownups” like McMaster etc. never seem to have done squat.
---
Locum's grand declarations are utterly- laughably counterfactual, of course, as always. Republicans used to loudly brag that Reagan saber rattling was what caused the USSR collapse! And though Carter deserve much of that credit for turnaround and other factors exist, I'll grant that trying to match Reagan's buildup bancurpted the Sovs.
But ah, those were the days whe Republicans admired the US military officer corps and when the Kremlin and KGB guys were seen as plotters toward our demise... which they are, still - the very same guys, openly chanting their yearning for revenge and to reconquer the Warsaw Pact ingrates and them more. Openly and avidly and loudly. Now with help from easily-suborned traitors-Quislings like poor locum.
Nothing in his 4th para is true on a macro level. And EU military strength is projected to double that of the RF in 3 years, sooner if you account for quality. Where it likely already has. But why wait NATO preserved general peace for 80 years with the US (admittedly) carrying more of the burden. Now that Europeans are stepping up, we should abandon the peoplr of Ukraine because... because... because?
Only now he's stepping up to support the Iranian mullahs? Okay, Reagan conspired with them treasonously in 1979. But seriously? This is a bigger flip than when all the dixie-know-nothing segregators switched to the GOP.
I am ever more of the opinion Locum may be having us on.
Dr. Brin:
Please bring me up to speed re He3. Is it on the Moon in insufficient amounts? Also, how unfeasible is fusing the stuff?
One thing you can do on the Moon that you can't do on other planets; run a (nearly) real-time telepresence robot.
Dr Brin:
Only now he's stepping up to support the Iranian mullahs?
The enemy of his enemy, I guess. Even right-wing American politicians, whose hatred for Muslims knew no bounds, have begun to notice that radical Islam is on their side when it comes to women, gays, and wokeness.
I am ever more of the opinion Locum may be having us on.
There was a time I thought he was playing a character that he refused to break. I've also wondered if that's what Trump is doing.
Musk's Neuralink has done its first human implantation. It's hoped that it will allow mind control of a mouse-like cursor. I'm waiting for the tech to reach the point where one can have a FORTH interpreter implanted. At that point, computational thinking becomes a literal reality.
"There was a time I thought he was playing a character that he refused to break. I've also wondered if that's what Trump is doing."
My theory is that Locum is actually Dr. Brin :)
Locumranch is a little comprehension impaired today.
1. The Soviet collapse wasn't really a unilateral military withdrawal. Their soviet republics chose to withdraw and the Muscovy core chose to let it happen because their options were essentially non-existent. They were bankrupt. Our resulting withdrawal was mostly one of scale. We dediced the Cold War had been won and moved on.
2. At NO POINT IN RUSSIAN HISTORY have they ever responded to an opponent's unilateral withdrawal with one of their own. NEVER.
…and I see no reason why the same approach can't work for NATO in reverse.
You are willingly blind and quite possibly an idealist/utopian. I don't fault you for that, though. I wish the Russians would do exactly as you imagine they might, but history isn't on your side.
3. The Cold War ended in '91. The Soviet-Afghan war ended in '89.
4. The Russians have a proven track record of making war on their neighbors. When one is defeated, they move on to the next neighbor and keep going until they are spread so thin they can't afford to occupy all the territory. After they collapse back to their core… they do it again. I'm not a fan of pre-ordained cycles of history, but the Russians HAVE A HISTORY OF THIS!
Look at their list of wars through the 19th century. Many involve putting down peasant revolts. That's what happens when you occupy unwilling cultures. These little flares get expensive because one must maintain a well-bribed security apparatus. Russia was also at war with every central asian power through the middle and end of the century. They also warred with the Ottomans. All of those make a kind of sense, but they are damn expensive. THAT'S why they sold us Alaska! Same kind of need Napoleon had when he sold us Louisiana.
5. Russian paranoia is well founded. Their core region is inherently indefensible. They MUST press their borders outward to ensure their enemies face General Winter in a prolonged war. Worked well enough with the French. Doesn't work so well with their immediate neighbors who are familiar with the General.
—————
So… NO unilateral military withdrawal should be considered by ANYONE on their border. Not even by nations who will be on their border when the border nations fall. Especially not by the US or NATO.
Doesn't mean we have to go to war with them. All we have to do is recognize history rhyming again and wait for the current idiots to bankrupt themselves again. It would be nice to preserve a few lives in their border nations too while we are at it.
He-3 concentrations in well-lit lunar regolith are estimated between 1.4 and 15 parts per billion. It arrives there in the solar wind and gets stuck.
That's a LOT of regolith processing to extract it.
In a modern world with relatively cheap PV's, it is nonsense except as a tertiary extract from regolith refinement.
-----
Most He-4 on Earth is a result of alpha-decay of heavy isotopes. Only about 7% of our helium is primordial and that's the fraction with any He-3.
One of my professors in college did cold temperature work. He had a supply of He-3 and showed me the price he paid for it. Yowza!
Why is Putin’s new palace by the Finnish border? Simple. If 1917 occurs again - RF troops turning to head to Moscow - he can seek refuge in Finland from mob justice. They have no extradition with Russia and even then, never extradite to a country if capital punishment is on the table.
https://twitter.com/MikeNelson/status/1752277082338730024
Good questions, Paradoc.
1. Asteroids are way better than the moon for all resources on any level except TIME. Many are easier energetics than Moon surface, but they take much longer. Hence we need good robotics. We’ll need that on Luna too. But the Moon’s #1 attraction in org-human tourism.
He3 may someday be a big thing! As in that terrific flick called MOON. But for now:
1. show me actual samples with actual assays of harvestable He3 in lunar regolith. There… are… none. Yet.
2. Show me a method for extraction from vast tonnages of regolith and collection.
3. Show me a customer! Again, there’s been some good news re fusion. After 80 years of “Now it’s just 20 years away!” maybe now it’s 19. For now, I say BFD.
----
Andy you devil! “My theory is that Locum is actually Dr. Brin :)”
How I have been tempted a coupla times! Like when folks spread a rumor that only Brin could have written Greg Egan’s novels, since he appeared just after I visited Pert and arranged a mail drop…. Flattered!
But one reason I am fascinated by locum is I could never have imagined his kind as a character. My villains, while often aiding evil, tend to have some notion of objective reality, 3d... and color.
Greg Egan is on Mastodon btw, chattering about cool mathematical theorems when he's not rescuing his Mac from collapsing ceilings.
Dr Brin:
he can seek refuge in Finland from mob justice. They have no extradition with Russia and even then, never extradite to a country if capital punishment is on the table.
Given current levels of hostility, why would Finland take Putin?
Dr Brin:
My villains, while often aiding evil, tend to have some notion of objective reality, 3d... and color.
I noticed that about the Holnists the first time I read The Postman. I particularly liked a scene between General Macklin and his subordinate, ...Shaun?, where the general admonished that, "Nathan Holn was not a racist, and we shouldn't be either." The lackey, based on his notion of hierarchy, had to outwardly agree with his superior, but it was clear he wasn't having any of it in his head.
That's the big difference between the Costner movies THE POSTMAN and WATERWORLD. The villains in WATERWORLD were all 2D watercolor idiots and clowns.
Given current levels of hostility, why would Finland take Putin?
Because they would have to. They have signed and ratified the Rome statute and would be required to hand him over to the ICC for Crimes against Humanity (and possible more indictments once he is apprehended) or at least put him on trial for it in their own country (though I don't now if they have the same laws towards persecuting Nuremberg-level crimes as other European states have.)
The irony would be that he could avoid this fate if he would flee to the US or Israel.
I'm not sure what that gets us, though. If the pseudo-Putin's iron grip on the country is just as strong as real-Putin's was, then what's the difference? Just as in 1984, it hardly matters whether or not Big Brother is an actual person.
Should have mentioned that it seems to circulate in exiled Russians, repatriated German-Russians and maybe even in Russia itself. It maybe could help to demoralize genuine followers of Putin. It could weaken the resolve and morale of the Russian population (especially, when Putin is forced to react to the protests of soldier's relatives in one way or another). Or create other forms of social tensions.
Finland is a rising Hockey power and VP scores six goals per game. It's a natural fit.
Der Oger:
The irony would be that he could avoid this fate if he would flee to the US or Israel.
Netanyahu used to be Putin's BFF, but Putin funds and trains HAMAS, so I'm not sure how that works out now. It might be one of those "don't know who to root for" situations.
If he came to the US, the Republican Party would embrace him and probably run him for president. The Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen, but when have Republicans let the Constitution stand in their way of a good time?
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/collapse-soviet-union#
It's the textbook definition of the zero sum mentality when a renowned expert in competition & conflict resolution won't even consider the positive sum 'win-win' connotations of losing graciously, bowing out or taking a knee.
In a nutshell, this is the winner-take-all approach of 19th Century Social Darwinism, and it is not consistent with either civilised or enlightenment era behaviours, as it is mere barbarism gussied up with a less objectionable name, bringing to mind the 4 boxes in defense of liberty that I mentioned earlier.
The first is the soap box under the presumption that most civil conflicts might be resolved with words, the second being the ballot box in the belief that larger conflicts might be resolved by majority rule, the third being the jury box in the hopes that our legal system might prevail over those conflicts which endure, and the fourth being the cartridge box which becomes the final arbiter when conflicts become large & existential.
Existential is the conflict we are in now, as either our loss or our surrender will mean our total destruction in terms of our values, our demographics & our posterity, since these progressives will never settle for anything less than their total victory & our total destruction BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION.
This is not a game. This has never been a game despite all their talk of fair-open-level-equal playing fields & game theory. These progressives mean to win by any means necessary and they have told us frequently that they desire our complete & total destruction under the misapprehension that they can 'build back better' after they destroy the best of us.
Our sole remaining option is the fourth, unsealed.
Best
I'm not sure if this quite fits here, and the article dates from 2010, but it makes a point I have been making about rich people for a long time. Even if they aren't on drugs, they still act like crackheads, indifferent to anything but getting their next "hit" of money.
https://hbr.org/2010/10/dopes-and-dopamine-the-problem
https://www.npr.org/2009/08/07/111579154/study-your-brain-thinks-money-is-a-drug
When you see wealth as an addiction rather than a reward for hard work and intelligence, it makes a whole lot more sense, especially when you link wealth to extreme ego and status-marking behavior. Remember the politician in Dr. Brin's "Existence" who was doped with a dopamine antagonist? If you did the same thing to corporate executives, you would get he same result. Thus the rapaciousness and inherent untrustworthiness. And that is exactly why there has to be a force in society capable of balancing the slime balls.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Paul SB
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Locumranch:
Who are the "we" in your imagined conflict? Who are the "they" you oppose? I think you are as American as I am; can you share what you mean by "our" posterity and demographics? Who do you want to exclude from that posterity? Which demographics don't belong in your America? Are the allowed demographics color coded, by any chance?
Can you explain what a progressive "total victory" is and how it actually changes your life?
Just trying to understand your message here. I don't feel like I'm in an existential conflict with you or anybody else. Who are you fighting and why?
@Paul SB Remember the politician in Dr. Brin's "Existence" who was doped with a dopamine antagonist?
From memory it was a dopamine blocker. It prevented the politician from getting his sanctimonious hit and resulted in a runaway escalation of outrage and rant.
If you haven't already read it, you will find 'Doughnut Economics' gives an interesting (and damning) perspective on the traditional economic models: in particular, the monopoly that GDP has on policy decisions, and the evolution of 'homo economicus'; which over two centuries has become, not just an egregious caricature of the everyday person, but something that the everyday person should aspire to. It makes me wonder whether our current crop of sociopathic rulers are the chickens or the eggs.
---
An aside. I have been only vaguely following the brouhaha about gender politics and 'wokeness', but had to roll my eyes when Dawkins recently weighed in against various entities like Scientific American and the NZ Science minister for talking about the 'Sex Spectrum'.
"Any biologist knows that sex is emphatically binary" he proclaims.
Oh? I had thought it was pretty well established that gender-bending behaviour had been documented in all phyla of the animal kingdom.
Well, Dawkins is a bit of a scrapper. One might sometimes deplore the way he puts it, but a renowned biologist ought to be given a hearing on this matter. Dawkins helpfully provides a link to this enlightening talk.*
So, it boils down to a matter of definitions. In case you didn't get beyond High School in the subject, biology formally defines the term 'sex' *not* by chromosomes, but by the relative size of the gametes an individual produces. Large gametes (eggs) = female. Small gametes (sperm) = male. This definition allows much of the animal kingdom (certainly mammals) to be described in binary terms (even though some fish and reptiles might switch sides, depending on environmental cues). It also allows assignment of various forms of genetic androgeny.
Of course, this definition is not how 'sex' is generally used. Most people use 'sex' and 'gender' interchangeably, even though they shouldn't be considered synonyms. It doesn't help that 'male' and 'female' are labels that are applied to both sex and gender. It's a bit like talking about 'truth' and 'beauty' when discussing the human condition rather than subatomic particles.**
In summary, it may not help dispel the political fighting, but it might clarify matters to talk about gender spectrum and assignment of a person's male or female-ness. Then use a separate breath to refer to someone's biological sex as either 'andro' or 'gyno'.***
At the very least, it might allow people to wonder why, if sex is binary, gender is not.
* I have the impression that Dawkins' objections to gender assignment run deeper than the use of sloppy semantics.
** Physicists switched to using 'top' and 'bottom' after 'strangeness' and 'charm' had already bolted.
*** Mind you, these tentative terms are unlikely to be accepted by Greek speakers!
JPinOR right. Locum is SO much more cogently expressive now! And it still distills into such a raving! All the imperfect methods we found to escape from 6000 years of brutally stoopid feudalism -- constitutions, juries, scientific peer review ... plus majority rule elections moderated by our quite sophisticated method where minoritiy views can insist on being reckoned with...
... all of those are flawed, yes... just vastly better than all that came before. All that our poor raver desperately wants - along with his cult - for us to return to. Alas.
Loc is referring to beached Leninists, whose numbers declined in the last few decades.
Look, if you want to parse Loc's insanity, he wants all progressives shot. Read the last paragraph, that's all I can stand to do these days. Only he's got himself twisted around to where it's all in self defense. It's fascist, and I try not to throw that word around too much on the Intertubes, because of Wilhoit's Law. Blathering about cartridge boxes, when there are parks of AFVs and heavy artillery, squadrons of bombers, and nuclear weapons. I'll say it again - only a fool invites War into his own country, because the other Horsemen are always ready to saddle up.
Tony,
Dawkins should know better. Has he ever met a snail?
Pappenheimer
Paul SB,
Even if they aren't on drugs, they still act like crackheads, indifferent to anything but getting their next "hit" of money.
Sorry. I grant that IS the case with some of them, but I know too many of them to believe the generalization. Even the Adam Smith quote fails for me. I get this was often the case in his time, but I think that was more about the related behaviors being normalized than it being an addiction. If I grew up in a culture that saw me as a nobleman and my status would suffer if I failed to behave as one (e.g. got a job), you can damn well bet I'd behave as one and believe in the rightness of what I'd choose.
———
My brother and his wife managed to invest their money wisely. She chose real estate and hired family and close friends to make places rentable. Because of this (mostly her I think) they broke into the millionaire status long before I realized they did. Eventually they cashed out, moved back south of the border, and teamed up with her other family members to buy a small hotel and casino. More income and assets that could be improved, right? He set up shop training would-be casino owners how security was managed at big Vegas casinos. She put up her sign too and established a school for teaching dealers. So alongside their properties generating income, their 'schools' were too. This is just what they did. It's how they imagined they should live. It's also how they taught their kids to think about generating income, so my niece was a home owner by her early 20's.
None of that is addiction. It's better described as a way of life. I have no idea what they were worth when he passed, but the life he lived informed his children about options beyond wage slavery. He informed them they don't have to work for anyone let alone those crackheads you describe.
I have other stories like this besides family members. Many. One of them made multiple millions by solving what turned out to be a useful mathematics problem because it mattered in how video games rendered meshes faster. I met him once when he was thinking of going into a different field that had new and interesting problems to solve. He knew how to make money, but he loved solving problems. Fortunately there are ways to do both at the same time.
Sure. Those crackheads exist. The dopamine theory is probably consistent with their behaviors. I'm very leery of generalizing it, though, because I don't know how to account for 'nurture' in the data.
---------------
And... just for the sake of clarity, I'm not a millionaire. I'd like to be (of course), but I'm not. I can tell you from experience that rich people do socialize without discussing incomes and business, but it's a challenge*. Imagine two people at a party with essentially nothing in common. How long are they going to talk about the weather? What about those Dodgers!
* A seriously large one is how people with less money are often pitching ideas at them. Hang around that-place-that-used-to-be-called-Twitter and watch the thousands of comments that get placed under everything Musk ever says. The fanboys are kind of annoying, but the idiotic pitches show a profound misunderstanding of how to make money in a market with non-fantasy rules. Ugh. I used to see this at space conferences when any business guy with more than ~$10M showed up. Ugh^2.
There’ve been worse here; if he were so bad, he’d be banned.
Dirtnapninja was allowed to post; and the falseflag “evilukrainian”.
JPinOR,
Just trying to understand your message here.
If you dig back through his posts over the last few years you'll find evidence that he lost a custody battle. I think it involved his daughter. No doubt the fight got ugly. No doubt he feels VERY wronged. (I could be wrong on the details, but I think I'm close.)
Our host happens to represent a position (so locumranch thinks) that he blames for having wronged him. It's a case of not being able to do much about one thing, so blame the other.
Truth is, though, our host doesn't represent the position Locumranch attributes to him. Some of the other people here would make much better fits, but we aren't semi-famous in the same sense as our host… so what's the point in attacking us individually? The 'position' he feels wronged him is somewhere between Progressivism and the old Liberalism that existed at the time our modern civilization took off, so he denies them any credit for doing anything that improved our lots.
Our host IS an advocate for that old form of liberalism with softer edges progressives like, but more importantly he is a staunch defender of this civilization. THAT'S why Locumranch must deny him no matter how much word twisting is required. If our host said the sky was blue, Locumranch would either claim he didn't or find a way to hear it as saying the sky was pink.
This is my personal view of the matter, so feel free to form your own.
A number of us, however, will point out that you'd probably be wasting your time.
@Pappenheimer Dawkins probably has met a snail, as well as fish who change sex. I think he would be able to answer your point. Neither of these cases apply to mammals, though.
Alfred Differ:
If our host said the sky was blue, Locumranch would either claim he didn't or find a way to hear it as saying the sky was pink.
This is my personal view of the matter, so feel free to form your own.
Mine isn't that far off from yours. I think he'd retort something along the lines of, "How dare you so-called experts infringe on my freedom by insisting I accept your diktat on what color the sky is?"
The reason Dawkins and many other biologists are saying things like "biologically, sex is binary," is because many people these days are saying that even in the strictly biological sense sex is not binary. It sort of astounds me that so many people are offended by that reality (that sex is binary), though it shouldn't. I know the reason they are. It's because they attach strong ideological views and their self image to a fact in such a way that the fact must be true for their views / self image to be valid, something humans do routinely.
And when someone comes along and explains that they are wrong about that crucial fact in question, that it is not true, they deny it because it would be too expensive to accept it. To me the sad thing, not to mention frustrating, is that whether or not sex is binary has nothing to do with their primary goals of equal rights and respect. Seizing onto that one fact to support their position is completely unnecessary and is an own goal, because the fact is false.
Sex in biology is a very specific thing, and it is binary. Various intersex conditions are not different sexes. They either produce large immobile gametes or small mobile gametes, or no gametes. Even in the case of hermaphrodites*, you still have the same two gametes, not a different kind of gamete, and those same gametes work in the same way as they do in non-hermaphrodites.
Secondary sexual characteristics are something else and are much more complicated, but there are still very strong correlations between the two. Sex/Gender is something else again and even more complicated.
If someone were to argue, "okay, but even if sex is binary it shouldn't matter!," I'd agree. So stop trying to rewrite science by insisting it is, and then using that as a premise for further arguments.
* As far as I know there is no known case of hermaphroditism in a human that was capable of successfully producing both ova and sperm.
Darrell E:
...so many people are offended by that reality (that sex is binary), though it shouldn't. I know the reason they are. It's because they attach strong ideological views and their self image to a fact in such a way that the fact must be true for their views / self image to be valid, something humans do routinely.
Though it might surprise you, I totally agree. My fellow liberals seem to conflate "There's no reason a woman can't be a firefighter or an astronaut if she is physically capable," with "There is no biological difference between a man and a woman." I completely agree with the former, but find the latter offensive to sensibility in the same way that "The Jan 6 rioters were tourists," is. Both insistences try to get me to agree with something that we all know is false, but that we are supposed to handwavium into truism by force of will.
If someone were to argue, "okay, but even if sex is binary it shouldn't matter!," I'd agree. So stop trying to rewrite science by insisting it is, and then using that as a premise for further arguments.
I should have just read ahead. Exactly!
As far as I know there is no known case of hermaphroditism in a human that was capable of successfully producing both ova and sperm.
Even if he could produce ova, he couldn't carry a zygote to term. "Where's the fetus going to gestate; are you going to keep it in a box?" I refuse to use the term "pregnant person" to imply that a man is just as likely to be pregnant as a woman. Sorry, but no matter what you identify as, if you're pregnant, you are functioning as a woman in that capacity. If one insists on arguing the contrary, then explain why you can't just as well identify as a dog or a cat or an axolotl. In this particular instance, reality has a conservative bias.
Mine isn't that far off from yours. I think he'd retort something along the lines of, "How dare you so-called experts infringe on my freedom by insisting I accept your diktat on what color the sky is?
I just realized how boringly similar all these tin foil right wing extremists sound. Locums earlier notion in this thread to get rid of 20% of the population is exactly in the range of what the AfD had in mind.
For everyone interested in the Wannsee Conference 2.0 report, correctiv.org has published an English version:
https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories/2024/01/15/secret-plan-against-germany/
Events since then:
Martin Sellner has been banned from entry into Germany and the US (where he wanted to marry this year). He is to be deported back to Austria when he is arrested.
Roland Hartwig, Limmer, the Language Lady and a bunch of other people have been fired or resigned from their positions.
Björn "B-dolf" Höcke* has doubled down on the deportation plans while the rest of the party and right-wing media try to deny or downplay the events. In Höckes own words, it would "help the environment", and to counter the loss of population, other instruments would be implemented.
AfD -2% in the polls.
Millions in the streets, petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures have been given to the parliament to start the process ban the AfD and to enact a Basic Rights Forfeiture indictment against Höcke at the Federal Constitutional Court.**
It has been unveiled that Mörig, the dentist, has received payments from the AfD from the funds Alice Weidel has at her personal disposal. This either means she did it with the blessing of the party, and thus strengthens the case to ban the party, or has acted criminally and could face charges of embezzlement***.
Phillip Maaßen now has officially founded the Werte-Union as a hard-right political party. Note that the guy was the former head of the civilian counterintelligence under Merkel, but got sacked after antisemitic and tirades against the SPD, whom he called "left-extremist". He got filed as a right-extremist by his former agency yesterday. I start to wonder if he was also on the payroll of another nation than our own.
There are first discussions to increase the threshold of needed votes to change the laws concerning the Federal Constitutional Court to 2/3 of votes.
*Yet, if not something drastic happens, he will be the Thuringia State Governor in autumn. He is one of the worst of the bunch.
** These trials take years. It is to late to prevent them to become the strongest party during the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, and it is not sure what the verdict will be. Also, some people fear the propaganda effect, while others say that the trial would force the party to behave more constitutionally. Finally, the moment the trial starts, domestic intelligence has to stop surveillance and has to withdraw all undercover agents.
*** There are multiple ironies. Alice Weidel, head of a Nazi party railing against globalization, is a former Goldman-Sachs employee, lives in Switzerland (which considers expelling her now) in a same-sex marriage with another women from Sri Lanka.
Also, the current Embezzlement section in the penal code was originally introduced by the Nazis.
Heard on the Stephanie Miller radio show...
"I think the reason Evangelicals hate Taylor Swift is because they realize she's more like Jesus than they are."
Der Oger:
I just realized how boringly similar all these tin foil right wing extremists sound. Locums earlier notion in this thread to get rid of 20% of the population is exactly in the range of what the AfD had in mind.
Thanos too.
Given that MAGAs detest Taylor Swift, they seem obligated to cheer on the 49ers, which puts them in interesting, though perhaps, not unfamiliar company. It would not be out of place in a Martin Mull screenplay.
Tim H:
Given that MAGAs detest Taylor Swift, they seem obligated to cheer on the 49ers, which puts them in interesting, though perhaps, not unfamiliar company.
Lindsey Graham should be comfortable, anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/opinion/trump-maga-fear.html
A few days ago, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota — a MAGA hard-liner sometimes mentioned as a potential running mate for Donald Trump — warned that President Biden is “remaking” America, turning us into Europe. My first thought was: So he’s going to raise our life expectancy by five or six years?
...
Heh. But more to the point, don't the "Blood and soil" MAGATs want to envision us as a European nation?
I guess as Bernie (Sanders) ultimately wasn't Bernie enough for the Bernie Bros, Europe is apparently not European enough for the white Christian nationalists.
I recently passed a gas station whose pumps were disconnected or something of that sort. The station's sign had all of the LEDs lit up, so that it looked as if the prices for unleaded, premium, and diesel were all $8.88.
I honestly wonder if something like that is why Donald Trump thinks gas still costs 8 dollars a gallon.
Alfred, Larry, Pappenheimer - thanks for responding about Locumranch's peculiarities. I am a long time lurker here - all the way back to the Bush years. I've only posted a few times, but I know Locumranch very well.
I've noticed a pattern: he doesn't respond when pressed, but does go away for a while. I think it is because he can't really answer reasonable questions about what is so "evil" (his word) about progressives. For example, was it "evil" to enact laws against child labor? National parks? Clean air and water? Food that's not adulterated with shit?
The going away part is what I'm after. In my progressive utopia (the one that has clean air over a national park), I would do something completely on brand (according to Locum's hysterical delusions) and ask Dr. Brin to just cancel him already. (Do we have a sarcasm font we can use?) :)
Europe does the right thing, even if the US won't.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/world/europe/eu-hungary-ukraine-fund.html
After weeks of standoff, European Union leaders brought Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary on board and agreed on Thursday to create a 50-billion-euro fund for Ukraine, providing a critical lifeline to a country at risk of financial meltdown in the midst of war with Russia.
The breakthrough was an especially significant one for both Ukraine and the European Union. For Ukraine, it offered stability and assurance as American aid is held up in Congress.
...
JPinOR:
In my progressive utopia (the one that has clean air over a national park), I would do something completely on brand (according to Locum's hysterical delusions) and ask Dr. Brin to just cancel him already.
In my progressive Utopia--sometimes referred to as my Mike Doonesbury's Summer Daydream==President Biden uses the dictatorial powers that the MAGAts insist the president has. Just writes out a treasury check for Ukraine. Has the national guard distribute free mifepristone to anyone who asks. Have Trump hung for treason (and then pardon himself, just in case).
Alfred, sorry. But the switch in morality about gambling from a vice to a normal business is part of the hijacking of the conservative soul, reflected in starkly different divorce rates between visibly-important Republicans vs high Democrats. And (except Utah) higher rates of every turpitude in Red America. Alas no one steps up to say it aloud.
I am increasingly impressed with Gavin Newsom. He’s sharp and potent… at mainline political riffs. He’s not the one to deliver the ‘kneecappers’ I feel SOMEONE should be doing.
Related “Nikki Haley says Texas can secede from US if it wants but 'isn't going to'”
What a monster. But note that this time the secessionists have going for them the American reflex that I cite below: “We get to redefine ourselves.” Only HERE is the proper answer to them:
“If Texas may secede from the Union, then so can your blue urban areas (an viable surroundings) secede from Texas, to stay with America. We will support our fellow citizens… including all the smartest sons and daughters or that state… in their desire not to join the troglodyte madness. A viable, 30-mile wide zone from Oklahoma through Dallas, Austin, San Antonio to Houston. We’ll put in high speed rail so that the rest won’t have to do more than sell oil+cows (till science makes them obsolete) in exchange for… every other desirable thing.”
On 2nd thought, it IS like the 1860s Phase Four Civil War. Maybe 10% of Southerners imposed secession on the rest of the humans in the Olde South. After fighting to PATIALLY free the remaining 90%... it took 150 years to finish that task.
------------
As for calling me an old style Smithian liberal with soft edges… it’s fairly simple. Humans are competitive creatures! And that can be a good thing… even the best thing… if we cooperatively set things up so the competition is flat-fair-creative and no blood on the floor. In other words, totally unlike either 6000 years of cheater feudalism OR the way Mother Nature grindingly made us.
When competition is transparent and fair – with a lot of good-natured fair play – then the worst humans are kept accountable and the best get positive sum outcomes.
But one thing is fundamental. As Smith and even Hayek said, maximize your feedstock of healthy, informed, confident and encouraged competitors. STOP WASTING TALENT! That is all you need, to justify an alliance between Smithian Libertarians and goody-goody progressives. At least half of “liberal” (progressive) programs/actions are perfectly justified on that basis alone.
Especially those that remove every barrier to children growing up, fed, educated, safe and confident and free, with opportunities to thereupon prove themselves. But also taxation etc measures to reduce wealth disparities down to a level that prevents feudalist cheating, allowing the competition to be real.
Tony the “sex=99.99% binary” vs “gender is fluid” thing should be fairly un controversial at its base. The latter is reflective of a rather basic mythic tradition in both the US and Australia: “I have a right to redefine myself!” and “my ancestors don’t control me.”
Alas there can be damage. We are not yet in the future of John Varley’s “Eight Worlds” novels, wherein sex-switching is an outpatient procedure. I know several trans folks and just one was what you might call amazingly convincing… and that at cost of constant attentiveness to reinforcing medications. Also, there’s sterility, which suggests parents should at least have a voice in the matter.
Yes, body dysphoria is a thing! Yay medical advancement. If I live to 180 heck, I might give the Varley thing a whirl! But kids ARE fad-followers with undeveloped prefrontals. And a 9 year-old should not be imposing irreversible decisions on their future, prefrontally -equipped selves.
JPinOR asks multiple questions about "who", "we", "they", "you" & "I" are in relation to some recent rhetoric, even though such an approach (although once considered direct & reasonable) is now considered socially unacceptable as it encourages categorizing, stereotyping, misgendering & other types of hate speech.
Identity has become so extremely personal in our modern age that it can no longer be trivialized by interrogation, as labels are fascist instruments which are most often used as a bludgeon to silence dissent, so much so that one's true identity is only discernible by one's propensity to agree with, sympathize & commiserate with the issue in question, howsoever secretly.
Look no farther than Der_Oger's hateful & inflammatory comments (posted above) in order to understand that the 'Everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi' assertion has become dominant meme in both the EU & US, which means that pretty much anyone who deviates from the approved progressive narrative gets labelled a nazi or white supremacist, perhaps even more so when these criticisms come from the diligent farmer, the faceless worker & other less visible identity groups.
Locumranch tends to 'go away for a while' after expressing these unacceptable opinions, not 'because he can't really answer reasonable questions about what is so "evil" about progressives' (he has mentioned the nature of this evil many times), but because of frequent calls from the PC faithful to ban dissent.
The problem with the progressive mindset & methodology is NOT their intent, as most progressives are idealists who possess the best of all possible intentions. The problem is one of 'competitiveness' and 'hypercompetitiveness' (our host admits), as the progressive simply does not know when to quit, as evidenced by the progressive ratchet grinding ever forward in an incrementalist fashion, never ceasing, never quitting, never capable of self-correction.
That conservatives are somehow against personal liberties, basic hygiene, child labour laws, clean air, safe food, safe streets, immigration, national parks & all the conveniences of modern life, this is a gross misrepresentation, as they most definitely support all these things up to a point (line & limit) that the progressive simply will not respect,, even though this action dramatically increases the likelihood of conflict, retribution & reprisal.
I persist in this endeavour because, if truth be known, I am much more the progressive than I care to admit, never knowing when to quit, always persisting, even when all my warnings and entreaties fall on the self-stoppered ears of the willfully deaf, as there are none so insensate as those who refuse to either listen or reason.
Best
_____
How can I even hope to communicate with those who pretend that depopulation is a conservative rather than a progressive agenda? But, pretend they do, ceaselessly & without reason, as they institute gender, sexual & racial preferences in order to end gender, sexual & racial preferences (they claim).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/population-decline-will-change-the-world-for-the-better/
Oh Alfred,
What, exactly are you afraid of? You know that I have enough of a science background to know that when we talk about living beings it's nearly always probabilistic, very rarely absolute. That is especially so with humans. But do I have to state that same caveat every time I write?
Let's use an analogy here. You can have a few drinks without going out of your mind, getting into fights, or jumping off a bridge. Most people can, and most people can stop before they become truly addicted. However, there are a hell of a lot of alcoholics the world over. Some of that is due to increased susceptibility from genetic factors. Even this, however, is largely epigenetic, meaning that the environment (in this case, the social environment) has more power than the genes by themselves. What's important here is that there are enough people who become addicted, drink and drive, pick fights, etc., to make alcohol a huge headache for the entire human species. Banning it, however, didn't quite work out.
Likewise, most people can get money without turning into callous monsters who will hurt anyone and everyone to feed their addiction. But there are enough such people, and by their competitive nature they tend to claw their way to positions of power and influence. These are exactly the worst possible people to be in positions of power and influence. Hordes of people drink too much because they are told that drinking is a good thing, a social thing, a thing that makes you "cool." Likewise, money is seen as a good thing, and the more you have, the more people will kiss your ass and tell you what a wonderful person you are. In both cases it's largely about ego inflation. But the wealth addicts have power, and their competition is entirely capable of bringing down civilizations and trashing the environment the next civilization gets top rise in.
Then, of course, being a millionaire today doesn't mean half of what it did in the '60s. There are plenty of places in the US where an average home costs half that.
Can you think of a way to keep the most avaricious of wealth addicts from laying our world waste? We aren't doing very well in this department. Transparency, as our host often points out, would be an important step. But when you have over 70 million voters who blithely ignore the crimes of their "savior" and the fascism they think is what we are about, I'm not sure transparency will be a panacea. Or do we have to wait until life gets so bad for so many that it can only be relieved by resorting to pogroms?
Paul SB
Dr. Brin,
Some humans are competitive, more or less. Some not so much. Only 18% of them have been found to be T-dominant. And, as with what I wrote to Alfred, the memescape matters. As long as we praise people for their wealth regardless of their honesty, we not only feed those who are most susceptible to wealth addiction, we encourage those who wouldn't naturally be attracted to it to engage in the same behavior. If you can find a way to make competition fair, and take the Social Darwinism out of it, it would cease to be such a destructive force.
Paul SB
Locumranch’s very predictable response: “JPinOR asks multiple questions about "who", "we", "they", "you" & "I" are in relation to some recent rhetoric, even though such an approach (although once considered direct & reasonable) is now considered socially unacceptable as it encourages categorizing, stereotyping, misgendering & other types of hate speech.”
I was asking YOU what YOU mean by those terms. Others can think what they want, and you are free to judge them for expressing their thoughts (as I judge you). You brought it up, so please tell us precisely who you want to exclude from your posterity and why. Are you saying that it is considered to be socially unacceptable to believe what YOU believe? Have you considered why that might be?
More locumranch: “That conservatives are somehow against personal liberties, basic hygiene, child labour laws, clean air, safe food, safe streets, immigration, national parks & all the conveniences of modern life, this is a gross misrepresentation, as they most definitely support all these things up to a point (line & limit) that the progressive simply will not respect,, even though this action dramatically increases the likelihood of conflict, retribution & reprisal.”
Conservatives most definitely have been opposed, quite consistently, often violently, to the very things you now say they support. So you can read for yourself the arguments of conservatives throughout time and somehow land on “it is progressives who have the wrong idea about us”? I wonder what could possibly have given me the impression that you are opposed to immigration, for example. Oh yeah, it was the words you actually took the time to type and post on this very forum.
And as far as this one goes: “all my warnings and entreaties fall on the self-stoppered ears of the willfully deaf” I can never tell what the hell you are actually trying to say, and when anyone follows up to find out, you do what you just did – duck the question. We’ll never know what pearls of wisdom you have to share, because you couch everything you say in a code that’s only decipherable to fellow deplorables. If you are really trying to convince me of the error of my evil progressive ways, you’ll have to actually take the time to debate a topic, which means clarifying your nonsense.
JPinOR:
Conservatives most definitely have been opposed, quite consistently, often violently, to the very things you now say they support. So you can read for yourself the arguments of conservatives throughout time and somehow land on “it is progressives who have the wrong idea about us”?
When I used to post regularly on a list devoted to Dave Sim's Cerebus comic, a conservative regular used to consider it a virtue of his team that conservatives oppose change until it has a proven track record and then embrace it. For example, conservatives of their day defended slavery, but now they are on board with agreeing that it is a bad thing (this was a decade or more ago, before Republicans started re-thinking even this position). To him, conservatism was a kind of purifying fire for liberal ideas such that only the good liberal ideas survived to be conservative ideas.
I always countered that what he described was conservatives reflexively opposing any change for the better until the need became so obvious that they were forced to claim the idea as their own. Look for example at the way modern conservatives talk about/use Martin Luther King, when back in the day they were on the side of his murder. Given the track record, conservative opposition looked less like a purifying fire and more like an extremely bad gambling record.
Larry - precisely! For some, it seems progress is something that should only happen to others, preferably before the birth and/or after the death of the person in question. I've always struggled to understand this point of view.
Dr. Brin:
Humans are indeed highly competitive by natural instinct. But we are also highly cooperative by other natural instincts. It sums to a prisoner's dilemma: cooperators lose to competitors, but share wins with each other, and competitors share losses with each other.
How to ensure the stability of shared wins? The trick is to keep the game on the truce-draw axis, with wins and losses off the table. To achieve this, game theorists recommend a mixture of mercy and justice. Default to cooperation, but reciprocate when provoked. Be kind if you can, and just if you must.
JPinOR:
Part of the problem is that 'Conservative' is a misnomer. Conservatives do not conserve; not life, nor liberty, nor property, nor custom, justice, decency, sanity, nor rule of law. It is the Left, mostly, that is the small-c 'conservative' faction nowadays, in the non-Orwellian sense of the term.
Once my father and I were arguing, for we liked to argue. He scoffed, "You'll become a conservative in your old age!" Stung to the quick, I could only retort, "If so then it'll be on my own terms!" Half a century has passed since then, and we have both proven to be prophetic. He knew me, and I knew me.
Locum:
Like it or not, there is a baby bust in progress worldwide right now, with population decline its consequence, probably starting mid-century. This can be good or bad, depending on how it happens. If the economy declines more slowly than the population, then money-per-person increases. Japan will rely on robots; the USA will take in the young and ambitious from all over the world; I am mildly optimistic for both. Alas, China will get old before it gets rich, and Russia has already jumped the shark.
Larry Hart:
A good ship needs both sail and anchor.
Sure there’s something to what you write—a grain of validity—yet militant indentityists are spurred on by far-left Leninist remnants. The majority of progressives are not as insistent.
—
First far-rightists will say the left is composed of peaceniks; then they’ll say they’re aggressive! Even someone as educated as VD Hanson will use that ploy—which demonstrates insecurity.
From talking to Christians (more accurately, who wish to be Christians), I perceive that Loc fits their pattern of high standards & expectations—followed by disillusionment.
Alan Brooks:
The trouble with optimism is that all your surprises are unpleasant. If you aim for Heaven and arrive instead at Earth, then how disappointing.
I prefer to keep my expectations fairly low. I aim for Earth, but occasionally I stumble on a bit of Heaven.
A good ship needs both sail and anchor.
Yes, but also a well-trained crew, and a capable captain who knows when it is best to drop the anchor or to set sails.
Paradoctor,
"A good ship needs both sail and anchor."
So you think we should tie conservatives to ropes and toss them over the side? Is this permissible?
By the way, my initial self-publishing error has come back to haunt me - got an email (and phone call) from the same online company that offered to professionalize my work a year ago:
"We'd like to help you with your two fantacy novels."
Doesn't fill me with confidence.
Pappenheimer
should have been "fantacy (sic)." I blame my first bout of Covid. Glad I got fully vaxxed beforehand - I'm protected, magnetized AND I get Bluetooth Satellite Radio!
Pappenheimer
Loc is a great deal smarter than the many would-be Christians I talk to (though they do most of the talking). However the outcome of the discussions is always the same, whether Loc or they: progressives are adjudged as aiming too low—not attempting the Higher Things.
Far-leftists also expect us to ‘shoot for the moon‘; they aim for democratic socialism/socialism Now! Peace Now! Justice Now!
Libertarians expect us to aim for Liberty Now! (Shoot for the moon, until the moon is shot to pieces.)
Loc appears to hanker for Morality, but none exists any longer. There are situational ethics.
No linkage between business and virtue; or science/engineering and morality/virtue. Merely expediency a la mode.
Expediting matters.
——
Again, Loc is someone who sets the bar impossibly high.
Paradoctor:
Once my father and I were arguing, for we liked to argue. He scoffed, "You'll become a conservative in your old age!"
When I was a youngster--during the Nixon age or so--my now-late father told me the age-old wisdom that people become more conservative as they get older and have more to protect. It didn't take in me, though. In my teens and twenties, I was more conservative than most of my compatriots. Not pro-Republican exactly, but I could see and argue both sides' point when most of my college mates were flaming liberals. Had I known the term, I might have called myself a contrarian. :)
Now, in my sixties, I've become a flaming liberal.
Paradoctor:
A good ship needs both sail and anchor.
I have often noted that a functional society requires a good balance of conservatives and liberals. I'd even grant that the ratio should be weighted on the conservative side, just to be safe. However, the liberal side should not be silenced or disenfranchised.
Conservatives are good at knowing what works, and has always worked before. Liberals are necessary when circumstances change to the point where "what has always worked" no longer does the job.
Pappenheimer:
So you think we should tie conservatives to ropes and toss them over the side? Is this permissible?
Heh. I could have written that.
Glad I got fully vaxxed beforehand - I'm protected, magnetized AND I get Bluetooth Satellite Radio!
One of us is quickly becoming redundant.
The biology / gender discussion reminds me of the beginning of a Kilgore Trout story, “The Accidental Recital.“
In Trout’s story, the hero Bucky Whiplash awakens from his crash-landed life-pod on a system whose inhabitants resemble nubile human females in all facets, excepting genitalia. Of course Bucky doesn’t know this and mistakenly concludes he’s landed on a planet of women. Moreover, seeing no children Bucky surmises that the aliens are obligately thelytokous. What Bucky doesn’t know when he first probes beneath a native’s skirts and finds a keyboard, is that the males (although they otherwise appear identical to the females) have genitalia resembling small Steinway baby grand pianos. As it is, Bucky’s fingers can’t help plucking out a clumsy twinkle twinkle little start on the tiny keyboard. The sound of the jingle arouses a group of nearby females to ungird themselves revealing genitalia resembling smith-corona manual typewriters which begin lustily clacking away. Realizing the aliens are gonochoric, Bucky attempts to pull his hand off the “piano” but its “lid” slams closed crushing his fingers. As he crumples to the turf in agony, Bucky hears a little bell coming from the nearest “typewriter.” A thin black and white dotted rectangular membrane rolls out and floats to the ground. What Bucky doesn’t find out until later ss that the females of the species can only produce offspring upon hearing the sound of a male’s keyboard. But the males refuse to play their keyboards because they are not aroused by the females or the males. Thus the females can only reproduce when the males accidentally manipulate their own keyboards or...encounter an alien who stimulates their libido, as in the case of Bucky, who with one hand trapped in a baby grand piano is ready to renounce his life-long belief that literacy is power and freedom. Nonetheless he can’t but help to parse the newly birthed manuscript.
David,
But the switch in morality about gambling from a vice to a normal business is part of the hijacking of the conservative soul…
I can see how that POV makes sense. When connected with the other changes they adopted it even makes good sense. I've never seen it that way (wrt gambling), though, and neither did my brother or father. We leaned classical liberal (liberty as a lack of coercion) with my brother probably being the most tolerant of progressive positions. (My mother was downright socialist.) Our view of it was that the anti-gambling folks WERE progressives in the same sense the alcohol abolitionists were. Both preached as they advocated for us to become people of better character.
I think it useful to remember that progressives used to align with Republicans within our lifetimes. Conservatives could agree with them on many things having to do with social choices, but even their alliance wasn't enough to make Prohibition work. Pick any moral turpitude and look at the percentage of people who disagree. We've learned if it is over ~10% you can't write enforceable laws opposing it that will actually work.
My family's POV on gambling is obviously biased by the fact my father retired to Vegas from the USAF. If you had a pulse, you could find a job… and he had a family with four kids to feed and educate. Our POV is that the fiscal conservatives eventually gave up and stopped allying with the social conservatives on the issue of banning gambling. It wasn't working any better than Prohibition because too many people actually disagreed about it being a sin. Like our war on drugs, they stopped fighting and chose to make money at it instead. These folks weren't ever social conservatives, though. Not really. Not the ones who showed up in Vegas and essentially kicked out the Mob.
———
I recognize addiction problems when it comes to gambling and other things. My father and brother were alcoholics and I know in my bones I could easily fall into that. I got to meet my father's Best Man as I hit college when his marriage broke up and he crashed at our place while he put his life back together. Sounds like a good thing to do for a friend, right? Well… years later he had gambling debt problems and was writing bad checks. Spent time behind bars for that. He couldn't handle the lures around us any better than my father and all his early friends could handle alcohol. These are serious problems SOME people face and I find it difficult to square them with my belief that people should basically be let alone to do what they want.
I've settled on a squishy position where I feel obligated to avoid contributing to the harm an addict suffers. We served no alcohol at my wedding as a result. I get it out of the house when certain other relatives come to visit. Oddly enough, I don't like casinos. I can see the addicts and that cuts through the mesmerizing lights and sounds. I might eat at the in-house restaurant, but I only look at the tables and sports books as I walk by. I'd rather not help them do any harm, but I won't go so far as to support another form of prohibition that can't work.
Paul SB,
What, exactly are you afraid of?
To be bluntly honest… Just-So Stories.
We are in agreement that callous monsters are harmful. My concern is we have a wonderful motivation to rationalize policies aimed at remediating that harm. My fear is we too have an kind of addiction where it takes more and more 'remedy' to fix what we see as the cause of a harm and we won't stop until we've done another kind of harm. Just-So stories are like that.
Can you think of a way to keep the most avaricious of wealth addicts from laying our world waste?
Yes. Exactly the one you mention next. Transparency isn't easy, though. No silver bullets. No vaccine. We are what we are, so saving the world from being wasted requires a great deal of effort.
But when you have over 70 million voters who blithely ignore the crimes of their "savior" and the fascism they think is what we are about, I'm not sure transparency will be a panacea.
I HIGHLY recommend you read F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom". The path we are on is nothing new. The people who would walk that path aren't doing anything particularly special. Skip the abridged version. Avoid the cartoon version. With each chapter try writing down your ideas to refute the author's position and then see how well they stand up when you read the next chapter. That's how I approached that book and I came away from it with a VERY different view of the sheeple who are my neighbors.
———
You know that I have enough of a science background to know that when we talk about living beings it's nearly always probabilistic, very rarely absolute.
I know and won't forget it. Sorry if I gave that impression. Wasn't my intention.
Where I was going involves the difference between 'probable' and 'possible'. I break out in hives when I see a possible Just-So story, so I want to poke hard and test the hypothesis for confounding variables.
———
Then, of course, being a millionaire today doesn't mean half of what it did in the '60s. There are plenty of places in the US where an average home costs half that.
Tell me about it. I'm in southern California too. That number is closer to a full million for us. Thing is… most everyone has matching mortgages, a two-income requirement leaving many living from check to check, and what equity does exist isn't something that counts toward practical wealth if the home is your only one. Formally my home equity counts, but I can't touch it (without more borrowing) unless I sell and completely leave the region like my brother did.
When you can't touch your wealth it is a bit of a phantom… which leaves people in this situation behaving much like those who don't have that wealth at all. It's a weird thing to try to explain to those who don't have it, but there IS a kind of 'sunk wealth'.
Alan Brooks:
Loc appears to hanker for Morality, but none exists any longer.
I can't tell if the second half of that sentence is your own opinion or you paraphrasing loc.
Me, I happen to think that modern rejection of some traditional notions of morality indicate enlightenment rather than debauchery. Those who bemoan a decline in traditional restrictiveness can't deal with morality being a matter of individual conscience. They insist that there's a simple binary choice between dogma and anarchy.
Everybody--even cats and dogs--knows in their bones that cutting in line is immoral. Even the ones that do it know they're being evil--they're just willing to do so. Not so for such infractions as drinking soft drinks on Sunday or showing a girl's bare ankle. Relaxing some outdated restrictions is not the same as loosing mere anarchy upon the world.
locumranch,
I persist in this endeavour because, if truth be known, I am much more the progressive than I care to admit, never knowing when to quit, always persisting, even when all my warnings and entreaties fall on the self-stoppered ears of the willfully deaf, as there are none so insensate as those who refuse to either listen or reason.
Ha ha! No.
You like to think of yourself as the indefatigable hero who knows a Vital Truth.
Lots of us do this, so you are in good company.
Alfred Differ:
It's a weird thing to try to explain to those who don't have it, but there IS a kind of 'sunk wealth'.
It's kinda like the discussion about Sisyphus a few weeks back. If housing in the area costs a million dollars, then your first million is tied up in having a house and not liquid to spend on other stuff. Which means you don't act or feel "rich" just because you have that million. But it's not as if you'd be just as well off without it. Without that first million, you'd be poor and homeless. With it, you're just poor. :)
Alfred Differ quotes:
there are none so insensate as those who refuse to either listen or reason.
You're tricking me into reading that guy's stuff by proxy, but now that I've seen it, I might as well mention what Dave Sim used to tell feminists who kept repeating things he had rejected as if he'd have to agree if they said it often enough and...slow...enough.
"It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. I just disagree with it. And I'll continue to disagree no matter how often you repeat the same stupid thing."
Agreed.
As long as one doesn’t confuse ethics with aesthetics.
Or confuse morality with situational ethics.
Or virtue with utilitarianism.
Or pragmatism with expedience.
Or happiness with pleasure.
Or Christ with Christianity.
Or confuse a retired physician with a True Philosophe...
“ which means that pretty much anyone who deviates from the approved progressive narrative gets labelled a nazi or white supremacist,”
Sir that is your impression because tarring all opponents with the same paint and brush IS what you and your fellow cultists do. But in fact, your opponents span a huge range, from an extremum minority of PC bullies who Do screech reflexively (a far smaller minority than your MAGA cult on the right) all the way across folks who wince at your pals’ confederate and Nazi flags… but reserve “nazi!” for the real deal… all the way to all that’s left of mature grownups in the USA…
… and I mean all of them. While we do have some crazies… we have ALL the adults. All of them. You have none left, whatsoever. Ponder that. Bet against it please.
Paul: “If you can find a way to make competition fair, and take the Social Darwinism out of it, it would cease to be such a destructive force.”
I CAN ‘find a way.” It’s called enlightenment civilization with transparency and reciprocal accountability in a milieu of values trending toward compassion. And you live in it, which is why you want all that and are disappointed it’s enacted imperfectly.
One thing I do know. Those denouncing competitive creativity and accountability are often those who want ‘cooperation’ to be controlled by themselves.
“Humans are indeed highly competitive by natural instinct. But we are also highly cooperative by other natural instincts.” Alas, Paradoc, you are doing EXACTLY the flawed thing, posing competition and cooperation as opposites and zero sum incompatible, whereas *as I have said repeatedly* it takes extensive cooperative negotiation to create the positive sum playing fields where competition delivers its miracles.
---
Is it strange that loc denounces us as reflexive dogmatists nursing delusions, yet keeps returning. Why. The level of argument and discourse here is always higher than almost anywhere else on th e World Wide Web.
---
Oh and this.
A ship, anchored in port, remains safe. But that is not what ships are for,
Someone will say “houseboat”...
Alfred Differ:
'Where I was going involves the difference between 'probable' and 'possible'.'
From "The Space Child's Mother Goose":
Probable-Possible, my red hen
She lays eggs in the relative When
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate How.
Dr. Brin:
"
“Humans are indeed highly competitive by natural instinct. But we are also highly cooperative by other natural instincts.”
Alas, Paradoc, you are doing EXACTLY the flawed thing, posing competition and cooperation as opposites and zero sum incompatible, whereas *as I have said repeatedly* it takes extensive cooperative negotiation to create the positive sum playing fields where competition delivers its miracles.
"
I regard competition and cooperation as orthogonal, not opposite. At 90 degrees from each other, pointing to different dimensions, rather than 180 degrees from each other, pointing within the same dimension. That's compatible with what you said.
Coexistence implies complementarity, not mutual exclusion.
I see competition/cooperation as neither opposite nor orthogonal, though possibly complementary (that word is a bit vague). More like yin/yang or two sides of the same coin. In computational terms, they're like code/data as Turing put it. In woo-woo terms, they're the same thing.
On politics, one possible epitaph for the American Experiment is "Killed by Interlocutory Appeal". Yes, I understand that this is uncharted territory. But that's what ships are for. Consider 1776.
scidata:
In woo-woo terms, they're the same thing.
I can't quite agree that competition and cooperation are "the same thing" when they clearly mean different things.
Maybe "the same thing" in the way that i and -i are "the same thing". Both meet the definition "the square root of negative one", and in any expression involving only real numbers if the solution involves i, it can also be said to involve -i in the same spot.
And yet, they are not "the same thing". The equation -x = x is not solved by i. Only by 0.
@Larry Hart
Without -i, there's still a complete i. But consider the TOS episode "The Enemy Within" (the transporter splits Kirk in two). Or wavicles, or even quantum physics itself. Are competition/cooperation really two separate things that exist independently?
@scidata,
I realize I'm nit-picking.
I never mentioned "exist independently".
I only meant that you can't substitute "competition" for "cooperation" in a sentence without altering the sentence's meaning.
Me, I happen to think that modern rejection of some traditional notions of morality indicate enlightenment rather than debauchery. Those who bemoan a decline in traditional restrictiveness can't deal with morality being a matter of individual conscience. They insist that there's a simple binary choice between dogma and anarchy.
Interestingly, I believe that the Christian morality core (as laid down by pope Gregory I, the seven cardinal sis and virtues) does not exclude enlightment. Rather, if applied to modern times they are still a guide to decency and mental health and need enlightment to be effective.
Chastity/Lust: Be responsible in your sexuality. Protect yourself and your partner from STDs, unwanted childs, and of course, trauma.
Temperance/Gluttony: Be responsible in your use of alcohol, other drugs or addictive behaviours.
Don't waste food, or consume unhealthy stuff.
Charity/Avarice: Look out for the weak in your society. Also refrain from gambling, and promote social democracies.
Diligence/Sloth: Be productive, don't waste your talent and days on earth - carpe diem!
Kindness/Envy: Respect other people, Say Thank You!, don't attribute own misery to other people (unless it is so)
Patience/Wrath: On a long enough timeline, progress always wins. Also: don't get upset, wait a day until you complain etc.
Humility/Pride: Keeping one's narcicisstic or chauvinistic impulses in check. And most importantly: Don't force your own morality code on others, just defend the freedom for everyone to define their own path.
And maybe: Enlightment needs some form of morality core like the one above in order to be successful, especially in the community of teachers, researchers, students, experts and skilled workers.
@Larry Hart
That depends entirely on the sentence, its domain, and its context.
@Der Oger
A short article was published yesterday in the MIT Technology Review about an experiment in A.I. training. They strapped a head-cam to a toddler and let the A.I. train along with the kid intermittently for over a year. The A.I. showed remarkable learning speed. Far beyond what Noam Chomsky described LLM as: "a lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching". It's possible that such human-parallel learning might be how we instill morality or even a "soul" into A.I.
I read about A.I. soul kernels somewhere :)
As evidenced by Paradoc's 'a ship needs a sail & anchor' to Alan_B's 'houseboat' quip to Dr. Brin's 'What Ships Are For' fanfic StarTrekContinues reference, this certainly is a lively bunch, with the rather obvious low-hanging rejoinder being that progressivism is 'a runaway train, no brakes'.
Fortunately, JPinOR's simplistic comments inspire a more astute progressive analogy:
Are any of you familiar with Affirmative Consent standard?
First pioneered in California, only to be adopted later by the US federal government, the Affirmative Consent standard is an explicit, ongoing, informed and voluntary agreement to participate in a sexual act which upended & redefined what is believed to constitute rape, sexual misconduct & sexual violence within US jurisdictions.
The Affirmative Consent standard mandates a fully revokable stepwise approach to all verbal, physical & sexual contact wherein the male must request AND receive stepwise permission to look at, approach, talk to & touch a potential sexual partner, elsewise any such interaction is now believed to constitute sexual violence.
This is Progressivism in a nutshell:
In their rush to drag global humanity kicking & screaming into 22nd Century, as justified by certain nebulous & poorly defined existential threats, progressives like Dr. Brin are tantamount to rapists & sexual predators who ASSUME the ongoing consent of their partners without either requesting or receiving permission.
This analogy also applies to the false claim that 'conservatives typically oppose everything good', as the traditional hallmark of the conservative is to prefer the time-proven good over any unproven potential good that may or may not materialize.
However, it's important to note that our terminology has undergone significant changes over time, often placing the current definitions of 'liberalism' and 'conservatism' at odds with all prior definitions, as the term 'liberalism' now indicates collectivism (as well as illiberalism & intolerance) in common usage, leaving 'conservatism' little enough to conserve.
One could even argue that our so-called Progressives are actually the 'New Conservatives' who display increasing desperation in their attempts to hold back time & preserve the so-called 'liberal' gains made over the last 50 years, even though those gains are now somewhat quaint & old-dated.
Best
Oh, crap.
https://www.firstpost.com/world/china-reports-death-of-woman-from-combined-h3n2-h10n5-strains-of-bird-flu-13672902.html
China reports death of woman from combined H3N2, H10N5 strains of bird flu
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2801499
Bird Flu Has Begun to Spread in Mammals
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wpro---documents/emergency/surveillance/avian-influenza/ai_20240126.pdf?sfvrsn=5f006f99_125#:~:text=From%201%20January%202003%20to,(CFR)%20of%2056%25.
From 1 January 2003 to 1 November 2023, a total of 246 cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) virus have been reported from four countries within the Western Pacific Region (Table 1). Of these cases, 138 were fatal, resulting in a case fatality rate (CFR) of 56%
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a4.htm#:~:text=The%20age%2Dadjusted%20COVID%2D19%20death%20rate%20was%2061.3%20per,%2C%20and%20AI%2FAN%20persons.
The age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate was 61.3 per 100,000 persons. (0.06%)
Larry Hart
When I was a youngster--during the Nixon age or so--my now-late father told me the age-old wisdom that people become more conservative as they get older and have more to protect. It didn't take in me, though. In my teens and twenties, I was more conservative than most of my compatriots. Not pro-Republican exactly, but I could see and argue both sides' point when most of my college mates were flaming liberals. Had I known the term, I might have called myself a contrarian. :)
Now, in my sixties, I've become a flaming liberal.
Except Larry, there are no conservatives anymore. The people who call themselves conservatives aren't, they are radical reactionaries.
Scidata “I see competition/cooperation as neither opposite nor orthogonal, though possibly complementary…”
Well, yes. Which makes for a 2-d landscape and only the upper right quadrant… lots of cooperation to make lots of competition work… creates a healthy, enlightenment civilization. The others are chaos, feudalism and mind-control Brave New World.
See my Political Landscapes: and what libertarianism might look like, if it ever grew up.
https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/politicalmetaphors1.html
https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/politicalmetaphors2.html
https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/politicalmetaphors3.html
----
“ They strapped a head-cam to a toddler and let the A.I….”
This is a version of what I discussed in EXISTENCE. Training AI the way we train the only intelligences we know in the universe… by interfacing for a long time with the real world.
Der Oger nice contrast if virtues and sins. But Gregory left no room for the greatest Gift… after love… which is Curiosity! Which is related to another (that MIGHT fall under Diligence) – Ambition, which can be its own spectrum. Indeed, Honesty/Deceit is not quite in the 7, including dishonesty with one’s self.
L: “rogressivism is 'a runaway train, no brakes'….”
Bah. Utterly ignoring the “Stop wasting talent” maxim which is the core of the alliance between Smithian libertarians and compassion liberals.
His obduracy is easy to explain because all the attempts to psychoanalyze Trumpism are wrong. I believe mine works best, because it dials into why MAGAs hate smartypants nerds FAR more than they hate races and genders and even wokists….
… “we” – meaning advanced civilization – have been using universities and city lights to ‘steal their children’ for 150 years. Even when they come home, they are changed. Overlapping PERFECTLY with the ancient myths of Elfs etc. stealing kids, around the world for half a million years of dark firelight tales.
L’s declaration of ‘needing prim ‘permezzo’ approval for every sexual act is classic. Certainly important early in a relationship. But Bullshit re later… when a safe word is more than adequate to allow the guy to be as aggressively grabby as she wants. Baloney.
Dr Brin:
Training AI the way we train the only intelligences we know in the universe… by interfacing for a long time with the real world.
I think it is also useful to avoid doing to an in-training AI the things that we would never do to our own young children. We don't make fun of their early gaffes, and we don't turn them loose in a library full of adult material and leave them to separate wheat from chaff without guidance. I worry that those wrong things are exactly how AI are being trained at present.
Tony,
Sorry I didn’t get back to you right away. A quick note: antagonist, in biochemistry, = blocker.
“the evolution of 'homo economicus'; which over two centuries has become, not just an egregious caricature of the everyday person, but something that the everyday person should aspire to. It makes me wonder whether our current crop of sociopathic rulers are the chickens or the eggs.”
Great question, and your mention of aspiration is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. I suspect that pre-Reagan, most of the sociopaths kept their derangement hidden as much as possible. The Patron Saint of Jellybeans was very successful at turning Social Darwinism into America’s national religion. There was once a time when the idea of corporate responsibility was not just another oxymoron used to influence the gullible. American culture, and Western culture more broadly, is rife with Social Darwinism. To many people, if a person has a lot of money, he’s a “winner,” and the rest of us get tossed into the “loser” bucket. That essentially makes us less than human, and it’s okay to use, abuse, and exploit sub-humans.
No culture is monolithic, so we have to think about the meme pool in much the same way we think about a gene pool. The meme pool that the older people here grew up with is not what it is today. The percentage of narcissistic individualism memes has been trying to overtake an ultimately eradicate memes of human decency. So the sociopaths of the past are now models for the future in the minds of many people. No one gets labeled “winner” for acts of kindness or generosity, but the possession of wealth, no matter how it was acquired, does. And for many, getting money dishonestly at the cost of the rest of civilization wins you bonus points. Those chickens have laid a whole lot of eggs.
Your discussion of the “sex spectrum” is quite familiar. The biological branch of anthropology has been involved in the discovery of such complications. Too many people, however, greatly prefer simple explanations for complex realities so they can get back to beer and the game. BTW: most people don’t know that the Y-chromosome is a feature of mammals, but not so much in the rest of the Animals Kingdom. Sexually dimorphic traits are spread throughout the genomes on multiple chromosomes. That’s why biologists use gamete size (and quantity) rather than chromosomes to define sex.
Regarding the conflation of sex with gender, having more than two is common in non-state level societies, but much more rare in state-level societies. The reason has a lot to do with scalar stress. In state level societies, social roles are usually prescribed rigidly. If you live in a village of just a couple hundred people, it’s not hard to remember that Villager Bob prefers to play a social role that is more typical of women, and that Villager Sally is the best hunter of all of them, even if not so many women are out there stalking prey. When you have millions of people and a hierarchy, it’s not so easy to know who belongs where in the pecking order. I think there is some hope for human civilization in that regard, though. Communication technology is making it much easier to see that social rigidity is not natural, and is harmful more often than not, even to some extent to those on top of the hierarchy.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I try not to pay too much attention to economics. When their predictions start coming true more often than chance, I’ll start taking them seriously. Economics is mostly just ideology masquerading as science and logic.
Paul SB
Alfred,
Just-So stories means untestable hypotheses. But these things are being tested. They are being tested all the time by reputable scientists all over the world in disparate fields, all of which are converging on a view of human nature that is quite different from what we have been enculturated into believing. Variability is a big part of what is being demonstrated in nearly all aspects of human life. That’s a big part of why I’m an anti-ismist. No one’s “theory” ever explains it all, or is capable of passing through time without changing with the generations. And no remedy will ever solve everything. We have to always tinker around the margins of life. We always do, and we always will.
Sure, transparency is a principle I can get behind. Remember when they made radar detectors so people could get away with cheating on the speed limit? Then they came up with the radar detector detector, so police could identify who is using radar detectors to cheat. Then the radar detector detector detector… Enforcing transparency will always be a struggle, and backroom deals will always happen. When the decent human beings are winning, the backroom deals happen less often, but they evolve just like any other pathogen. Right now we’re in a time of pathogen dominance. The decent folk need to evolve to catch up, and evolution isn’t just a biology thing. Don’t let your fear of going too far stop you from going anywhere.
Fred Hayek? Sure thing, maybe, some day. Don’t forget that I’m an anti-ismist. Whatever logic guided Fred to his conclusions, the world keeps evolving, the meme pool keeps changing, and what makes sense to someone who grew up bombarded with Cold War propaganda doesn’t make sense to later generations that grew up in a very different world. If people can’t make sense of it, they either abandon it or implement it badly.
Paul SB
One more point and then I'll go away again and let everyone ignore locumranch, me included. I do try to understand others. Might be an indicator that I'm a liberal. I was genuinely trying to have him explain what he meant by his post on demographics and posterity, but I should have known he would not engage. My bad - sorry!
Per Locumranch: "This is Progressivism in a nutshell: In their rush to drag global humanity kicking & screaming into 22nd Century, as justified by certain nebulous & poorly defined existential threats, progressives like Dr. Brin are tantamount to rapists & sexual predators who ASSUME the ongoing consent of their partners without either requesting or receiving permission."
Your analogy is not astute. It is ignorant, indefensible horseshit. I don't assume anything, nor do I need to justify anything I advocate for. All Americans (progs, cons, libertarians - doesn't matter) use the political process to attempt to *persuade* enough people that we (since we are our government) decide on a *changeable* course of action via our elected representatives. Don't like immigration laws? Persuade people to change them. Don't like current child labor law? Persuade people to change it. Even the rules of the game are changeable! You can amend the foundation of our political process (the Constitution) if you can get broad enough agreement.
The test of this nonsense is easy. If you got YOUR way via our political process, does that mean I've been raped? Nope, it just means that enough people agree with you that you get a political win. Tomorrow, you might lose.
A free zoom conference on anthropogeny (human origins) will be held on Friday, February 9, 2024, 10:00am - 2:30pm PST, CARTA "Body Modification: Anatomy, Alteration, and Art in Anthropogeny". https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/96255050876
JPinOR
If you got YOUR way via our political process, does that mean I've been raped?
By the electoral college or Senate filibuster or the Clarence Thomas supreme court? Maybe. But none of those options are available to Democrats.
MCS: “Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, Not A Newspaper!”
No, it was meant – like Marx – to be a prescription. Instead it has been a self-preventing prophecy… not as convincingly effective as Marx. But helped rouse awareness of the allure of utter adolescent male solipsism.
Oh! Did you all hear Peter Thiel wants to start a third Olympics? (After the official one and Special.) “Enhanced Games” would allow performance enhancing drugs, under ‘supervision.’ I used to ‘know’ Thiel… a couple of lunches when he admired The Transparent Society and had not yet become devoted to restoring 6000 years of feudalism. He is – or was – a sci fi fan and I am sure he bases his E-Games on the novel ACHILLES’ CHOICE by Barnes & Niven!
In fact I expect more variant games. One for CYBORGS and many for robots and a division of the regular Olympics into one for professional athletes and then a return to one for amateurs!
Lena:
"The reason has a lot to do with scalar stress. In state level societies, social roles are usually prescribed rigidly. If you live in a village of just a couple hundred people, it’s not hard to remember that Villager Bob prefers to play a social role that is more typical of women, and that Villager Sally is the best hunter of all of them, even if not so many women are out there stalking prey. When you have millions of people and a hierarchy, it’s not so easy to know who belongs where in the pecking order. I think there is some hope for human civilization in that regard, though. Communication technology is making it much easier to see that social rigidity is not natural, and is harmful more often than not, even to some extent to those on top of the hierarchy."
This suggests a psychohistorical law: the Failure Of Success. The system grows when it is small and flexible; but then it must calcify, which makes it vulnerable to changed conditions. You suggest communications technology as a remedy; I think this has some merit, but it too fails when scaled up.
The Failure Of Success is a variant of the Peter Principle: employees in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence. Together they imply the Circulation Of Aristocracies.
ImageFX is Google's latest venture into the realm of AI image generation, directly competing with established players like Dall-E 3 and MidJourney. It’s available via Google's AI Test Kitchen, an experimental platform that allows users to interact with Google's projects while they’re still in development.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-labs-imagefx-textfx-generative-ai/
https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com/tools/image-fx
Anyone want to try it out? If so, again I am interested in the following prompts!
"In whimsical or comedic style: an elegant, unhappy count dracula vampire is tied supine to the ground by thin ropes, like Gulliver, while very tiny, lilliputian robots dance on him jubilantly."
"In a whimsical or comedic style: From atop a tomb, a Star Trek officer watches enthralled as shambling zombies on a nearby hilltop serenade a strange moon."
"In a whimsical or comedic style: a beautiful vampiress, wearing a provocatively torn Star Trek uniform plus cape, approaches, eyes gleaming, fangs glistening."
Dr. Brin,
I intended to get to you sooner, but I had to take my son to the gym, then perform some mammal maintenance. Anyway …
“I CAN ‘find a way.” It’s called enlightenment civilization with transparency and reciprocal accountability in a milieu of values trending toward compassion. And you live in it, which is why you want all that and are disappointed it’s enacted imperfectly.”
Re: Transparency, please see what I wrote to Alfred on the matter. Transparency is extremely important, if it is pointed equally at all. Likewise accountability. These are arms races, things that are unlikely to ever be achieved, but are nonetheless worth pursuing.
Re: Imperfect enactment, nothing is ever perfect. Being upset over the absence of perfection is delusional, what psychologists call a “cognitive distortion.” It’s not the imperfection that’s the problem, it’s the backsliding. How are the successes of people like Ronnie Reagan (The Patron Saint of Jellybeans), Jack Welch, or Fredrick Donner not a step back into the Age of the Robber Barons? Then there’s the 70-odd million voters who hate the whole rest of America so much that they are willing to burn down the whole country if they can hurt the people they don’t like in the process. Most of what I’m on about is bringing back at least some of the Seven Deadlies as guides to behavior. America has done some great things, but when we responded to the Comintern by making greed into our natural virtue we pretty much abandoned humanity.
And as for living in such a society, are we really, or are those the ideals that we are most backsliding on? Competition is just part of life, but glorifying it is highly maladaptive, and it shows. It shows every single day when we listen to the news, when we walk or drive around town, when we contemplate our future. Earth won’t get as hot as Venus - 900˚ F on a chilly winter morning. I haven’t found any estimates of how hot it could get, but too hot to bake your cookies is too hot for much of any life on Earth. Maybe we’ll be replaced by silicon-based life?
“One thing I do know. Those denouncing competitive creativity and accountability are often those who want ‘cooperation’ to be controlled by themselves.”
Now this is a dead giveaway that your thinking is a product of the Cold War. It practically screams “Animal Farm” and “Big Brother.” Obviously we have to beware of shysters, but are we to sit on our hands and do nothing because we’re afraid that any attempt to improve life will backfire as badly as it did under Stalin?
Paul SB
As usual, my sig completely distracted from my message.
There are solid reasons for our so-called elite to be despised
https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/19/survey-two-thirds-of-elites-say-theres-too-much-freedom-in-america/
https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/why-i-am-going-davos
@mcsandberg,
I can't read the Federalist Society one without enduring multiple pop-ups and signing up.
The Davos one confirmed what I figured, that the Davos "elites" were being conflated with leftism, despite their being made up of the cream of the wealthy and powerful. As usual, conservatives portray themselves as standing bravely against corporate power, even though conservatives are the ones who let those types of folks have free reign.
Stephanie Miller's show once mentioned a line from...I think it was "The Office", though I can only relate it now second or third hand. "Just say 'Jewish' already. This is taking way too long!"
I have heard rumblings about "too much freedom" in America and how the dictatorship of a firm hand might not be such a bad thing. It's not coming from the left, though. It's coming from MAGA.
Wow, I haven't thought of Achilles' Choice in years.
I haven't been on this site in a week, and boy it's hard to catch up where the conversation goes.
I was in KC to watch the AFC championship game with my nearly 100yo father, and will go back to watch the SB with him. To think that my Dad watched the Japanese bomb Manila from the roof of his college dorm is just bizarre.
JPinOR,
Democracy is supposed to work that way in theory, but in practice it's become our elected shills do what oligarchs want around 75% of the time, regardless of the desires of the people who voted them into office.
This leads to a very high risk of "brick wall" type of mistakes, plus undermines the core stability of democracy---which is to mollify unhappy people before they get so desperate that revolution is their only recourse.
This stability prevents the most damaging thing that can happen to any society, which is to destroy accumulated wealth in an internal battle.
Another sure sign of a toxic democracy is when too much talent gets tied up in government fighting for social control. When that happens, creative and inventive people are fighting each other to control leviathan instead of building sand castles on the beach and devising better mousetraps---which is why we live 1 million X better lives than our cave person ancestors.
I suppose I've outed myself as a closet progressive with conservative Midwest social plumage, bc to me, the only justification for one legitimate use of force in society is the peace and freedom it buys to build those better mousetraps---and pass on the accumulated knowledge to those that follow.
In philosophical terms, this makes me a progressive, bc state power rests on the promise of making things better over time rather than conserving the present.
__________
P.S. had a weird time in KC. Now that the Chiefs have become The world's NFL team with Taylor Swift in the KC orbit...every little thing related to Chiefs fandom is hitting news site across the f'n world.
Perhaps some here have heard of the 3 KC fans who went to a friend's house to watch a game and they got found dead due to being frozen outside the house 2 days later.
The parties involved quickly lawyered up, and of the 3 legal eagles mentioned in the news, I went to school with two of them.
One was a guy I had no idea was a KC area lawyer and I haven't seen since I was 14---when he was my freshman yr bully who sucker punches me in the hall just before a class.
After unloading my yrs of martial arts training on him in the middle of a classroom (I started Judo at age 6)---well that pretty much ended my days of getting picked on in school.
Amazing how seeing that name in the news made me want to punch him all over again---totally irrational bc who is really the same person at 59 that they were when 14?
Sigh. Does anyone ever really grow up, or do we just die and those left behind pretend that it happened somewhere along the way?
JV tell us (briefly) your dad’s story!!
Good rumination on Chiefs and bullying
Paul: ““One thing I do know. Those denouncing competitive creativity and accountability are often those who want ‘cooperation’ to be controlled by themselves.”
Now this is a dead giveaway that your thinking is a product of the Cold War. It practically screams “Animal Farm” and “Big Brother.” Obviously we have to beware of shysters, but are we to sit on our hands and do nothing because we’re afraid that any attempt to improve life will backfire as badly as it did under Stalin?”
Utter baloney, sir. All humans are delusional and very soon those who have all-power… who tell themselves they have the best of intentions… sooner or later act in ways that reduce the ability of others to point out their deluded errors. While science and the arts of maturity both teach many people to be ‘grownups’ and do a lot of error checking themselves, the only truly grownup thing is to invite competitive others to perceive and point out what they see as your mistakes.
They may prove WRONG a lot of the times. But the times they make you rethink delusions make it all worthwhile. And that does NOT happen without a competitive spirit.
Dr. Brin,
If JV's dad was an eyewitness to the Battle of Manila, I'm not sure he would have provided much detail. That's the kind of thing I would spend decades trying to forget, myself. Half Stalingrad, half Nanjing (Nanking for us oldsters).
Pappenheimer
I may have misunderstood - if he was there in 1941 instead of 1945 (when the US heavy artillery was in play, and the Japanese defenders had nowhere to run) there would have been less widespread horror.
Pappenheimer
Dr. Brin,
Grad school pounded into me and all my cohorts the importance of exposing our work to hostile critics. The better writers, artists, musicians, etc do the same. Athletic coaches can come across as quite hostile, though hostility as a teaching method only works for some. However, these relationships aren't necessarily competitive in nature. A coach is supposed to be helping you get better. Beta readers, art critics, and mentors among musicians are most often people who do what they do out of their desire to help others (probably less so with art critics, or so the stereotype would suggest).
One of my favorite composers is Franz Liszt, who some people today still say is the best pianist who ever lived. He was a rock star of his time, but kept very little of the fortunes he made on tour. The lion's share he used to promote the musical careers of other musicians, people like Schubert and Mendelssohn. Had a rough start with Chopin, but once he got to know Franzie they became fast friends. Competition isn't everything, and not everyone who wants to help others has nefarious ulterior motives. If that were the case, then what would even be the point of being here, talking about this stuff?
Humans are social animals, though obviously some are more social than others. I would like to see the more social animals get credit, and the sociopaths who usually end up at the top taken down. The mentality of our right-wing fascist folks, the knuckle-dragging troglodyte cult that is trying to destroy America, is one of "manly" competition. I never said that no one should ever compete under any circumstances. It's just that when competition has deadly consequences, or worse, it needs to be taken out of the arena. Thus Laissez-moi M'Ennuyer.
Paul SB
John,
"Sigh. Does anyone ever really grow up,...?"
I have been convinced for many moons that among male hominids in the US (I couldn't comment about anywhere else, and I won't assume that how things work in my tribe is universal), maturity is as common as hen's teeth. And that was long before Adam Sandler became a phenomenon. Hell, just look at Archie Bunker.
Paul SB
Paul SB:
Hell, just look at Archie Bunker.
Archie Bunker was compassionate and thoughtful compared to today's Republicans.
Remember in the very early seasons of The Simpsons, Homer was a bit of a boor, but not the complete idiot he suddenly became around the time of the "Streetcar Named Desire" episode? Somewhere along the line, 40% or so of our fellow Americans went through a similar, unexplained transformation.
How serious an idea is this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/climate/sun-shade-climate-geoengineering.html
It’s come to this. With Earth at its hottest point in recorded history, and humans doing far from enough to stop its overheating, a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists are proposing a potential fix that could have leaped from the pages of science fiction: The equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer space.
The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a far away point between the Earth and the sun to block a small but crucial amount of solar radiation, enough to counter global warming. Scientists have calculated that if just shy of 2 percent of the sun’s radiation is blocked, that would be enough to cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, and keep Earth within manageable climate boundaries.
...
The new edition of EARTH will be terrific. Lots of fixes. Anyway, while going through it, I found the following passage in the afterword... showing how far back (1989) I despised the utterly false and truly insane fixation so many nurse toward "cyclical history" - today a particularly noxious cult incantation on the gone-mad right. But suckled also by some on the far left.
"We don’t need mystical conjectures about “cycles of history” to explain, for instance, the fall of Rome. Perlin shows how the Roman Empire, the Aegean civilization of ancient Greece, imperial China, and so many other past cultures performed the same feat, ignorantly fouling their own nests, using up the land,
poisoning the future for their children. Ecological historians are at last starting to realize that this is simply the natural consequence whenever a people acquires more physical power than insight."
We will solve this by forging forward with the only human civilization to develop habits of self-questioning and science and a true sense of self-improvement. It will NOT happen if despair and inevitability ingrates - like those devouring the mad FOURTH TURNING junk - get away with spreading 'historical' bull.
https://www.davidbrin.com/earth.html
"I may have misunderstood - if he was there in 1941 instead of 1945 (when the US heavy artillery was in play, and the Japanese defenders had nowhere to run) there would have been less widespread horror."
Vastly MORE horror, spread across four grinding years of random bayonettings on the street. Everywhere the Imperial Army went, they were shocked not to be welcomed as liberators. And within weeks of savagery, they found nearly every local people raising insurgencies in favor of the Brits and Yanks... though less so for the French and not for the Dutch or Portuguese.
As for American maturity, that is exactly what that 40% of US males hate about the majority.
Well guys, my Dad never ended up seeing the battle of Manila.
He was in college and thus was part of an ROTC unit digging in to defend Manila when an officer ordered them to, "go home." My Dad says that officer probably saved his life.
My Dad does talk about pre-invasion Manila being utter insanity, where, "18 yr olds were handed guns and told they were 'in charge.'"He recounted a story about an aged friar ascending a bell tower with a lantern to ring the bell in his University. A unit of teenagers starts shooting at the light that they saw in the tower bc Manila was under blackout. My Dad talks about laughing bc the bald friar comes out of the bell wobbling bc his ears must have been ringing from bullets peppering the bell.
My Dad went home to his small town in the mountains about 70 miles from Manila. Japanese occupation troops showed up, and he said they were quite friendly and disciplined at first. Tried to teach Japanese to the locals and talked about, "Asia, should be for Asians."
As US submarine warfare cut their supply lines, things got not so nice bc everyone got hungry. The disciplined troops got rotated out, but before they left, the Colonel shows up at the house of some ladies where they had parties with Japanese officers. He warns them that, "some very bad men are coming. Tell the town not to be there."
My Dad says that this Japanese Colonel probably saved his life, bc the scum troops burned his town and slaughtered anyone they found. Thus, he was then living in a cave when people high in the mountains, whom people in his town used to look down on, shared the little they had to help them survive.
After the war, my Dad finished college, gets a medical degree and briefly practices medicine in that small town.
He came to the US in 1956, bc he knew his training was primitive. So, he repeats residency.
After overcoming a tough start where people said stuff like,"I don't want that Jap doctor," he ends up with more people who want to see him as patients than he could see in day (By the time I was a teenager).
He ended his career as the medical staff president of a large hospital in KC after becoming the biggest charitable fund raiser on the staff. He's where I get my puritanical standards for charitable foundation behavior.
Larry,
Re: Poor AND homeless VS just poor.
Yes, with one caveat. Someone without that sunk wealth is not necessarily homeless. One can rent places around here if one can earn enough. That's slightly easier to do than earning enough to secure a mortgage to own a place instead even though the cashflow is about the same.
One thing a person with sunk wealth has that the renter does not is an option to leave easily. If I cash out and move east to where land costs less, I can re-enter over there with relative easy. I though about doing that once, but I married a California girl. I'd never have been able to get her back in over here near her family.
That option, though, has value even if we don't want to cash it in.
———
For everyone else pondering the geometry of competition and cooperation…
That's nuts!
They are obviously parallel here and perpendicular over there.
They undergo scale and rotation transformations as our political opinions shift.
Heh. Try competing with someone across a chess board without also cooperating with them.
If you think you can do it, you aren't playing chess.
Or try cooperating with colleagues without also competing with them. Progress will be replaced by stagnation.
JV wow. Great story! Inspiring life. Good thing they didn't muster his ROTC unit to go to Bataan!
Any successful sports team is built on a combination of internal competition and cooperation. Without the internal competition, the player can't stand up to opponents.
Without cooperation, the team will lose to a more unified opponent.
Team sports success relies on an unstable devil's brew of cooperation and internal rivalry. These things are finicky, high-performance sports cars that are hard to maintain at peak output.
P.S. Looking back Iast last week's threads, I see a number of people gave my bb novel a whirl. Thanks for looking at it...and my silence doesn't mean I was ignoring u...I was in KC with my almost 100 yo father (his bday is March 8).
So I haven't looked at the Google doc in over a week, so if anyone left comments there I have yet to see them.
_____________
@John_V: Three chapters in on your baseball yarn & it's an odd mix of first person narrative (present & past) and omniscient with maybe too much exposition. Haven't found a reason to identify with, care about or like your protagonist yet.
Locum,
Hmmmm, any first person narrative present/past mix is a friggin mistake. I'm hoping u don't see it later, bc the opening chapters started life as first person past that I shifted to first person present.
As for the omniscient POV, hmmmm, I'd like if u could point that out where u see that in the text---are u seeing the baseball culture exposition as omniscient?
P.S. the baseball exposition came from picking up an audience I never expected on an early version i posted: female romance readers.
Apparently, there's an entire indie romance subgenre about women landing male sports star love objects (and yes, I read a number of these books trying to understand that audience).
I agree that the baseball culture exposition needs to get cut down to a minimum necessary for the plot. Oddly enough, a lot of the female test readers from my writer's group really liked the protagonist, but were confused by things I assumed a baseball audience would know.
I don't want to clog up the main thread on here with stuff about my bb novel, so would be happy to respond in Google doc comments.
More cooperation leads to babies.
More competition leads to the food to feed them all.
Social behavior is both intertwined.
Paul SB,
But these things are being tested.
Some. One of the great things about Sapolsky's book was how one could dig deeper and examine the form those tests took. I love that stuff because I can test those things I've been enculturated to believe… including the validity of the tests.
One thing I'm especially skeptical of, though, are tests that rely too much on games. I have a deep appreciate of game theory itself, but I've spent some time learning its limits. Especially the limits imposed by the enculturated beliefs of those implementing the games.
So… if you have more stuff I can chew on like Sapolsky's material I'll shut up about this and go read it. Until then I grant 'possible' not not yet 'probable'.
converging on a view of human nature that is quite different from what we have been enculturated into believing
I strongly agree here and fully support demolishing our attitudes about worship of wealth. However, there are important things to teach children that widen their understanding around how to generate incomes. We CAN do that without equating money with self-worth, but we risk pissing of people who want to demolish too much.
…radar detector detector detector…
I spent some time pondering how to make a device that would intentionally fake out radar detectors. Just putting that on the market would have been enough to cause turmoil. I grew up, though, and decided to stay out of that arms race.
When the decent human beings are winning…
True, but you unintentionally put your finger on the source of my 'test' skepticism. Try defining 'decent' in a testable way and you'll find yourself adrift far from the shores of science.
———
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
Hayek focused a lot on economics at the time, so the book focuses on the totalitarian risks associated with central planning. That might not seem to apply to our current dangers, but if one takes into account the economic futures the MAGA fools likely face, one can see the connection and the path laid out.
Hayek himself was not a fan of labels either and went so far as to discourage people from attaching 'ism' to his name when talking about his ideas. Road to Serfdom doesn't have anything to do with any of the isms I know, though, so you aren't in much danger if you work through it.
Skip the abridged version from Reader's Digest.
Skip the cartoon version too, though it will make more sense later.
You won't like some of what he says, but that's not unusual for deep thinkers from Vienna.
Oh! Did you all hear Peter Thiel wants to start a third Olympics? (After the official one and Special.) “Enhanced Games” would allow performance enhancing drugs, under ‘supervision.’
There is actually a story about that, only with prosthetics. Can't recall the details or the name, though. It was printed by Gollancz as one of their yellow hardbacks. Seventies or earlier.
JV wow. Great story! Inspiring life. Good thing they didn't muster his ROTC unit to go to Bataan
Dr. Brin,
That 's the short version. My Dad wrote a book "for the family" about his WW2 experience. Honestly, I'd like to build a writing platform to the point where I could take that book, add in his medical career, and essentially tell his full immigrant story.
My Dad did see quite a bit of nasty stuff during the Japanese occupation. My great-grandfather founded the town, bc he blew up a Spanish outpost and had gold o inn his head.
He relocated the family to the mountains and changed the family name. My Filipino grandfather was the town mayor and Chief of Police, which meant he was the local martial arts badass who broke up bar fights.
He was in his 60's during WW2, and thus wasn't involved in guerilla actions. But, bc he was the local Don, the guerrillas would ask his permission bf doing anything in his area.
He would of course give his permission, but insisted his only son (my Dad) not be involved. So, my Dad knew who the local guerilla fighters were, and pretty much knew what they were doing, but never took part.
The closest my Dad got to combat was when he was 20 and he was out retrieving rice his family had buried. Late in the war, Filipinos buried their rice bc otherwise foraging Japanese soldiers would steal it. The young men would ride out at night, dig up the buried provisions, and bring them back so the family could eat.
One night when they were living in caves, my Dad is doing this when he and his friend ran into a full column of Japanese horse cavalry patrolling the jungle in the dead of night.
The horses sensed each other, but it was pitch black so the Japanese don't realize my Dad and his friend are there.
They ended up breaking for the jungle and the Japanese fired wild shots when they figured out what was happening, but they don't follow bc they feared getting lured into a guerilla ambush (a tactic guerillas actually used).
After liberation, my Dad became the for the orderly for the commanding officer of a US paratroop unit located in his province (probably the Colonel's way of making nice with local authorities by employing the Chief of Police's son).
My Dad said that when Filipino workers would go through the mess chow line, the cooks just piled their trays with food. When they'd say something about not being able to eat all that food, they get told, "You're in the US Army, now. You'll eat what we tell you to eat.'
Of course, the Filipino workers would give away excess food to hungry filipinos hanging around the camp. The US soldiers were loaded with equipment, but couldn't give away their supplies due to regulations. Overloading the trays of local workers was their way around this rule.
Alfred Differ:
Re: Poor AND homeless VS just poor.
Someone without that sunk wealth is not necessarily homeless.
I'm pretty much in full agreement with everything you said there. My "poor and homeless" comment was just to emphasize that even sunk into an illiquid asset, the million dollars has still provided value that you wouldn't have without the money. One has to be reminded of that when your friends and acquaintances are spending like sailors, and you're eating ramen noodles.
* * *
Try competing with someone across a chess board without also cooperating with them.
If you think you can do it, you aren't playing chess.
I don't deny that cooperation and competition sometimes require each other. I also don't deny that they sometimes resist each other. The only semantic argument I was making is that they are in fact distinct concepts.
I spent some time pondering how to make a device that would intentionally fake out radar detectors. Just putting that on the market would have been enough to cause turmoil.
From a certain point of view, radar detectors promote cooperation between drivers and police. Drivers slow down when they know they're being scanned--just like they're supposed to. Win-win. Of course, if the purpose of the radar is to generate ticket revenue, then it becomes more like competition. :)
John Viril:
Of course, the Filipino workers would give away excess food to hungry filipinos hanging around the camp. The US soldiers were loaded with equipment, but couldn't give away their supplies due to regulations. Overloading the trays of local workers was their way around this rule.
Your stories from the Philippines restore some American pride.
JV: Another great anecdote! My wife and I published my father’s autobiography online. He beat up Bund Nazis in Chicago in the 1930s (See his picture and story in the great new book GANGSTERS VS. NAZIS.) As a though reporter for City News Bureau he covered Capone and tommygunnings, then reported for Yanks & Stars & Stripes during WWII.
I assume you've seen my standard "Advice article for rising writers" at http://www.davidbrin.com/advice.htm
I have a longer screed of specific advice, which I was going to suggest you email me to get. But I am thinking maybe I will post it here, in chunks.
L’s declaration of ‘needing prim ‘permezzo’ approval for every sexual act is classic. Certainly important early in a relationship. But Bullshit re later… [DB]
However, the situation regarding marital rape in California has since changed. In 2021, the state’s legislature enacted a new bill, known as Assembly Bill 1171, which repealed the spousal rape law in California. This means that, since the law was repealed, rape in marriage is subject to the same penalties as rape outside of marriage.
https://msmagazine.com/2021/10/13/can-your-husband-rape-you-california-law-spousal-rape-exemption/
For people my age & older, I assume that it's natural for them to prefer the mythical 'once was' of yesteryear to the messier realities of today, even though this makes discussion & argumentation into an arduous chore, since no amount evidence can shake their calcified convictions about the durability of either the now extinct Greatest Generation or the long defunct US Social Contract.
I believe some wag has dubbed this the 'Mandela Effect', this eerie phenomenon where people collectively misremember events, historical facts & other important culture moments in order to convince themselves of both historical continuity & relevancy.
Perhaps after our host revisits the two cognitively dissonant topics of minority rights & majority rule, we may talk about the Affirmative Consent standard again.
Best
One of the major differences in reactions to Japanese occupation of SEA was that the Philippines had already been promised independence by the USA. In most other countries there was little interest in resisting Japan until later in the war (when huge numbers of civilians were rounded up for slave labor and, in many cases, worked to death) because the European colonialists were not seen as 'liberators' but more 'old owners returning'. Granted, the Japanese occupiers tried hard to become as hated in 4 years as the French, Dutch, etc. had become in 300-350, but the SEA nationalist movements were often collaborators until late. An exception should be made for various Communist groups who, as European and American infiltrators and advisers found, could be relied on to risk their lives actually attacking Japanese troops. I believe the Hukbalahaps in the Philippines fell into that category, but there was also more widespread Filipino resistance than in other countries*.
* Please note that any resistance during these years was near-suicidal as Axis garrison troops across the world had no compunction about mass reprisal against any nearby civilian population, resulting in many resistance groups being betrayed as a matter of survival. When the British engineered the assassination of Heydrich the backlash resulted in about 5000 Czechs rounded up and killed. Chinese support for US airmen who had to bail out over China after the Doolittle Raid resulted in nearly uncountable deaths - estimated at 250,000 murders - by Japanese occupation troops.
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer:
Axis garrison troops across the world had no compunction about mass reprisal against any nearby civilian population,
I think their inhumanity tends to work against fascists over time. They start by thinking that "If you resist, we'll kill you and everyone around you," is a winning strategy, but for that to be true, the implicit opposite promise also has to be true: "If you don't resist, we won't do that." Fascists are not inclined to make that part seem plausible. At some point, the only choice is to take some of the bastards to Hell with you.
Larry,
The WWII era Fascists always tried to provide a local, intermediary target - Jews and Roma in Europe, Chinese in Asia - for the local Quislings to displace hatred towards. I'm sure that playbook would work quite well in the US; if our country fell apart into seceding states and then portions fell under, as a completely random example, Russian 'guidance', little trouble would be found employing local GQPers to kick in the heads of browner people and shoot down or drive pickups over demonstrators. Just look at the 'Pinochet did nothing wrong' and 'free helicopter rides' T-shirts.
Do I think a Russian occupation likely? Five Hells, no*. Could such an occupation find local support? Of course.
Pappenheimer
*Though Putin has apparently declared the sale of Alaska illegal, and does have an historical territorial claim akin to Russia's over Crimea. THAT would be interesting fiction - local neofash coming facing the results of their collaboration and sedition. Some might fight; others would join the local Gestapo in order to help round up liberals, 'socialists' and First Nations 'agitators'.
* poor editing - "coming facing" should be "facing"
Pappeneheimer
Alfred: “More cooperation leads to babies.
More competition leads to the food to feed them all.”
Well… both are very mixed. In fact making babies (esp. ‘,mating’) is about the most competitive thing imaginable.
Re wealth worship. Bill Maher’s show last night attacked the money-wealth obsession of modern music lyrics.
Well locum, my Dad was born in 1924 and us still around, but I do not dispute "the now extinct Greatest Generation."
They pretty much are extinct---except in memory and the cultural legacy they left behind.
Please note that any resistance during these years was near-suicidal as Axis garrison troops across the world had no compunction about mass reprisal against any nearby civilian population,
In my Dad's area, this wasn't true. Reprisals were difficult for the Japanese to execute, bc this area is mountainous with thick jungle.
This meant Filipinos could disappear into the jungle and the Japanese wouldn't follow bc they could be set up for ambushes very easily.
Extremely difficult to use armored vehicles in a mountain region with thick jungle, hence my Dad's story about running into a column of horse cavalry.
The most useful vehicle there was a friggin jeep.
My Dad said he knew Vietnam was hopeless when news reports came about VC bombings if US troops. He said he had seen jungle warfare and the Japanese couldnt dream of pulling such attacks against the Americans in the Philippines bc some local would see the Japanese marshalling their troops to prep for such a raid and tip American soldiers.
My Father's town ran from bad men bc they were tipped by a JAPANESE COLONEL, which was unusual. But, in my Dad's area, the jungle was so thick there could be eyes everywhere looking at Japanese troops from the jungle and they wouldn't have a clue anyone was there.
The Japanese start loading up for a patrol, and the nearby villagers start disappearing into the jungle. How do u kill a ghost?
Historically, my Dad's province was a hotbed for rebels (Batangas).
Batangas was one of 8 provinces that started the 1896 rebellion vs. Spain-which is why the Filipino flag depicts a sun with 8 rays of light. The 3 stars are for 3 other provinces that joined later.
What you're talking about happened in big cities that couldnt just ghost away. Mainland China is NOT a "jungle nation" like the Philippines, so geography and the specific region are EVERYTHING in guerilla warfare.
I'm not talking out my butt either. My uncle Ding was a Philippine Army General who earned his star commanding a counter-insurgency action in Mindanao vs. islamic moros in the mid 70s under Marcos.
Uncle Ding later became a commerce Under Secretary on the Philippine Cabinet long after the Marcos regime collapsed. He had enormous real power that far outstripped his title bc the President's Chief of Staff was his Plebe year roommate (and lifelong friend) at the Philippine military academy.
P.S. Uncle Ding sat me down and explained to me how Philippine politics worked when a firm I was involved in was trying to win a govt contract in the Philippines.
Pappenheimer:
Though Putin has apparently declared the sale of Alaska illegal, and does have an historical territorial claim akin to Russia's over Crimea.
If he'd give back the money we bought it with, I'm not sure I'd have a problem.
'Course, "There are parts of Alaska I'd advise you not to try to invade."
THAT would be interesting fiction - local neofash facing the results of their collaboration and sedition.
They wouldn't know who to root for.
'Course, "There are parts of Alaska I'd advise you not to try to invade."
In the history of the Fallout universe, prior to WW III, it was China which invaded Alaska (shortly after the US annexed Canada). There is a whole DLC dealing with a battle between Chinese and American forces.
Well locum, my Dad was born in 1924 and us still around, but I do not dispute "the now extinct Greatest Generation."
I believe that there is a connection between long life spans, mental resilience, and the events of WWII. When I look around here, most of the survivors of that era are women who fled from the former eastern provinces as well as the victims of the Nazis.
Der Oger:
In the history of the Fallout universe, prior to WW III, it was China which invaded Alaska (shortly after the US annexed Canada).
In a WWII-era comic book (I mean one actually published during the war), the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch had to foil a Nazi plot to dig a tunnel under the Bearing Strait and invade North America via Alaska. How a Nazi force of that size had already made it all the way east across Russia to the Pacific was not even considered worthy of explanation.
How a Nazi force of that size had already made it all the way east across Russia to the Pacific was not even considered worthy of explanation.
Yes. The franchise certainly lacks realism in that regard, though the trigger for WWIII are conflicts over dwindling natural ressources. Then again, the game series has a good dose of political satire wrapped into 50s science fiction and monster flics, complete with mad scientists, brains in the jar and two-headed cows.
Outer worlds has the same satirical vibes, though it concentrates on capitalism.
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