[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:

I pointed out that statement was not accurate. There be risks and dangers. You may feel they are worth the gain, but being worth it is not the same as not existing at all.

That’s either deliberate misunderstanding, or non-deliberate misunderstanding.

Dangers are uncontrolled and unpredictable risks. Aside from Chernobyl, which was state-bungled design and management, name another nuclear plant disaster.

You have an interesting dictionary.

If a “risk” is “predictable”, then it’s not much of a risk, is it? If you know where the anvil is going to fall, you can step aside, at your leisure.

“Risk” is more like, “there’s a chance that one of these anvils will fall, we don’t know which one, or when, or even if.” Or, “if you run through this field of anvils, there’s a good chance you’ll bump your shin on one of them, and that won’t be fun.”

You also have a habit of changing definitions in mid stream:

You go from “Dangers are…risks” to “name another…disaster”. So, only “disasters” are “dangers”?

Again, a simple trip to the dictionary will clear things up:

danger |ˈdānjər|
noun
• the possibility of suffering harm or injury
• the possibility of something unwelcome or unpleasant

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: The Idiocy of Green Authoritarianism:

About 100 or so lawyers at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are in the midst of a move and will become the first tenants in a new building a couple of blocks down from the headquarters on First Street NE. Since FERC regulates electricity, natural gas and oil transmission, the commission appears most anxious that its offices meet the independent U.S. Green Building Council’s certification standards.

“FERC is subject to unannounced inspections at any time to ensure that all” the standards are met, a move notice explained, so the office site must be “clean and orderly all day, every day.” Deviation “from the plan to reduce paper waste and personal items,” the instructions say, “will risk our . . . certification.”

But the building will be a true monument to the demented evil of self-righteous bureaucracy, while it lasts.

You’re really not getting into the spirit of adventure here. This is an experiment! These guys are going to see down to the the tiniest detail how well this thing works (or doesn’t) And who better to be subject to this experiment than those who work for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission?

Of course, I have to tell you that America is already well ahead in the invasive bureaucracy category. Most building permit and inspection rules are for safety, and that’s great. But you have a lot of really invasive policies that are purely aesthetic. Mostly to do with “blight”. Quite a few of them go in the other direction, like that lady who wants to hang her washing out to dry. Clotheslines are banned by the homeowner’s association. So they’ve fined her over $900.

I think all office buildings have long and complicated rules. Every office I’ve been to seems to be a conservative place, and the owners are always trying to save money – putting in annoying fluorescent lights and so forth. Plants – often frowned on. Some go so far as to tell you how to decorate the space, putting limits on personal items. And of course, there’s a dress code.

These things all relax over use, as the impracticalities come out. Your fears are misplaced.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:

…Sustainable means that – sustainable. Capable of feeding the world, on a sustainable basis.

No, it doesn’t. It pre-defines “sustainable” to equate to some partimular model of agriculture, life-style, etc., with zero comprehension of technology and what the know and unknown alternatives might be. It’s a “freeze in place” code-word, with the place designed by the speaker.

Partimular, you say?

Interesting use of pronouns. “no, it doesn’t” – “it” refers to “sustainable means…”
Then, “It predefines…” – what is “it” there?

I suspect the second “it” would be “some folks”. Well, OK, some folks do. I have come across people who want to freeze some idealized life-style in place, but they aren’t ALL folks, and certainly, they don’t have exclusive rights to the word.

I likewise used to think of “sustain” as limiting – keeping everything the same. I thought it meant “unchanging, forever”. Which I found unsatisfying, because I am comfortable with a dynamic model of the environment, and was actually hoping to “improve” the environment, as measured by increasing habitats, lushness, biodiversity, etc. “sustain” to me meant, this is as good as it gets, let’s not lose any more ground, zero sum with human population and resource use.

But it doesn’t really mean that. You don’t need to limit yourself to that. You don’t need to pretend that others are limiting themselves.

Of course, you don’t need to pile all that onto the poor word. It has a simple job, just addressing resilience and continuity. From a dictionary:

sustain |səˈstān|
verb [ trans. ]
1 strengthen or support physically or mentally : this thought had sustained him throughout the years | [as adj. ] ( sustaining) a sustaining breakfast of bacon and eggs.
• cause to continue or be prolonged for an extended period or without interruption : he cannot sustain a normal conversation | [as adj. ] ( sustained) several years of sustained economic growth.
• bear (the weight of an object) without breaking or falling : he sagged against her so that she could barely sustain his weight | figurative his health will no longer enable him to sustain the heavy burdens of office.
2 undergo or suffer (something unpleasant, esp. an injury) : he died after sustaining severe head injuries.
3 uphold, affirm, or confirm the justice or validity of : the allegations of discrimination were sustained.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Not particularly. Just taking the reasoning to its conclusion. A car is dangerous in the hands of a fool or a texter or cell-phoner. Is the solution to get rid of cars?

“Taking the reasoning to its conclusion” – Isn’t that the definition of “reductio ad absurdo” or something like that? I always mix those things up.

I didn’t say anything about getting rid of cars. I used cars as an example of tradeoffs people make. But the risk is very real. The danger is there. Have you ever been in a car accident? Lost anyone to an accident? This is why they spend billions on highway safety, car safety, licensing drivers. It’s dangerous.

If you don’t acknowledge the danger, if you don’t know what it is, you aren’t consciously taking a risk, you’re just acting out of ignorance and denial. It’s once you understand the danger that you can calculate the tradeoffs and make an informed choice.

Denying the dangers is counterproductive. You started this cycle by saying:

Brian H wrote: Fission is nothing to fear. It is expensive, but not dangerous–aside from decrepit plants run by decrepit countries, like the Chernobyl disaster.

I pointed out that statement was not accurate. There be risks and dangers. You may feel they are worth the gain, but being worth it is not the same as not existing at all.

“Nothing to fear.” You said. “Not dangerous”.

Then…finally, you acknowledged the dangers.

Although, now, you’re backtracking.

What was that word you used?

Silly.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:

Irresponsible people with overtly destructive goals are the risk there, not the plants. There are, in any case, plant types that are very hard to use as the bases for atomic weapons.

The plants don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in a world of irresponsible people.
Silly principle. By that reasoning, nothing dangerous should ever be built anywhere by anyone. Responsible people are actually the only assurance of safety, survival, and progress there is.

Finally! You’re admitting it’s dangerous.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: The oil rig disaster is almost a pure case of “black swan”; in fact, it may be a red or purple swan. It was apparently caused by a huge surge of gas pressure blowing the valves, sending flammable gas to the surface. It was so large that it is unique in drilling history: there has never been a blowout like it. Safety measures in place saved over 100 of the workers; the ones who died were almost certainly at “ground Zero” in the initial explosion, and probably vaporized by it.

Such events must be treated with care in formulating standards and assigning “blame”. “Hard cases make bad law.”

That’s the point of the black swan. You’ve got a lot of people trying to downplay risks by throwing out the “hard cases” data, (aka “outliers”, “black swans”), and looking at “most probable” events. The “most probable” approach is delusional.

Because you’ll be getting hard cases from time to time. And then, who does absorb the cost of those hard cases? Shouldn’t it be those who have been benefiting most by ignoring or not anticipating the hard case?

Ignoring hard cases hides true risks and costs. Is that rational?

Banking appeared “conservative” for decades, but they were sitting on a huge problem and simply ignoring/hiding the risk. It only takes a year to wipe out all the “profit” they made over the past x decades.

So – the public bails them out, or takes the fall in terms of job loss and houses lost and abusive changes to credit card rates and so forth. That means, effectively, you’ve “blamed” (outsourced costs to) the public.

Meanwhile, all those years, the folks in finance have been giving themselves huge bonuses. They take credit for the booms, but outsource the busts.

They say it’s because they work better on “incentives”. Meanwhile it’s all gambling and they hope we don’t notice. If things go well, their bonuses are huge. If things go less well, their bonuses are a bit smaller. If there are losses, they pretend the losses would have been bigger without them and still get a bonus. Or a golden parachute. If things are catastrophic, they get a bail out. God bless ’em.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Irresponsible people with overtly destructive goals are the risk there, not the plants. There are, in any case, plant types that are very hard to use as the bases for atomic weapons.

The plants don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in a world of irresponsible people.

[Rezwan]

AaronB wrote: More news now posted on the LPP site.

Great! I just added it to the LPPX twitter, and retweeted it on FFS.

Also, put the longer bits from Eric on the FFS site and tweeted those as well. On LPPX first and then retweet on FFS.

I think it’s best if it comes from LPP and then FFS retweets. More fitting.

Keeps LPPX for pure technical updates, and FFS is free to ramble into the broader social currency dimensions.

Speaking of which, on the occasions when we do have news, I don’t see a lot of retweeting going on. Twitter isn’t really useful if there’s no retweeting.

I suppose I should mention this on twitter.

[Rezwan]

benf wrote: Correct me if I’m wrong in my understanding of the Black Swan, but what was “just” an exploding oil rig killing some workers has now turned into more of a Black Swan type of event, including birds and other animals soiled black with oil.

That would be a black swan if the industry didn’t think that sort of thing could happen and didn’t have precautions in place to prevent it. Did they think oil rigs were fool proof as compared to tankers? If they didn’t see it coming, it’s a black swan. If they have an insurance policy for it, it’s part of their business as usual, risk strategy. (not acceptable from an eco-view, but then again, 40,000 deaths on the highways every year doesn’t stop us from driving off to work every day.) In other words, we’re addicted to oil. Oil spills are acceptable. Just like the occasional exploding meth lab is worth it to those addicts.

The black swan is more the things you aren’t planning for – the “unknown unknowns” as opposed to the “known unknowns.”

Example from the book, a Vegas Casino’s risk management division was geared toward
1) reducing losses resulting from cheaters
2) sophisticated surveillance (to thwart an “oceans 11”)

Their four largest losses and risks, however, “fell completely outside their sophisticated models”. They were:
1) Loss of $100 million when Roy was maimed by a tiger. In scenario analysis, they had considered the tigers attacking the audience. But not attacking Roy. Seems so obvious now.
2) A disgruntled contractor, injured at work, was insulted by the settlement they offered him and attempted to dynamite the casino (explosives around the pillars in the basement). He was thwarted – but if he had been successful…?
3) An employee whose job it was to file a special form with the IRS simply didn’t. For years. No one noticed, until the IRS did. Tax violations and negligence could have resulted in loss of gambling license or suspension. They ended up paying a huge (sum undisclosed) fine. (I wonder what happened to the employee).
4) Casino owner’s daughter was kidnapped (!). This caused him to violate gambling laws, dip into casino coffers to pay ransom. (I thought K&R didn’t happen in the US.)

And more! Such drama.

C’est la vie.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Fission is nothing to fear. It is expensive, but not dangerous–aside from decrepit plants run by decrepit countries, like the Chernobyl disaster.

Paraphrasing John Stewart: “Spoken like a true scientist. From the first reel of a disaster movie.”

And if it’s nothing to fear, then why aren’t my fellow Iranians getting the green light on their nuclear aspirations? They just want energy. The official President assures us all.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: The only worthwhile “efficiency” initiatives are the ones that pay for themselves. Attempting to promote/hype one or the other with subsidies and tax benefits has consequences in Bastiat’s “unseen” sphere: the opportunity costs, the uses of capital now deflected that will never occur. The most obvious and dramatic modern reality-proof is the Spanish govenment report on the Spanish GreenJobs initiative. Each GreenJob cost 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy. It’s a rolling disaster.

Would have to see how they came up with that. Correlation or causality is hard to determine. Job availability is always shifting.

Things like productivity increases in a sector, which are considered good for the whole economy, end up costing jobs, but I don’t see you labeling that a “rolling disaster” even though it is to many families involved. In any case, not enough info here to put it in perspective.

Is it like the studies where mgmt wrings their hands about how much it costs them that people at work are surfing the internet rather than doing their jobs?

You can also look at the unregulated games high finance institutes have been playing and calculate how many jobs have been lost for each of those hedge fund jobs. I’m guessing it’s much higher than 1:2.2

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote:

So in the next 10 to 20 years we’re graduating a bunch of techies competing for jobs like new teachers are today. By adding a fourth branch to the government vs industry vs academic research environment, we’re not upsetting anybody else’s funding. My fantasy runs more along the lines of an announcement that the

“Podunk Development Co-operative seeks 50,000 partners contributing $100 annually to build and operate cutting edge aneutronic fusion research and tooling support lab to employ 2 degreed physicists, 10 physics undergraduate students, and up to 100 physics majors and promising high school students, who will graduate with solid work experience. Other intangible benefits include mentoring opportunities while developing a community of motivated problem solvers in all areas of business and the community. Creating and maintaining a global reputation for the highest energy density aneutronic fusion generators is the driving focus. Contact _____ “

Now we’re out of the ownership mentality and back into the frontier-style barn raising thinking.

Yes, that’s it!

FYI, my Mollusk example was to show that this doesn’t just apply to Focus Fusion, it’s broadly applicable to any number of innovative ventures.

The issue here is timing. Emergent social media technologies suggest that the time is right. We no longer need to settle for amputated markets but can unfurl the full scope of the market. Radically pro market. But there are quite a few SEC laws that oppose this. So – I don’t know if the timing will work for Focus Fusion.

[Rezwan]

Thanks!

I just tweeted it:

Australian “make it so” campaign. Vote for focus fusion – http://bit.ly/c3JbGw

By the way, the link generator they have is faulty. Took a few tries to get a link that actually went to the focus fusion entry. They need to make it so their link generator is accurate : )

[Rezwan]

benf wrote: Being more energy efficient in the mean time doesn’t really hurt anything accept maybe some stockholders returns. Car pooling and mass transportation helps the traffic flow. By listening to some of what the environmentalists views are, is the world necessarily worse off?

It doesn’t even need to hurt stockholder returns if they have a diverse portfolio, with both new and old tech covered. Being energy efficient in many cases means using advanced technology, fresher patents, new innovations, more money. You would figure this is an economic win. Actually, it was an “ozone hole denier” who put forth that argument to me. He said the patent for CFC based refrigerators had expired, and this whole ozone thing was a scam to get a new patent on new refrigerants so 3rd world countries couldn’t start making the old fridges and bypassing the 1st world.

Whether or not it was a scam, the continuation of economic activity is the lesson here.

[Rezwan]

Thanks! Looks great. Now to deploy it. One for Focus Fusion Society, and one for LPP. LPP’s would be an investment thermometer, I suppose.

Please stand by.

[Author]

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