[Rezwan]

How does anyone know what prehistoric people universally believed? Have they interviewed them? From the wikipedia flat-earth link above we read:

The belief that the Earth was flat was almost universal until about the 4th century BC, when the Ancient Greek scientists and philosophers proposed the idea…

Maybe they did, but there’s no way to know without universal interviews! Universal! What epistemic arrogance. The people that built the pyramids, and those astronomers of ancient meso-america seem to have had an excellent grasp of the heavens. They didn’t seem to be using clumsy flat-earth geometry. Why would one assume they thought the earth was flat? Because years later, Herodotus wrote down that they did? Because some drawings in holy sites in India show a flat earth atop a stack of turtles? As if, in the past, everyone has always believed what they teach in sunday school, and no one thought of it as a metaphor, or a social thing, and only now are we sophisticated enough to tell the difference.

FYI, the earth is, indeed, resting on a turtle. You can’t see it, because it’s in its stealth/invisi-sheild shell. When it shifts, that’s what causes the northern lights.

[Rezwan]

Ooh! Here’s an even better quote. This book is so much fun:

Scientists and true believers in science are fond of pointing out that science is always open to new ideas, new methods, new knowledge: how otherwise could one explain the progress of science, which has seen the continual acquisition of new knowledge by deployment of continually new methods and the adoption of continually new theories?

This is the same fallacy as that which led to the myth of the scientific method. Hindsight gives a misleading perspective. There may not be a simple cause for what has happened in science in the past few centuries. One might equally explain the course of biological evolution through openness to change, just because as we look back we see that there has been so much change. In point of fact, we believe that biological change is anomalous rather than normal. Reproduction proceeds by duplication of existing genes, with considerable safeguards against errors in duplication, so that organisms on the whole breed true; the challenge is much more to explain variation and novelty than faithful heredity and stasis. The particular course that evolution has taken is a by-product of mutation, competition , environmental change, natural selection, genetic drift, and the like, not the result of any direct natural tendency for biological entities to change.

Similarly, that science has adopted new ideas in no way demonstrates that the adoption of new ideas is somehow fundamentally natural to science.

And:

Nowadays, again or still, even the most forward-peering scientists believe that all the main principles have been recognized and that no major surprises await us.

Carl Sagan, in many respects incisive and critical, wrote in 1978, “this…is written just before – at most …a few years or a few decades before – the answers to many of these vexing and awesome questions on origins and fates are pried loose from the cosmos…there is only one generation privileged to live through that unique transitional moment: that generation is ours.”

Thus, human beings, including scientists, do not function under continual awareness of humanity’s fundamental ignorance; rather, they live under perpetual illusion of fundamental understanding.

Epistemic arrogance. Annoying whenever someone else is exhibiting it. Logical when you’re doing it.

Whoo! The book is mostly about uncertainty in knowledge, human nature (that scientists are human, but the scientific method asks that they not be, that they be truly rational) and the claim that this truly rational process exists and is used, when in fact, the actual process of science is much more human, and there is a constant tension between innovation and conservatism in science.

Enjoy!

[Rezwan]

Here’s a quote from one of my favorite books on science that brings up the issue of uncertainty:

To assert that science is open-minded, or that it should be, not only contradicts the evidence but also clashes directly, and not too subtly, with other common beliefs about science, in particular that scientific knowledge carries a notable degree of certainty. Everything that one learns has not only a positive side – that certain things exist, that a certain phenomenon takes place – but also a negative one – that certain other things therefore cannot exist, that certain other phenomena therefore cannot occur. This, of course, is the source of resistance to novelty. Having explicitly learned certain things, scientists and science have at the same time learned implicitly that other things are not so. We could then be truly open-minded only about things that we do not yet know about at all, or things about which we know so little that we cannot even judge their plausibility. That is an empty sort of open-mindedness, good in lighthearted bull sessions perhaps, but irrelevant to organized knowledge seeking.

Further:

Much about the actual everyday practice of science can be understood on the basis that science is a conservative, even hidebound enterprise; little, if anything, can be understood about the actual practice of science by regarding it as inherently open to new things. Indeed, genuine absurdity results if the demand that science be open is taken to logical conclusions.

From “Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method” by Henry Bauer. Check it out 😛

[Rezwan]

So, basically anything that does not produce, market, or make production equipment for many other forms of energy.

Did you mean “Anything that DOES produce…”?

No, he’s saying that equipment etc. tied to other forms of energy generation will be obsolete, and so should be avoided.

Thanks for clearing this up.

It’s a strange boolean. Anything but x. Just avoid x, and you’ll be fine. OK! I’ll buy more shady derivatives – because it’s not x!

I thought perhaps he was thinking of the energy conversion equipment, and that we should invest in that, as he says:

FF-related stuff, of course. And electric utilities. Any industry that uses energy. Energy conversion

[Rezwan]

So, basically anything that does not produce, market, or make production equipment for many other forms of energy.

Did you mean “Anything that DOES produce…”?

[Rezwan]

OK, so I went to the DOE website, since ARPA-E is with them.

I looked through their org charts and program descriptions. I found this article: http://www.energy.gov/recovery/science_technology.htm

Which has this to say about ARPA-E:

Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
$400 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was founded at the beginning of the Cold War and developed the technologies that resulted in modern computer operating systems and the Internet, ARPA-E will support transformational energy technology research projects with the goal of enhancing the nation’s economic and energy security. By fostering an atmosphere of innovation, ARPA-E will provide a place for research into cutting edge technologies that are still too risky for private industry, creating the opportunity for revolutionary breakthroughs in energy technology.

* Learn more about DARPA, the model for ARPA-E

Note, the only link in this article was to DARPA, the model for ARPA-E. So it sounds like they still don’t have a contact point. If anyone knows better, or is a better searcher, let me know! Maybe a phone call. I’m in Iran, phone calls get awkward here.

[Rezwan]

I googled “ARPA-E” and found on this site http://opencrs.com/document/RL34497 that:

In August 2007, Congress authorized the establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) within the Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the America COMPETES Act (P.L. 110-69).

Yet the Mercury article quoted in first post above says that:

Deep in the $787 billion stimulus bill that became law two weeks ago is $400 million to launch ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Authority for Energy.

I guess in August 2007, ARPA-E is “established”, but with $400million in 2009, it gets “launched”. Oh, wait! Reading further in the opencrs article, we see the Bush administration didn’t want to really fund ARPA-E:

The Bush Administration questions whether the DARPA model can be used for the energy sector and is concerned that it might redirect funds away from current DOE research activities, particularly the DOE Office of Science. Instead, the President’s FY2009 budget requests funding for six new technology transfer collaborations. ARPA-E proponents doubt that DOE can achieve ARPA-E’s goals with its existing structure and personnel, as opposed to the ARPA-E’s innovative R&D;management design.

So, it was funded, but not actually funded (authorized funds – psych -not appropriated):

Congress authorized $300 million for ARPA-E in FY2008 and “such sums as are necessary” for FY2009 and FY2010. Congress subsequently appropriated no funds for FY2008. The Administration requested no funds for ARPA-E in FY2009.

Where does that leave us now? $400 million, but will that be authorized/not appropriated as well?

And who are the contact people there! I’m off to find an address. Is it even up and running yet? Has it only been on paper since 2007?

It will be cool if Obama becomes the “Fusion President”.

[Rezwan]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: Also not to mention the fact that even if there was no warming, the planet’s remaining natural deposits of carbon are far too valuable for other uses than to burn it all up.

Can you elaborate on this? I appreciate it in theory, but do you know of any sources that quantify this? I live in Iran, and some days feel like I am betraying this country by putting an end to their cash cow.

I have a vague idea that they can re-tool their economy to go upstream and develop high end petroleum based products, and that this is valuable, but other than an assertion, I have nothing to go on.

Thanks!

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote:
PS:Much better than TNGLFM 😉

TNGLFM – “tingle fum” sounds like some kind of Christmas monster.

My favorites at this moment in time are “Stella” “Plasimodo” and “Firefly”.

“Stella” because I can picture the abusive power companies in their undershirts yelling “STELLLLLLAAAAAA” once they realize they’ve lost the relationship with their customers.

“Plasimodo” because I like the freakiness it implies. Misunderstood Plasma dude with a heart of gold.

“Firefly” because of the TV series. What a ship. Well, maybe the baby should have a different name, but once we develop a fusion powered spaceship, call THAT Firefly.

[Rezwan]

You’ve reminded me of the refrigerator patent conspiracy. I have no supporting documentation for this – OK, my source is my uncle who liked to point out that the CFC bans coincided with the expiration of patents on refrigerators. The conspiracy here is that the environmentalists are being used by big business to keep control of the market by making proprietary processes with expiring patents obsolete. The motivation here is that big business profits are derived from intellectual property rights, and once the patent expires, they can’t exploit it anymore. Eventually everything will end up in the public domain, and this is not a happy thought for patent owners.

This is an economic issue that I don’t have a good handle on. In the current case, we have big businesses happy to accommodate environmental fears and generate new patents and keep their market share. The losers, as you point out, are certain consumers who have to pay higher prices (although these consumers are free to switch to alternatives, for example, saline nasal rinses which don’t require aerosol and may be more effective for asthma). Other losers are businesses that were prepared to mass produce the older technologies at a much cheaper cost (like third world companies) who now are unable to exploit the expired patents.

In the long run, is it better to keep this up, to keep finding ways for businesses to come up with new patents and jack up their prices? How does our economy work? Do those consumers have shares in the companies that they buy products from? Are any of them (or the consumers of the businesses they work for) employed and overpaid by these companies? It’s all interconnected in a big tangled economic web. How much of pricing is artificially sustained, and how good or bad is that?

Like I say, I don’t have a good economic model or equations to try and process this dilemma.

[Rezwan]

Also, folks, maybe we can ease up on the name calling and other inflammatory language.

[Rezwan]

JimmyT wrote: This whole global warming argument certainly reminds me of the hubub over CFC’s and how they were going to ruin the ozone layer. The “enviromental” lobby forced their will on US business and US people in the form of legislation which cost consumers billions and billions of dollars.

You sound so victimized. Relax. Bjorn Lomborg, in his book The skeptical environmentalist page 274:

The case of the depleted ozone layer and the solution through restrictive protocols is seen as a success story, in which the world community finally pulled itself together and put the environment before money. … However, it is worth pointing out that the implementation of the CFC ban was strictly profitable. It was actually relatively cheap to find substitutes for CFC (e.g., in refrigerators and spray cans) and at the same time the advantages were quite clear-cut.

In a report for Environment Canada, the Canadian EPA, it was estimated that the overall global cost until 2060 of the implementation of the CFC protocols was about 235 billion 1997 US dollars. By way of comparison, the overall advantage, stemming from avoided damages to fisheries, agriculture and outdoor materials was estimated to amount to some 459 billion 1997 US dollars, not even including about 333,500 fewer skin cancer deaths.

However, these are global figures accumulated over the next 63 years, which because of both the long time and the number of people easily get very large.

E.g., average consumer cost is just a few cents. And benefit is more. And now you get double paper cups at Starbucks instead of styrofoam. Cry me a river.

[Rezwan]

Duke Leto wrote:
Now that I’ve thought about it, I really hope Eric is right. It would be a tragedy if FF stopped Peak Oil and Global Warming only to bring back the bad old days of nation state power jockeying.

Never mind nation states. It’s all these pesky ethno-national sub-groups. Big hairy problem, and FF won’t make it go away. How about nation time-sharing? Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, this patch of land will be Iran, this patch Iraq and this patch Turkey. Wednesdays Saturdays and Fridays they will all be Kurdistan. Sunday, we all fight…or play football! Yeah. Whoever wins the game gets Sunday. If you commit your crime on this soil on a Monday, you’ll go to Turkish prison. Wait ’til Wednesday, the Kurdish system is more lenient. Maps of the world will be digital to show the ebb and flow of national identity over the week. Lovely irridescent effect, like rippling butterflies clustered on trees against the blue sky of the ocean.

This won’t solve anything, of course. Outrage will ensue in perpetuity. Ill will will simmer. (heh! aliteration). But for it to spill over into violence (but will it spill?), usually there’s a valuable resource at stake. And FF should take the wind out of that. Creating space for cooperation and creative conflict resolution. You’ll have people who aren’t so worried that resources are going to run out, that they need to jockey for power and position. People who can relax, take a deep breath, appreciate life, renewal, regeneration, create a home where they’re at. Or get plastic surgery and take drugs. Brave new world. That’s the fantasy, at any rate.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Damn few, actually, by comparison with the ongoing toll of the regime. And, if you’re up on the news (which you won’t get from the news outlets, of course), things are going just swimmingly over there now. Outrage fueled by ignorance is quite distasteful, thankyouverymuch.

Can you quantify “damn few?” There must be a number.

The “outrage” concept comes from a book on risk assessment whose title I forget. It says that what most people do is take actual probabilites of risk for an event, and then multiply by an outrage factor to determine their action or feelings on the matter. This outrage factor, is, of course, completely subjective. Different things outrage different people to different degrees. The upshot is, of course, that perspective on actual risk is lost. Everyone nurses their confirmation bias and calls each other names. And then spends or frets disproportionately on certain pet areas of outrage.

So now, based on false information about “outrageous” weapons of mass destruction we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives on Iraq, which wasn’t even where the 9/11 attacks originated from. Saudis and Egyptians. Our allies.

Well, what’s done is done. I say, let it go and get on with the work ahead. I have no perspective. Lumpy outrage and denial. As you can see from this post on my new website, I even have a tendency to trivialize these matters. I like to think of it as strategic trivialization. the “Life is beautiful” use of denial as a stand against violence.

Also, the title of that book : “The Sling and the stone: On war in the 21st century” by Thomas Hammes

For many military strategists, including those presently running the Defense Department, this new world order amounts to a call to newfangled technological arms, but for Hammes, smart bombs and spy drones are not the answer. The solution is to study our enemies as they have studied us and build a networked, flexible, and, here’s the kicker, less hierarchical military structure that employs humans to fight the humans fighting us.

In this context, railguns are yet another technological approach, which the author above finds less relevant to the nature of warfare today. The middle easterners aren’t lobbing nukes (much as Iran would like to have them) so what use are rail guns against them (whew. I got back on topic)

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Lots of partial agreement and disagreements with the above, but I’ll limit myself to this: in the modern context, in societies (e.g., KSA) where the 4-wives rule DOES generate a large young male surplus, where and how do you think the frustration is expressed?

“Large male surplus” is overrated. Another country with a large male surplus is China’s “one child” policy which has made folks abort females. I suspect their male surplus is much larger than KSA. Plus, the four wife thing I think only applies to wealthy people. You need the permission of your first wife to get the next. It only happens in the context of economic imbalance.

We can also look at the fringe Mormon community. All those “lost boys”, as they call them, who are kicked out of their houses when they become teenagers. Do they blow themselves up?

I live in Iran, and the only time the second wife thing comes up, outside of rich guy throwing weight around in villages, is generally in cases of infertility. First wife can’t have a kid, so the guy gets a second wife, with her permission. Always ends up badly. “trying to love two women is like a ball and chain”, as they say.

Likewise, Iran. During the war with Iraq, many youth were recruited not with the promise of 72 virgins in the afterlife, but with motorcycles. You went to the recruitment office and got plastic keys to your heavenly bike. (This is the rumor. I haven’t seen documentation). Maybe the kids were that gullible, or maybe they just wanted to see some action. There’s not a lot to do out here in the desert.

I think a more plausible way of looking at this is as a social trend. In “the Tipping Point”, the author theorized about how something becomes a trend. He said there was a small island somewhere, with an indigenous population, in which a kid killed himself by hanging over a love triangle. This was, of course, a big deal in the community. Everyone came to the funeral, both girlfriends. Many tears were shed, and it became a local legend. This perversely set off a rash of copycat suicides, so that proportionately, the suicide rate of this tiny island was greater than anywhere else by an order of magnitude or two. The idea was that the youth were captivated by this narrative, and were inspired to live it out as well. The author noted that for many, like teen drug use, it was just experimentation that ended badly. The kids didn’t really get what they were doing.

Then there’s that book about “the madness of crowds” which had a chapter on dueling. Apparently, at some point, it was quite the trend to demand satisfaction, go and meet someone in a field, walk ten paces, turn around and shoot. Many fine young men died in this way, and everyone knew someone who was killed like this. Wait a minute, that’s an argument in favor of the “surplus male” theory. But certainly more focused on just taking out the surplus males.

So, back to suicide bombing. We’re looking at this on two levels. The motivation of the people actually carrying it out, and the strategy being followed by the organizations that recruit and support them.

For the organizations orchestrating the terror, the strategy sometimes backfires and sometimes doesn’t. An interesting book on the topic is “The sling and the stone”. The purpose of terror is, in some cases specific like the guy described in his article, but in others, it is simply to show unreasonable-ness and resolve. Revenge. And to create equivalence of status, since there’s no way you can match the wealth and power of the west.

For the people doing it, perhaps it is a captivating narrative and has some sort of romantic appeal. Dying for something! How many films play that up. As for the killing all these other people, well, this world is an illusion anyway, and only the afterlife is permanent. They’ll be resurrected and tried for their sins like everyone else.

Which reminds me about the value of life issue. My uncle the psychiatrist has no patience with suicides. If someone calls and they are threatening suicide, he calls the sherrif. Takes the person into lockdown, I think there’s a prescribed time. 36 hours? He sends a sherrif because if your estimation of the value of life is low enough that you’d take your own, then it’s low enough to take others. There’s no difference. Life has no value. This life.

Well, I could just keep going here. About how in Iran, if you run someone over and kill them, you have to pay the family the amount described in the Quran: 40 camels. So, that’s how much a life is worth. It turns out to be a lot, but much less than you get in America in a lawsuit for wrongful or even accidental death. Much less than the airport insurance.

But on the other side, how easy it is for western powers to overlook the death they cause. How many Iraqi lives were lost during “shock and awe” (true, now many Iraqi lives are taken by Iraqis, but does that excuse us?) I think the west just has it more mechanized and civilized, while this terror thing is much more personal and emotional. Both methods should cause outrage.

And now, getting back on topic with this post,

Conclusion 1) Conventional Air Forces have now become flying turkeys. No unstealthy fighter, bomber or gunship will be able to dodge a shotgun barrage of these little things going at escape velocity, and the stealthy ones will be in deep trouble too since the enemy only needs to have a general idea where they are to kill them.

This seems to demonstrate the utility of suicide bombing as a military tactic. Expensive weapons systems are useless, but some unsuspected person, walking into a crowded place, blowing himself up with a cheap bombs, that will have an impact. Not on the military. On the people behind the military who order the military around, e.g., the national will.

[Author]

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