Re: Sarah Palin

[Dave Land]

On Aug 30, 2008, at 5:23 PM, William T Goodall wrote:

>
> On 30 Aug 2008, at 23:48, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote:
>
>> Even if you don't give a fuck about people with Down Syndrome,
>> remember that, not long ago, someone else started doing the
>> same thing, and he-who-should-not-be-mentioned-in-mailing-lists
>> began the pogrom by mass-murdering those with mental handicaps.
>
> I invoke Godwin's Law. You lose the argument.

No. Godwin's Law does not allow you to win or lose arguments. It
merely states that this discussion is basically over.

Cite please? Why yes, of course:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/

Dave

Play by the rules Maru
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Re: Sarah Palin

[William T Goodall]

On 2 Sep 2008, at 08:06, Dave Land wrote:

> On Aug 30, 2008, at 5:23 PM, William T Goodall wrote:
>
>>
>> On 30 Aug 2008, at 23:48, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote:
>>
>>> Even if you don't give a fuck about people with Down Syndrome,
>>> remember that, not long ago, someone else started doing the
>>> same thing, and he-who-should-not-be-mentioned-in-mailing-lists
>>> began the pogrom by mass-murdering those with mental handicaps.
>>
>> I invoke Godwin's Law. You lose the argument.
>
> No. Godwin's Law does not allow you to win or lose arguments. It
> merely states that this discussion is basically over.
>
> Cite please? Why yes, of course:
>
> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

"There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more  
canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[2] than others invented  
later.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and  
other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made,  
the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has  
automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. This principle  
is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's Law. "

Definitions Maru

-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great  
evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. -  
Richard Dawkins



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Re: Science and Ideals.

[William T Goodall]

On 2 Sep 2008, at 02:18, Dan M wrote:

>> Olin wrote at the end
>> These are all scientific questions though.  If the answers don't  
>> come form
>> there, where will they come from?
>>
>
>
[snip]
> So, there seems to be at least a few of us who agree that the  
> naturalistic
> fallacy is just that, a fallacy. But, if we don't go that route,  
> then where
> does one ground basic concepts of good and evil, right and wrong,  
> better and
> worse?
>
> I've seen two clear alternatives to this question, and a whole lot  
> of stuff
> that I can't make heads or tails of: denying both of the clear  
> alternatives,
> not falling into the naturalistic fallacy, yet not saying anything I  
> can get
> may hands around.  (BTW, I don't need to agree with an idea to  
> understand
> it; I just need to see the worldview._

  I suggest if you can't understand the arguments you refrain from  
commenting at all.

>
>
> The two clear views are these: morality, better, worse, etc. are  
> based on
> axioms that are posited (i.e. taken on faith) or they are just tools  
> of
> politics.

So you've progressed from the strawman argument to the false dichotomy?


More Later Maru



-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit  
atrocities." ~Voltaire.

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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Charlie Bell]

On 02/09/2008, at 2:41 PM, John Williams wrote:
> My impression is that this list has an ongoing debate between  
> religous people,
> with faith in their gods, and government people, with faith in their  
> politicians.

I'm neither of those. I'm not sure how long you've been lurking, but  
this List is far more dimensional than that. Recently some voices have  
been louder, but there is a genuine breadth of opinion here (of  
course, most of it's wrong, but they'll agree with me one day ;) )

>
> Personally, I put my faith in evolution, both biological and  
> economical.

I don't. Evolution exists, but I hope we can rise above mere  
evolution, and direct ourselves rather than being shunted about by the  
harsh mistress of selectional forces and mere survivability being the  
criterion for our future.

> Humans
> are fallible, and politicians are human. Putting greater  
> responsibility (power,
> expectations, etc.) in the hands of politicians means that their  
> failures will be
> greater disasters. Better to keep government as small as possible,  
> not put our
> politicians on a pedestal, and instead rely on ourselves and  
> competition of ideas
> in a marketplace to determine solutions to problems.

Partially agree. By "small government", I think we need more  
participatory government. We need rules and regulations to make an  
even playing field for business, employment, education and  
opportunity, but we don't need government interference in our personal  
lives. Not putting our politicians on a pedestal is a good thing,  
'cause people are people.

> If the "gene-pool" of ideas
> is sufficiently diverse, then natural-selection in a free-market  
> will find better
> solutions to problems than millions of politicians ever could. If  
> the gene-pool is
> not sufficiently diverse, then perhaps there is a role for  
> government to encourage
> greater vitality and diversity through policy. But any approach that  
> relies on
> politicians to design an efficient system is doomed to failure.

Yes - regulations should be about putting a brake on waste and  
environmental damage, unethical practices and exploitation. Beyond  
that, they should be as minimal as possible (and that means minimal  
subsidies and tarriffs too).

Charlie.
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Re: Science and Ideals.

[William T Goodall]

On 2 Sep 2008, at 02:18, Dan M wrote:
>
> So, there seems to be at least a few of us who agree that the  
> naturalistic
> fallacy is just that, a fallacy. But, if we don't go that route,  
> then where
> does one ground basic concepts of good and evil, right and wrong,  
> better and
> worse?
>


Why do they need to be 'grounded'? Doesn't that just lead to an  
infinite regress?

If ethics is valid because it is 'grounded' in X, what makes X a valid  
basis? Because it's grounded in Y?  And Y in Z?  And ...

Saying 'God did it' is just as useless a non-answer for ethics as it  
is for the origin of the universe.

Bumper Sticker Philosophy Maru

-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

Theists cannot be trusted as they believe that right and wrong are the  
arbitrary proclamations of invisible demons.


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Re: Science and Ideals.

[William T Goodall]

On 2 Sep 2008, at 02:18, Dan M wrote:
> My personal favorite version is "love your neighbor as you love  
> yourself"
> because this balances the importance of neighbor and oneself.  I  
> know people
> who are so self-sacrificing that they neglect themselves.  How best  
> to do
> this can be the subject of tremendous debate, since we do not have  
> enough
> information to know outcomes.  But, that's not my central point  
> here.  My
> central point is that the Golden Rule is an axiom; inherently  
> unprovable.
> The only way to prove it is as a theorem from another axiom that's not
> provable: e.g. because we are all made in the image and likeness of  
> God we
> must love one's neighbor as oneself.

Or it could be a social contract.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Justice

New Ideas Maru

-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit  
atrocities." ~Voltaire.

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Re: Science and Ideals.

[Charlie Bell]

On 02/09/2008, at 11:18 AM, Dan M wrote:
> Now, IIRC, Charlie had some quibbles with "do onto others as you  
> would have
> them do unto you."  He noted, correctly, that others may want and need
> things differently from your own needs and wants.  (Reminds me of  
> the old
> story of the monkey who killed a fish while "saving it from  
> drowning)."

Indeed.
>   But, that's not my central point here.  My
> central point is that the Golden Rule is an axiom; inherently  
> unprovable.
> The only way to prove it is as a theorem from another axiom that's not
> provable: e.g. because we are all made in the image and likeness of  
> God we
> must love one's neighbor as oneself.

Or because it is written in letters 20 miles high on the third moon of  
Bukabobul Six.

Or any other story.

Sorry, but "I don't know, therefore God" is simply not a reasonable  
proposition 'cause it leaves even more questions, not one of them  
answerable. Why are you even *trying* to "prove the Golden Rule"? It's  
just an aphorism. You might as well try to prove that a stitch in time  
saves nine. Discussing how to best treat each other is a human  
question. To say that being nice to each other requires a god (a god  
who is pretty unpleasant in the Old Testament, no less) is just hand- 
waving, and it's plain anachronistic. It may still seem reasonable to  
many in the world, and that's up to them, but I don't need a god to  
tell me that being empathetic to others and asking what they want and  
need. And here among adults who are big enough to face criticism of  
their own ideas, I'll say that I not only find it strange that human  
adults still believe this stuff, but that I used to too, well into  
adulthood.
>
>
> Well, that wasn't as long as I feared.  So, let me end with some  
> general
> questions.  Who here accepts the Golden Rule (even with some  
> quibbles) as
> valid in at least one of its forms?  How many folks are true
> post-modernists, who think there is no better, no worse, just personal
> desire and politics?

I accept a variant of the "golden rule", I just don't accept that it's  
anything other than a personal and social contract.

Charlie.
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Re: Science and Ideals.

[Charlie Bell]

On 02/09/2008, at 11:40 PM, William T Goodall wrote:
>> The only way to prove it is as a theorem from another axiom that's  
>> not
>> provable: e.g. because we are all made in the image and likeness of
>> God we
>> must love one's neighbor as oneself.
>
> Or it could be a social contract.

OK, jinxed. That'll teach me to not read ahead!

Charlie.
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[zwilnik]

Better to keep government as small as possible, not put our 

politicians on a pedestal, and instead rely on ourselves and competition of 
ideas 
in a marketplace to determine solutions to problems. If the "gene-pool" of 
ideas 
is sufficiently diverse, then natural-selection in a free-market will find 
better 
solutions to problems than millions of politicians ever could. If the gene-pool 
is 
not sufficiently diverse, then perhaps there is a role for government to 
encourage 
greater vitality and diversity through policy. But any approach that relies on 

politicians to design an efficient system is doomed to failure.

But sometimes there are problems that only govenrment *can* handle. I used to 
be a member (dues paying!) of the Libertarian Party, but I left that behind 
because of thei ssue of global climate change. What I saw inside the 
Libertarian Party was a very interesting dynamic. It is clear that climate 
change is not something the market can handle in any effective manner. Only 
government action has any possibility of tackling this problem. Well, 
Libertarians cannot abide the thought of the government being necessary to 
solve a problem, so they almost instinctively tunred to embracing all of the 
climate change denialists. 

Now, I don't like unnecessary government action (there is a reason *why* I 
joined that party), but I also have a firm rule that I do not make scientific 
decisions on ideological bases. So I left the Libertarian party. Later on I 
recalled the words of one of my best professors from grad school, who pointed 
out that the issue with Libertarianism is that it is held most strongly by 
those who would be most likely to prosper in such a system.

Regards,

-- 
Kevin B. O'Brien
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment 
insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, 
you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a 
tiny splinter group, of course, that believes 
that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and 
an occasional politician or businessman from other areas.
 Their number is negligible and they are stupid." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[John Williams]

Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Yes - regulations should be about putting a brake on waste and  
> environmental damage, unethical practices and exploitation.

I don't understand the "yes", since what follows the yes does not agree with 
what
I wrote. Waste is not something that can be efficiently identified and reduced 
by
politicians. And "environmental damage" has become trendy for politicians to 
talk about, but the cures they propose are invariably more harmful. So, No, not
"Yes". I would probably agree with a carbon tax or similar measures that forces
carbon-emitters to bear the costs of pollution that everyone must endure, but
government should not be creating specific rules on "waste" and "environmental
damage". As far as unethical practices and exploitation, the politicians excel 
at
those pursuits. Not a good idea to have politicians defining what is ethical or
exploitative, beyond a basic legal framework for protecting property and liberty
that was already established ages ago.


  

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RE: Science and Ideals.

[Dan M]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Doug Pensinger
> Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 10:48 PM
> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion
> Subject: Re: Science and Ideals.
> 
> Dan M  wrote:
> 
> >
> > The two clear views are these: morality, better, worse, etc. are based
> on
> > axioms that are posited (i.e. taken on faith) or they are just tools of
> > politics.
> >
> > Taken on faith from what?  The Bible?  The Koran?  A cereal box?  That
> doesn't work at all for me, Dan.  For one thing it doesn't explain why
> ethical values are constantly changing, not only within my own lifetime,
> but
> from decade to decade ore even year to year not to mention from place to
> place; from culture to culture.
> 
> I think Charlie's objection to the golden rule is spot on.  I might like
> my
> back scratched, but it might be an offensive gesture in another culture or
> even in my culture at a different time, so the do unto others thing just
> doesn't work universally.
> 
> I love how you minimize (ridicule?) the second option by using "just" as
> if
> one believes that they could find their ethics under a bush.  Its also
> interesting how you use the word politics which has negative connotations.
> 
> Of course if I was to ask the question it would probably be something
> like;
> do you think ethics are created by magic or do you believe that they are
> cultural constructs?

No, actually, I believe that there exists truth apart from us.  That we have
partial understanding of that truth.  That the Critique of Pure Reason did a
good job defining and a fairly decent job addressing the truth.

There have been many social constructs in history.  If one defines morality
in terms of social constructs, and they contradict one another, which one is
right?  Is it the one that won?

If that is the case, we only have to look at who won the three great wars of
the 20th century: WWI, WWII, and the Cold War.  Take the US out of the
picture, and there are only two real important players in WWII: the USSR and
Germany.  Take the US out of the picture, and Europe would have no power to
resist the USSR. (Granted the UK may have survived for a while on Hitler's
fear of water).   

If either Germany or the USSR won, they would have the dominant social
construct. 

You could, I suppose, argue that Stalin would start to exhibit a sense of
restraint and ethics in 46even though he pushed as far as he could was
was limited by the US during that time. You could be in the vast minority
and argue that the North winning the Civil War was inevitable. 

But all of that is akin to arguing that humanity is the purpose of creation.

Finally, it appears that you and others here  old the viewpoint that
realism.  If realism is valid, how can there be a plethora of
interpretations of science, each describing a far different reality, with no
testable differences, (well unless something really weird happens and we do
something like find the aether).  The MWI interpretation of QM, the
strongest "realistic" interpretation of QM posits a rich infinity of
inherently unseeable universes created every infinitesimal unit of time. How
are unseeable, unproveable, untestable universes which are really really
there, but only exist to satisfy metaphysical demands realistic?

That's the best chance realism has.  As has been published multiple times in
Physics Review Letters "Local Realism is Falsified."

Dan M. 

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Ethics (was Re: Science and Ideals.)

[Nick Arnett]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 1:24 AM, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>
>
> Ethics is a product of philosophy.


 It's not a county in eastern England?

(Tom Holt reference, IIFC.)

Nick
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RE: Science and Ideals.

[Dan M]

> 
> I accept a variant of the "golden rule", I just don't accept that it's
> anything other than a personal and social contract.
> 

OK, so just to be clear, you think that no social or personal contract is
actually better than any other.  (Clearly there have been a number of social
contracts on human behavior and many thousands of personal contracts).
Ethics are like aesthetics, there's personal taste, the taste of the public
at large, but nothing is actually true.

BTW, I'm not trying to prove anything more than what Weinberg (a well known
scientist who has sold many books that discuss his viewpoint) and I agree
upon the subject: there is logical-calculus basis for ethics.  You either
accept certain axioms as truths without proof (admitting straight out that
you are positing those axioms) or you say they are arbitrary, and that there
is no means of distinguishing one set of axioms from another. 

The other alternative, which I see many people use, is sliding in a
disguised version of the naturalistic fallacy through the back door.  

Dan M.

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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[John Williams]

"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>  It is clear that climate change is not something 
> the market can handle in any effective manner. Only government action has any 
> possibility of tackling this problem.

I do not have blind faith in government to solve difficult problems. The only 
way 
that I have seen that consistently solves difficult problems is trial and 
error. But
government does not do trial and error efficiently. Typically, there are very 
few
ideas, sometimes only one, and the failures are not abandoned, but
instead suck down resources indefinitely. Far better to let prices and market
forces evolve efficient solutions. If "climate change" is a high-priority 
problem 
that is not adequately touched by market forces, then perhaps there is a small 
role
 that government can play, but never in specific policy. The government role
should be limited to addressing market failures, such as when carbon-emitters
do not pay for costs to the environment that everyone experiences. For example,
a carbon-tax.

>  Later on I 
> recalled the words of one of my best professors from grad school, who pointed 
> out that the issue with Libertarianism is that it is held most strongly by 
> those 
> who would be most likely to prosper in such a system.

The same could be said of virtually all politics. There are many people who want
to make laws to benefit some at others expense. I prefer to minimize all such
laws. Freedom is the best policy.


  

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Oil

[Dan M]

> > Honestly, what _short-term_ effect will drilling in Anwar and on our
> coasts
> have on prices?

The real question about drilling in areas that have been off limits until
now is when do we do it?  The record of spills from oil well drilling has
been very good; the real damage has occurred in the transportation of the
oil.  Further, places that produce most of the oil do not bear the scrutiny
that exists in the US.  Sure, the North Sea is hypersensitive to ecological
damage, but I dare say that it's not a big deal in say, Nigeria...or in the
Middle East.

 
> And isn't any long term effect in all probability going to be dwarfed by
> the increase in demand?

It will.  The only way it makes sense is part of a large term picture.
Compared to world demand, opening up all of the oil fields in the US will
probably add 0.5 to 1.0 million barrels per day to the total, ramping up
over 10 years peak production over ten years, and then ramping down over
10-20.  

 
> IMO, the push to drill in sensitive areas has nothing to do with prices
> and everything to do with big oil making bigger money.

But, the real choices are having US companies making the money or places
like Iran and Saudi Arabia making the money.  Obama was right in that we are
borrowing money from China to pay Mid-East dictatorships for oil.

The only minus I can see is that, since the price is highly dependent on the
exactness of the fit between the supply and demand (5% excess and the price
is $10, a 1% shortfall and the price is $200), is that the US drilling could
drop prices down to the point where the relative cost of other options are
so high that they are ignored.

Dan M. 

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Re: Science and Ideals.

[William T Goodall]

On 2 Sep 2008, at 15:53, Dan M wrote:

>
>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:brin-l- 
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] On
>> Behalf Of Doug Pensinger
>>
>> Of course if I was to ask the question it would probably be something
>> like;
>> do you think ethics are created by magic or do you believe that  
>> they are
>> cultural constructs?
>
> No, actually, I believe that there exists truth apart from us.  That  
> we have
> partial understanding of that truth.  That the Critique of Pure  
> Reason did a
> good job defining and a fairly decent job addressing the truth.
>
> There have been many social constructs in history.  If one defines  
> morality
> in terms of social constructs, and they contradict one another,  
> which one is
> right?  Is it the one that won?
>
> If that is the case,


Fallacy: petitio principii, Begging the question.


[snip]

>
> Finally, it appears that you and others here  old the viewpoint that
> realism.  If realism is valid, how can there be a plethora of
> interpretations of science, each describing a far different reality,  
> with no
> testable differences,

[snip]

Fallacy: Ignoratio elenchi or red herring.

Critique Maru

-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

Theists cannot be trusted as they believe that right and wrong are the  
arbitrary proclamations of invisible demons.


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Re: Science and Ideals.

[Nick Arnett]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 7:34 AM, Olin Elliott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>   I suspect that the same thing is true of a lot of our idealistic ethical
> systems -- and the systems I hold most precious, democracy, the open
> society, etc. almost certainly fall into this category -- they do not come
> naturally to us, and in a sense we must re-learn them over and over again,
> and we must make a concious effort to translate from our "natural ethical
> language" into these
>  systems, because on a basic level we may never really learn to think in
> them.  Maybe out descendents will, if these systems turn out to have
> survival value.


I believe, though I'm not sure I have a good reason for it, that the modern
notion of freedom would have been incomprehensible to most people living in
a feudal system.  More generally, the notion of a self-regulating system,
via feedback, would have been incomprehensible in the abstract.  Mark Twain
played with these ideas a bit in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court."

I think the incomprehensibility arises from an entirely different idea of
how order arises in the universe.  Medieval thinking was hierarchical; order
flows down through the "Great Chain of Being."  Enlightenment ideas --
democracy, evolution, open markets -- added self-regulation through feedback
to our model, causing some to entirely reject hierarchical models.

Ethics doesn't yield very well to self-regulating models.  Although there
are any number of evolutionary hypotheses for ethical behavior, they tend to
have a bit of a square peg in a round hole feel to them, in my opinion.  The
reason is simple, I suspect -- our notion of self-regulation has been based
almost exclusively on competition until the last few decades; pure
competition doesn't leave much room for seemly altruistic behavior.  When we
try to explain ethics, especially social ethics, in a competitive framework,
it has to emerge from the large-scale nature of social interactions, since
it doesn't seem to be present on the small scale.

Trouble is, when we analyze emergent properties of large-scale feedback
networks, traditional competitive models stop working; our notion of how
order arises breaks, as it did during the grand discoveries of democracy,
evolution, open markets, etc.  Instead, mathematics turns to game theory and
other self-organizing paradigms.

The complexity people (Santa Fe Institute and such) sometimes call
self-organizing emergent properties "order for free."  I suspect that for
some people, the idea of order for free is threatening (TINSTAAFL, after
all) or at least disturbing, for much the same reasons that self-regulation
was threatening and disturbing some five centuries ago.

At some point in all this, I find myself turning to the anthropic principle
or many-universes.  We're here because this universe somehow gave rise to
life... we're still here because only a universe in which we survived to
this point contains us to think about the fact that we're here.  Both ideas
are fairly wild to contemplate... that there is just one universe and its
physics allow or even encourage order for free... or there are lots and lots
of universes and we cannot be in one of the infinite dead ends.

To tie this back around to ethics, this line of thinking brings me around to
agree with those who see ethics as an emergent property of complex social
and biological systems.  Unfortunately, "emergent property" is just so much
hand-waving until somebody figures out a way to describe and predict the
behavior... and complex systems seem to have no trouble creating problems
that are unsolvable in the lifetime of the universe.  We get order for free,
but not petaflops.

Nick
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Re: Oil

[Nick Arnett]

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 8:13 AM, Dan M <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > > Honestly, what _short-term_ effect will drilling in Anwar and on our
> > coasts
> > have on prices?
>
> The real question about drilling in areas that have been off limits until
> now is when do we do it?  The record of spills from oil well drilling has
> been very good; the real damage has occurred in the transportation of the
> oil.


IIRC, the concerns about Anwar are not about possible oil spills, it is the
environmental impact of the whole operation, even if nothing goes wrong.

Nick
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Re: Science and Ideals.

[Olin Elliott]

>If ethics is valid because it is 'grounded' in X, what makes X a valid  
>basis? Because it's grounded in Y?  And Y in Z?  And ...

Mathematics, as has been pointed out, is grounded on axioms that cannot 
themselves be proven or reduced to anything else.  Kurt Goedel showed that any 
mathematical system powerful enough to explain basic mathematics must contain 
certai propositions that we know to be true, but which cannot be proven within 
the system.

I don't think this is an exact analogy, but it does show that not everything 
has to be "grounded" -- it stops somewhere as it does with axioms ...

Olin

  - Original Message - 
  From: William T Goodall 
  To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion 
  Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 6:28 AM
  Subject: Re: Science and Ideals.



  On 2 Sep 2008, at 02:18, Dan M wrote:
  >
  > So, there seems to be at least a few of us who agree that the  
  > naturalistic
  > fallacy is just that, a fallacy. But, if we don't go that route,  
  > then where
  > does one ground basic concepts of good and evil, right and wrong,  
  > better and
  > worse?
  >


  Why do they need to be 'grounded'? Doesn't that just lead to an  
  infinite regress?

  If ethics is valid because it is 'grounded' in X, what makes X a valid  
  basis? Because it's grounded in Y?  And Y in Z?  And ...

  Saying 'God did it' is just as useless a non-answer for ethics as it  
  is for the origin of the universe.

  Bumper Sticker Philosophy Maru

  -- 
  William T Goodall
  Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
  Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

  Theists cannot be trusted as they believe that right and wrong are the  
  arbitrary proclamations of invisible demons.


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Re: Science and Ideals.

[Bruce Bostwick]

On Sep 1, 2008, at 8:18 PM, Dan M wrote:

> A number of atheists as well as theists have ideals they hold to be  
> true.
> They believe in human rights.  For example, most atheists that I  
> know accept
> some form of the Golden Rule.  I think its accurate to say that most  
> folks
> on Brin-L believe in the Golden Rule in one form or another.
> Now, IIRC, Charlie had some quibbles with "do onto others as you  
> would have
> them do unto you."  He noted, correctly, that others may want and need
> things differently from your own needs and wants.  (Reminds me of  
> the old
> story of the monkey who killed a fish while "saving it from  
> drowning)."
>
> But, I think taking that statement in a more general and not  
> literalistic
> sense is all that's needed.  One should try to understand the truth  
> that
> (according to my memory) Charlie wrote on this topic in one of our  
> previous
> discussions.
>
> My personal favorite version is "love your neighbor as you love  
> yourself"
> because this balances the importance of neighbor and oneself.  I  
> know people
> who are so self-sacrificing that they neglect themselves.  How best  
> to do
> this can be the subject of tremendous debate, since we do not have  
> enough
> information to know outcomes.  But, that's not my central point  
> here.  My
> central point is that the Golden Rule is an axiom; inherently  
> unprovable.
> The only way to prove it is as a theorem from another axiom that's not
> provable: e.g. because we are all made in the image and likeness of  
> God we
> must love one's neighbor as oneself.

Minor quibble:  the Golden Rule is not an assertion of truth or  
falsehood, grammatically speaking, so it's not something that does or  
does not need to be "proven" per se.  It is an admonition,  
specifically, advice on a basic ethical standard of sorts .. the  
"truth" or "falsehood" of it would be a measure of how well it  
succeeds as such an ethical standard, which is ultimately a social  
science question and not easily reducible to a "yes" or "no" answer.   
It's good advice under most circumstances, but as noted, there are  
exceptions.

> Well, that wasn't as long as I feared.  So, let me end with some  
> general
> questions.  Who here accepts the Golden Rule (even with some  
> quibbles) as
> valid in at least one of its forms?  How many folks are true
> post-modernists, who think there is no better, no worse, just personal
> desire and politics?

I would go so far as to say that I do believe in a general principle  
of reciprocity when it comes to personal ethics -- I wouldn't impose  
rules on others that I was not prepared to obey myself, and I wouldn't  
make demands of others that I wasn't prepared to meet myself if asked,  
and so on.  Since the Golden Rule is basically a fairly literal  
expression of that principle of reciprocity, yes, in a way, I tend to  
follow it.  I don't "believe in" it, necessarily, as an article of  
faith, but it does tend to lead in the right direction a large part of  
the time.  Personal desire is a fairly poor moral compass, because it  
completely fails to account for situations where people's desires  
conflict .. and history is full of examples of what happens when  
personal desire is the only consideration.  (Nero's Domus Aurea in  
Rome, built on the ashes of the former aristocratic houses on the  
Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian hills, and whose construction was  
financed by a sizable portion of the empire's tax revenue, is a  
particularly good example.)  Reciprocity at least provides a reason to  
preserve a boundary between one's own right to pursue one's desires  
and the rights of others to do the same, and provides a logical basis  
for negotiating disputes when those desires run head on into each other.

"I think we invested time and money teaching her how to fly a warplane  
which, it turns out, she does very well, and there aren't that many  
who do, so I'm gonna go ahead and pick national security over caring  
who she sleeps with." -- Toby Ziegler



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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Bruce Bostwick]

On Sep 2, 2008, at 9:28 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> It is clear that climate change is not something the market can  
> handle in any effective manner. Only government action has any  
> possibility of tackling this problem.


That's been well established.  The government does best when it  
provides the external force necessary to push the market out of  
suboptimal equilibria that none of the market players want to bear the  
cost of breaking out of unilaterally.

"Nobody ever looks like Joe McCarthy. That's how they get in the door  
in the first place." -- Toby Ziegler


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Re: Oil

[Bruce Bostwick]

On Sep 2, 2008, at 10:42 AM, Nick Arnett wrote:

 Honestly, what _short-term_ effect will drilling in Anwar and on  
 our
>>> coasts
>>> have on prices?
>>
>> The real question about drilling in areas that have been off limits  
>> until
>> now is when do we do it?  The record of spills from oil well  
>> drilling has
>> been very good; the real damage has occurred in the transportation  
>> of the
>> oil.
>
>
> IIRC, the concerns about Anwar are not about possible oil spills, it  
> is the
> environmental impact of the whole operation, even if nothing goes  
> wrong.
>
> Nick


A good indicator of how much environmental impact there would be is  
the drilling currently taking place on the North Slope.  Everything  
needed to support the drilling crews and equipment -- and I mean  
everything, food, living supplies, drilling mud, logging/analysis  
equipment, the rigs themselves -- has to be trucked in on the Haul  
Road, and all the waste has to be trucked back down south for  
disposal, so the drilling crews are very good at not wasting any more  
than necessary, and their survival depends on not damaging too much of  
the permafrost they're sitting on, so "leave no trace" is sort of an  
economic necessity up there.  I don't see why the lessons learned up  
there can't be applied to drilling in ANWR, if there's enough  
petroleum there to be worth it.

(IIRC, the oil companies themselves aren't all that convinced that the  
petroleum reserves in ANWR are worth the cost of drilling to get at  
them, environmental damage or not.  It's possible they could choose  
strategic spots and horizontal-drill fairly large areas of the  
reservoirs from those few spots, which they do anyway in a lot of  
producing areas nowadays anyway, but is there enough oil down there to  
recover the cost of drilling for it?  How much geological surveying  
has really been done up there, honestly?)

"I don't believe there's a power in the 'verse can stop Kaylee from  
bein' cheerful. Sometimes you just wanna duct-tape her mouth and dump  
her in the hold for a month." -- Capt. Mal Reynolds, "Serenity"

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Re: Science and Ideals.

[William T Goodall]

On 1 Sep 2008, at 15:34, Olin Elliott wrote:

>> The question 'where do our ethical ideas come from' has the answer
>> 'our nature as social mammals'.
>
>> The question 'how do we tell good from bad' does not have the answer
>> 'our nature as social mammals'.
>
>> Category Mistake Maru
>
> I'm not sure this is true, although I'll admit I don't have the  
> answersto the questions it raises.  If our ethical ideas come from  
> our nature as social animals -- and I do believe that's true, even  
> to the degree that we share "ethics" to a large degree with other  
> social animals -- for instance birds who mate for life, the  
> intricate social systems of wolf packs and primates, or the amazing  
> civility of dogs toward other dogs (just go to a dog park sometime  
> and observe for a while the "rules" by which dogs interact, and how  
> 99% of the time even a group of strange dogs who have never met  
> before recognize and behave by those rules) -- if all of that comes  
> from our nature as social animals, then where else can the ability  
> to tell right from wrong come from?  Those of us who do not believe  
> in a transcendent power, a revealed ethical system, can't argue from  
> authority or tradition.  The real danger here is that we can easily  
> descend into total relativsm, which is essentially no ethic
> al system at all.  I think we all believe that there are some things  
> which are write and wrong absolutely (or every nearly so), but  
> explaining that belief is more difficult.  If our ethical ideas are  
> a product f evolution and our social nature, and if the only way we  
> can tell good from bad is by nature of our eithical ideas, then if  
> follows that it all arises out of evolution.  The question is how?


I think that our capacity for ethics comes from our social animal  
nature but that telling good from bad comes from thinking about ethics  
using our intelligence.

>
>
> Stephen Pinker, Daniell Dennett and other writers have done some  
> very provocative work on this and related qestions. One explanation  
> would be that our ethical sense is an emergent property of our  
> species specific reasoning skills which are themselves probably a  
> product of lanague.  The ability to make analogies, to reason about  
> long-term consequences, to imagine the effect of our behavior on  
> others, and to abstract general propositions from specific  
> circumstances all create a new level of ethical concerns.
>
> Ethics seems to be a little like mathematics, in the sense that  
> there may be certain "axioms" that we have to start with, which  
> cannot in themselves be proven.  Since there are an infinite number  
> of these possible axioms, we are left with the question of how to  
> choose between them.  Perhaps it comes down to something like the  
> pragmatic test that William James and others suggested:  the "cash  
> value" of ideas.  If I hold such-and-such an ethical principle, and  
> I draw out all the logical conclusions from that principle, what  
> kind of world would I be living in?  This approach has had mixed  
> success of course.

And if it's like mathematics it raises the question would aliens  
develop the same ethics as us?

>
>
> I think there's also an analogy to language.  Noam Chomsky pointed  
> out a long time ago that certain aspects of lanague are hardwired  
> into the human brain, they develop normally in any child exposed to  
> language in a critical period.  He noted that many of the patterns  
> found in laugages around the world are not inherntly logical -- and  
> that it is possible to create far more logical, rational language --  
> Esperanto is an example -- but humans have a hard time learning  
> these languages, because the are not human languages, not in keeping  
> with the intricate grammar structured in our heads by evoltuion.  I  
> suspect that the same thing is true of a lot of our idealistic  
> ethical systems -- and the systems I hold most precious, democracy,  
> the open society, etc. almost certainly fall into this category --  
> they do not come naturally to us, and in a sense we must re-learn  
> them over and over again, and we must make a concious effort to  
> translate from our "natural ethical language" into these
>  systems, because on a basic level we may never really learn to  
> think in them.  Maybe out descendents will, if these systems turn  
> out to have survival value.
>
> These are all scientific questions though.  If the answers don't  
> come form there, where will they come from?

Fortunately people don't spend much time arguing about which language  
is 'best' ;-)

Sapir-Whorf Maru


-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit  
atrocities." ~Voltaire.

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Gas prices & alternative fuel

[Jon Louis Mann]

 ...because something is cheap doesn't mean
> we need to be
> wasteful, but that's the mentality and
> lifestyle of the US.
> Until gas prices started going up, higher efficiency cars
> were a fantasy for
> the future.
> In the 80's & 90"s, most people, myself
> included, never considered or cared
> that oil and gas prices would necessitate the development
> of lighter and
> more efficient vehicles.  When I graduated in the early
> 80's, $4 a gallon
> gas was something from a post-apocalypse movie.
> Even science fiction didn't predict high gas prices -
> most assumed that 30
> years in the future an alternative fuel source would be in
> use...


the market for higher mpg cars started to pick up after the OPEC gas price 
increases in the 70s.  unfortunately, it didn't last.  while the price of gas 
will continue to fluctuate, it will no longer dip that much, relatively, 
because demand will continue to outstrip supply, despite renewed exploration 
and exploitation of vanishing resources.  that is a good thing because it will 
force conservation, and development of alternative renewable sources of energy.
jon


  
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RE: Gas prices & alternative fuel

[Dan M]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Jon Louis Mann
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 3:13 PM
> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion
> Subject: Gas prices & alternative fuel
> 
>  ...because something is cheap doesn't mean
> > we need to be
> > wasteful, but that's the mentality and
> > lifestyle of the US.
> > Until gas prices started going up, higher efficiency cars
> > were a fantasy for
> > the future.
> > In the 80's & 90"s, most people, myself
> > included, never considered or cared
> > that oil and gas prices would necessitate the development
> > of lighter and
> > more efficient vehicles.  When I graduated in the early
> > 80's, $4 a gallon
> > gas was something from a post-apocalypse movie.
> > Even science fiction didn't predict high gas prices -
> > most assumed that 30
> > years in the future an alternative fuel source would be in
> > use...
> 
> 
> the market for higher mpg cars started to pick up after the OPEC gas price
> increases in the 70s.  unfortunately, it didn't last.  while the price of
> gas will continue to fluctuate, it will no longer dip that much,
> relatively, because demand will continue to outstrip supply, despite
> renewed exploration and exploitation of vanishing resources. 

Ah, what vanishing resource?  Complex hydrocarbons?  We've tapped well less
than 1% of those in the past 200 years.  We've just picked the low hanging
fruit.  The real question is, will the cost of developing the next fields be
higher than the alternatives.


Dan M.

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Gas prices, complex hydrocarbons & alternative fuel

[Jon Louis Mann]

> > the market for higher mpg cars started to pick up
> after the OPEC gas price
> > increases in the 70s.  unfortunately, it didn't
> last.  while the price of
> > gas will continue to fluctuate, it will no longer dip
> that much,
> > relatively, because demand will continue to outstrip
> supply, despite
> > renewed exploration and exploitation of vanishing
> resources. 


> Ah, what vanishing resource?  Complex hydrocarbons? 
> We've tapped well less
> than 1% of those in the past 200 years.  We've just
> picked the low hanging
> fruit.  The real question is, will the cost of developing
> the next fields be
> higher than the alternatives.
> Dan M.

1%, really?  at what point does the cost of extracting the fuel from the 
alberta tar sands, coal, off shore, from other planets, etc., have enough value 
for what the market will bear?  will whale farms in the oceans be next?-)
jon


  
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Charlie Bell]

On 03/09/2008, at 12:50 AM, John Williams wrote:

>
>
> Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> Yes - regulations should be about putting a brake on waste and
>> environmental damage, unethical practices and exploitation.
>
> I don't understand the "yes", since what follows the yes does not  
> agree with what
> I wrote.

Yes it does. It only doesn't if you're ideologically tied to the idea  
that there should be no regulations at all. And given the differences  
in standard of living between say the USA and the Scandinavian  
countries, I'd say that a free market doesn't and shouldn't mean NO  
regulations, just a level playing field. Given the power of lobbyists  
in the States, I'd say that the American free market is an illusion  
anyway.

> Waste is not something that can be efficiently identified and  
> reduced by
> politicians.

In the simplest terms it can.

> And "environmental damage" has become trendy for politicians to
> talk about, but the cures they propose are invariably more harmful.

Really? So allowing a logging company to clear fell an entire forest,  
rather than only taking a percentage of trees, is fine in a free market?
> So, No, not
> "Yes". I would probably agree with a carbon tax or similar measures  
> that forces
> carbon-emitters to bear the costs of pollution that everyone must  
> endure, but
> government should not be creating specific rules on "waste" and  
> "environmental
> damage".

Why not? Chemical companies should not dump their waste in rivers. The  
only way you make them not do that in an otherwise free market is to  
have financial penalties if they do.
> As far as unethical practices and exploitation, the politicians  
> excel at
> those pursuits. Not a good idea to have politicians defining what is  
> ethical or
> exploitative, beyond a basic legal framework for protecting property  
> and liberty
> that was already established ages ago.



You should be made aware that this is a global list, and that basic  
legal framework you're talking about only applies to your nation, not  
mine.

Charlie.
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Re: Science and Ideals.

[Charlie Bell]

On 03/09/2008, at 1:07 AM, Dan M wrote:

>>
>> I accept a variant of the "golden rule", I just don't accept that  
>> it's
>> anything other than a personal and social contract.
>>
>
> OK, so just to be clear, you think that no social or personal  
> contract is
> actually better than any other.

Oh for fuck's sake. Where have I EVER said THAT? Stop trying to make  
other people fit in your own limited number of pigeon holes, and don't  
say "to be clear" and then say something that's just plain wrong.

Of course some are better than others. But what actually is better  
depends on what one is trying to achieve. If we're trying to achieve  
the best outcomes in terms of personal freedoms and responsibilities,  
then some ways of living are demonstrably better than others.

>  You either
> accept certain axioms as truths without proof (admitting straight  
> out that
> you are positing those axioms) or you say they are arbitrary, and  
> that there
> is no means of distinguishing one set of axioms from another.

Or one doesn't regard them as axiomatic at all, and we attempt to come  
to an agreement about what works better than what else.

If what I've said is a version of "sliding in the naturalistic  
fallacy" then so be it.

Charlie.

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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Nick Arnett]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 9:41 PM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

>
> My impression is that this list has an ongoing debate between religous
> people,
> with faith in their gods, and government people, with faith in their
> politicians.


Eh?  Is that sarcasm?  I hope.

If not, then somebody has successfully re-framed our conversations in an
unfortunate way.

Nick
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Charlie Bell]

On 03/09/2008, at 6:58 AM, Nick Arnett wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 9:41 PM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> >wrote:
>
>>
>> My impression is that this list has an ongoing debate between  
>> religous
>> people,
>> with faith in their gods, and government people, with faith in their
>> politicians.
>
>
> Eh?  Is that sarcasm?  I hope.
>
> If not, then somebody has successfully re-framed our conversations  
> in an
> unfortunate way.

Yeah. I couldn't work that out either. Right, off to work time.  
Conversation resumes in about 12 hours from my point of view. :-)

Charlie.
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[John Williams]

Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


>  I'd say that the American free market is an illusion  
> anyway.

I'd agree that the United State's market is far from free. I did not
intend to compare countries. Indeed, the more global the market,
the better, as far as I am concerned.

> So allowing a logging company to clear fell an entire forest,  
> rather than only taking a percentage of trees, is fine in a free market?

If the forest is someone's property, then no one has the right to prevent
them from doing as they wish with their property. If the forest is the 
"property" of government, then government is probably in the midst
of one of its many failures. Anyway, do you think that
a logging company that clear cuts its forests will be the most profitable,
in the long run, in a competitive market?

> You should be made aware that this is a global list, and that basic  
> legal framework you're talking about only applies to your nation, not  
> mine.

I was not referring to the framework for any specific country. If your
country does not have basic laws protecting property and individual
liberty, then I suggest worrying less about government regulations to
reduce waste and more about basic legal framework.


  

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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[John Williams]

 Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> If not, then somebody has successfully re-framed our conversations in an
> unfortunate way.

Sorry, I did not mean the groups to be mutually-exclusive or all-encompassing.
Some posts seem to fit into both, some neither. But is was interesting to
see how similar some posts appeared as far as faith in a paternalistic force
for good. No offense intended to your faith, or lack thereof, whatever your
inclination may be.


  

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Priorities

[Jon Louis Mann]

> From: John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I was not referring to the framework for any specific
> country. If your
> country does not have basic laws protecting property and
> individual
> liberty, then I suggest worrying less about government
> regulations to
> reduce waste and more about basic legal framework.

my priority is regulation of those who have way too much property.  they are 
rich enough to have input into government, at the expense of protecting our 
environment...
jon


  
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Re: Priorities

[John Williams]

Jon Louis Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


> my priority is regulation of those who have way too much property. 

The very fact that you are posting an email
here suggests that you have more property than millions, and probably
billions of people in the world. 


  

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RE: Science and Ideals.

[Dan M]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Charlie Bell
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 3:53 PM
> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion
> Subject: Re: Science and Ideals.
> 
> 
> On 03/09/2008, at 1:07 AM, Dan M wrote:
> 
> >>
> >> I accept a variant of the "golden rule", I just don't accept that
> >> it's
> >> anything other than a personal and social contract.
> >>
> >
> > OK, so just to be clear, you think that no social or personal
> > contract is
> > actually better than any other.
> 
> Oh for fuck's sake. Where have I EVER said THAT? 

OK, it seemed to logically follow, because I didn't expect an appeal to
infinite regression as a response.

> Of course some are better than others. But what actually is better
> depends on what one is trying to achieve. If we're trying to achieve
> the best outcomes in terms of personal freedoms and responsibilities,
> then some ways of living are demonstrably better than others.

OK, we've just moved a step downwards (not in a derogatory sense, but in,
say, the sense of an excavation) in assumptions.  There is no doubt that if
we are trying to achieve X, then we can demonstrate that some ways of
reaching X are better than others.  But, different people want to achieve
different things; different cultures had different goals. Which desires are
good, and which are not good?  What objective framework exists for measuring
these goals?  And if it exists, where does it come from? And, what about the
variety of goals, both individual and communal, that existed in the past and
now exist.  Are any of them better than the others?  If so, where's the
yardstick for measuring them?

Now, you can add another layer to this argument, and it may very well be
turtles all the way down.  But, that's what I've seen you do..  Ethical
things are things that help us meet this good goal.  That doesn't sound so
bad...except it doesn't answer the question, it just moves it form what is
ethical to what are good goals.  

Dan M. 

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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Kevin B. O'Brien]

John Williams wrote:
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>   
>>  It is clear that climate change is not something 
>> the market can handle in any effective manner. Only government action has 
>> any 
>> possibility of tackling this problem.
>> 
>
> I do not have blind faith in government to solve difficult problems. The only 
> way 
> that I have seen that consistently solves difficult problems is trial and 
> error. But
> government does not do trial and error efficiently. Typically, there are very 
> few
> ideas, sometimes only one, and the failures are not abandoned, but
> instead suck down resources indefinitely. Far better to let prices and market
> forces evolve efficient solutions. If "climate change" is a high-priority 
> problem 
> that is not adequately touched by market forces, then perhaps there is a 
> small role
>  that government can play, but never in specific policy. The government role
> should be limited to addressing market failures, such as when carbon-emitters
> do not pay for costs to the environment that everyone experiences. For 
> example,
> a carbon-tax.
>   
If the problem were not urgent, if we had the luxury of reducing CO2 
emissions by 30% over the next hundred years, I would probably agree 
with you. Tweaking market incentives would probably be a very good way 
to address that sort of problem. But when you are confronted with an 
urgent life-or-death problem, the primary problem is not one of 
efficiency. For example, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we did 
not worry about the most efficient, market-based way of letting the 
private sector respond.

Regards,

-- 
Kevin B. O'Brien TANSTAAFL
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  Linux User #333216

"The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from 
one graveyard to another." -- J. Frank Dobie
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RE: Science and Ideals.

[Dan M]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Olin Elliott
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 11:11 AM
> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion
> Subject: Re: Science and Ideals.
> 
> >If ethics is valid because it is 'grounded' in X, what makes X a valid
> >basis? Because it's grounded in Y?  And Y in Z?  And ...
> 
> Mathematics, as has been pointed out, is grounded on axioms that cannot
> themselves be proven or reduced to anything else.  Kurt Goedel showed that
> any mathematical system powerful enough to explain basic mathematics must
> contain certai propositions that we know to be true, but which cannot be
> proven within the system.
> 
> I don't think this is an exact analogy, but it does show that not
> everything has to be "grounded" -- it stops somewhere as it does with
> axioms ...

This is actually at the heart of my point.  As you said, it has to stop
someplace.  Different people have different stopping places when they
develop ethical systems.  Systems have been developed that I would guess
most of us would find repugnant, such as systems that consider the
extermination of other races as highly moral.

But, such systems, such as different maths, can have internal consistency.
There are tens of thousands (at least) different self-consistent axiomatic
systems.  Some are better at achieving a given goal (say modeling QM) than
others.  But, without such an external yardstick, there is no way to call
one system better than the other.


Dan M. 

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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[John Williams]

 Kevin B. O'Brien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> If the problem were not urgent, if we had the luxury of reducing CO2 
> emissions by 30% over the next hundred years, I would probably agree 
> with you. Tweaking market incentives would probably be a very good way 
> to address that sort of problem. But when you are confronted with an 
> urgent life-or-death problem, the primary problem is not one of 
> efficiency. For example, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we did 
> not worry about the most efficient, market-based way of letting the 
> private sector respond.

The "solution" to Pearl Harbor was straightforward. The "solution" to
the environment is not. I don't see how some politicians, who have spent
precious little time studying either the environment or economics, will be
capable of solving the "problem". Simply deciding to go to war on the
environment will not help, and on balance, will probably cause harm.


  

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Re: Oil

[Doug Pensinger]

Bruce wrote:

>
> A good indicator of how much environmental impact there would be is
> the drilling currently taking place on the North Slope.  Everything
> needed to support the drilling crews and equipment -- and I mean
> everything, food, living supplies, drilling mud, logging/analysis
> equipment, the rigs themselves -- has to be trucked in on the Haul
> Road, and all the waste has to be trucked back down south for
> disposal, so the drilling crews are very good at not wasting any more
> than necessary, and their survival depends on not damaging too much of
> the permafrost they're sitting on, so "leave no trace" is sort of an
> economic necessity up there.  I don't see why the lessons learned up
> there can't be applied to drilling in ANWR, if there's enough
> petroleum there to be worth it.
>


Really; leave no trace?   I had heard just the opposite, that the North
Slope was pretty trashed.

Doug
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Re: Science and Ideals.

[William T Goodall]

On 2 Sep 2008, at 23:47, Dan M wrote:

> This is actually at the heart of my point.  As you said, it has to  
> stop
> someplace.  Different people have different stopping places when they
> develop ethical systems.  Systems have been developed that I would  
> guess
> most of us would find repugnant, such as systems that consider the
> extermination of other races as highly moral.
>
> But, such systems, such as different maths, can have internal  
> consistency.
> There are tens of thousands (at least) different self-consistent  
> axiomatic
> systems.  Some are better at achieving a given goal (say modeling  
> QM) than
> others.  But, without such an external yardstick, there is no way to  
> call
> one system better than the other.

Just like how without an external yardstick there is no way to call  
Uwe Boll's _BloodRayne_ better than Shakespeare's _Hamlet_. Because if  
it's all just opinions they are all equally valid and there is no way  
to call one better than the other?

Not a car analogy Maru


-- 
William T Goodall
Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web  : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/

Theists cannot be trusted as they believe that right and wrong are the  
arbitrary proclamations of invisible demons.


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One word you can say on television

[Ronn! Blankenship]

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war on the environment...

[Jon Louis Mann]

> The "solution" to Pearl Harbor was
> straightforward. The "solution" to
> the environment is not. I don't see how some
> politicians, who have spent
> precious little time studying either the environment or
> economics, will be
> capable of solving the "problem". Simply deciding
> to go to war on the
> environment will not help, and on balance, will probably
> cause harm.

it can be said that the human race has been at war with the environment since 
the agricultural revolution, but it only started to become a serious problem in 
the last century.  it will become much, much worse in this century.  some 
estimates are that we will reach critical mass in four more years, and then the 
problem will correct itself...
jon 


  
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Nick Arnett]

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 2:16 PM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> > Anyway, do you think that
> a logging company that clear cuts its forests will be the most profitable,
> in the long run, in a competitive market?


Well, I do... if by clear-cutting it drives the competition out of business.

For public companies, the "long run" is anything more than a year or two, at
best.  The stock market likes consistent profits from quarter to quarter.
 There's a damned if you do and damned if you don't in the market.  If
you're a small company, nobody cares if you're investing for the long run
because they can't be bothered to understand the strategy of a small player.
 If you're a large company, the market expects you to figure out how to be
profitable every quarter *and* invest for the future.  Thus the public
markets encourage businesses to ignore the long-term issues.  What's more,
the tenure of top management at public companies is short and their
compensation has nothing to do with how the company performs after they
leave, so again, no incentive, even a disincentive, to have a real long-term
strategy.

Who cares if the company will run out of trees, as long as it isn't going to
happen until long after the current senior management and board are gone?
 And if we don't keep profits up now, we'll be gone that much sooner.

It is very, very hard for anybody to make present-day sacrifices for
long-term profits when the guy next door is cashing in stock options worth
millions.  In fact, one risks a lawsuit that would argue that the board is
failing in its fiduciary responsibility to protect shareholder value.
 Shareholder value is now or in the few years, not in a decade or two.

Pardon if it seems like I'm repeating myself... but even for venture
capital, which plays for a longer term than the public markets, long-term is
4-5 years.  If you can't show the possibility of a 10x return in that time
frame, you don't get to play.  Look at what has happened in a traditionally
low-risk marketplace -- real estate -- lately.  Even there, investors
started having crazy expectations.  And yes, the market is correcting, but
look at the fallout.

I've played the game a lot, raising venture money, IPOs, advising large and
small companies on high-risk investments in emerging markets.  Maybe I'm
biased because that's the world I've lived in for many years now... but what
I see is people who mostly let the long term take care of itself.  As long
as a few people are becoming millionaires and billionaires and the rest of
us think we have a shot at the same, nobody sees any need to change their
perspective.

Nick
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[Nick Arnett]

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 2:25 PM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
>
>
> Sorry, I did not mean the groups to be mutually-exclusive or
> all-encompassing.
> Some posts seem to fit into both, some neither. But is was interesting to
> see how similar some posts appeared as far as faith in a paternalistic
> force
> for good. No offense intended to your faith, or lack thereof, whatever your
> inclination may be.
>

I'm relieved that you are unsure about that, since I don't see any conflict
there.

Nick
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Re: war on the environment...

[John Williams]

Jon Louis Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> it will become much, much worse in this century.  some 
> estimates are that we will reach critical mass in four more years, and then 
> the 
> problem will correct itself...

I think those estimates may be a bit off. My estimate is 5 years.


Oh, wait, I just checked my work, and I seem to have dropped a couple zeros. 
That
should be 500 years. Sorry.


  

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war on the environment...

[Jon Louis Mann]

> > it will become much, much worse in this century.  some

> > estimates are that we will reach critical mass in four
> more years, and then the problem will correct itself...

> I think those estimates may be a bit off. My estimate is 5
> years.
> Oh, wait, I just checked my work, and I seem to have
> dropped a couple zeros. That
> should be 500 years. Sorry.

no need to apologize, john, neither one of us know how long we have left.  the 
estimate i was referring to was not mine:
http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovebioen.htm
i'm sure there are many others...
jon


  
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Re: Welcome to Hyperinflation!

[John Williams]

Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> For public companies, the "long run" is anything more than a year or two, 

What is it for politicians?

> Who cares if the company will run out of trees, as long as it isn't going to
> happen until long after the current senior management and board are gone?

I'd peg the long-run for investors at about 20 to 30 years, which is about the
longevity of many investing careers. I agree that few companies excel at
planning ahead by more than a couple years. But that is because predicting
the future more than a few years ahead is difficult. That is why the 
free-markets
have historically outperformed planned economies. Humans are bad at planning
ahead, but if you have a sufficiently large and diverse "gene-pool" of plans,
random events and natural selection will tend to evolve a few successful plans.

> Look at what has happened in a traditionally
> low-risk marketplace -- real estate -- lately.  Even there, investors
> started having crazy expectations.  And yes, the market is correcting, but
> look at the fallout.

People thought that real-estate always went up, at least for the past 30
years in the US, they said. Now a generation of investors has learned otherwise.
That lesson will probably stay with the current generation of investors, but in
20 or 30 years the lesson may need to be "re-learned". And the investors who
learned from history will profit from the ones who did not. 

> As long
> as a few people are becoming millionaires and billionaires and the rest of
> us think we have a shot at the same, nobody sees any need to change their
> perspective.

Amen!


  

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Priorities

[Jon Louis Mann]

> > my priority is regulation of those who have way too much property. 

> The very fact that you are posting an email
> here suggests that you have more property 
> than millions, and probably
> billions of people in the world. 

as a matter of fact, i own a home in eureka, california, and forty acres in 
shasta county. which is certainly more than most people in the world, but far 
less than the kind of corporate entities i am referring to, but you know very 
well what i meant.  

are you by any chance suggesting there is no need for any government regulation 
at all?  perhaps you would you like to see us return to laissez faire 
capitalism, or feudalism, or perhaps a return to the wild west?~)

you also know that declaring war on japan is not the same as declaring war on 
the environment, any more than it can be compared to a war on poverty, 
inequality or any other action taken to eliminate injustice.  
jon


  
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Re: Priorities

[John Williams]

Jon Louis Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> > > my priority is regulation of those who have way too much property. 

> as a matter of fact, i own a home in eureka, california, and forty acres in 
> shasta county. which is certainly more than most people in the world, but far 
> less than the kind of corporate entities i am referring to, but you know very 
> well what i meant. 

I believe you meant that the amount that you own is okay, but people who
own much more than you are not okay.


  

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Priorities

[Jon Louis Mann]

> > > > my priority is regulation of those who have
> way too much property.> > as a matter of fact, i own a home in eureka,
> california, and forty acres in 
> > shasta county. which is certainly more than most
> people in the world, but far 
> > less than the kind of corporate entities i am
> referring to, but you know very 
> > well what i meant. 

> I believe you meant that the amount that you own is okay,
> but people who
> own much more than you are not okay.


you know very well that is not what i mean.  rather than address what i am 
really saying, you appear to be trying to provoke me into a flame war...
jon



  
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Re: Priorities

[John Williams]

Jon Louis Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


> you know very well that is not what i mean.

Sorry for being dense, but I do not. You wrote about people who
have "way too much property". How much is way too much?


  

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