My beef with you is - this is my thread, and thus far you haven't discussed my ideas at all. — karl stone
There's no going back. There's no standing still. — karl stone
how we'd install solar panels on a stormy ocean — Jake
I'm asking readers to face the fact that the "more is better" group consensus which they assume to be correct is actually dangerously out of date. — Jake
the "smart and serious" people who form the cultural elite of our society don't know what they're doing. — Jake
so the only solution was for us to learn how to migrate across the galaxy. — Jake
What about ships running into the floating solar plants and wrecking them. Ships? What ships? Do you think there will still be shipping once we're reduced to collecting electricity on the surface of the ocean? — Bitter Crank
Not exactly, no - but increased oil costs effect everything else produced or supplied using oil. The ubiquity of oil raises prices on almost everything - a cost of living increase that eventually, wages increase to account for. Now, the original price hike has effectively disappeared. You don't get as many apples for a dollar - but you get more dollars an hour, and work the same hours for the same apples. Effectively therefore, the value of money has changed to accommodate the price hike. — karl stone
In the immediate and short term, sure - a huge economic dislocation you seem to want to cause on purpose, to make renewable energy more competitive. I just don't think that a good idea. — karl stone
No. I said renewable energy doesn't need subsidies - it needs infrastructure funding, like the rail network, the canals, or the Romans and their roads. I also propose a means we can raise the money to apply renewable energy on a massive scale, and keep fossil fuels in the ground at the same time. — karl stone
I agree with the way you reason out the scenario you describe, but it's not what I'm proposing at all. If you'd read the OP - I'd love to get your opinion. — karl stone
So, your alternative is what? That we have less? How is that achieved? — karl stone
Less is not an answer. — karl stone
Basically, fossil fuels are commodities, and commodities are assets. Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology. — karl stone
Bearing in mind such issues as transmission loss over long distances, I would suggest that solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, could produce electricity - used to power desalination and electrolysis, producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel at sea, collected by ship. — karl stone
In the immediate and short term, sure - a huge economic dislocation you seem to want to cause on purpose, to make renewable energy more competitive. I just don't think that a good idea. — karl stone
Let's make some carefully reasoned decisions about what knowledge and power is appropriate for our children at this stage of their development. This will inevitably involve saying no to some knowledge and power, while saying yes to others. — Jake
Nazis love a good book burning but they tend to be unpopular in general. — praxis
Praxis, surely you see that there are more choices here than between nothing and Nazi book burning? — Bitter Crank
Of course. It's just the idea of regulating power and information sounds so, well, absurd. — praxis
For one thing, the regulator would be the super elite, possessing all the power and information. — praxis
But I'm interested in Jake's plan. I assume he's thought this all out. — praxis
Please note that I'm not arguing that shifting away from the outdated "more is better" relationship with knowledge will be easy. I'm just arguing it's necessary, like it or not. — Jake
In so many ways this is true. It's true because we are, after all, only very bright primates. We have drives which push our behavior in ways that our higher thought capacities can see are ill advised, but the drives remain in place -- they are deeply woven into our beings. Our drives were tolerable when there were fewer of us -- maybe 7 billion fewer. When we were a few hunter gatherers we could not get into too much trouble.
Then we settled down; we developed agriculture, built cities, organized governments, harnessed the energies of slaves and beasts to produce large surpluses of wealth (which accumulated in few hands), and began our more recent history. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott takes the view that a human urge to control led to the early states, and their exploitation of the people under their control. Scott has a deep libertarian streak, I suspect. I haven't finished the book, but I think he is going to name the State the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.
I'm not at all convinced, but there is certainly unhappy business at the very beginning of our more recent (last 10,000 years) history. — Bitter Crank
First, there is some prospect of managing science and technology, we're already doing that. The question I'm raising is, can we successfully manage unlimited science and technology? If not, then it seems reasonable to at least question whether a development such as, say, unlimited free clean energy would on balance be helpful to human flourishing.
Next, you keep saying "the reality science describes" without referencing the imperfect reality of the human condition. I wouldn't harp on this except that it seems to me to be not a failure of your personal perspective so much as a logic flaw which almost defines modern civilization. Yes, if human beings were all rational as you define it then we could handle far more power, that's true. The problem is, we're not that rational, never have been, and there's no realistic prospect of us all joining the science religion and becoming Mr. Spock logic machines. — Jake
No, you haven't presented an argument for why it's necessary [to change our "outdated 'more is better' relationship with knowledge"].
— praxis
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3728/the-knowledge-explosion — Jake
The point being here, that it's not their attitude towards knowledge that is driving their research policies.
— ChatteringMonkey
Another good point. Yes, it's their relationship with power, which is what drives our relationship with knowledge. We usually don't pursue knowledge just for itself, but for the power it contains. I like this way of looking at it, as you're helping us dig deeper in to the phenomena. It might be useful to rephrase the question as our "more is better" relationship with power. — Jake
My beef with you is - this is my thread, and thus far you haven't discussed my ideas at all.
— karl stone
— Jake
1) I've discussed the philosophy behind your ideas because, um, this is a philosophy forum. And not an energy forum. — Jake
Of course. It's just the idea of regulating power and information sounds so, well, absurd. For one thing, the regulator would be the super elite, possessing all the power and information. Power tends to corrupt, you may have heard. — praxis
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