I would have thought ‘and’ more accurate than ‘or’ (but I’ll let it go.)

Actually I want to say something in defence of Pinker. I basically agree with his optimism with regards to the ability of science and rational economic thinking to tackle the world’s problems. I only disagree with him in that this doesn’t really amount to a philosophy, except for in the sense that an accounting or engineering firm has ‘a philosophy’. I think he’s entirely deaf to the depths of philosophy. But at the same time, the world does need optimism that science and technological know-how is needed. We really need to believe that now more than ever - Spaceship Earth will not keep sailing on without good flight engineers. Pinker is one pole in the dialectic, so to speak, but an important one, and one that needs to be heard.

I haven't read pinker although I seem to recall something about not eating meat but might be confusing him. Anyway, I'm optimistic science and engineering could solve most of our problems but it's worthless if there's no political will or profit incentive to allocate resources to those problems. In other words, I don't think we're capable is prioritising properly and that will make fixing it either really expensive or too late. My particular concerns, GDP growth obsession, pollution, fish population and other environmental equilibriums, global warming. I'm probably forgetting a few.

Worth reading this.

My dear, departed father was an eminent man, a world-renowned professor of obstetric medicine and a vocal advocate for birth control. He served on the board of WHO and advised the Indian Government. And he was convinced that by now, the world would be in the grips of an appalling famine (having read the Club of Rome reports). Didn’t used to go on about it, but that was his view. He died in 1992 - but I think what has happened has actually been much better than he could have imagined. Look at India - they’ve gone from impoverished agrarian society to (still impoverished) technological powerhouse. OK, still enormous problems, but literally hundreds of millions of people lifted out of subsistence economics.

There are heaps of problems, enormous problems, nobody can ever doubt that. But we also ought not to simply disregard human ingenuity and the ability to solve problems. Western liberal economics and advanced technology are an intrinsic part of that, there’s no future without them. So in that sense, I think Pinker’s is one important voice, even though I completely disagree with him in many regards.

If a man is poor and he obtains a huge loan to be replayed a 400% interest in 100 year's time, is he now rich?

Fair point.

New York Times review:

There’s a noble kernel to Pinker’s project. He wants to discourage the kind of fatalism that leads people to think the only way forward is to tear everything down. But he seems surprisingly blind to how he fuels such fatalism by playing to the worst stereotype of the enlightened cosmopolitan: disdainful and condescending — sympathetic to humanity in the abstract but impervious to the suffering of actual human beings.

I suppose that's not surprising; he is after all a convinced materialist.

I read the article but I don't see how it relates to the environmental issues I mentioned, which I think are of a different type than the ones discussed in the article. I'm very confident we could solve these environmental issues if we'd be willing. I'm simply not optimistic about the political will to do so until such time as it has become an actual problem. Eg., it will probably be fixed at much greater expense than necessary if we would've had the will to prevent it. But we won't because we're only to happy to let later generations fix the shit we break.

Yearp. Sincere use of "Cultural Marxism" makes me pause and wonder about who I'm talking to -- not by necessity, since sometimes people just pick up words and don't realize their historical use, just makes me pay closer attention to see if there are other symbols of Nazi sympathy.

The Frankfurt school doesn't really fit, at least as self-defined. Not sure I know anyone who would call the Frankfurt school "cultural Marxists' who is in any way sympathetic to their writing.

There are heaps of problems, enormous problems, nobody can ever doubt that. — Wayfarer

I'm very confident we could solve these environmental issues if we'd be willing. — Benkei

For a really depressing read, try Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation or The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century James Howard Kunstler.

Kunstler writes both fiction (A World Made By Hand series) and books about the environment and urban design (The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape is a book written in 1993 by James Howard Kunstler exploring the effects of suburban sprawl, civil planning and the automobile on American society). He is, essentially, a journalist, lecturer, and gadfly (an honorific in my opinion).

Kunstler's thesis in Too Much Magic and The Long Emergency is simple to state, complex to explicate:

We passed Peak Oil in 2006, the result of which is a long-term decline in oil production. The absolute end of oil will be when it takes more energy to extract oil from the ground than is in the oil itself. At the same time, the world population continues to grow, global warming continues, and many consequences flow from those three trends.

All of this is economically, politically, socially, and environmentally destabilizing.

COAL, OIL, and GAS have no replacements, and the world built and maintained since the industrial revolution until now can not be maintained without abundant supplies of these three fuels, particularly petroleum. Further, the would-be substitutes like solar and wind are most economically feasible when oil is relatively inexpensive and rare earths (Lanthanum, Yttrium, Scandium, Neodymium, Praseodymium, Cerium, Samarium, Promethium, Europium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Dysprosium, Erbium, Thulium, Holmium, Ytterbium, Lutetium) are on hand. The rare earths are also necessary for mathematics professor Tom Lehrer's Elements song. [see below]

It isn't that the rare earths are necessarily as rare as hen's teeth; some of them are not common; they just aren't everywhere; they often occur in combination; they are hard to separate out, and so on. The properties of rare earths are critical to a lot of our stuff -- the magnets in windmill generators, solar panels, all sorts of communication equipment, cancer medications, big batteries, etc.

The message of Too Much Magic is that our high tech culture requires cheap energy and petrochemicals to build it, operate it, and then replace it with more.

High tech will be the least of our worries when food and fresh water become scarce, which will happen whether we run short of cheap petroleum or not. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11... billion people can not be sustained, and human population will crash at some point.

I pretty much agree with Kunstler's scenario, though I find his timeline a bit too short and his estimations overly pessimistic, mostly because of the short timeline.

Kunstler dismisses renewable energy out of hand. That despite some states generating a significant portion of their electricity (15% to 30%) from wind, solar, and hydro 4 years after he published Too Much Magic. On one particular sunny, windy day Germany produced 85% of its energy from wind and solar, at least for a few hours. After that happy day there was a month of clouds and still cold air and half the country froze to death.

From the recent issue of Advances In Political Psychology, a study on "How Our Social Group Attachments Strengthen Partisanship"

As racial, religious, and ideological identities have cumulatively moved into greater alignment with Democratic and Republican identities in recent decades, American partisans have grown increasingly identified with their parties due to the psychological effects of identity alignment captured in objective and subjective sorting mechanisms. However, we find that this effect is more powerful among Republicans than among Democrats, due to the general social homogeneity of the Republican party. Contrary to the assessments of modern political punditry, Republicans are more susceptible to identity-based politics.

:monkey:

Here is below:

We passed Peak Oil in 2006, the result of which is a long-term decline in oil production. — Bitter Crank

I believed in ‘peak oil’ back then, but i think the predictions have been shown to be false; the world is not going to run short of oil, but the environmental problems caused by burning oil will nevertheless be catastrophic. And for sure, I fear there will be a global catastrophe and/or economic collapse. It’s obvious that the planet cannot support the human populations that are predicted. So maybe I’m just responding to the optimism that Pinker expresses as a way of ‘grasping at straws’. I hope not, though.

I believed in ‘peak oil’ back then, but i think the predictions have been shown to be false — Wayfarer

Yes, this is a bit tricky. For one thing, oil production is driven by price, and the price-production relationship can be chaotic, with big peaks and valleys in price/production. But then peak oil doesn't mean no oil, it just means that the maximum amount of oil identified isn't continuing to increase. As far as I know, there are no huge new oil fields which haven't been identified.

The other thing is that when prices are high, it makes sense to pursue marginal oil fields, like the fields over the Bakken formation in North Dakota. It takes fracking, which is expensive, but if oil is selling at $140 a barrel, it's worth it. At $50 a barrel, it isn't. Also, wells like those in North Dakota and gas wells in Pennsylvania and New York tend to be exhausted fairly quickly, barely repaying the cost of drilling and fracking.

It takes a lot of energy to get at deep oil, deep under the oceans especially. It takes a lot of energy to move oil from the well head to storage and refineries; it takes a lot of energy to refine oil (heat, pressure), and some of the rare earths are used to catalyze gasoline out of heavier fluids. Then it takes more energy to move refined oil to the end user. What Kunstler sees is a downward feedback spiral of costs, decreased supply, decreased economic activity, etc. which makes expensive oil unaffordable, and so on.

Like I said, his timeline is too compressed, and he expects disaster to be fully unfolding by 2020. A disaster is unfolding, no doubt, just slower than he describes. Let's say 2035, instead of 2020.

I also agree with Kunstler that everybody in the oil business, and everybody who wants things to continue on as they have been will be EXTREMELY reluctant to explore in public what it will mean to run out of cheap abundant oil.

And yes, if running out of oil doesn't get us, global warming will, or both.

I'm grateful for being 71 and not 21. With any luck cancer, a heart attack, stroke, or a fast large truck will happen before things get way too bad.

It's not the lack of oil that is going to be the problem, it's the intersection of environmental disaster, over-population and resource depletion, and consequent economic collapse. Capitalism is predicated on endless growth - value is underwritten by a projected, endless growth curve. When it becomes absolutely undeniable that the growth curves are unsustainable, then the world's financial systems really could collapse - meaning that currencies would lose all of their value. That is the 'financial apocalypse' that people mutter darkly about, and that nearly happened on September 18th 2008.

I truly hope not - the one hope that I have is that there are people in the world economic system that understand these threats and are working to mitigate them. But with the likes of Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA......

engineers aren't that smart after all. — Pseudonym

Civil engineers!

Software engineers, on the other hand, are incredibly brilliant. They turn out new products, and new versions of old products that work PERFECTLY, never crashing or causing to crash, never slowing down their host, always being transparently intuitive, always meeting if not exceeding expectations, and delivering lavish benefits to purchasers.

Clearly they should be fathering the next generation of children.

Clearly they should be fathering the next generation of children. — Bitter Crank

For what it's worth, my good friend's 25 year old daughter got her bachelors in fine arts, worked for a year, and then went to a 6-month computer coding program. She made $85,000 to start. Now, a year later, she makes $115 thousand. She is very, very smart. Again - for what that's worth.

It's not the lack of oil that is going to be the problem, it's the intersection of environmental disaster, over-population and resource depletion, and consequent economic collapse. — Wayfarer

And oil is the critical resource that will be, one fine day, depleted. Oil powers agriculture; gas fertilizes agriculture; oil powers mining ["If it isn't grown, it's probably mined."]; oil powers transportation in trains, trucks, barges, ships and planes; oil and gas power a significant share of electrical generation; oil lubricates all gears, pistons, and shafts; it is the resource without which there are not too many other resources to be had (given the industrial revolution).

There is an oil empty well in the middle of the intersection of environmental disaster, over-population and resource depletion.

Capitalism is predicated on endless growth - value is underwritten by a projected, endless growth curve. — Wayfarer

Yes, Kunstler discusses that very thing at considerable length. Credit is borrowed, and is meant to be repaid in the future -- somehow. Most enterprises, whether for profit, non-profit, or governmental operate on at least short-term credit. Credit is also a lubricant of economic activity and is slicker than oil. Credit is great until the debtors ability to repay sinks beneath the surface like a stone. Then the boom is lowered on the debtors, and they are bankrupted.

When it becomes absolutely undeniable that the growth curves are unsustainable, then the world's financial systems really could collapse - meaning that currencies would lose all of their value. That is the 'financial apocalypse' that people mutter darkly about, and that nearly happened on September 18th 2008. — Wayfarer

Exactly -- a topic Kunstler returns to repeatedly.

I truly hope not - the one hope that I have is that there are people in the world economic system that understand these threats ... — Wayfarer

Abandon hope ye who see that our desired growth curves are unsustainable. Abandon hope ye who recognize the Troika of Apocalypse: environmental disaster, over-population and resource depletion. Abandon hope ye who can see the black magic of capitalism's scheme of endless growth. Eyes that have observed these things can not un-see them.

He has loaded up the cannon with the grape-shot of His wrath
He is poised to set the charge off and smash us up like glass...

does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute... does not compute...

Either your good friend is lying to you, or your friend's daughter is lying to him. No one with 6 months coding experience is making anywhere near that to start.

thanks, BC. I’ll look out for Kunstler’s books, even though I know they’ll probably depress me.

For what it's worth, my good friend's 25 year old daughter got her bachelors in fine arts, worked for a year, and then went to a 6-month computer coding program. She made $85,000 to start. Now, a year later, she makes $115 thousand. She is very, very smart. Again - for what that's worth. — T Clark

Actually, I know someone who made the same kind of money at an earlier age as a software developer. When I went to university I met this computer scientist guy whose family was quite well connected (to say the least) and on placement, right after he finished first year of university, he was making £60,000 per year, working in London for one of the big banks in IT.

Though I have to tell you that I have great disrespect for people who make a lot of money working a job and taking no risks.

That's shit pay in London considering cost of living.

Either your good friend is lying to you, or your friend's daughter is lying to him. No one with 6 months coding experience is making anywhere near that to start. — Maw

You're wrong.

Maybe. But half of my friends majored in computer science, and learned coding for 4 years. They didn't start making that amount of money until at least two years into the work force, so I'm highly skeptical that taking 6 months of coding will immediately land you a job that pays so high.

They didn't start making that amount of money until at least two years into the work force — Maw

I've been doing it for 7 years and I ain't earning that much. :confused:

For what it's worth, my good friend's 25 year old daughter got her bachelors in fine arts, worked for a year, and then went to a 6-month computer coding program. She made $85,000 to start. — T Clark

That is £61k in real money. Since an average house is between £450k and £1.2M

Lets break that down a little.
£61k per year
With a student loan tax and NI this will leave you with £3300 per month
Rent in London £1000 + for something basic.
Rates, and basics £800
Leaving £1500 to spend.

Is good, but not unbelievable.

Is good, but not unbelievable. — charleton

It is in New York City, so there is an expensive cost of living.

"it" is the mother of all confusion.

Well written, but poorly argued defense of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now. Thoughts on this piece?

In Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay, “What is Enlightenment,” he wrote that it is man’s “emergence from his self-incurred immaturity” through the “public use of reason at every point.” Only through free inquiry and disputation, according to Kant, could humans flee the darkness of ignorant conformity to the light of true knowledge and wisdom. Recently, several prominent intellectuals have argued that this vision, the vision of the Enlightenment, needs a vigorous defense from increasingly dangerous Counter-Enlightenment forces, including an apathetic public, a hostile academy, and a censorious intelligentsia that is too quick to replace rational dispute with accusations of moral treachery. Steven Pinker’s newly released Enlightenment Now represents perhaps the culmination of this movement: It is an unapologetic embrace of Enlightenment values and a persuasive rebuttal to those who assail them. Unsurprisingly, it has already attracted lavish praise (from Bill Gates!) and provoked furious debate.

Steven Pinker as a culmination of Immanuel Kant??!? WTF???