I haven't see it, but I heard about it recently when I saw this review by "ecomodernist" environmentalist Mark Lynas on Facebook:

So last night I sat down with my wife Maria and did something I have dreaded for over a week: we forced ourselves to watch Planet of the Humans. This is the much talked-about film, executive produced by Michael Moore, which purports to take down renewable energy and expose leading environmental campaigners as self-serving capitalists. It's now had nearly 6m plays on YouTube.

Man it was hard going! That's two hours of my life I'll never get back. It has to be one of the worst documentary films I have ever seen, and I've sat through a few. It was slow, badly organized, voiced in a dull monotone and fundamentally dishonest. The cinematography was dreadful, with long black screens, no obvious narrative and strange old sequences that looked like VHS video from the 1980s. By the end we were just desperate for the credits to roll, to end the pain and misery.

And the content? It starts with a flawed premise, supported by misleading arguments and incorrect data, and reaches a conclusion that is - surprise, surprise - utterly wrong on almost every count. The most obvious reason is that it's all just REALLY OUT OF DATE! All the sequences about how bad wind and solar are have a dated feel about them - and for good reason, as it turns out most of the footage is a decade or more old.

Those solar cells that are 8% efficient? They were installed in 2008. The industry standard is now 20%, and rising all the time. Those picturesquely rusty dead wind turbines? First generation. The electric car run from a coal grid? Shot 10 years ago. (The UK grid is now almost entirely coal-free - back when this film was made it was at 40% coal.) The arguments about needing fossil backup to intermittent renewables? Not borne out by any experience, with renewables now comprising far higher proportions of grids than was ever imagined possible when this film was conceived a decade and a half ago. The only thing it gets right is that burning trees for biofuels is really bad, but anyone with a brain has been saying that for years already.

So what's the truth about renewables? Crunch the figures, and it turns out that with current technology an area of solar PV the size of 8% of Western Australia (or a quarter of Namibia or an equivalent area of hot desert) can supply sufficient energy to replace the entire world's oil industry, all 90 million barrels/day of it. So don't let any attention-seeking film-maker tell you the clean energy transition isn't possible. If they do, they're lying, and you need to ask why.

And who are these people who are set up as environmental 'leaders'? RFK Jr! A man who has so far lost his mental marbles that he's now become a full-time anti-vaccination campaigner. Nothing he says should be taken seriously by anyone, especially in a pandemic. The man is a dangerous lunatic. Who else? Vandana Shiva? She's an Indian eco-guru who has long opposed science. The only genuine leader featured is Bill McKibben, who is framed to look as if he's taking money from bad people - this also is untrue, as is obvious from the flimsiness of the evidence provided.

Now I would count Bill as a friend, but even so I would say this: take down McKibben if you have some evidence of bad faith or foul play, but doorstepping him at a rally and showing out-of-context gotchas about 350.org’s funding is not going to convince me. No wonder the right-wing climate denial lobby is having a ball. Michael Moore, the celebrated lefty, has done their dirty work for them!

It all leads up to a gloomy catastrophist fantasy where various elderly white Americans (and they are all old and white, and mostly male) muse misanthropically about how how the "elephant in the room" - that tired old cliché - is population. I mean degrowthers like Richard Heinberg et al, who are presented as prophets whereas in actual fact they are just lifelong professional pessimists who are as wrong now as they have always been (where's your peak oil now Richard?).

This Malthusian bilge I think is probably the most egregious part of the movie, and has received too little pushback - there are plenty of people out there quite rightly calling out the lies about renewables and defending Bill McKibben, but we need to look carefully at what these population de-growthers are actually saying. Where is population growth highest? Africa, of course. They won't tell you this outright, but basically this comes down to a white nationalist fantasy about stopping black people from breeding. I could correct them on points of fact and tell them how the best way to reduce population fertility rate is actually to lower rates of infant mortality and empower women, but what's the point? There's not a single African voice given airtime in the movie either, not surprisingly.

I guess Heinberg and the population-crash fantasists should be cock-a-hoop right now thanks to the pandemic. Here at last there's a good chance that millions of people will die quickly, in Africa most of all due to its poor healthcare systems and high rates of malnutrition. Yay! It's an ugly vision, and it makes me shudder for the darkness of these peoples' hearts. This is not just a bad film, it's morally repellent. Watch it if you must, but be prepared to feel sick as well as bored by the end. — Mark Lynas

https://www.facebook.com/mark.lynas.71/posts/3770369539644440

Any time.

No problem. But I'm going to stand by my analysis until proven wrong :razz:

I wouldn't necessarily be against a "What Are You Into?" thread in the Lounge. Could be interesting (not that I'll be taking part).

Im into both by the way. — ttjordy

Nobody cares, except for your sexual partners, and maybe some of your friends. This is what Baden was talking about: it's a sign of self-obsession that you think we're interested. In fact, my first reaction to your OP was that you were here just to talk about your sex life, and disguised this with a discussion about ethics. And now that, disappointingly, nobody has asked you about it, you've begun to tell us anyway.

That's the cynical interpretation, anyway.

On the other hand, I have felt the urge to talk a lot about sex during those periods when my sex life has been particularly good, and maybe that's what is going on with you now. When I felt that urge, it didn't feel like self-obsession, but more like an innocent enthusiasm: isn't sex great!

I think that's okay, but best among friends who you know are going to enjoy the conversation.

Sure, but it doesn't follow that the way to persuade them is to follow the quoted advice, i.e., to use disclaimers and clarifications to remove all ambiguities.

A "persuasive text", one that could even persuade mean readers, might not be one that is written with them in mind. And maybe you don't persuade by pandering to nitpickers, but by showing them the way, strongly and confidently.

Maybe I'm being too charitable.

:lol: :up:

However, I am not implying that Pfhorrest wants to do this, only pointing out that academia puts people on such a path with the certainly harmless "mnemonics" of thinking of people as "stupid, lazy and mean" as a hapless luck-charm to remember to be "simple, concise and disambiguate" for the purposes of institutional writing. — boethius

You may be right, and I agree that aiming for clarity, concision, and logical comprehensiveness is not the recipe for a great work of philosophy. But it is at least good to write like that sometimes in philosophy, say in academia; or here on the forum, as you obviously attempt to do yourself; or when writing for non-specialists.

Although, like I said, I think it's counterproductive and a waste of time to write for "mean" readers.

With all due respect, your comments and advice seem to be part of the problem and not the solution — 3017amen

What's the problem?

In other words, you seem to be saying "keep those things in the closet; that's good for society". — 3017amen

No, I don't think that's implied by what I said. But I don't really know what you mean. You're being too vague. Should we openly explore sexual matters so as to help people achieve satisfying sex lives free of anxiety and difficulty? Yes, that's why I excepted education and therapy. I took the OP to be referring to being open about your own personal sex life, and there I think intimacy is important, because respecting the intimacy of sex, the privacy of your partners, and so on, is important.

I think we should be just as open about sex as discussing politics. — 3017amen

Politics is public, sex is private (most of the time).

The less private and sacred sex becomes, the less we are reticent to talk about it openly in public. Twenty years ago nobody talked about masturbation at dinner parties. Now people never shut up about it. I'm not sure if that's good or bad or neither. As I'm slightly old-fashioned I think that aside from education and therapy, it seems proper that sex talk is for intimate conversations or whispering behind others' backs.

@boethius Could it be that you have misunderstood this topic? It looks like it. The advice to assume your readers are stupid, lazy, and mean, is merely an arresting, memorable way of saying you should write clearly, concisely, and should argue carefully. The argument of the OP is that you can't do all three. What does this have to do with commercial writing?

Any audience that is none of those things will be unreachable no matter how much you try, and the more effort you put into fortifying against one kind of vice, the more you sacrifice toward your defense against at least one of the other two. — Pfhorrest

I think you're right. And in particular, fortifying your writing against mean readers can result in verbosity, with, as you say, "a fortress of disclaimers and clarifications". Scruton said that "philosophers have become so nervous of their nit-picking colleagues, that they dot every i and cross every t, lest they should be accused of slap-dash thinking".

I can see the point of the triangle, but writing for the mean, while it might encourage you to anticipate objections and so on, mostly just promotes ponderous prose. So my solution is: be clear (for the stupid) and concise (for the lazy), and forget about those who don't apply the principle of charity, the meanies. Like this:

You can write for a stupid and lazy audience, with clear, concise explanations, only if you can assume they’re charitable enough to look for your intended meaning without lengthy disclaimers and clarifications. — Pfhorrest

I think that's a reasonable assumption, unless you and your readers are doing philosophy as some kind of battle of wits.

As we all discover on a forum like this, people will very often be mean, that is, they will pick on easy targets and argue against the weakest version of your argument. I've found those people not to be worth the time, and one's writing suffers from all the disclaimers and hedging.

Why are we here, again? — Professor Death

Because your benevolent overseers allow it.

In an unprecedented move, the staff has decided to unban @Pfhorrest after communicating with him by email. We're confident that the flaming was out of character and won't happen again.

All right, I'm closing this now. Until the next time...

I see what you're saying, but I haven't seen flaming as bad as this for a very long time, perhaps never on this forum. The guidelines make it clear that racism and homophobia are not tolerated.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/480/site-guidelines

His language was grounds for an instant ban, and I was initially pretty lenient in applying the rules.

Yes, it was about those comments. It was me who deleted them. And I did in fact give him a chance by first opting to warn him instead of banning instantly, on the basis that it was totally out of character, but he seemed to have no remorse about it even many hours later, and couldn't bring himself to give a strong assurance that it wouldn't happen again, and that's why I finally banned him.

@Pfhorrest was banned for some particularly deplorable flaming.

Objective truth should be contrasted with subjective truth. Objective truths are quite mind-independent. For example, the Earth has one moon reflects a state-of-affairs that exists apart from any mind. In other words, one could eliminate all minds, and the fact would still obtain. There might not be anyone around to apprehend the objective truth, but the fact would still exist.

Subjective truths, on the other hand, are mind-dependent. For example, "Tim likes apples," is dependent on Tim for its truth or falsity, i.e., it is either the case that Tim does or does not like apples. The truth of the statement, for Tim, is subjective, dependent on the subject, his taste, likes or dislikes, etc. Eliminate all minds and you eliminate all subjective truths. — Sam26

I'm never convinced by this way of using the terms "subjective" and "objective".

"Tim likes apples" is not objectively true? Isn't it a fact that Tim likes apples? Are you saying there are subjective facts?

And if "Tim likes apples" is subjectively true because it's "dependent on Tim for its truth or falsity", then "Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher" is also subjectively true, because it's similarly dependent on Slavoj Zizek.

I imagine you might go on to say that subjective truths are only about a person's "taste, likes or dislikes, etc", as if those were something private and inaccessible. But those things are expressed in a person's behaviour: Tim's taste for apples can be seen in his excessive consumption of apples, and Zizek's taste for thinking about Hegel is expressed in the fact that he's a philosopher who writes about Hegel.

I don't see the utility of saying that a truth is in a special class of truths if the subject of the statement happens to have a mind.

In my view, the terms "subjective" and "objective" make better sense as: from only one point of view and not from only one point of view. Under this scheme, though, we can't really talk about subjective and objective truths at all, unless we want to follow the popular mode of "it's my truth", or, "Tim's truth is that apples are delicious".

Not really. You're referenced inefficiencies that could result in fewer jobs if eliminated. The corporate America I worked for measured every move until we all became efficient mindless robots devoid of personal authority because that would de-systemetize the machine. The bullshit was that people were treated as cogs. It was dehumanizing and tragic if one ponders these are people who are dedicating their lives to this.

Finding and eliminating inefficiencies is corporate speak for creating a dystopia. It won't result in shorter days, just more tasks during the day monitoring efficiencies and chasing away inefficiencies. The reason for squeezing the most from the worker is because people want more bullshit products and there's no way to predictably get people to do what you need them to than by endless forms, datasets, and numeric monitoring. — Hanover

I think this gives too much credit to corporations. In my experience of corporations, they're more like badly run local government: bureaucratic and stupid. I think Graeber's idea is that corporations are not, in fact, particularly good at capitalism, at least according to how it is imagined by its advocates, i.e., as the most efficient and productive economic system possible.

He thinks that (1) "financial services or telemarketing", "corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations", are pointless and unproductive, and (2) that their existence doesn't have an economic basis, but a moral and political one.

It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don't really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organizing or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets. — Graeber

The Soviet Union hasn't been around for a while, but since I've been living in Moscow I've been struck by the number of workers doing jobs that could be done by fewer people. Apartment buildings with six security guards, small shops staffed by four people, that kind of thing. The explanation can't be strong trade unions fighting for full employment, because the unions are weak (or effectively part of the state). And the Russians, or a class of them, embraced a predatory capitalism in the nineties that still largely exists, though now combined with authoritarian government. The underlying explanation might be cultural, which is similar to part of Graeber's diagnosis when he explains the moral and political reasons for the growth of bullshit jobs:

... the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing — Graeber

And this is convenient for a ruling class that won't share its wealth.

If you can work from home, there's a good chance yours is a bullshit job. — Banno

My case might be interesting. I work from home, I'm the co-founder of a very small company, and everyone who works for the company is working very productively. I'm a software developer and my work isn't bullshit. Or, it certainly doesn't feel like it. On the other hand, Graeber might argue that the thing we're working on, the web application we're running, is bullshit, because it's not in itself productive, but merely makes the lives of our customers easier in some ways. So, unlike the paper-pushers, I'm actually making something, it's just that what I'm making might be bullshit.

:cool:

She straight up says I should ignore you — Pfhorrest

I second that.

One of my favourites.

EDIT: this is the best performance and recording I've seen of it online. Thanks.

Not the same thing but I enjoyed this one:



https://www.facebook.com/arsgratiartismutatismutandis.25/posts/1602738313206550

Ah, I see you've done your homework while in Russia :) It's an iconic image, but somehow perhaps due to the historic remoteness or to its fastidious realist execution, it doesn't seem to have the same emotional impact as, say, the Guernica. — SophistiCat

Yes, I know what you mean. When I first saw it, at the Tretyakov Gallery, I was unmoved as I wandered past staring at it vacantly. Only later I realized, oh, wait a minute, that was a pile of human skulls being picked clean by crows, and I should have experienced it as a stunning indictment of war.

:blush:

That comment is so fucking nuts...that anyone attempting to comment on it further than what I am saying right here, is also fucking nuts. — Frank Apisa

:lol:

I guess I'll have to refrain from commenting to the effect that Street and Baden are right.

The painting of the pile of skulls is called "The Apotheosis of War" by Vasily Vereshchagin, sarcastically dedicated "to all great conquerors, past, present and to come". Recreating it with frozen dumplings for skulls is either sick or brilliant, or perhaps both.

:up:

Using [ code ] means you can write it in a monospace text editor and paste it straight in:

It was me. It's possible I was a little hasty in moving it, because I didn't really look at the responses, basing my decision mainly on the OP. But still, I don't think it's a philosophical question so I'm not too regretful about my decision.

@Noble Dust

I remember when I first heard that song on Obscured by Clouds, thinking, ah, it's nice to get a bit of light relief; a jaunty whimsical reflection on life. By the end of the song, I was disabused:

You shuffle in gloom in the sickroom
And talk to yourself till you die

Aren't you allowed to go out to exercise? — Punshhh

Since March 30, officially no:

According to the published decree, leaving one’s place of residence is permitted only for the following: seeking emergency medical care or other direct threats to life and health; traveling to and from work if required to do so; shopping at the nearest existing store or pharmacy; walking pets at a distance not to exceed 100 meters from one’s residence; taking out household garbage. — US embassy

But so far it's not as strict as Spain. Unlike there, I haven't encountered any police checking what I buy at the supermarket. In fact I haven't seen any police in this neighbourhood at all.

Don't worry about the mess, my house would be messy if my wife didn't make me remind me to tidy up and do the housework regularly — Punshhh

Unfortunately my wife is as bad as me.

Tomorrow, I'll definitely do it tomorrow.

Perhaps if folk post an image of where they isolate, it would be interesting to see how our experiences differ? — Punshhh

Right now I long for a garden like that. England?



Isolation Station, Moscow. Pretty much the same as before to be honest, although now my wife is working from home as well, and we can't go out except for essentials. Out the window I can see for many miles across the city, places I cannot go.

Earlier this week, or maybe last week, the Moscow authorities introduced a pass system for travel. If you want to go anywhere in a car or by public transport, you need to get a special QR code from the local government web site. If the police catch you without one they'll fine you 5000 rubles.

Locals are generally derisive about this system, partly because it's been introduced in a rush and quite incompetently and chaotically. The web site crashed several times and the mayor immediately blamed foreign hackers--which I think convinced exactly nobody--and the police don't have scanning devices to check the QR codes, so they have to call back to base to confirm the code's validity. This has caused long queues at the metro stations, leading one journalist to caption a photo with "Stations of the Moscow metro are experiencing unprecedented DDoS attacks organized from abroad". I'm getting to like the Russian sense of humour.

EDIT: I really should clean up.

There was a member here called The Great Whatever. He had a powerful intellect and a persuasive character, an unremitting pessimist, and said the only reason he was still alive was to save his loved ones from the pain.

I presume that antinatalists stay alive merely to convince others. And, not to be too flippant, it's a hard thing on your loved ones to commit suicide.

Yes, I do think that pessimism, or at least antinatalism, is fundamentally a matter of temperament, as something beyond or prior to the rational. The times when I've lost my optimism, in an ethical or political context, have been under the weight of powerful, eloquent pessimism; not because I agreed with any of the arguments of my pessimistic interlocutors, but because they began to emotionally force upon me their outlook. In the end, there is nothing to say to a temperament that has it that the suffering is not worth it.

Antinatalism is not really a philosophy, a free questioning towards truth or towards better ways of thinking or living(!), but more like an aplogetics of a temperamental pessimism. It begins in the temperamental and depends on it completely, which is why the antinatalists can only win if they succeed in spreading their temperamental pessimism. So long as people have the will to live and build and breed, the antinatalists can't get anywhere (I'm not saying that will always be the case). Pessimists realize this and lament it, but...what of it?

It's like the Chartists against the ruling class: it's a battle with good arguments on each side that make no difference except as propaganda: not a matter of objective fact. In the case of pessimism, it's a battle that the pessimists seem so far always to lose, because the a-rational will to live and create is stronger than the urge to give up and let it all fade away. That's a folksy way of putting it, I suppose, but here I feel philosophy doesn't really help, certainly if what is desired is some definitive answer.

EDIT: In @Pfhorrest's terms, most of us, philosophical or not, are ontophiles, and that's not amenable to argument.

"Heymann said masks could create a false sense of security that could end up putting people at greater risk. Even with the mouth and nose fully covered, the virus can still enter through the eyes."

This and the recommendation that carers of covid-19 patients should wear masks both contradict the headline. In fact, the whole article is confusing, and it's not the fault of the article.

It seems that the WHO has been downplaying the protective utility of masks so as to emphasize the more important things, namely distancing and hand washing, etc. Fair enough, but I don't believe masks offer no protection at all, neither does the evidence show that. After all, the virus can enter through the nose and mouth.

Dark and fucked up.