It's not going to run out. I sort of forget that that's advertised in the world around, that somehow our supply of oil is going to suddenly disappear.
It won't, though, it'll just get more and more expensive, to buy and drill, the allowed uses of oil will be increasing legislated, and, if things go really well, only rich hobbyists will drive petrol cars. And we'll all be viewed as short-sighted criminals who lived amazingly luxurious lives at above cost; had a large amount of ingenuity and intelligence, but ultimately wallowed in our own self-interest for too long.
A bit like we view slavery, the pre-women's/black rights world or the world run by religion just a few generations ago.
But quite a bit worse.
I'll even put £5 on it.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
What are prisons for?
So I've been wandering 'round asking people I don't know that well what they think prisons are for. Mostly I get deterant, occasionally it's a more complicated answer than that, and once, I got punishment. Which is fair enough, probably fitted her personality well.
>:>
Don't often get rehabilitation as an answer. But it really seems the only useful thing to come of it. As a deterrent, it doesn't seem to work too well, and to be honest, there are better ways of deterring people. Somehow, prison is "acceptable", like attempting to cause long term pain to someone because they wronged you is better than short term pain of waterboarding. As a punishment, it's rubbish for the same reasons, it's got to be naff for some people to be away from their family for so long, but really? Protecting society. Well, yes, it's effective at that, but equally so would a program dedicated to full rehabilitation in most statistically effective manner.
Punishment seems pointless to me, I just don't get it, really and it seems an ineffectual deterrent. Sure, these guys do bad things, but if they can be stopped from doing bad things, become useful tax paying people, what difference is it if they're been stuck in a room for 2 years or not?
I suppose I ought to say a bit more about punishment. If an action has a useful outcome, then it's worthwhile. Punishment for punishment's sake doesn't seem to have a useful outcome. People have done bad things, to people I know, and to people I care about. Sometimes, I'd like vengeance, or to punish them. But often, there's no point, and actually, through the sort of actions people like that do, very often they end up miserable themselves.
And honestly, if I could stop them behaving like that, which would probably make them happier, I would. I mean, within limits, they have to want to. Although with one caveat - I'd neuter the bastards (in a reversible fashion) to stop them having kids until they grew up, but hey, can't be all loving.
>:>
Don't often get rehabilitation as an answer. But it really seems the only useful thing to come of it. As a deterrent, it doesn't seem to work too well, and to be honest, there are better ways of deterring people. Somehow, prison is "acceptable", like attempting to cause long term pain to someone because they wronged you is better than short term pain of waterboarding. As a punishment, it's rubbish for the same reasons, it's got to be naff for some people to be away from their family for so long, but really? Protecting society. Well, yes, it's effective at that, but equally so would a program dedicated to full rehabilitation in most statistically effective manner.
Punishment seems pointless to me, I just don't get it, really and it seems an ineffectual deterrent. Sure, these guys do bad things, but if they can be stopped from doing bad things, become useful tax paying people, what difference is it if they're been stuck in a room for 2 years or not?
I suppose I ought to say a bit more about punishment. If an action has a useful outcome, then it's worthwhile. Punishment for punishment's sake doesn't seem to have a useful outcome. People have done bad things, to people I know, and to people I care about. Sometimes, I'd like vengeance, or to punish them. But often, there's no point, and actually, through the sort of actions people like that do, very often they end up miserable themselves.
And honestly, if I could stop them behaving like that, which would probably make them happier, I would. I mean, within limits, they have to want to. Although with one caveat - I'd neuter the bastards (in a reversible fashion) to stop them having kids until they grew up, but hey, can't be all loving.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Societies progress technologically
All I know about this is mostly from reading Guns, Germs and Steel. So I'm commenting far outside any expertise or experience, but I also want to remember a conversation I had and quite enjoyed at said conference, and also to switch away from the religious stuff (having been brought up in a religious environment, I find it quite easy to write about and talk about, though fortunately less easy than I used to; I get tongue tied and a bit confused about the ideas because I don't consider them very often).
We were chatting about genius, and the progression of ideas. The idea was proposed that individual genius was responsible for much of the development of thought, and I've never liked that idea. Ideas aren't formed in a vacuum. The lightbulb was refined by Edison, and his version dominated, but he wasn't the first to try it, or even succeed. His lightbulb was the one that was successful, and had someone else managed it before or after, the nature of the lightbulb might have been different, but it seems, given that there are usually considered around 22 inventors or the thing, that it was pretty likely to happen, in one form or another, Edison or not, at some point. Given how useful the thing is, too.
Another example was Einstein. He was a genius, and his ideas revolutionary. But they were ideas in the right time. The underlying concept that takes special relativity away from Newtonian mechanics, that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant and that light is self-propagating through a vacuum (there is no substance filling space for light to "wave" in), was about to arrive independantly of Einstein. The concept of relativity, that there are no special reference frames, was already pretty strongly held in physics. Given those ideas and time, it seems that special relativity, in one form or another, would appear. And general relativity is special relativity applied to gravity; that the accerlation in pushing things around is the same as the acceleration from gravity.
Which seems obvious, but given a strong knowledge of mathematics, special relativity, and lagrangian dynamics people say that knowing that will lead to General Relativity, in some form or another.* Would just have taken time, and perhaps more people.
Revolutionary ideas are always based in a context or technological progression. In the context that we were discussing it, the idea was then passed around that technology is a gradual and continual upwards progression.
Which is also inacurate, but better than saying technological progression is based around individual geniuses, in my view.
There have been examples where societies have fully abandoned their own technological advances and regressed. I think an example of this is easter islanders - they had a complex society, with advanced stone working, but it all fell apart due to ecological sucicide - they chopped down all their trees. Another is Egypt - a massively complex, powerful and, for the time, technologically advanced society, but it collapsed and dissapeared itself.
A similar example is to do with being scientifically advanced, but then loosing that position due to sociological changes - once China, with gunpowder, and the Islamic world, mathematics, medicine and philosophy, were at the forefront of science and technology, but then, for whatever reason, stopped being an aminable environment for scientific advances, and the position of most advanced gradually shifted to Europe.
An interesting addition to this is the wheel. In the early americas, examples of toys with wheels have been found, but no evidence that the wheel was used more widely. This could be because the wheel is most useful in combination with beasts of burden, which weren't around then.
To counter this, though, there are lots of ideas of technologies that have appeared only once and survived - a strong one being the phonetic character representation system, in the modern world the alphabet, which, as far as is known, only appeared once and all similar systems came from one original source. Another is any given staple crop, which was only selectively bred once and then spread, much easier than reinventing it.
So coming back to where I started, neither individual genius nor continual development is sufficient explination for scientific progress, but I've not proposed a counter hypothesis, though I might understand it a bit better. So this, for now, is what I think; it's complicated.
I do think more, which has ideas about patents, individual rewards, free time, climate as a motivation, wars, socities receptivness, religious. But it's complicated is actually more useful ;) It can then be equated to being quite random, and then ignored. Which is perhaps cheating, but I've said what I want to :D
*I once understood how to derive basic SR (but not in the sense of rotations in space-time), and given a run up I could probably do it in a few months because I've seen it before and remember the ideas, but I never quite got there with GR. I just about had the maths, but didn't have a complete enough understanding of either SR or lagrangian dynamics. Hence in my GR course I only got 64% (the best uk pass is above 70%, a fail is below 40%), and considering how awful I found the paper, the bell shaped curve must have been rubbish.
We were chatting about genius, and the progression of ideas. The idea was proposed that individual genius was responsible for much of the development of thought, and I've never liked that idea. Ideas aren't formed in a vacuum. The lightbulb was refined by Edison, and his version dominated, but he wasn't the first to try it, or even succeed. His lightbulb was the one that was successful, and had someone else managed it before or after, the nature of the lightbulb might have been different, but it seems, given that there are usually considered around 22 inventors or the thing, that it was pretty likely to happen, in one form or another, Edison or not, at some point. Given how useful the thing is, too.
Another example was Einstein. He was a genius, and his ideas revolutionary. But they were ideas in the right time. The underlying concept that takes special relativity away from Newtonian mechanics, that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant and that light is self-propagating through a vacuum (there is no substance filling space for light to "wave" in), was about to arrive independantly of Einstein. The concept of relativity, that there are no special reference frames, was already pretty strongly held in physics. Given those ideas and time, it seems that special relativity, in one form or another, would appear. And general relativity is special relativity applied to gravity; that the accerlation in pushing things around is the same as the acceleration from gravity.
Which seems obvious, but given a strong knowledge of mathematics, special relativity, and lagrangian dynamics people say that knowing that will lead to General Relativity, in some form or another.* Would just have taken time, and perhaps more people.
Revolutionary ideas are always based in a context or technological progression. In the context that we were discussing it, the idea was then passed around that technology is a gradual and continual upwards progression.
Which is also inacurate, but better than saying technological progression is based around individual geniuses, in my view.
There have been examples where societies have fully abandoned their own technological advances and regressed. I think an example of this is easter islanders - they had a complex society, with advanced stone working, but it all fell apart due to ecological sucicide - they chopped down all their trees. Another is Egypt - a massively complex, powerful and, for the time, technologically advanced society, but it collapsed and dissapeared itself.
A similar example is to do with being scientifically advanced, but then loosing that position due to sociological changes - once China, with gunpowder, and the Islamic world, mathematics, medicine and philosophy, were at the forefront of science and technology, but then, for whatever reason, stopped being an aminable environment for scientific advances, and the position of most advanced gradually shifted to Europe.
An interesting addition to this is the wheel. In the early americas, examples of toys with wheels have been found, but no evidence that the wheel was used more widely. This could be because the wheel is most useful in combination with beasts of burden, which weren't around then.
To counter this, though, there are lots of ideas of technologies that have appeared only once and survived - a strong one being the phonetic character representation system, in the modern world the alphabet, which, as far as is known, only appeared once and all similar systems came from one original source. Another is any given staple crop, which was only selectively bred once and then spread, much easier than reinventing it.
So coming back to where I started, neither individual genius nor continual development is sufficient explination for scientific progress, but I've not proposed a counter hypothesis, though I might understand it a bit better. So this, for now, is what I think; it's complicated.
I do think more, which has ideas about patents, individual rewards, free time, climate as a motivation, wars, socities receptivness, religious. But it's complicated is actually more useful ;) It can then be equated to being quite random, and then ignored. Which is perhaps cheating, but I've said what I want to :D
*I once understood how to derive basic SR (but not in the sense of rotations in space-time), and given a run up I could probably do it in a few months because I've seen it before and remember the ideas, but I never quite got there with GR. I just about had the maths, but didn't have a complete enough understanding of either SR or lagrangian dynamics. Hence in my GR course I only got 64% (the best uk pass is above 70%, a fail is below 40%), and considering how awful I found the paper, the bell shaped curve must have been rubbish.
Bringing up your kid religious
So I was away at a conference. These things happen, is a day out of the office. And I had a conversation about religious things. 2 actually, I don't know why that happens, and I know I'm talking a lot about religious things lately. I'll switch back to more realistic things in a bit, I do have to get on with reading the selfish gene.
And there was this one woman I was chatting to, and she was very adamant that bringing up children to hold theistic beliefs is brainwashing, and that they should be brought up with a questioning mind set and allowed to make their own decision. There are lots of things I've heard like this, and more extreme examples include comparing it to child abuse, which might be implicit in the phrase brainwashing.
I object to this sort of thing on a number of grounds. One is to do with language - it's like the abortion debate, were people use emotive words for effect - murder, for one. Well, no, not murder unless the embryo has personhood, which is perhaps the point. The word here is "brainwashing" when "indoctrination" is more accurate, appropriate and is less emotive. I'm usually for clear, less emotive language, it means debates can be carried on with more civility and, at least, a common understanding is more likely to be found.
Another is pragmatism. If religious people are allowed to breed, what else are they going to do? The centre of their intellectual belief system is not questioning, but conforming to the social norms in which they live, which is holding onto to the belief system that has lasted centuries. If it has lasted that long, it is likely a component of that will be passing it onto the kiddies. It seems unreasonable to expect that if people are allowed to hold diverse belief systems, that passing it onto the kids won't happen, or at least try to.
But another thing is a lack of understanding. It seems to purvey through these debates - that people consider the other side to be wrong is a given, because people believe exclusive things. Going around accusing people of indoctrinating their children is harsh. It might be true, but it's not going to win any friends. And being friends with people, engaging them so they feel that you at least understand their way of thinking means they are far more likely to listen. Yes, bringing up children in a religious way is indoctrination, but so is bringing up children in an atmosphere that rejects non-empirical belief systems. It might be a lesser form of indoctrination, less ideas pushed across, but there is some there.
I guess I'm quite long term in my outlook. Organised religious belief is waning in the western world, it has been for decades and it seems it'll carry on like that for a while. It is in the states, in Europe, all over the place. Sure, if fundis try to push their belief systems into science schooling, legal frameworks, oppose that strongly; I hope I would, though it's not an issue in this country. But if people want to believe stuff and bring their kids up like that, it's going to happen. If we engage people, it seems more likely that they'll pass on a more liberal view to their kids, and a certain percentage of those will be at least less religious, if not completely areligious.
And there was this one woman I was chatting to, and she was very adamant that bringing up children to hold theistic beliefs is brainwashing, and that they should be brought up with a questioning mind set and allowed to make their own decision. There are lots of things I've heard like this, and more extreme examples include comparing it to child abuse, which might be implicit in the phrase brainwashing.
I object to this sort of thing on a number of grounds. One is to do with language - it's like the abortion debate, were people use emotive words for effect - murder, for one. Well, no, not murder unless the embryo has personhood, which is perhaps the point. The word here is "brainwashing" when "indoctrination" is more accurate, appropriate and is less emotive. I'm usually for clear, less emotive language, it means debates can be carried on with more civility and, at least, a common understanding is more likely to be found.
Another is pragmatism. If religious people are allowed to breed, what else are they going to do? The centre of their intellectual belief system is not questioning, but conforming to the social norms in which they live, which is holding onto to the belief system that has lasted centuries. If it has lasted that long, it is likely a component of that will be passing it onto the kiddies. It seems unreasonable to expect that if people are allowed to hold diverse belief systems, that passing it onto the kids won't happen, or at least try to.
But another thing is a lack of understanding. It seems to purvey through these debates - that people consider the other side to be wrong is a given, because people believe exclusive things. Going around accusing people of indoctrinating their children is harsh. It might be true, but it's not going to win any friends. And being friends with people, engaging them so they feel that you at least understand their way of thinking means they are far more likely to listen. Yes, bringing up children in a religious way is indoctrination, but so is bringing up children in an atmosphere that rejects non-empirical belief systems. It might be a lesser form of indoctrination, less ideas pushed across, but there is some there.
I guess I'm quite long term in my outlook. Organised religious belief is waning in the western world, it has been for decades and it seems it'll carry on like that for a while. It is in the states, in Europe, all over the place. Sure, if fundis try to push their belief systems into science schooling, legal frameworks, oppose that strongly; I hope I would, though it's not an issue in this country. But if people want to believe stuff and bring their kids up like that, it's going to happen. If we engage people, it seems more likely that they'll pass on a more liberal view to their kids, and a certain percentage of those will be at least less religious, if not completely areligious.
Continuation of last post
I was chatting with a good friend of mine, Ash, about the doubting stuff, and the conversation led me to another thing I remember. For a while, I kept track of the prophesies people would bring. Prophesies = future sight for Christians, they were brought because they were given from god, in the theology of the branch of christianity I was in.
And there were a number of rather interesting things I spotted. Firstly, a lot like astronomy and psychics, the prophesies were very vague. And another thing was that week in, week out, over the weeks I did it, the people who brought prophesies, they were all very similar. Not just in content, but almost word-perfect repetitions. (Unrelated, but if you listen to people repeating stories on various occasions, it is surprising how very nearly word-perfect similar the tellings are, at least I find).
But the crucial things about these prophesies was that they didn't much come true. And that's not really up up to scratch, if a prophet in the OT got the prophesies wrong, they were definitely for the stones. And that isn't "mostly got them right, but missed on the odd one or two" it was a "you get one wrong, and you're going to splatted".
In the context that these prophesies were brought, they were meant to be Divine future sight interpreted through human mouths. Fair enough, a noobie might get it wrong a couple of times, but the people who had been doing it for years, had lots of practice, I expect of an all-knowing, all-powerful god to be up in the 98% at least of getting things right. Often, the best was around 70% right. Which would be astounding, if they were detailed; "your aunt mable will get lost at 9am in orange street on tuesday, and she'll have forgotten her phone. Go pick her up, tell her god told you on sunday, and also write it down, post it 2nd class on monday so she'll at least have some proof. Because, although she'll thank you, saying the voices in someones head told you where she'd be sounds a little bit like you're going for mayor of crazy town."
But they're not like that. They were closer along the lines of X person is unhappy, and god wants them to be happy. Lo and behold, a few weeks later X person is happy, and god wins.
Or reading body language and inevitable mood swings, either works. Which can be achieved without god, so appeal to Occams Razor much?
(yay Occams' Razor, I am much a fan, being a physicist and hence a reductionist.)
And I think that's all for that for now.
And there were a number of rather interesting things I spotted. Firstly, a lot like astronomy and psychics, the prophesies were very vague. And another thing was that week in, week out, over the weeks I did it, the people who brought prophesies, they were all very similar. Not just in content, but almost word-perfect repetitions. (Unrelated, but if you listen to people repeating stories on various occasions, it is surprising how very nearly word-perfect similar the tellings are, at least I find).
But the crucial things about these prophesies was that they didn't much come true. And that's not really up up to scratch, if a prophet in the OT got the prophesies wrong, they were definitely for the stones. And that isn't "mostly got them right, but missed on the odd one or two" it was a "you get one wrong, and you're going to splatted".
In the context that these prophesies were brought, they were meant to be Divine future sight interpreted through human mouths. Fair enough, a noobie might get it wrong a couple of times, but the people who had been doing it for years, had lots of practice, I expect of an all-knowing, all-powerful god to be up in the 98% at least of getting things right. Often, the best was around 70% right. Which would be astounding, if they were detailed; "your aunt mable will get lost at 9am in orange street on tuesday, and she'll have forgotten her phone. Go pick her up, tell her god told you on sunday, and also write it down, post it 2nd class on monday so she'll at least have some proof. Because, although she'll thank you, saying the voices in someones head told you where she'd be sounds a little bit like you're going for mayor of crazy town."
But they're not like that. They were closer along the lines of X person is unhappy, and god wants them to be happy. Lo and behold, a few weeks later X person is happy, and god wins.
Or reading body language and inevitable mood swings, either works. Which can be achieved without god, so appeal to Occams Razor much?
(yay Occams' Razor, I am much a fan, being a physicist and hence a reductionist.)
And I think that's all for that for now.
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