The Robot Revolution

[MarkK]

Anthropogenic Climate Change might or might not be real.

If you believe the sun is at the centre of the solar system, but you don't believe anthropogenic climate change is real, then you are a science cherry picker, trusting what scientists tell you in one domain, and not trusting what you are told in another. If you stand out in your backyard and look around, there is no reason to believe the sun is at the centre of the solar system, and there is no reason to even consider that climate change exists.

The science, however, is unambiguous. 1) The sun is at the centre of the solar system. 2) Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is a direct result of humans burning fossil fuels, and it is warming the planet.

If you trust science, neither of these concepts are difficult to grasp. If you don't trust science, both of these concepts are counter-intuitive. So what is the difference, that you accept one, but not the other?

My speculation: One of these requires that we take responsibility, accept ownership. There is obviously no action required on our part to acknowledge the sun is at the centre of the solar system. By contrast, if I acknowledge that I am causing climate change but I fail to remediate, then I am a planet-wrecker, a destroyer-of-worlds, an addict. In this there is suffering.

This is exactly the behavioural pattern psychologists call denial: Presented with facts that a cost is being incurred, and understanding that to remediate that cost will entail suffering, therefore we simply and conveniently rejects the facts, even where the source of those facts is trusted in other domains.

So I take the position that your position, "Anthropogenic Climate Change might or might not be real," is a position of denial.

 

[Thales750]

Oddly enough, you have found a subject on which we can agree, at least in principle.

Anthropogenic Climate Change might or might not be real. (Climate Change - without regard to cause - IS real.) But pollution in impoverished countries is due to having too many people who burn things in open fires for heat, who destroy trees because they don't have more efficient ways to obtain fuel and building materials.

Our scientific and industrial renaissance over the last few centuries enabled us to be more efficient, which helped exacerbate the problem of increasing population leading to increasing resource consumption leading to more waste by-products. Part of the medical issues we have now - including rising health care costs - stems from supply vs. demand issues. Too many people need health care but the illegal immigrant influx only increases the local demand without increasing the supply side of that situation any better.

When researching my family history through that popular ancestry site, I found many cases, one might even say innumerable cases, where at least two or three family members died before reaching adulthood. Many of my pre-Cilvil War families had over a dozen children but a lot fewer who lived to adulthood. At least five isolated cases stood out where one of my "nth" cousins died at an age less than one year old. That frequency of early death didn't match up to ongoing war but rather correlated to people in rural areas away from any place with a higher proportion of medical care availability.

In a way it is part of survival of the fittest, but nature maintained balance over the long term by making the weakest members due of disease, age, or predation such that species populations would stay in balance over several generations. If a group of predators died out, their prey had a sudden population growth, which fed the dwindling predator population, causing THAT to increase, which in turn led to the NEXT generation of prey being brought back into balance. Drought, flood, and famine did their share of population control. But now... the extreme weather being felt around the USA would normally have taken care of population extremes - but not now. One might say that thanks to the Renaissance, we have sown the seeds of our own over-population doom.

Right now, mainland China is actually suffering a population decrease for reasons far too complex to examine here. (Besides, I've got stuff to do this morning to help my wife.) India is now the most populous nation on Earth. China's anti-family policies from the last two generations finally took their toll... a toll that might lead to serious diminution of China's economic and industrial strength as they find they don't have enough workers to pay taxes to support their rapidly retiring older generation.

Not to mention China is the world leaders in the implementation of industrial robots. One way or the other the richest people in the world are either going to let their customers die off or they're going to start giving them sustenance pay.

 

[Thales750]

Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Let’s say you’re a smart guy maybe an engineer not rich, but making a good living. You invent a new widget and instantly become a millionaire, and you happen to live in the great state of Texas. You’ve paid all the taxes that federal and state governments require. For the sake of argument, let’s say the government takes one-third of your new windfall in taxes.

That leaves you with about $667,000. How much of that remaining money should you be forced to give to the poor? Half? Three-quarters? All of it?

It ultimately comes down to arbitrary definitions of who is rich and who is poor. There’s a family in the Congo right now who might think you are the Bill Gates of Texas and therefore believe you owe them financial assistance.

The numbers are what are important if, as I believe, robotics takes over all the jobs in the world someone has to pay for the things that need to be done and that money will no longer come from employment withholding. So exactly how are all the corporations of the world going to make a living or profit rather if there are no workers that are able to buy anything because they don't have jobs?

 

[Thales750]

Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Let’s say you’re a smart guy maybe an engineer not rich, but making a good living. You invent a new widget and instantly become a millionaire, and you happen to live in the great state of Texas. You’ve paid all the taxes that federal and state governments require. For the sake of argument, let’s say the government takes one-third of your new windfall in taxes.

That leaves you with about $667,000. How much of that remaining money should you be forced to give to the poor? Half? Three-quarters? All of it?

It ultimately comes down to arbitrary definitions of who is rich and who is poor. There’s a family in the Congo right now who might think you are the Bill Gates of Texas and therefore believe you owe them financial assistance.

And by the way a million dollars is pretty much nothing. We have people that are approaching the million times a million in their worth.

 

[Thales750]

Thereby justifying the actions of street thugs who rob the slightly-richer-than-themselves and keep the money since they think of themselves as poor. Thanks but no thanks.

I'm pretty sure those guys that built a bunch of ships and raised an army to get rid of the influence of the crown in the American Colonies were considered thugs by the ruling class in England

 

[MarkK]

How much of that remaining money should you be forced to give to the poor? Half? Three-quarters? All of it?

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute.

If you live in a society that is obviously exceedingly wealthy and you yourself want for nothing, and you understand that in life there is no assurance at the time of your birth that your needs will be fulfilled. The universe owes you nothing. You are a completely dependent organism with no skills, no power, no resources, no inalienable right to even survive.

If all that is so, and then you have the experience based on the gifts you received, gifts you were not owed or had any reason to expect, your physical and mental health, your intelligence, a reasonably good family and upbringing, political and social stability, a strong economic environment. You did not earn any of that, but within that context you have the experience in your life of significant financial success.

Who are you then that in that context, in the knowledge that all predicates for your success were gifted to you, that you should pass in the street people you know to be suffering, and feel no desire to provide?

Should you be forced to give to the poor? Abso-fucking-lutely. If you are dick enough to not respond, in all that you have received, with gratitude, generousity, and kindness to others, then some external and more just power should force you to do so.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Should you be forced to give to the poor? Abso-fucking-lutely. If you are dick enough to not respond, in all that you have received, with gratitude, generousity, and kindness to others, then some external and more just power should force you to do so.

I get that you're passionate about your beliefs, but unchecked emotions will certainly get this thread closed.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

If you trust science, neither of these concepts are difficult to grasp. If you don't trust science, both of these concepts are counter-intuitive. So what is the difference, that you accept one, but not the other?

My speculation: One of these requires that we take responsibility, accept ownership.

Your speculation is incorrect. If you bother to look, you can find many videos by reputable scientists who suggest - and back up their suggestions with evidence - that (a) too many of the doom-and-gloom predictions have not come true and (b) that there are natural cycles that can account for climate activity. MY speculation is that you have decided to stop looking because you made up your mind. For the record, I am a believer in climate change but a skeptic solely as to its origin. We are coming out of a mini ice age that peaked in the late 1800s. You know what happens when you leave an ice age? The climate gets warmer! You remember Dr. Mann's hockey-puck graph? It has been discredited regarding the way he filled in the latter part of that graph. The main accusation was that it was "cherry-picked" to give the desired results.

Do you believe in the survey that says 97% of scientists accept global warming? Do you know the question that yielded that result? "Do you believe that human activities have or will contribute in any way to climate effects?" It was not those exact words but that was the summary of it. And even I would have answered YES to that question based on the way it was formed. BUT I would answer YES even if the "in any way" encompassed 1% of the effect. The question itself was biased and THEN was statistically mishandled by the author.

I remain open to a definitive study that didn't originate from a grant that depended on finding the "politically correct" answer. But (sadly), there are too many articles out there from over-eager (and probably over-hungry) young scientists who believe in "publish or perish" and think they can fudge the results in some way. So they jump on the bandwagon and leave us accused of something we might not have done.

Your speculation is that I don't take responsibility for the effect. The truth is that I accept the responsibility to not blindly accept some scientifically oriented article and stop looking for a better understanding, particularly when there remains a controversy or two or six.

Now, to mitigate that statement, my monologue about overpopulation contributing to pollution of various sorts? To that extent, I might agree that people have not been nice to the planet. But industrial CO2? We've got a planet of 8 Billion (with a B) people and hundreds of billions of lesser critters breathing out CO2 and a Pacific Rim of volcanoes belching out sulfur oxides and, to a lesser extent, nitrogen oxides. Those latter sources are natural. (At least, the last I looked, people are parts of nature.) I question the portions of industrial vs. natural sources for the effects you bemoan.

 

[Thales750]

I get that you're passionate about your beliefs, but unchecked emotions will certainly get this thread closed.

Yeah all discussions of this nature should derive their source and intent from whatever logic is available. The advantage of having a logical mind is that you are we rather should be able to dissect that logic and vector when new data appears. I get it that that's a little oversimplified and idealistic but we should endeavor in any event.