Nut Nut's Attempt At A Book About Politics & Society
Dear Forum Members,
Over in the poker threads, they have members who blog about their poker experience. I've been wanting
1) What are the measurable objectively different preferences you are referring to ?
2) If poor Egyptian families were guaranteed the things I had outlined in my new Bill of Rights, do you think they would riot ? People riot when their livelihood is threatened. If we demonstrate that they will be fed and housed, why would they riot ?
selfishness and disregard for long term consequences.
You can write whatever you want in your bill of right, but a worldwide communist government won't have the resources to guarantee positive rights as much as you would like to.
Remember that production collapses in communism as everyone very quickly ends up producing just as little as necessary not to get beaten, no 1 does any effort he can't benefit from outside a minuscule portion of the population.
And then you have the other dramatic drop in production caused by the environmental regulations you consider necessary. We all become poor egyptians in your model, and we all riot far sooner than that.
*and so why do you want to give the power to decide to people who you now admit won't vote for what you want* as the solution lol.
I want people to have the opportunity to salvage something of human civilization. You can lead a horse to water, but can't make them drink.
I think the packaging with a universal Bill of Rights that guarantees everyone food, housing, education, medical care, etc might help.
Also, packaging the offer with an honest perspective from the world's intelligence infrastructure would also help.
I want people to have the opportunity to salvage something of human civilization. You can lead a horse to water, but can't make them drink. I think the packaging with a universal Bill of Rights that guarantees everyone food, housing, education, medical care, etc might help. Also, packaging the offer with an honest perspective from the world's intelligence infrastructure would a
it doesn't, you can't guarantee first world housing education food and medical care to every human being on the planet. We don't have the resources to do so and especially we wouldn't have them under communism, and especially under heavily-economically-restricted communism that is hyper-regulating about the environment.
Only 12y people believe you can just wish abundance into existence. Not even peruvians accepted a constitution full of positive rights like that recently, they knew it would just be dead letters
On specific issues, a large public consensus can exist no matter the form of government. My point was that your proposal also depends on that sort of consensus, and for better or worse, I don't think that consensus exists right now (or is likely to exist in the future on the timeline that you believe is necessary to prevent societal collapse).
There is a loneliness associated with having an intense curiousity about matters of math and science.
The population of people who have both a) a similar curiousity and b) the intestinal fortitude to grasp the horror we are unleashing is very small.
Lucifer has a valuable role to play here because he speaks aloud of and embodies the dark truth of our tribal focus. He gives voice to the majority quality of "us vs them" thinking which is the global standard.
The notion of international cooperation is repulsive to him because he lives in a place that has more than most. He is addicted to that primitive competitive instinct which says "I feel better about a world in which I have more than others".
I'm a loving person. I want a world where we can ascend to a different plane and feel good that everyone is being cared for and don't have to worry about where our next meal comes from.
Imagine a world in which we don't have to work under a feudal financial lord in order to eat. Imagine what life might be like if we really cared about the environment.
At least you're honest and acknowledge that modern humans have the ability to meaningfully impact the environment.
It isn't possible to argue otherwise. You don't even have to wade into a discussion about global temperature to conclude that humans meaningfully impact the environment. There isn't much debate about why there are no passenger pigeons in North America and far fewer bison than there were in 1700.
On specific issues, a large public consensus can exist no matter the form of government. My point was that your proposal also depends on that sort of consensus, and for better or worse, I don't think that consensus exists right now (or is likely to exist in the future on the timeline that you believe is necessary to prevent societal collapse).
Well .... it certainly can't happen in the current version of the USA.
The financial control of every institution inclusion, The most damaging entity they control is the media brainwashing machine. They fill us with tribal drama 24/7. The professional sports infrastructure (NFL, etc) further reinforces our primitive tribal instincts.
I see in the world a lot of people who attach the word "intelligent" to the human species. But wouldn't an intelligent species have the capability to have a conversation about letting go of tribalism and having one global government which eliminates the need to keep investing in weapons to kill each other?
In my mind, an educated citizen would understand the reasons that the Earth has regularly oscillated between ice ages and warm periods for millions of years.
The term for that description is Milankovitch Cycles which describe the cyclical orbital relationship between our Earth and Sun and I have addressed them previously in this thread.
People who understand that can more easily make the leap to the future consequences we are committing ourselves to.
But these are things most people just don't find the curiosity to ever investigate.
I don't prefer China over Scandinavian models of government. I used China's success as an example of the success of a dictatorship. The difference between China and Norway's per capita emissions are not that great. 9.24 tons per year vs 7.86. A lot of that is due to two factors. 1) China's being a global export hub and the fact that emissions are allocated 100% to the country o
Well, you decided to immediately delete out the bolded but okay. I'd rather you stand with your side with a little more temerity but w/e.
lol at military emissions - look into that one. But you seem to acknowledge that they need a military in this case. We've argued about cleaner alts for energy use while china chose coal despite cleanlier options while the Scandinavian countries invested early in hydro and wind while having elections.
Also, China’s green energy expansion is heavily influenced by international and market pressures. You won't ever believe that or know what it means but the actual EU taxes them based on carbon emissions literally forcing them to incentivize (which is good).
...And that is exactly what you and I both advocated for mutliple times in mulplie threads. You really are running low on fuel here in portraying that you are more concerned about the environment than you are about capitalism.
Also Nut Nut...
Who gives a **** if you prefer one economic system over another. One of the few things that actually annoys me on this forum are political pundits who pretend to be something that they aren't to cleverly try to push through some silly attempt of influence onto others.
Because right now, I am speaking to someone who's #1 concern is the environment, full stop. Yet you post a lot of really idiotic side quests that just doesn't compute.
it doesn't, you can't guarantee first world housing education food and medical care to every human being on the planet. We don't have the resources to do so and especially we wouldn't have them under communism, and especially under heavily-economically-restricted communism that is hyper-regulating about the environment. Only 12y people believe you can just wish abundance into e
Who said anything about "first world" housing ?
I wouldn't plan on everyone having bourgeois standard of living.
But we also don't need 5,000 square foot (500 m2) homes for two people. Those can be retrofit so that more people can live inside them.
We don't need any more new single family homes. Perhaps these are a luxury item for people who do important work like doctors, nurses and community leaders who need to be able to host people over for dinner.
I imagine that there will be community cafeterias for the bulk of meal preparation and consumption. I would follow the model of the kibbutzim which were very popular during the earlier era in Israel.
We're going to have to eliminate luxuries.
You really are running low on fuel here in portraying that you are more concerned about the environment than you are about capitalism.
Capitalism as currently practiced doesn't put any cost on environmental damage.
Coca-Cola can sell as many plastic bottles of soda as they want and the plastic winds up in the air, soil, atmosphere, food supply and is accumulating in our brains.
Does Coca-Cola pay any damages ? No.
I am not opposed to a form of capitalism which rewards people for their work. I don't mind if a doctor or a scientist who must spend many years of study being rewarded with perks. I don't mind rewarding leaders who are responsible for the well being of many others and are on call 24/7 in the event of emergency.
But those rewards are not going to include a gas guzzling Humvee or a yacht or a private jet.
As Lucifer correctly points out .... we can't bring the entire world up to first world living standards.
The general rule of the adaptation is that rich people are going to migrate in the direction of having less.
There is a relationship between the economic system and the environment.
I don't have an ideological problem with capitalism. I have a problem with the lack of environmental regulation which is currently coupled with capitalism.
There is certainly room for entrepreneurial energy in the future which I imagine. I would reward problem solvers.
I think someone like Jeff Bezos and his team at Amazon have created an amazing resource in terms of an extremely efficient distribution system. What Microsoft has created is also an amazing resource. Self-driving EV's will be an amazing resource when they are perfected. No longer will everyone need their own vehicle ..... we can just order one from a community fleet to show up and take us where we need to go.
I guess one way to imagine the Earth is that it's like a spaceship.
It makes a 600 million orbital mile journey around the Sun every year. So it's flying through space at over a million miles per day around the Sun. The Earth's atmosphere which we breathe is held to the surface by the Earth's gravitational force.
That atmosphere is like the air in a spaceship. If we send a bunch of astronauts out of our atmosphere ... the atmospheric conditions in that spacecraft are tightly regulated.
There is no fundamental difference between these two examples of Earth and a spaceship.
The problem is that there is no human being on Earth who is responsible for the atmospheric conditions of Spacecraft Earth. There is no Captain Kirk. No Spock.
How does this not sink in to people as being a fundamental shortcoming in management of our home planet ???
Why is this so hard for people to grasp ?
Is it because atmospheric gases are not in the visible spectrum and people can't see them that they can't imagine them ? Are most humans only capable of grasping what they can see and don't have the ability to make a picture in their minds ?
nut nut if you want to make a difference about the climate you have to learn chinese
As Lucifer correctly points out .... we can't bring the entire world up to first world living standards.
The general rule of the adaptation is that rich people are going to migrate in the direction of having less.
Sure and the general rule is that when you want to reduce the quality of life of someone you have to be ready to use a lot of violence because they will be ready to defend their standards of living
Draft Title: The Path To Human Extinction
Draft Chapter One: Spaceship Earth
When I was a child, I grew up watching the television series Star Trek which about a spaceship of humans who were traveling through space on a ship called the Starship Enterprise.
The show depicted an international cooperation as the crew came from all around the globe. One of the characters, Dr. Spock, came from a different planet. So, it was truly an inclusive orientation.
The ship had a captain, James Kirk and a cast of supporting crew which introduced me to the various specialties in an organization. Captain Kirk provided leadership, Dr. Spock provided powers of logic, Dr. McCoy was the doctor and Scotty was the engineer. Among the characters, I was almost most drawn to character of Dr. Spock who was unrelentingly logical and seemingly devoid of emotion.
But today, I want to talk about Scotty and his job of ship's engineer as it's mostly relevant to the story of how human currently are on a path to extinction.
Scotty would have been responsible for the composition of the air that crew in the Enterprise was breathing. He would have been responsible for making sure that there was enough oxygen in the ship and that there was a means of expelling the carbon dioxide that the crew would have been exhaling. Too much carbon dioxide can kill a person.
So why is this relevant to us as humans today ?
Because we live on the equivalent of a spaceship. Our Earth is flying around the Sun at a rate of about 67,000 miles per hour. While our spaceship earth doesn't have walls to keep the breathable in as the Enterprise did, it keeps the breathable air "inside" via its gravitational force. The breathable air is all within a few miles of the Earth's surface.
Unlike the Starship Enterprise, the real Spaceship Earth has no captain and no engineer which is authorized to regulate the environmental conditions on the ship.
While our ship doesn't have a captain, it does have a crew which is composed of competing tribal factions with tribal leaders who are content with their positions. The tribal leaders refuse to even allow a conversation about appointing a ship captain and giving them the authority to manage the ship's air quality.
Meanwhile, the engineers are telling a story that our earth ship's air quality is moving in a direction that will kill all of the crew from all of the tribes if we don't stop the trend.
(Feedback welcome)
Chapter Two: An Abbreviated History of Spaceship Earth
Throughout our Earth's history, conditions have been quite dynamic. Most previous versions of Earth would not have been compatible with human life. The early atmosphere was full of carbon dioxide and had almost no oxygen.
After its formation, chemical reactions gave rise to new compounds called nucleotides which were to become the letters of the language of biological life which we call DNA.
After some hundred of millions of years, the DNA language came to life in the form of a single celled entity which could divide and make a copy of itself. That single celled organism contained a few million letters of DNA.
The forces of nature also provided a way for the letters of the DNA language to be altered. We refer to that process as mutation.
About halfway through the Earth's history, the process of mutation led to a new type of single celled organism called cyanobacteria. These simple creatures had an amazing quality. They were capable of a unique kind of metabolism called oxygenic photosynthesis. Oxygenic photosynthesis basically works like this.
Water (H2O) + Sunlight + Carbon Dioxide (CO2) ==> Glucose (C6H12O6) + Oxygen (O2)
These single celled creatures were creating the building blocks of a world in which plants and animals could thrive. Plants use glucose as a building block and animals like ourselves use glcuose and oxygen for our metabolism.
As time went on, life continued to evolve via mutation and the Earth continued to physically evolve via a variety of forces .... volcanic, tectonic and an occasional interaction with an extraterrestrial object like a comet or meteor.
The volcanic, tectonic and interactions were sometimes so profound that they altered the Earth's atmosphere or ocean chemistry and caused many species of organisms to go extinct. The biggest mass extinction was the Permian about 250 million years ago which caused the extinction of an estimated 98% of Earth's species.
About 2.6 million years ago, the Earth settled into its present physical configuration when the Panama Isthmus slid into place and blocked the connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
that had previously flowed between North and South America. This initiated the geological era now known as the Pleistocene and is the planetary configuration during which humans evolved.
Chapter Three: An Abbreviated History of Life On Earth
Life continued to evolve via mutation from the single celled organisms of billions of years ago.
At some point a cell absorbed another cell and this absorbed component became the mitochondria of a eukaryotic cell.
Eventually, evolution led to multicellular organisms.
Then evolution led to sexual reproduction which allowed for an alternative form of genetic variation in addition to mutation. Life and the planet continued to evolve dynamically.
About 200 million years ago, evolution gave rise to the first mammals. Our ancestors. Read the following link if you want to understand what differentiate mammals from other animals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal
About 66 million years ago was the last major extinction which was caused by the large Chicxulub meteor impact. That wiped out the dinosaurs.
About 55 million years ago was another extinction event called the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) occurred which involved the release of greenhouse gases that heated the planet by up to 8C. Scientists indicate the rate at which CO2 is being added to the atmosphere today are 10x greater than they were during the PETM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%...
After the PETM ended the planet began to cool and our mammalian ancestors, who were then no larger than a mouse, began to fill the new ecological niche.
Mammals diversified into many branches. Dogs, cats, primates, etc.
Animals like ourselves lived in harmony with plants. Exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. Each of our wastes was beneficial to the other.
Eventually primates evolved into proto-humans and we began evolving away from other primates. We developed knee joints which supported an upright posture, opposable thumbs which helped us manipulate objects, a voice box for speaking and larger brains for abstract thinking.
Chapter Four: Ice Ages & Interglacials, The Climate Cycles During The Pleistocene
As discussed earlier, the planet came into its current configuration about 2.6M years ago and since then, the Earth has regularly oscillated between ice ages and interglacials.
During an ice age, places where Boston and New York City are located were covered under a mountain of ice.
These ice ages and interglacial periods occurred on a regular basis. Why was this ?
The answer are regular cyclical changes in the Earth's orbital relationship with the Sun known as Milankovitch Cycles after the Serbian scientists who discovered them.
Why is the Earth's orbital relationship with the Sun not constant ?
1) Gravitational forces of other planets. When the Earth is between the Sun and Jupiter, the gravitational force of Jupiter pulls the Earth further away from the Sun. When Venus is between the Sun and the Earth, the gravitational force of Venus pulls the Earth closer to the Sun. The result is an elliptical orbit.
2) The plane of the Earth's own axial spin is not the same as the plane of its orbit around the Sun.
3) The Earth is not a perfect sphere. It's slightly irregular in shape with some peaks and valleys.
The sum of these three factors means that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface is variable within a repeating 100,000 year cycle.
