Ethics — What if we just keep asking why?

[apeiron]

The faster the pace of globalization, the faster we'll reach an equilibrium between world economies.

Yes, but my point is still that much of the "success" of western liberal democracy may be an illusion.

We live like kings, but how much is this because we have created real value through our enormous personal efficiencies in our modern economies?

Or how much of it is down to our exploitation of the third world, our blowing of our cheap fossil fuel legacy, and most recently, the bank bail-outs that have mortgaged even our future wealth (putting us in hock to those like China who hold the debt either as undervalued dollars, or increasingly as direct ownership of foreign farmland, foreign companies, foreign resources)?

We have created a highly effective system for consumption - entropy generation - no doubt about that.

Which comment hopefully redirects attention to the issue of ethics. Is bringing all nations up to the same level of consumption a healthy longterm goal for a social system?

A functional social system would seem to have to be good at producing social capital. Being good at material consumption, one way or another, has to be a passing phase.

 

[russ_watters]

Calling what has happened in Asia in the past half century "slavery" is utter nonsense. The global poverty rate has halved in that time because of globalization.

 

[apeiron]

Calling what has happened in Asia in the past half century "slavery" is utter nonsense. The global poverty rate has halved in that time because of globalization.

Excuse me, but a few more facts are required here. You also need to pay attention to the mixture of human exploitation and resource exploitation that is the basis of our luxury lifestyles.

So what poverty rate are you talking about? The Millennium Development Goals for example means those living on less that a dollar a day.

Halving that by 2015 will probably be achieved (due to China becoming a factory), but whoopee. Don't insult me with whack statistics. Four billion people still get by on less than $2 a day.

Instead check out the proper inequality measures like gini coefficient if you want a sense of what is going on out there - how many sweatshop kids and peons it takes to keep a westerner in box-fresh Nikes and snap peas imported from Vietnam.

* the richest 1% owned 40% of global assets.

* the richest 10% account for 85%.

* the bottom 50% own barely 1%.

(World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2006)

[Technical note: this may or may not be an ethical picture, but it sure as heck is a familiar form of equilbrium - the powerlaw regime of an expanding dissipative structure. Or what I liken to the iceberg model. The more ice that appears above water (the world middleclass) the more ice there also has to be below the water to maintain the 'balance".]

Having considered this, then get back to the fact that the only way to make the whole world middleclass is through burning cheap oil (which is how we did it). Oh, I forgot you don't believe in eroei measures either. Yes, we will all live the grand, feel-good, dream of economic convergence via alternative technology - windmills and thorium reactors.

 

[Frame Dragger]

I could agree and leave it at that but... on the issue of slavery... the efficiency of a happy, paid worker pitted against efficiency of the forced - slave labourer will always come out with the paid and somewhat "equal" worker on top.

Inherent in the slave/master relationship will always be the need to revolt, run away, seek revenge etc...

Now, if you can ignore the post office scenarios... inherent in the paid model of labourer... is the motivation to continue, not bother the boss and hope for a raise later... or at least a continued paycheque.

The inefficiencies that come with slavery are numerous and would go well into time I don't have... but think about it... think about the leaps and bounds Romans could have made with educated and appreciated labour serving as its backbone... rather than the hostility and loathing created amongst her slaves. True we've seen these civilizations last over 500 years... but at what cost and where are they now? If we were to gauge the efficiency of a civilization... and its ethics... by its longevity we might get an interesting picture... perhaps that's a good project for this thread.

What is the median age of a slave-holding adult in a given country, at a given time vs. the median age of their society? How long does the average slave-holder live compared to the average slave? How likely is it for a given slave-holder to suffer the consequences of centuries in their life? As terrible as it is, Slavery, Identured Servitude, What China does with MOST of its people ("plomo o plata") does get things done when you're surrounded (or believe you are) by enemies or those wanting what you have.

Lets stick with China for a minute: what about the student protests? Did their equivalent of the Politburo make the right choice for the country, for themselves, etc? They stayed in power in fact, consolidated it for a while, and now they're slowly unclenching their fist. Was it moral? Hell no. Was it right? Not from my perspective. Did it work to keep them in power, and their wealth intact? Oh yeah.

Black Slavery in the USA was probably the most vicious example of slavery in history (outside of intracultural/racial slavery, which is always the nastiest) because slaves were in no way expected to do anything, but the most menial labour. After all, teach them to read and write and you're dead, or so they thought. The period of near-slavery, and recovery from bigotry is unique in terms of scale and duration. Contrast that with a slave tutor in Rome? Then again, there was the colliseum, but now we have 2 million+ people in jail (in the USA), horrendous education for MOST, and huge numbers of our own people living in squalor and misery. I'm not seeing that education and freedom equate to success of a civillization (if one can "succeed).

People usually make decisions based on rewards-risks in their OWN lifetime, and rarely think so far ahead as the fall of Rome. Of course, you wonder what Rome would have looked like, been like, if they had educated populaces instead of converting most, and enslaving some? It's hard to judge, but I doubt it could have been done. How do you teach, what was at that time, most of the known world? Wait... they did! In fact, as I recall the Roman method of conquest was military, then cultural. Keep in mind that much of the stability at home was a result of ongoing conquest, and politics then were rather nasty.

Of course, in Rome, a non-citizen vs. a slave... well, it depends who's slave you were. In fact, our picture of slavery tends to be distorted by race-based slavery. Frankly, Slavery has, and is ongoing, because in MANY parts of the world it is still efficient. It's true that given modern technology the dream of educating a world seems closer, but given how we seem to fail on a national level (USA again, ) I wonder. The Greeks had slaves, and their conquest by the Romans had nothing to do with dissipation due to slave-labour. In fact, you might argue they reached that pinnacle (for the time) you describe... and a meaner bunch came along and took it.

That's the final issue: slaves did work while soldiers soldiered, and the short-lived populace (all of them) didn't really have time to mentor and apprentive more slaves than Rome had Citizens. That said, if we're going to continue this, you really need to argue by example, where a civilation has persisted without slave-labour in the manner you describe. Human history argues against your dream of reason, laudable as it is, because we're not reasonable, and only recently have we begun to live for so very long, that what we did at 30 haunts us at 60, and we're not dead vby 40.

Frankly, if you want to judge a civilation by major milestones which are universal (food, water, homes, communal structures, hospitals, monuments, etc..) especially the longevity of a given way of life... Rome, Greece, The Mesopotamians (Sumer, Babylon, Akkadia), The Egyptians, The Mayans, The Aztecs, etc... etc... etc... All with slaves, all ended for reasons OTHER than slave-revolt, and all have left their mark on history.

Finally... "imagine the leaps and bound... educated and appreciated labour..." well... the former DID happen, unless you find the peristance of the pyramids, cuneform tablets, ziggurats, to be unimpressive. I'd say that the egyptians did a fair job of math, and they did so on the backs of TONS of slaves. Granted, they were mostly locals, and no I'm not referring to the Passover story (which is a fine parable reflecting the Egyptian use of slavery, and Baylonian bondage, but hardly accurate). The world has an educated and appreciated workforce larger than the total population of earth... not so long ago! I don't see life improving for most, just the most visible.

I've traveled a fair deal, including to some very VERY poor locales, I've seen people die from drugs, and gunshots, and I read of more people harmed by land-mines, than DIED in an average historical conflict with a thousandth of the people involved. I don't see that the leaps and bounds made are actually that good for our long-term survival. In fact, for the first time in human history, we have the ability to wipe ourselves out with relative ease, are CRUSHING the environment, and devestating a majority of life on earth. I wouldn't want to be a marine creature right now...

I think your viewpoint is genuinely beautiful... I wish I shared it.

 

[Frame Dragger]

Excuse me, but a few more facts are required here. You also need to pay attention to the mixture of human exploitation and resource exploitation that is the basis of our luxury lifestyles.

So what poverty rate are you talking about? The Millennium Development Goals for example means those living on less that a dollar a day.

Halving that by 2015 will probably be achieved (due to China becoming a factory), but whoopee. Don't insult me with whack statistics. Four billion people still get by on less than $2 a day.

Instead check out the proper inequality measures like gini coefficient if you want a sense of what is going on out there - how many sweatshop kids and peons it takes to keep a westerner in box-fresh Nikes and snap peas imported from Vietnam.

* the richest 1% owned 40% of global assets.

* the richest 10% account for 85%.

* the bottom 50% own barely 1%.

(World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2006)

[Technical note: this may or may not be an ethical picture, but it sure as heck is a familiar form of equilbrium - the powerlaw regime of an expanding dissipative structure. Or what I liken to the iceberg model. The more ice that appears above water (the world middleclass) the more ice there also has to be below the water to maintain the 'balance".]

Having considered this, then get back to the fact that the only way to make the whole world middleclass is through burning cheap oil (which is how we did it). Oh, I forgot you don't believe in eroei measures either. Yes, we will all live the grand, feel-good, dream of economic convergence via alternative technology - windmills and thorium reactors.

I wouldn't worry about it, we'll be dead and gone by then, with most of life on this planet with us. If we're lucky, we'll manage not to wipe ALL of it out in some last spasm before we return to barbarism and probable extinction. Happy, right?

EDIT: I should add we got here by burning cheap COAL... oil was just a booster that is running dry. Of course, we could get lucky and embrace fission, establish a central GEOLOGICALLY STABLE dump for the nation, guard it Fort Knox, and recognize that we won't need to worry about a glowing pit until long after we'd have killed ourselves off some other way. At least this way we minimize damage, and maximize production. Besides, the world needs more tritium, and other fun stuff for medicine, and watches. Ohhh, sometimes i just want to scream.

 

[brainstorm]

I could agree and leave it at that but... on the issue of slavery... the efficiency of a happy, paid worker pitted against efficiency of the forced - slave labourer will always come out with the paid and somewhat "equal" worker on top.

Inherent in the slave/master relationship will always be the need to revolt, run away, seek revenge etc...

US slavery discourse got stuck in the assumption that wage labor is total freedom because it's not unpaid slavery. In truth neither involves workers self-determining their own labor. Wage labor can be described as an evolution of unpaid slavery to allow more slave-rights, better compensation, more free time, etc. without totally eliminating the ability for people to submit their labor to the authority of management.

Now, if you can ignore the post office scenarios... inherent in the paid model of labourer... is the motivation to continue, not bother the boss and hope for a raise later... or at least a continued paycheque.

There is of course a modern version of slavery called globalisation. Asian sweatshops, foreign farms, where many hands work to make life cheap and easy for the rich west.

So it is both true that societies with motivated individuals will motor along, but also that growth can be achieved by the recruitment of a large enough pool of inefficient and reluctant workers.

I think this logic that "globalization is slavery" reflects the general use of anti-globalization ideology as pro-nationalist propaganda. The implicit assumption of anti-globalization is that national governments love and take care of their citizens without subjecting some to exploitation by others. That is ridiculous. Even when nations are big, happy structural-functional families, they rely on xenophobia to convince citizens that their lives would never be as good if they lived in another nation.

Ironically, globalization is just continuing nationalist expansion. Just as economic expansion led to the incorporation of rural people into industrial cities and regions into nations, the same economic logic promotes global corporatism.

The enslaving force, however, is corporatism - not globalism. Globalism is an irreversible fact that evolved from colonialism. Reducing the exploitation that occurs globally requires changing the way people view global economy and culture. If greater economic independence grew globally, there would be less interdependency and exploitation, which would also reduce ethnic differentiation and exclusionism (i.e. (ethnic) nationalism and anti-migration).

That's how globalization works though. I wouldn't call it slavery at all. The faster the pace of globalization, the faster we'll reach an equilibrium between world economies. Free trade allows supply in third world countries to feed demand elsewhere. The established economies export wealth to the countries with cheaper labor, which eventually drives demand locally in those countries.

Why not just increase local self-sufficiency culture and allow people to migrate to sources of resources they need to self-sustain where they are? That would vastly reduce the need for shipping and it would prevent some localities from bearing the brunt of resource-drain and pollution for unsustainable consumption patters in other localities.

 

[baywax]

Even the most advanced economies can fall victim to the inefficiencies of greed (which produced slavery etc...) ... such as cutting corners in manufacturing... Take Toyota for example. They made huge headway as an auto giant, surpassing GM etc... requiring no hand outs and so on... then, one or two little procedures are left out of the manufacturing process and their whole reputation and marketing machine are dashed on the dash board of public opinion.

PS. thanks for all the replies re: slavery and modern labour.

 

[brainstorm]

Even the most advanced economies can fall victim to the inefficiencies of greed (which produced slavery etc...) ... such as cutting corners in manufacturing... Take Toyota for example. They made huge headway as an auto giant, surpassing GM etc... requiring no hand outs and so on... then, one or two little procedures are left out of the manufacturing process and their whole reputation and marketing machine are dashed on the dash board of public opinion.

I have to be careful with conspiracy theorizing, but it strikes me as quite a coincidence that it was the Prius as a pioneer in electric cars that ended up with all the bad press and prohibitive levels of liability exposure. If I wanted to send out a strong repressive message to all auto-manufacturers and consumers everywhere about building and buying hybrid or electric vehicles, I would choose the Prius to set an example.

Hopefully this is just conspiracy theory and this is not the end of the road for (hybrid) electric vehicles. On the other hand, I've yet to understand how electric vehicles are more efficient except that electricity is easier to distribute than gasoline.

 

[baywax]

I've yet to understand how electric vehicles are more efficient except that electricity is easier to distribute than gasoline.

Ethical behaviour is generally an indication of higher efficiency, in my book. The hybrid as an excellent example of ethical mobility produces less emissions, less gas exploration, less people killed for their oil and the list goes on. Invading a country for its oil, spending over 1 trillion dollars to do so, creating total destruction and killing over 500,000 civilians in said country does not smack of ethical behaviour... and has turned out to be, relatively, as damaging as skipping a couple of procedures in manufacturing (if not more so).

Everyone knows that when you step on someone else's toes, this act will come back to haunt you at some point. Ethics is the mechanism devised to avoid this sort of inefficiency in civilized evolution. However, I'm sure the traumatic inefficiencies like slavery, war and corporate greed serve to hurry up the evolution of the species toward a natural balance of ethical behaviour between all nations ()

 

[Frame Dragger]

Ethical behaviour is generally an indication of higher efficiency, in my book. The hybrid as an excellent example of ethical mobility produces less emissions, less gas exploration, less people killed for their oil and the list goes on. Invading a country for its oil, spending over 1 trillion dollars to do so, creating total destruction and killing over 500,000 civilians in said country does not smack of ethical behaviour... and has turned out to be, relatively, as damaging as skipping a couple of procedures in manufacturing (if not more so).

Everyone knows that when you step on someone else's toes, this act will come back to haunt you at some point. Ethics is the mechanism devised to avoid this sort of inefficiency in civilized evolution. However, I'm sure the traumatic inefficiencies like slavery, war and corporate greed serve to hurry up the evolution of the species toward a natural balance of ethical behaviour between all nations ()

Right... instead we have to deliver electricity, which will demand a rise in production. I've had this debate... here I think... and I know it's not clear-cut that our infrastructure can handle that. More importantly, HOW we generate power is most important. What does a hydrogen or electric economy matter if behind the curtain, it's just coal-fired plants churning out the juice?

As for our (USA's) invasion of Iraq, it was stupid, ideologically driven, and greedy. Mostly it was stupid however, and that really has nothing to do with ethics. Was it more ethical when international sanctions are estimated to be responsible for somewhere on the order of 1 million deaths over 10 years.

As for stepping on toes, that's true, sometimes. Of course, we stepped all over many... say... vietnamese toes, and we seem to get along well enough. On the other hand, we trained and funded and equipped the Afghani Mujahidin, and they in turn gave birth to Al Qaeda. Was it ethical to help the Afghanis fend off the Soviets, even though it acted as a proxy war for us? I don't know... certainly it's what the Afghanis wanted, and needed.

The reality is that Ethical behaviour doesn't have a universal definition, unless you really boil it down to what I'd consider "hardwired" morality. The sense that having sex with your sister is a bad idea, or imaging how much it would hurt an animal or person if you harmed it... these can be taught, but they don't HAVE to be. It makes sense that some form of morals would evolve in a highly social animal, does it not?

As a species, we don't eject males who are not "alpha", and that means major social dynamics have to evolve. Add group hunting, grooming, etc... and even more emerges. Why don't Chimpanzees murder other Chimpanzees all the time? Why is cannibalism a taboo? Empathy + Freedom to Choose (i.e. you're not staving, desperate, addicted, etc) = Morality. The rest is a matter of what we aspire to, what we require for a current society, and what religion and philosphy leads us to believe is moral.

In the end, all you really need to do to understand morality, is to talk to people with no conscience at all; "sociopaths (now Anti-Social Personalty Disorder). These are people, who under an fMRI clearly do not process executive functions as 'normal' people do. They do NOT experience empathy, sympathy, they are poor planners, and frakly, most end in jail or dead.

That... is not very advantagous from an (biological or social) evolutionary standpoint. Some of those TRAITS are, and some are just on the borderline enough to saaay... become politicians. Others simply have the high arousal threshold (not sex) and become daredevils, or firefighters, or front-line soldiers, because they need more "umph" to feel alive than most of us. Again, useful as a minority, but is it any wonder that such people are the stuff our modern nightmares are made of?

Madness is still to be feared, because I think on some level we all know that the seat of morality isn't a throne in heaven, or in the soul, but part of the human brain. A person lacking any empathy, impulse control, etc... is a shark amongst seals. We're hardwired to cooperate, they exploit... yet there is a niche for such predators, which is why their genetic material is still around, in roughly 1-2% of the male population, and about .5-1% of the female.

That's a minority, but still a boatload of people. Efficient actions are often swift and brutal, designed to maintain control within a single human, or dynastic lifetime. The question you raise re: Iraq, is again... ""In war there can be no substitute for victory, war's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision." (Gen MacArthur re: Korea)".

Bottom line: is it moral to wage war? I don't know. In an ideal world, probably not. Is it moral to wage a slow war, minimizing bad press at home and abroad, but still slowly bleeding a country dry? I'd say the swift cut is best, and most effective... alas, we lack the conviction of our greed. You can wage war, win utterly, and rebuild, but you have to be willing to commit open conquest. Only through total victory can you hope to rebuild a shattered nation.

Alternatively, you don't commit that kind of life and treasure, save money, and lives. Is that more ethical... yeah, it seems to be. Then again, there will always be another group of people, led by one of that 1-2%, that will come after you regardless, even if it's to their own detriment. Are we better off with a nuclear NK? Would we have been better off with a unified Korea, but under Northern-style rule? Should we have taken more decisive action, and ended the war by any means necessary? Any of those tracks leads to a better outcome than NK with nukes pointed at Seoul, and led by a madman who is systematically starving his people.

Finally, WWI, and WWII. What was the moral choice for the USA in each case, vs. efficiency? In WWI, we definitely came out on top, missing much of the trench warfare that denuded the young male population of England and more. In WWII, I think earlier engagement would have prevented the scale of the conflict, and saved untold lives (if the Russian front never emerged... how many lives...ah). It is not always a single clear Ethical axiom which can be applied to war, and even to wars of conquest.

To me, the issue is less about right and wrong, and more about success and survival. Doing so within my own beliefs (which definitely preclude slavery) is also important, efficiency be damned. Then again, I'm not running the country, or a major corporation, and they get to choose our "national morals".

I admire your optimism baywax... or at least your faith in some kind of link between Right & Success... I disagree, but I'd rather believe what you do.

 

[brainstorm]

Ethical behaviour is generally an indication of higher efficiency, in my book. The hybrid as an excellent example of ethical mobility produces less emissions, less gas exploration, less people killed for their oil and the list goes on. Invading a country for its oil, spending over 1 trillion dollars to do so, creating total destruction and killing over 500,000 civilians in said country does not smack of ethical behaviour... and has turned out to be, relatively, as damaging as skipping a couple of procedures in manufacturing (if not more so).

Everyone knows that when you step on someone else's toes, this act will come back to haunt you at some point. Ethics is the mechanism devised to avoid this sort of inefficiency in civilized evolution. However, I'm sure the traumatic inefficiencies like slavery, war and corporate greed serve to hurry up the evolution of the species toward a natural balance of ethical behaviour between all nations ()

I can't quite tell from your language whether you think that ethics can be collective as well as individual. You talk as if war is a collective breach of ethics and observance of territorialized ethnicity in the form of national boundaries is a virtue. In fact, individuals can actually fail ethically by becoming accomplices to the sovereignty of ethno-national governmental elites. After all, nationalism itself is just one more form of power exercised in denial of its own ethical abuses.

Although I've heard the argument that the war on terror was about securing oil rights, I actually think that those oil rights were already secured in the 1990s by the "oil for food" program in which the pain of embargo was exploited by offering access to basic medicine and food. It was framed as a human-rights program, but in effect amounted to leveraging oil in exchange for the most basic human rights assistance (not that I'm an expert).

I actually tend to look at the media aspect of war in the middle-east as having a positive effect on oil-consumption, in that it drives up prices as investors speculate on rising scarcity. By driving up the price at the pump, consumers and businesses are motivated to conserve petrolium usage. A gas-tax would have the same effect, but would never be politically supported - whereas a war on terror can. Although it's a far-sought logic, cheap oil IS actually a cause of terror and anti-democracy globally, so driving up the price to stimulate greater oil-independence is not as much of a lie as it may seem to be.

The worse lie, I think, is allowing the economy to build up dependency on oil in that it is a non-renewable resource doomed to increasing in scarcity, price, and therefore allows for some people to continue gaining in wealth while increasingly less people can have access to the fuel.

Electric cars are a step in the direction of less dependency, but they also support the belief that technological development can indefinitely postpone the need for greater energy-conservation and the development of less energy-dependent lifestyles. Electric scooters anyone?

 

[Frame Dragger]

Ok, I'm ready to embrace any rumour of cold-fusion at this point.

Damn we're a depressing species. The again Brainstorm, you talk as though we made a collective decision with a population explosion in mind. The society we have today is built on fossil fuels, and as you say, would be impossible without it. EDIT: ADDITON: {That includes medicine, and many other things which in the moment seem very essential. It's not human nature to discover new technology, but not utilize it, for profit or for the sake of ethics. Do you make a plastic that helps burn victims, even if it comes from petroleum products? What about the morality of animal testing for medicine?} ADDITION ENDS:

In the end, we can either hope for a change in human nature (HAHAHA), or hope that this is a stepping-stone on the way to major technological breakthroughs. We'll probably all die as a result of our action, but then, was there any other possible outcome? We're meat on a rock after all, in a very LARGE universe that apparently could give two ****s about us.

 

[brainstorm]

Ok, I'm ready to embrace any rumour of cold-fusion at this point.

Damn we're a depressing species. The again Brainstorm, you talk as though we made a collective decision with a population explosion in mind. The society we have today is built on fossil fuels, and as you say, would be impossible without it. EDIT: ADDITON: {That includes medicine, and many other things which in the moment seem very essential. It's not human nature to discover new technology, but not utilize it, for profit or for the sake of ethics. Do you make a plastic that helps burn victims, even if it comes from petroleum products? What about the morality of animal testing for medicine?} ADDITION ENDS:

In the end, we can either hope for a change in human nature (HAHAHA), or hope that this is a stepping-stone on the way to major technological breakthroughs. We'll probably all die as a result of our action, but then, was there any other possible outcome? We're meat on a rock after all, in a very LARGE universe that apparently could give two ****s about us.

The nice thing about free market mechanisms is that there is a continuum of prohibition between absolute abstinence an unlimited use of a resource like oil. As the price of oil increases, the price of everything rises in proportion - and as a result the impetus/stimulus to develop alternative technologies, products, logistics, etc. increases too.

So while some people are making the choice to develop oil-alternatives for ethical reasons, they are also pioneers of more oil-independent industries that will eventually replace the oil-dependent ones as these grow ever more expensive and under-cuttable by the alternatives, who usurp profits by cutting out an increasingly expensive input.

Seek oil-alternatives for either reason, ethics or economic savings. In the meantime, you're right that it would be unethical to eliminate the oil-industry prematurely. A smooth transition requires doing both at the same time while figuring out ways to bridge the gap.

 

[Frame Dragger]

The nice thing about free market mechanisms is that there is a continuum of prohibition between absolute abstinence an unlimited use of a resource like oil. As the price of oil increases, the price of everything rises in proportion - and as a result the impetus/stimulus to develop alternative technologies, products, logistics, etc. increases too.

So while some people are making the choice to develop oil-alternatives for ethical reasons, they are also pioneers of more oil-independent industries that will eventually replace the oil-dependent ones as these grow ever more expensive and under-cuttable by the alternatives, who usurp profits by cutting out an increasingly expensive input.

Seek oil-alternatives for either reason, ethics or economic savings. In the meantime, you're right that it would be unethical to eliminate the oil-industry prematurely. A smooth transition requires doing both at the same time while figuring out ways to bridge the gap.

I couldn't agree more, from start to finish. It's a double-edged sword, but you're right, it's probably our only hope. Human nature is static, human constructs seem to evolve, and no construct is more pervasive than the notion of an economy.

What concerns me are the following:

1.) Scarcity of Fossile fuels leads to MASSIVE(er) coal consumption
2.) Oil become largely irrelevant due to market forces as you describe, and what happens to the "no longer so strategic" middle east, when the world is no longer paying any attention?
3.) Water... Electricity and water are linked once we come to the need for purification plants as a major source of reclaimed water. I can frankly imagine the USA annexing Canada for it's water resources, either economically or through force of arms.
4.) What happens to countries with nothing left but military power? God help the world if we ever feel forced to act without restraint. How does a world filled with nuclear weapons EVER reach the point of total surrender without a holocaust?

A stable economy, a cleaner world... and a middle-east and Africa completely ablaze, having been pumped and mined of every natural resource. At the same time, fishing becomes more difficult due to overfishing and environental ****ups. People slash and burn tracts of irreplacable land for a few years of subsistance farming.

I read an interesting study that came out in this week's JAMA, about supine blood pressure (BP) upon admission to an ICU vs. 1 year survival. It's no crystal ball, but you REALLY don't want to fall into certain statistical catagories either. In essence, a person is dying with wounds or illness that is already fatal, but they are unaware of the outcome until... well... it's measured. Once the um, "cat" is dead, it becomes clear in retrospect, the arc of that indivual's decline.

Sometimes I wonder if the world is already that person, dying by inches with no hope at all. I wonder if we're talking about ways to change a future that is already inevitable. I have the sinking suspicion that all we're ever really doing is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

It makes one consider just how conditional ethics can be. I know what I'd do for water in a desert... :(

 

[GeorgCantor]

I wonder if we're talking about ways to change a future that is already inevitable. I have the sinking suspicion that all we're ever really doing is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

It makes one consider just how conditional ethics can be. I know what I'd do for water in a desert... :(

Those of us who don't believe in coincidences and think the world is a put up job, seem to get by easier. I think it's likely that when the oil wells dry up, a new form of energy will(accidentally ) be discovered. I know Kaku and Paul Davies(among others) would agree. Didn't Einstein say "God is not malicious"? Guess that draws him to my camp.

 

[apeiron]

I think this logic that "globalization is slavery" reflects the general use of anti-globalization ideology as pro-nationalist propaganda.
.

In my case, it is more a pro-relocalisation propaganda. And I see you feel the same.

I'm not anti-globalisation either. As you would see from my posts, I believe the correct model to apply to social, economic and political system is that of an adaptive hierarchy.

The system is shaped by its local~global forces - local construction or competition in interaction with global constraint or co-operation. The system must also have a clear goal (such as even merely to persist, perhaps to expand). And the system ought also be in equilbrium across all its scales - the opposed tendencies of bottom-up competition and top-down co-operation being scale invariant, or fractally expressed across every scale of measurement.

So this is a complete complex system framework of analysis with strong mathematical bones. It happens to predict exactly the kind of wealth disparities observed (the faster the system expands, the steeper the powerlaw slope of inequality must be to equalise all the system's tensions).

Thus if I were to say the world is over-globalising, it would be a claim about it being unbalanced, out of equilbrium, in a specific way. In this case, it seems arguable that globalisation entrains the lives of too many of the world's people, reducing their space of choice. To the extent that Indian children or Kenyan farmers have no choice about servicing Western consumer markets, they are our slaves.

The best forms of slavery are indeed voluntary - the definition of human freewill. If you believe in the goals of your system, you will use your best energies to serve it.

An ethical system can be defined in these equilbrium balance terms. To the extent the Indian child or Kenyan farmer is a believer in getting ahead in live via a free market ideology (which is accompanied by all kinds of things such as a belief in unlimited human ingenuity and no resource constraints, a belief in growth over planning, novelty over history, etc) then that person is "freely" engaging in the "global" system, and so their involvement is informed, ethical, fair and not enslaved, forced, unbalanced.

The enslaving force, however, is corporatism - not globalism. Globalism is an irreversible fact that evolved from colonialism. Reducing the exploitation that occurs globally requires changing the way people view global economy and culture. If greater economic independence grew globally, there would be less interdependency and exploitation, which would also reduce ethnic differentiation and exclusionism (i.e. (ethnic) nationalism and anti-migration).

What you are talking about here is the fact that systems are dynamic equilbrium structures. So yes, as people in different places build up the information flows between them, so we would expect this new larger system to move to a more broadly-based cultural equilbrium.

There is in fact a predictable increase both in homogeneity (co-operation) and differentiation (competition).

So now, you and me and the Kenyan farmer have more in common than 50 years ago. McDonalds is everywhere (though perhaps the Kenyan farmer just provides the beef). All three of us know Britney Spears and share other highlights of global culture.

But equally, a larger critical mass of people in interaction also encourages more personal specialisation. I have builders working on my house at the moment. It used to be a couple of guys would do everything. Now I have a different guy to rivet the gutters, nail the cladding, cut the concrete, etc.

When information really flows freely through a system - as with the internet - then we get these scalefree effects where there is a clustering of interests over all scales.

 

[apeiron]

Ethical behaviour is generally an indication of higher efficiency, in my book...Everyone knows that when you step on someone else's toes, this act will come back to haunt you at some point. Ethics is the mechanism devised to avoid this sort of inefficiency in civilized evolution.

Thanks, this sharpens my definition of ethics.

From a systems perspective then, ethics = equibrium balance. What is in equilibrium are the opposed (but systems-forming) tendencies of competition and co-operation. And the equilbrium needs exist over all scales of the system to be ethical.

Are there then any examples of ethical beliefs that are not tacitly based on this systems model. Is there anything a society has believed that was not about arriving at this kind of "rightful" equilibrium between local competition and global co-operation?

 

[brainstorm]

1.) Scarcity of Fossile fuels leads to MASSIVE(er) coal consumption

. . . with the price of coal rising as demand exceeds supply.

2.) Oil become largely irrelevant due to market forces as you describe, and what happens to the "no longer so strategic" middle east, when the world is no longer paying any attention?

Oil will only continue to get more scarce and expensive. The middle east will become more strategic, only to a shrinking elite.

3.) Water... Electricity and water are linked once we come to the need for purification plants as a major source of reclaimed water. I can frankly imagine the USA annexing Canada for it's water resources, either economically or through force of arms.

I suspect water conservation will replace the need for reclamation. Flush-free toilets are already quite popular. Grey-water reclamation from showers and laundry is probably more doable, especially if greywater is recycled among different uses, like laundry water being used for cooling systems, etc.

Invasion of Canada is a nationalist fantasy. Business between national governments is no longer handled by military force. Decisions are made by administrative conference and a media show is designed to legitimate historical events. This is more conspiracy theory on my part, but I really don't think that administrators of Canadian and US government are going to resort to ground-battle unless they're trying to orchestrate some soldier-extermination - God forbid.

4.) What happens to countries with nothing left but military power? God help the world if we ever feel forced to act without restraint. How does a world filled with nuclear weapons EVER reach the point of total surrender without a holocaust?

Nuclear weapons are little more than the guarantee that economy remains the battleground of conflict. Ever read George Bataille "The Accursed Share?"

A stable economy, a cleaner world... and a middle-east and Africa completely ablaze, having been pumped and mined of every natural resource. At the same time, fishing becomes more difficult due to overfishing and environental ****ups. People slash and burn tracts of irreplacable land for a few years of subsistance farming.

What makes you think that sea food and other products won't be conserved through pricing the same as any other resource? Subsistence farming implies that somehow professional farming authorities would be excluded from any agricultural responses to distribution problems. Worst case scenario, I imagine, would be many people migrating to the outskirts of traditional farming areas to gain access to grains and crops without the need for fuel-driven transport.

If that's not feasible, professional farmers will have to run urban farms using local residents as a labor pool. The trick will be how to manage land and soil resources to ensure sustainable agriculture at the local level.

I read an interesting study that came out in this week's JAMA, about supine blood pressure (BP) upon admission to an ICU vs. 1 year survival. It's no crystal ball, but you REALLY don't want to fall into certain statistical catagories either. In essence, a person is dying with wounds or illness that is already fatal, but they are unaware of the outcome until... well... it's measured. Once the um, "cat" is dead, it becomes clear in retrospect, the arc of that indivual's decline.

In other words, fear of failure is stressful - but the trick is to supplant that fear with resolve to achieve sustainability, and to keep the faith that it's achievable.

Sometimes I wonder if the world is already that person, dying by inches with no hope at all. I wonder if we're talking about ways to change a future that is already inevitable. I have the sinking suspicion that all we're ever really doing is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

Well, I'll burst your bubble by assuring you that end-of-the-world propaganda has no other effect than to generate fiscal stimulus as people "live it up" thinking that the world is soon to end anyway. The Prince song, "Party Like It's 1999," is my favorite expression of this. I've noticed a lot of it lately with the "economic crisis." Businesses want people to spend money so they promote media that contains the suggestion that you better enjoy life while you still can. This fills up cash-registers even while it takes culture farther away from sustainability.

It makes one consider just how conditional ethics can be. I know what I'd do for water in a desert... :(

Aha, so the truth come out!:) You are one of those people looking for an excuse to throw ethics to the wind and take the easy way to (someone else's) resources. Just remember that there is someone else thinking just like you ready to do the same thing to you that you are ready to do to someone else. Ethics are a frustration, but if you're lucky they also frustrate someone on the way to abuse you. Ethical actions are your best hope of being treated ethically by others. If I were you I would embrace that hope and take advantage of the opportunity to be spared as you spare others.

 

[Frame Dragger]

Thanks, this sharpens my definition of ethics.

From a systems perspective then, ethics = equibrium balance. What is in equilibrium are the opposed (but systems-forming) tendencies of competition and co-operation. And the equilbrium needs exist over all scales of the system to be ethical.

Are there then any examples of ethical beliefs that are not tacitly based on this systems model. Is there anything a society has believed that was not about arriving at this kind of "rightful" equilibrium between local competition and global co-operation?

Well... it's about as far from physics as it is possible to get... however relatively recent discovervies seem to indicate that neolithic humans cared for disabled children/young adults. It is, without a doubt, a net minus for hunter-gatherers to bear the extra weight of a physically and mentally retarded member... yet the evidence is there.

If you think about that scenario in a larger context, as an outgrowth of empathy in general, and love of our children in particular, then it seems that some kind of moral compass existed long before we consciously formulated it. That is an assymetry that has emerged, along with evidence of murders, etc. All seem to indicate the devlopment of morality as lubrication for the social wheels. After all, alone we're pretty defenseless from a wild standpoint.

@GeorgCantor: That said, I do believe in coincedence, and I don't have faith that a god of all the universe(s?) cares particularly in a manner we'd understand. Plague, Famine, War... and mass extinctions that are dwarfing those in fossile records. I'm not particularly optimistic about a magical new energy source appearing, although if I were to look for a candidate, it would be some kind of super-efficient solar. That, is a dream however, and while it pays to keep hope alive, hedging your bets with god, believer or not (I'm not, clearly) is not a proven way to stay alive.

I wonder what god would think about a woman in Darfur who finally is murdered after her third or fourth sexual assault? Probably watching a nice fat supernova. We are just fleeting after all, of important only to ourselves and each other.

 

[apeiron]

If you think about that scenario in a larger context, as an outgrowth of empathy in general, and love of our children in particular, then it seems that some kind of moral compass existed long before we consciously formulated it.

But this is what I've already said. The systems view is general enough to talk about "ethics" at any level. So a well adapted biology has the same logic as a well adapted sociology.

Brains were indeed shaped to make fine-tuned competition~co-operation judgements in social creatures like hominids and apes.

Of course, there are the old caricatures about nature red in tooth and claw, the savage state of man, the brutality of naked darwinian selection, etc. But biologist know better that life is a balance of competition and co-operation, whether you are talking at the genetic, cellular, social, or whatever level.

 

[GeorgCantor]

@GeorgCantor: That said, I do believe in coincedence, and I don't have faith that a god of all the universe(s?) cares particularly in a manner we'd understand. Plague, Famine, War... and mass extinctions that are dwarfing those in fossile records. I'm not particularly optimistic about a magical new energy source appearing, although if I were to look for a candidate, it would be some kind of super-efficient solar. That, is a dream however, and while it pays to keep hope alive, hedging your bets with god, believer or not (I'm not, clearly) is not a proven way to stay alive.

I wonder what god would think about a woman in Darfur who finally is murdered after her third or fourth sexual assault? Probably watching a nice fat supernova. We are just fleeting after all, of important only to ourselves and each other.

I didn't mean to imply that i agree with Einstein about god being benevolent. I am not even sure emotions would be applicable to the hypothetical entity of God. The only thing i meant to imply was that if existence and the universe were caused by a god, then likely we are a central point in the plans, given that we are able to comprehend the universe(more or less) when there is no reason why we should. Yet, I don't think we understand our own existence to a level where we can be certain about what is what. Given the confusion about what reality is and how the world works, we could be anything from thoughts in the mind of god, on through a non-comprehensible cosmic coincidence, to a miserable, fleeting accident of conditions that we cannot account for(as you seem to imply). So it's really hard to be certain about that woman's suffering in Darfur. When a fundamental knowledge is required that simply isn't there, you either turn to religion or philosophy, or you choose to make the least set of assumptions, which would lead you to solipsism, which is a no-go for me. So usually i try not to think about such issues too deeply, as i see no elegant solution to your question that would not make god look like a murderous villain.

 

[Frame Dragger]

. . . with the price of coal rising as demand exceeds supply.

There is more than enough coal to be burned... we'd be absolutely screwed if we used so much that demand exceeded supply.

. Oil will only continue to get more scarce and expensive. The middle east will become more strategic, only to a shrinking elite.

Yes, but how do elites stay in power? It's quite the balancing act in most of the middle-eastern states, and I really don't see that status quo lasting once the GDPs of those nations plummet. Hell, most of those regimes have enough issues as it is (see how the Saudis manage)

. I suspect water conservation will replace the need for reclamation. Flush-free toilets are already quite popular. Grey-water reclamation from showers and laundry is probably more doable, especially if greywater is recycled among different uses, like laundry water being used for cooling systems, etc

Here... and in some other developed nations. However we manage to poison a fair amount of that water through the agriculture that sustains us, and China... etc. Desalination is always going to be the public preference, and really, good luck in getting enough people to use flushless toilets to make a significant difference

. Invasion of Canada is a nationalist fantasy. Business between national governments is no longer handled by military force.

That REALLY depends on the governments, unless you'd argue that we're peacefully hashing it out (pun) with the Afghanis and Iraqis.

. Decisions are made by administrative conference and a media show is designed to legitimate historical events. This is more conspiracy theory on my part, but I really don't think that administrators of Canadian and US government are going to resort to ground-battle unless they're trying to orchestrate some soldier-extermination - God forbid.

Annexing water-rich parts of Canada is not only feasible, but entirely likely. Canada is enormous, and not massively populated. Siezing and controlling such resources would not present a challenge compared to... say... US citizens losing their minds over water rationing? That said, I don't actually believe we'd go that far unless matters had already collapsed. Of course, nationalist fantasies (Germany had a couple as I recall) do sometimes translate into military action, given the proper motivation and desperation.

. Nuclear weapons are little more than the guarantee that economy remains the battleground of conflict. Ever read George Bataille "The Accursed Share?"

Yes, but I also researched the Cuban Missile Crisis a great deal, and we came very VERY close to ending ourselves. We've come a long way, but it would be silly to assume that circumstances couldn't change. Assymetry in warfare is a strong motivator for some to utilize weapons in desperation. Riddle me this: What to do about North Korea? We are reduced to impotent negotiatoins, or a blistering and truly inhumane first strike to save Seoul. I don't see the latter happening unless something goes terribly wrong.

I don't see MAD as a backdrop for peace however, because in the end losers in ALL conflicts sometimes resort to force. "To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." (Capt. Ahab) That is very human, and terrifying. Logically, you shouldn't pull a gun and point it at anything you're not prepared to destroy or kill. In practice, robbers, people at home, etc... use guns as a THREAT. Does that lead to LESS gun violence, or more? Hint... more.

What would we do, or Russia, or China, faced with a sinking ship loaded armed, and aimed? The answer is: "who knows?" and that is not comforting. This of course, exludes accidents, misunderstandings, and weapons of a non-nuclear nature (biological, etc) which could be devestating. As I'm guessing you're well aware, infrastuctures and economies can be destroyed by simply overloading those infrastructures. Get enough people sick, and scared of becoming sick, and you could do terrible things. Back people into a wall, take away their guns, and what happens?... hijaacking with plastic utensils, two towers down, a hole in the pentagon, and two wars we shouldn't have entered. Imagine what similarly motivated people (remembering that M.I.C.E. is a truism for us all, not just pissed-off Arabs) could do with a well engineered virus, or bacteria?

Economics is one proxy... consider the Cold War... we had other proxies, and they didn't fight on an economic field.

What makes you think that sea food and other products won't be conserved through pricing the same as any other resource? Subsistence farming implies that somehow professional farming authorities would be excluded from any agricultural responses to distribution problems. Worst case scenario, I imagine, would be many people migrating to the outskirts of traditional farming areas to gain access to grains and crops without the need for fuel-driven transport.

1.) The rising price, and scarcity of Phosphorus, and while we might mine 'stercore' for it, the rest of the world is going to mine their areas dry.
2.) Damage to the oceans is clear, and present. Algael blooms, dead zones, overfishing and whaling. Believe it or not, it's not easy to farm most fish, and it won't matter if the whole ecosystem keels over. A lifetime of Talapia and Carp might be feasible for a while, and a lot of Textured Vegetable Protein...
3.) Again, many of your ideas are feasible for the SOME of the world, but as China and others have expressed, "**** you! You burned coal and oil to get where you are, and why should we do any differently?"
4.) Time.

If that's not feasible, professional farmers will have to run urban farms using local residents as a labor pool. The trick will be how to manage land and soil resources to ensure sustainable agriculture at the local level.

That's proactive... if matters ever become so dire that such is the only means of support, we won't have an "urban" to farm. We needed to build verticle farms in cities decades ago... now... *shrug* who knows.

In other words, fear of failure is stressful - but the trick is to supplant that fear with resolve to achieve sustainability, and to keep the faith that it's achievable. Well, I'll burst your bubble by assuring you that end-of-the-world propaganda has no other effect than to generate fiscal stimulus as people "live it up" thinking that the world is soon to end anyway. The Prince song, "Party Like It's 1999," is my favorite expression of this. I've noticed a lot of it lately with the "economic crisis." Businesses want people to spend money so they promote media that contains the suggestion that you better enjoy life while you still can. This fills up cash-registers even while it takes culture farther away from sustainability.

Agreed. People who live their lives as though it is about to end, makes sense, but only if you have a keen appreciation of your own mortality, and no desire for longevity. Otherwise, a doom that could be 50, or 500 years in the offing is not exactly something that should make anyone put a flatscreen on layaway.

Aha, so the truth come out!:) You are one of those people looking for an excuse to throw ethics to the wind and take the easy way to (someone else's) resources. Just remember that there is someone else thinking just like you ready to do the same thing to you that you are ready to do to someone else. Ethics are a frustration, but if you're lucky they also frustrate someone on the way to abuse you. Ethical actions are your best hope of being treated ethically by others. If I were you I would embrace that hope and take advantage of the opportunity to be spared as you spare others.

No... I wish I was. I have a sense of morality whether I like it or not. To me, the ultimate ethic is the so-called "Golden Rule" (not Fermi's lol). I have empathy for others, again, whether I want it or not, and I don't want to cause anyone pain, suffering, or misery. I can hardly tolerate how people treat one another, and animals, as it stands. In general, I'm treated well by peers and friends because, as you say, I treat them well. If the world ends tommorrow (lets say Tesla comes back to life and cracks the world ), is it so different from our individual lives ending? I try to treat people the way I want to be treated in return, and I fall short of that (being human, mercurial, and occasionally vicious mit mein tongue!), but not for lack of trying.

Ethics are a comfort... I just don't believe they have an objective reality. Who cares about that, when all is said and done? If this is all a dream someone is having, or a simulation, and I KNEW that, my feelings wouldn't change. I feel for others, I feel for animals, I have a very vivid imagination, and being chubby as a kid I know how even casual cruelty hurts. I've also been traveling all over the world since I was a child (and I mean all over). At age 12 I traveled to Guatamala. Interesting, since at the time there was a rumour that white foreigners were stealing children for their organs. Mothers actually drew away from me, at 12.

I still remember dogs with fence-slat ribs, and kids with a cheap come-on to buy kitsch, and an angry "**** you" if you declined. I've seen people dying on the street from an infection that would be cleared with a course of IV antibiotics, and known I could do nothing to help them.

So, do I give up on ethics? No. I find that as silly as people who claim not to believe in a god because of an unjust world. I recognize that I'm a single person, and barring some extraordinary event in my life, I can effect those around me, and hope that effect spreads a little. I'm now a not-chubby 6'2" man, and I don't fight, even when people seem to think a big man must be a challenge. I volunteerd as a camp counseler at a local Audubon Society camp/farm/animal-rescue. I'd rather (true story) have a 6 year old on each arm, and on on each leg pretending I'm a giant to be ridden, than go to a bar and see people waste their minds, and time.

I'd much rather learn in a mileu such as this, respecting one another where appropriate, than be thrown to wolves. I appreciate the ethical acts others perform, and try my best to do the same.

I do all of this, never having believed in a god. I've never being an atheist or theist... I'm agnostic. I don't believe in a god, but I recognize that an absolute faith in a negative and unprovable is only marginally less silly than absolute faith in a positive. Faith is faith, and I'm... faithless. I'm a depressive-realist, skeptic, who hopes and acts as though the world will continue apace. What other way can you live?... hunkered in a blast shelter, hoping to enjoy a wasteland? Nah. I'm not trying to avoid the hard stuff, I'm trying to NOT resolve my cognitive dissonance. I eschew certainty in favour of phenomonology a bit of logical positivism, and a dash of hope. So, I'm not the happiest man alive, but I believe I have a more realistic view of the world, good and bad.

NOTE: To be fair, I haven't listed any good, but we're not exactly on the upbeat!

 

[Frame Dragger]

But this is what I've already said. The systems view is general enough to talk about "ethics" at any level. So a well adapted biology has the same logic as a well adapted sociology.

Brains were indeed shaped to make fine-tuned competition~co-operation judgements in social creatures like hominids and apes.

Of course, there are the old caricatures about nature red in tooth and claw, the savage state of man, the brutality of naked darwinian selection, etc. But biologist know better that life is a balance of competition and co-operation, whether you are talking at the genetic, cellular, social, or whatever level.

Cooperation and success for the SYSTEM, not the individual. Maybe you're willing to sacrifice yourself for ideals, but what about family, or a friend, or a lover?
Oh, and as for nature red in tooth and claw, how about rapes in The Congo? What's happening in Darfur? People sitting by while a girl is raped outside a school in Chicago? Etc... etc... etc... Hitler and Stalin... The Armenian Genocide... Rwanda, Bosnia, The Baltic states, a disturbingly large portion of Africa, What the French did in Algiers, What the British did in India, and pretty much everywhere ele?

It's red, it's toothed, and it's clawed, and if you ever find yourself in the wild with saaaaay.. a starving timber wolf, you'd learn that terribly quickly. Life is evolution, and the history of evolution is eventual extinction and replacement.

 

[Frame Dragger]

I didn't mean to imply that i agree with Einstein about god being benevolent. I am not even sure emotions would be applicable to the hypothetical entity of God. The only thing i meant to imply was that if existence and the universe were caused by a god, then likely we are a central point in the plans, given that we are able to comprehend the universe(more or less) when there is no reason why we should. Yet, I don't think we understand our own existence to a level where we can be certain about what is what. Given the confusion about what reality is and how the world works, we could be anything from thoughts in the mind of god, on through a non-comprehensible cosmic coincidence, to a miserable, fleeting accident of conditions that we cannot account for(as you seem to imply). So it's really hard to be certain about that woman's suffering in Darfur. When a fundamental knowledge is required that simply isn't there, you either turn to religion or philosophy, or you choose to make the least set of assumptions, which would lead you to solipsism, which is a no-go for me. So usually i try not to think about such issues too deeply, as i see no elegant solution to your question that would not make god look like a murderous villain.

I think a good solution to the problem of God being a murderous villain is:

1.) Don't believe in God.
2.) God isn't omniscient or omnipotent
3.) God doesn't percieve human or other lives as we do.
4.) There is an afterlife, this is all some kind of test or such.
5.) We are central to NOTHING, there is a god, and The Kwizleks of the Fleemong nebula are chatting with it right now.

Really, anthrocentrism can only get you so far before you start munching on your own tail. unless options 1-5 appeal to you. Genenrally speaking, I find that #4 is most common, #3 next, followed by #5, then #1, then #2

 

[apeiron]

Cooperation and success for the SYSTEM, not the individual. Maybe you're willing to sacrifice yourself for ideals, but what about family, or a friend, or a lover?
Oh, and as for nature red in tooth and claw, how about rapes in The Congo? What's happening in Darfur? People sitting by while a girl is raped outside a school in Chicago? Etc... etc... etc... Hitler and Stalin... The Armenian Genocide... Rwanda, Bosnia, The Baltic states, a disturbingly large portion of Africa, What the French did in Algiers, What the British did in India, and pretty much everywhere ele?

It's red, it's toothed, and it's clawed, and if you ever find yourself in the wild with saaaaay.. a starving timber wolf, you'd learn that terribly quickly. Life is evolution, and the history of evolution is eventual extinction and replacement.

I was talking about the principles of systems in social equilbrium and you cite a bunch of examples of systems where equilbrium has broken down and is not in equilbrium.

If you study theoretical biology, you will see that your view of evolution is the popular caricature.

The ecological view involves both evolution and development (top-down constraint in the form of environmental selection, bottom-up construction in the form of developmental self-organisation).

Yes, there is a lifecycle in the dissipative structure view of ecology. You have the stages of immaturity (freely expressed development), maturity (equilibrium balance) and scenescence (over-constraint that leads to rigidity, fragility and so eventual break up and replacement).

Sorry if my approach to philosophical questions is too structured, too much based on concrete models, for your tastes.

 

[apeiron]

There is more than enough coal to be burned... we'd be absolutely screwed if we used so much that demand exceeded supply.

This is off-topic, but given your interest in coal, are you so sure that there is more than enough? Some argue peak coal is just a decade or so away.

http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Coalarticle.pdf

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...13/2569143.htm

The production profiles of a small number of countries will dominate the global coal production since most of the coal is distributed within the Big Six. China, the world’s largest coal producer, will determine the timing of the peak in global coal production.
China will peak in coal production around 2020 unless their reserves are bigger than reported or a significant amount of coal resources can be transformed into producing reserves in the near future.

 

[Frame Dragger]

I was talking about the principles of systems in social equilbrium and you cite a bunch of examples of systems where equilbrium has broken down and is not in equilbrium.

If you study theoretical biology, you will see that your view of evolution is the popular caricature.

The ecological view involves both evolution and development (top-down constraint in the form of environmental selection, bottom-up construction in the form of developmental self-organisation).

Yes, there is a lifecycle in the dissipative structure view of ecology. You have the stages of immaturity (freely expressed development), maturity (equilibrium balance) and scenescence (over-constraint that leads to rigidity, fragility and so eventual break up and replacement).

Sorry if my approach to philosophical questions is too structured, too much based on concrete models, for your tastes.

There is no need to get pissy apeiron... You cited examples of theoretical social equilibrium, and I pointed out that a majority of the world has never conformed to that view. We are, as humans, apparently unable to reach an equilibrium in terms of a sustainable population, and as that is ultimately the most basic issue...

Yes, my view is not popular, but then again, that doesn't make it wrong. My view is also depressing, and doesn't include god, which means that ALREADY most people would reject it. I am as yet, unfazed.

Perhaps you would care to give me examples on par with those I could give you, of this equilibrium that exists only in theory, and in chimps? History is filled with atrocity on a grand scale, over and over and over. Whole cultures, and the world as a result, set back socially and technologically (think of Alexandria...). The lesson you should take from evolutionary biology is that people seem unable to reach a balance (equilibrium) with our environment. We really are quite viral, and we're apex predators, and we change our environment radically. Historically, this usually means we'll be fossiles soon.

It's not my fault that life doesn't conform to your model apeiron, although the model does work very well pre-industrial revolution if you think only of the system as a whole. Alas, that is no longer the case, and not likely to be anytime soon. If you're talking about ants or cells working together, and even symbiotes, and parasites... then sure. The problem is that ethics only enter the equation when you can THINK about them, and the only species doing that at the moment that I know of, is us. We seem to be very much at odds with the system you describe, with population growth being a fine example. Explosive growth, not curbed by any disease yet, or war, or famine. The number of extinctions we've caused, and saaaay wiping out whole civilations with disease and warfare, already beats such natural disasters such as mass-extinction events.

If you feel that there is a basis in evolutionary biology which covers the massive exception to the rule called "humans", feel free to share. I'm not seeing that model line up to reality very well at all.

Besides, what good is an ethical structure that people are unwilling or unable to enact?

EDIT: Re: post 126: Yes... coal could peak in 2020, but I really don't see that as likely. Not to mention that it doesn't change the outcome at the end of rthe day, which is that if we burned all of the coal we could mine, it would be a disaster. Keep in mind estimates of resources are based on speculation, and best geological guesses... which frankly don't impress me. That said, I'm unsure for the same reason... expected coal veins could be smaller, or there could be disasters such as fires (think Centralia) which render it useless, but still quite hazardous.

I will say this; anyone speaking about China's potential coal reserves is either flailing (not uncommon) for lack of info, or they assume the Chinese et al have accurately mapped existing coal deposits. Even given that, should China burn through every last gram of coal, it would release a truly unfortunate amount of such delights as mercury, and sulphur dioxide.

Then again, if coal DOES become scarce I hope I'm dead and gone by then, because I expect that matters would become fairly ugly.

I mentioned Phosphorus before... something we already tarriff the HELL out of for scarcity's sake. We need it to feed ourselves, and others, but it's a disaster to mine, the runoff is an absolute menace, and radioactive gypsum pillars are not exactly "desireable". We can reclaim some from feces, but it all comes back to overpopulation... the one indisputible way that humanity is utterly out of equilibrium. If you believe in the model you present, then I expect plague, war, or some other factor to "trim" the population. Is it ethical to allow this to happen? Is it efficient? Is it in line with the continuation of our genes, or is it more likely that we've simply gone viral? I believe the latter.

 

[baywax]

I can't quite tell from your language whether you think that ethics can be collective as well as individual. You talk as if war is a collective breach of ethics and observance of territorialized ethnicity in the form of national boundaries is a virtue. In fact, individuals can actually fail ethically by becoming accomplices to the sovereignty of ethno-national governmental elites. After all, nationalism itself is just one more form of power exercised in denial of its own ethical abuses.

Although I've heard the argument that the war on terror was about securing oil rights, I actually think that those oil rights were already secured in the 1990s by the "oil for food" program in which the pain of embargo was exploited by offering access to basic medicine and food. It was framed as a human-rights program, but in effect amounted to leveraging oil in exchange for the most basic human rights assistance (not that I'm an expert).

I actually tend to look at the media aspect of war in the middle-east as having a positive effect on oil-consumption, in that it drives up prices as investors speculate on rising scarcity. By driving up the price at the pump, consumers and businesses are motivated to conserve petrolium usage. A gas-tax would have the same effect, but would never be politically supported - whereas a war on terror can. Although it's a far-sought logic, cheap oil IS actually a cause of terror and anti-democracy globally, so driving up the price to stimulate greater oil-independence is not as much of a lie as it may seem to be.

The worse lie, I think, is allowing the economy to build up dependency on oil in that it is a non-renewable resource doomed to increasing in scarcity, price, and therefore allows for some people to continue gaining in wealth while increasingly less people can have access to the fuel.

Electric cars are a step in the direction of less dependency, but they also support the belief that technological development can indefinitely postpone the need for greater energy-conservation and the development of less energy-dependent lifestyles. Electric scooters anyone?

Without much time to say this I'll just hint at my definition of ethics:

The word "ethics" describes (for me) a mechanism of balance within a system. That balance is only reached when a maximum of efficiency is realized within the system. Therefore my definition of "ethics" could be construed to be the equivalency of efficiency.

The odd part of this definition is that you need inefficiency in order to see the efficiency of an ethical state. This sort of contrast allows for re-adjustment and re-engineering which inevitably leads to a more efficient ethic... and thus a more productive and balanced system.

The word ethics is generally used to describe human relationships and more recently to describe the human relationship with the environment. This is because when we screw with the environment the results are a poorer quality of life for humans. Thus, treating the environment "ethically" means treating humans "ethically".

 

[Frame Dragger]

Without much time to say this I'll just hint at my definition of ethics:

The word "ethics" describes (for me) a mechanism of balance within a system. That balance is only reached when a maximum of efficiency is realized within the system. Therefore my definition of "ethics" could be construed to be the equivalency of efficiency.

The odd part of this definition is that you need inefficiency in order to see the efficiency of an ethical state. This sort of contrast allows for re-adjustment and re-engineering which inevitably leads to a more efficient ethic... and thus a more productive and balanced system.

The word ethics is generally used to describe human relationships and more recently to describe the human relationship with the environment. This is because when we screw with the environment the results are a poorer quality of life for humans. Thus, treating the environment "ethically" means treating humans "ethically".

Efficiency as an ethic. Interesting.

Would life on this planet be better off if we had never arrived on the scene? In your view, do the only meaningful ethics relate to the human condition, or is there also a sense of responsibility and care for life in general?

 

[Vanadium 50]

But what about ethics? It´s not based on axioms or experience.

Not based on axioms? Spinoza did this in 1677.

 

[Frame Dragger]

Not based on axioms? Spinoza did this in 1677.

Well, a dictum.

Now THAT was petty of me.

 

[apeiron]

Yes, my view is not popular, but then again, that doesn't make it wrong.

Well my complaint was that your views lack structure. They are opinions lacking theoretical bones or precise measurements. So they come across as windy rants rather than precise thoughts.

For instance, you failed to understand my point that the equilbriums I am talking about here are open systems equilibriums (as modeled in dissipative structure theory - the maximum entropy production). The difference is the same as that between gaussian distributions and powerlaw ones - radical.

 

[Frame Dragger]

Well my complaint was that your views lack structure. They are opinions lacking theoretical bones or precise measurements. So they come across as windy rants rather than precise thoughts.

For instance, you failed to understand my point that the equilbriums I am talking about here are open systems equilibriums (as modeled in dissipative structure theory - the maximum entropy production). The difference is the same as that between gaussian distributions and powerlaw ones - radical.

I think you missed the part where I'm in the philosophy forum to NOT talk about physics, or related metaphors. You call it "open system equilibrium", biologists call it homeostasis if they're considering a single organism. A system being a system, the concepts are fairly similar, and not terribly useful when consciousness and motives contrary to even one's own well-being and survival come into play.

Consider this: I could just as easily have posted in response to you: "why the hell are you bringing this up?" in regards to: "I was talking about the principles of systems in social equilbrium..." when you've still failed to give historical examples that actually back your point... because we're not talking about theory, but application. In the absence of people, there are no Ethics... no moral philosophy. To ignore the brunt of human history and it's fairly clear future arc (again, only in relation to population) is to miss the point of the discussion that was taking place prior to your entrance.

Frankly, you took some steps back by apparently assuming my (and perhaps others') ignorance. I'm not interested in talking about a 70's theory which equates all open systems, including human, and then uses basic thermodynamics to make predictions. People defy these predictions, because they do not always (or often) act rationally or in absolute accordance with biological imperatives. How is that you felt a discussion about the morality and efficiency of slavery, with historical context, would be enriched by reducing it to *EDIT* Whoops... "diS -> deS". mixed my i's and e's. *End Edit*

You're welcome to your viewpoint, but don't make assumptions in the damned lounge alright? It's just tiring. If we actually agreed to have the same discussion then it might be interesting, but we're not... we are in a consciuous manner, talking across purposes. No thanks, that's really not what I'm looking for in anything that starts with "PF Lounge > General Discussion..."

 

[baywax]

Efficiency as an ethic. Interesting.

Would life on this planet be better off if we had never arrived on the scene? In your view, do the only meaningful ethics relate to the human condition, or is there also a sense of responsibility and care for life in general?

Hi Frame Dragger... I tend to visualize (erroneously and anthropomorphically) the laws of nature as ethical laws. We as humans try to imitate them as best we can... or should do... because they are tried and true... the laws of nature and physics have allowed this universe to survive 13.7 billion years. Pretty efficient!

 

[Frame Dragger]

Hi Frame Dragger... I tend to visualize (erroneously and anthropomorphically) the laws of nature as ethical laws. We as humans try to imitate them as best we can... or should do... because they are tried and true... the laws of nature and physics have allowed this universe to survive 13.7 billion years. Pretty efficient!

Well hell man, why didn't you just say that to begin with?! We would have had little disagreement at all in that setting. Ah well, the ride has been a lot of fun.