J4zonian’s Recent Comments

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  There are 2 things going on here (at least). One is that some people will tell any lie for money and most people in the US are too poorly educated to tell. (Critical thinking has been systematically sacrificed to teaching to the tests, for example.) The other is that on so many issues now the right has muddied the waters by preemptively, repetitively and massively making whatever accusations they know are rightfully coming their way, but turned on the left. By the time the underfunded left ramps up to make true claims of harm, lying and cover-up, the public is tired, confused, skeptical and won’t listen, even if they hear it. This strategy is in the gray area between unconscious psychological projection and simple deception. Undetectable but damaging “noise”? You can’t hear it, you can’t feel it, and you can’t prove it exists or that it causes harm at the levels detectable, but it can hurt you. The idea creates this sense of a problem that can’t even be detected… Sound familiar? Sounds like radiation; sounds like BPA and phthalates and mercury and sounds like physical and psychological problems caused by a thousand aspects of industrial life. It also sounds like it might be projection. We need to investigate fully, perform such a huge, exhaustive, thorough and transparent study on this that there can be no question by rational people. (There will always be paranoid people and people willing to lie for money; proving them to be irrational goes a long way.) Then we need to do the same with the provably absurd notions of windmill bird dangers, black solar panels and the economics and technical feasibility of conservation, wind, solar and organics. We can’t let the nuclear, tobacco, and other industries be our model; we have to pursue radical democracy and let all voices be heard—and listened to. We must patiently and lovingly educate, not shut down or shout down objections but bring them out and answer them in both scientific and emotional/psychological realms. If there any problems—and there are always problems with technology and with doing things—then we need to be up front about them, admit they exist and say that these technologies will save far far more than they injure. And we need to show the math as we do it. Wind, solar, efficiency. Faster, cheaper, safer. More ecological, more democratical. Better in every way that counts.On One doctor’s quest to sound the alarm on ‘wind turbine syndrome’ posted 4 days, 15 hours ago 57 Responses

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  Besides the obvious point that people might just be lying about their symptoms because they oppose wind, it's entirely possile they're suffering from psychosomatic symptoms. I also am curious about the correlation of expensive houses with nice views (and political affiliation and source of employment and income) with these symptoms, but ferreting out conscious from unconscious causes is much harder. While in the end why seems to matter less than whether, fixing the problem demands knowing the cause.

  On Attack on industrial wind puffed with false peer review claims posted 3 months, 1 week ago 46 Responses

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  "should satisfy the nuclear industry"

  but it won't. orthodox economics doesn't recognize it as a disease when it says economic desires are endless (they know how to cure that now--the Buddhists and the Reichian psychologists do) but at least it describes the symptoms accurately. It's not about rationality; wanting to take over everything and leave it covered with our metaphorical bowel movements is also a symptom.

  What world do you think we're living in, where industry does unprofitable things and doesn't try to get away with everything they can? where they do things honestly and safely? They are full of rage and don't want to do things safely; I don't see how we need any more evidence than what they've been doing for 50 years to recognize that. And conservatives' (and our inner conservatives') answer to everything is to punish; that results not in stopping bad behavior but in making it sneaky and resentful.

  Nukes are not the answer. Coal and oil are not the answer. Wind, solar and conservation are. On Superb NYT story captures both coal's peril and the barriers to its elimination posted 9 months ago 38 Responses

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  drx,

  I'm not opposed to study of things that may prove useful, although I think your modular reactors don't fall in that category. However, the chances of just studying, while having a moratorium on an industry that stands to make millionaires into billionaires seems extremely unlikely. More probable is that even if the battle could be fought and won, the nuclear industry would just come back and chip away, as industries tend to do, until they got not only the research but everything else they wanted too. End of moratorium. Welcome back subsidies. Goodbye regulations and cleanup. In other words, hello endless fight over ANWR, metaphorically speaking. On Superb NYT story captures both coal's peril and the barriers to its elimination posted 9 months ago 38 Responses

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  Ted,

  I didn't mean science is democracy; only that compared to warlord religion, business and government it sees authority in many different sources rather than one, or a few in a patriarchal hierarchy. We are never completely equal, as in (theoretical, ideal) balloting; but authority is derived from perceived ability to see truth, which is available in theory to everyone, and to be respected in everyone, not a priori to some via a position in a family-reproducing structure. It is because we are not certain that science must be democratic, i.e. open to all, and respectful. The many amateur and semi-pro scientists who have contributed to scientific advancement are evidence of that--from Mendel to the Brahe/Bruno/Copernicus/Galileo revolution to the work of Faraday and Lorenzo Langstroth.

  The work of George Lakoff (with some psychological refinements) is relevant--the conservative view is `people are bad' and alone, the world is dangerous and we need to be disciplined and protected by daddy. The liberal view is `people are good' or with potential to be good if nurtured (especially physio-psychologically), which leads to the belief in deep connection to others, including non-humans. Of course it's more complicated and people and all institutions are mixes and have other things going on. Religious liberals tend to be involved with democratic religions, where each person is, to various degrees depending on religion, his/her own authority in relation to god. Not an either/or but a continuum, with the other end putting all authority in a book, person or hierarchy as the interpreter of god. Those conservatives who are not religious believers tend to project the same authority into business, government...or even a hierarchical "science".

  Science is neither democracy nor consensus, since consensus is a specific agreement on a particular way to make decisions in a defined group, and good science never does come to one agreed-on truth. ("As soon as you say `I understand' you cut yourself off from understanding."--Frank Herbert) Science depends on freedom of speech--allowing all views into the public forum--which it does imperfectly, obviously. To the extent that it is `democratic' and not hierarchical and father-oriented it is still science and not `religion', to use the term very broadly.

  Yes, out of the differences come disagreements on what freedom is, and how we should rule; the perceived fascist-like behavior of the left is the following of science, reason and connection, while conservatives currently see that as an encroachment on what they see as their individuality (and what I think of as their maladaptive aloneness--an attachment disorder from childhood. And again--way, way more complicated than this can say. Issues and positions shift and meld and reverse in quite bizarre ways. Just look at how much of their otherwise absent compassion for children some conservatives project into fetuses, while many liberals don't. Contradictions for both, but perfectly consistent with the complexities of psychology. Everybody splits. Everybody responds to their unconscious desires. Polar bear numbers may or may not reflect immediate short-term danger of extinction but their position near the North Pole makes them vulnerable, and liberals' concern for them is a 1. reflection of connection to them, 2. projection into cute cuddly things, and 3. projected fear for ourselves--deserved fear at that.

  Of course one can never be sure of another's motives--we can hardly be sure of our own, at least until extensive self-investigation has been done. While we shouldn't be saying we are sure, since we're not, the more people understand climate science the more time pressure and direness they feel, and the more strident they become. Our own maladaptive neurosis. Which was my point about not causing despair...

  Decades of economic devastation have been caused not by ecological protections (of ecosystems, not owls--another example of seeing things not as separate but in webs of connection); they've been caused by neoconservative policies valuing license over freedom--the unfettered allowance of accumulation, by a few supposedly-deserving people, of the interchangeable commodities money and power. They're the ways conservatives try to get relief from the fear, grief and rage they feel at being so alone.

  Of course, that's only theory. I don't know for sure. Unfortunately, our lack of drive for money and power means we have a hard time getting our version of the truth out to the public, and even when we do it's, as we agree, the wrong message. Certainty is counterproductive; we need to say `if things go this way... this is what will happen...' not `this is what will happen'.

  I worry about how little time we have left to save everything, with parties splitting power, sabotaging each other, lying and demagoging and deadlocking progress. For one thing, what happens if we're just successful enough to delay the most obvious, visible and memorable things we've predicted without actually stopping the process? It's a way to keep the debate going right up to the end.

  I certainly don't mean to pathologize conservatives and apologize for liberals. We have our own pathologies. And until we heal ours, allowing us to help them heal theirs, we will continue to act out of our respective unconsciousness and cause the world continued pain and destruction.

  PS: Not much of a Freud fan; more of a Jungianesque neo-Reichian.
  On What will shift the public's attitudes on climate change? posted 9 months ago 21 Responses