Comments trisk has made

  • Expending effort in fault-finding

    DobermanMcleod's comment brought up something I've been chewing on. I notice how much effort is being expended in determining "whose fault" the rising CO2 levels, melting glaciers, and erratic weather are. It seems to matter terribly to some people whether it is "our fault" or some kind of "natural phenomenon"/"act of God", or whatever.

    Doberman's post points out that this fault-finding could soon become moot as

    [s]oon the warming earth will emit considerably larger amount of greenhouse gas than humans.  In other words, carbon sinks will soon become carbon emitters big time.

    Perhaps we could save some time by stopping the unnecessary expense of energy, time, and effort in pointing fingers about "whose fault" it all is.On Thawing permafrost, oh my. posted 3 years, 2 months ago 24 Responses

  • More is Different

    I can imagine our cells arguing about whether a human being really qualifies as a genuine cell.

    These are different levels of organization. Cells, whole animals, corporations/countries/societies. They have similarities as collective entities, but also critical differences.

    I think it is too simple to say that a corporation is made up of humans, and hence the true responsibility lies with the humans, whose collective actions somehow bring about the corporation's actions. That ignores the fact that a genuinely new level of organization has been created. The idea of "corporate personhood" at least acknowledges this reality.

    In terms of individual atoms, there is no such thing as a "metal." That is a collective phenomenon. So is ferromagnetism -- iron atoms will individually antialign with an applied magnetic field, not align like a chunk of iron will.

    Groups of people do not behave like individual people. So it is tempting to call corporations "sociopaths," but that is really not accurate either.

    Corporations are just corporations. They should be treated as the whole entities that they are (not broken into their components), but neither should we expect this entity to behave like an individual human.

    That's the challenge: What is this collective thing? How does it work? Where are its buttons and levers, and how can we push and pull them to bring about beneficial results for us? This has been the project of corporate law for centuries.

    And it is, after all, what our cells are doing to us.On Wal-Mart is not a person posted 3 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses