The nuclear industry managed to get an “expert”, whose livelihood depended one way or another on nuclear power, onto every mainstream media broadcast about the Fukushima disaster, to persuade us that an incident ranked by the IAEA as on the same level as Chernobyl, was actually nothing to worry about.
Subsequently they have managed to persuade the media that the whole thing has simply gone away. How many of you, for example, knew that the highest levels of radioactivity so far at Fukushima were measured two days ago?
The highest radiation readings since March 11 [date of the tsunami] were recorded at the Fukushima plant by robots this week. Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building on April 26 took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts an hour, according to Tepco, or more than four times the annual dose permitted to nuclear workers at the stricken plant.
A controversial book about nuclear pollution and human health from Dr. Chris Busby is called ‘wings of death’ ISBN 1-897761-03-1.
he also published a booklest called ‘low level radiation from the nuclear industry: the biological consequences. This describes increases in cancer in Wales. Chris has linked the athmospheric testing of fission product pollution, which is also the thesis of his book.
Dr. Chris Busby, like so many intetrested scientist (Helen Caldicott)has been sidelined and made a laughing stock by nuclear vested interests. They are not laughing now.
“Tim, deaths from fallout from nuclear accidents are hard to quantify, because radioactive pollution causes cancers over many years, and they are masked by cancers from other causes. One estimate of excess deaths from Chernobyl is nearly one million.”
I estimate the number of deaths from Marmite at one Gagillion.
“Bulk energy production methods generally cause big problems. Global heating, acid rain, smog and disease, mining accidents and environmental damage, oil spill pollution, nuclear material proliferation and fallout, war. But the modern way of life is extremely wasteful of energy. Look at the traffic jams caused every day by commuting to work. Go to your local “recycling” site and look at the huge piles of discarded domestic stuff, much of it still usable. Look at the ever increasing “need” for Internet bandwidth due to the adverts plastered over most web pages. Go to the service road at the back of the High Street shops and look at the masses of commercial waste.”
Sounds bad. What is your alternative?
“No. Let the Power Fall…”
Brilliant. And when nobody wants to follow in your footsteps and nobody wants to live the way you urge them to and yet won’t live yourself then you’ll say that it is down to brainwashing and corruption of democracy that you don’t get your way.
You mentioned thorium reactors earlier. You say that they are good in the sense that they can’t be used for nuclear weapons and yet you also say that you are unequivocally against nuclear power. So are you against thorium reactors and are you sure that no proponents of nuclear power are for thorium reactors?
More bad news link
link
link
I’m no expert but have looked into uranium chemistry since this kicked off and it’s extremely reactive and a great catalyst, it reacts with both hydrogen and oxygen and will break apart water when red hot or in the prescence of electricity, the water used for cooling is consequently de-ionised, when faced with[soon to be] melting fuel rods and a chance that sea water might help the battle was already lost.
Thanks for all the links above it’s hard to get any perspective in the mainsteam and too time consuming to rely on your own searches.
Hello Angrysoba. I obviously need to make my position clearer.
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(1) I think that all humanity could have a happier, more fulfilling lifestyle while also using power at a fraction of the current rate. The consumerist lifestyle does not lead to satisfaction. People are adapted for interacting with nature, not watching TV, sitting in traffic jams under a sky of smog and working in call centres.
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(2) I do attempt to live this way myself. For instance, I gather wood for my stove in a hand cart and cut it with a bow saw. I find this very satisfying and relaxing, and it keeps me fit. It’s not bad economically, either, compared with the hours spent earning money to buy fuel. People often ask me why I do this, or they say I should use a chain saw. A noisy, dangerous chain saw would take all the pleasure out of it.
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(3) I’m not opposed to nuclear power. I’m opposed to the building of inherently unstable nuclear reactors, and attempting to store their waste products for millenia.
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(4) I don’t know much about thorium reactors; there doesn’t seem to be much written about them. What I have found suggests that (1) they are inherently stable and (2) they can actually render dangerous nuclear waste (including plutonium) safe. Yes, there must be proponents, but they seem to get little exposure, and I wonder why. I think China and India are showing some interest.
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How are you doing, anyway? Glowing in the dark yet?
Angrysoba, you wrote “And when nobody wants to follow in your footsteps and nobody wants to live the way you urge them to and yet won’t live yourself then you’ll say that it is down to brainwashing and corruption of democracy that you don’t get your way”.
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I think that we’re all going to discover that the current way of life is unsustainable anyway. People can choose to live a more natural life, or nature will force itself upon them. It has little to do with what I want.
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But there certainly is “brainwashing and corruption of democracy”. They are called advertising, PR, spin and perception management.
“Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist: Fukishima Daiichi Nuclear Facility is a “Ticking Time Bomb””
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrxKqLeZYD0
Hi Clark,
Thanks for your points:
1.) I find the argument from nature a tad suspicious. It is certainly true that neither God nor Gaia made us TVs and cars but then computers, the internet and even bow saws are not natural either. These days even if we want to emulate our hunter-gatherer forebears then we do so a-la-carte.
In short:
a) How do select which products of a globalized industrial world you would keep and which ones you would like to see abolished?
b) On what basis do you say that our current way of life is unsustainable? If this based on fact or prejudice?
c) Do you think it is inherently more “moral” to consume less energy? If so, on what basis?
d) How will you convince the vast majority of people that they would be more satisfied living simpler, disease ridden, nasty, brutal and short lives in which they have no leisure time?
2) Isn’t it likely that your own lifestyle is made possible by the growth in freedoms created by modern civilization? You do, after all, choose your form of exercise and know that when you go into the woods to cut down a tree you aren’t going to be set upon by a rival tribe.
3) Would you be for nuclear power stations if they were much safer?
4) There clearly are certain types of nuclear power which are less likely to be used for things such as proliferation. During the North Korean nuclear crisis, the US offered to built Light-Water-Reactors to replace the type of nuclear power stations the North were using at Yongbyon. This was after the DPRK had walked away from the NPT so were no longer bound by its terms. I think it’s a fair point that much nuclear power development is used as a cover for nuclear arms creation which is why the creation of thorium reactors could be a good idea. As far as India and China are concerned they couldn’t possibly hope to sustain their industrialization on fossil fuels or “renewables” alone and they do want to industrialize so some kind of solution such as thorium reactors may well be necessary.
As for me, I’m doing well and am not yet particularly affected by radiation. Not directly anyway. A bakery near me had to close down however as the butter they use in making their bread comes from a producer near the affected area in Tohoku.
“I estimate the number of deaths from Marmite at one Gagillion.”
Excellent analysis, Angrysoba 🙂 I too find some of the comments on this topic a tad chicken little.
Anyone got any original research references for the ‘millions to die’ claims? Epidemiology is a troubled science, and anxiety industry is a real phenomenon. James Le Fanu’s Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine is a great book if you would like to get a sense for where it all went wrong.
Here is a summary of various estimates of the health effects from the Chernobyl disaster:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Assessing_the_disaster.27s_effects_on_human_health
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Here is a report on the “nearly one million deaths” assessment:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment
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Angrysoba – answers:
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1) Substitute “primitive” for “natural” if you wish; neither term is quite right, but “natural” seems closer. Is an ant-hill natural? If so, I suppose nuclear power stations are natural. Progress requires change AND learning. Change for its own sake is not progress.
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1a) I’m not prescriptive, I just wish people would wake up to what is good. But this is hard when so many companies are using psychology to deliberately induce dissatisfaction and promote unnecessary consumption.
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1b) You can’t generalise the rich world’s lifestyle to the entire global population without environmental catastrophe, and the population is still rising.
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1c) In absolute terms, no, but at the present level of technology, yes.
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1d) Simpler – well, the modern lifestyle tends to impose complexity; simplicity should be available as a choice. “Disease ridden, nasty, brutal and short lives in which they have no leisure time” – this is not what I’m advocating at all. Most people like to spend some leisure time in less developed places, living at a slower rate, or they like to watch such things on TV. There is obviously some attraction. I’m saying, let’s live this way. If we build things to last and stop chasing possessions for social status, augment a more natural lifestyle with appropriate and sometimes low-tech technology, we can have healthier, happier, more rewarding and self-motivated lives. You’re lucky, Angrysoba, you work in education. But the majority work in far less rewarding jobs that often make them ill.
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2) Yes, though I also think that (a) things are peaceful and good in the rich world partly by virtue of the suffering and conflict produced in the poor world and (b) history as we tend to encounter it dwells upon great upheavals and war, whereas long periods of peace and stability are overlooked, essentially because they make boring history. And I don’t cut down trees because live wood doesn’t burn well. I collect the dead wood.
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3) No, I have no moral condemnation of any power production method, but all the conventional reactor designs I’ve encountered are inherently unstable; they have to be constantly kept in check by cooling and safety systems. Their failure mode is to run faster and hotter to disaster rather than slowing and stopping. I will not support this. Nor will I support a system that in 40 years operation produces waste that’s lethal for 25,000 years.
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4) I suspect that renewables are seriously underestimated. If they’d had a similar development effort to nuclear, they’d have left nuclear standing. The energy in natural systems is staggering. Just a one hour thunderstorm releases as much energy as the Nagasaki bomb. The polar jet streams are equivalent to all-out nuclear war, and they blow continuously. Ocean currents, biomass, geothermal; There’s no shortage of energy on Earth, but there’s a shortage of good sense in humans.
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I’m glad you’re OK; sorry about your local baker. I’m really not for ditching technology and progress, in fact I think a lot of modern change isn’t true progress. I think humans should take things a bit slower, stop rushing after short-term gain, and really cut back on the speed and wastefulness of our lifestyles. Fukushima is a disaster for millions of people. It would be better for all of us live within our means than to make large minorities suffer such catastrophes periodically.
Thanks for your reply, Clark. I don’t have enough time to write a complete response but I’ll just say for now that I do agree with a fair amount that you have written although I think it is fair to say that neither of us are going to be able to put forward “ideal” solutions but rather will have to find the right balance between costs and benefits.
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On Chernobyl there seem to be two important points. One is that the high-end estimates for the deaths caused by the meltdown doesn’t appear to have a lot of acceptance in the scientific community as a whole by the looks of things. The other is that Chernobyl was a very different type of reactor which had a very different kind of meltdown and was subject to far lower safety standards than, say, Fukushima.
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I do think there has been a lot of complacency about nuclear power. At an engineering plant where I work one or two evenings a week the engineers there whose work sometimes involves nuclear power stations did say to me that while Chernobyl is not a good comparison with Fukushima the disaster that unfolded there was beyond their expectations. It seems that some of the other nuclear reactors here in Japan may have to be temporarily shut down if they fail to live up to certain safety standards. The engineers predict if that happens there could be power shortages in the summer when everyone is using their air conditioners. We’ll have to wait and see.
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1.) Yes, the example of an anthill is a good one. I think this is what Richard Dawkins calls the “extended phenotype” and the example he uses to illustrate it is a beaver’s dam. But our own use of tools, agriculture, domesticated crops and animals, books, writing and building of residences and utilities could also demonstrate that the dichotomy between natural and artificial is a false one and even if it were applied it wouldn’t show that erring towards “natural” is “better” or more desirable. But the other point about the argument from nature is that it seems to rest on an assumption that that which is natural is therefore good or right. It’s a dangerous argument to make, I think, because the same argument could be used by those who think “gay marriage is just not natural” and various other things that I can’t think of right now (I’m sure you know what I mean…)
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1 a) Yes, this is certainly true. People are sold things that they don’t need yet buy for reasons even they can’t fathom. Then again, there are lots of things that aren’t needed but are pleasant to have, use, consume. I take it neither of us are thinking this on an all-or-nothing basis. I know that you don’t watch TV. As it happens I hardly ever do anyway and I think that most programmes on TV are stupid or downright moronic but there are some excellent ones too. The Sky At Night, The World At War, David Attenborough documentaries (which only confirm my suscpicion that I wouldn’t want to live in a “state-of-nature”) while NHK make some excellent documentaries.
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1 b) It’s true that the rich world’s lifestyle can’t be enjoyed by all as it is but much of the problem is the rich world’s use of fossil fuels. The rich world probably eats too much as well in most places (Japan is somewhat of an exception as its calorific intake is much lower than the “West” but at the same time I don’t think it produces enough food to feed itself. Food from China and elsewhere in South-East Asia is cheaper). But a rise in living standards has in Japan and most of Europe led to a decreasing population. If standards of living were to be improved elsewhere it seems reasonable to think that the population increase might slow or reverse. Nuclear power has certainly been proposed by a number of environmentalists such as Mark Lynas and now George Monbiot as a way to prevent environmental catastrophe. If you advocate an alternative being that the rich world will simply have to be made to live simpler and less wastefully then you may need some serious forms of coercion that will make many of the current complaints about decreasing civil liberties look rather trivial. You can of course advocate increased education on climate change but as you probably know by now this too will meet resistance by those who will argue that it is a propaganda ploy by Al Gore and Polly Toynbee to prevent, say, the middle classes from using fossil fuels, even as they jet around the world – with a carbon footprint the size of Cambodia’s in their wake – wagging their fingers at us. I know you have heard people argue this.
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1 c) Well, okay. At least you haven’t fallen into the second point of the fallacy of the argument from nature.
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2. a) No, I don’t think that’s quite right. At least I don’t think it is true that prosperity and freedoms must be at the expense of others. I don’t think it is a zero-sum game. I do think that everyone’s standard of living can be increased even if not everyone at all times equally. It may not be perfect but I don’t think we should make the perfect the enemy of the good. b) Again, I don’t think this is entirely true. It is true that periods of history that involve revolution and war are much more interesting than say Tokugawa Japan which had no wars or revolution from 1600-1871 (if memory serves me right) but some anthropologists and archeologists such as Jared Diamond suggest that back in the hunter-gatherer times and even modern hunter-gatherers tend to be almost constantly at war with each other. Either way, even those times in which there were no wars or revolutions often tended to be very repressive, and required slavery. Slavery as in genuine, real slavery not as a euphemism for working long, hard hours for low pay.
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3.) Well, that’s the same as a plane or a car going downhill. (Okay, I realize that’s a bit facetious).
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4.) I’m sure that the tsunami that struck Japan packed the energy of a few atomic bombs as well. The problem is in harnessing that power.
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Thanks. The bakers have managed to save some money so they’re actually going to take the opportunity to travel and study so it’s not a COMPLETE disaster for them. There are of course many farmers who have been completely ruined by the tsunami and also the radiation. To what extent would their produce have been safe to eat and to what extent they are being bankrupted as a precaution I don’t know.
The economic and environmental baance sheet on nuclear power is complex and not easliy argued in short posts, especially if you have no particular expertise. I’ve mentioned this link before, but here it is again anyway:
http://www.theoildrum.com
Contributors include nuclear physicists and engineers, and much more ground is covered (for and against nukes) than could be achieved here. I suggest bookmarking it.
Thorium-based nuclear has the ‘advantage’ of not producing weapons-grade by-products. Quote marks there, as the civil nuclear industry is a hidden subsidy to The Bomb, and hence US/UK interest in thorium has been muted. Thorium is more plentiful than uranium especially in India (uranium is globally scarce) and India is pressing ahead with development. The fast-breeder technology they favour is known to be dangerous so the rest of the world is standing well back, fingers in ears.
Regarding Monbiot: round at The Oil Drum you can see several complete dismantlings of his position, but here’s one quick link which also mentions the unhealthy nexus between the WHO and the IAEA:
http://wideshut.co.uk/george-monbiot-nuclear-power-and-the-new-world-order/
I’m with Clark: reduction of energy consumption isn’t an option which we might or might not take: it is certainly going to happen, and happen soon. All we might control (though I doubt we will) is how it happens.
On a practical level, http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-help-protect-yourself-low-level-radiation
This seems to be a hell of a “misunderstanding” when you’re talking about an “expert in radiation exposure”:
“Japanese government adviser Toshiso Kosako is overcome with emotion during a news conference Friday, April 29, 2011 in Tokyo announcing his resignation from the position. The expert on radiation exposure said he could not stay and allow the government to set what he called improper radiation limits of 20 millisieverts an hour for elementary schools”
http://www.newsday.com/news/criticism-up-on-japan-pm-s-handling-of-nuke-crisis-1.2848054
“chief government spokesman Yukio Edano said Mr. Kosako had misunderstood the government’s standard that set the maximum radiation limit for elementary schools in Fukushima Prefecture to 20 millisieverts per year”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704167404576294343071646176.html
Are they suggesting Mr Toshiso Kosako resigned because he didn’t know the difference? Or couldn’t clarify it?
(don’t know if html tags work in this)
“I suggest bookmarking it” — Vronsky
Thank you – I will indeed. Google News is bringing up very little info.
Clark and Angry,
How are you doing your double spacing for paragraphs?
Testtestif this works then you can get paragraph breaks with the HTML tag ‘br’ in arrowhead brackets instead of the quotes I’ve given it.
@dreolin
Bookmark these also – two very valiant ladies.
http://www.helencaldicott.com/
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/
..and obviously (see above) the br tag doesn’t work.
Angrysoba, some follow-up points…
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1) Humanity seem to suffer from a kind of collective arrogance. For instance, when we draw the evolutionary tree, we tend to place ourselves at the top, rather than on a side shoot. On seeing this diagram, most of us don’t even question humanity’s position at the pinnacle. It’s as if we’ve retold the Genesis creation myth with evolution as Jehovah; the final creation, the “objective”, was humanity.
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Similarly, we tend to assume that human intelligence is the best, or only, type of intelligence. But life and nature “know” things, too. DNA “knew” how to make keratin long before humans did, to give one tiny, trivial example. The explosion in human capability has come mainly from science, which is the study of nature. So science could be seen as a sort of translation process, whereby “natural knowledge” is translated for human understanding. This, I think, is the correct context in which to examine the “argument from nature”. Nature indeed “knows” more than us, and “knows” it better. Nature has been developing that “knowledge” over a MUCH greater timescale, and “knows” far better than us how to make sustainable systems. Nature is also greater and more powerful than humanity, and we are dependent upon it; we transgress at our own risk. Humility is called for.
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One particularly important “lesson” from nature is the strength of modular, cellular “design”. Humans are learning this too slowly. We build big, centralised systems that create huge dependencies. We fail to notice the foolishness of this even during a disaster like Fukushima.
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One example: you mentioned air conditioning, which is based upon heat-pump refrigeration. When I was a lad, our family had a gas powered refrigerator. A little flame powered the heat-pump system, no electricity or moving parts were necessary. This system could obviously be adapted to solar power quite simply, with a reflective solar collector replacing the gas flame. Look at the elegance of this method. It would have no dependence upon a centralised electricity supply. It would not add heat energy to the building being cooled. As solar heating increased, cooling ability would rise in direct proportion; appropriate design could eliminate the need for additional control systems.
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Why are such systems not used? I can’t believe that I’m the only person who has thought of it. The reasons probably lie in short-term commercial pressures and “industrial inertia”. Apathy, too; we already have air conditioning systems, so why go to all the bother and (short term) “expense” of developing a superior, more robust system? And it’s Somebody Else’s Problem – “they” should just build safer nuclear power stations! Pah!
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1b: point one) Yes, falling birth rates roughly correlate with rising living standards, but I’ve seen it argued, and it seems more likely, that the closer correlation is with female literacy, female liberation and contraceptive availability. This subset has much smaller environmental/energy costs than overall increase in “living standards”. “Living standards” usually means monetary wealth rather than quality of life.
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1b: point two) I think economic coercion coupled with socialist wealth redistribution is called for now, before natural limits becomes the dominant coercive factor. It is a mistake to assume that humanity as a whole has the choice to maintain or increase its energy usage in the decades to centuries timescale. Such choice has to be earned, and so far humanity hasn’t earned it.
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1c) I have an intuitive aversion to high energy usage that I suspect is similar to the feelings of many Hippy/Green type people. I also have a strongly questioning rational aspect. I have made a deliberate effort to respect all parts of myself, and encourage communication between them. This is tricky, as they communicate rather differently. I believe that taking psychedelic drugs (in a deliberately careful manner) has greatly helped me in this endeavour. Methods of contemplation, reflection and meditation would probably also help.
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2a) No, prosperity and freedom don’t HAVE to be at the expense of others, it doesn’t HAVE to be a zero-sum game, but in practice it often is. Again, it’s short-termism, commercial pressure, and the SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) syndrome causing this.
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2b) You brought up hunter-gatherers; I only said that humans were adapted to interacting with nature. Many pensioners take to gardening. Jared Diamond traces the rise of agriculture. Much of our “nearly slavery” is displaced to distant lands. Our clothes and computers are made in sweat-shops, the workers having few rights and almost no economic alternative. Out of sight, out of mind? SEP?
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3) Thanks for this, you’ve made me clarify my thinking. A car or a plane going downhill starts with the kinetic energy at the moment of failure. It’s not like the failure suddenly causes all the fuel in the tank to embark upon as rapid combustion as it can achieve. In most engines, the fuel is stored externally, and is delivered to the engine by a subsystem that is dependent upon the engine’s continued operation. Engine failure therefore shuts down the fuel supply.
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By contrast, a nuclear reactor has years worth of fuel pre-loaded, and various systems RESTRICT the sudden production of energy. ANY system failure INCREASES the probability of sudden conversion of fuel to energy. Nuclear reactors are “primed” to create disasters.
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4) I’ll say it again, I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face – nuclear vs. renewables is an issue of relative developmental investment. The stricken reactors are forty years old, that’s about sixty years and billions of dollars of development! It’s Cold War technology and it passed its sell-by date decades ago. How would, say, deep geothermal measure up with a similar level of development? Where is my solar powered air conditioning? Well, we’re a bit late, but we’d best get started!
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People like me have been slagged off in the mainstream media as alarmist, over-emotional Luddites, oh, for as long as I can remember. If we manage to keep our arguments calm and rational, we’re dismissed as “misty eyed idealists” or some such. Hell, I don’t make these arguments because I’m opposed to technology and science; I love both, and I argue because I want humanity to keep progressing to greater and better things, like quantum consciousness research, asteroid mining and building space habitats. But we ain’t going to get there by ensuring that a quarter of the world’s population has the “freedom” to throw away one TV, one stereo, one laptop, one iPhone, a full wardrobe, etc etc etc every two years or so, nor by constantly having to clean up nuclear disasters.
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I’m glad your bakers are getting a break. I love bakers’ bread, and it saddens me that the supermarkets have been so “successful” in putting so many bakers out of business. I hope things improve enough for them to rekindle their business after their break, but Japan is not nearly out of the woods yet, things could still get much, much worse at Fukushima. Here’s hoping for the best.
Dreoilin, look closely; there’s a full stop in the “blank” line!
1) No. This needn’t be done and yet no one is competing to put themselves higher on this chart. I think your point is irrelevant anyhow. Nature doesn’t “know” or “care” for us.
1 b) Oh, I completely agree that the emancipation of women is part of the increase in prosperity of mankind. I reject all kinds of political or religious views that seek to disempower women.
1 c) This is not an argument. It is merely a statement of your prejudices and also a rather silly reliance on a corruption of your mental faculties to make decisions. I’ve taken psychadelic drugs myself and all I know from the experiences is that anyone who claims to have found some kind of higher understanding from them is probably talking bullshit.
2) No. Not out of sight out of mind. What is more pertinent is that as much as you feel disempowered now you aint seen nothing yet and it won’t be the “West” calling the shots.
By the way, I must admit that I am a fan of such movies as this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1J6TFHCevg
And this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFnmH9a2RkE
I don’t laugh at environmentalists or think they are silly. For me the natural world is something sublime and beautiful. All I am saying is that I am suspicious of anything that sounds like dogma.
I guess I am in moderation because of my number of links:
By the way, I must admit that I am a fan of such movies as this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1J6TFHCevg
And this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFnmH9a2RkE
I don’t laugh at environmentalists or think they are silly. For me the natural world is something sublime and beautiful. All I am saying is that I am suspicious of anything that sounds like dogma.
Angrysoba,
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1) I’m not sure which part of those five paragraphs your “No” refers to. As to “no one is competing to put themselves higher on this chart”, I assume you mean the evolutionary chart. No, it’s not a competition. People just put humans at the top without thinking. The arrogance is unconscious.
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What is the nature of knowledge? You write like a material realist, so you probably believe that personal knowledge is stored in the structure of an individual’s brain. So in what way would the formula to make keratin stored by DNA be any different?
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I’ll warn you, if you are a material realist, that this philosophy is not compatible with quantum physics. Consciousness (whatever that is) may well be fundamental to Reality, like gravity or the strong nuclear force. So nature may “know” all sorts of things, whether we are capable of understanding that or not. Or you can abandon belief in your own consciousness, in which case your personal knowledge no more qualifies for the title “knowledge” than DNA’s formula for keratin.
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1c) I don’t know what you mean by “This is not an argument. It is merely a statement of your prejudices and also a rather silly reliance on a corruption of your mental faculties to make decisions.” Am I supposed to restrict myself to arguments? If so, why? I think we’re at crossed-purposes.
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Anyway, regarding psychedelics, what can I say? My own experience, along with Tim Leary, Aldous Huxley and many others, is that the psychedelic experience helped me to “open my doors of perception”. If it didn’t for you, I am sorry. I was very lucky in finding some people that helped me along that path; there is certainly more to it than just popping a pill. Drug induced psychedelic experiences are valued in many cultures, where they are used alongside ritual and with the help of an experienced guide.
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2) Again, I don’t know what your “No” refers to. In what sense did I express disempowerment? I assume your second bit refers to the economic rise of India, China etc. I do wish you’d just state what you mean to save me such guesswork. But if you’re saying that India and China are going to be “calling the shots”, it remains to be seen how far they rise before humanity as a whole enters the quagmire of unsustainability.
Angrysoba, I’m glad that you appreciate the beauty of the natural world. I empathise with your suspicion of dogma; many of us, including myself, have had bad experiences with dogma. Ethereal, Hippy speculation is as silly as rigid, restrictive rationalism. Both are incomplete. Nature knows better than us, and thus it makes our minds from both – complementarity is a principle of nature. It is up to each individual to perform the necessary integrations.
Thanks Vronsky, thanks Clark.
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Couldn’t agree more on the lifestyle, Clark. It’s one thing I don’t regret about the dramatic demise of the Celtic Tiger. No more perfectly good 2+3 seater couches, or three piece bathroom suites, being offered on Dublin Freecycle for the sake of a change of colour scheme. Such nonsense.
Dreoilin, I know, it’s amazing, isn’t it? People just buy stuff and chuck it out, and then complain about having to work all hours! Modern stuff is such rubbish, it falls to bits in no time. I rescue all sorts of discarded stuff. Older stuff lasts longer, it’s better made from better materials. Modern consumerism is the fastest method yet discovered for turning raw materials into landfill. Oh yes, we’re conscientious, we “recycle” it, but that still costs energy. How much petrol is burnt, forever driving back and forth to the shops and the dump?
Angrysoba, I’ve now followed your video links. Koyaanisqatsi has been one of my favourite films for decades. Thanks for The Host of Seraphim.
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Koyaanisqatsi – crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.
“1) I’m not sure which part of those five paragraphs your “No” refers to. As to “no one is competing to put themselves higher on this chart”, I assume you mean the evolutionary chart. No, it’s not a competition. People just put humans at the top without thinking. The arrogance is unconscious.”
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Well, I didn’t think that people did put themselves at the top of the chart. Nevertheless it shouldn’t be too surprising if they do. We, as humans, do tend to take a special interest in humans. Or should do, in my opinion.
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“What is the nature of knowledge? You write like a material realist, so you probably believe that personal knowledge is stored in the structure of an individual’s brain. So in what way would the formula to make keratin stored by DNA be any different?”
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I think the term “material realist” is outdated now. But yes, I probably am something similar to what you describe. I think the politically correct term is “physicalist” these days. “Material realist” is a slur. ;D
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“I’ll warn you, if you are a material realist, that this philosophy is not compatible with quantum physics. Consciousness (whatever that is) may well be fundamental to Reality, like gravity or the strong nuclear force. So nature may “know” all sorts of things, whether we are capable of understanding that or not. Or you can abandon belief in your own consciousness, in which case your personal knowledge no more qualifies for the title “knowledge” than DNA’s formula for keratin.”
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Well, the point is that “time” is a physical concept but doesn’t have any kind of tangible material extension so I don’t need to be hidebound to the idea that consciousness needs to have material extension either to still be physical. What is consciousness? Well, we don’t know, of course but that is not the same thing as saying all attempts to explain it are just as possible as any other. I think the idea you are talking about of nature knowing things and consciousness being a “fundamental property of Reality” is known as panpsychism in philosophy but I know that there are some physicists such as Penrose and Stapp who are interested in the implications of quantum physics for consciousness. I don’t know if I would say they aren’t physicalists though. As it happens some philosophers get into incredibly bad-tempered arguments over this type of thing. I remember reading about one philosopher who scoffed at one of his colleagues for being a panpsychism believer AND a vegetarian. Surely, he thought, panpsychism would somehow undercut the basis for the same philosopher’s vegetarianism. Doesn’t he care about the screams of his tofu burger as he cuts into it?
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Here’s some more of that ill-temper:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/McGinnReview.html
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“Anyway, regarding psychedelics, what can I say? My own experience, along with Tim Leary, Aldous Huxley and many others, is that the psychedelic experience helped me to “open my doors of perception”.”
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Well, okay. I read Huxley’s Doors of Perception and was underwhelmed, I’m afraid.
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“If it didn’t for you, I am sorry. I was very lucky in finding some people that helped me along that path; there is certainly more to it than just popping a pill. Drug induced psychedelic experiences are valued in many cultures, where they are used alongside ritual and with the help of an experienced guide.”
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Yes, and in some tribes they hang from hooks that they’ve attached to their bodies for similar experiences of ex-stasis. Each to their own, I suppose.
“Angrysoba, I’ve now followed your video links. Koyaanisqatsi has been one of my favourite films for decades. Thanks for The Host of Seraphim.”
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The Host of Seraphim is actually the name of the piece of music. The video is a sequence from the film Baraka. If you liked Koyaanisqatsi then you would probably like Baraka which was directed by Koyaanisqatsi’s cinematographer, Ron Fricke.
Interested in the exchanges on drugs. The only drugs I have used are tobacco and alcohol. Cigarettes were given up many years ago (just too late to avoid medical consequences) and alcohol is dwindling to an occasional pleasure, simply for financial reasons (pension doesn’t really stetch to such things). As a musician I felt alcohol was occasionally useful, not in performing a piece (plays havoc with the technique) but in perceiving it – strumming through and seeing new phrases and emphases, suddenly seeing the sense of something that previously had been just a couple of puzzling bars. Something important had relaxed and was no longer a barrier to ‘seeing’.
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So I think it’s possible that other drugs may expand perception in other ways, and it seems unreasonable to suggest otherwise – on what possible basis could we assert that the brain, an electro-chemical machine, is unaffected by chemicals? Is your argument, angrysoba, that any changes that take place are invariably for the worse, like random alterations to computer code? But I think it is fairly undisputed that nicotine enhances the ability to concentrate, for example.
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The subconscious is a curious thing – by ‘subconscious’ I mean mental processes that continue without conscious direction or supervision. If you’re a crossword puzzle addict you will almost certainly have had the experience of waking up at 2 a.m., suddenly aware of the answer to that last clue that had stumped you.
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While I was studying maths I used to sleep with a pencil and paper beside the bed, knowing that I would often dream of a route to a proof or solution that had eluded me when awake. In one striking case, I knew before going to sleep that a particular problem could be solved using prime decomposition, but the process would be a very long one – requiring many pages and more time than I felt I had available.
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That night I dreamed that I set out on the prime decomposition, quite unworried about the time it would take as I had an odd sensation that time did not exist. To my surprise the required result emerged in a few dozen lines. I woke up, wrote down the critical steps that I had not been able to see while awake, and went back to sleep. And it was no illusion – I completed the proof next morning from those sleepy notes.
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My (very unscientific) theory is that if you get your subconscious interested in something then it will continue to worry away at it even when you are consciously thinking about something else, or even asleep.