In this episode I respond to an article in the Science Journal “Nature”. Here is the link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04412-x
Nature is among the highest tier of journals in the world - highly respected and the place every scientist would love to have their work published at some point in their career. Nature has editorials as well as journal articles and they have effectively a letters to the editor section and commentary. Nonetheless, although this article is labelled as “comment” it has 8 authors all claiming expertise in disciplines from environmental science through to ecological economics and sociology. I refute the article paragraph by paragraph and point by point providing analysis, opinion and reflections. This is a clash of worldviews: that of decline and degrowth and pro-environment and that of progress, growth and pro-people. This was something of a “straw that breaks the camel’s back” moment. Just as around the world many people are struggling to pay energy bills and governments persist in implementing policies that will only see the cost of living due to energy policy increase further while the overall wealth of households decreases, Nature sees fit to publish a defence of strong-socialism. This piece refers to “science” and yet it is not science. It is not even economics. It is an ideology screed. And a screed of this kind needs to be answered because, as I conclude - this is dangerous. This is literally life, livelihood and liberty threatening. The brakes are presently on the economies of the world because of the misconception that rapid progress and growth are a bad thing. That population increase is a bad thing. That cheap reliable energy is a bad thing and the prescription for this is to coerce people into using forms of energy that are not yet shown to have worked reliably anywhere (in other words entirely untested in even one place before being mandated on all places) and in many places simply not available yet, while coal and fossil fuel supplies are decommissioned too early. This is a threat to nation states and to the globe. This is my defence of humanity against anti-rational memes, prosaic “bad ideas” and stasis.
Enjoy! :)
Ep 128: Steven Pinker’s ”Rationality” Chapter 5 ”Beliefs & Evidence (Bayesian Reasoning” Remarks & Analysis
Ep 127: The End of Global Order (A response).
Ep: 126 Origins
Ep 125: Livestreams 1, 2 & 3
Ep 124: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 6 “Universality and the limits of Computation”
Ep 123: Ask Me Anything 3
Ep 122: ”Work and Heat” - Chiara Marletto’s ”The Science of Can and Can’t” Chapter 6 Readings & Discussion.
(Episode 121) Energy
(Episode 120) Newsletter 10: The Jubilee, Peace, Progress and Policing
Ep 119: Work and Heat: An introduction to thermodynamics (a prelude to Ch 6 of ”The Science of Can & Can’t).
(Ep 118: The Planetary Health Authority)
(Ep 117: Heat, Work, Universality and Exams)
Ep 116: Objective Knowledge
Ep 115: David Deutsch’s ”The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 5 “Virtual Reality”
(Ep 114) Newsletter 3: Manners and Misattributions
Ep: 113 Steven Pinker’s ”Rationality” Chapter 4 ”Probability and Randomness” Remarks and Analysis
(Ep 112) The 3Rs: Reality, Reason and Rationality. Newsletter 1
Ep 111: Probability - Reality, Rationality and Risk
Ep 110: A Tradition of Criticism
Ep: 109 ”Objective Morality I: The Principle of Optimism”
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