Good News!

Here is the biggest news I have heard in the past few months. Rupert Murdoch has come out and now agrees that there is a link between human activities and global climate change. This is amazing! This marks the turning point of our history. It is really that big. This should be front page news on every media.

I wrote the previous post in ignorance of this factoid and this is exactly what I was on about. The practical upshot is that with the power of News corp things will start to change. The more informed have known and have been concerned about climate change for quite some time but this will push it down the throat of the other 70% of the population. It will become political suicide to avoid this issue over the coming years.

On the conspiracy theory front does this mean that big money has moved its capital out of businesses that will suffer as we move into a low carbon emission era?

Big business ideas for a low carbon world:

Direct conversion of cellulous into alcohol.
Creation/collection of biodegradable waste for feed stock for the above.
Combined food and cellulous farming
Battery/electrical energy storage technology
Low cost/low efficiency/easily deployed solar electric system integration for domestic application
Hybrid/all electric vehicles
Efficient artificial lighting and HVAC
Low capital fast neutron fission reactors
Public transport infrastructure systems

Politics

I read posts all over the web from people complaining about elected governments not serving the majority interest. Bad luck. You obviously have insufficient funds and influence. If you want to change the world get obscenely rich and do something about it other wise just sit back (or bend over) and enjoy the ride. Let go of this romantic notion that political activism will change anything. It hasn’t in the past and will not in the future.

Don’t fool yourself that some magical post will change anything. It won’t. A true, logical and sound argument read by millions means squat. Yes politicians will enact laws that the “people” cry out for but only on the proviso that it doesn’t interfere with persons who hold power. You know the sort of thing – anti abortion laws, save a bit of habitat there, no gay marriages; basically stuff that doesn’t matter except for a few individuals with insufficient power. And that is the nub of the argument; those with power are not the fools we elect and pay a few hundred grand a year to act on our behalf.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) expressed it best when he stated that the general public had about as much chance of electing true and worthy leaders as a dog pissing the Mona Lisa into a snow bank. I believe even that is an optimistic estimate. It is impossible to elect the people who run the world – they elect themselves.

For our leaders the government/s is/are just an easy way to deal with the trivial administrative functions that they see no profit in.

There might have been some mythical point where the good and noble represented society but I have yet to find when that time was. At each point in history I sample, with sufficient scrutiny, I find the feudal system was alive and well. In the past it was tribal chiefs, kings and barons now it is the über rich, perhaps less than a few thousand individuals, who run the world.

This is the order of humanity.

Second thoughts about freedom

I have written about this subject before but thought my original thoughts lacked a vital bit so here is an update of my thoughts on the subject of freedom.

For this take I will only consider freewill (I have heard a lot of banter about this recently). It would seem to be the most fundamental aspect of the freedom question.

You can consciously decide to do this or that but below the surface each choice is pre-programmed by your learned prejudice (both conscious and subconscious), the environment the decision comes in and your genetic predisposition. In this sense freewill is only a perception and not reality. Perhaps there is some connotation of lack coercion in the term freewill but given the ensemble of inputs that lead to any, even the most trivial of choices, there is always some conflict.

We execute our pre-programmed code in response to stimulus. To me this is not freewill it is automation. Quantum uncertainty does not provide an out. A molecule in a liquid may follow some truly random path but it is just responding. Like wise we respond. It is not freewill. Our actions are locked in.

If we take action due to duress of some kind or for or own gain it is just response to stimuli. I guess it comes down to semantics if we label anything we do for ourselves as freewill and anything we do due to some negative pressure as against freewill then it resolves nicely.

If I see bucket full of $100 bills on the side of the street I have to make a decision. I can;

a. choose to pick it up and spend it,

b. pick it up and report it to the police or

c. just keep on walking.

By the definition above my freewill choice is a., the other options are tainted by my perceptions of consequence.

So I guess this means there is no freewill, just different varying degrees of oppression.