Philosophy Now Forum

EU energy sector in funding crisis. (BBC News. 02/05/2013.)

'Investment totaling a trillion euros (846 billion pounds) is required before the end of this decade if the European Union is to stave off an energy crisis. That is the conclusion of an eight month enquiry by the House of Lords into the EU power sector. The Lords report says that muddled Brussels energy policy is putting off big investors. In addition, it says there needs to be greater support for Europe's Emissions Trading System. (ETS)'

Having repeatedly predicted the market will fail to deliver on energy, and in the same terms predicted that the Emissions Trading Scheme would fail, this confirmation of the fact vindicates an argument that better explains why. It may very well be that Brussel's energy policy is muddled - that big investors are put off, and that the Emissions Trading Scheme lacks support, but these are merely symptomatic of the deeper cause of a bigger problem. These and other mortal threats to civilization each have a root cause in Ideological Psychosis; which is to say, the disparity between the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of societies and a scientific understanding of reality.

Ideological Psychosis is the consequence of a deliberate mistake. The mistake was to fail to appreciate the significance of valid knowledge, and to shame science as a heresy, such that it emerged only slowly and subject to ideologies that mis-described reality to justify power and the inequitable distribution of wealth, work and resources. It's important to note that in principle - this argument does not bemoan power or inequality. It's not a moral argument. The principle upon which these predictions were based is a functional relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and the validity of the consequences of such action within a causal reality. To employ an axiom from the ethos of computer programmers as a metaphor: garbage in - garbage out. The reason it's not rational for energy companies to invest in the production of energy is the same reason it is rational to pollute. Money isn't real - but believing money is a real and natural object with intrinsic value perverts the calculus of reason that underlies action. Starting from a false premise one cannot reach a valid conclusion. Assuming only that energy companies, polluting industries and governments reason soundly from false premises, because a valid outcome would require they act in a manner contrary to their ideologically described interests, the failure of the market to deliver on energy and failure of the ETS were inevitable.

For the same reason the ETS failed; which is that one cannot reach a valid conclusion merely by adding another false premise to an already invalid argument, massive tax-payer subsidies to incentivize energy companies to invest in infrastructure are not the solution. It's superfluous to condemn such a policy on moral grounds, as another example of the gross injustice of private profits and socialized risk identical to bank bailouts from 2008, if one recognizes that the tendency of the market to socialize risk is a consequence of Ideological Psychosis. Thinking of capitalism as the logic of money, again the logic may be sound but admitting a false premise necessitates an invalid conclusion. The solution therefore is for the worlds governments to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common as commanding superior political legitimacy to ideological misconceptions of reality - thereby subsuming the ideological equation within a valid argument, and changing the rationale for action from national economic interest to what's true and necessary to the survival of humankind.

In these terms, the problem is not a funding crisis in the EU energy sector as such, but a global energy and climate change crisis. In scientific terms, it's not difficult to solve. I have suggested the best solution is to tap into the effectively infinite heat energy of the earth's molten core to produce electricity and hydrogen fuel on such a scale as to massively over-provide for current energy needs. This will enable future generations to sustain massive population while protecting natural habitat from over-exploitation by desalinating sea-water - and pumping rivers of fresh water inland, uphill, without additional energy cost or pollution, thereby bringing uninhabitable land into productive use. There need never be another famine nor a shanty town anywhere on earth given the economic benefits that will accrue from being able to mine, farm, manufacture and build, deliver and travel without depleting energy resources or polluting. Further psychological and social benefits will accrue from correcting for psychotic beliefs and belonging to a species with a future, as opposed to having less and paying more to sit in the cold and dark - else warm and well fed, bearing a burden of guilt for the poor, the polar bears and the legacy of death we leave our children's children.

Accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common should not be thought of as rendering ideological falsities wholly illegitimate. It's not necessary, desirable nor feasible to tear down the churches, banks and borders - as if to wipe the slate clean to start again from scratch. We have to get there from here. While philosophically, science and ideology are mutually exclusive - human beings are quite sophisticated enough to encompass the contradiction. Given such a hopeful vision - or bottom line, the prospect of bringing billions of consumers into a sustainable market for everything from meat to medicines to manicures, it doesn't seem impossible that big investors, purely on grounds of rational self-interest might stump up the necessary. Similarly, it doesn't seem beyond the wit of minds capable of devising financial derivatives so complex as to defeat the very concept of legality to raise capital by passing on the bill to future generations, who as a consequence will be more than able to afford it. They will exist.

Global political agreement is the key log and the greatest obstacle. If politics really were as secular, post-ideological and pragmatic as pretended then agreement upon science, as a valid basis of analysis objective with respect to everyone's particular interests, should already have emerged in international relations. It hasn't because the political flesh hangs upon religious bones - in that, even the most Enlightened states, even atheist states are only variations upon, and rationalizations of the archetypal social contract forged 15,000 years ago by hunter-gatherer tribes agreeing a common concept of God as an ostensibly objective authority for hierarchy, law and the inequitable distribution of work and resources. The long translation from religious to national identity entails the same inclusive/exclusive dynamic, the same symbolism, articles of faith and common myths, and therefore the same invalid relation to valid knowledge one might expect of a theocracy. That politicians are committed to an explicitly ideological identity and role reinforced by uncommon privilege makes it doubly difficult for them to see beyond the ideological facade to the truth of reality. However, if the leaders of our national tribes can only equal the wisdom and foresight of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the transformation of our fortunes will be a multi-dimensional, qualitative improvement upon the present state of affairs greater still than was the founding of civilization an improvement upon running around in the forest with a sharp stick.

hg.

04/05/2013. BBC news reported that while city traders are getting military grade laser communications technology to steal nanoseconds more money, primary and secondary schools haven't got the kit to peform practical science experiments. 30,000 hectares of Nicaragua's 'cloud forests' are being decimated yearly for yankee dollars, while 100 Sudanese wage slaves and nine rescuers are to be left entombed in the same gold mine just recently the cause of a war between rival Arab groups. Israel bombed Syria; while Syrians fled 'sectarian cleansing' by the Syrian government who 'restored peace and security.' In Nigeria 40 people were killed in clashes between Christians and Muslims at a funeral, as Neo-Nazi's protested in Hungary against the World Jewish Congress, and UKIP tapped into racist sentiment to gain 140 council seats.

Describing David Hume's argument, G.E. Moore's term 'the naturalistic fallacy' is an article of philosophical faith raised endlessly as an objection to accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common. Repeatedly, it's been explained to me that 'because one cannot derive ought from is, ideologies are necessary to allocate values.' But Hume's objection was to the observation that people so frequently do just that. To misquote him from memory, Hume said something like: '...people cite facts A, B, and C - and without pausing for breath or thought, enter into should mode to advocate D, as if D were the inescapable consequence.' I'd suggest people do so because human beings are moral animals as a consequence of evolution within a social context.

Chimpanzees have morality of sorts. They groom eachother and share food - and remember who is more or less likely to return the favour. Further, they know that others remember such reciprocation - and modify their own behaviours accordingly. They groom others that groom back. It's not alturistic - but self-serving behaviour in a social context, where self-interest is achieved through serving others - but not all others. Morality is therefore a behaviourally intelligent relation to social reality reinforced through reciprocation. The inclination to morality is an advantage in the struggle to survive and breed, resulting in an innate moral sensibility, that intellectually intelligent human beings expressed in the form of religious, political and economic ideologies. However, by claiming divine revelation and requiring faith as a basis of authority, religions framed themselves as a well-spring, definitive of morality. This misapprehension that the source of morality is external remains - and is inherent to the Ideological Psychosis of contemporary society.

Accounting in my philosophy for evolutionary development and the direction of knowledge from less and worse to more and better over time, I recognize that ideologies are expressions of an innate moral sense that occurred before humankind became capable of establishing valid knowledge by scientific method. I also recognize that religious, political and economic ideologies misconceptualize reality. In scientific terms, humankind is a single species and the world is a single planetary environment. Ideologies false to a scientific understanding of reality, by the very same process of deriving 'ought' from a misconception of what 'is' - divide the world and the species, rationalize warfare, unjustly distribute resources and promote the politics of hate.

So, while the chief implication of Hume's argument is that people's logic is often faulty - and it's a fault I'm often accused of, fault actually lies with faith in ideology as an external source of morality, and underlies continued objection to drawing moral implications from scientific fact. Relative to the symptoms of Ideological Psychosis garnered from BBC News above; that people seem to accept as the rightful outcome of a calculus of moral reason premised upon falsity, 'oughts' derived from 'is' as mis-described by religious, political and economic ideologies - vast moral implications follow from the fact a highly coherent scientific understanding of reality is available to us. But it's not a moral argument. Humankind ought to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common because of the relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and causal reality: garbage in - garbage out. It is a necessary and inescapable implication only insofar as continued denial entails the fall of civilization and unimaginable human suffering unto extinction; and it's necessary to exist in order to have values.

London was warm and sunny.

hg.

Thus preached Priest Homegrown of The Atheist Church, and don't you dare say against him!

thats about 7%
of what US spent on strategic nuclear strike force from 1950 to 1990. land based icbm's ssbn's and 2 trillion on orbital weapons you never got to hear about.
50 thousand + warheads.; SSBn's are 10 billion a pop
Usaf spent a trillion on strat bomber design let alone manufacture. the xb70 cost 100 billion just as workup.
The b2 cost 1/3rd of atrillion before the first one rolled off line
when your checkbook has no limmit

bank america

400ppm.

Developing the idea purely from a philosophical interest in truth, without expectation of epic implications, I experienced the answer as a revelation. Describing the journey is impossible now because I cannot be as misinformed as I once was. But there came a time, after accepting that religious, political and economic ideologies that occurred during the evolutionary development of humankind are untrue of reality - I realized that, acting as if they are true is the root cause of a progressive, multi-dimensional dysfunction with symptoms amounting to threats of extinction. By implication therefore - by virtue of a relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and causality, accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common is the answer. It wasn't unreasonable to suppose other people would experience the same revelation, and that any who didn't embrace the solution from rational self-interest would nonetheless be compelled by compassion and/or bound by the normative force of truth. But that's not what happened.

I didn't recognize the problem right away. I still don't understand it. But at first I attributed the cool reception these ideas received entirely to how poorly I had expressed them. For a further eight years I wrote and re-wrote essays on the subject, seeking to more concisely and accurately capture a meaning I remain convinced is the answer. But as former feelings of eudiamonia bled away, learning today that atmospheric carbon dioxide passed the 400 parts per million mark induced in me an acceptance of the truth, that humankind cannot or will not accept the truth - and consequently, cannot but perish.

That so, it would be nothing but cruel to continue. I will not rage against the dying of the light, but as I live out my remaining years, I'll know that accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common was the right answer, and that I expressed it clearly enough that an averagely intelligent person could understand why. In short, I did my duty to this knowledge and humankind. I told you so.

hg.

homegrown wrote:400ppm.

Developing the idea purely from a philosophical interest in truth, without expectation of epic implications, I experienced the answer as a revelation.

mahahaha xD First criticising religion and ideology and then talking about revelations! Somebody should buy this guy a mirror so he watch himself as he talks...

People have journeys all the time, there's nothing special about it, you should stop making yourself so special just because you've been using your head.

I feel sorry for the people of Oklahoma. I also feel sorry for humankind, but there's a difference. There's nothing the people of Oklahoma did, or failed to do that caused that tornado. There's nothing they could have done to prevent it. The same cannot be said of the catastrophe facing humankind as a whole. The ideological architecture of societies could be different. It's not a matter of apportioning blame. I've written several times of the illusion that wealth and power confer freedom. Obedience to the ideological rationale becomes more important the higher one is in the hierarchy. Government has no greater freedom now than had the Catholic Church, in 1632, to accept that the ideas that justify power are falsified by a scientific understanding of reality. Sadly, the seeds of my revelation fall upon stony ground.

Only in theory are human beings as fertile soil to the seed of truth. I was able to see beyond the ideological facade to the value of valid knowledge, but I was utterly disenfranchised and socially excluded. Other than the identity I inherited, and was keen to redefine, I had no ideological interests. I was free to audit my received mind - to discover and accept the truth, in a way that those with ideologically defined identities, interests and responsibilities are not.

I discovered that my received mind was not so much a conception of reality, but an unruly accumulation of concepts, built up over the years, in terms of which I interpreted perceptions. It's little wonder then my behaviours left much to be desired - so much in fact I became disenfranchised and excluded. Similarly, it's little wonder humankind is running into energy scarcity - with no plan B but to replace Trident. It's little wonder that thirty years of climate change conferences have produced nothing but a string of broken promises. Little wonder that the Amazon is half the size it was in 1970 - and little wonder the Oklahoma tornado was two miles wide and tore up the ground for 45 minuets.

I'm glad I'm free to change my mind.

hg.

I think beauty was at the tip of Maslows hierarchy, wasn't it? Which would seem to place abstract things of greater order than base requirements. I think that to be true, but I think the top need is the need to will freely, but until we are able to do that we are still dependant on the forces of circumstance and destiny in one way or another. Can we escape?.. if only just for a moment?

If the security services are wasting resources monitoring me because of the revolutionary nature of this philosophy, I give my word of honour that I will never commit or condone an act of violence to further my cause. While I maintain that acting in the course of ideologies false to a scientific understanding of reality dooms humankind - if humankind is not convinced by these arguments, extinction is the rightful consequence. I have described the evolution of life; pointing out that at every stage the organism is tested in relation to the reality of the environment. Just as simple organisms that proved physiologically incorrect, or animals that were behaviourally incorrect were rendered extinct, if we are not intellectually correct to reality then the cumulative effect of actions based on falsity will conspire to disallow human existence. Akin to a divine judgment built into Creation - it's absolutely objective and entirely just.

I can tell you this, but if you cannot understand and accept it then no demonstrative act on my part will make for the sincere and long term commitment to scientifically valid knowledge necessary to secure the future. I know that, just as in an economic recession the capitalist noose merely tightens its grip, similarly, terrorist attrocities such as the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby inspire unthinking patriotism without regard to rational criticism of a morally dubious foreign policy. As a philosopher, it's my duty to point out that the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of society is false to a scientific understanding of reality - and such horrors as the killing of Lee Rigby are symptoms of Ideological Psychosis, but it's an appeal to reason that would be profoundly undermined by...hypothetically speaking, stealing a bus and plowing down the crowds on Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon. But what would you do if I did? Lock me up, condemn such violence, express sympathy with victims families and refuse to be otherwise effected! The killers of Lee Rigby know they won't even spend ten years in jail - and that while they're in prison they'll be well taken care of by other Muslims as martyrs to the Islamic cause.

No. I honestly don't need to cause you more misery that you cause yourself acting in the course of ideologies false to a scientific understanding of reality. There is not a day goes by I cannot draw upon BBC news to cite half a dozen examples of cumulative dysfunction tending toward extinction. As amusing as it is to watch politicians tying themselves in knots, positing a difference between good Muslims and bad to pretend Islamic religion is not the seed bed of terrorist violence - that line barely holds water at present. I advocate Britain putting the argument to the world that, in order to solve the energy crisis and climate change humankind must accept a scientific understanding of reality in common - over and above the religious, political and economic ideologies forged by our dim distant ancestors. Doing so would tacitly address the issue of the religious inspiration of terrorist violence by giving real meaning to species identity. But if the British government cannot, or will not do that, then Britain must re-introduce the death penalty for terrorist violence, else suffer repeated acts of such blatant murder - committed in the knowledge that sentencing policy proves: 'the government don't care about you.'

hg.

The point of imprisonment shouldn't be punishment. The point of imprisonment is to remove the problems of society out of the public so the problems can be contaminated or preferably treated with. To kill a person is not a treatment, and that does not make any more sense than brutalism in general.

homegrown wrote: Government has no greater freedom now than had the Catholic Church, in 1632, to accept that the ideas that justify power are falsified by a scientific understanding of reality. Sadly, the seeds of my revelation fall upon stony ground. .

Hg

Not so stoney.
i hear you.

But i ask. What has government to do Freedom?
IT. is what restricts freedom.
Near evrey act in human history to gain freedom has been 'against' a government.'
or is this stoney ground?

prill

I'd like to thank Donald Villa and all for commenting - for doing so briefly returned my string to the top of the index page. I don't know if Donald's comments were about anything I've written, or whether he posted on my string by mistake. I don't remember the concepts that feature in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I'd look it up but I haven't got the internet at home - where I do my writing. Is beauty at the top of the pyramid? If so, I fail to understand Maslow's logic - but Donald makes an interesting inference from this, where he says: 'Which would seem to place abstract things of greater order than base requirements. I think that to be true...'

It would be easy to sneer at this idea - because stereotypically people whose 'base requirements' are met, rarely spare a thought for the abstract, while the poor are forever bothering the hypothetical Almighty with their woes. Knowing so little about people in the particular I can't speak to the veracity of the stereotype - but it was an economic crisis that first set my feet on the path to revelation of a profound truth I hoped would save, heal and elevate humankind. It was 1992. I was 20 years old when the Chancellor of the Exchequor Norman Lamont conspired with George Soros and other city bankers to steal the Bank of England's gold reserves by using the nations wealth to back the ERM. I've since learnt that even quite severe economic recessions such as the current crisis don't much effect London - but up North, it was devastating. I lost my job and for the following three years lived on 32 pounds per week Income Support.

During those formative years in the life of a young man - day after day I ate eggy bread and beans. I stayed in all the time - becoming reclusive. My shoes flapped open at the toes and my jeans had holes in the knees long before jeans with holes in the knees became fashionable. Up North, things were slow to recover - while on TV city bankers in red braces flashed their wad, quaffed champagne and hoovered up the Columbian marching powder by the yacht full. After a decade in which government had destroyed the unions, closed the coal mines, decimated the steel industry and shipbuilding - and encouraged outsourcing of manufacturing to other countries, the Conservative government used the crisis as an excuse to further slash public services - which impacted more heavily in the North, where the only half decent jobs left were in the public sector. It wasn't just me asking: 'Why God, why?'

I began to write about it - but found I could hardly write half a page without either running into direct contradiction of what I'd written above, or encountering the absence that is ignorance. What I found I could write about; not from knowledge as such, but merely from the experience of being a human being, was the abstract. Donald would prioritize free will over beauty - but mitigates this argument with the suggestion: '...we are still dependent on the forces of circumstance and destiny one way or another.' I remember struggling in much the same way as Donald to understand and order such ideas. It was only years later - attending university as a mature student, I discovered shelves of philosophical literature on such questions as 'free will in a deterministic universe.' Finding many of the ideas and arguments I had developed from first principles there in text books lent hugely to my confidence in a tentative conclusion conspicuous by its absence.

It's obvious to me now, why - for example, those behind the 'veil of ignorance' in Rawls classic 'A Theory of Justice' - knowing only scientific facts about the world, and theories of all kinds, but nothing of their own status: rich or poor, black or white, Innuit or Iraqi, theist or atheist - but honest to ignorance of the existence of God - agnostic, do not choose to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common and apply technology on merit to balance human welfare with environmental sustainability. It's essentially the same reason for Rousseau's fawning introduction to 'On the Causes of Inequality Amongst Men' - the same reason Galileo was tortured and imprisoned while Descartes went on to teach in the court of Queen Christina of Sweeden. And it's the same reason I get so few replies and the ones I get are of such dismal quality it drives me to despair.

In Rawls case, he wanted 'A Theory of Justice' to be relevant to the liberal democracy of the United States - and therefore maintained that rationally self-interested actors behind the veil of ignorance would conclude that the liberty to exploit naturally occurring differences was fundamental to a just society. It's not an unreasonable argument by any means - but it was written in 1972. The finite nature of fossil fuels and anthropogenic climate change were already matters of concern - to say nothing of the Cold War and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. Knowing all this, Rawls asks us to believe rationally self-interested actors would choose that state of affairs. They would not choose to accept a scientifically valid understanding of reality - but divide the species by emphasizing individual liberty, thus inferring freedom of religion, worship, conscience and speech - which is to say the liberty to indoctrinate children with the culturally constructed misconceptions, lies and prejudices of their dim distant ancestors before the age at which human beings become capable of critical judgment. Who was it said: 'Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man'? I could look it up, but don't have the internet at home where I do my writing.

Donald concludes by asking: 'Can we escape? ...if only just for a moment?'

I'm living proof that escape from the religious, political and economic ideological narratives of society is possible, but it took me 15 years and I spent a lot of that time weeping. I'm the exception that proves the rule - the rule that seals our doom: 'sycophants prosper!'

hg.