The greatest good for the greatest number: A doctrine of acceptable losses
“The greatest good for the greatest number” seems like an enlightened view until you examine its application. Then things get very messy.
Kurt Cobb
Democracy, truth, fallibilism, and the tech overlords
Truth is a very difficult thing to come by. Usually, when humans stumble onto it, they don’t even know they have. America started out as a nation skeptical of royal prerogatives and concentration of power. We’ve morphed into a gullible society easily manipulated by dreams of a techno-utopian future.
Christmas during the Forgetting
No one is saying that all modern creations are bad, of course, and you can like whatever you like. I’m simply saying that the actual customs that our forebears kept for hundreds or thousands of years disappeared quickly and recently during the Great Forgetting of modern times, replaced by less wholesome and healthy customs manufactured by people with agendas.
Green New Deal – 23 December 2018
– GND explained by David Roberts
– Possible without a revolution?
– Launched today (2008) by Rob Hopkins
Drones for Christmas
Unidentified drones shut down London’s Gatwick Airport for three days last week in the midst of the busy holiday travel season. Drones are examples of how miniaturization and cost reductions of existing technologies can lead to havoc when there is no thought or testing concerning the implications for public safety.
Artificial intelligence and the limits of the machine model
If we reduce all of our efforts at addressing our problems to language a machine can understand, we will get machine solutions. What we need, however, are solutions that come from our deep connections to this planet as beings of this planet, connections that no machine will ever fathom.
Uber, Moore’s Law and the limits of the technofix
Uber is being hailed as a revolutionary tech company that is modernizing city transport. In fact, the failure of Uber to generate profits shows that it is not a tech company at all and that, notwithstanding our worship of all that is tech, some problems are not amenable to a technofix.
Bayer suffering buyer’s remorse for Monsanto acquisition
If only Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and agricultural seed and chemical giant, had bothered to ask around before acquiring the American-based Monsanto Company for $63 billion in cash last June.
Australia’s drought, climate change and the future of food
There’s a reason that few people are thinking about world grain supplies. Last year saw record worldwide production of grains and record stocks of grains left over. But this year worldwide production slipped about 2 percent, owing in large part to the plunge in Australia’s production caused by an ongoing severe drought.
Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world
The increasing connectedness of the global economic system has long been touted as the path to greater prosperity and peaceful relations among nations and their peoples. There’s just one hitch: Complex systems have more points of failure and also hidden risks that only surface when something goes wrong.
Money –Some points for revolutionaries to think about
The monetary system we have is a fundamental cause of our problems, and setting up new systems is crucial in the development of alternative economies. However some popular initiatives are sadly mistaken and can have few if any beneficial effects. The goal must be to set up a system that enables previously idle people and resources to begin producing necessities for the locality. This is easily done.
Is the “world” actually getting better? Depends on your definition of “world”
All of this commotion we call industrial civilization understandably looks like progress to those living through it and fortunate enough to die before the decline begins.
