All posts by pfh

Science yearning for rules in a world of change…

re: Feb 14 2009 Science News – editor’s comment

Editor Tom Siegfried’s comment emphasizes that the main subject of science is understanding a world of change, but one might not know that from asking scientists.

Scientists have built their whole culture around finding fixed rules for things.    We call it “determinism” and the whole community is so set in its ways it still only adjusts the standard fixed rules by adding a little random variation to explain why things of the past keep changing the rules they work by.

Even after half a century of all fields intensely studying how complex systems evolve, we are still not publicly acknowledging that they do.

Complex systems frequently have independently changing individual parts, that express new behavior in new situations, and we keep following our rules of the past for them. That seems just disgraceful! Continue reading Science yearning for rules in a world of change…

Ever multiplying obligations – the “Gold” rule

Responding to Steve Kurtz 2/14/09

Phil, What evidence do you have to claim that my well-being is dependent upon
me “multiplying other peoples obligations” to me? Steve
—-
Steve,

It’s mainly a kind of “generosity” and show of “trust” that becomes an onerous multiplying obligartion.

We typically all act to multiply the obligations others have to us for performing financial and resource exploitation around the world in two ways.    You and I and everyone else buys products that are made by businesses that are given financing only if they return a profit.

It has to be a level of profit that assures their investors a rate of compounding returns, too, better than or equal to what is generally available.     Secondly You and I and nearly everyone else, have money in the bank or in the markets earning compound interest, acting in to be the enforcer of the first process from the investor side of it.

It has no limit but for those so obligated breaking their trust and failing to be able to do so, as when the economy as a whole ceases to provide net returns.

We choose to receive compounding returns better than or equal to what is generally available, or we move our money elsewhere to get a better compounding return.     With each choice we opt for using the surpluses of business to create real multiplying obligations for others to fulfill.   Continue reading Ever multiplying obligations – the “Gold” rule

In the Spirit of Reason, A coded message

CCG post 2/11/2009 – responding to Malcolm and RML

Malcolm – “How can we express the climate risk in way the public can understand?”
RML – That is probably the entire point right now. An infinite supply af “facts,” expecting people’s reasoning ability to take over, doesn’t seem to work.

In that spirit, we might show our own ability to reason with simple arithmetic.    If you consider a growth system as always starting with a non-renewable seed resource, that is finite, then as the system grows what can you say about the rate of % changes in the balance of the seed resources available?

(meht gnissorc erofeb sdlohserht ees ot elba eb ot doog eb ti dluow .e.i)

Assuming you get the first part of that right, it’s not so hard, how valuable would it then be to have a way to tell?

Phil Henshaw
NY NY  www.synapse9.com

 

Getting peeks at the the coming peaks

CCGroup post 2/12/09

responding to Alex:
Phil, I liked your coded message. You mean a threshold like ‘peak oil’? Or the peak carrying capacity of the earth in terms of population? The question is, how do you propose to reduce demand? Right now, governments are doing their damnedest to stimulate demand to save the global economy from implosion. You’re saying let’s reduce demand. How? How is this going to work? Asking a question for which there’s no answer is probably a good way to get no answer. :)

Alex,
Thanks very much.  My usual worry is not leaving people with questions, but getting none in return. Whether any answer about the future is more than half an answer, after all, depends on what question you ask.   The best available answer to what “people want to know” is often only speculation.

Yes, “being able to see thresholds before crossing them” would apply to “peak oil” and to the carrying capacities of things.    For example, the rate at which a scalar peak like “peak oil” is approaching is visible in the derivative rate long before.    Continue reading Getting peeks at the the coming peaks

Missing from the scientific message

Dot Earth comment 2/12/09 regarding misreading short term trends:

Too Much Hot and Cool Hype? – A leading British climate expert berates climate campaigners of all stripes for overstatements.”
—-

There’s an interesting add-on to how people are often confused by statistics and trends being interepreted without any actual causal mechanism identified. I’ve seen that in lots of “whacko conspiracy theory” kind of science discussion that is all over the blogs these days.

The confusion seems to be between scientific answers and questions.

How often the error is clearly visible in the work of rather distiniguished scientists too, points to how we are all rather inept at “public science” discussion.   If science is to lead the world it can’t be done in a closet where sloppy reasoning gets sorted out in private. Continue reading Missing from the scientific message

So fortunate the economy collapsed!

To GreenLeap 2/10/09, edited response to Glenn Albrecht saying “I am genuinely surprised that the global financial system has failed before ecological systems.” in his blog post: http://ethicsclimate.blogspot.com/2009/02/ethics-of-nation-building.html

Glen,
Yes indeed.   If surprising, yes, but it’s also quite fortunate that the global financial system failed BEFORE the ecological systems…  That gives us a little time to think, before the calmity occurs that we couldn’t recover from.

Now, let me think…  What happens if we restore the global financial growth system to its former glory…?     Hmmm…. Continue reading So fortunate the economy collapsed!

Cognitive Gaps – not Learning From Experience

Bob, 1/8/09 post to Downslope

Well, people ignoring contexts certainly do make it hard to learn from change, and even learning by hard experience after the fact doesn’t always help.     Humans often are so fixated on old ideas in new worlds they only learn by generational succession (with old ideas dying off rather than changing by experience).

There are kinds of problems where even that doesn’t work either.    We seem to be struggling with one of them now, yet another in the long series of economic overshoot and societal collapses, fitting a similar pattern and occurring time and again throughout history at all kinds of scales large and small.

We don’t even seem to see the pattern well enough to talk about it.    The curious thing is that even repeated powerful experience plus generational succession seem not to teach us a thing about it, and, it also seems never to get publically discussed.   There’s enduring silence about our greatest persistent tragic problem.

I think profound denials like that may seem “hard wired”, but if they are not shared by everyone I think it means they’re cognitive not cultural, i.e. just inherited expert errors. Our natural reaction is to work harder when we run into difficulty, but if nature is making things harder because of being overworked, that can trick us and be counterproductive.

Then our impetus to ban together to sacrifice and recommit ourselves to work harder for the common good, but results in the environment becoming even more overworked and unresponsive, i.e. a decidedly heroic but mistaken response.     Our present impasse, a failing economy and looming environmental and resource collapses of several kinds is signaling that nature is overworked, and for us all to heroically work harder.

Possibly enough people could notice the error in a response to pushing old methods ever harder, when nature is actually calling for rather new ones, to take it as a signal to begin thinking on our feet and not blindly forging ahead.

Phil Henshaw
NY NY  www.synapse9.com
——–

Bob, to post again on 1/9/09

I think there is still something suspicious about the “cone of silence” around mankind’s most persistently self-destructive behavior. The people who do it obviously includes nearly everyone, and thinking that it’s constructive right up until it’s too late.

How we then appear to fail to be self-critical enough to see or say what the real problem was after, is also part of what I’m beginning to notice.

People seem too close to it to get any perspective. Continue reading Cognitive Gaps – not Learning From Experience

You have to laugh at our climate control plan!

posted to Climate Concern Group 1/28/09


You have to laugh about the long range predictions for the environment, though.    The planners show ocean levels continuing to rise for 1000+ years, even if CO2 increases are halted immediately.  The curves all have a different slope depending on how soon.

That well founded idea has been in all the literature, even from the economists, for a decade or more.  see: http://www.synapse9.com/issues/ClimateLags.pdf

but….

It shows every physical symptom of growth leveling off,
and GDP shooting straight UP! Continue reading You have to laugh at our climate control plan!

Our great & tragic hope for bridging the gap

Anselmo,
Right, it’s not only that things get more expensive, but more profitable to make more expensive too. On the downslope as shortages develop faster than expectations are broken the prices of things are driven up.   Then people who control resources profit from accelerating their depletion which vastly worsens the problem.

I think that’s a good general explanation for why the last tree on the Easter Islands was cut down.    It was the one with the highest profit to the owner.    That that also effectively terminated what was probably a kind of “tree worship” civilization is the curiosity…

manGap.jpg Continue reading Our great & tragic hope for bridging the gap

I enjoyed the Connections site

Re: HDS sustainability Connections site from 1/22/09

Will, All the best to you and Nicky too! Thanks for the note.

People get so absorbed with their solutions it keeps us from seeing that most mistakes come from not checking our way of defining our problems.  It takes constant reminders to just ‘look around’ for unaccounted new things happening in the world we might use or we might run into, as we go…!

Best, pfh Continue reading I enjoyed the Connections site