From Freeman Dyson. It’s a long read but worthwhile (as always).
[Update late evening]
Dayo Olopade has an uncomplimentary review of Dyson’s review.
FWIW, I don’t think that GW skepticism is equivalent to Pascal’s wager. But I don’t have time right now to say why.
Hope I live to tell the tale.
I find it amusing that these folks were clueless as to the purpose of the Google Lunar Prize when they signed up:
In my first blog, I wrote why Harold Rosen formed the Southern California Selene Group. In short, he and I registered our team to compete for the Google Lunar X PRIZE to demonstrate that a low-cost space mission to the moon could be accomplished and could lead to lowering the cost of some future robotic missions to planetary moons. Plus, we intended to have fun! Harold and I both are strong supporters of space science and robotic space exploration. (For one, I’m an astronomy and cosmology enthusiast.) We love the kind of work that JPL is doing, for example. But we most definitely are not in favor of human space missions. That is not our goal, nor do we support such a goal.
The Team Summit turned out to be a real wakeup call. In the Guidelines workshop that I attended just last Tuesday, the cumulative effect of hearing all day from Peter Diamandis, Bob Weiss and Gregg Maryniak that the “real purpose” of the Google Lunar X PRIZE was to promote the so-called commercialization of space (which I took to mean highly impractical stuff like mining the moon and beaming power to the earth, as shown in one of GLXP kickoff videos), humanity’s future in space, etc. etc., took its toll. I couldn’t help but think “what am I doing here?” When I spoke to Harold about it on the phone later, he agreed – no way did he want to be involved in promoting a goal he does not believe in.
So, what does this mean? It sounds to me like it’s not just a goal they “don’t believe in” (which is fine–they could not believe in it and still want to win the prize for their own purposes), but rather, a goal to which they are actively opposed, and don’t think that anyone should be pursuing. I’m very curious to hear them elaborate their views, but it sounds like they’re extreme Saganites. For those unfamiliar with the schools of thought, you have the von Braun model, in which vast government resources are expended to send a few government employees into space (this is Mike Griffin’s approach), the Sagan model (“such a beautiful universe…don’t touch it!), and the O’Neillian vision of humanity filling up the cosmos.
So when they say they don’t support such a goal, does that mean they oppose it, and would take action to prevent it from happening if they could? Sure sounds like it. And they take it as a given that lunar mining is “impractical,” but is that their only reason for opposing it, or do they think that it somehow violates the sanctity of the place, and disturbs what should be accessible only for pure and noble science? I’ll bet that they’d prefer a lot fewer humans on earth, too.
[Via Clark Lindsey]
[Update late morning]
Commenter “Robert” says that I’m being unfair to Carl Sagan. Perhaps he’s right–I was just using the formulation originally (I think) developed by Rick Tumlinson, though Sagan was definitely much more into the science and wonder of space than were von Braun or O’Neill… If anyone has a suggestion for a better representative of the “how pretty, don’t touch” attitude, I’m open to suggestions.
Here’s an article about the current status of the lab-grown meat industry (such as it is):
…don’t hold your breath while waiting for your first lab-grown roast. Despite considerable hubbub over the technology in recent months, we’re still years–or, more likely, decades–away from affordable lab-grown meat. The current experiments are taking place in bioreactors that measure only a few hundred milliliters in volume, and the longest complete muscle tissues are just 2 centimeters long. Researchers are nowhere close to scaling up their production to market-ready levels, to say nothing of market-ready prices. A Dutch team’s lab-grown pork, for example, would cost around $45,000 per pound–assuming they could make an entire pound of the stuff. Bioreactors may be energy-efficient when compared with cattle, but they’re also expensive to design, build, and maintain. They also require highly skilled personnel to manage, in order to preserve aseptic conditions.
Furthermore, manufactured meat promises to replicate only the taste and texture of processed meat; as far as we are from enjoying lab-grown hamburger, we’re even further from perfecting man-made rib-eyes. So even if meat labs did become viable commercial enterprises, the naturally raised meat industry would hardly vanish.
I think that this is a little too pessimistic. Considering where we’ve gone with realistic computer graphics based on fractals, I wouldn’t count out the possibility of a nicely marbled filet being produced in the lab. But this is what I found interesting, in a linked article at the New York Times, bewailing how much meat we eat:
Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.
What’s the point of the first sentence? Were the 1950s the epitome of American health? Yes, people were eating less meat, and a lot more processed high-glycemic carbs (noodle casseroles, mashed potatoes, lots of sugary dishes–Lileks
And since when did the federal government become a nutrition expert? They food pyramid is a bad joke, in terms of health, with far too little protein, and too many carbs. The author of the article blithely states protein requirements as though they are established, objective fact.
It could be that some people are eating too much meat, but I’ll bet that a lot more are eating too much sugar, white rice and refined flour. The interesting thing is that it’s not meat and fat per se that seems to increase cholesterol levels (assuming that high cholesterol is really a problem, and not just a symptom), but the combination of it with an overabundance of carbs. That’s what Atkins is all about (though I think he took it too far).
Anyway, I find it annoying to see this stuff promulgated as though it’s indisputable, when in fact it is in constant dispute, and I think that those disputing it have the better of the argument. But if we do need more meat, I hope that we can in fact get the factories going, for both cost and ethical reasons.
…as Barbie used to say. Well, actually, it’s not that it’s hard, but that women just aren’t as into it as men are.
The tone of the article is amusing, because the author clearly knows that she is reporting politically incorrect (though obvious to most thinking, observant people) results, and seems uncomfortable with it. So kudos to her for doing it anyway. And of course the feminist establishment is extremely threatened by the notion that there is any cause of disparity between men and women that cannot be attributed to evil patriarchal social conditioning and rampant sexist discrimination. To the point at which they of course have to completely misstate the argument in order to knock down the illogical straw man:
Rosalind Chait Barnett, at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis, says that boys and girls are not, at root, different enough for such clear sorting to be seen as a matter of “choice.”
“The data is quite clear,” she says. “On anything you point to, there is so much variation within each gender that you have to get rid of this idea that ‘men are like this, women are like that.’ “
Well, the data may be clear, but the logic is severely flawed (I’ll refrain from noting that it may be because it’s coming from a woman…).
Even if there is tremendous variation among individuals within genders (which there clearly is) it doesn’t follow that there won’t be average differences in traits between genders. For instance, when it comes to math, what Larry Summers noted (and lost his job over after some of the mature, rational, scientific women present got the vapors and had to hie to their fainting couches) was that in fact men have a much greater standard deviation than women. They have both more geniuses, and more morons, when it comes to higher mathematics, whereas women have more of a tendency to stay near the mean. And there are brilliant (individual) woman mathematicians and hard scientists. But that doesn’t mean that we can therefore conclude that there are no statistical differences in these traits between men and women. And the fact that there are allows us to draw no conclusions about any particular man or woman (if I call Ms. Barnett illogical, it is because she conveys illogic, and has nothing to do with her genital configuration.) It remains perfectly reasonable, on a statistical basis, to make some broad statements about the genders (“men are like this and women are like that”) without having to infer that every man is like this and every woman is like that.
This is the general problem with discussions of gender and race differences, and why books like The Bell Curve
But leftists, hating individualism, and being addicted to group and collective rights, can’t conceive that such research wouldn’t or shouldn’t be translated into some attempt at social policy making. Similarly, if women’s choices in career really are choices, and not a result of false consciousness, then they won’t be able to get as much support for implementing their social engineering nostrums.
The neurology of org@sms. Mostly safe for work.
Some advice for John McCain, from Bjorn Lomborg.
I expect the ad hominem attacks on Mr. Lomborg to commence shortly.
Some advice for John McCain, from Bjorn Lomborg.
I expect the ad hominem attacks on Mr. Lomborg to commence shortly.
Some advice for John McCain, from Bjorn Lomborg.
I expect the ad hominem attacks on Mr. Lomborg to commence shortly.
May ’08 has been a pretty rough month for the planet and its inhabitants, what with the volcanoes and tornadoes and cyclones and earthquakes, <VOICE=”Professor Frink>and the drowning and the crushing and the evacuating and the staaaaarving, glavin</VOICE>.
Jeff Masters has a roundup and some history, and some inside info on why the death toll in the country formerly known as Burma was so high.
From George Will:
You say that even if global warming turns out to be no crisis (the World Meteorological Organization says global temperatures have not risen in a decade), even unnecessary measures taken to combat it will be beneficial because “then all we’ve done is give our kids a cleaner world.” But what of the trillions of dollars those measures will cost in direct expenditures and diminished economic growth–hence diminished medical research, cultural investment, etc.? Given that Earth is always warming or cooling, what is its proper temperature, and how do you know?
You propose a “cap and trade” system to limit the carbon dioxide that many companies can emit. Is not your idea an energy- rationing proposal akin to Bill Clinton’s BTU tax?
He has more, not related to climate change.