<Thanks for the wild-eyed, manic rant, er, response. It made clear to me how your position is driven by the rational analysis of pure science as opposed to the ignorant emotionalism of the enviros. (g)>
Hang on, there's nothing wrong with emotion. That's the engine room of life. But it's important to steer using brainpower. The envirowackoes are all engine room but not much in the navigation department - heading for the rocks is not a good idea.
Similarly, people who say to keep emotions out of investing are fooling themselves. Emotions are in everything we do and provide the drive. Maintaining good navigation is the important part. Those who think they are keeping their emotions out of investing will find that they aren't, when the chips are down or in thrall to irrational exuberance.
<<Easy. The general public is pig ignorant. If wacko environmentalists make some claim, it's dangerous for a company to oppose them. The wacko environmentalists call for a public boycott. The company only needs to lose 5% of their customers and they are in big trouble for no gain. So, they be quiet and add the silly costs of doing business to their prices. Governments are happy to put the burden on too because if a politician goes against the wackoes, they lose votes, but don't gain a compensating number of votes from people who disagree, because those who disagree don't care about what they see as a trivial issue and are worried about their own interests. >>
<And I thought elaborate, conspiracy scenarios were the province of the goldbugs!<>
That wasn't a conspiracy. People acting individually in their own interests isn't a conspiracy. The effect looks like a conspiracy and that's the way the ideal human world works. That's the basis of democracy - individual interests are more or less aligned for most people [bad luck for the individuals, minorities etc whose interests are subsumed by the majority - negroes were enslaved within a democracy for example].
<<No, the collective decision-making of society doesn't always correct itself. That's a false premise of believers in democracy. Facts and truth are not a matter of popular belief. >>
<How about if I say this: democratic societies will tend to revert to a mean position. I meant “correct” in terms of correcting excesses in one direction or the other.>
Democracy elected Hitler who exterminated Jews. Sometimes democracies don't choose the right thing and they are mean, not that they revert to the mean. The correction came from external forces.
<<Communities which persist in false beliefs are usurped by people who have better beliefs.>>
<Hmmmm. Right thinking people will prevail, huh? Sounds like the talk of a religious extremist. Much like our President Bush saying "god is never neutral.">
Only in the harshest evolutionary sense where DNA survival is what counts. False beliefs are tested by survival and DNA propagation. False means "conflicts with laws of the universe". For example, there are some really basic laws, such as don't walk over cliffs, don't expect Nike shoes to fly you to the spaceship behind comet Hale-Bopp, don't think that kleptocracy will create a strong society, don't think that mystical superstition will lead to the promised land, don't think that correlation is causation, don't think that cannibalism beats ethicism.
<< It's a red in tooth and claw process called evolution. That's why we have big bumps over our eyebrows. The mistaken people didn't get to have their DNA represented in the gene pool. IQ has been selected because it works. >>
<Do you have bumps over your eyebrows? Is this a NZ trait? I seem to be missing them. The obvious implication that this makes me a member of the pig ignorant group has me worried...>
Well, we are all in the ignorant group, but not all in the pig ignorant group [it's an arbitrary division in the pig pen and doesn't mean those of us in the top division have reached the pinnacle of evolution]. By 'bump over eyebrow' I meant the big bulge of your skull. The purpose of that bulge is contain and protect our brains. The purpose of our brains is to learn, think, plan and change things around so we do better than those whose bulges are more chimplike. That's why we got like that. Big bulges won [that's correlation not causation, but you know what I mean].
Google is in the process of replacing our brains, which are simply not up to the job these days. We need extra-somatic memory and some extra-somatic thinking wouldn't go amiss either.
<<As I wrote, facts and truth are not a matter of voting. No, it's not obvious the true answer is unknowable.>>
<Written with the unshakable confidence of someone convinced of mankind’s omniscience. Some of us have our doubts… >
I wouldn't say omniscience. But we certainly beat rocks, trees and chimps and most of us beat the chimpoids of 1,000 years ago. Heck, most of us are way ahead of our grandparents [see the Flynn Effect for worldwide increasing IQs - by standard deviation amounts].
What is knowable is rapidly increasing and has done in leaps and bounds over the last 100 years and especially the last 20 years.
<<Actually, humans haven't always lived for the moment. Mostly we plan well ahead and those who are successful at doing that have been genetically selected. Animals don't plan far ahead - they don't have the brainpower. Humans have been selected for that ability.>>
<Huh? Are these humans the same the pig ignorant people you referred to earlier? Sorry. But I believe you are incorrectly generalizing the behavior of a select minority to the pig ignorant masses. >
I'm not suggesting planning in the 100 year range. Even planning to go to the footie match and buy some beer is planning. Robbing a bank on the way is planning. Chimps have trouble with even that level of planning. Some people, such as Irwin Jacobs, can make very long-term plans [decades long] [long-term being a very relative term closely associated with our puny lifespans].
<<...gorse, box thorn, leeches, hagfish - I wouldn't miss them.>>
<Just so you know, overfishing in Asia has decimated their local hagfish stocks, so it says here:
oceanlink.island.net
Be careful what you wish for...you might miss 'em when they're gone.>
As I was writing my list of species to be exterminated, I was struggling because I'm well aware that getting what one wishes for can result in being hoist by one's own petard [I guess you know that sailing expression - a bit like Midas wishing for gold and everything turned to it and life wasn't as good as he thought it might be].
So I picked on a few minor species which I didn't think would leverage themselves into ecological collapse. The next stop after hagfish is oceanic sediment, so I thought they'd be a safe bet to exterminate. Leeches provide so pretty good anti-coagulants and we are not yet as good as plants and animals at some tricks of the trade. Leeches are good for wound healing [by keeping blood flowing through re-attached bits and pieces, such as an ear, finger etc].
<Actually, they appear to have their redeeming qualities and need nothing so much as a new name to bring them into the same hug-able, love-able category as the panda bear and koala. >
A slime-ball by any other name is still a slime-ball. Here's a slime-ball Sier [Anthony@, not Elena or GG]: Message 17507664
<Imagine what it's going to do for the goliath grouper now that it's dropped it anti-Semitic past:>
When people say anti-Semitic, meaning anti-Jewish, why don't they just say anti-Jewish? Semites used to include those living in that region [Israel region] and I suppose it meant kind of Arab looking.
Anyway, as you saw from my post, the Resource Management Act is suffocating NZ without achieving anything.
Mqurice |
