Friday, June 14, 2019

RU OK, Jason?

Gee, Jason, you're sounding a little like a cross between Peter Thiel and Lyndon Larouche with tweets like this:



OK, you and Thiel are half right - there is a uselessness about a lot of new, internet based business ideas which are an extremely wasteful use of capital when there are serious problems - well, mainly one, big, long term, planet wide serious problem - to tackle.   Yeah, the problem that Thiel doesn't even think is really that big a deal. 

But space colonisation and fusion?   Both are so off in the outer limits of do-ability that the technological development to get them to a stage beyond mere experiment is a ridiculously big hurdle.  The only credible fast track path to Mars for decades yet is likely to be via one way death trips.  (Indeed, the trip itself may kill the astronauts, given the hardly resolved problem of adequate radiation shielding.)   Large scale space colonisation is going to have to be a low priority while energy and climate change are cranking up as serious challenges.   (And yeah, I doubt fusion is a useful avenue to pursue - it's the "flying car" of the energy world, with futurists and small start ups telling us for the last 50 or more years that it's always just around the corner of becoming practical.  I don't think anyone takes it seriously anymore as an energy solution.)

And what about this silly claim:



You're not even half right there - in that Isis and Al Qaeda were never plausible threats to Western civilisation.  

So panicking about "woke corporations" being a threat to western civilisation now are we?    I assume your concern is not too much to do with companies pushing around conservatives on gay or transgender rights in the US?   How's that a threat to civilisation, unless you think it has to be one in which toilets have to be strictly gendered and gays shouldn't marry?

So what is it?  That some groups are wanting to divest money from carbon based energy and mining?    What are you upset about with that?   That some people with capital are starting to believe scientists and take action when they governments that are not?    

Here's the thing:  I don't think you have never faced up to the fact that the biggest single movement behind preventing the largest economy in the world (and the Australia one too) from consistently  embracing a proper, capitalist friendly, response to climate change has been libertarianism/small government/small tax advocates.  If it weren't for them, fossil fuel divestment groups would have less to worry about.

To be fretting that "woke capital" is a threat to western civilisation is just silly wankery coming from reading too many conservative publications, and paying attention to eccentric IT billionaires.   

Or come here and justify it.

21 comments:

Not Trampis said...

No-one who has something serious to say would say it on Twitter

Steve said...

Homer, did you notice he has disclosed that blue cheese is his kryptonite? You should keep it in mind if you ever need to defend yourself in public from him - provided you are near a deli or supermarket.

Not Trampis said...

No, Blue cheese?? It isn't even a good combination with red wine

Steve said...

I didn't add into this post another tweet in the series, which I didn't even understand properly (the second sentence):

"Nation states are still the only sustainable guarantors of ordered liberty. Any deviations to accommodate its continued feasibility are necessarily".

Steve said...

Oh, he's mocking Al Gore (or "climate warriors" now. I'd courier deliver some blue cheese to his apartment if only I knew the address.

Steve said...

In the series of tweets, I see Jason is supporting the CIS's turn towards culture war issues. So I drop into Catallaxy only to see a post promoting a CIS event described as this:

"Join Dr Jeremy Sammut and Maurice Newman – former chairman of the Australian Stock Exchange and columnist with The Australian newspaper – as we have a conversation about what can be done to stop corporate political meddling and to ensure that business keeps out of politics.

Major Australian companies are increasingly involved in contentious political debates – such as Indigenous Recognition – that are not the business of business, and are all in the name of what is known as “Corporate Social Responsibility”."

Maurice Newman!!!

Yeah, way for a think tank to build its credibility, Jason.

You up for the IPA's next hosting of Monckton, or Jonova, too? Or has Gina's money run out for that?

Not Trampis said...

Twitter is for those like the late great Mark Colvin who provided a large number of links to those interested or more usually used by sportmen and women, journos, pollies and those in entertainment who use it essentially for advertising.
Soony doesn't fill either criteria. If he had a tenth of the intellect he thinks he has he would write a blog. He would not have to be a regular writer either.
If anything Soony displays all the characteristics of catallaxtyitus.

John said...

Space colonisation is a pipe dream. Look up the research on what is happening to astronauts spending a long time up there. Many strange inexplicable changes there.

I agree about the woke issue. It has become ridiculous. As for the internet thing well that's the free market for you, it never promised you a rose garden. Internet forums are perfectly entitled to exercise their property rights and ban anyone they so choose.


There are many fusion projects happening. That's going to happen so I have no idea what Jason is on about there.

Jason Soon said...

Yep there are, John, the artificial sun project of China for one thing. But I am seriously concerned the west is now falling behind given its PC obsessions and the bread and circuses obsessions of the millenials etc while China gene edits its way into a new superpower

Jason Soon said...

Nuclear fusion is on the horizon certainly contrary to what Steve thinks but may be in the wrong hands https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-15/china-attempts-to-create-an-artificial-sun/10495536

Steve said...

From a 2016 article in Discover:

" The Wendelstein 7-X and EAST reactor experiments were dubbed “breakthroughs,” which is an adjective commonly applied to fusion experiments. Exciting as these examples may be, when considered within the scale of the problem, they are only baby steps. It is clear that it will take more than one, or a dozen, such “breakthroughs” to achieve fusion.

“I don’t think we’re at that place where we know what we need to do in order to get over the threshold,” says Mark Herrmann, director of the National Ignition Facility in California. “We’re still learning what the science is. We may have eliminated some perturbations, but if we eliminate those, is there another thing hiding behind them? And there almost certainly is, and we don’t know how hard that will be to tackle.” "


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/03/23/nuclear-fusion-reactor-research/#.XQNMO4-ubIU

From a recent article at Phys.org:

Radiation damage lowers the melting point of the metal tungsten, an effect that could contribute to material failure in nuclear fusion reactors and other applications where materials are exposed to particle radiation from extremely hot fusion plasma. That's the result of a study, published today in Science Advances, that was led by researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-lowers-potential-fusion-reactor-material.html

A detailed list of radiation problems likely to arise from fusion reactors can be found here:

Fusion Reactors Share Seven Drawbacks of Fission Reactors

https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201610/fusion.cfm

That was apparently written by someone retired from a plasma lab, which perhaps infringes my rule of thumb to pay little attention to anyone over 75, but he seems to know what he's talking about...

My hunch is that no one has any good idea how to deal with the irradiated materials problem from fusion reactors. They might figure out successful long term magnetic confinement well before anyone can figure how you can run a reactor for years without turning the whole thing into a radioactive metal nightmare.

Steve said...

Oh. Here's another article by Jassby, the guy who wrote the last link in my previous comment. Comments following it worth reading too:

https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/

anon said...

Stepford

There’s more than one way to skin a cat as there is more than one way to building nuke reactors.

For a person who advocates propellers on sticks and plastic panels to energise industrial civilisation... you have no business ever talking down to anyone about scientific advances in this field. This is homer Paxton stupid.

Not Trampis said...

This is from JC the genious whom like Soony does not seem to understand the lowest cost operator on electricity is solar PV.

no wonder he is known as Forrest Gump

anon said...

If it’s the lowest cost then why the need for subsidies, you mentally retarded knobhead? There is no place on earth favouring renewballs with low power prices. Remain silent .

Jason Soon said...

As JC has said Homer, this is a serious blog (I'm sure Steve agrees) so let's shape up or ship out

Jason Soon said...

BTW the article by Adam Creighton answers all the questions you have about my views on woke capital, steve. The fact that I may believe particular causes doesn't mean I'm happy for corporations to start enforcing them as conditions of employment

Jason Soon said...

e.g. our friend Homer no doubt has idiotic views on gays but I wouldn't want him fired because of that. for being a general idiot, maybe

Steve said...

So you're talking about threats to Western Civilisation in the context of corporations becoming too politically correct? Your exaggeration is worse than I thought, then...

anon said...

Oh yea, homer. Tell us how your view on gays differs from the rugby player.

GMB said...
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