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Ditch Fahrenheit's Journal
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Started by Ditch Fahrenheit,

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Ditch Fahrenheit

Ditch Fahrenheit

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Watched this earlier today. This guy is absolutely spot on.

 

 

I may watch that tomorrow.

 

Does he discuss sexual freedom unconstrained and its effect on the decline of traditional marriage, courtship, and procreation?

 

No...mores are completely excluded from the presentation except for their underlying complexity.

 

Although, come to think about it, family size is discussed as it relates to cost.

 

If he isn't talking about the decline of the American family, size, citizenship, and communal role, he's missing a huge piece of the puzzle, IMO.

 

I imagine it could be woven into his complexity model, since successful civilizations are complex in many ways including complex social structures, but his focus is primarily on energy and wealth. You could tell he wanted to spend more time discussing the decline and collapse of previous civilizations, but there was only so much time available in the lecture.

 

Regardless, it has my interest.

 

Have you seen the Zeitgeist series of documentaries?

 

I don't agree with everything in them, most importantly the underlying philosophical premise, but they are compelling.

 

I haven't seen the Zeitgeist movies. But after Googling them, the content is familiar to me.

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Ogami

Ogami

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Thoughts on the documentary:

 

1. His name is Tainter. 5/5 on :D:D:D:D:D

 

2. His ability as an educator/lecturer: extremely dry and monotonous style and informationally dense, too dense at points, for the audience to appreciate. He should spend more time guiding the material instead of making huge inductive leaps from his data. 2/5 on :blahblah:

 

3. His thesis: all civilizations are in a flux of decline or an increase in terms of productivity and complexity. The goal should be a state of stasis, since ever increasing growth is an impossibility.

 

All complexity gains are factored at a cost of energy. All Capitol, at the end of the day is energy. People, ideas, research and development, morality, society, all at the end of the day boil down to energy costs. Either a civilization HAS the resources to continue to specialize and adapt and commit to R&D, or they do not.

 

Energy is all.

 

2/5 on :eyeroll: Certainly, energy is a HUGE factor in the fall of a civilization, but his evolutionary scientific framework is so rigid and small as to preclude ANY other important factors (anthropology, religion, culture, visionaries, morality, ethics, etc.) as to make his analysis pretty useless in my humble opinion.

 

4. His argument:

 

Fails, ultimately, I'm afraid. "Civilizations need energy to thrive" is a nice bullet point (that took him too long to arrive at) but by completely disregarding human nature, he avoids ANY solutions (he argues there are no EASY solutions, then offers none). And by disregarding human nature and focusing only on energy costs as the sole contributor to rises and falls of civilization, he's effectively dumbing down and oversimplifying very complex social mechanisms ingrained in humans for millennia.

 

Example of arriving at the wrong conclusion from the data: he compares the number of bombers created at the height of WW2 to the number of bombers created at the end of the Cold War as proof that increasing advances in technology MUST lead to decreases in productivity AT increased resource costs, which misses the point that a) we didn't NEED a massive fleet in 1988 to match a bomber fleet of 1948 and b) I'm sure a 1988 bomber is worth many many 1948 bombers.

 

Example of him excluding morality to ONLY discuss energy costs of civilizations. (Man, this guy is a textbook social Darwinist) "the Roman Emperors acted ethically. " in his defense that their only goal should have been to sustain their civilization as that was the purpose.

 

This guy is a pragmatist. He eschews idealism and disregards ethics all to discuss energy exchanges. And in so doing, in my opinion, completely misses the point of why civilizations may or may not be worth saving in the first place, if at all.

 

I have a few more quotes by him, but that's enough.

 

His Q&A was hilarious. Defensive much? lol

 

And the last question was great. The FBI should get a file started on the guy who asked the last question.

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Ditch Fahrenheit

Ditch Fahrenheit

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Thoughts on the documentary:

 

1. His name is Tainter. 5/5 on :D:D:D:D:D

 

2. His ability as an educator/lecturer: extremely dry and monotonous style and informationally dense, too dense at points, for the audience to appreciate. He should spend more time guiding the material instead of making huge inductive leaps from his data. 2/5 on :blahblah:

 

3. His thesis: all civilizations are in a flux of decline or an increase in terms of productivity and complexity. The goal should be a state of stasis, since ever increasing growth is an impossibility.

 

> Growth is a prerequisite for all historical and current economic systems. Cultures in stasis are absorbed, exploited or destroyed by growth cultures - they cannot compete. Ever increasing growth is an impossibility in the long run, and is the ultimate reason why all cultures have eventually failed and another to eventually take its place.

 

All complexity gains are factored at a cost of energy. All Capitol, at the end of the day is energy. People, ideas, research and development, morality, society, all at the end of the day boil down to energy costs. Either a civilization HAS the resources to continue to specialize and adapt and commit to R&D, or they do not.

 

Energy is all.

 

> His thesis is also that ever increasing expenditures of energy are required just to maintain the status quo, and even more to move the chains down the field. The Law of Diminishing Returns, etc.

 

2/5 on :eyeroll: Certainly, energy is a HUGE factor in the fall of a civilization, but his evolutionary scientific framework is so rigid and small as to preclude ANY other important factors (anthropology, religion, culture, visionaries, morality, ethics, etc.) as to make his analysis pretty useless in my humble opinion.

 

> He glossed over this, but I would assume this just falls into cultural complexity and the roles individuals play within the culture.

 

4. His argument:

 

Fails, ultimately, I'm afraid. "Civilizations need energy to thrive" is a nice bullet point (that took him too long to arrive at) but by completely disregarding human nature, he avoids ANY solutions (he argues there are no EASY solutions, then offers none). And by disregarding human nature and focusing only on energy costs as the sole contributor to rises and falls of civilization, he's effectively dumbing down and oversimplifying very complex social mechanisms ingrained in humans for millennia.

 

> Disagree that he fails. He offers no solutions, and this is typical of researchers. I'm just happy to have the data. Energy is just another way to look the problem.

 

Example of arriving at the wrong conclusion from the data: he compares the number of bombers created at the height of WW2 to the number of bombers created at the end of the Cold War as proof that increasing advances in technology MUST lead to decreases in productivity AT increased resource costs, which misses the point that a) we didn't NEED a massive fleet in 1988 to match a bomber fleet of 1948 and b) I'm sure a 1988 bomber is worth many many 1948 bombers.

 

> Totally agree here, it was a bad example. The model should have been targets destroyed, normalized for required targets. Innovation has allowed the development of more efficient bombers, so less are required (quality versus quantity).

 

Example of him excluding morality to ONLY discuss energy costs of civilizations. (Man, this guy is a textbook social Darwinist) "the Roman Emperors acted ethically. " in his defense that their only goal should have been to sustain their civilization as that was the purpose.

 

> In this sense I believe you can exchange ethically with efficiently. They made the correct choices given the problems they were facing, but only delayed the inevitable since they were no longer in a growth culture.

 

This guy is a pragmatist. He eschews idealism and disregards ethics all to discuss energy exchanges. And in so doing, in my opinion, completely misses the point of why civilizations may or may not be worth saving in the first place, if at all.

 

> I know your leanings, and you know mine. :) I'm a Social Darwinist in the sense that I believe history shows that the stronger culture will always usurp the weaker culture. Our current war on terrorism is a perfect example of this - this is a war between two cultures and really isn't much of a contest.

 

I have a few more quotes by him, but that's enough.

 

His Q&A was hilarious. Defensive much? lol

 

And the last question was great. The FBI should get a file started on the guy who asked the last question.

 

So, in summary, I think his analysis is spot on.

 

He offered no solutions, which I'm guessing was not part of his thesis.

 

I actually think the solution is a simple one.

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Ogami

Ogami

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Thoughts on the documentary:

 

1. His name is Tainter. 5/5 on :D:D:D:D:D

 

2. His ability as an educator/lecturer: extremely dry and monotonous style and informationally dense, too dense at points, for the audience to appreciate. He should spend more time guiding the material instead of making huge inductive leaps from his data. 2/5 on :blahblah:

 

3. His thesis: all civilizations are in a flux of decline or an increase in terms of productivity and complexity. The goal should be a state of stasis, since ever increasing growth is an impossibility.

 

> Growth is a prerequisite for all historical and current economic systems. Cultures in stasis are absorbed, exploited or destroyed by growth cultures - they cannot compete. Ever increasing growth is an impossibility in the long run, and is the ultimate reason why all cultures have eventually failed and another to eventually take its place.

 

All complexity gains are factored at a cost of energy. All Capitol, at the end of the day is energy. People, ideas, research and development, morality, society, all at the end of the day boil down to energy costs. Either a civilization HAS the resources to continue to specialize and adapt and commit to R&D, or they do not.

 

Energy is all.

 

> His thesis is also that ever increasing expenditures of energy are required just to maintain the status quo, and even more to move the chains down the field. The Law of Diminishing Returns, etc.

 

2/5 on :eyeroll: Certainly, energy is a HUGE factor in the fall of a civilization, but his evolutionary scientific framework is so rigid and small as to preclude ANY other important factors (anthropology, religion, culture, visionaries, morality, ethics, etc.) as to make his analysis pretty useless in my humble opinion.

 

> He glossed over this, but I would assume this just falls into cultural complexity and the roles individuals play within the culture.

 

4. His argument:

 

Fails, ultimately, I'm afraid. "Civilizations need energy to thrive" is a nice bullet point (that took him too long to arrive at) but by completely disregarding human nature, he avoids ANY solutions (he argues there are no EASY solutions, then offers none). And by disregarding human nature and focusing only on energy costs as the sole contributor to rises and falls of civilization, he's effectively dumbing down and oversimplifying very complex social mechanisms ingrained in humans for millennia.

 

> Disagree that he fails. He offers no solutions, and this is typical of researchers. I'm just happy to have the data. Energy is just another way to look the problem.

 

Example of arriving at the wrong conclusion from the data: he compares the number of bombers created at the height of WW2 to the number of bombers created at the end of the Cold War as proof that increasing advances in technology MUST lead to decreases in productivity AT increased resource costs, which misses the point that a) we didn't NEED a massive fleet in 1988 to match a bomber fleet of 1948 and b) I'm sure a 1988 bomber is worth many many 1948 bombers.

 

> Totally agree here, it was a bad example. The model should have been targets destroyed, normalized for required targets. Innovation has allowed the development of more efficient bombers, so less are required (quality versus quantity).

 

Example of him excluding morality to ONLY discuss energy costs of civilizations. (Man, this guy is a textbook social Darwinist) "the Roman Emperors acted ethically. " in his defense that their only goal should have been to sustain their civilization as that was the purpose.

 

> In this sense I believe you can exchange ethically with efficiently. They made the correct choices given the problems they were facing, but only delayed the inevitable since they were no longer in a growth culture.

 

This guy is a pragmatist. He eschews idealism and disregards ethics all to discuss energy exchanges. And in so doing, in my opinion, completely misses the point of why civilizations may or may not be worth saving in the first place, if at all.

 

> I know your leanings, and you know mine. :) I'm a Social Darwinist in the sense that I believe history shows that the stronger culture will always usurp the weaker culture. Our current war on terrorism is a perfect example of this - this is a war between two cultures and really isn't much of a contest.

 

I have a few more quotes by him, but that's enough.

 

His Q&A was hilarious. Defensive much? lol

 

And the last question was great. The FBI should get a file started on the guy who asked the last question.

 

So, in summary, I think his analysis is spot on.

 

He offered no solutions, which I'm guessing was not part of his thesis.

 

I actually think the solution is a simple one.

 

See, internet trolls?

 

This is how adults disagree agreeably.

 

For you, Shelley. :foryou:

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Ditch Fahrenheit

Ditch Fahrenheit

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See, internet trolls?

 

This is how adults disagree agreeably.

 

For you, Shelley. :foryou:

 

:D

 

When I was a kid I was addicted to Sherlock Holmes and thought that the greatest fun would be as a member of one of those clubs where you sit in a leather chair in front of a fireplace, sipping port, reading the paper, and waiting for one of your friends to come in and engage you in a provocative discussion. :cloud9:

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Ogami

Ogami

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See, internet trolls?

 

This is how adults disagree agreeably.

 

For you, Shelley. :foryou:

 

:D

 

When I was a kid I was addicted to Sherlock Holmes and thought that the greatest fun would be as a member of one of those clubs where you sit in a leather chair in front of a fireplace, sipping port, reading the paper, and waiting for one of your friends to come in and engage you in a provocative discussion. :cloud9:

 

:D

 

Ask Sean how many times I've used that exact same analogy to express that exact same desire.

 

 

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Ogami

Ogami

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PS - We could so easily bring Dune into this discussion right now. lol

 

lol Yeah to bolster your position. :baiting:

 

I prefer the term, 'elucidate.' :)

 

Let's get Tup in here.

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