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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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The rot runs deep.

Take a look at this paper. Here's the abstract:

It is incorrect to consider tidal power as renewable energy. Harnessing tidal energy will pose more severe problems than using fossil fuels. This study provides quantitative estimates to show how using tidal energy can destroy the environment in a short amount of time. Tides are induced by the rotation of the Earth with respect to the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The rotational energy of the Earth is naturally dissipated by tides slowly. Consuming tidal energy further reduces the rotational energy, accelerates the energy loss rate, and decelerates the rotation of the Earth. Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 1000 years. As a consequence, one side of the Earth would be exposed to the Sun for a much longer period of time than it is today. The temperature would rise extremely high on that side and drop extremely low on the other side. The environment would become intolerable, and most life on Earth could be wiped out.

Do read the paper. It's not long and it's a good test of one's bullshit detector1. For the impatient: the author assumes a 2% growth rate for humanity's energy use and projects that forward a thousand years.

The paper's isn't that interesting once you spot the trick. But it does bring up two interesting thoughts:

  • If the NYT picked up this story, do you think they'd have the nuance to highlight the shall we say questionable assumptions in this paper? Or would they just blare a giant headline stating "TIDAL POWER WILL KILL US ALL!" (Sub-heading: solar and wind the only way forward...)? Would they even link to the original paper? I think the world's complexity has surpassed the abilities of the average MSM reporter/editor/reader. Even if journalists are perfectly honest and impartial, they are too susceptible to manipulation to be trusted. Barring a drastic change in our media, the information content of the typical news article is now capped at zero.
  • How far can we extrapolate from this example? This guy's apparently a professor at Stanford and apparently he's been teaching there for some time (the paper refers to a grad-level class in 1993). And it's... pretty easy to find garbage papers. Here's another one. For a broader perspective, consider the replication crisis, accounts like this one, and digging back to the ancient year of 2009, Climategate. This is why for example I think Global Warming/Climate Change/etc... is nonsense. That we have the tools to model the Earth's climate at all is (imo) an outlandish claim (it's a complex dynamical system the size of the planet with billions of poorly understood interactions!). That we can project this model forward a hundred years (with all of its many intrinsic dependencies on other complex systems like human civilization) is another outlandish claim. And that we should restructure all of society based on these projections is yet another outlandish claim (with a side-helping of massive conflicts of interests). And at the bottom of it all are people like our dear Dr. Jerry.

1 I suppose this is technically consensus building. If you think the paper's arguments are reasonable, I'd be happy to discuss that as well...

digging back to the ancient year of 2009, Climategate

Am I the only one who finds Moldbug's writing style completely incomprehensible? He rambles on for paragraph after paragraph, smugly self-assured, and at the end of it I come away with literally no idea what he's trying to say. The only thing I'm confident of is that, whatever it is he believes (which is something I am wholly unable to glean from the actual content of what he's written), he thinks it's so self-evident that you'd have to be an utter cretin not to already believe it.

It's an experience not unlike reading TLP/Edward Teach, but at least in that case the incomprehensibility does seem to be deliberate (for whatever reason).

Am I the only one who finds Moldbug's writing style completely incomprehensible? He rambles on for paragraph after paragraph, smugly self-assured, and at the end of it I come away with literally no idea what he's trying to say. The only thing I'm confident of is that, whatever it is he believes (which is something I am wholly unable to glean from the actual content of what he's written), he thinks it's so self-evident that you'd have to be an utter cretin not to already believe it.

No, you are not the only one. I can usually understand what he is getting at, but Moldbug is ridiculously long-winded and meandering. I have found that it is best to just skip the introduction and skim his articles until he starts actually talking about whatever he is talking about, which tends to be several paragraphs in; in the climategate article, I would start reading at "In reality, there’s no way...", then start skimming again whenever he goes on a tangent. Even then I don't often think it's worth the effort; I prefer the dark enlightenment thinkers who write clearly, like Jim and Spandrell.

It's an experience not unlike reading TLP/Edward Teach, but at least in that case the incomprehensibility does seem to be deliberate (for whatever reason).

I've heard it theorized that Moldbug is also being obscurantist on purpose, in order to keep away the riff-raff, but I have no idea if it's true or not.

Well the whole point of political violence is that it's supposed to solve the problem. Now it might fail for any number of reasons - that's not a given. If Nicholas had just rounded up all the Bolsheviks in Russia and shot them, as opposed to playing catch-and-release, it's very reasonable that they wouldn't have been able to overthrow him.

If you talk to your average SS Obergruppenfuhrer or the guy on twitter who thinks they should've hung all the Confederates, they'd say '??? obviously the world would be better if we had full power to wipe out our enemies.'

HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?

Did the Soviet Union die when Lenin died? Stalin? No. Did the PRC collapse when Mao died? North Korea? Party-states usually survive the death of their leader.

The most relevant example for your case would be Franco's Spain, which was in a completely different international situation to a triumphant Nazi Germany. There are people who just assume that it would disintegrate, this meme has made its way into popular culture based on works of fiction like TNO or Man in the High Castle. In actual fact, much of Western Europe was happy enough to collaborate - more French bore arms for the Axis than against it (and much resistance was really just refusal to get deported to Germany to work in arms industry there). Only the Poles, Yugoslavs and Russians fought hard as partisans, many of the other ethnicities of the Soviet Union were ambivalent or somewhat pro-Axis.

Anyway, the Mongol empire lasted about 40 years after Genghis's death, before splitting into four (after considerable further expansion). The Ilkhanate was first to fall and still lasted into the 1330s and 1340s for about an 80 year lifespan.

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