Overton

A janela de Overton é um conceito da ciência política, introduzido por Joseph P. Overton, que descreve um facto social inescapável: os conceitos considerados aceitáveis para serem discutidos publicamente são muito limitados. Esta janela altera-se com o tempo, reciclando, esquecendo, introduzindo termos e ideias, soluções. Por exemplo, no século XIX era possível falar publicamente de políticas raciais ou de eugenia, mas agora seria equivalente a um suicídio político (ao ponto do corrector automático não conhecer a palavra eugenia e sugerir-me 'Eugénia'). Como exemplo inverso temos o casamento homossexual, algo aceitável para discussão hoje em dia, mas mesmo o mais racional, coerente e influente dos pensadores liberais de há 100 anos jamais ousaria discutir o tema em público. Não é certo que a janela se alargue com os anos, mesmo imaginando possível uma qualquer métrica. A única certeza empírica é a janela ser limitada. 

O transformar da opinião pública para que certas ideias passem de impensáveis para radicais, de radicais para aceitáveis, e finalmente de aceitáveis para essenciais, é um papel social da maior importância. É um caminho percorrido por inúmeras pessoas ao longo dos séculos, desde filósofos e políticos a outros agentes sociais. Os direitos humanos, a igualdade das mulheres, a abolição, a separação da Igreja e do Estado, a liberdade de expressão, o trabalho infantil, a independência da Justiça, todos elas consideradas ideias impensáveis algures no passado. Devemos muito a todos os que lutaram e sofreram as consequências para nos legar estas subtis mas críticas heranças. 

A minha opinião é que existe um problema muitíssimo grave com a actual janela de Overton. A civilização globalizada caminha para uma mudança radical, talvez inédita, mas não é possível abordar certos tipos de solução por políticos e outras figuras públicas que prezem a sua reputação. Esta mudança deriva de estarmos a atingir uma série de limites físicos do nosso planeta. Limites energéticos, sobre-população, o colapso de um sistema financeiro de natureza exponencial, uma pressão intolerável sobre o ecossistema. O tema do ecossistema é abordável mas não o é um certo tipo de raciocínio que aponta à sua resolução. Não é admissível explicitar a ligação integral entre o ecossistema planetário e a economia global. Não é possível admitir que o crescimento -- actualmente um conceito sacralizado -- possa ser negativo à economia e à sociedade, que é possível pensar políticas baseadas na estabilização da produção global (a steady-state economics) e não no crescimento infinito. Igualmente, não pertence à janela de Overton o constatar que todas estas questões estão relacionadas, e que os problemas económicos do Ocidente podem ser meros sintomas iniciais dos limites que estão a ser atingidos. 

Um exemplo particularmente difícil: será inevitável discutir a limitação do número de carros privados existentes. Estes são responsáveis pela maior parte dos cerca de 80% do consumo de petróleo mundial que é dedicado aos transportes rodoviários. A médio prazo (talvez 10, talvez 20 anos) este consumo crescente colocará em perigo o uso do petróleo (de extracção barata) para uma actividade à qual não existe alternativa: a aviação. Mas que político arriscaria informar a população que será preciso mudar a forma de nos deslocarmos para acomodar uma diminuição progressiva e a eventual proibição do uso de automóveis daqui a uma geração? A resposta é simples: ninguém. Este é um tipo de discussão que está totalmente fora da janela de Overton. O perigo é que se, e quando, este assunto entrar na discussão pública, a maior parte do combustível barato disponível estará já demasiado perto da exaustão. A partir daí o combustível da aviação ficará dependente de fontes fósseis muito mais caras, o que implicará o colapso do mercado aéreo para níveis de décadas atrás, pelo preço que os bilhetes atingirão para acomodar o preço do combustível. Poderá isto não acontecer? É possível. É possível que ocorra algum desenvolvimento tecnológico -- que os últimos 50 anos de investimento das companhias petrolíferas foram incapazes de conseguir -- e nos inundem de algum novo tipo de petróleo economicamente competitivo*. Mas não é provável. E no entanto, a probabilidade deste evento ocorrer é, literalmente, indiscutível.

* O pico de produção de petróleo convencional ocorreu por volta de 2006. [World Energy Outlook 2010, Key Graphs, p.7]

• João Neto: Do you think math concepts exist independently of persons (aka, mathematical platonism)?
• Alexander Nikitin: Define 'exist'. --- 
• JN: Well, I overload the word 'exist' with two meanings: (i) existence independently of persons (let's call it exist-1) and, (ii) existence due to persons (exist-2). It's the separation of Maps and the Territory. 
• AN: You can argue that only mind exist. Everything else are just ideas in your mind. Then you have an idea of natural numbers in your head. And you have an idea of a set of axioms and deduction rules that define your space of natural numbers. Then you start doing different things with your natural numbers following the rules and you find that the space has a structure and properties that depend on those axioms and rules only and nothing else in your mind. Your mind can do whatever it wants. It can have any other ideas, feelings and states, but whenever it follows the axioms and rules it always gets the same results. Does that mean that there is something that exists independently of your mind? 
• JN:  But there is evidence against solipsism: we have lots of data from our senses and tech extensions. And my mind cannot do whatever it wants, especially when I'm driving :-) We are more than one human, why would one single mind be special? And if we assume two or more minds (a belief that literally every one follows) then how could we explain the coincidence of sense data? The belief that 'only mind exist' does not help us at all, it dissolves everything and give us nothing. 
• AN: If you believe that the 'real' world exists and math is just an artifact of human brain activity. Then notice several things: (1) You can define a mathematical system as purely abstract and symbolical without any attempts to model anything 'real'. You can even ask a computer to generate a random set of symbols, axioms and rules for you to exclude any 'subconscious' mapping to anything real; (2) You can give that math system to any other people and/or computers and notice that if they follow the rules they always get the same results regardless of the properties of their minds; (3) If you eventually manage to map your system to something 'real' you will notice another strange thing: the results of physical experiments will always follow predictions derived from the system once the mapping has been established, but it NEVER work in the opposite direction - physical results NEVER disprove any conclusions derived from the axioms and rules of the math system. They can prove that the mapping was wrong, but they can't 'bend' the 'truths' of the math system. As we see math is self-sufficient. Substrate independent. And physics always follows math. Then what is more 'real'? 
• JN: The first and second point also work for board games. And games can be formalized as math objects. However, defending that, say, Chess exist-0 is a very strange assertion for me. I don't see the relevance of the third point. Some math mappings are adequate to formalize scientific models (since there are infinite mathematical models, only a vanishing part of them are really useful). And, sure, enough counter-evidence can cancel the previous adequacy between model and data. So what? Why would we want to use data to bend Math? We just try to find or create another Math model that does the trick. They are tools just like anything else. We use many maps/models. We could imagine a spectrum from totally objective to totally subjective. Humans developed a discipline to deal with those at the objective extreme of that spectrum and called it Math (Physics, which is just another family of models, is a close neighbor). 
• AN: The third point is important because it tells us that math is not just a map. It has predictive power. A map doesn't give you more information than you already know from your 'real' data. It shows you only that part of the territory which you already have experienced. Once you get mathematical model you instantly know everything about your territory. All human engineering is based on this idea. Every day we build bridges, planes, skyscrapers - 'real' objects that never existed before - and we can do it successfully because we rely on the empirical fact that once we get the math right we can be sure that the 'real' system's behaviour will follow the math. Our experience tells us that the 'real' world is not random. It follows certain rules. That means that the rules exist. The rules are abstract concepts they are not a part of the physical world because they define it. So if you believe that the world is not random then you should accept that abstract concepts can exist independently of anything in the 'real' world. I asked you to define 'exist' in the beginning because abstract concepts don't exist in the same sense as 'real' things. We can not put them in any specific place and point in time. They exist outside of space-time. I think I was not clear from the beginning. My view is not just that abstract mathematical objects exist. My belief is that mathematics is the only thing that exists. Our 'real' world is just one of all possible mathematical systems that has 'self-aware' objects that precept their environment as 'real'. That's all. 
• JN: When you say that the fundamental basis is Math, the only thing that exists, and outside space-time, you are putting yourself into a position that cannot be settled by evidence. Which is not unreasonable since we are talking metaphysics. I recently already read similar arguments from people like Bill Taylor, Massimo Pigliucci or Steve Landsburg (all quite clever chaps). I think we cannot possible breach the abyss between the Territory and the Map (for me, we are entirely Map denizens). I just don't like positions which are 100% argument and 0% evidence. So, I try to minimize my own 100% argument beliefs: I don't assume anything from the Territory except that it generates events. And that's because we are able to measure those events (these are partial measures due to the limitations of our sense apparatus). These events, as you said, do have some regularities that we adapt ourselves to them by customs and culture, and formalize some into scientific laws. Why there are regularities? I don't know. Nobody knows (anyway, as far as we know people would be impossible in a more random universe). It's a bit like Hume's guillotine for ethics, there's an ontological guillotine between existence-0 and existence-1. I would bet that no one will ever cross it (in fact, from my position, that does not even make sense). Now, when you say: "Our experience tells us that the 'real' world is not random. It follows certain rules. That means that the rules exist." I think you are falling into Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (aka as ET Jayne's Mind Projection Fallacy). Rules imho only exist-1 in our minds. Perhaps using a less objective example, I can explain it better: humans share lots of cognitive bias. We can extract rules from well-made psychological studies. But we don't assume that these rules exist outside its scientific context. For me, the same happens with electrons, QM, etc. I see some wisdom in the "Shut Up and Calculate" attitude. In this case, we can only appreciate each other arguments. At the end of the day, we are confronting aesthetic positions not truly empirical ones.

Speech and Violence

The differences between speech and violence are not the differences between words and acts, or between good and evil.

Some speech promotes violence, like teaching xenophobia or religious intolerance. Some violence protects speech, like the lawful actions of the police in a free society. The line between speech and violence is too blurry, they overlap too much on each other. Why can't someone publicly deny historical or scientific facts? Why can't religious people verbally express their emotions against heresy? This is not about spreading false personal accusations (like defamation) or taking advantage of someone's name or work (like plagiarism or fraud). The argument is symmetric: there should be nothing wrong about denying or showing disrespect about beliefs or to argue how unfounded are certain system of ideas. For example, it is wrong for a society to apply violence or censorship to the ones exposing Homeopathy for what it is (a placebo) and it is also wrong for the same society to prohibit the expression of homeopathic ideas (which is not the same as allowing people to sell homeopathic products branded as medicine, which they are not, but that is a matter of fraud, not a matter of free-speech).

One role of the state is to protect its citizens. The state will always classify and restrict variants of violence and speech. In the category of 'violent speech' it is common to find notions like libel, slander, obscenity, hate speech, blasphemy, incitement. Each society adapts the broadness of this category, but we will not find a society that dismiss the idea entirely. And this is because speech can be violent and every feasible society always restricts violence one way or the other. 

The focus should be in the discourse's subject. Is it about people, communities, specific individuals, or is it about ideas, opinions, beliefs? People have rights, ideas do not. No one owns an idea, no person 'is' one. Every criticism over an idea should never be interpreted as violence against its believers, even if they see it that way. There’s no right to not be offended. On the other hand, a verbal and personal attack can be interpreted as a violent act, just like a punch. Only the latter, not the former, should concern the judicial system. This is the difference between blasphemy and hate speech, between mocking ideas and defaming communities. Religions are systems of ideas and rituals. A religion has followers but it is not them. The same goes with Ideologies or Corporations. All systems of belief should and must be open to criticism. Every free society that gives them protective status walks a messy and dangerous path. People are, by definition, worthy of respect. Beliefs must strive to be.

Modelos

What is a random variable? That’s easy. It’s a measurable function on a probability space. What’s a probability space? Easy too. It’s a measure space such that the measure of the entire space is 1. 

Probability theory avoids defining randomness by working with abstractions like random variables. This is actually a very sensible approach and not mere legerdemain. Mathematicians can prove theorems about probability and leave the interpretation of the results to others. 

As far as applications are concerned, it often doesn’t matter whether something is random in some metaphysical sense. The right question isn’t “is this system random?” but rather “is it useful to model this system as random?” Many systems that no one believes are random can still be profitably modeled as if they were random. 

Probability models are just another class of mathematical models. Modeling deterministic systems using random variables should be no more shocking than, for example, modeling discrete things as continuous. For example, cars come in discrete units, and they certainly are not fluids. But sometimes it’s useful to model the flow of traffic as if it were a fluid. (And sometimes it’s not.) 

Random phenomena are studied using computer simulations. And these simulations rely on random number generators, deterministic programs whose output is considered random for practical purposes. This bothers some people who would prefer a “true” source of randomness. Such concerns are usually misplaced. In most cases, replacing a random number generator with some physical source of randomness would not make a detectable difference. The output of the random number generator might even be higher quality since the measurement of the physical source could introduce a bias. John D. Cook 

Mapas

"The central dogma of statistics is that data should be viewed as realizations of random variables. This has been a very fruitful idea, but it has its limits. It’s a reification of the world. And like all reifications, it eventually becomes invisible to those who rely on it." John D. Cook

"Statisticians can get awfully uptight about numerical approximations. They’ll wring their hands over a numerical routine that’s only good to five or six significant figures but not even blush when they approximate some quantity by averaging a few hundred random samples. Or they’ll make a dozen gross simplifications in modeling and then squint over whether a p-value is 0.04 or 0.06. The problem is not accuracy but familiarity. We all like to draw a circle around our approximation of reality and distrust anything outside that circle. After a while we forget that our approximations are even approximations." John D. Cook

"A well-made language is no indifferent thing; not to go beyond physics, the unknown man who invented the word heat devoted many generations to error. Heat has been treated as a substance, simply because it was designated by a substantive, and it has been thought indestructible". The Foundations of Science, Henri Poincaré

"[...] in 1980, U.S. federal usury laws, which had previously limited interest to between 7 and 10 percent, were eliminated by act of Congress. Just as the United States had managed to largely get rid of the problem of political corruption by making the bribery of legislators effectively legal (it was redefned as "lobbying"), so the problem of loan-sharking was brushed aside by making real interest rates of 25 percent, so percent, or even in some cases (for instance for payday loans) 120 percent annually, once typical only of organized crime, perfectly legal-and therefore, enforce­ able no longer by just hired goons and the sort of people who place mutilated animals on their victims' doorsteps, but by judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and police." (pg.376) Debt, The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber (2011)

Cartas a Séneca

Encontro-me de costas para os augures. Observo o voo das aves e nada nele vejo. Os pássaros vão atrás uns dos outros, naquelas nuvens que fazem, na confusão e chilrear que aprendemos quando crianças a reconhecer. Ficaram alguns instantes nisto, como treinados, pareceu-me no meu tédio, para demorar certo tempo e não mais. Acabado o exercício voltaram para as toscas casas de madeira de onde os tinham libertados dois jovens no silêncio e com os olhos no chão durante o tempo que este teatro demorou. Paro um pouco a olhar para o mais alto dos dois. A cicatriz geométrica no ombro nu revela a sujeição ao culto, um símbolo que o acompanhará pela vida, reduzida a abrir portas a animais, no passar de utensílios nos sacrifícios, talvez a satisfazer as outras necessidades destes homens espirituais. E antes dele, quantas outras cicatrizes iguais, quantas dedicadas à antiguidade do mistério. O mais velho dos bruxos levantou-se, a encenar uma majestade nos gestos, uma imitação forçada que tanto contrasta com a facilidade natural daqueles que nascem e crescem nas nossas famílias romanas. Seguiu-se a ladainha do costume que enche o jus augurum, premonições e avisos, sentenças com as variações treinadas pela prática. O futuro, os receios vagos e não respondidos do presente, algo do nosso passado conhecido nesta cidade. A minha esposa ouve, com fervor, a leitura dos auspícios, o olhar fixo nos lábios do velho, eu fixo nos dela, o seu querer reduzido perante o culto. Na minha vontade, rápida e fugaz sim porém real, um desejo de ter este desejo, de acolher vontades de um passado que não o nosso. Algo das profundezas do que somos, talvez. Mas de mim visível, apenas eu quase imóvel, a abanar a cabeça levemente a mais esta superstição, apenas e mais outro luxo que suporto. Tanto que foi dito nas linhas vazias e cruzadas daquelas aves. A lembrar-me de alguma coisa pensaria no cruzar que os interesses, as ambições, a fortuna que nos limita uns contra os outros, uns com os outros, tão misteriosas e convolutas, tão caprichosas como os simples desejos de alguns pássaros. Que sinais são estes que precisamos, nós Romanos, ainda reconhecer? E que presságios esperamos encontrar no furtuíto do mundo natural que não encontramos na nossa filosofia? No fim, antes de sairmos, retive a mesma pergunta que raramente partilho, "Onde estão essas vozes que Aquiles, que Odisseus seguiam? As vozes que tanto se preocuparam e escreveram os antigos."

O Pão, não o Circo.

A sociedade é um corpo de corpos a dirigir-se, em tumulto e pandemónio, numa direcção que não sabemos. Para se manter utiliza mecanismos de coesão que lhe garantem continuidade e cujo preço é uma inércia que aprendemos com a idade a amar e odiar. Convenções sociais, ética, comportamentos instituídos e ensinados desde criança, estados de alma e uma grelha de pensamentos apropriados. Uma vasta fábrica de gente. Isto facilita o sentido da acção justa, simplifica a moral vigente, o que se deve fazer ou evitar. Um jogo a justiça. Uma contabilidade de castigos e recompensas, um labirinto de sombras. Nisto o Dr. Spleen observa a vítima, prostada na mesa de cirurgia de um qualquer esqueleto de hospital abandonado. Pensa como tudo isto é reflexo de um corpo humano. O que na pele e sangue é analogia à comunidade? Com que regras jogamos e perdemos? Qual o processo? Como os mecanismos inatos, automáticos, nos levam entre A e B, entre o início e o fim do tempo e da acção. O fim, essa taxa democrática, avizinha-se a todos. Especialmente para alguém, como o padeiro da aldeia, cujo desleixo impensado conduz ao erro e irreversível castigo.

Metáforas

"Humans think metaphorically. Most of our thoughts are built up of more primitive metaphors. Our most atomic metaphors are hard-wired in as a result of where we evolved. One of those hardwired metaphors is something we commonly call 'I.' It's the metaphor of self-as-object." Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By

Ano 2112

Se daqui a cem anos, assumindo que conseguimos evitar o colapso económico e ecológico global, como reagirão as pessoas à sociedade actual? Sendo optimista, listo alguns pontos que os poderiam revoltar:

• A profunda rede de influências entre o poder político e o poder financeiro. Quão forte é a ligação entre as grandes corporações e os governos dos estados que repetidamente passam por cima dos interesses do resto da sociedade.
• As proibições arbitrárias, os crimes sem vítimas, independentemente do impacto social que a sua aplicação provoca. O principal exemplo é a guerra contra as drogas. Outras restrições legais, também de origem religiosa, são os boicotes a direitos individuais como a eutanásia voluntária e à interrupção prematura da gravidez.
• A sangria constante do domínio púlico para satisfazer os interesses parasitas das indústrias de copyright e da legislação actual das patentes.
• A relevância de várias crenças anti-evidência e anti-razão, como a astrologia, as medicinas alternativas, a crença no crescimento ilimitado, o negar do aquecimento global ou da depleção dos recursos físicos da Terra.
• Quão generalizada continua a confusão entre crenças divinas e Ética. Quão aceite é a influência política e pedagógica dos vários líderes religiosos.
• O estado do Estado de Direito. A correlação forte entre riqueza e protecção judicial, e como a legislação é tornada complexa e inacessível para proteger quem pode contratar os melhores advogados. Como os partidos influenciam o ramo legislativo do Estado de forma a criar legislação conveniente.
• O grau de controle editorial e censura dos mass media promovido pelos interesses e compromissos das respectivas estruturas financeiras.

Optimismos...

O outro lado do argumento

"The case for guaranteed mutual benefit in international trade, and hence the reason for leaving it “free”, is based on Ricardo’s comparative advantage argument. A country is supposed to produce the goods that it produces more cheaply relative to other goods, than is the case in other countries. By specializing according to their comparative advantage both trading partners gain, regardless of absolute costs (one country could produce all goods more cheaply, but it would still benefit by specializing in what it produced relatively more cheaply and trading for other goods). This is logical, but like all logical arguments comparative advantage is based on premises. The key premise is that while capital (and other factors) moves freely between industries within a nation, it does not move between nations. If capital could move abroad it would have no reason to be content with a mere comparative advantage at home, but would seek absolute advantage—the absolutely lowest cost of production anywhere in the world. Why not? With free trade the product could be sold anywhere in the world, including the nation the capital just left.  While there are certainly global gains from trade under absolute advantage there is no guarantee of mutual benefit. Some countries could lose.   

Now comes the problem. The IMF preaches free trade based on comparative advantage, and has done so for a long time. More recently the IMF has started preaching the gospel of globalization, which, in addition to free trade, means free capital mobility internationally—exactly what comparative advantage forbids! When confronted with this contradiction the IMF waves its hands, suggests that you might be a xenophobe, and changes the subject.", Herman E Daly,  A Steady-State Economy [pdf]

Capitalismo e Mercados

We are used to thinking of such bureaucratic interventions­ particularly the monopolies and regulations - as state restriction on "the market" - owing to the prevailing prejudice that sees markets as quasi-natural phenomena that emerge by themselves, and governments as having no role other than to squelch or siphon from them. I have repeatedly pointed out how mistaken this is, but China provides a particularly striking example. The Confucian state may have been the world's greatest and most enduring bureaucracy, but it actively pro­moted markets, and as a result, commercial life in China soon became far more sophisticated, and markets more developed, than anywhere else in the world. This despite the fact that Confucian orthodoxy was overtly hostile to merchants and even the profit motive itself. Commercial profit was seen as legitimate only as compensation for the labor that merchants expended in transporting goods from one place to another, but never as fruits of speculation. What this meant in practice was that they were pro-market but anti-capitalist. Again, this seems bizarre, since we're used to assuming that capital­ ism and markets are the same thing, but, as the great French historian Fernand Braude! pointed out, in many ways they could equally well be conceived as opposites. While markets are ways of exchanging goods through the medium of money-historically, ways for those with a surplus of grain to acquire candles and vice versa (in economic shorthand, C-M-C', for commodity-money-other commodity)-capitalism is first and foremost the art of using money to get more money (M-C-M'). Normally, the easiest way to do this is by establishing some kind of formal or de facto monopoly. For this reason, capitalists, whether merchant princes, financiers, or industrialists, invariably try to ally them­selves with political authorities to limit the freedom of the market, so as to make it easier for them to do so. From this perspective, China was for most of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years

O mito da Quimera

A quimera na mitologia Grega era um monstro fêmea, uma mistura de leão, cabra e cobra com um terrível bafo de fogo. Foi morta pelo herói Belerofonte com a ajuda de Pégaso, o cavalo alado.

Nas lendas existem vários animais quiméricos, misturas de dois ou mais animais, como a Esfinge, o Minotauro, os Centauros, as Hárpias... Estas são instâncias mais velhas do mito do herói e do dragão e, elas próprias, ecos de mitos ainda mais antigos. Por exemplo, numa imagem de um tempo Babilónico observamos a luta de uma leão alado com um herói igualmente capaz de voar [1].

Mas qual o significado do mito, para além do óbvio tropo "herói corajoso mata monstro assustador" transformado em cliché por tantos livros, filmes e séries de TV? Ugo Bardi [2] sugere que o mito espelha a perene luta entre a humanidade e a natureza, entre o desejo de uma ordem para a sociedade e o medo do caos incontrolável e desconhecido do mundo selvagem. A relevância deste mito e desta luta, nos dias que correm, é a vitória esmagadora que os Homens estão a infligir ao nomeado «monstro». Só que, ironicamente, precisamos do monstro para sobreviver.  Sem uma ecosfera funcional, a Humanidade arrisca-se a desaparecer. Também Belerofone, o assassino da Quimera, morreu cego, aleijado, miserável.

[1] http://www.unifi.it/surfchem/solid/bardi/chimera/origins.html
[2] http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.pt/2012/06/making-peace-with-our-chimeras.html

Xeque

Muitos historiadores e sociólogos do conhecimento afirmam com segurança que toda pesquisa é tendenciosa. Pergunto-me como esse fato foi descoberto. Não é tautológico ou mesmo autoevidente. Certamente foi preciso investigação -- isto é,pesquisa -- para descobri-lo. Mas na medida em que a pesquisa é tendenciosa, as conclusões a que ela chega não merecem confiança. Assim, essa conclusão, a de que toda pesquisa é tendenciosa, se correta, não tem de merecer confiança. E, naturalmente, se estiver incorreta, então também não merece confiança. Portanto, não merece confiança. Poderia ser verdadeira, mas não podemos ter boas razões para pensar que seja.

 Jarret Leplin, A novel defense of scientific realism; Oxford University Press, 1997. [via Blog da Crítica]

Vendilhões

Se um governo vendesse periodicamente os tesouros nacionais para manter o nível de vida dos cidadãos que representa, a maioria consideraria, com razão, ser este um comportamento irresponsável e insustentável. No entanto, é exactamente isto que fazemos com as nossas reservas energéticas.

A Ideologia do Cancer

"I once heard Paul Ehrlich remark that if an engineer proposed a design for an aircraft with a constantly expanding crew, we would think him mad. And yet, when an economist defends a theory that posits a perpetually growing global economy, he is awarded a Nobel Prize. Notwithstanding that, "perpetual growth" is unknown in the natural world. In the words of the novelist Edward Abbey, "the ideology of constant growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." It is an ideology that leads to the death both of the cancer and its host." - Ernest Partridge 

Encontro com a realidade

"to those who will not have the benefit of two billion years’ accumulated energy reserves"

Podem descarregar o livro aqui. E vão-se preparando: isto não vai ser bonito...

[edit] "At present it’s much cheaper to buy a new microwave, DVD player, or vacuum cleaner than to get a malfunctioning one fixed. That’s crazy. This craziness is partly caused by our tax system, which taxes the labour of the microwave-repair man, and surrounds his business with time-consuming paperwork. He’s doing a good thing, repairing my microwave! – yet the tax system makes it difficult for him to do business. The idea of “greening the tax system” is to move taxes from “goods” like labour, to “bads” like environmental damage. Advocates of environmental tax reform suggest balancing tax cuts on “goods” by equivalent tax increases on “bads,” so that the tax reforms are revenue-neutral." (pg.225)

Vida

One Shot

"It has been often said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ore gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only." Fred Hoyle

Eutanásia e Soylent Green

"[...] All hypocrisy aside [Soylent Green] speaks to another area of future shock that's dear to my heart: the the death with dignity right to die. GREEN has the best assisted suicide scene in all cinema! When Eddie G. can't stand it no more, he heads off to 'Home' - a giant white (air-conditioned!) edifice that draws the shambling old city dwellers in like the light at the end of a filthy smog-encrusted, rat-crowded tunnel. It's no coincidence that once one decides to shuffle off their mortal coil everything becomes suddenly magical and precious. Heston finally cries when he sees the Cinemascope vistas that only the voluntary suicides are allowed access to in the magic chamber. Beforehand, when you enter "Home"; a man and a woman in white flowing robes let you pick the color of the blazing light you want to subsume you in the chamber.

I love that retro-futuristic suicide chamber so much I want to live there! I want to encourage the building of just such a room as a place not just for dying, but tripping... instead of the usual clinical hospital setting where most legally approved medical experiment therapeutic tripping is done. In fact, if you substitute exposed brick for one of the walls and make the screen just a tiny smaller, and put the bed on the floor, it would look a lot like my old apartment!

Most of all I wish my 100 year -old granny could have access to an assisted suicide set-up like that one. They won't let her just die in her nursing home, just because she's fairly healthy for a 100 year old woman... it's just she's bored. She can barely hear or see anymore, and can't walk because of a bad hip, and can't really think straight for long periods... I know she'd at least like to have the option, as she meanders through the years; her own mom died at 107--and the last17 years (!) kind of sucked) the doctors are hovering to make sure she sticks around in this earthly, withered form as long as possible.

It's ironic that our collective denial of death has sealed the doom of this planet and made dying so unpleasant. Western medical science is convinced dying is a violation of our basic human liberties, and they're too busy curing every disease nature can come up with to consider whether they've doomed us all in the process. It's left for hundredth monkeys like me and Chuck Heston to ask the tough questions and make the grisly suggestions." Erich Kuersten

Filosofia

"[...] There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy. The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the first semester of freshman year, in a class taught by Sydney Shoemaker. I learned that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I. But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies. Imagine waking up after such an operation. You have to imagine being two people.

The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. Even a concept as dear to us as I. It took me a while to grasp this, but when I did it was fairly sudden, like someone in the nineteenth century grasping evolution and realizing the story of creation they'd been told as a child was all wrong. [2] Outside of math there's a limit to how far you can push words; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings. Everyday words are inherently imprecise. They work well enough in everyday life that you don't notice. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to. But you can always make them break if you push them far enough.

I would say that this has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central fact of philosophy. Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist." Paul Graham

Questões menores?

"Words like "maximize" or "minimize" are disdained by the great thinkers among us as they are associated with common problems, not ultimate ones. But there are some evils we can minimize or even prevent, regardless of the ultimate origin of evil. I think it is clear that we should emphasize addressing common problems. Perhaps we'll find that when common problems have been resolved the ultimate ones will no longer interest us." Ciceronianus

Origens

"As enunciated by classic thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Mill, liberalism holds that the legitimacy of state authority derives from the state’s ability to protect the individual rights of its citizens and that state power needs to be limited by the adherence to law. One of the fundamental rights to be protected is that of private property; England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 was critical to the development of modern liberalism because it first established the constitutional principle that the state could not legitimately tax its citizens without their consent.

At first, liberalism did not necessarily imply democracy. The Whigs who supported the constitutional settlement of 1689 tended to be the wealthiest property owners in England; the parliament of that period represented less than ten percent of the whole population. Many classic liberals, including Mill, were highly skeptical of the virtues of democracy: they believed that responsible political participation required education and a stake in society -- that is, property ownership. Up through the end of the nineteenth century, the franchise was limited by property and educational requirements in virtually all parts of Europe. Andrew Jackson’s election as U.S. president in 1828 and his subsequent abolition of property requirements for voting, at least for white males, thus marked an important early victory for a more robust democratic principle." Francis Fukuyama

Impotência

"Se uma pessoa decide ir contra os factos da História e contra os factos da Ciência e da Tecnologia, não há muito que possamos fazer por ela. Na maioria dos casos, sinto apenas pena por termos falhado na sua educação" -- Harrison Schmitt

Limites e Influências

[An] ethical theory, explicit belief about right and wrong, is not omnipotent in determining our behavior, but it is influential. Good theories of ethics can encourage us to behave well; bad theories can promote correspondingly unethical behavior. Grounding ethics in reciprocal altruism unduly encourages selfishness; ultimate reliance on social, legal, or religious tradition or authority tends to entrench the oppressive or persecutorial aspects of those institutions; and perhaps most insidiously, denial that there is a rational foundation for ethics exerts influence toward ethical relativism, which tends to imply that any adopted ethical standard is as good as any other—and thence toward ethical nihilism, the doctrine that there is no real distinction between right and wrong. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Definições e Abusos

[A] definition can be anything we choose. But the arbitrariness of definitions doesn’t make truth arbitrary. Rather, it just means that in order to understand which proposition it is whose truth we’re being asked about, we need to know what the words mean. Once again, it is just a matter of pinning down the meaning in order to pin down the truth. [...] whenever something substantive seems to depend on a choice of definition—for example, if whether to take a contemplated action seems to depend on whether the action falls within the scope of some proposed definition of right—we should suspect that a tacit definition is being smuggled in, and a sleight-of-hand substitution of the tacit definition for the explicit one is occurring. Here’s a good diagnostic technique: define some made-up word in place of the familiar one that is being defined, and see what apparent difference that substitution makes. [...] A definition is just an arbitrary association between a symbol and a concept; it has nothing to do with what is true or false about the world. [...] If concepts yielded to our attempts to equate them just by our proclaiming definitions in that manner, then definitions would be like magic spells, capable by their mere incantation of somehow rearranging the substantive facts of the world. Obviously, definitions have no such power. [We need arguments, not definitions] [e.g. ownership] A supporter of libertarian capitalism may argue that you are morally entitled to use your own property for your exclusive benefit, because such entitlement is the very definition of the word own. But by that definition, you have not established that anything is your own until you have (somehow) established that you are morally entitled to use it for your exclusive benefit. However, there is another definition of own that is often implicitly smuggled in—roughly, that if you have obtained an item by purchasing it, inheriting it, building it, and so forth, then you own it. Sleight-of-hand alternation between the explicit and implicit definition creates the illusion of having established that whatever you build, purchase, inherit, and so forth, you are necessarily entitled to use for your exclusive benefit. [You need to argue that the latter implies the former]. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Atribuição

Um modelo científico não é verdadeiro ou falso. Ele pode ser adequado à evidência relevante, passível ou não de estabelecer predições, coerente internamente e ainda, espera-se, compatível com o corpo científico relacionado. É sobre estas propriedades que devemos avaliar um dado modelo, não se ele corresponde à verdade. Qualquer modelo, qualquer conceito dele derivado, qualquer crença estruturada, é uma narrativa, um conjunto de construções cognitivas socialmente construídas e biologicamente limitadas. O mesmo não se pode dizer dos respectivos referentes, aos quais apenas temos impressões indirectas, projecções incompletas sobre os efeitos que produzem. Esta é a componente real que tentamos entender e sobre a qual há pouco a dizer (imagino a epistemologia como um corpo de conhecimento imensamente maior que o da ontologia). E este entendimento é procurado seja através das impressões subjectivas do que é a verdade -- pelo respeito da tradição, pelas diversas convicções colectivamente chamadas fé --, seja através da abordagem empírica e racionalmente crítica que designamos por método científico. Ou, muitas vezes, por uma mistura das duas.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies IV

Collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. The notion that collapse is uniformly a catastrophe is contradicted, moreover, by the present theory. To the extent that collapse is due to declining marginal returns on investment in complexity, it is a economizing process. It occurs when it becomes necessary to restore the marginal return on organizational investment to a more favorable level. [...] In a situation where the marginal utility of still greater complexity would be too low, collapse is a economical alternative.

[...]

Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum. Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration. Where such a competitor does exist there can be no collapse, for the competitor will expand territorially to administer the population left leaderless. Collapse is not the same thing as change of regime. Where peer polities interact collapse will affect all equally, and when it occurs, provided that no outside competitor is powerful enough to absorb all. [...] there are major differences between the current and the ancient worlds that have important implications for collapse. One of these is that the world today is full. That is to say, it is filled by complex societies; these occupy every sector of the globe, except the most desolate. This is a new factor in human history. Complex societies as a whole are a recent and unusual aspect of human life. The current situation, where all societies are so oddly constituted, is unique. [...] There are no power vacuums left today. Every nation is linked to, and influenced by, the major powers, and most are strongly linked with one power bloc or the other. [...] Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies III

Any complex hierarchy must allocate a portion of its resource base to solving the problems of the population it administers, but must also set aside resources to solve problems created by its own existence, and created by virtue of overall societal complexity. Prior to the development of modern welfare states it is likely that these increased administrative costs did little for the population as a whole other than to maintain some semblance of basic needs. And often even that was not accomplished. To maintain growth in complexity, hierarchies levy heavier taxes on their populations. At some point even this yields declining marginal returns. This happens when rates are so high that avoidance increases, and taxation-induced infation erodes the value of the money collected.

Rulers [...] must constantly legitimize their reigns. Legitimizing activities include such things as external defense and internal order, alleviating the effects of local productivity fluctuations, undertaking local development projects, and providing food and entertainment (as in Imperial Rome) for urban masses. In many cases the productivity of these legitimizing investments will decline. Whatever activities a hierarchy undertakes initially to bond a population to itself (providing defense, agricultural development, public works, bread and circuses, and the like) often thereafter become de rigueur, so that further bonding activities are at higher cost, with little or no additional benefit to the hierarchy. [...] The alternative course is to reduce legitimizing activities and increase other means of behavioral control. Yet in such situations, as resources committed to benefits decline, resources committed to control must increase. Although quantitative cost/beneft data for such control systems are rare, it seems reasonable to infer that as the costs of coercion increase, the benefits (in the form of population compliance) probably do not grow proportionately [...] These remarks are not meant to suggest that social evolution carries no benefits, nor that the marginal product of social complexity always declines. The marginal product of any investment declines only after a certain point; prior to that point benefits increase faster than costs. Very often, though, societies do reach a level where continued investment in complexity yields a declining marginal return. At that point the society is investing heavily in an evolutionary course that is becoming less and less productive, where at increased cost it is able to do little more than maintain the status quo.

[...]

For human societies, the best key to continued socioeconomic growth, and to avoiding or circumventing (or at least financing) declines in marginal productivity, is to obtain a new energy subsidy when it becomes apparent that marginal productivity is beginning to drop. Among modern societies this has been accomplished by tapping fossil fuel reserves and the atom. Among societies without the technical springboard necessary for such development, the usual temptation is to acquire an energy subsidy through territorial expansion.