dagblog - Comments for "World in Collision"

Or never did. In recent

acanuck — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:19:12 +0000

In reply to That's an interesting way of

Or never did. In recent years, I've read a lot of science for fun, to the extent I'd virtually forgotten I ever went through a mystical phase. Until you brought up Velikovsky -- who tried to integrate myth and science, but ended up being a fork in the road instead. Thanks for reminding me that I wandered down one of those paths a fair distance before cutting through the woods to the one I'm now on. I may have turned my back on belief, but not spirituality, which is a key aspect of being human. In passing, Robert Wright's The Evolution of God is a fascinating read.

That's an interesting way of

Donal — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:13:58 +0000

In reply to Thanks, Donal, for

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I never read Velikovsky or von Daniken myself. I read Out of the Silent Planet, but not any of Lewis' Christian epics. I had to read The Teachings of Don Juan and the Communist Manifesto for classes. I did read a lot of Greek, Norse and Indian mythology. I do have an Alan Watts book somewhere. I read Morris, who led me to Tiger and Ardrey, and Elaine Morgan. So I suppose there are a lot of 'beliefs' floating around in my brain that I may or not actually believe anymore.

Thanks, Donal, for

acanuck — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:02:18 +0000

In reply to World in Collision

Thanks, Donal, for highlighting the Heinberg-Velikovsky link. I'd read Velikovsky as a youth, so I tried to wrap my mind around how Heinberg, a disciple of such crackpot theories, could evolve into a respected scientist. (Velikovsky's biblical-historical stuff was innovative and tried hard to be scientific, but his cosmology was pure whackjob.)

Then I recalled that, around the same time in my own life, I'd immersed myself in a now-embarrassing shitload of myth, mysticism and outright religion: the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, I Ching, Tarot and Ouija, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, plus the somewhat more conventional C.S. Lewis, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, The Passover Plot, Last Temptation of Christ, James Churchward's Mu series, and much more I've forgotten about. Looking back, I don't think I "believed" any of it; I just had to absorb it all in order to discard it. (Almost simultaneously, I was reading Marx, Engels and Ayn Rand -- to much the same end.)

I sometimes flatter myself as being the most diehard skeptic on this blog, and I think maybe that's a corollary of being open to entertaining anything as possibly true. While in high school (1960 at the latest), I read about the theory of continental drift and carefully cut the continents of Africa and South America from a map; the edges matched up in a most convincing way. My view of the world changed, and what was especially satisfying was that I, a teenage nerd, had "proven" something that some scientists in the field were still disputing.

Sometimes openness to new ideas yields nothing useful: more recently, I got very enthusiastic about the Siljan Ring and cold fusion experiments. But here's the thing: I didn't "believe" in either. My skepticism and my openness to persuasion are one and the same thing. Scientists need skepticism as a starting point, but I think you can't have one without the other. To get back to the original topic of your post, I suspect maybe Heinberg's association with the crackpot Velikovsky, in an odd way, made him a better scientist than he otherwise might have been.

But science is the child of

Verified Atheist — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:18:05 +0000

In reply to But science is the child of

But science is the child of mythology.

I'll buy that, but it's an adult now, and I do believe it's mostly estranged from its parents. :P As for Creationism, you'll get no brook from me, but re-read what Donal wrote about Venus and Mars above to see what I'm taking exception to (not that Donal is making those claims himself, of course).

Excellent info there Donal!

Beetlejuice — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:23:49 +0000

In reply to World in Collision

Excellent info there Donal! There needs to be more engaging public discussing on the subjects of energy - oil, gas, coal and so forth - as well as food, population, labor and lifestyle, so everyone is aware of the possibilities and consequences their footprint makes along the path the nation is following.

And there needs to be recognition, while most have little choice but to follow the pack, there will be some who, for whatever reason, will break away due to their financial status. Such is life. But the no-man's-land between the haves and have nots is becoming more apparent every day and people need to start learning coping skills necessary to live in a world where they have less to use and implement simply because of the lack of quantity at an affordable price.

What's really interesting is the pull back to the neighborhood within an easy commute to one's work, shopping and recreation. Many livable areas near working environments are are lower quality compared to worker wages. Some industries are miles from population centers depending on the pollution and wastes they generate too. What's not discussed is people will have to live within close proximity to the very people they were avoiding when they moved out to the suburbs. And as we are witnessing today, race is still an issue because urban flight was the alternative option used instead.

But it's also about mindset too. I was in Las Vegas when they decided they needed a light rail route. I was all for providing an elevated rail system to replace the bus system. It would move faster and more efficiently that a bus. And once in the city, smaller people movers could be used to move from the rail hub to central work areas where you could walk the difference. In fact, they could include running a route out to Henderson and Boulder City up to Logandale then back to Las Vegas as well as another loop out to Indian Springs, the Test Site, back to Pahrump then into Las Vegas. Instead, the City decided tourism was far more important than the public who was expected to pick up the bill simply because they felt making the tourists happy was good for business and kept everyone employed.

Also, if urbanizing both work environments and worker habitats is the path chosen, the housing sprawls around and near industries will inhibit if not curtail business opportunity for expansion. Just think about the Las Vegas Strip if one block on either side were residential areas their workers lived in. How about New York City? LA? San Francisco? Chicago?

There's some serious choices to be made in the near future.

But science is the child of

Beetlejuice — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:41:43 +0000

In reply to I've got no problem with Peak

But science is the child of mythology. Alchemy and Astrology just to name a few. Both based on observations and deductions to explain events experienced in daily life. Science came along later to give them both what they were missing...order. Whereas Creationism is nothing more than a make-believe attempt to deny and deceive the obvious all for the sake of a religion itself based on faith rather than principles.

Re: VelikovskyHis story is

LarryH — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:24:49 +0000

In reply to World in Collision

Re: Velikovsky

His story is much more interesting than one might think. His is the story of someone who was not part of formal academia and yet his ideas - imaginative, creative and provocative as they were – caused an uproar in established academe as well as other establishment figures like Asimov. He made a great enemy of the head of the Astronomy Department at Harvard. There is a classic screed against V. written by her for Reader’s Digest in 1951. That is what initially attracted me to him. He was an admitted amateur astronomer and paleontologist but the establishment seemed so threatened by him that they would reach out to attack him. And of course I was reading him in the mid-1960’s when “thinking outside the box” as we say now was so much in vogue. It turned out that V. was correct about a lot of things, like the idea that Jupiter is a sun and not a planet. In the end he made a lot of very useful observations by being willing to imagine other ways of evaluating things and in that he is quite apropos to the discussion of peak oil and a post collapse world. (As always, thanks Donal.)

Venus and Mars are alright

Donal — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:50:45 +0000

In reply to I've got no problem with Peak

Venus and Mars are alright tonight.

Thank you. I think we will

Donal — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:47:10 +0000

In reply to I agree with the assement but

Thank you. I think we will see different responses based on income and resources. Wealthier people will be able to keep driving larger comfortable cars with hybrid engines to get better mileage. They will be able to afford to own in decent neighborhoods that are closer to work. Less wealthy people will have to scramble for smaller cars or public transit, and will probably have to rent closer in.

Florida and Cali exurbs seem to be the worst of the worst for sprawl.

I've got no problem with Peak

Verified Atheist — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:35:49 +0000

In reply to World in Collision

I've got no problem with Peak Oil theories, but Asimov's absolutely right about Venus and Mars, and sometimes you just got call a crack pot a crack pot. You can't base science on mythology, despite mountains of evidence against it (as in creationism), and then expect it to be treated as something not worthy of scorn.