Thursday, August 14, 2003

Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference. Let's not start with the fallacy that all conservatives are anti-environment.  It just ain't so.  I'd prefer to believe that they're operating in something of a void of information.  The thing is, we all are.  What do we really believe?  Who do we believe? In an increasingly cynical age, we just decide not to trust anything.  So we end up just trusting ourselves, our own judgements, instead.  That's where we run into some serious problems.  When it comes to things like the environment, you and I know nothing.  I think I know, you think you do, and neither one of us does. There are people who've done a lot of studying.  These climate reports are a good place to start, I suppose.  You can read the executive summaries, and they're fairly scary. The thing is, we are more driven by our sense of "team" than we are by facts on the ground.  And when the facts available to us don't match with our team sense, we start attacking the facts, and attacking the sources.  I think that "sticking to your guns" can show a real lack of character, not strength.  It seems to me that our current administration values their guns above all else.  This environment thing is really troubling to me, because the down side is enormous.  All the politicial issues in the world aren't really all that troubling (although I suppose ultimately everything is political).  If we have a currency collapse in this country, 50 years from now everything will be fine again.  There are a whole host of things that can go wrong and will be repaired by history.  Bloodshed, yes.  Permanence, no. The environment is different.  Right now we're betting that nothing permanent is happening.  We betting that there's nothing we can do that will have an effect on the environment.  We're betting that we're smarter than nature; that we understand a great deal about it.  We are also terrified of a supposed horrible economic destruction that will occur, if we take on environmental issues squarely. I think that the fundamentals of the general right-wing position on these issues are driven by faith and a sense of team, more than facts on the ground.  The general left-wing position is driven by fear, and perceived facts on the ground.  The correct position should be driven by risk assessment.  How much do we really know about how our global climate works?  How much effect are we having on it?  What is an acceptable risk level? What are the real economic consequences of fixing up some of our environmental impact? We don't know.  We don't know who to trust.  We are self-indulgent cynics, sticking to our own guns.  We're not interested in being informed; we'd rather just not be subject to peer pressure, and we'd rather fit in.  Go team. 1:51:42 PM    comment []

Why Do You Believe What You Do? Let's start with the assumption that for most of us, right and left, our political opinions stem from some kind of conviction that we're actually right about it. As I review my own beliefs, I've been wondering why I believe those things. For each opinion, do I have some sort of evidence or fact to back it up? Do I just feel like it's the right thing to do? Somewhere out there is a set of questions that we can answer, where we prod ourselves to reveal why we believe what we do, and then we can start being honest with ourselves. It's a structuring of the unstructured debate we all engage in. I envision some kind of multiple choice, but here's the thing -- me writing the choices just doesn't do any good. I need to find a good conservative who can help me with the choices for the conservative side. They have to be real, and represent true choices and beliefs that conservatives have. Fortunately, I know one such conservative.  This promises to be an interesting matrix of ideas.  The problem is avoiding the "what he said" factor...you don't want to provide someone with predetermined answers that they might not have been otherwise aware of.  The question list is being developed. 10:02:01 AM    comment []