Hacker News Reader

Quote: ‘(Stalin) exterminated an awful lot of non-Russians who had traditionally resisted the central Russian state’

Yes, he did but not because they were non-Russians and the Soviet Union was not a "central Russian state". Stalin’s power was centered in the power of the Communist Party that by design (and ideology) spanned all nationalities.

Quote: ‘The rise of the modern state enabled ideological mass-killing, but that just added another reason to all the other ones - ethnic, religious, colonial conquest, etc.’

Yes, exactly, "ideological mass-killing". Of course there was plenty of other killing all along but I am sure you’d agree that’s irrelevant to the thesis. I assume, of course, you were not trying to say that since people were killing each other before we should not try to understand the causes of 20th century atrocities.

So back to the obvious question:

Who developed the ideas of the ideologies that are at the root of ideological mass-killing?

Just consider your own words (and the ideas behind them). I don’t think you need reeducation. You went straight to the core, quite intuitively.

I think you need to take another look at the connection between western intellectuals and communism. They defended it and, for decades, denied the abuses and murders committed in the Soviet Union and in communist China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

Here's the thing about the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. It rests on the assumption that uniformitarianism (the doctrine that is the basis for the entire science of Geology) is false. It does not attempt to prove this, it merely assumes it. Much like the Young Earth Creationists.

All the CO2 currently sequestered in fossil fuels used to be part of our atmosphere. We know what the climate was like before this happened through fossils, changing sea levels, and evidence of glaciation, all recorded in the rock. The climate has followed a predictable and remarkably constant warming/cooling cycle as far back as we can reliably measure. If the sequestration of CO2 in fossil fuels had an impact, it's below our level of precision.

Could the release of CO2 make a slight difference at the margins? Sure it could. The ice age we've got coming down the pike in a few thousand years could possibly be partially mitigated. But the sackcloth, ashes, and cries of "The End is Nigh! Repent, Ye Sinners!" is stuff and nonsense.

Many of the highest profile advocates of AGW are charlatans. This has been demonstrated time and time again.

Let's take a look at the IPCC report that was so loudly praised by AGW supporters. There are any number of problems with it, but for argument's sake, we'll accept it at face value as the worst-case scenario. It concluded that over the course of several decades that the globe had warmed 0.8 degrees, and stated with 90% confidence that man's influence was responsible for (wait for it) less than one tenth of one degree. That's not a sound basis for wailing and rending of clothes.

Like it or not, CO2 is a trace gas that comprises significantly less than 0.1% of our atmosphere, and will remain so in any realistic projection. Ice cores have shown little or no correlation between CO2 and temperature. AGW proponents state that this will change soon. But this is a statement based upon faith, not one based on evidence.

Of course, I could ramble on at more length about the difficulties in finding an extremely faint signal amongst mind-boggling amounts of noise. The pretense of a precision that does not exist. The claims of knowledge that is not actually known. And the perfidy of the vocal AGW proponents. (The last one is especially fun.) But I don't think I'd be adding much by doing so. All of that is easily addressed with simple search strings.

> All the CO2 currently sequestered in fossil fuels used to be part of our atmosphere.

That's an interesting assertion. I'm not a biologist, but I suspect quite a lot of the carbon in hydrocarbons was locked into other carbon compounds before being taken up by plants and animals.

Consider: the carbonaceous compounds in the shells of mollusks do not come from C02 but from other disolved carbon compounds in the water.

You could just as easily argue that all the carbon in limestone used to be in the atmosphere.

'but you're pinning the mass-murders of the 20th century on "intellectuals"?'

Intellectuals provided the impetus and moral theory for the revolutions, started the revolutions, enabled the continuation of them, and in the non-Communist countries flew active cover for them. We still have intellectuals today like Friedman who fly as much cover for murderous totalitarian regimes as they can; it hasn't even stopped. Intellectuals are yet to give up Marxism, despite what it actually does. It flatters them so, a toxic meme that can only strike the smart.

It wasn't every last person everywhere who might have called themselves an intellectual, but it sure wasn't "the common man" reading Marx and deciding to break out the pitchforks. "I am a barely literate peasant and I demand the immediate centralization of all power into the government so it can be run by the intellectual elite, create a single central bank, eliminate my religion, abolish my private property, remove my means of communication into centralized control of the state, and write glorious Five Year Plans so I can stop farming potatos!" They provided a driving force for change, but the change itself was controlled by intellectuals.

"Intellectuals" may not be solely responsible, but they weren't even remotely innocent, and it is entirely irrational to pretend that intellectual ideas not accompanied by humility and an intense effort made to discover whether those ideas are actually true before making grand pronouncements that move countries have not had massive negative impacts in our world today.

"one of our major political parties and it's major financial backers hate the policy implications of some important scientific conclusions"

I assure you Democrats are equally prone to it. If you think the Democrats have been some great boon to true science it's only because you're a Democrat yourself. As neither Republican nor Democrat, neither political party (emphasis "political") has particularly impressed me with their devotion to scientific truth. Though I will concede the Democrats have done a great deal better job pretending in the past decade, at least inasmuch as it was politically convenient.

And remember perception really matters here. You may refuse to chalk up these actions to "intellectualism" no matter what contortions you have to go through to account only good to its cause and discard the evil, but those of a "simpler, less intellectual" bent won't go through those contortions, and that's not necessarily irrational. It's no great wonder "I'm an intellectual and I'm here to give you the answer!" isn't something that makes an American drop everything to listen.

(And they have done great good, too. One Norman Borlaug can offset an awful lot. But it's not a path to an accurate picture of the intellectual history of the 20th century to take credit for Norman but dance away from, for example, Eugenics, to name just one problematic entirely-intellectual idea, and what it wrought.)