“Assault on Reason” Endangers Democracy (2008)
npr.org
npr.org
He was made into a joke for his climate change documentary (remember ManBearPig?) when now it feels like if we listened 15 years ago we'd be in less of a snake pit.
We really missed the boat in the 60s/70s when the West largely gave up on Nuclear power (which environmentalists are against). Imagine if the West invested in nuclear power to the same level as France did - think of the trillions of tons of CO2 that would not have been emitted into the atmosphere. Maybe it would have bought us an extra 5 decades.
There is nothing we could have done in the early 2000s that we didn't do (and though your comment is very American-centric, the world is bigger than America). The biggest gains we received were when many regions transitioned from coal to natural gas but natural gas was not an economical option before the fracking revolution (which environmentalists are against).
Even now, we don't really have any options to transition from fossil fuels. The best we can do (outside of nuclear, and if geography allows, hydro/geothermal) is to pair natural gas with solar panels and wind mills - but though solar/wind are OK (just OK) with CO2 emissions, they are very hard on the environment because of land-use requirements, production, and disposal. This doesn't take into account other fossil fuel use, like fuel for cargo ships, rockets, and airplanes, and the thousand of products that need petroleum.
By the way, there's a Green party candidate running in Vermont (or Maine) that is against importing hydro power from Quebec. Insanity.
What's crazier still are all those "extinction rebellion" types who oppose it even now because "it's too late now" and "we'll have better storage tech in 5-10 years". It makes absolutely zero sense. What rational mind when faced with an impending existential threat wouldn't take a known good solution over a potentially better solution down the road? At least temporarily if not forever, but but alas we have to let perfection be the enemy of the good. And that's assuming what they want is even achievable or desirable in practice.
I swear half of the "greens" you meet are actually just malthusians in disguise. They don't care what happens to the environment as long as they have theirs, others be dammed.
Agreed. I suspect the people who claim climate change as an existential threat and denounce nuclear because of reasons like nuclear waste, don't really believe climate change is an existential threat.
>types who oppose it even now because "it's too late now"
They aren't wrong about that because we set ourselves a timeframe of 2030-2060 to completely decarbonize. Restarting large-scale nuclear deployment would take decades and wouldn't really fit within that timeframe.
The brutal reality is that we will not decarbonize by 2060 with renewables - so we keep wasting time by not investing in nuclear. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe we will get back on the nuclear wagon, because we live in a world that is still growing in population and per capita energy use and there is nothing as energy dense as nuclear.
I'm also surprised that for all the talk about decarbonizing to fight climate change, there is very little discussion on what we need to do to live with the effects of climate change. It's pretty obvious that no matter what we do, we're not going to be removing the existing carbon from the atmosphere anytime in the next few hundred years.
If rebuilding our nuclear infrastructure was an absolute national priority, the way the moon landing was in the 60s, I don't see a reason why it couldn't be done within a decade plus change (kind of the way COVID-19 has accelerated vaccine development by years because we decided that a COVID vaccine is critical). The problem is that as a society we are not anywhere close to treating nuclear power as a necessity. In fact, the present inertia is to move away from nuclear, with much of new nuclear reactor projects being cancelled, and a number of existing reactors actually closing. There is tepid support for nuclear AT BEST by the public and representatives, and nuclear is still vilified by environmentalist and the fossil fuel lobby (i.e. natural gas companies).
Given that reality, we're looking at decades at best. Basically we need to see renewables through to the end and be convinced that they cannot power a modern economy before there can be any shift.
Government should set a carbon tax, redistribute the proceeds as basic income, and get out of the way. Let industry sort the rest.
What I dont get about this viewpoint is like so you're just gonna sit around while the climate becomes more hostile because it's natural? I mean humans have done a lot to combat nature and bent the world to their comfort for a lot less.
This means reductions can only bring a short delay, they can’t stop global warming.
At this point it’s getting warmer mostly because it’s getting warmer.
https://youtu.be/ZaqaPGw24_c?t=8
And look what mask nazis we all have become.
Science is a LIAR sometimes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFPtjXFfczM
All one has to do is to decide that they hate "climate activists" - humans are fallible, so it's not hard to find reasons to hate every single one of them, be it Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, or Michael Mann.
https://i.imgur.com/SXA5sEo.jpg
Miami and Fort Lauderdale should be completely destroyed today according to his predictions. In order to boost his investments and become richer he was predicting catastrophic issues that clearly never happened.
He now has become a symbol of anti-climate change arguments and he has done more harm than good.
Well that didn't happen, nor even close.
20+ years of cultural commentators, the Oscars, and show ratings suggest that you're wrong. Stone + Parker may be assholes, but they are insightful assholes, performing the much-needed task of holding our noses to the shit we left behind
"Insightful" about how people respond to messages in the same sense that a successful demagogue is, except that they are playing on "easy mode" where they don't have to produce results of their own to be judged by -- or even, in classic demagogic fashion, to distract from by attacking some other target -- sure, they are definitely that kind of insightful.
Insightful beyond that...well, none of the evidence you point to is explained any better by adding that additional assumption.
They don't hold peoples noses to the shit left behind, they are just masters of the clever juxtaposition of the cheap, easy, shallow (mostly recycled, but for the juxtapositions) attacks.
They are also good at crafting amusing stories, and welding the shallow attacks into the stories as a delivery vehicle. So I'm not saying that they aren't talented, just that the talent has nothing to do with any substantive insight regarding the substance of their targets. Actually, I think they'd be a lot less successful at what they do if they didn't have an absolute and total lack of interest in substance, which would be a distraction from the cheap, easy bomb-throwing.
EDIT: Rereading that, it sounds more hostile than I would like. I mean, South Park is great entertainment, there's certainly value to periodic, momentary escape into the kind of cheerful,shallow nihilism it wallows in. My wife and I had Stan and Wendy figurines on our wedding cake. I'm not anti-Stone/Parker, just against the idea that their work is insightful social commentary. Not only is it not, and not only is that central to its success, but, to the extent it is (personally, to me, and arguably socially) valuable, that's also central to its value. Its not intellectually stimulating, enlightening, or insightful, its an escape from being intellectually "on" at all.
Charlie Chaplin was didn't exactly delve into ideology.
'PC Principal' is a brilliant satirization.
They skewered the sometimes insufferable Tom Cruise because everyone else has to 'fall in line' to the inside censorship and only they had the courage to just 'have a go'.
The bubble they've created for themselves where they can now get away with just about everything is otherwise non-existent in the industry.
Yes, that's the genre they operate in, which I thought goes without saying.
No, that's no part of what I was trying to describe.
> it's cutting and intelligent not because of the depth of their understanding of some issue, but their willingness to offer characters and comedy around simple ideas and perspectives others dare not broach.
It's clever in presentation more than “intelligent”, and, no, almost none of it is around “ideas and perspectives others dare not broach”.
+ Mickey Mouse as a totalitarian fascist? You couldn't breathe this outside of a writers room, anywhere, and yet, it's something that probably a lot of people, even within the industry, absolutely love.
+ Walmart as a cultural monster, devouring society? Possibly not an unpopular idea, but definitely not one that anyone can do, because Walmart represents too much advertising power. Many of us hate Walmart, so where's the Walmart skits on SNL? There are none, because they're shills. SNL literally exists to sell Walmart ads.
+ Very simple articulation of how China is able to suppress and censor American businesses? Nobody in entertainment will touch this. Hollywood exists to sell films, and China will eventually be their biggest market.
+ Insufferable WholeFoods/hipster gentrification culture?
+ Jesus snorting cocaine, depictions of Mohamed?
+ Wrestlers as posing, effect actors, ultra authoritarian 'PC Bro' culture, Japanese businessmen deferring to the 'large penises' of American businessmen for social favour, a 'Token' Black character ...
Most of it is completely inane obviously, but the whole thing exists to satire/make light commonly accepted norms with insufferable artifacts, or to give air to the the issues nobody can talk about. That's what makes it funny.
'Man Bear Pig' was probably wrong and not in a good way, so they did another show about it ... which is great ... but really who cares? It was funny at the time.
A lot of folks object to the characters they write, or the cheapness of the animation, but I don't think that South Park would be the success it is without either of those things. It's crudeness attracts a lot of the counterculture types unafraid to go against mores, who I think are naturally more receptive to a given episode's themes.
Stone + Parker have made it very clear that most episodes start out as a joke. But then, so do most comedians' routines. And comedians almost never need or want to explain the nature or thought process behind their jokes, because all that reasoning is encoded within the joke itself. That is part of why I think they are so insightful -- that they can form elegant, meaningful commentary on previously untouchable subject matter, using such crude tools, and get away with it. For 20 years and counting.
Who else can do that? George Carlin, and I'd maybe add Stephen Colbert and Dave Chapelle if their careers as political or social satirists hadn't effectively ended the way they did. In any case that's a pretty small club to be a part of.
Not every episode should be held to such lofty standards, of course, and I am definitely not enjoying it as much as before they started serializing everything. But overall the show has given me words and a perspective to start to think about dozens of social and cultural issues long before they came up elsewhere in my life.
South Park never does this. They just make fun of people or current trends in society, without evaluating them morally. They are more drastic, but never claim moral superiority.
Also, entertainment is both plural and singular jb. Like sheep.
In this regard you are opposed to David Foster Wallace and therefore, obviously, wrong.
They are literally one of the only entities in the US to point-blank take on Chinese censorship.
They are comedians, not Scientists, they're allowed to step out of bounds and be 'wrong' that's the point - it's not even about 'right or wrong' for gosh sakes.
Anyone taking literal social cues from an antagonizing cartoon is going to be led astray.
The 'Assault on Reason' is coming from a lot of angles these days.
Do you wonder why people on talk shows, on the news in interviews, never say anything bad about anyone, never have an opinion, never critique - unless it's political? - because they risk being ignored, losing out on the next deal, upsetting a director/producer/exec/casting agent on the creative side, or advertisers (very powerful) on the business side.
Count how many people will mock Tom Cruise, Scientology, China, Hollywood - or more poignantly almost corporate brand etc. - none really - it's to expensive to one's career.
How often has SNL mocked Google, Apple, Tesla, Ford or any major corporations (or their products) in an edgy, satirical way? Never. It doesn't happen because it's censored for obvious business reasons.
How many SNL or other comedy skits have you seen over all the massive rape allegations concerning Hollywood figures? Nobody is going to touch that because they're all in the 'same industry' - it's socially toxic.
There are zero shows on Television today which aggressively take risks for the sake of 'comedy' - it's almost sad that it's getting kind of old and there's nobody to hand the torch too.
Parker and Stone have carved out for themselves an amazing 'safe bubble' years ago - they basically took a stand and said 'we will say anything' and didn't care which bridges they burned. Weirdly it became 'accepted' for them to court controversy within the walls of their show.
Sacha Cohen does some really outrageous stuff, but it's politically very safe.
South Park as a vehicle is stale, it was 10 years ago, but that it's legit satire, and one of the only sources of it, is why it's still around.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Results-Paper-Berkele...
This paper confirmed the warming trend and came from someone who was a somewhat skeptical outsider to the climatology field. Author Richard Muller wrote in 2011:
When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.
Its publication helped to separate actual scientific skeptics of anthropogenic global warming from dogmatic contrarians. Warming "skeptic" Anthony Watts, for example, said that he would accept whatever results came out of the BEST group, regardless of whether it confirmed his premise. After the BEST results confirmed mainstream climatology, he dismissed them as flawed.
How unusual is our climate change in a geological time frame?
He was made into a joke long before that ( lock box ) because he was a joke. And his climate change "documentary" was nonsense. All he did was use his name recognition to peddle a documentary to make himself a shitload of money.
> when now it feels like if we listened 15 years ago we'd be in less of a snake pit.
We did listen. That's the problem.
If you want a good laugh, go watch the Inconvenient Truth. Then go watch Moore's "Human Planet" and see what al gore had been up to since his documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuHxL5FD5U&feature=emb_logo
The downside of TV's big fantasy is that it's just a fantasy. As a special treat, my escape from the limits of genuine experience is neato. As my steady diet, though, it can't help but render my own reality less attractive, render me less fit to make the most of it, and render me dependent on the device that affords escape from just what my escapism makes unpleasant.
[...]
My real dependency is on the fantasies and the images that enable them, and thus on any technology that can make images fantastic. Make no mistake. We are dependent on image-technology; and the better the tech, the harder we're hooked.
[...]
An exponential surge in the mass of televisual images, and a commensurate increase in my ability to cut, paste, magnify, and combine them to suit my own fancy, can do nothing but render my interactive [telecomputer] a more powerful enhancer and enabler of fantasy. [...] . Insights and guides to human value used to be among literature's jobs, didn't they? But then who's going to want to take such stuff seriously in ecstatic post-TV life, with Kim Basinger waiting to be interacted with?
[a] Source: "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell, 1946: https://archive.org/details/PoliticsAndTheEnglishLanguage
The names they know are Greta thernberg and Al Gore.
How can you know what 2+2 equals if your source of reason is the media and not science.
A few reactions.
(1) How do you even know this? This is not even a verifiable claim, it's just a derisive comment.
(2) Additionally, it is an elementary logical fallacy. "I claim the other side is not sufficiently educated about X, therefore X is not true."
(3) In this case, many sources in "the media" (your term, and again, a derisive and non-specific term, like your earlier "most people") are broadly correct. That is: serious assessments like the National Climate Assessment [1], summarizing the current state of the science, substantiate that there will be many varied and serious impacts of climate change.
[1] NCA: https://nca2018.globalchange.gov
We don’t however need science or such federated rationality to tell us what 2+2 is, rather why 1+3 in floating point is not 4,
https://www.exploringbinary.com/floating-point-questions-are...
Just wanted to say thanks for putting a name to this concept I've been thinking about for a while. Federated Trust, that's great.
If one wants to apply the tin-foil hat theory that climate change is a product of the media industry, then one should also consider that claiming that science debunked climate change would also bring eyeballs. The fact that the mainstream media as well as independents universally report on climate change being true (vs say the effects of various foods on weight loss) should say something about the underlying scientific consensus.
Source?
Neither have most people who are championing it though.
Experts are quit often wrong. Outsourcing your thinking to them blindly seems intellecuallty lazy in my opinion.
If the reason to believe proposition P is that the experts who study this thing say it, most people believe P. That people with obvious non-scientific motives to assert !P do assert !P is not considered evidence of scientific controversy but rather of the non-scientific motives that were obvious in the first place.
I have no motives other than disliking this idea that experts are these angels of truth that should blindly be followed.
All that said, I'm pro-computers because I've got enough familiarity to know it's not a terrible idea and I know that some smart people are intimately involved with computers and so I trust it to all work out.
I am similarly unfamiliar with specific climate studies but trust that climate change is a real issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not going to start calling out a climate denier at a party with specific points of relevance because I don't have a solid grasp of things and, honestly, don't tend to do that at parties - but I'll still look on with judgement at climate deniers as I'm firmly of the opinion (based on popular science) that they're making baseless claims.
I'd love to see a climate wiki that compiled studies / charts / resources for people to actually read the literature - vs the hysterics of the media.
My point is that blindly trusting in the infallibility of experts without thinking for yourself is intellectually lazy.
Whether one believes in climate change or not, they should look at the data for themselves and make up their own mind.
It's not a simple set of facts that scientists discover and move on.
There's ton's of questionable ideas even in the most accepted theories.
For example:
1.Massive leaps in Evolution: "theres no use for half a wing"
2.no one understands how gravity works only how it behaves
3.the source of climate change is pretty speculative due to the fact that it's true that there are indeed massive natural historic temp shifts
5.Scientists don't even understand the folding process of how the DNA fits into a cell.
So science is one large evolving conspiracy theory.
If you think deeply about how little even the smartest monkeys on earth truly know about the universe it will definitly put you into a psych ward.
Blood & Gore come across very poorly as cynical green capitalists in this 2020 documentary.
https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE?t=4219 The profit motive
Generation investment management/ Blood and Gore https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE?t=4650
Reason is the intoxicating brew that lends credibility to all kinds of quak medicine.
Reason has let theologians fabricate cathedrals in sky and then consecrate them with the blood of thousands.
Reason without the guide posts of empiricism is as deceitful as mysticism maybe moreso.