I don't know whether it's the Cherokee in you that's speaking, or the
American. I suspect the latter. It's not that Americans have been living in
a celestial domain but that you have been so comfortable for the past 70
years that you cannot face reality. Ever since the Bretton Woods conference
in 1944, when America hammered the rest of the world into currency
submission -- that the dollar should be the standard for all the other
currencies -- you have had the rest of the world working for you. Most of
the dollars that America has spent in making war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan and in maintaining hundreds of army bases around the world have
been earned by other countries and, in effect, lodged in America for
American sole use.
Times are a-changing though. Ever since China and Europe started to call
your bluff in 1979 (Deng Xiaoping's reforms) and 1999 (the institution of
the Euro) respectively, reality is beginning to seep through. Well . .
. both China and Western Europe have experienced the reality of
starvation, disease and constant warfare for hundreds of years before
America existed. We're doing so again, as new modern economic realities
intervene. One of the results of this is that foreigners are now longer so
keen to support America by buying your government debt. I'm sure you
appreciate this but, for Americans' sake you ought to start telling this to
Obama who is proving to be as spendthrift as ever. You didn't do so in
Reagan's, Clinton's and Bush's time but the next two years will be your
last chance, I suspect.
KSH
At 12:51 12/09/2010 -0400, you wrote:
You guys are just bound to your lower selves. You need to get into the
celestial part of your minds. The place where all memories are complete
and the future can be passed to the young. That lower self is dark,
mineral, cold and hopeless for a human.
REH
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010 11:58 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Ed Weick
Subject: Re: [Futurework] There's scientific hope yet
Ed,
At 11:18 12/09/2010 -0400, you wrote:
The issue you are raising is partly a moral one, Keith. We currently
spend a lot of wealth on guns and bombs and the kinds of military
equipment that delivers them. We send some of the brightest people we
have off to do battle with and obliterate other very bright people. What
if we shifted all of that money, brains and energy into research in
genetics and particle physics? Even then we might not find the Higgs
boson or resolve the ultimate problem of how we and our universe came to
be, but we'd probably get a lot closer to real answers.
Will we ever be able to make that kind of shift? I doubt it.
I doubt it also -- at least under the present set-up. What I fear -- and
this is a very serious possibility in my view -- is that the present
social divide in advanced countries will widen further and that only a
meta-class (perhaps the top 20% of the population) will actually survive
over a coming period of perhaps two centuries of increasing general
breakdown. All advanced country populations are declining or are at the
point of decline and only a meta-class might have the motivation and
resources to pay for pronatal procedures (in vitro gestation, for example)
that will enable them to keep up their numbers. They might also go in for
breeding in a serious way. This would not be so much along the "designer
babies" route -- it is now realized that our genes are much too complex
for that -- but by a systematic extension of what is beginning to occur
now -- the elimination of harmful gene variations.
What with reaching peak supplies of both fossil fuels and freshwater for
agriculture, I cannot see how countries can save themselves en masse
(never mind pay for particle accelerators!).
Keith
(P.S. I'm sounding more pessimistic than you often say you are!)
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010 4:42 AM
Subject: [Futurework] There's scientific hope yet
Now that we are into an era of austerity -- at least in Europe and at
least for a number of years -- what is the future for CERN (European
Organization for Nuclear Research)? This huge circular particle
accelerator running for miles under the boundary between France and
Switzerland is now due to be moth-balled from 2012 onwards because of its
immense running costs. This is a body-blow to several thousand engineers
and scientists, including many of the best young brains of Europe. From
2013 onwards, if we are realistic, the likelihood is that it will be many
years -- if ever again -- before European governments will be in a
position to support it.
We must also bear in mind another factor which is never talked about. This
is that the cost of particle physics has never appeared in political
manifestos at election times. It has been surreptitiously slid into more
general governmental spending on science education and research. The
proverbial man-in-the-street is vaguely aware that his consumer goods are
due to science, but he would never willingly vote for the immense sums of
money required for further accelerators if they ever began to loom large
in governmental budgets.
The man-in-the-street is potentially as curious as the most dedicated
scientist but his education is so blunted in childhood that he cannot
begin to assess the importance and excitement of particle physics in the
whole scheme of things. Indeed, it is a marvel that the CERN accelerator
has been funded at all, there being hardly a politician or senior
bureaucrat in the whole of Europe who understands anything of basic
science (Angela Merkel of Germany being a notable exception).
But even if the CERN accelerator could have continued, the Higgs boson
discovered, and antimatter atoms created, then one thing is for
certain. Many more questions will have been raised, and the scientists
concerned would have wanted to build an even more powerful accelerator.
This, at the very least, would probably cost several times more than the
present one -- probably more than Europe could afford. It is possible that
one more might be built. If a fantastic scientific breakthrough occurs
during 2011, then perhaps America and China could join the project and
help to build the next accelerator which might have to be the size of
Europe, or the American Mid-West or the Gobi desert.
Subsequently, if all the deep matters of physics are not answered, what
then? An accelerator that runs round the whole Equator? This is a classic
Malthusian problem. Sooner or later, the whole world would not be large
enough, nor governments rich enough, to build the next one. This would not
only be a body-blow to particle physicists, it could be devastating to
scientific enquiry itself.
But never say never. Perhaps all the particles that physicists have
discovered so far, and will discover in the future, are merely
terminological artefacts of our present scientific theories, the principal
one being the Big Bang. Perhaps the universe wasn't created this way.
Perhaps there aren't really such things as sub-atomic particles but
something else that adopts particular appearances according to the
experiments that are applied. Perhaps a different scientific view of
things, different concepts and different theories and experiments will
reveal another way of explaining the overwhelming wonders of the universe.
Perhaps classical experiments in the future -- whatever the current theory
might be -- will have to be held in outer space. If so, then despite
delays, we do have hope for science in the future because the best young
minds in science are not confined to physics alone but also to
evolutionary biology. And we will need this subject if we are ever to go
on prolonged flights or carry out large experiments in outer space. We are
probably going to have to deep-freeze or otherwise maintain human DNA in
good condition for long periods of time. To do this we are going to have
to understand and develop genetics a lot further yet.
And this is already the main growth area of science even though it has
only really come of age since the Human Genome Project in 2003 which blew
several previous ideas of biology shy-high. Biologists are also pursuing
answers to deep questions. "How did Life start?" is the most profound one.
This may turn out to be involving complex issues of a quantum sort that
are quite as deep as those presently pondered by particle physicists.
Although this question only intrigues a minority of the population there
are also some wider ones. "How can we breed better children?" is
something every mother is interested in. "How can we conquer disease?" is
a question that everybody is interested in.
And, of course, the taxpayer will support this avenue of enquiry. So far,
both the professional careerists and the more fanatical believers of
organized religions kick up a lot of trouble from time to time. But the
motivations of potential recipients of genetic manipulation (particularly
mothers of IVF children so far) as well as the scientific curiosity of
professional biologists has been too strong. Politicians and bureaucrats
already know this, of course, and genetics is now quietly slipping through
the legal cracks and developing quite as fast as is possible, limited only
by the quantity and quality of young minds wanting to enter the subject.
Even if some governments were to outlaw or delay particular lines of
enquiry for electoral reasons -- as President George Bush did concerning
stem cells some years ago -- then other governments will allow it to
continue, or even give it much more substantial backing as Singapore and
China are already doing.
Even if science is blocked along the present particle physics avenue then
we have every hope that it will continue along others. And -- who knows?
-- even the "soft" science of biology might one day help to answer the
questions that particle physicists are now asking but can't yet answer.
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
----------
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
<https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework>https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
