Models

I see a strong sentiment, especially among youth, of capitalism being the source of our environmental problems. I'm not sure if everyone agrees on what capitalism means. On the scale of the myriad ways thousands of human cultures have lived over hundreds of thousands of years, communism and socialism are pretty close to capitalism, compared to say, how hunting and gathering societies lived. I think most Americans can't imagine an alternative. I don't think the people criticizing it know of many alternatives. The more I read about other cultures, especially outside written history, the more alternatives I see. I view capitalism or any other economic set of ideologies like a technology. I don't see technologies as good or bad. They augment the values of the…

The greenhouse effect was front page news in the 1980s and known long before. Plus plastic, mercury, deforestation, extinctions, and you've read the front page. You know the problems. We don't just not act. We tell ourselves lies that we'll solve the problem. We've told ourselves lie after lie, scam after scam, to keep from changing our behavior. The Scams The following are all scams that delay acting. None of them will solve our environmental problems. When you hear them, someone or some industry is benefiting from the current polluting system and wants to maintain it. Only changing the system will change the system, not changing parts. The hydrogen economyTelling ourselves "Future generations will solve what we messed up"RecyclingThe closed loop economy (or circular economy)Green…

Martin Seligman is known as the father of positive psychology. In his words, "when I started, psychology was all about fear, conflict, struggle, and competition. I was part of movement that changed it to be also about meaning, control, love, engagement, accomplishment, success, and hope." He started that change by chance. In 1967, studying depression and responses to challenges, he discovered an unexpected result in dogs. He had administered an electric shock at random times to different groups. One group could stop the shock by pressing a lever, the other group's lever did nothing (ethics boards might not allow the experiment today). He then put dogs from the groups in a room where the floor on one side could provide a similar shock. The dogs…

An observation based on my experience with physics and economics: both fields create models that predict how nature will behave, often people for economists. Then we observe nature and people. In physics if nature contradicts our predictions, we say we're wrong and the model needs fixing. When people behave differently than economists predict, economists say people are wrong and need fixing. Economists claim that a country's or the world's population growing too old creates economic problems, like requiring too many young people to take care of old people or pensions will go bankrupt. These claims filter to the rest of us, who don't look at their assumptions to see the flaws. You need only consider that humans lived with close to no growth for hundreds…

I don't have to do what I do to act in stewardship to others. I get to. By avoiding flying and packaged for or by picking up others' litter or training people for free to start offshoots of my podcast, I'm not missing out on better things or sacrificing my time. If you think stewardship to others, especially those helpless to protect themselves from my actions that hurt them, lessens my life, you're missing out on the greatest feelings humans can have, to act in service of something greater than all of us, that helps us all. If you think I'm a sucker or a loser for doing unto others as I would have them do unto me, as many prominent people think of someone…

In physics, if your theory predicts one thing but nature does another, we know nature is right and we change our theory. In economics, if nature doesn't fit theory, they stick with the theory and try to describe how nature is wrong. Sadly, economists don't lose their jobs when their theories don't work and they keep trying to push them, despite not creating the results they want. On the contrary, many of them gain influence from their peers, journalists, and politicians. Many of them, for example, believe economic growth will solve nearly any economic problem---disparities in wealth, poverty, and so on. They don't see growth often exacerbating these problems, however obvious. Sadly, many politicians, journalists, and peers follow their advice. I found a video that…