For the record I'm not interested in naked pictures of you. At least, not for $500.

On the other hand, I might point out that there's a whole non-commercial segment of the web where people broadcast their entire lives, or give a continuous feed of one room, etc.

@Cerberus How about, I WON'T give you $500 if you DON'T send me naked pictures of yourself.

@JosephWeissman Right, that's what I meant by disgrace...but to me the audience is in a different position.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Dirty old man.

Again, totally non-commercial -- it's almost like even though we're afraid of being watched (all the time,) what somehow terrifies us even more is never being watched.

@Cerberus I ain't that much older than you.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 For how much then?

@JosephWeissman Yeah...privacy and renown are both significant drives.

@Cerberus agreed. the spectators are malevolently neutral to the spectacle :/

Paradocially enough.

Without the spectators, there'd be no advertising, and therefore no show.

@JosephWeissman Haha, malevolently neutral? I don't really know what they are, actually.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 But much dirtier.

@DavidWallace There's that, secondary responsibility—another very interesting and complicated subject.

@DavidWallace Well, pictures of naked dutch guys, or naked hell-hounds, are not worth much to me. Maybe $0. I'll be honest, if I were so inclined I'd just google "naked dutch guys" and pretend it was @Cerberus. But I'm not inclined.

Ewww.

Why do you even think these things? Your mind is impure.

It needs cleansing.

Hey, Cerberus, sleep well tonight, little doggie.

@DavidWallace Yeah, like that's going to happen now.

What with these disturbing images.

@Cerberus First of all, "purity" is a flawed concept. Secondly, I was just being honest in saying that I don't want or need naked pictures of you.

Yeah, DON'T think about what some dodgey Canadian guy might be doing while you sleep!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 You keep mentioning it again and again...

@DavidWallace All right! I will do that.

Would you feel better if asked you to send them, for real asked, instead of only hypothetically in the framework of a discussion about enticing people to perform immoral acts?

What made you think that I would?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I hope that was a hypothetical question.

@Cerberus Nothing does. But you do seem upset about this direction of conversation.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 For the record, the sole purpose of my previous ten or so lines was to make you feel uncomfortable.

Other than that, I am completely unconcerned.

I keep thinking of the old joke about the rich guy with his secretary.

In fact if we are going to be perfectly honest, I think pictures of a naked dutch guy in, say, my email, could actually represent negative utility to me, if my wife were to find them. So if you do send the pictures, please also send me $50, which I can use to buy flowers.

@DavidWallace Oh?

@Cerberus ooh, too bad I found it humorous :)

Damn.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I'm afraid I cannot make any concrete comment on your musings.

But Cerb's amazing, incredible, sexy naked body aside, we were talking about the immorality of paying people to do stuff....

@Cerberus You know ... Would you sleep with me if I offered you $100,000? ... You bet I would ... OK, well I don't have $100,000; so how about $100? ... Hey, just what do you think I am? ... I've already identified what you are; now I'm negotiating.

I think this is actually a really important and interesting point

The ignominy of possibilities of life under capitalism...

...has a lot to with voluntarism

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I know what you're doing, but it's not working.

@Cerberus Please explain because I'm not sure what I'm doing

The way all work is "voluntary" under capital -- and of course the alternative to "voluntary" work is starvation...

I'm still trying to work out whether or not MrSN just asked Cerberus to send him naked pictures and $50.

@DavidWallace Wouldn't you like to have $50?

Not if I have to look at naked photos of Cerberus.

@DavidWallace Haha...in a real situation, even for 100K I would have to really think about it. The disgrace is probably worth it; but why would some one make such an offer? Isn't there something dangerous behind it? I would be extremely suspicious.

@Cerberus It's a joke. You don't have to analyse it in such detail.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Trying to make me feel uncomfortable by violating etiquette? I can handle that, you know.

@Cerberus That "disgrace" is just arbitrary norms trying to keep you suppressed

@Cerberus I would be suspicious too.

Although it was the premise of a movie that I can't remember the title of. With Robert Redford, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson.

"Too Much Money"

@Cerberus I'm not trying to actually make you feel uncomfortable. Please smack me if you think I've gone too far.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 This is getting worse and worse.

@JosephWeissman Exactly: both sides have valid arguments. Having children in India labour on our clothes may be humane because otherwise they'd starve, but on the other hand they are exploited. Very complicated.

@DavidWallace Bah, that is less exciting.

@Cerberus this is the thing even the left can't think through, how to change or move beyond capitalism -- how to organize our individual and collective faculties without needing base relations of domination, or their successors, indirect relations of exploitation via capital

@DavidWallace um... that statement was meant to be read in a completely benign and non-dirty way.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 So?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 So you get $50, the naked pictures, and a spanking. What does Cerberus get, exactly?

Your offer seems a little one-sided, that's all I'm saying.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 No, no. But I think I've won.

@DavidWallace Well, I did say that the pictures would be negatively useful to me, i.e. harmful.

@Cerberus Dammit!

"I bet you say that to all the boys" - Meat Loaf.

@JosephWeissman Exactly. I think the least-evil system is controlled capitalism. We may need some more controls, but in general the system seems workable so far. And it has been improving steadily over the past couple of centuries, partly because the cake has simply become bigger and bigger.

@Cerberus Well, we have controlled capitalism.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 That's what I'm saying.

Just that we need more controls, and the right ones.

As Adam Smith said.

It's interesting to me that communism gets glossed as "redistribution" today. This is the most vulgar possible understanding of it.

@Cerberus I'd say most of the controls we have work, where we have them. The problem is that the capitalism is global but the controls aren't. i.e. child labour isn't illegal everywhere, etc.

Even Marx criticizes this as a reactionary and vulgar move to simply equalize property, rather than work through the difficult problem of organizing social reproduction without it.

@JosephWeissman Well...you mean the communitarian aspect of it deserves more attention?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 But would it really be best if we simply outlawed child labour world wide, if we could?

@JosephWeissman So how would this organizing work?

I guess I'm just pointing out the revolutionary problematic -- the new dimension of thought -- that Marx opens up, and how quickly even thinkers on the left gloss over this problem of actually reorganizing society collectively

My Marx is a bit rusty.

Part of it I think is the trauma of the spectacular failures of communist movements in the last century; I feel like we don't even have a theory of these failures

Really?

Economists and historians feel that they have...

@Cerberus I'd say yes. Because the resulting unbalancing of the market would shift the labour onto adults. The demand for goods is still there.

I guess I should qualify -- one that addresses the world-historical dimensions of the problem

@MrShinyandNew安宇 How about what it would do to the income of poor families in India?

@JosephWeissman Hmm, such as?

@Cerberus When the supply of labourers goes down, the price paid for them must rise, right?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Somewhat...but by how much?

The market is global, to some extent. Production is only in India because labour is cheap there.

@Cerberus Well, I don't know, but the same arguments were used here when we had child labour.

@Cerberus briefly, the concern I'm trying to develop is about a gap or lacuna in leftist thinking around this central problem of reorganizing society (without wage-slavery, or worse, relations of direct domination); a good theory would help address the traumatic kernel of the revolutions of the last century and their aftermath

@Cerberus But the global labour market would shrink if child-labour were outlawed everywhere at the same time. So the global labour market prices would rise. More in some places than others, sure.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 But we had the means to make sure that poor families still had some access to food and medical care, I think. And, if we didn't, then was it really a good idea to outlaw, rather than regulate?

Speaking of economics: current capitalist economies are based on a model of continuous growth. continuous growth in the economy requires continuous growth in energy usage. Continuous growth in energy usage is impossible; at our current rate of energy growth the surface of the planet will reach 100 C in a few centuries.

In other words, I think the idea that "they just implemented it wrong" is entirely insufficient. It's not just Stalin, there is a problem even in the nucleus, in Lenin and Trotsky and so on, even perhaps in Marx.

@Cerberus I don't know the specifics of how we did it here, it was a long time ago

@JosephWeissman Oh, OK. But...what would you be looking for beyond simply "communism doesn't work because people strive after their own good too much, rather than that of society"?

@Cerberus I think the Left definitely needs to get used to admitting that the attempted communisms of the last century failed miserably. But I also think the idea of communism needs to be rehabilitated today -- I think it's a universal idea, if such things exist; I think this gloss that it's simply redistribution is a way to try to make it vulgar and repress it

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Why would we need continuous growth in energy usage?: we can become more efficient. And why can't we theoretically some day dispose of this heat in other ways, such as by storing it in various ways, or shooting it off into space?

@Cerberus In short, no, we can't become so efficient that energy use is negligible, or that it generates no waste. In long, you'd need to read that blog post and the whole series that follows. It's fascinating.

@Cerberus Actually we do shoot the energy off into space, just not fast enough to prevent raising the surface temperature of the planet.

@JosephWeissman It is possible...but I still don't fully understand what essential part of communism beyond redistribution you have in mind. Perhaps it is too complicated to explain in the genre of short chat messages, hehe.

Consider a motor. It turns stored energy in gasoline into motion. However it also generates a lot of heat and noise. There's basically no way to make that so efficient that it is cool and quiet.

@Cerberus we have this problem even in the Philosophy chat. It's quite tough to get into the meat of things :)

@MrShinyandNew安宇 It wouldn't have to be negligible, as long as increasing efficiency could keep up with economic growth?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Then shoot more?

@JosephWeissman Yeah...sometimes I feel that I should write a page or two and post a link here.

Is Phil chat alive these days?

@Cerberus it's spotty, but has been lighting up more often lately.

I used to be there, but it seemed...deadish.

@Cerberus I can't explain it as well as the guy who wrote that blog can. In short, unless energy growth becomes negligible, it will still eventually heat the planet to a crisp. And that assumes we could even FIND that energy, which we can't.

@JosephWeissman Oh OK. Perhaps I should shine my light around those parts more, then.

@Cerberus the problem is capturing that energy. If we could capture it we could re-use it.

Without reading the article, it sounds unconvincing, hehe.

@Cerberus you should read the whole series of posts. It's fascinating, and terrifying.

I...perhaps I will.

That first post, in essence, says that we've been growing our energy use at 2.9%/year. Since the earth is in solar equilibrium (i.e. it radiates as much heat as it absorbs from the sun, except for recent changes i.e. global warming), if we use, eg, nuclear power to generate electricity, and grow the use of that power at 2.9%/year, we see a factor of 10 increase every 100 years.

this means that in 450 years or so the surface temperature of the planet would be 100 degrees Celcius

I have scanned the article.

I'm not buying it.

@Cerberus skimmed

Or, actually, maybe you mean scanned. "Scan" = study in detail.

@Cerberus Well, the man is a physicist. I'm sure he'd be interested in your rebuttal.

No, I mean skimmed. Scanned can mean just that, no?

@Cerberus It's starting to change its meaning. I am pushing back.

@DavidWallace Oh, it is prescriptivism! Why didn't you say so? Then I won't use it that way again.

The definition that you have quoted is a relatively new one. Created by people who mistakenly used "scan" in place of "skim".

I keep a prescriptivist hat handy, for occasions such as these.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 On the one hand, it makes all kinds of wild speculations and very broad assumptions and calculations. On the other, it doesn't allow for many changes in its premises that don't seem any more speculative.

@DavidWallace I appreciate it.

I think I mentioned to you recently, the NZ telecommunications company who marketed their new phone-boxes as "opaque", by which they meant "transparent".

@Cerberus wild speculations?

It does make some broad assumptions, but they are conservative in nature

@DavidWallace Waaaaahh yes I remember.

You see, I explicitly instructed you not to get me started on "scan". And you didn't pay any attention.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Wild as in extremely broad and unheeding of particulars.

@DavidWallace Oh, dear.

My sincerest apologies.

Accepted. This time.

Never again will that travesty escape from these lips.

Is that all six lips?

Yes.

@Cerberus The math presented in those blog posts is meant to present a rough outline, and to give an upper bound on the facts. He states his assumptions.

And they are highly speculative.

I would like to know what assumptions he makes that you feel invalidate his premise.

Invalidate his premise?

Which premise?

I already mentioned a few of those assumptions.

that continued energy growth would roast the planet

How is that a premise? It is his conclusion.

@Cerberus where?

But anyway, here goes:

It can't possibly happen if we restrict ourselves to sun-made energy such as hydro-electric and wind. If we burn oil or coal, or use nuclear energy, then we're in trouble.

1. The efficiency of our use of energy won't be able to keep up with our use of energy.

@Cerberus He addresses that in another blog post. There are fundamental limits to how much efficiency we can hope to achieve.

2. We cannot store excess energy to render it harmless.

3. We cannot insulate the excess energy.

So when the temperature starts to rise, we stop using nuclear energy. Problem solved. Kind of.

4. We cannot make the excess energy useful.

@Cerberus insulating doesn't help. The energy still goes somewhere.

@Cerberus If we could store the energy we wouldn't need to generate it in the first place.

5. We cannot remove the excess energy.

@Cerberus This is the same as #2

@Cerberus This is the same as #2

6. People will continue to use more and more energy if such increased usage becomes a problem to them.

@Cerberus That is not what he is saying. In fact the whole point of the blog is to advocate for decreased energy use.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Why doesn't it help?

People will continue to want to heat their homes, once the surface temperature reaches 100 degrees?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 True, but that is irrelevant.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 All right.

@Cerberus By "insulating" the energy, what are you advocating? wrapping all motors in fiberglass so that they don't heat the air? The motors would still have to vent that heat somewhere, or else just heat the fiberglass which heats the air.

@Cerberus No, that's actually the key: it's energy generation from non-solar sources which is the problem.

@DavidWallace Yes, I hadn't even got to the more particular idiosyncrasies that he seems to have to assume.

How about setting up huge mirror farms, so that a larger percentage of the sun's radiation is reflected back into space?

@Cerberus Clearly he is not stating that life on earth would continue to operate in anything like the way it does now if the surface temp were 100 degrees. It is just the extrapolation of continued growth. It is an upper-bound: there is simply no way to continue the growth that long.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 A. We could live in fridges, as the simplest example.

@DavidWallace That would probably ruin crops.

B. The obvious solution would be to combine insulation with removal, e.g. shooting it into space.

C. As long as the heat dissipates from its insulated areas very slowly, we can make great gains there.

@DavidWallace Another example of the same category.

@Cerberus No, you don't make any gains. Unless the fiberglass stores lots and lots of heat, and you fling hot fiberglass into space.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Not how this counters anything I said.

Can we sell some of our excess energy to the Martians?

sigh

He is not stating that it is an unavoidable fact that in 2462 the surface temperature of the planet will be 100 C.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Why no gains? Less dissipation seems a gain. Next-to-zero dissipation seems a great gain. In any case, combine with some of the others numbers and letters above.