Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Whitehouse on Wednesday

On magical thinking how God will tidy up after our follies


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Magical thinking"

A term I have used frequently of late, and one that is profoundly more important than many understand.

The trouble is that the roots of magical thinking grow deeper and further than most people realise, and they grow in more soil than most realise.


Exhibit A - much of economics, predicated on the oxymoron of sustainable growth.


Bernard J.

Pinko Punko said...

Eli, are you going to post about the Monnett settlement?

Anonymous said...

"On magical thinking how God will tidy up after our follies"

Well, if you think of 'God' as in mother earth, then, yes, She will tidy up after our follies, though, be prepared to give Her a few million years to make it happen. Perhaps another 'God' is able to work a little faster?

--cynicus

EliRabett said...

Hmm, Pinko would you like to do a guest post, or how about Whitebeard?

Eli might try something for Christmas when the spirit of the season is lifting the flem in his chest.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Has it not dawned on Bernard J. that the good Professor Bartlett's sermon on the Energy Crisis wa exponentially s overtaken by the Oil Glut two squared years later .

Anonymous said...

Russell, the noise overlaying the signal has not escaped my attention, although in this as in other disciplines there are some who like to imagine that such gluts re-write the laws of physics.

Energy or other resource crisis, in a closed system with finite options for replacability those handy positive blips in extraction serve only to shift the curve along the x axis - they don't change the essential shape of the trajectory whilst the usage parameters remain largely unaltered.

And technofantasy = magical thinking, so that is not a get-out-of-jail card, before the bag-of-inifinite-holding crowd who imagine that those gluts portend the end of thermodynamics.


Bernard J.

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

Russell: "Has it not dawned on Bernard J. that the good Professor Bartlett's sermon on the Energy Crisis was exponentially overtaken by the Oil Glut two squared years later ."


Spoken like a gambler on a winning streak. I've known otherwise intelligent people who allowed themselves to entertain the possibility that the laws of probability had been suspended in their favor during such a streak. It usually doesn't end well.

Likewise, I think I'll bet on the house long term on this one.