Culture in Decline By Peter Joseph‏ (Youtube TV Series)

[Ithekro]

Stopped building new plants for about twenty-five years I think. More or less new projects were stopped after the Three Mile Island incident and only those that has been approved before that were allowed to continue being build....after being redesigned and go through a lot of political hoops. The last one I think was actually finished in the late 1980s. They just started building new ones this year, though there were efforts to build other new reactors in the 90s.

It is possible they may have build newer reactors in place of older reactors on the same certificate, but I doubt it.

But that is for commercial reactors. I know the Navy has some new reactors since then for submarines and aircraft carriers. I'm guessing there have also been newly build research reactors and probably experimental reactors, but those might have been scrapped as well because the public still has a massive fear of anything with the word "Nuclear" in it.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Over half of my undergraduate degree was spent in engineering. I feel confident in saying that it's not always about the long term, even with engineering

Well...we're supposed to think about the long term. There always going to be guys who fall down on the job.

Case in point, you bring up bridges. It's a testament to civil engineering that those bridges are still standing, but I don't think it necessarily shows long-term thinking. Long-term thinking involves maintenance of the bridges. Within the past 10 years we had a major bridge collapse, and if I remember correctly, part of the reason was that they were behind on their maintenance.

I don't think that's necessarily a failure of engineers. The engineers who designed and built the bridge are not at fault if a civil servant decides to cut back on the maintenance the original civil engineers recommended. I don't think you can blame that on any engineers.

This is an example of short-term and long-term thinking. Short-term thinking states that the bridge is currently standing and working, so the maintenance can be put off and money that would have been put toward it can be used for something else. Long-term thinking states that a bridge failure would be catastrophic and would inconvenience many other areas of society, thus it's better (and potentially cheaper) to do the maintenance on schedule, and not to cheap out on it.

If you called in an engineer, and he was properly doing his job according to the codes of the profession, he would recommend the latter course of action. Engineers are very safety oriented. There's a lot of scary responsibility that goes with the profession.

If you take the former course, you're being criminally negligent(and can be put on trial for it). Taking the latter course was drilled into me on numerous occasions by my professors.

Another similar example can be seen with America's nuclear power plants. We had a bunch of plants that were built in the 1950's and/or 1960's. The exact dates aren't important; what's important to know is that those plants were licensed to operate for 40 years, after which they were expected to be shut down, having served out their useful life. The expectation was that other nuclear power plants would have been built, so taking the older ones offline wouldn't be a big issue. The problem is that building a nuclear power plant is very expensive, and we reached a certain point where our rate of building new plants slowed dramatically. I think we even stopped for a while.

Now the old plants have been re-certified once (or twice, in some cases) and have been running for much longer than they were designed for. That they're still running is a testament to their design (and perhaps a bit to luck), not to long-term thinking. Long-term thinking would dictate that we should have been building new plants to replace these aging plants, because our energy needs have grown and the plants are an absolute requirement. If a plant fails, society served by that plant will suffer losses to productivity and lifestyle. But the plants are working now and it's a lot of money to spend now to build a plant that will service tomorrow. And so we continue to gamble on our luck and the strength of the original designs.

Again, that's not really down to engineers. Engineers don't choose whether or not new Nuclear plants get built, elected officials and bureaucrats make that call, in consultation with the Engineers(and this is how it should be). The fact that the plants are functioning well past their stated life shows that the original design engineers didn't cut corners, but it equally shows that the legislators who came after did.

If we look at things on an individual level, most engineers do their work and don't cut corners. Of course there are always bad engineers out there, and when they do cut corners everyone hears about it. But when Engineers do their job as they're supposed to, they're basically invisible.

Engineers are probably the least visible(and in my opinion most important, but I am biased ) major profession out there. At least doctors get glamorous dramas made about their lives. What do we get?

One of these days someone needs to write a sitcom set on an oil rig, or something.

[Ithekro]

Engineers get sci-fi representation in most cases. Though from what I understand "Big Bang Theory" likes to have those with doctorates pick on the engineer...because he is not a "doctor".

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Engineers get sci-fi representation in most cases. Though from what I understand "Big Bang Theory" likes to have those with doctorates pick on the engineer...because he is not a "doctor".

If we have to use a completely imaginary fantasy to make engineering at all glamourous, we have a bit of a problem. Also, how often are engineers actually the starring characters in SF? At best they're the supporting characters who build the machines for the "cool" pilots and marines to use. We're lucky if we get a Kira Yamato, who at least starts as an engineer (even if he never does any engineering past the first episode).

Actually, there was Planetes, which I think is probably the closest thing to an Engineering drama. Most of the main characters in that were fairly close to being Engineers. They had to deal with a lot of mundane mechanical problems and fix them. Something like that would be good.


Anyway, to get back on topic, we do have some social problems today, but I think many of these are down to our society being in a state of extreme flux. We still haven't developed the required cultural attributes to prosper in the new digital world we find ourselves in. Our attitudes are still analog.

For instance, it wasn't so long ago that the general populace thought that everyone on the internet was an anti-social weirdo. Now using the internet is normal. You're an anti-social weirdo if you're not online.

Many of our devices have put more barriers in place for people to socialise with one another, used to be people routinely chatted with complete strangers for want of anything better to do. This sudden decrease in communications with strangers I think causes a lot of stress, so our society will have to devise new ways to get around this fact. For instance, maybe in the future trains will have "socialisation" carriages where people can go if they want to talk to other people.

Once our culture has caught up with technology, I can see people becoming a lot happier. Before that though, there's going to be a lag time.

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

We're lucky if we get a Kira Yamato, who at least starts as an engineer (even if he never does any engineering past the first episode).

Implying that any character resembling Kira Jesus Yamato is a good thing :P

[monsta666]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I think people overestimate the materialism of our society. Certainly if you look at Tweenagers you'll get a vain consuming lot, but you know what? Tweens are idiots. Most people get fairly grounded once they have to pay their bills. That's not to say there isn't obscene consumption out there, but you know I think you'll find similar analogues in tribal societies (for instance in tribal societies men will compete to get the best exotic bird feathers to decorate their headresses. Ultimately, not too different from a Lamborghini).

While I can certainly see where you are coming from; there are people that are very materialistic and value people only by the stuff they have the main point I wanted to get across is our whole economic system is dependant on our consumption. If people were to suddenly save, be thrifty and not make impulsive purchases then the economy would go into a major recession. Indeed there was one time when Cameron suggested the Brits do just that, be more frugal with their money but the economists encouraged him to retract such statements lest he make the recession worse. It is one of the long-standing problems of capitalism where there is an issue of overproduction. To insure there is no overproduction demand has to be artificially stimulated.

This problem of overproduction was present in the great depression and after the depression demand was stimulated via the great rise in advertisements. As advertisements became insufficient and real incomes did not rise fast enough to match capital expansion lending standards were lowered so more people could obtain credit. In addition there was a systematic move to make credit cheaper and cheaper by lowering interest rates. This financialisation of the economy really took off after the 1980s until reaching something of a climax in 2008 with the financial crisis. However because demand has to be maintained politicians and bankers keep pushing credit even though the market has been saturated with debt.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I believe that things are only set to get better. But if things get worse, people will look back on this time as a golden age.

I do think, and this is only what I think, things will get worse in the near to medium future. And it is quite likely that people will see this as a golden age. Still, that fact does does not prevent people being resentful of our times. Indeed they could resent us precisely because we lived the good life...

Originally Posted by willx

You respond on nightbat's behalf, but take his statements out of his own context and you argue his statements aren't contradictory largely via sophistry.

I am not entirely sure where the fallacies in my argument are. It is not like I enjoyed the conclusions I have made, in fact I have spent time examining the potential weaknesses in the line of reasoning I have put together. Yet much of what I say is actually quite basic and intuitive.

All what I say can be summed up simply: we live in a finite planet with finite resources and energy. Yet we have an economic or should I be more precise a monetary system that demands infinite growth. Such a system will soon reach limits and a collapse in the financial system will have major consequences on other systems such as the economic, political and social systems we live in.

Originally Posted by willx

Don't forget he argues even the mechanization of the production cycle is a bad thing for humanity as a whole. Think about that for a second -- he literally argued that technological advancement is a bad thing because it made certain workers obsolete...

I would agree with you here, mechanization has not been bad for humanity as a whole. However there are negative consequences to technology and they should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps we differ, like we do in this case with Nightbat but I think the important lesson we should gather from Nightbat is the ability to question certain assumptions. I think the message of thinking for yourself and applying critical thought is a good one and that seems to be what Nightbat is getting at albeit this appears to be the implicit statement he is making in his posts.

Originally Posted by willx

I'm also quite familiar with Maslow's work, he argues the final stage is self actualization, but it's overly vague and constitutes everything from learning to play the piano, devoting yourself to charity and buying everyone around you a Ferrari. Read up on the criticisms of his work, it's quite interesting.

I will give you that Maslow's work does have its flaws but I do find despite them there are some merits. We do need to examine the concept that humans can gain happiness outside of material items or higher incomes. This needs to be addressed and I do not think this can be done with GDP or even HDI.

Originally Posted by willx

Also, everyone makes these big arguments about materialism and how it's a bad thing and debt and all these other things -- debt is a "capital structure" issue, regardless of that, real productive capacity proxy measured by "Real GDP" or "GNI" or whatever measure, has been increasing. This concept may be difficult for people to comprehend if they don't have a clear understanding of finance or economics, but it's very important to think about it. The "current" or "past" generation is mortgaging the future of the young .. but the young can also default on their obligations to the old.

GDP is a measure of gross spending or consumption and while this has indeed been increasing, even to this day, there are several weaknesses with GDP. GDP only measures the total amount of goods/services produced in society, it does not really distinguish whether these economic activities play a positive or negative effect on society.

Moreover the accounting derived from GDP seems a little suspect, for example GDP counts debts as income so if a country engages in deficit spending then this spending is counted as a component of GDP growth. In addition to this certain externalities such as environmental/ecosystem damage or climate change are not removed from GDP figures. In fact these negative factors may even contribute to GDP growth if some form of economic activity took place to limit the damage caused by these phenomenon.

Ignoring these negative externalities seems a rather dishonest form of accounting. Other issues that come from GDP is it counts the liquidation of stock as income and this is important when this stock are non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels. These issues btw are not even addressed in the HDI indeed it is a source of criticism using that index. And these points come before we even get to the issue of various governments massaging the figures to promote greater GDP numbers than is warranted but that is another topic.

If we had something that measured net worth instead of income then that would provide a far more accurate picture of where we stand. If we did this then it is quite likely we are not growing, our net worth could be declining. This potential conflict of decreasing net growth but rising incomes would suggest that some of our recent growth is either non-sustainable (due to liquidation of non-renewable stocks) or that economic growth is becoming uneconomical (as the negative externalities are exceeding the benefits of growth). If you wish, you can check some articles written by Herman Daly; a expert economist who worked in the World Bank. He talks repeatedly about uneconomic growth. Granted you may not agree with what the man says but his ideas should be interesting nonetheless.

Just to be clear, I do not mean to turn this into a big thing. But I just say and wish to stress that a strong case can be made that perhaps, just maybe, things are not as great as they would appear. I do feel there is wisdom in challenging the status quo.

[Nightbat®]

Originally Posted by willx

^ Okay! Then we're done! You actually didn't admit to that earlier, which is the whole point of the conversation thus far.

...and so you can stay silent about taking a step back and looking at things from a different perspective


Keep it in mind with the next wave of asbestos, DDT, Thalidomine, or when those geothermal reactors start creating cracks in the walls of your home ...600 miles away

[willx]

@monsta666 - I mostly don't disagree with what you're saying. My points were spurred and directly pointed at Nightbat's assertions that, and I paraphrase, "NOTHING is better. We are NOT better off than we were before" etc. You can line my points up against his side by side if you want. Things aren't perfect, will never be, and we can always improve. That said, it's intellectually dishonest to not appreciate the progress we've made. The glass is BOTH half-empty and half-full.

@Nightbat - I'm still not sure what you're saying? I'm a very critical person that looks at facts from various sources, pays attention to both sides of a debate .. And I don't think our world is perfect at all and can indeed improve. I'm also not blind to the progress that has been made. I'm the one that is trying to convince you to look at things from more than one perspective.. !?

[DonQuigleone]

The glass of human progress is not fly or empty, but, despite all our recent problems, it's more full then it ever has been at any previous time in history. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep on trying to fill it.