Summing up a Green position on SSPS

> Somebody forwarded me the following link:
>
> http://www.lastsuperpower.net/docs/Document.2003-12-11.3925
>
> Michael Crichton's talk to the Commonwealth Club of California this past
> September, on "Environmentalism as a Religion". There's a point where
> there's no real use in arguing further; as he says, "One of the defining
> features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts,
> because they have nothing to do with facts." Can we actually leave the
> realm of religion for science here? Crichton concludes:
>
> "Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And
> if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will
> enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears
> and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better.
> That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's
> time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the
> science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly
> on that."

The problem with a statement like "science offers us the only way out of
politics" is that science, like logic, can only help you work out the
implications of your political or other assumptions (including religious
ones) given the apparent laws of nature (as far as we currently
collectively understand the mystery of the universe and life itself).
Science or engineering or logic cannot directly help you choose those
moral assumptions (at least not at a most basic level).

I will admit that products of science and engineering and logic viewed
as forms of art may help illuminate the universe in an unexpected way
which may inspire us to develop further as moral beings or citizens,
like any work of art may do.
http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/fractal/Theorem.html
http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/fractal/Solids.html
http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/pgrim/pgrim.htm
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_22_5.html
But that is a far different issue than saying science and engineering
and logic alone can or should define our moral compass or our societal
aspirations. It is historically always been the province of art and
story to help us with moral and social and spiritual development.

If we as a group for example say that universal health care is a
fundamental human right, science and logic and engineering may help us
achieve that goal efficiently and effectively. But it can't help us
choose that fundamental goal. (Engineering management techniques can
help with choosing subgoals once the big goal is agreed on, of course.)

Similarly, if we decide a group of human beings should be exterminated
based on some shared property (genetic marker, race, creed, class, legal
status), science and engineering etc. can help us achieve that
efficiently and effectively such as by using detailed census data to
optimize secret police sweeps in minimal paths using the least
automobile fuel -- but that may seem to most people to be engaging in a
moral horror (unless of course these days they are labeled as
"terrorists" instead of, say, an ethnic minority).

Likewise if we decide to implement Solar Space Power Systems, science
etc. may help us do that expediently, but it can't let us resolve a
cost-benefit analysis of whether SSPS is worth doing if the people who
get the benefits and the people who pay the costs are different (which
is typical for most large projects). Nor can science or engineering help
us choose between alternative SSPS implementations or development paths
if again those choices benefit and cost different groups differently.

This is the fundamental fallacy of the oh-so-scientific sounding
"cost-benefit analysis" -- different people pay different costs and get
different benefits. Even the same objective benefit given to different
people may provide different subjective levels of personal benefits to
each.

For example, say you have a cake and ten friends at a party. How should
the cake be divided? Should everyone get the same size piece? What if
some people ate before they came over -- should they get less? What if
some people are allergic to chocolate -- should they get a different
part of the cake preferentially? What if some people prefer other food
at the party -- should they get the same size piece even if they will
throw it out? What if some people are fatter than others -- should they
get the same amount, even if they want less? Who then gets the extra?
What if some of your friends are diabetic and eating the cake would mess
up their sugar (but they want it anyway)? What if you start cutting the
cake having decided on one strategy and in the middle of distributing
the pieces another ten friends show up? Do they get some too? Does
everyone reapportion what they have already got and are eating, or do
you just divide what is left somehow? And what about the five people who
were in the first group and didn't get their share yet when the other
arrived -- do they get more or less or the same? How do you answer these
simple cake cutting problems with science and engineering alone? You
can't -- because ultimately subjective weights need to be assigned to
various subjective feelings and subjective socially related
interpretations of possible benefits. Granted, science and engineering
can help make software that helps a decision maker input the problem and
given weightings and a distribution algorithm make a choice, but even
the act of turning to the machine for help and deciding on a cutting
path program will disrupt the flow of the party and slow down the food
distribution process (plus it costs time to write and maintain software
-- does the programmer get paid for in cake too?). This cake example was
inspired by one in the book _The Policy Paradox: The Art of Political
Decision Making_ by Deborah A. Stone:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393976254?v=glance
""Policy Paradox" integrates case studies and theory with clear critical
analysis. Through a rich and complex model, this revised edition
continues to show how real-world policy grows out of differing ideals,
and even definitions, of such basic societal goals as security, equality
and liberty."

You are always a moral human being and a citizen before you are a
scientist or engineer. To be otherwise is fooling yourself -- from the
very second you wake up in the morning and decide to have a fun day in
the lab instead of call in sick and watch television or instead take
your kid out of school and go for a special day together. Let your
science and engineering talents serve your morality and your
citizenship. To put your morality in service of some seemingly
irrefutable scientific or logical principle is to court disaster. By
this I don't mean subscribe slavishly to every bit of dogma you were
brought up with; the mind often has an amazing ability for making some
sense of the mystery of the world and reconciling complex issues and
eventually seeing through intellectual parasites if you retain some
intellectual curiosity (sadly lacking in the White House right now,
despite otherwise great intelligence and persuasiveness).
http://www.buzzflash.com/southern/2002/09/06_southern.html

Classically, this problem of using science to justify something often
comes up when people cite some species as a model for ideal human
behavior using ecological and evolutionary pseudoexamples to prove some
point about how humans or human society should be. This is a fallacy
because biology shows diversity more than anything, including how weird
basic human concepts are (like males are larger than females in humans,
when 90% of species are the other way around) and it also ignores that
even if every species ever seen and all of human history showed some
common behavior pattern, humans can still make a different choice right
now on how to live as thinking moral beings.

Also remember, it is in the choice of subject to research in science and
the choice of technology to explore for further invention and refinement
where a scientist or engineer has their greatest control over shaping
the world. See Langdon Winner's writings on this:
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/
Or Seymor Melman's:
http://www.aftercapitalism.com/index2.html
or E.F. Schumacher's:
http://www.schumachersociety.org/
Or Bucky Fuller's:
http://www.bfi.org/

Also, often people in power suggest turning to science or engineering or
logic for solutions to moral problems because they know what answers
such technicians will give because they pay the technicians salaries in
one way or another. Just look at the scandles around scientists quietly
taking money from companies to create favorable studies about their
products for examples of this.

So, politics and morality (religion) and other issues remain in play,
even when being a scientist or engineer doing what one is told or what
one is allowed to do or what one chooses to do, as does the very nature
of whether we are playing a finite (to win) or infinite (to play) game
with our decision making process. See _Finite and Infinite Games_ by
James P. Carse:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345341848?v=glance

All the best.

--Paul Fernhout