Drowning in prejudice?
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I often wonder why people have started to conflate a skill area or knowledge area in one area with skill, knowledge or even political insight in other areas.
Just because you write great music doesn’t make you insightful in other areas, or because you were or are a talented footballer or even astrophysicist it does not mean that you have any great knowledge about other areas or particularly that your political opinion really matters.
This obsession with the views and thoughts of high profile people seems to me to be a fairly recent phenomenon. We are completely swamped with the media crying out that footballers/actors/musicians, etc are role models. Even more worrying is the way that some people are willing to treat experts or skilled people as “mentors” and hang on every word they way and treat them as demi-gods.
As a young person my musical hero was Keith Moon, my favourite actor was Jack Nicholson and my football hero was Wyn Davies (who was more than happy to stick the brow on an opposing Centre Half). I didn’t use them as a lifestyle guru, if I had I would probably be six feet under.
Even at this callow age I could separate their skills set and talent from them as an individual. None of them were role models to me; I just liked some of the things that they did.
It turns out that Picasso was a bit of an arsehole (a very big one actually), it might be (debate rages about it) that Wagner was a racist, Van Morrison has a history of wacky belief systems and Alan Titchmarsh is a royalist. It doesn’t mean that Alan Titchmarsh’s tips on early flowering climbing roses are null and void, or that I would consider his views on the causes of inflation to be of any import.
A quick example that demonstrates the kind of bollocks Sabine Hossenfelder comes up with, when she talks about economics comes from her posting below.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/05/capitalism-is-good-for-you.html
In this posting she starts by stating:
“Most economists I know started out as physicists. Being a physicist myself of course means that the sample is biased, but still it serves to demonstrate the closeness of the two subjects.”The fact that she knows some economists who started out as physicists doesn’t in any way “demonstrate the closeness of the two subjects”. This is the level of debate she is reduced to.
That anyone would consider her to be a mentor in any area other than her specialist area, is risible.
There was one Physicist known as Albert Einstein who did not support capitalism and he accepted the labor theory of value, but there are some famous ones who are atheists but they support capitalism and bourgeoisie liberalism. As Engels wrote: Some scientists are materialist in their laboratory but they are idealist ( or maybe metaphysic) in their private life
That would be interesting a debate for astrophysicists on “Capitalism or Socialism?” between Albert Einstein and Sabine Hossenfelder.
That would be interesting a debate for astrophysicists on “Capitalism or Socialism?” between Albert Einstein and Sabine Hossenfelder.
Much more than interesting considering Einstein’s been dead for 68 years! 🙂
Here’s a view of Sabine’s you (ALB) might identify with.
I think that this video shows quite eloquently how poor Hossenfelder’s use of comparative logic. She has in one part explained that 1g of used nuclear waste would kill you within 2 weeks if ingested and that there is 400,000 metric tons of it. She then goes on to explain that industry produces 400 million tons of “High Level Hazardous Waste”.
The implication is that the two things are comparable, if she doesn’t they are comparable then why is she making the comparison? However using the same information she has provided, they are not comparable. Is she saying that High Level Industrial Waste is equally lethal to spent nuclear waste?
She is mixing her comparators, quantity and quality.
I don’t agree or disagree with the argument she is making regarding nuclear power, what I am saying is that she makes the argument very poorly.
The problem is not nuclear waste, or nuclear energy, the problem is how capitalism has used nuclear energy, nuclear discovery and nuclear testing, since it is system based on profits before human being the capitalists do not care how many human can die as long as they are able to produce profits
The testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War has produced many consequences including the intoxication of thousands of human beings, vegetation and animals, there are several islands used for testing where the population had to be moved, and everything around the islands have been contaminated including the animals.
The island of Vieques which belongs to Puerto Rico and it has been used for many years for military weapons testing is completely contaminated, the population has cancer, and the animal life have mutated, and many peoples in Puerto Rico have been intoxicated with the testing of military weapons, the whole Caribbean basin has been affected
It has been proven that the places where they keep the weapons it has affected the health of many personnel
We would be able to use nuclear energy in a socialist society in a safer way because is not going to be used for profits and wars but in order to serve peoples needs, even more medicine is moving from molecular biology into atomic biology.
Nuclear waste is dumped in poor countries where they do not have any regulations, and the population is getting sick, and the capitalists do not care if peoples on those countries die, and some countries are target of wars because they are being used for military bases and they have atomic weapons .
One of the motives of the war in Africa is due to uranium mining which is used for the atomic industry of France and others powerful countries around the world, and they want to have access to the uranium and keep the monopoly, another indication that capitalism is the main problem.
In other to have an understanding of this problem, you have to understand the logic of capitalism, a person who is a bootlickers of the capitalist class can not understand this problem.
In Iraq the population has been intoxicated due to the use of depleted uranium, and that country was used as dumpster for atomic waste during the war, and tactical bombs were used to destroy military bunkers, and it was war initiated between capitalists for the monopoly of oil to produce profits.
They can sign hundred of treaty but it does not work, but they already know how to make atomic bombs, the only solution too all these problem is not going to be a pos capitalist society, reforming capitalism will not resolve our problems
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a44950168/wild-pigs-europe-radioactive-chernobyl/#
Karl Marx wrote that the prevailing ideas in any class society are the ideas of the ruling class, that set of ideas can be called ideology, or what Marx also called distortion of the reality, and Engels privately called it false consciousness, and thru history mankind has overthrown several societies, or economic systems despite that ideological distortions and false consciousness, they broke away with the prevailing system and the prevailing ideology
Feudalism was a historical economic period in Europe that lasted more centuries than capitalism, and most peasants supported Feudalism and they also supported the church, kings and it was the same case of the Asiatic mode of production which lasted longer than European feudalism and it was also overthrown by the peasants and capitalism was established.
In our time, like in prior times capitalist ideology has an enormous influence in the minds of most peoples and today that influence has been largely expanded due to the fact that the ruling class has more resources, and more means of communication to influences in the minds of the workers and they are able to manipulate our minds, they control our bodies and our minds, but despite all that, there is a large discontent around the world, but workers do not know how to direct that discontent to the real target which is capitalism, therefore, it is possible that workers might also eliminated those distortion and will overthrow capitalism and probably sooner than classical slavery and feudalism–
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/vieques-invisible-health-crisis/498428/
Vieques and Culebra
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-cleanup-us-military-will-take-decade-rcna529
These two islands are refugees for birds and wild life and they are dying and getting sick and many birds are moving to another islands, wild horse are getting sick and dying.
Wild pigeons used to travel from Venezuela to Vieques, Culebra and La Palmilla and most of them have died and also commercial hunting have killed most of the birds, it is similar to the ecological problem produced by the wall between Mexico and the USA
These two islands were uranium shooting range for two military bases, in the past peoples protested because the main island was a storage and military base for atomic bombs, and inside the mountains they had missiles, and the island was a military target
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/30/vieques-puerto-rico-us-navy-base-training
Under the sea they have done atomic experimenting, this area is prompt to earthquake because two tectonic planes are constantly moving in that area
The whole Caribbean basin has petroleum under the seas
They choose Bikini Atoll in the Marshall archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. After the displacement of the local inhabitants, 23 nuclear tests were carried out from 1946 to 1958,. The cumulative force of the tests in all of the Marshall Islands was equivalent to 7,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.
The USA has lost several atomic bombs in the oceans and that type of accidents produce contamination in the ocean and affect the ocean life
Birth defects and cancer in Iraq and Kuwait are the consequences of the use of depleted uranium during the wars
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/us-depleted-uranium-weapons-civilian-areas-iraq
Our problem is capitalism and profits
ALB
Keymaster
That would be interesting a debate for astrophysicists on “Capitalism or Socialism?” between Albert Einstein and Sabine Hossenfelder.
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Albert Einstein would have swept the floor with her wrong conceptions about capitalism. Einstein like Marx died but the law of value of exchange and the labor theory is still valid, and Einstein described it pretty well. Einstein knew about physics and about political economy, therefore, he understood the logic of the capitalist societyShe’s lucky that Einstein is dead. I have just re-read that article of his and you are right he really would have wiped the floor with her. Here are the arguments she would have had to have dealt with:
“The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free.”
“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.”
“Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an ‘army of unemployed’ almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism.”
His argument is mainly directed against private capitalism but that’s precisely what she is defending and wants to see more of.
Instead of a debate she could do a talk on “Why Einstein Was Wrong”. That would bring them in.
What we are talking about here is an imaginary debate between two people who happen to be astrophysicists, not as such but as ordinary people who are reasonably well-informed.
His argument is mainly directed against private capitalism but that’s precisely what she is defending and wants to see more of.
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Probably, she is going to say that state capitalism is socialism or communism like anybody else, but since the time of Engels he made a clear explanation that is just another form of capitalism, and the socialist party was clear about that concept since its foundation, ( before Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin ) and some Marxists have said that it emerged during the 1930, specially the Marxist Humanists, but it is in order to deny the existence of capitalism in the Soviet Union since 1917 and that Lenin supported state capitalism
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