[Paleopsych] energy problems

[Werbos, Dr. Paul J.]

At 09:17 AM 8/9/2004 -0700, Steve wrote:
>So you don't seem to be a pessimist about
>actually doing this...
>
>However, a Vice President who says "conservation
>is not an option" and  President who is owned by
>the oil companies won't lead us where we need
>to go.
>
>I recently saw a British Petroleum ad which asserts
>that the oil companies will have to lead us into the
>future of energy.  Probably not.
>
>Steve Hovland


Hi, Steve!

Lotfi Zadeh once asked whether Bayesian Utilitarianism was basically
just part of my religion. In a way, yes. Respects to Howard Raiffa and John 
von Neumann,
among others.

In that viewpoint -- we are not really called to act if things are 
guaranteed to go well,
or guaranteed to go badly. But if we say there is some probability of 
survival between
zero and one, then a rational person will try to tweak the probabilities as 
best he/she can
in the right direction.

So -- I am not exactly an optimist, and not exactly a pessimist -- but not 
a defeatist.

I do think we have good, rational bases for fear here. Here today we look at
the pain, the cost and the risk caused by the combination of Osama's groups,
of Iraq, of Arab-Israeli tension, of instability in Saudi Arabia, and so on...
all very costly already, and worthy of high-level attention. And then I wonder:
Now that Ismail has shown us it could be ten times as bad in 20 years, or 
worse,
why are we sitting here paralyzed like a deep in the headlights? Maybe we 
will all
be road kill after all, but if enough of us brain cells start twitching 
there is always some hope
of waking up...

I see it less as a problem of partisan politics and more of a problem in 
waking up.
But yes, certainly, there are a few folks in the partisan politics (in both 
parties
or exploiting the parties) who seem to specialize in sleeping pills or 
hypnogogics.

BP is not the most evil company in the world... maybe a key part of waking 
up is for
many parties to learn better how to work with each other, and bypass the 
outer ring
of hired guns. But, yes, the guns are there.