values

For anyone even vaguely involved in the world of blogs and climate change, logical fallacies are a familiar thing.

In wanting to create a new society, I have a few obvious "core" values (quote marks due to our ex-prime minister's bastardisation of the word in the phrase "core promises") .

These consist of:

• Best practice environmentalism (not best as in better than everyone else, but best as in as good as possible).
• Autonomy/self governance for groups and individuals
• Freedom of information

In that order. These are fairly solid for me, and I won't really bother discussing why in this piece. I think that the second point is basically my ideal for best practice social organisation.

So how to go about the third? I think the internet might be the answer.

I had a very interesting lecture today, on thermodynamics, ecosystems, and human values relating to technology (lecture 4, Technology and Human Values, PHIL3910 at the University of Newcastle. I recommend it). It didn't give me a lot of information that I hadn't heard before, but Yin Gao's presentation definitely cemented a lot of that information in place for me.

One thing that did strike me, was Yin's case study: the Aswan Dam. I've heard of it before of course, but never paid a lot of attention. Almost as soon as she mentioned it, I saw the link with climate change. As she went on, the similarities blew me away. let me explain: