What is the most rational view of Peak Oil and its near term consequences?
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
Downvoted as I disagree that this answer is the most rational view, Logos, nor does this kind of response encourage rational discussion. This is irrespective of whether I agree or disagree with your argument that peak oil hasn’t occurred. Your first response sought to refute the specific statements the article made, and in general you did a fairly good job of putting up a rational argument (once again irrespective of whether the refutations are correct or incorrect). When your arguments are factual, they can be verified or refuted.
On the other hand, when your arguments contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value, they cannot be called rational. Please see below for the words here that I feel especially stand out in this regard(emphasis mine):
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
I reject and abjure the notion that topics of emotion are somehow irrational simply because the topic itself is emotional. If a person stands before me, raising his voice, using harsh language, displaying aggressive body language and conducting himself hostilely, it is rational to say, “This man is angry.” The mere use of emotionally-charged terminology does not inherently relegate a statement irrational. Their context does that. I posted my ‘answer’ to the question not as a top-post but as a ‘response’ to my own as an indicator that it was contingent upon my top-level post.
I stand by my assertion that my statement regarding the use of ‘catastrophic’ Peak Oil is nothing more than fear-mongering, is itself a factual statement.
Had I made that statement ‘ex nihilo’—that is, as a top-level post and not as what amounts to a “too long; didn’t read” version—I would be more than happy to concede your position. As it stands, the statement that my arguments “contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value”, is one I cannot accept as valid. Please do not mistake the statement that something is an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior for that statement itself being an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior.
“Peak Oil” is fear-mongering. It is being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas (and frankly your accusation of the term “agenda” of being emotionally charged I find to be without merit, by the way). And those various disparate and non-colluding groups are attempting to exploit the ‘risability’ of the so-called ‘common person’ to fear (i.e.; fear-mongering) in order to achieve their goals.
Fear-mongering and fear-driven politics is so common I find it rather surprising that it should be taken as a non-ordinary claim. Based on my top-level comment, which itself was in response to a question of a fearful nature regarding the topic, I can’t see how it’s even viable to call it ‘unverified’.
At worst I could see a position calling my ‘sub-comment’ disrespectful, insulting, or condescending. It wasn’t meant that way, but I could see that accusation being made and I would have to consider it seriously.
I do not believe emotional comments are inherently irrational. As all of us experience emotion, almost any comment we make is emotional, in that it elicits certain emotions from both ourselves and others. However, not all emotional comments are rational. I still do not believe that your last comment on what to think of peak oil was rational ( I also disagree that the term agenda used in that context is not emotionally charged, but this topic may be more subjective than the other and is less central to my point, so I won’t discuss it further here).
Your last comment about peak oil being fear-mongering is not supported by your previous statements. Your previous statements support peak oil not being true. Your last statement has nothing to do with this, as far as I’m concerned, and is considerably more complex to work out the truth or falsehood of. The idea of a political or social institution saying that peak oil is true because they wish to exploit common people for their own disparate agendas has nothing to do with whether or not peak oil is true. Consider:
Peak oil is true and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
Peak oil is false and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
I assume you are asserting 2b with your statement about fear-mongering, whereas your previous post put forth arguments that only support the statement in 2 that ‘Peak oil is false’. I also feel that the connotation for fear-mongering used in such contexts is likely to produce either rapid agreement or disagreement.
My question is—which is more important to you, proving that peak oil is false, or proving what the motivations of various unrelated politicians and social organizations are? Do not mistake my criticism of your statement for a belief that fear is never used in politics. I just don’t see how it at all helps your attempt to prove that peak oil is not true. See statements 1 and 2 above for my reasoning of why the first does not necessarily follow from the second. I think a more rational statement made after giving supporting arguments that peak oil is false would be something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it and show others it is not true so they can devote their resources to solving things that are actually problems’.
EDIT: changed some erratic capitalizations and one ‘denotation for fear-mongering’ to ‘connotation for fear-mongering’ to more correctly express my meaning in that part.
Your last comment about Peak Oil being fear-mongering is not supported by your previous statements.
How not? I demonstrated that it isn’t, in my view, a legitimate concern; that there exists at least one viable solution already being practically implemented. How can the topic—which is expressed as a ‘serious problem’—remaining a concern for discussion possibly exist except through the agency of various groups attempting to drive up fear levels amongst the public in order to achieve their specific goals? (“specific goals” being synonymous with “agendas”. You really need to get over that emotionally-charged thing for the word “agenda”.)
I assume you are asserting 2b with your statement about fear-mongering,
Unfortunately that is an inacurrate assumption. I made no differentiation between whether the agencies’ agendas were true or genuinely believed. Your view of the term “agenda” being emotionally charged necessarily resulted, I feel, in this being your stance though so I find myself too limited to the task of explaining my position to you.
I just don’t see how it at all helps your attempt to prove that peak oil is not true.
It’s not meant to. It was a conclusion/summary statement, not an argument towards a conclusion. Conclusions should never be used as arguments to support themselves.
My question is—which is more important to you, proving that peak oil is false, or proving what the motivations of various unrelated politicians and social organizations are?
I have no horse in the latter race. I have never implied I do. Why then do you insist I do?
Thank you for explaining your intent in more detail. However, the fact that I see a logical problem with your argument still exists. I will try to clarify the issue.
How can the topic—which is expressed as a ‘serious problem’—remaining a concern for discussion possibly exist except through the agency of various groups attempting to drive up fear levels amongst the public in order to achieve their specific goals?
If people are concerned about something untrue, then this may very well be because various groups are attempting to drive up fear levels. It may also be because the various individuals involved looked at the incomplete and often ambiguous data available to them and came to the conclusion that it is true, regardless of whether or not that was the conclusion some group wanted them to come to, and regardless of whether or not any groups involved wanted to drive up fear levels, or create a sense of fatalism, or thought this news would somehow cheer people up. I think there really is a lot one could say about how humans act on their beliefs and why.
But that was not what your main arguments were discussing. Let me try to summarize what you have said so far:
Giving various arguments supporting the idea that peak oil is false.
Concluding with the idea that some people say peak oil is true for various specific motivations that you have clarified are irrelevant to you, but one of their motivations for saying it is true is to drive up fear levels.
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about) at the very end of talking about whether a certain state of the world is true. It would make sense to end with a conclusion distilling the essence of what you argued (eg. ‘technology is already advanced enough to prevent this from being a problem’ or ‘we won’t be running out of oil anytime soon’). It might also make sense to summarize the various points you argued. However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here. Perhaps you want to discuss something about human nature as well, as it pertains to what people say or do, or what people believe. That is where I think the ending you gave might belong, not as a conclusion to arguments discussing whether or not peak oil is true.
If there is something you think I am missing here, I hope you will elaborate.
It may also be because the various individuals involved looked at the incomplete and often ambiguous data available to them and came to the conclusion that it is true,
The trouble with this position is that the falsification of the issue has been available since before it became an issue. A more-than-cursory examination reveals this—as I have done. This means that there needs to be active suppression of this information to preserve the levels of fear we now see.
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about)
Ahh… no, I never said that. I said I didn’t make any presumptions about what their motivations in specific were. That’s not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about them.
However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here.
Someone has been raising the issue. I haven’t made any presumptions about who or why—only that it has been happening. I then described the act of raising a false fear as ‘fearmongering’. They might not know they’re doing it. They might honestly believe it.
That they honestly believe a false fear to be valid doesn’t change the fact that they are promoting a false fear.
There are several things I would like to address, taking into account the additional information you have now supplied.
The trouble with this position is that the falsification of the issue has been available since before it became an issue. A more-than-cursory examination reveals this
I disagree with this statement,since I think determining the truth or falsehood of most statements tends to be rather more complicated than it might intuitively seem, but this is the type of statement that would be relevant to supporting your original conclusion.
there needs to be active suppression...
As opposed to something like confirmation bias? What specific kinds of actions does active suppression entail? Are you saying that this is the only possibility because you have evidence to dismiss all others, or because you intend this statement to refer to a large number of types of behavior that encompass all or most possible types of reactions?
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about)
Ahh… no, I never said that. I said I didn’t make any presumptions about what their motivations in specific were. That’s not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about them.
Okay, after considering them some more, I agree that your statements don’t indicate that you don’t care about the motivations (apologies for the double negative).
In regards to presumptions of specific motivations, I have examined the statement in question:
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
I observe that I interpret all of the ‘in order to’s here as ‘with the intent of’. If you intended them to perhaps mean something more along the lines of merely ‘with the effect of’, then I will not interpret ‘exploiting the risibility of the common person’ as a statement about their specific motivations. Otherwise, even if this motivation is not a terminal motivation, it still seems to be a specific one.
However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here.
Someone has been raising the issue. I haven’t made any presumptions about who or why—only that it has been happening. I then described the act of raising a false fear as ‘fearmongering’. They might not know they’re doing it. They might honestly believe it.
That they honestly believe a false fear to be valid doesn’t change the fact that they are promoting a false fear.
This clarification of your original statement increases my estimate of it’s probability of being true, but only by making it more generalized than I originally thought it was. Do you agree that the more possible outcomes a statement applies to, the fewer things its truthfulness can be used to predict? If I have three types of card in a shuffled deck: red, green, and blue, and I say the card on the top is red and I am right, is that more or less predictive than if I say the card on top is red or blue and I am right?
Even with the more general meaning you have applied to your statement, I still don’t think after presenting evidence that X is false, One can conclude that people act in way Y whenever they state that X is true. The only conclusion that follows from giving evidence that X is false is that X is false. If you want to convince others that people act in way Y when they say that X is true, it is not directly relevant evidence to simply say that X is false (though this might be used to support a sub-argument if X being true corresponds to different behavior). Instead, discussion of the causes of people’s mental states, and how their mental states affect their behavior, is necessary. Your conclusion does not directly follow from your original argument. This was, and still is, my largest objection to the conclusion you supplied.
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
Evidence for what, exactly? And exactly what is it you are claiming this geological evidence to be evidence of?
Posted as a sub-comment for brevity-of-discourse:
That it’s fear-mongering, being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas in order to exploit the ‘risability’ of the common person to fear in order to achieve their various goals through persuading the population.
Downvoted as I disagree that this answer is the most rational view, Logos, nor does this kind of response encourage rational discussion. This is irrespective of whether I agree or disagree with your argument that peak oil hasn’t occurred. Your first response sought to refute the specific statements the article made, and in general you did a fairly good job of putting up a rational argument (once again irrespective of whether the refutations are correct or incorrect). When your arguments are factual, they can be verified or refuted.
On the other hand, when your arguments contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value, they cannot be called rational. Please see below for the words here that I feel especially stand out in this regard(emphasis mine):
I reject and abjure the notion that topics of emotion are somehow irrational simply because the topic itself is emotional. If a person stands before me, raising his voice, using harsh language, displaying aggressive body language and conducting himself hostilely, it is rational to say, “This man is angry.” The mere use of emotionally-charged terminology does not inherently relegate a statement irrational. Their context does that. I posted my ‘answer’ to the question not as a top-post but as a ‘response’ to my own as an indicator that it was contingent upon my top-level post.
I stand by my assertion that my statement regarding the use of ‘catastrophic’ Peak Oil is nothing more than fear-mongering, is itself a factual statement.
Had I made that statement ‘ex nihilo’—that is, as a top-level post and not as what amounts to a “too long; didn’t read” version—I would be more than happy to concede your position. As it stands, the statement that my arguments “contain no specific information that can be verified or refuted, and instead contain words designed to maximize for emotional effect rather than informational value”, is one I cannot accept as valid. Please do not mistake the statement that something is an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior for that statement itself being an attempt to produce emotionally-charged irrational behavior.
“Peak Oil” is fear-mongering. It is being exploited by an array of political and social agencies with sometimes conflicting agendas (and frankly your accusation of the term “agenda” of being emotionally charged I find to be without merit, by the way). And those various disparate and non-colluding groups are attempting to exploit the ‘risability’ of the so-called ‘common person’ to fear (i.e.; fear-mongering) in order to achieve their goals.
Fear-mongering and fear-driven politics is so common I find it rather surprising that it should be taken as a non-ordinary claim. Based on my top-level comment, which itself was in response to a question of a fearful nature regarding the topic, I can’t see how it’s even viable to call it ‘unverified’.
At worst I could see a position calling my ‘sub-comment’ disrespectful, insulting, or condescending. It wasn’t meant that way, but I could see that accusation being made and I would have to consider it seriously.
I do not believe emotional comments are inherently irrational. As all of us experience emotion, almost any comment we make is emotional, in that it elicits certain emotions from both ourselves and others. However, not all emotional comments are rational. I still do not believe that your last comment on what to think of peak oil was rational ( I also disagree that the term agenda used in that context is not emotionally charged, but this topic may be more subjective than the other and is less central to my point, so I won’t discuss it further here).
Your last comment about peak oil being fear-mongering is not supported by your previous statements. Your previous statements support peak oil not being true. Your last statement has nothing to do with this, as far as I’m concerned, and is considerably more complex to work out the truth or falsehood of. The idea of a political or social institution saying that peak oil is true because they wish to exploit common people for their own disparate agendas has nothing to do with whether or not peak oil is true. Consider:
Peak oil is true and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
Peak oil is false and political and social institutions say that it is true, because they a.) believe it is true, b.) want to exploit other people, or c.) both.
I assume you are asserting 2b with your statement about fear-mongering, whereas your previous post put forth arguments that only support the statement in 2 that ‘Peak oil is false’. I also feel that the connotation for fear-mongering used in such contexts is likely to produce either rapid agreement or disagreement.
My question is—which is more important to you, proving that peak oil is false, or proving what the motivations of various unrelated politicians and social organizations are? Do not mistake my criticism of your statement for a belief that fear is never used in politics. I just don’t see how it at all helps your attempt to prove that peak oil is not true. See statements 1 and 2 above for my reasoning of why the first does not necessarily follow from the second. I think a more rational statement made after giving supporting arguments that peak oil is false would be something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it and show others it is not true so they can devote their resources to solving things that are actually problems’.
EDIT: changed some erratic capitalizations and one ‘denotation for fear-mongering’ to ‘connotation for fear-mongering’ to more correctly express my meaning in that part.
This comment is fantastic.
How not? I demonstrated that it isn’t, in my view, a legitimate concern; that there exists at least one viable solution already being practically implemented. How can the topic—which is expressed as a ‘serious problem’—remaining a concern for discussion possibly exist except through the agency of various groups attempting to drive up fear levels amongst the public in order to achieve their specific goals? (“specific goals” being synonymous with “agendas”. You really need to get over that emotionally-charged thing for the word “agenda”.)
Unfortunately that is an inacurrate assumption. I made no differentiation between whether the agencies’ agendas were true or genuinely believed. Your view of the term “agenda” being emotionally charged necessarily resulted, I feel, in this being your stance though so I find myself too limited to the task of explaining my position to you.
It’s not meant to. It was a conclusion/summary statement, not an argument towards a conclusion. Conclusions should never be used as arguments to support themselves.
I have no horse in the latter race. I have never implied I do. Why then do you insist I do?
Thank you for explaining your intent in more detail. However, the fact that I see a logical problem with your argument still exists. I will try to clarify the issue.
If people are concerned about something untrue, then this may very well be because various groups are attempting to drive up fear levels. It may also be because the various individuals involved looked at the incomplete and often ambiguous data available to them and came to the conclusion that it is true, regardless of whether or not that was the conclusion some group wanted them to come to, and regardless of whether or not any groups involved wanted to drive up fear levels, or create a sense of fatalism, or thought this news would somehow cheer people up. I think there really is a lot one could say about how humans act on their beliefs and why.
But that was not what your main arguments were discussing. Let me try to summarize what you have said so far:
Giving various arguments supporting the idea that peak oil is false.
Concluding with the idea that some people say peak oil is true for various specific motivations that you have clarified are irrelevant to you, but one of their motivations for saying it is true is to drive up fear levels.
It doesn’t make sense to me to discuss people and their motivations (which you’ve said you don’t care about) at the very end of talking about whether a certain state of the world is true. It would make sense to end with a conclusion distilling the essence of what you argued (eg. ‘technology is already advanced enough to prevent this from being a problem’ or ‘we won’t be running out of oil anytime soon’). It might also make sense to summarize the various points you argued. However, since you didn’t talk about how peak oil being false causes people to say it is true, I think there is something missing here. Perhaps you want to discuss something about human nature as well, as it pertains to what people say or do, or what people believe. That is where I think the ending you gave might belong, not as a conclusion to arguments discussing whether or not peak oil is true.
If there is something you think I am missing here, I hope you will elaborate.
The trouble with this position is that the falsification of the issue has been available since before it became an issue. A more-than-cursory examination reveals this—as I have done. This means that there needs to be active suppression of this information to preserve the levels of fear we now see.
Ahh… no, I never said that. I said I didn’t make any presumptions about what their motivations in specific were. That’s not the same as saying that I “don’t care” about them.
Someone has been raising the issue. I haven’t made any presumptions about who or why—only that it has been happening. I then described the act of raising a false fear as ‘fearmongering’. They might not know they’re doing it. They might honestly believe it.
That they honestly believe a false fear to be valid doesn’t change the fact that they are promoting a false fear.
There are several things I would like to address, taking into account the additional information you have now supplied.
As opposed to something like confirmation bias? What specific kinds of actions does active suppression entail? Are you saying that this is the only possibility because you have evidence to dismiss all others, or because you intend this statement to refer to a large number of types of behavior that encompass all or most possible types of reactions?
Okay, after considering them some more, I agree that your statements don’t indicate that you don’t care about the motivations (apologies for the double negative).
In regards to presumptions of specific motivations, I have examined the statement in question:
I observe that I interpret all of the ‘in order to’s here as ‘with the intent of’. If you intended them to perhaps mean something more along the lines of merely ‘with the effect of’, then I will not interpret ‘exploiting the risibility of the common person’ as a statement about their specific motivations. Otherwise, even if this motivation is not a terminal motivation, it still seems to be a specific one.
This clarification of your original statement increases my estimate of it’s probability of being true, but only by making it more generalized than I originally thought it was. Do you agree that the more possible outcomes a statement applies to, the fewer things its truthfulness can be used to predict? If I have three types of card in a shuffled deck: red, green, and blue, and I say the card on the top is red and I am right, is that more or less predictive than if I say the card on top is red or blue and I am right?
Even with the more general meaning you have applied to your statement, I still don’t think after presenting evidence that X is false, One can conclude that people act in way Y whenever they state that X is true. The only conclusion that follows from giving evidence that X is false is that X is false. If you want to convince others that people act in way Y when they say that X is true, it is not directly relevant evidence to simply say that X is false (though this might be used to support a sub-argument if X being true corresponds to different behavior). Instead, discussion of the causes of people’s mental states, and how their mental states affect their behavior, is necessary. Your conclusion does not directly follow from your original argument. This was, and still is, my largest objection to the conclusion you supplied.
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
Evidence for what, exactly? And exactly what is it you are claiming this geological evidence to be evidence of?