Tag Archives: Science

Science and the scientific Method

Power, Saving the World, Science, Technology

Energy from Thorium

February 12, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Thorium as an energy source, particularly as delivered by the Molten Salt Reactor Technology known as LFTR (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor) may be the disruptive technology that is required to jolt us from the status quo. It promises to provide universal cheap safe green electricity and has to potential to deliver a bunch of other benefits, anyone of which would normally be incentive enough to have money thrown at its development.

This solution has been around since the fifties. The problem with promoting a solution that simultaneously solves multiple problems is that for some reason it gains less support than a focused single problem solving solution.

Perhaps, there lies the parallel to Kahatika.

Fair - Justice, Power, Science, Technology, Tools

Conservation will not Save the World

January 13, 2010 admin Leave a comment

When I speak of my “Save the World” goal I don’t mean saving the planet. After all, the known life cycle of the sun dictates the ultimate demise of our planet. Saving the sun is not on the agenda.

So when I say I want to save the world I actually want to save our species, or more correctly I want to save our species long enough for it to evolve into it’s next revision.

In the long term there appears to be only three alternatives for that to happen.

1. God rewrites the physical world laws to reveal a new reality that our species can survive in.

2. A more advanced extra-terrestrial life-form than ourselves takes pity on us and facilitates our escape from our doomed planet.

3. Our science and technology develops sufficiently for us to escape.

Both 1. and 2. I can only hope and/or pray for, and as I really don’t want the responsibility of saving the world, would be really cool alternatives.

Unfortunately in my reality, three is the only alternative that I can take action on.

OK, now that we are all convinced that without science and technology advancements we are eventually doomed. We being us and all our plant and animal friends. We necessarily can only use conservation and sustainability measures as a means to delay premature destruction of our planet long enough for our species to get off it. It seems logical to use science and technology as a means to advance conservation and sustainability to give us that time and as a byproduct keep our hand in; High tech conservation and sustainability techniques are sure to aid our escape.

I guess that means that only some of us will have the luxury of going back to a simpler less technology driven lifestyle, and only then, for a few billion years.

Some of us will need to carry on pushing the envelope of science and technology and converting our new findings into something useful using the change agent of business. This is where Kahatika fits in.

P.S. Yes I know about the “Big Rip” Theory. If it is real I guess I’m working to give us enough time for us to develop technologies that will enable us to pass to another universe. i.e. I’m on the road to the multiverse.

Business, Love, Science

Distillation of Information

December 16, 2009 admin Leave a comment

Watching the World Debate on the BBC last night I noted co-winner of the Nobel prize for physics 2009 Willard Boyle’s take on the internet.

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Like him I often find the Internet Plaghh!

His idea of entrusting organisations to distill information for human consumption is a little bit like entrusting a government formed through representative democracy.

None of us have time to sift through the vast amount of information to come up with an informed opinion on science. Take climate change science as a case in point. In the end we have to trust the system. Deep inside all humans we search for love and truth and therefore, unfettered, the scientific process will eventually deliver something closer to the truth than we previously had.

Now if I could just figure a trustworthy method of distilling the wisdom inherent in our most powerful change agent, business.

Business, Fear, Saving the World, Science, Technology

Spreading Dangerous Ideas

December 8, 2009 admin Leave a comment

I’ve just read a blog by Seth Godin about Protecting vs Spreading Ideas. The moral of his blog, as far as I can tell, is; “Get good at what you do”; “Spread your Ideas Freely” they belong to everyone.

I agree with this philosophy but have often agonised over possible exceptions to this rule.

Lets take a hypothetical rewrite of History. Lets say Rutherford split the atom and kept it to himself, he went on to do a few more experiments and discovered in isolation the power that could be obtained from such activity and kept it to himself. Pondered a bit more he decided to try the reverse of splitting the atom and discovered that fusing together atoms was even more powerful than splitting them. He still didn’t tell anyone. Experimented a bit more and came up with a working fusion reactor. This he told. In fact he gave building instructions, that an idiot could follow, to every country in the world.

Japan now had the energy they previously went to war over, no nuclear bomb got dropped, in fact it never got invented because there was no need for it.

Now lets assume instead that anywhere along this time line that Rutherford dies taking his ideas to his grave.

No splitting of the atom, no discovery of fission, again, no bomb.

OK I’m not a science historian. I have no knowledge of how long it would have been before someone else would have discovered the splitting of the atom bringing the world through the sequence of discoveries that have got us to where we today rather than the impossible events that lead to my Utopian scenario. It does however illustrate the possible need for exceptions and why I spend time agonising over it.

Are nanotechnology ideas going to progress or harm humanity’s progress? How about genetic engineering? Biotech?

Was the letter, sent to the American President, which sparked the Manhattan Project, and signed by Albert Einstein, an exception to the rule?

History documents Einstein’s anguish over the decision to send that letter.

Communication, Love, Power, Saving the World, Science, Technology

Yet we still Trust

November 27, 2009 admin Leave a comment

Having just written about a Crisis of Trust I must recognise that, as a society, we still trust.

The following TED talk I found reassuring. His observations provide partial reason for why my Plan to “Save the World” may just work.

Like every world changing idea now-a-days, mine too involves the internet to a very limited degree. More importantly it involves some aspects of Human behaviour Jonathan touches on.

Agnostic, Business, Fear, Love, Power, Saving the World, Science

The Climate is Changing?

November 25, 2009 admin Leave a comment

The world needs saving because the climate is changing. This is impacting on the way we as humans currently live and we are all worried.

Being agnostic I find I just don’t know what the truth of the situation is. There is so much conflicting information out there that seems to be so complicated and with so many compelling reasons for it to be presented in a particular way that I can’t trust what I see or hear.

But nobody likes a fence sitter. You have to decide.

Anyone could be forgiven for deciding that this is where you concentrate your efforts to Save the World.

Our planet is under attack, and it’s under attack by us.

Seas are rising, ice is melting, floods are massive, droughts are long, hurricanes are bigger and more frequent; and that’s just the start. We are also going to freeze to death. As individuals we must all do our bit, right? Rah rah rah speeches, social media campaigns, politics, advertising.

How do we keep everyone on track?
How does everyone stay engaged?

You can generally get everyone on the same page for a short period of time when in a time of war. Define an enemy, generate some hate by laying blame, tell everyone what to do. If they don’t do it, kill them. Unfortunately the enemy seems to have been defined as all of us. If we use the same strategy we’ll legitimise killing our neighbour simply because they don’t car pool.

The generation of an enemy to accelerate change unfortunately works but it is wrong, when the enemy is us, it is really really wrong and self-destructive.

If Deming was right and over 90% of the problem is due to the system not the people we must look at the system.

Regardless of the debate over climate change; and there is still significant debate, moving around the proportion of responsibility for action is simply an elaborate dance.

Business for better or worse is always going to be the main change agent. Inventing the light bulb didn’t change the world, commercialisation of the light bulb did.

A seemingly forgotten base principle of business needs to be revived. “More with Less” (See Buckminster Fuller Institute, Deming Institute, Excellerated Business Schools)
Following that fundamental principle in combination with following the principle of, “Think Global act Local” would render the debate redundant. There would be no reason to debate if the climate was changing or what was causing it. The consequence of following sound first principles simply because they are the right thing to do puts us on the right track and eliminates the need for an enemy.

Furthermore the original reasons for incorporation of a business needs to be remembered. The law was originally written to produce entities to serve the people. “Us”. Build roads, bridges, railways etc. Through a succession of bastardisations of that original law do we get the entities we have today. (see the movie “The Corporation”)

We also need to remember that it’s not that the climate is changing it’s the speed of predicted change that is the problem.

Assuming the climate will follow these predictions how do we get our biggest most powerful change agent to respond quickly enough?

Thats all I can remember that we should remember. I’m sure there are other things, I just can’t remember.

Love, Peace, Bellbeads 🙂

P.S. This is not the solution but it is related. Read on.

Power, Science

There are no such thing as “Rights”

November 23, 2009 admin Leave a comment

You have no “rights”. Not even to eat, drink, breath or even to be born.

Everything we regard as rights has taken energy to give the appearance of being a right.

Institutions which consolidate that appearance require constant energy to maintain them.

Like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics without energy to bring order from disorder a system will naturally tend to chaos.

Where does that energy come from?

I like to think the “Boundless energy of the Human Spirit”.

Destruction is therefore a waste of the efforts that came before us and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.

Constant, never ending Improvement is a far more productive and is part of the solution to “Save the World”.

Agnostic, Love, Saving the World, Science

Not Knowing

November 8, 2009 admin Leave a comment

Being an Agnostic is a bad thing.

Humans don’t like uncertainty.

If you don’t know, that makes you inferior in some way doesn’t it?

You are wishy washy, you sit on the fence, you are indecisive. Definitely not leadership material.

I decided a long time ago I was probably agnostic, I say probably because I don’t really know. I went to University and learned about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and realised I was probably right to doubt what I knew and what I didn’t know.
I like the saying “A true scientist never says never”. Not that I profess to be a scientist. Far from it. I do however find living a life being open to possibilities is more fun than that of living with a closed mind.
I guess it all comes down to probabilities. What is most likely to be right? Once you get close enough to 100% proof, acceptance saves a bit of time.

So if I don’t “know” anything for certain, what sort of things would I like to be true.

A couple of things come to mind.

Humanity is basically “Good”

Individuals are “Good” because they have a capacity for “Love”

I will attempt to deal with “Good” and “Love” in future posts.

Of course I don’t know these to be fact but I do find them assumptions which make my life fun.

They are in fact essential assumptions in my Plan to “Save the World” and rest assured this won’t stop me from acting on my plan.

To justify my point that, not knowing is bad, have a look 2 minutes in to this video on what Tony Robbins has to say on “knowing”.

Good advice for getting ahead but in my view needs to be tempered by the fact that, the more you know the more you know you don’t know.

I hope this sets the stage for my future writings. Where I state things as I see it, you may well assume that I don’t really know.

Update: Steve Schwartz takes this knowing and not knowing a bit further

Kahatika