Greg Boyles

Single cells DO NOT have conciousness or self awareness. I am confident in saying that this is a universally accepted biological fact. And I never said that individual neurones have consciousness - you have completely misunderstood what I was saying. I will try again for what it is worth. When a neurone does what it does in firing off nerve impulses to neighbouring neurones it contributes to the generation of conciousness within the brain, i.e. the continuous stream of nerve impulses is a small part of consciousness not the neurones themselves. Back to the motor cycle analogy..... It is not the piston of the spark plug that is a small part of the speed of the bike. It is the coordinated movement of the piston and the coordinated sparking of the spark plug that are small parts of the speed of the bike. If the piston does not move or the spark plug does not spark then the motorcycle does not move and generates no speed. Similarly if the neurones in your brain do not fire impulses then you would be nothing more than an inanimate meat sack.

If time was purely a subjective human phenomenum then surely all humans in one time zone would not be able to agree on the measurement of time etc. But largely we can and do agree on its measurement. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west over aperiod of 12 hours or so is not subjective but a fact. Perhaps our feelings about time are subjective but our experience of it is not. Although what if the Earth was in a tidally locked orbit around the sun, and day and night did not exist. I wonder how our experience of time would change then. We would still be able to detect the passage of time however through the procession of star constellations in the sky and progression of events on earth.

An electron giving away its negative charge would be like me trying to give away the colour of my skin. If it did then it would no longer be an electron. An electron giving away its negative charge would be like me trying to give away the colour of my skin. If it did then it would no longer be an electron.

I agree. But you should realise that if all the neurones were alive and well but not firing off impulses to each other then the level of consciousness would be zero no matter how complex the interconnections were. In exactly the same way that a motorbike does not generate speed and noise unless it is running and in gear.

Granted. But the point is that I think a great deal of our behaviour is some what autonomous and driven by instincts with our conscious selves left to rationalise that behaviour after or during the fact.

Aint that the truth, particularly with young males. But even more than that granpa. When we are innitially attracted to a member of the opposite sex..... How much of that is due to rational choice and how much of it is due to base sexual instinct? Or xeonophobia........ Xenophobia is base instinct across a great many mammals, for example, lions will attack and kill any other lion from another pride that strays into their territory. How much of xenophobia in humans is due to rational choice and how much is due to base instinct?

Does not mean that the cerebral cortex is in total rational and logical control of our actions at all times. Sometimes it becomes an accessory after the fact in trying to justify and rataionalise an individual's irrational actions. E.G. Drag racing with your car full of mates, crashing the car and killing your mates.

I don't know about that granpa! I think a greater deal (than we are collectively prepared to admit to ourselves) of what we humans do is driven by subconscious instincts and impulses. Why does a problem gambler gamble away his pay cheque and then steal money from his boss to chase his/her losses despite knowing that the long term consequences will be severe? Why do some males give into temptation and commit adultry despite the risk of losing their family and home? This sort of behaviour is clearly not driven by rational logic. I could give you many other examples. Intelligence is not quantified by determining the number of neurones you have in your brain. If a neurone contains 0.00X% of the total consciousness then logically the number of neurones a person has determines the level of consciousness they have. That is just silly. A person who has had a stroke that affects the left side of their body would therefore have less consciousness than a normal person. Again that's just silly and demonstrably not true. The level of consciousness can be affected by a stroke depending on what part of the brain is damaged. A stroke that affects the motor cortex or the visual cortex is unlikely to have any noticeable effect on a persons consciousness or personality. However a stroke that affects the frontal lobes is extremely likely to have a noticeable effect on a persons consciousness or personality. Ever heard of the brain injury patient Phineas Gage? Google him and find out what happened to him. While not the precise location of 'the self' the frontal lobes are extremely important in its gensis. And any damage to this region of the brain severely degrades and damages 'the self'. The hippocampi in each temporal lobe are heavily involved in laying down long term memory - they are equivalent to the reading/recording head of a computer hard disk. Any damage to these regions also degrades 'the self' since each of us are partly the sum of our memories and experiences. So again, it is the complex interactions of these brain regions that generate 'the self' and consciousness. While it can no doubt be quantified to some extent through memory and cognitive tests and the like, individual neurones alone have nothing to do what ever with that level of consciousness. It is about how well integrated and functional theses critical regions of the brain are.

When I did my graduate diploma in computer science we covered a bit of LISP. I personally found it very unintuitive and difficult to debug due to the necessity for umpteen recursive calls resulting in a horrible mess of nested brackets. I find it far easier to program on a one step per line basis as in imperative languages.

We could start with the figures on that website I found that calculated we would need an area the size of Malaysia packed with solar voltaics in order to replace the US's current annual consumption of oil energy. Then we could factor in the maintenance and replacement requirements for this along with need to expand it as the global population and energy demand grows. We could figure out how many additional tonnes of aluminium, silicon and steel we would need to produce this array and over what time period. We could figure out how much ongoing additional tonnes of aluminium, silicon and steel will be needed in order to maintain it and to expand it. We could calculate the amount of energy that will be required to do all this and over what time period and compare it to the predictions of future oil production and the amount of energy that will provide over a given time period. I don't have all these figure at hand but I am sure we could both come up with some rough estimates.

Well Captain I think you are quite simply wrong! You may have a good grasp of the science, but I just don't think you have a good grasp of the economic implications implementing this technology on a vast scale.

Through a purely scientific prism then you are right they have nothing to do with each other. But through an economic prism then the population issue is of paramount relevance to the viability of solar and wind energy.

EXACTLY. And deliberately so. You could precisely replicate the full details of a motorbike out of wood rather than metal etc. But would it generate speed? Would it be greater than the sum of its individual wooden components? Clearly no! But that would need to result from deliberate research and design. You can't just make any old changes to a motorbike at a whim and expect it to run as normal or at all. NO! Consciousness is not a physical component of a brain. A neurone IS a physical component of a brain. By arguing that a neurone contains a proportion of the total consciousness of a full brain you are arguing that consciousness can be pinpointed in a physical component of the brain. And in effect that consciousness itself is a physical component of the brain. I believe that it is well established in neuroscience that this is simply not the case. Consciousness results from functioning of a brain alone and not from substance of the brain - the neurones. When normal brain function is interupted, e.g. when you get a severe blow to the head, consciousness ceases as you pass out. Perhaps what is preventing you from getting your head around this is the implications it has for 'the self', its lack of 'permanence' and dissolution upon death.

That is the usual slur I get, but I have no desire to cull humans. I am refering to fertility control, perferably voluntary but involuntary if necessary. And this is obviously the reason behind your eternal technology optimism, i.e. because you wish to avoid at all costs facing the fundamental problem of excess humans and the ethically difficult questions that arise from it. What is scientifically possible is meaningless on its own with respect to energy. To be a useful technological solution it must also be economically viable on a large scale. The resources required must be common, widely available and easy to extract and process. Which means that the technological solution will be cheap and available to most humans. Solar panels are not cheap - the silicon and metals required to produce are very energy intensive to extract even if they are common resources. With fossil fuel production set to decline in the coming decades, solar panels will increase in cost rather than decrease. On the other hand it is very easy to plant a canola crop and extract the oil from the seeds to use as diesel fuel. If necessary it can be done with low technology, including beasts of burdon. But then you run into the problem of it competing with food production for 7 billion, and counting, humans. So eve here we cannot escape the reality that we must reduce our numbers in combination with any renewable energy strategies We have no choice. Massive population reduction will occur whether we want it or not. They only choice we have is how that will occur. Through a massive program of fertility reduction, voluntary or involuntary. Or through war, famine, disease and genocide. Switching to renwables alone will not save us. With our current numbers we can never be free of the need to burn oil and coal even if we start a massive conversion to solar and wind energy. They will never provide the same amount of surplus energy as fossil fuels currently do. Therefore, regardless of a landscape filled with solar voltaics and wind turbines, or civilisation will still collapse as oil and coal production decline. If we combine renewable energy strategies with depopulation then our civilisation might have some chance. I stand by that comment Phi. An Israeli critic of Israeli foreign policy once said that Israelis/Jews have internalised their holocaust victimhood so that they can no longer see that, in some cases, they are visiting upon the Palestinians the same sorts of attrocities that were visited upon them by the Nazis. I believe that many advocates of technology have gotten themselves into a similar state of mind where they just cannot conceive any notion that humans and our civilisation are not protected from all things bad - technology will always provide an answer. I am not against us switching to renewable energy sources as much as possible. But I am against you (collectively not you personally) using this as an excuse to avoid facing up to the difficult responsibility we have towards the global population and our collective fertility. Scientifically speaking I am arguing that renewable energy technology cannot be implemented on the scale required to provide an equivalent amount of energy to what fossil fuels currently provide all 7 billion of us with. I am arguing, on a scientific basis, that renewable energy strategies must go hand in hand with depopulation. I am arguing that depopulation is not optional but absolutely required in order to make renewable energy a viable alternative.

If you had a simpler motorbike with one cyclinder rather than 4 or if the motorbike had only one gear then the amount of speed it could generate would be less. The amount of speed that can be generated is proportional to the complexity and specialisation of the enigine etc. In the same way a simpler brain generates a more basic consciousness than a more complex brain like ours. So there is undoubtedly a spectrum of consciousness across the animal world. But the total absence of a brain, such as in a single cell, means that there is 0 consciousness rather than 0.001 consciousness. A single cell is not designed to generate consciousness. In the same way a motorcycle seat or a piston does not contribute 0.001 to the speed of the bike. The complexity of the motorcycle components operating, as designed, is what generates speed. In effect, you are trying to argue that consciousness is a physical component of living things that can be pin pointed, i.e. by stating that a single neurone from a human brain has 0.001 of the total consciousness. You are saying that 0.001 of total human consciousness resides in any given neurone. But a neurone on its own is not designed to generate consciousness and contains 0 consciousness. It contributes to consciousness only when it is combined with billions of other neurones in a physical brain. So you could fairly argue that a neurone within a brain contributes 0.0001 (or what ever) to the total consciousness of the brain. But if you take that neurone out and put in in a petri dish then it has or no level of consciousness at all.

No scientist can answer that question esbo. Science's primary purpose is to explain what we do observe. It is not to, and cannot be to, explain a million other scenarios of what we MIGHT be observing if evolution had run a different course. One might as well try to detail what world history would have been had Nazi Germany had won WW2. You either lack the education in these fields or you are simply being unnecessarily argumentative. And need I point out to you that animals have a totally different genetic make up to plants and are only remotely related in evolutionary terms. Just because animals produce melanin does not amount to proof that plants could ever have had the genetic capacity to produce melanin. Genetics is not a total free for all where any organism can have any combination of genes from the total pool of genes across all life. Various genes in any given organism are often linked in various ways, e.g. sex linked charactersitics etc. They evolve collectively along with the physical characteristics they engender. And what might be possible with an animal population, genetically speaking, is limited by the genetic make up ancestors. And even if plants arose that could produce melanin, there is no evidence that it could be substituted for chlorophyll and allow photosynthesis to operate at the same or greater efficiency, or even at all. The quantum mechanics of melanin molecules may simply not be suitable. It is mumbo jumbo to esbo because clearly you do not understand the concepts.

Good point Captain. It is probably far more practical than solar voltaics etc on a large scale.

I once heard an excellent analogy of consciousness in a medical doco. Noise and speed are not physical components of a motorcycle. And yet a motorcycle is specifically designed to generate these things when it is operating. In the same way consciousness is not a physical component of the brain that can be pinpointed. But the functioning of the brain is designed to generate consciousness because gives the organism a survival advantage. Therefore your logic is flawed. Consciousness is no more a physical component of individual cells or atoms than it is of the brain as w hole.

If you agree that we must reduce our numbers and our consumption in combination with reneweable energy technology then why is that you resist so vehermently when I or other suggest that renewable energy sources or unlikely to be economically viable on the scale of 7 billion and counting humans? I can only conclude that you do not really believe that population and consumption reduction are a required part of the equation. Or perhaps you just do not want to 'speak its name' due to the inevitable ethical difficulties. And when I say 'you' I don't mean you personally. I mean you collectively, as in those who believe that 'technology will provide'. And what has nuclear go to do with this? The original post was about the comparison between the economic viability of the concorde and the economic viability of huge scale solar and wind energy. In one breath you say that you are not a technology zealot and then in the next breath you mount the exact same argument that 'technology will always provide'.....'god will always provide'. We can't assume that our technology will always come to our rescue when we $%&* up. There a physical, resource and ecological limits to what we can acheive. Obviously you simply cannot see yourself for what you are - some one who has replaced 'god' with 'technology'. You have internalised the mantra that 'technology will provide' and therefore will not consider the possibility that it may not always provide. Technology has always increased through human history - a reasonable assessment. And yet despite this many civilisations have collapsed and disappeared often due to ecological over shoot is indicated by the archaelogical record. Why is our civilisation not vulnerable to sudden collapse like all the rest despite our technology? Not only consume less be less in numbers. There is little likelihood that the vast majority of westerners will signficantly reduce their consumption and their standard of living. There is even less likelihood that third worlders will give up on increasing their consumption to western levels. Therefore there must be less of us. How will water be cleaner? How will there be less pollution? So far all the evidence has been to the contrary. The long haul of human history demonstrates that more people means more pollution and dwindling and contaminated water supplies. I don't see how renewable energy will change that. We will need to smelt even more metals and silicon etc. That cannot be done via renewable energy sources and hence attempts to switch to wind and solar energy will result in more pollution etc.

Well perhaps if you occasionally and explcitly acknowledged that reduction in numbers and consumption must be combined with advances in energy technology I might be less troubled and less prone to constantly remind you. You always post this sort of thing: "Trends suggest that electric cars will get more efficient. " But you never seem to ever balance it with this sort of thing....except on this occasion: "Also, we're pretty certain (but not 100%) that we probably should not go on consuming as normal. "

And you are just as sure that technology WILLprovide an energy solution equal to fossil fuels that will allow all 7 billion of us to go on consuming as normal. There is absolutely no guarentee of that! I find your faith in technology as troubling as a religious zealot's faith in his/her god. I.E. Industrial quantities of hydrogen are currently produced from fossil fuel derived hydrocarbons. When oil production enters its decline so will rocket fuel production. Because optimists like you NEVER seem to explicitly combine your hope in new technology with the sobering reality of the need to reduce our numbers and our consumption. From my point of view your implicit assumption is that we don't really need to signficantly change anything because technology will eliminate the need for us to do so.

So is the end of cheap fossil fuels and our current massive industrial capacity. Even if scientists do manage to come up with a miraculously efficient and practical battery system, not made from elements that are rare and difficult to extract, it may be simply to late. We may well have have started losing our industrial might and the ability to convert our massive fossil fuel energy systems. The conversion from horse power to fossil fuel power was increasingly assisted by the massive increase in energy made available by high EROEI fossil fuels. That will not be the case with conversion of fossil fuels to electrcity. Solar energy has a signficantly lower EROEI than oil had when it was first extracted and processed. So we will be conducting a far mor massive conversion, due to a global population 2 or 3 times bigger than it was, on a falling energy budget as oil becomes scarcer an less economically viable. It matters a great deal for transport of goods if trucks have to stop every 100km, or what ever, to swap out their batteries for example. Your cost of living will increase massively. Are you prepared to have a lower standard of living than you do at present. With declining oil production, where will all the rocket fuel come from to put this massive amount of infrastructure into space? These is clearly two schools of thought aren't there. Those that think that science will overcome all obstacles and allow us to carry on business as usual, very like the school of thought that god will provide. And those like me who think that science will indeed continue supplying solutions and solving problems but that it will still not be sufficient to allow us to carry on business as usual.

I am not the one who brought electric cars into this debate - I merely responded. You are building a strawman. Why don't we compare apples with apples? How many tonnes of steel did it take to build all the railways across the world? How long did it take? How many tonnes of steel did it take to build all the oil rigs, refineries and roads etc across the world? How long did it take? How many tonnes of steel will it take to build all the solar infrastructure required to entirely replace fossil fuel infratsructure? How long will that take? How many years of economically viable fossil fuel production is there left?

But again swansont you are denying the point that the infrastructure requirements for current renewable energy sources, except perhaps geothermal, are so much more massive than that required for oil. To use an anology, the conversion from horse power to fossil fuel power was perhaps like climbing Mount Hotham as far as infrastructure requiements. But conversion from fossil fuel power to solar and wind power is more like climbing Mount Everest. And with declining oil production we will have less surplus energy available to acheive it. With the current global population it may well be simply unacheivable. I don't question that solar and wind energy has a big role to play in our energy future, but I do question the assumption it can replace fossil fuels at our current population and consumption levels. But current and forseeable battery technology is not more efficient than oil. And electric vehicles cannot operate without batteries. I could fill my tank with petrol and probably make it most of the way from Melbourne to Sydney. Even with the most efficient battery technology to date, how far would you get with a full charge.......in a standard passenger vehicle.

Well presumeably oil infrastructure is not, or at least has not, been hideous compared to the amount of energy profit that has been delivered by oil. Perhaps that is changing as oil becomes harder to find and extract. If he is not making that comparison then why would he bother even mentioning the concorde. If he was not then the concorde issue would be totally irrelevant. I will rephrase the comparison I believe he is making. He is comparing the economic viability of the concorde to the economic viability of solar voltacis and thermal. At the heart of the economic viability of the concorde is its fuel consumoption and at the heart of the economic viability of solar votaics and thermal is the massive infrastructure requirements. I once found a website where the author did some rough calculations on how much solar voltaics would be required to entirely replace the US's current annual oil consumption. The estimate was an area the size of Malasia packed solid with solar voltacis would be required. Not counting future growth in energy consumption. Would the total global oil infrastructure, if packed side by side, add up to an area the size of Malasia? I seriously doubt it would come any where near it.