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Interesting conservative take. Why change or try anything new? Everything must have been made for some reason.
Randomly knocking out bricks of your house so you can sell them for 50c each to help pay the mortgage is not innovation.
U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
121–130 of 257 posts
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information…
> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. > you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased…
> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.
It is just metaphysics. I like it also, but it is impractical. I find it useful to train my mind to see things from different angles, but it is useless to talk about concrete things.
Can you find examples of a biased reports on CSB's youtube channel? If not, it is a good example of uselessness of metaphysics. If you are declaring all their reports biased, while being unable to show the bias, it is just empty words.
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> an objective source of truth An alternative source with different incentives and culture, not an objective one.
Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge. Going this way we'll risk to end up in a world, where there is no truth and no falsehoods. All we'll have is something in between. It would take just one small step to say that any two opinions are equal in their utility. You know, it is like Kremlin pr…
We are living in a post-truth world, and more specifically, a post truth country in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/post...
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information…
> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. > you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased…
> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.
Sure, I agree with what you’ve stated here.
> Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.
I reread what I wrote and still don’t see that I framed the conversation in this way. What I did frame was the motivation of the company (which I implied to be profit) versus the motive of the government (that of public interest). These are both biased and the effect of the bias could be anticipated: companies would slant their published information with a focus on the effects of profits, whereas the government’s overt bias would slant its information output towards safety (in the case of the CSB) without much concern for profit.
> The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.
Sure, we both agree the author is biased towards the government, but you’ve missed the thrust of what I wrote entirely: your nuance added absolutely no value to the discussion, it didn’t make a point or refute anything the author said.
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it turns out when Europe is a giant crater and the rest of world hasn't figured out electricity quite yet that your massive industrial capacity can be a bit of a boon. Especially when you loan out a bunch of money to Europe so they can buy all your stuff! Wow! Having over 50% of the world's industrial capacity when the world just spent 7 years on fire and everyone needs new everything means it's a bit of a selle…
Yep, all these baby booomers lucked the fuck out being born in an era where the entire world needed the US after WW2. But over time the rest of the world slowly recovered and suddenly US goods became overpriced. I blame much of the current US economy on the shenanigans of baby boomers and their parents. Who after having a booming economy for 3 decades, needed to quickly financial engineer themselves out of their infi…
Think you might like to read "Adrift: America in 100 Charts" by Scott Galloway.
He covers the impact of babyboomers on America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Galloway_(professor)#Bib...
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#126I think we will soon have to confront serious, real world proof that an unregulated free market is not ultimately self-regulating. Control systems without upper bounds (e.g. shareholder value / profit maximization) are prone to feedback loops and oscillations. And an oscillating system cannot be judged in its entirety during an upward cycle alone (20th century).
Going one level of abstraction higher: there is no evidence that demand/supply dynamics alone will regulate a society over larger populations and time scales. Even the phrase "invisible hand" appears only once in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, somewhere around page 500, and that refers not to the market at large, but to the emergence of protectionist behaviours among suppliers within a country.
Laws and regulations are part of the free market system. As rules approach zero, competition approaches war.
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's technically true but underplays the extent to which company self-enforcement PR is malicious nonsense at odds with reality. Companies are amoral piles of money which will do anything to become larger piles of money, and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.
> and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest. I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.
Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Moreover it altruism is not just something that people do, because they are culturally programmed to believe, that altruism exists. Examples of altruistic behavior are known for many species, including those, that cannot pass complex concepts from one generation to the next by telling fairy tales to their offspring.
Economics tends to use model where every agent is a total egoistic rationalist, and likely it is one of the reasons why the society tolerate totally egoistic corporations. You claimed in other comment that you believe that everything is biased? Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#128[flagged]
It's pretty important for anyone working around chemicals. I work around truck racks and pump houses and giant fuel tanks all day, and I'm rather glad I don't need to worry about being blown 100 feet in the air in an explosion and leave my family behind like my great uncle did. The reason I don't worry is because, partly due to the CSB, we're pretty good at knowing how to work around explosive liquids safely.
Everyone gets hung up on money and they don't pay attention to value. The CSB annual budget is less than some of the contracts I work on, automating fuel farms on military bases. They're good value for money.
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information…
> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. > you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased…
> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth.
Do you believe in priors? Or do you evaluate each perspective at its face value?
> Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government.
That's not the dichotomy here. It's a biased government acting on behalf of biased companies.
> The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad.
The only discourse you personally have contributed is "both sides."
> What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.
Sounds like you are intentionally giving benefit of doubt to well-known bad faith actors. This makes you incredibly naive at best, or biased sealioner at worst.
Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. The effects are functionally the same, but I think the ideology and rhetoric behind then and now have changed. There really isn't a purportedly "principled" system of logic behind these decisions, in the past these decisions would be dressed in principled rhetoric no matter how heinous they realistically were. They aren…
The principle is the rate of profit is falling, competing countries are rising, and they want to unleash the private sector in the hopes of raising GDP growth significantly enough to retain hegemony. This won't work, because they're fucking stupid, and they'll damage the health of the population and the productivity of the land and waters going forward, but there is a logic to it.
It's more like the current administration and the billionaires behind them are acting like private equity. Now that they have control of the government, they'll dismantle anything they can and set us on a path to destruction to squeeze out every bit of value they can for themselves.
Those most responsible are either betting they won't be around long enough to deal with the smouldering wreckage or planning to ditch before the country hits rock bottom.