Previous month:
November 2007
Next month:
January 2008

December 2007

Main Obstacle to Environmental Accords

Two words:  game theory.  Unfortunately, it appears that none of the global talks, accords, analyses, or studies have ever heard of the term.  We hear it all the time in terms of economics, auctions, business competition, but never in regards to climate crisis solutions.  Why doesn't the U.S. sign onto Kyoto?  Why won't we ever sign onto ANYTHING in this area?  Because China (and the "developing nations" in general) won't, and those nations would therefore enjoy an even greater competitive advantage than they already do.  If that's not basic game theory, I don't know what is!  Here's a definition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

"Game theory is the study of the ways in which strategic interactions among rational players produce outcomes with respect to the preferences (or utilities) of those players, none of which might have been intended by any of them."

Why don't we hear about this when we hear about climate talks?  Probably because climate talks are dominated by scientists and politicians, neither of which could be considered champions of the game theory realm.  Somebody read a book already, and let's get this hammered out.


Why Science Is Wrong About God

Inspired (yet again) by an Edge.org exchange pitting scientist/person of faith Paul Davies against many other scientists ("Taking Science On Faith"), I have come to the realization after much searching that the undeniable truth of the matter has shown itself.  And that truth is that SCIENCE IS WRONG.  On which side it errs, I'm not sure yet, but it most certainly contradicts itself.
How does science accomplish this feat?  On one hand, it searches for how things work.  Not necessarily WHY things work, but HOW.  This can only be decoded if one accepts the principle of cause and effect, i.e., everything is caused by something.  Why does so and so happen?  Because such as such happens, or because of this "law's" existence, or - you get the idea.
Once we agree that scientists accept that effects are the results of causes, we can quickly jump to the beginning of the universe, which of COURSE scientists agree exists, correct?  And that's where the contradiction comes into play!  There CANNOT BE a "beginning" if everything is caused by something, can there?  Clearly, no, there cannot.  The beginning must be caused by something, thereby making that other something the real beginning, which would then lead to THAT something needing something else, in an infinite regression.  The contradiction is that since science asserts that there is no "supreme power" (not supreme "being", mind you, but simply something that causes everything else to come into being without itself being caused by something else) and also that things are caused by other things (processes, events, whatever the case may be), then it must be wrong on at least one of those counts.
Which is the incorrect assertion?  Or are both incorrect?  I don't know.  But I do know that they cannot both be true; therefore, science is wrong.  And, I might add, once again Aristotle is probably correct (with his "first mover" line of reasoning, echoed by Thomas Aquinas over a millennium later, and still plausible/reasonable almost 750 years after him).