Via Timothy Sandefur’s blog, I came across this interesting question: what practices will be regarded as disgusting and barbaric in a 100 years’ time that are widely accepted and tolerated now? Tim reckons meat-eating is a possibility, and I sympathise with that. I would like to think that the practice of forcing people to attend places called schools between the ages of say, 4 and 18 and then taxing nearly half of their wealth at source and regulating the ways they spend the rest of it might one day be regarded as barbaric as slavery. We can always hope.
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“We no longer enslave animals for food” as Commander Riker once put it in ST:TNG…
At the risk of derailing the thread, how about abortion on demand? Especially if in 100 years technologies for transplanting foetuses to either a willing host or an artificial womb are routine.
RPW, you are not derailing the thread. It is a good point.
I’d go for prejudice on the grounds of sexuality – that’s already becoming unusual, and will continue to the point that we wonder how it happened.
A second guess would be the acceptance that a child starves to death every 5 seconds.
Blogging.
There’s no way of telling. It’s like asking what slang expressions will be used a hundred years from now. You can extrapolate from current trends assuming they’ll get worse, or you can look at where the current morality has swung beyond what is rational and justified and propose that people will realise and swing back. Obviously, there’s going to be a bit of both, with many current trends continuing, and even those that swing back leaving some residue of the original taboo. And there will be a few that appear from nowhere, or are raised by new technology and events, that we cannot even guess at.
The interest in the question is not so much predicting which way it will go, but in challenging the various assumptions of our current morality. Abortion, meat-eating, religion, and so forth are already controversies, and their assumptions well-challenged. It’s more interesting to consider changes in those areas we consider unquestionable: going to work, giving children the vote, nations and other tribal loyalties, compulsory education, care of the elderly, and so on.
Only one thing is certain: everyone will laugh at the quaint fashions in clothes and hairstyles.
I think human pregnancy and ‘natural’ birth will both be considered barbarous and horribly outdated – they will be replaced by convenient in-vitro fertilisation followed by some form of extra-corporeal techniqe for developing the foetus until it become self-viable.
And when government schools cease, or the education boards grow a brain, hopefully they’ll stop giving kids “abstinance/ignorance only education”, and there’ll be less abortions anyway.
Plus easier to use birth control. Hopefully there’ll be a men’s pill soon.
Yes, in other words a disgust for statism, without which in our technological world with cheap transport and intensive agriculture starvation would be impossible.
And slightly off-topic, “a child starves to death every 5 seconds” just reeks of a statistic someone simply plucked out of the ether to make their rhetorical point in an age where people in an audience somewhere did not have google available on their multi-function web enabled phones to fact check that little nugget.
Perry, it reminds me of the anecdote where there was a U2 rock concert and Bono came out and said, in his usual droning Irish voice, “Every time I clap my hands, a kid in Africa dies”.
Someone from the audience shouted: “Well don’t fucking do it then.”
Perry – I don’t dispute your characterization of the roots of the problem. And yet still we stand by, essentially disinterested.
As to the source of the figures, a quick Wikipedia check shows that according to the UN in 2003 (not sure why the figures are so old), 25,000 people starved to death every day. That’s more than one every 3.5 seconds. I’m guessing that the majority of those are children, but if you prefer I’ll amend it to “someone starves to death every 3.5 seconds, but it’s not always a child.” I’m not seeing how that’s an improvement.
Sexuality and reproduction have already been mentioned. 100 years from now the link between them will be utterly severed in the developed world.
That’s about the only prediction I’m prepared to make with any certainty and I’m almost absolutely certain of that.
In a similar vein – and this is a bit of a no-brainer – many of our current medical practises will be seen as unbelievably crude. Especially in areas like cancer treatment. Certainly the idea that a spinal-cord injury permanently puts someone in a wheelchair will appear utterly horrific.
Burning fossils for fuel might seem as backward as a wood-burning stove too.
I don’t think eating “real” animals will be seen as barbaric as such. Rather… a decadent luxury and somewhat atavistic.
Outside guess – real live pets that really piss on the rug might seem a more than a little quaint.
More certain guess… Computers and stuff as actual “things” you have in the house or office will seem backward as quite possibly will commuting. I can imagine schoolkids in 2108 looking at an iMac in a museum the same way I look at a difference engine.
Are you saying that there is nothing that can be prejudged by knowing if a person is a man or woman? You can draw no conclusions whatsoever?
Dying.
Some Dude – I was specifically thinking of denying people rights based solely on their sexuality. If you can name something that men (or women) must *necessarily* be prevented from doing specifically because they are a man or woman then I think that’s OK, but I honestly can’t think of something – if they *must* be prevented because of their gender then it strikes me their gender would automatically prevent them anyway. But preventing a woman from doing something just because she happens to be a woman will, I think, become hopelessly outdated. I suspect that will hold on later than denying people certain rights because they’re gay, however.
Immigration laws.
Sending people to prison for killing hippies.
As one of nature’s optimists, I fear our grandchildren will be horrified to think we so freely criticised our enlightened leaders, thus undermining social cohesion and the unity of the community (or something like that).
What Mark E said, if we are moderately lucky. If we are less lucky: women being uncovered, girls going to school.
Still, if we do manage to find our way out of our multiple current prisons, I always liked the bit in one of the Vorkosigan books where it says the Betans are absolutely horrified by the barbaric notion of anyone having restricted access to information.
I think meat consumption will remain although it may take the form of eating Ameglian Major Cows. We will probably be growing just meat muscles in factories and skip the part about breeding and killing a higher life form. I’ve become somewhat enamored with the blood group/food source correlation theories and unless we intend to outlaw blood groups ‘O’ and ‘B’, health will require at least a large part of the population to eat something their bodies believe is meat.
I think the opposite is as close to a certainty as anything ever is in this weird world of ours. People will be astonished we tolerated the cant, lies and naked theft without stringing up a large portion of the political class from lamp posts.
Tobacco consumption will be all but dead. I think this will come about through a combination of legal and social pressures. For example, in Santa Monica, CA, it’s basically illegal to smoke anywhere except a private, single-family residence. Laws like this will be come more common and then you have the pressures of “smoking is killing you.” Both of these forces are already at work here in the US and elsewhere…there’s nothing that makes me think this trend will abate.
I’d go for prejudice on the grounds of sexuality Posted by Paul
I think it’s just as likely that our descendents will regard us as repulsively decadent for our toleration of homosexuality, our sexual hedonism, our state-sponsored dissolution of the family, our indulgence of murderous criminals and for the practice of the numerous intellectual and quasi-religious superstitions that characterise our age: in other words, everything that is currently regarded as ‘progressive’.
The last 40 or so years represents a tiny blip in human social history, and an aberration from the vast majority of it. Alas, I think it’s perfectly possible that normal service will be resumed sooner than we perhaps think.
If this is the case, our descendents will, of course, regard themselves as the epitome of rational, moral right-thinKing-ness.
Corsair – what you say is possible, of course, but the current trend seems to be for greater tolerance in the west (which I approve of, if that isn’t obvious). There are many other cultures that don’t share that tolerance, so it certainly is a race to see which view predominates.
unfortunately, probably merely even touching each other
Perhaps evangelical vegetarianism will be rightfully relegated to the realm of barbarism?
(Perhaps, for that matter, all faddish dietary evangelism?)
Killing people on behalf of an imagined god, who – if the stories are to be believed – could instantly do it all on his own if he so wished.
Um, no. Unless somehow the developed world ethnically cleanses Roman Catholics (for instance, Mexicans in the US) and Muslims (in Europe) – just to name two enormous populations which are demographically ardent.
You’d also have to do something about human nature, which I’d say makes bringing democracy to the Middle East sound easy and fun.
Same with meat factories. Maybe they might exist, but maybe they’re the argula of nutrition, not the potatoes.
Sounds about right.
Marijuana prohibition, definitely. All drug prohibition, hopefully.
Vercingetorix,
(a) You assume the Catholics don’t move with the times. If they don’t they’re the way of the dodo. In Europe and the USA at least.
(b) Islamic sexual mores are even now regarded as barbaric.
This depends on the assumption that our current western civilisation will continue. If so, then probably everything “progressive” including vegetarianism would be imposed with an iron fist.
But I think we’re coming up to a discontinuity. I don’t think our civilisation will be here a century from now. We may well be in what would be termed a Dark Age. Europe may well be islamic. It certainly seems very likely that europeans will have dwindled to a very small minority, without homelands and their hegemony lost. If thats the case, the hegemonic values of europeans, including the fetish for “rights” will be gone.
If so, the freedoms we currently enjoy, which are already dwindling rapidly, will be described the writers of history as a brief decadent age that has now passed, much as some christian writers revelled in the purported decadence of pagan Rome. So, my guess is our descendents may be allowed to eat meat, but not pork, and will be taught about the barbarous past of sexual excess and homosexual depravity and that the failure of our civilisation was proof that women should not be given equal status to men.
Oh, and that the stories of people flying to far away places in big iron birds are just myths 🙂
There may well be a pro/con abortion like divide between those who could not imagine having a child without genetic analysis and fault correction, and those who reject such medical technology for various religious and cultural reasons.
I truly cannot imagine that the current “factory schooling” model will continue much longer. The social and athletic aspects will be fulfilled by various clubs and organizations, but the educational function will be entirely computerized and individualized, along the line of the “Rosetta Stone” language products.
There will be several more sites around the world dedicated to the victims of nuclear weapon attacks, ala Hiroshima.
If we do our work properly, homesteading will have become commonplace in the many areas of the world, including the oceans, that are now considered public spaces that can only be administered by public entities.
A 2nd or 3rd generation successor to the failed United Nations will be trying to get organized somewhere, maybe Brazil or India.
Medical care will have become a world wide system. The form that will take is, of course, dependent on whether statism or respect for individual liberties carries the day regarding this question, as in so many others.
People will routinely grow a supply of replacement parts, kept in storage for the time in their old age when they are needed.
The most complex social moral debate will be what to do with the millions of elderly in excess of 100 years old who are likely to be able to prolong their lives almost indefinitely using the techniques cited above.
Humans, in all their faulty and error-prone glory, will be moving out of this solar system, and embarking on an adventure which will make the “Age of Discovery” seem quaint indeed.
It all depends on what’s technologically possible. If Ray Kurzweil is correct, then superintelligence and nanoassemblers are possible. At that point, all bets are definitely off.
More than that, if Moore’s Law continues, the actual physical limits of computation will be reached prior to 2100. A 2109 AD superintelligence that assembles matter for optimum computation might take a look at these ugly bags of mostly water and think, “I’ll do better than that.” At that moment, the human race is over.
Eating Pork.
Drinking alcohol.
Letting women display themselves in public.
Demographics is destiny my friends!
You’re assuming that people that won’t reproduce will have the same vote in the future as people that reproduce quite a bit. For every aging feminist and gay rights afficionado, there are extended families of religious people.
By who? I don’t agree with Islamic mores, but looking at China, India, Russia, Africa, even Latin America, or even the Asian burroughs of London, it appears that our more enlightened, sexual mores are a definite outlier.
I would certainly argue that the traditional family is more stable, the traditional family nested within an extended family even more so.
A culture of Ken and Barbie dolls waiting for a eugenic stork is utter fantasy.
The future belongs to breeders.
Market bubbles.
“what practices will be regarded as disgusting and barbaric in a 100 years’ time that are widely accepted and tolerated now?”
Sending real live human beings out to fight wars.
Also I think our current, still fairly widely held notions of industrial war – where the purpose is to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible and destroy as much of their stuff as possible so as to achieve a particular political goal – will be considered barbaric. This is something that is starting to happen, but we still tend think of our armies as driving around in tanks, shooting people and blowing stuff up. I think in 100 years this will be seen as hideously barbaric. There will still be conflict but it will be much less overtly violent; the goal of both sides being to win over the general population to their way of thinking, and to convince them that their goals and aspirations can best be met by one particular side in the conflict.
Consider Taiwan. Its possible to imagine an old style industrial war over Taiwan, but what would the Chinese gain from violently conquering Taiwan? Nothing except a security headache. If the Chinese invade Taiwan it will be because somebody stupid has taken over. If the Chinese are smart they will try and entice the Taiwanese to choose to reunite with mainland China. The Chinese might adopt deceitful methods, and even low level violence; it needn’t necessarily be democratic, but this is how China will regain control of Taiwan if they ever do. I am pretty sure that any overtly and overwhelmingly violent attempt will fail.
5
Any kind of collectivism; Islamofascism, Russofascism, Sinofascism, Latinofascism, Afrofascism, Ecofascism, and also that gigantic, filthy lie called SOCIAL DEMOCRACY that has turned a global theft into a charity and poisoned people’s minds to such a degree that they allow themselves to be robbed by parasites with a sincere joy… Just dreaming…
Looking an Official
In the eye.
I am not entirely sure what to make of Corsair’s comment:
Are you saying that all these views that will be held in the future are good, or are you merely predicting what the climate of opinin will be?
Whatever one thinks of “sexual hedonism”, if it is about sex between consenting adults, then I do hope that the state will keep well out of it.
Where on earth do people get this bizarre idea that “progressives” are hedonists?
I am not entirely sure what to make of Corsair’s comment […] Are you saying that all these views that will be held in the future are good, or are you merely predicting what the climate of opinion will be?
Well, I’m not too keen on way the therapeutic-managerial state has wrecked the family, and I would support the death penalty for ‘aggravated murder’, and we are a particularly superstitious age, but I was really trying to take a pop at the idea that the future will be more ‘progressive’ than the past, meaning more in accordance with social democratic thought. I strongly suspect it won’t be – consider the ‘re-moralisation’ of Victorian Britain after the Hogarthian period. And I also suspect that those enforcing the re-moralisation will regard themselves as ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ – i.e. the sort of people who regard their fellow men as troublesome domestic pets requiring ‘responsible’ care.
Whatever one thinks of “sexual hedonism”, if it is about sex between consenting adults, then I do hope that the state will keep well out of it.
Well, the state’s already in it. Your taxes and mine fund the offspring of other people’s sexual incontinence. I’m a libertarian and I don’t believe that’s the state’s proper role. Nor do I think that the state should have anything to say about sexual relations between consenting adults.
And that leads to an interesting question for Libertarians: who is the state to decide at what age an individual is sufficiently adult to consent to sex? Perhaps our descendents will excoriate us for persecuting paedophiles. I hope not, but it’s possible.
Ian B: Where on earth do people get this bizarre idea that “progressives” are hedonists?
Perhaps from the observation that “progressives” always seem big on free love, ‘self-realisation’ (understood as an excuse to abandon inconvenient responsibilities) and enjoying the fruits of other people’s labour without their permission. However, I do take your point: ‘progressive’ is just the modern euphemism for authoritarian Puritanism.
Corsair, fair enough. Point well taken.
Johnathon’s main posting raises a very interesting question.
His thoughts include:
I’m not sure whether Johnathon’s sympathy is with the accuracy of the prediction, or its desirability. However, I find forced vegetarianism for humans to be a wrongful concept.
Our household hosts 2 cats. They are very domesticated and pretty much want for nothing: certainly not food; however, they insist on catching mice and eating them. In addition to hunting for food, the cats clearly also hunt for fun. Mice are brought into the house, usually substantially uninjured, and released for another round of catching, which the cats clearly enjoy. Given their upbringing (Cat Protection League to 5 months and then us) we view this as instinctive behaviour, rather than taught.
I view the human omnivorous diet as similarly natural. Excluding meat also introduces various dietary deficiencies that can be overcome only with significant informed effort.
In addition, I have observed various difficulties for vegetarians outside of the UK. One relation found it extremely difficult to live and work in Germany as there was negligible provision for vegetarians in hotels and restaurants; eating at home was possible, but a significant problem when trying to establish a social life. In Spain, a holiday was made somewhat difficult by the hotel having no concept of a vegetarian dinner. I thus see evidence that vegetarianism is (viewed as) faddy, outside of a particularly narrow sector of thought, and that sector I have found significant only in the UK. Likewise faddy is all that stuff about ‘organic’ food – as if there is any other sort. It is interesting that often the two desires coincide: people wanting increased ‘naturalness’ in food production methods (at increased production cost) while wanting increased artificiality in their dietary choice.
Oh, and hunting is pretty natural too, for humans as well as for cats.
Concerning education of children, in the UK it’s 5 to 16 rather than 4 to 18, except for New Labour latest attempt to massage down the unemployment figures (which I don’t think is held in widespread approval). And it’s education, not school, that is compulsory. School is just an effective and efficient (hence economic) method of provision, or at least it used to be. Interestingly enough, not so long ago, provision of schooling (especially free provision for the poor) was thought a most excellent philanthropic measure. Perhaps Johnathon’s complaint has more to do with state dominance of both school provision and syllabus, including socialist political indoctrination: now, I don’t disagree there!
Finally on Johnathon’s list, I can give wholehearted support against the high current levels of government taxation and expenditure (as a percentage of GDP). One size does not fit all, especially on such a large scale, and the additional unnecessary centralisation leads to more bad choices, more inefficiency, more corruption, and to less flexibility as needs and priorities change. Through all these reasons, I am also strongly against the very concept of the ‘ever-greater state’ (EU or otherwise). Please may public opinion change, such that that concept is markedly less widely tolerated.
Oh, and the one that we really need, most urgently, is a switch against the mind-numbing belief in the concept of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, Man-Made Climate Change or whatever its next going to be called. We don’t have 100 years though: have you seen the UK/EU Government are on the point of preventing the sale of (100W) incandescent lightbulbs? Those are the ones that work properly with modern energy-saving dimmer switches and timers.
Best regards
Chemotherapy
Nigel – A small note on incandescents. CFLs are available that will work with dimmer switches, and all of them work with timers. Neither of those save energy, however, they merely reduce the amount wasted when you’re using a 100W bulb to do the job that a 20W bulb could do.
Chemotherapy
It’s silly questions like this which will forever doom libertarianism to the sidelines of socio-political discussion. As long as socially-abhorrent practices are deemed worthy topics for debate, mainstream society will marginalize the debaters.
It is precisely because many people are incapable of judging for themselves that children are too vulnerable against adult predation (or that such vulnerability can be exploited) that the State must needs step in.
Our own foolishness creates the rationale for the State to intervene.
Or else we could leave the punishment of said predation to lynch mobs…? There’s a nice libertarian solution for you.
Paul responds:
Thanks Paul, and here is some additional information (much of which can be checked against this Wikipedia article).
Some CFL’s work with modern dimmer switches, over a somewhat limited range; likewise, timers work with the same sort of CFLs. A particular requirement for both dimmers and timers is that the CFLs must pass some current, even when off, either to power electronic/computer components or drive the motors in mechanical timers; in addition, the CFLs must be capable at running at a range of voltages or be otherwise tolerant to the rapid gating of thyristors. Such CFLs have additional components that make them somewhat more expensive than CFLs that do not have this capability. However, all incandescent bulbs work with all dimmer/timer switches.
Also, overall, CFLs really cost 3..10 times more to manufacture than incandescent bulbs of equivalent luminescence; current prices are obtained by subsidy.
The actual gain in luminescence/power of CFLs over incandescent bulbs is often below that which is claimed on packets. This is at least partially due to luminescence being largely determined by surface area of fluorescent material; this is problematic where existing light fittings are largely designed for fixed size bulbs of varying power, where adequate cooling is one of the major design limitations. Thus higher luminescence CFLs often do not fit in the same space (absolutely or with ‘elegance’) as their equivalent incandescent bulbs.
It’s also a bit of a pain for real people to have check extra detail on whether particular CFLs will work adequately with their dimmers/timers, probably pay more, and/or have additional stock management problems with requirements for different bulbs for different light fittings in the same house.
In addition, the power savings are usually exaggerated. Incandescent bulbs generate heat with the ‘wasted’ electricity; often that heat is useful. Where that heat is required, less is used from, for example, central heating. In the UK, only in the height of summer would I view such heating as generally undesirable. [There are interesting arguments concerning unit power costs, eg between gas and electricity. However, the case is not all one-way – slight heating of single rooms in my house is better done without starting the gas-fired central heating.]
Finally, I fully agree that CFLs do have their place. In my house they are used for most main light fittings. This is because of a combination of lower running costs and longer lives (which saves bulb changing cost/effort, particularly for stair-mounted lights and those with fragile/complicated light shades).
What I object to is having the choice taken away from me by government force, and at some inconvenience and cost to myself.
Best regards
Kim,
“As long as socially-abhorrent practices are deemed worthy topics for debate, mainstream society will marginalize the debaters.”
They used to say the same thing about homosexuality.
“It is precisely because many people are incapable of judging for themselves that children are too vulnerable against adult predation[…]”
Yes, that’s the ‘informed consent’ criterion. Except that we don’t actually test whether a person is sufficiently informed – instead, we apply an arbitrary age threshold. We’re testing the wrong thing.
Incidentally, this is exactly the same argument that was used to deny women the vote. Women are soft-willed and lack the education and judgement to be able to decide responsibly. This was why contracts with women were considered unenforceable, why women getting into debt resulted in their husbands going to the debtor’s prison, and why Magna Carta grants the right not to be convicted of a crime on the evidence of a woman alone. Women were often considered in the same way as children.
Barbaric, yes?
The purist libertarian solution would be to set a test, in which it was determined whether the person understood the consequences of having sex – not just STDs or the economic costs of bringing up children, but the social consequences of relationship failure, divorce, single-parenthood, disapproving family and neighbours, etc. too. If they pass the exam, then any consent they give may be considered ‘informed’, and they’re good to go.
There are major practical problems with that, including the risks of bureaucracy, which is why we use the simpler age criterion instead.
Besides the libertarian approach, other cultures can and have considered sex with younger teenagers to be legal. The Islamic tradition of allowing it any time after puberty is the most obvious. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is another – with Juliet being only 13 years old. Puberty is a logical threshold to set based on biology. It’s not inconceivable that our view on this could be reconsidered in future. For practical reasons if no other – in the same way the legality of abortion was reconsidered.
Here’s an interesting question that future technology might make more of an issue, and that is the use of computer graphics to create artificial child porn. This can already be created without harming any children at all – the characters are all software-generated. In future, it will get more realistic, more interactive, and faster, easier and cheaper to create.
Nevertheless, it is illegal in many places to create it, and the current trend is to restrict it further. There is no legal requirement to show that children have or actually will be harmed as a result, only that it’s possible they could be. That’s not protecting children, that’s just persecuting “perverts”. And they used to do the same thing to homosexuals.
There’s no way to tell which way future society will go on this. They might make even looking at other people’s children illegal. Or they might liberalise things. But it’s a question worth debating. The things people don’t even dare to think are always worth looking at.
Looking back on various World’s Fairs in the US from the 30s-early 60s and at the
usual “City and/or Home of the Future” displays the most noticeably striking aspect is the extent to which major technologies than in infancy and used as the foundation for these future advanced civilizations (moving side-walks, personal “air-cars,” etc.) DID NOT PAN OUT–AT ALL. Or if they did, to a very limited degree. Robot vacuum cleaners are just now hoving on the scene; and while centralized whole house built-in vacuum systems have been around for quite a while, they have had a very limited adoption. OTOH, nobody saw Twitter coming even five years ago….
Good luck with your predictions everybody. I’m sticking with Yogi “Predictions are very hard–especially about the future” Berra.
I’ll hazard a few speculations:
o It will be considered horrible child abuse to allow a minor to reach puberty. People will not be allowed to go through puberty until after they’ve legally become adults.
o Commercial fishing will be looked down on the same way that commercial hunting is today. Fish and other seafood will all be aqua-farmed, with the only wild-caught fish eaten being those caught by sports fishermen.
o Today’s computer operating systems and languages will all be seen as crude, cruel, and barbaric.
o With certain odd exceptions, it will be considered rude for machines to talk if they can’t understand natural language.
Yes. Exactly.
A belief that should be generally considered barbaric 100 years from now (or 100 nanoseconds from now) but sadly won’t be: “There ought to be a law.”
Thanks for the information, Nigel, I had no idea. It would be great if you could complete the link so I can read even more. In the meantime I’ll let my aunt know that the cheap CFL she’s running off a timer doesn’t actually work, and when she thinks she can see by it she’s actually walking around in the dark 🙂
I’m not in favour of the choice being taken from people either, btw, but I think we need to include all the externalities into the price of both the bulb (tungsten, CFL or LED) and the electricity. Until we’ve done that (and that’s something I don’t predict we’ll achieve in the next hundred years) I think we need to simplify things by allowing or disallowing certain types of bulb.
centralized whole house built-in vacuum systems have been around for quite a while, they have had a very limited adoption.
Well… The problem is the cost of retro-fitting. It’s very common in Soviet-era apartments in Russia.
Oh, and another (utterly unrelated) thing that will be seen as crude and barbaric in 100 years will be body hair.
Apologies for the incorrect link syntax; the following is, I hope, a working correction: this Wikipedia article.
Paul writes:
The sarcasm is noted. I’m just delighted for your aunt that you do things for her that work.
I have before me, unopened, a CFL delivered ‘free’, I think by Southern Electric (whom we have recently stopped using), presumably as part of some government scheme. The free is, I suspect, a taxpayer ‘subsidised free’ or subject to some other compulsion. The CFL is a General Electric 11 Watt bulb type E27-ES, marked as 60W equivalent (well they disclose that it’s strictly 96.8% of equivalence), and marked with ‘Eco’ and ‘6 years life’ (6,000 hours and 6 times the life of an equivalent incandescent bulb).
On the side of the CFL box, received within the last 6 months, it states the bulb is not suitable for any of: photocell circuits, timers or dimmer switches. It is also 6cm (67%) longer than the incandescent equivalent.
Now, this may well be no more than a dumping of obsolete stock (which, if taxpayer subsidised, is a ‘most excellent’ wheeze) following on from restocking with CFLs of extended functionality (including aunt-pleasing, you-pleasing and me-pleasing compatibility with dimmers/timers/etc). However, it indicates to me that care is still needed in selecting one’s CFLs, and so is somewhat muddying of your otherwise brilliant sales pitch for CFLs.
I’d just rather it became difficult to buy the old incandescent bulbs as and when there was insufficient demand, rather than it becoming prematurely impossible to buy them because of government diktat.
Best regards
Nigel – I hope I wasn’t too sarcastic; I’m genuinely happy to learn things I didn’t know, and while I’m aware CFLs aren’t as great as they might at first seem, your info helped me learn. And thanks for the link.
I too would prefer that incandescents became obsolete, if only to allow time for LEDs to be cheap enough to replace them in circumstances where CFLs aren’t appropriate (e.g. where they’re turned on/off a lot, though I too get sufficient ‘freebie’ bulbs that I can afford to burn out a few!). Unfortunately people show remarkable inertia on such things, when there’s scarcely a household that wouldn’t gain within months by replacing a few key incandescents with a better alternative. Again, pricing them according to all their external costs would help make the case clearer, but unfortunately we’re not there.
As an aside, I like the Wikipedia mention of the time it takes bulbs to get to full light output. I’ve seen the problem myself, and have never once thought “Dammit, I need to operate on this woman right now and it’s just not light enough in here!” 🙂
Pa Annoyed
Thanks for your comments – I agree with most of what you write, and you’ve saved me from having to draft my own reply. The point is, I suppose, what constitutes an adult capable of giving informed consent? Who decides? In the case of, say, mentally incapable adults, courts assign guardians to look after their financial etc affairs. That is acceptable to a libertarian, I suppose; having a court decide who is mature enough to consent to sex certainly isn’t (even if all practical objects were overcome). Nor is any sort of test – after all, who would set the questions?
Now, perhaps this is a question that libertarianism cannot answer (it seems so to me), in which case a somewhat arbitrary age of consent acceptable to society is a good and simple solution. However, we were talking about the future, and what is acceptable may (and will) change. Fourteen was once a socially acceptable age for marriage (Juliet’s mother, say, or IIRC, Jane Grey), and certainly could be again – perhaps as a consequence of Europe’s demographic implosion. If so, then it’s perfectly conceivable that our ancestors will excoriate us for demonising what they consider normal. And certain degenerate societies – in which the question of consent doesn’t even arise – have (and do) consider sexual contact with prepubescent children acceptable. Who can swear that we won’t decline to such a state? It seems to me that just about any horror can be justified by ‘progressive’ thinkers – abortion, euthanasia and eugenics all spring to mind.
Final point: when someone says that a subject shouldn’t be discussed, that’s precisely the time to discuss it loudly.
@Paul: I think we’ve delighted everyone else for quite long enough here today on CFLs, so I’ll leave your words at 05:25 PM as the last (and very suitable) ones on the topic.
Best regards
I think that provided that our economic engine rumbles on, along its long-term upward path, the people of the future will consider it barbaric that we allowed real material poverty to exist, whilst indulging in all manner of consumer goods and luxuries. Note that I don’t think that this is the correct view to take but It’s the one I forsee becoming the consensus.
World Hunger and starvation will cease to exist once the cost of doing so is low enough to eliminate them without requiring much in the way of sacrifice.
People frequently confuse moral and economic progress, and although they are linked, they do not amount to the same thing.
Problems such as malaria and malnutrition among the Have-Nots will be dealt with by a generation of Haves for whom the solving them can be accomplished at minimal cost to themselves.
However our descendants will chalk these achievements up to their moral superiority rather than
to the more prosaic fact that they are (in absolute terms) much richer than us.
Developments that are in large part the fruits of our economic progress, (gender equality, universal sufferage, the end of child labour, a right to ‘free’ education and health care even if you want to go back far enough, the abolition of slavery) are today habitually chalked up to our moral enlightenment rather than our prosperity.
I expect it to be no different in the future.
Wealth creation will continue to be something grubby and selfish next to noble pursuits like charitable donations and socio-political lobbying.
panhandling?
hunger?
arranged marriages? (in asia)
A century ago, what were people saying would be barbaric today?
Government.
How is that libertarian, let alone “purist”?
RWW,
Because the standard corollary to J S Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’ is that a person can give informed consent for themselves to be harmed. You have to allow people to consent because the only justification for interference with individuals by society is harm to others, (if my action only hurts me, it’s none of your business,) and the consent has to be informed to avoid the problems of people being tricked into consenting to things that they wouldn’t agree to if they knew all the relevant facts and could think clearly about them (i.e. not drugged or mentally ill).
The justification for restricting the rights of children, even when they freely choose to do something, is that they are incapable of understanding and judging the consequences of their decisions – i.e. that they are incapable of being ‘informed’. Their parents usually exercise that right on their behalf. (Note – it’s still the child’s rights being exercised here, not the parent’s.)
It’s the reason why doctors require you to sign consent forms before they operate on you if they can. It’s also why the anti-smoking campaigners had to show (by fudging the statistics) that second hand smoke was harmful before they could ban it. Being harmful to the smoker is insufficient justification, according to Mill’s principle.
The Harm Principle is a foundation stone of libertarianism, although one often compromised for practical reasons. One would have to be something of a purist to try to apply it strictly to taboos like children consenting to sex.
There are various ways competency could be tested. For adults with no obvious disability, it is generally assumed without the need for further evidence. It could also be judged by a persons actions, or after the fact. You can propose your own method of determining whether somebody knows what they’re doing – but if they do, you should have no right to interfere in their choices. Even if they’re children.
And who would administer the test?
Doesn’t matter. Anyone could, or it might be self-administered. All that matters is whether the person is capable of passing it.
I guess RWW was referring more to who would define the test.