I’d like to share an interesting source on the internet with you. I’ve been enjoying watching videos on YouTube from Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a physicist who mainly posts videos explaining physics (such as quantum mechanics) in her series “Science without the Gobbledygook”. She does a good job of simplifying complex subjects (similar to what Richard Feynman did while he was alive).
Why am I talking about physics in a political humor blog? Because Hossenfelder also explains many other things in videos, including things related to politics. For example, here’s a video that talks about Longtermism, which is a political philosophy popular among tech billionaires also involved in politics like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn.
She also has videos about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy, the use of diesel fuel for transportation, transsexual athletes, falling testosterone levels, climate change, the problems with the use of plastics, light pollution, earthquakes, nutritional labels on foods, pseudoscience, Covid-19, and many others.
Hossenfelder also has a website, where you can sign up for her free weekly email newsletter.
4 Comments
Sounds to me like concern for people a few million years in the future is pretty much indulging in fantasy rather than addressing the pesky problems at hand.
Note that the wealthy have never really had anyone’s betterment other than their own in mind.
The far distant future will take care of itself, Longtermism is bullshit.
Exactly, Ray. Longtermism is just another way for rich people to stoke their own ego by believing that they are doing the work of god when they are doing selfish things. Just like “prosperity theology“.
I want to defend the wealthy. My mother was one of the wealthy. My father took her money. Once she divorced him in her 60s, she was wealthy again. She gave every single year of her life to the Negro College fund. $500, a lot in those days. (her children (us) are moving on to our 80s) All were Republicans, but my mother was the ultimate in RINOs, she would go behind her first and second husbands and vote Democrat. Our father talked her into Bentleys. My mother drove Chevrolets. She was raised by governesses meaning she had no love. Her parents had three houses. They traveled to Europe all the time (spreading their wealth around) She was always giving away things to the less fortunate. I like to tell the story of when I was 16, I took my dogs for a walk. They ran in the garage up up the stairs. I wondered what they had found. They found a man in an overcoat lying there. I went back to my mother “Mum, there is a man in the garage.” “Well, he must be hungry,” said my mother “ask him in for breakfast” I brought him in and left for school. My mother called the police who knew the man who had walked away from the mental institute. They called an ambulance who took him back.
Eva, I wasn’t attacking all the wealthy. Just a select few!