Very not impressed by the content of the interview. We’ve lost the solar panel and wind turbine market to the Chinese- is there a particular reason we should be troubled by that? Oh no, we don’t subsidize unprofitable technology enough! “We” are running airplanes into buildings. Wait, I thought this was about America’s failures? If you’re willing to accept Middle Easterners as part of “we,” why not the Chinese, who are actually tied to us much more? The problem with Dawkins’ view is that it doesn’t allow for altruism. Money is bad because of greed.
When someone makes that many questionable conclusions, I have to wonder where they’re coming from. The BP reference is just bizarre- I strongly suspect that if BP could have tried multiple things simultaneously, they would have. (This is actually what they did, if I recall correctly- drilling relief wells while doing things at the top, and switching around which things they did at the top.)
We’ve lost the solar panel and wind turbine market to the Chinese- is there a particular reason we should be troubled by that? Oh no, we don’t subsidize unprofitable technology enough!
I looked at the paragraph you’re talking about, and it was all about focusing on where the US has a comparative advantage, and not on giving more subsidies to domestic wind and solar manufacturers. And the reason she used “we” to refer to the US in that context is because it’s something she’d like to see a candidate for political office say. The later use of “we” which included Middle Easterners was in a context where she was talking about humanity in general.
The problem with Dawkins’ view is that it doesn’t allow for altruism.
I looked at the paragraph you’re talking about, and it was all about focusing on where the US has a comparative advantage, and not on giving more subsidies to domestic wind and solar manufacturers.
This is how I parsed that: “We are bad at doing X.” (I don’t agree this is a problem.) “We could be the best at doing X if we did it another way.” Space-based solar is a neat idea but it has a number of significant problems with it- and the suggestion that NASA do it instead of a private satellite company suggests to me that it’s going to be unprofitable for quite some time (which agrees with what I know about the technical details).
She was misstating Dawkins’ views, actually.
I’m aware. That are the following sentence were paraphrases of what she said, which I repeated because I think she’s wrong.
Very not impressed by the content of the interview. We’ve lost the solar panel and wind turbine market to the Chinese- is there a particular reason we should be troubled by that? Oh no, we don’t subsidize unprofitable technology enough! “We” are running airplanes into buildings. Wait, I thought this was about America’s failures? If you’re willing to accept Middle Easterners as part of “we,” why not the Chinese, who are actually tied to us much more? The problem with Dawkins’ view is that it doesn’t allow for altruism. Money is bad because of greed.
When someone makes that many questionable conclusions, I have to wonder where they’re coming from. The BP reference is just bizarre- I strongly suspect that if BP could have tried multiple things simultaneously, they would have. (This is actually what they did, if I recall correctly- drilling relief wells while doing things at the top, and switching around which things they did at the top.)
I looked at the paragraph you’re talking about, and it was all about focusing on where the US has a comparative advantage, and not on giving more subsidies to domestic wind and solar manufacturers. And the reason she used “we” to refer to the US in that context is because it’s something she’d like to see a candidate for political office say. The later use of “we” which included Middle Easterners was in a context where she was talking about humanity in general.
She was misstating Dawkins’ views, actually.
This is how I parsed that: “We are bad at doing X.” (I don’t agree this is a problem.) “We could be the best at doing X if we did it another way.” Space-based solar is a neat idea but it has a number of significant problems with it- and the suggestion that NASA do it instead of a private satellite company suggests to me that it’s going to be unprofitable for quite some time (which agrees with what I know about the technical details).
I’m aware. That are the following sentence were paraphrases of what she said, which I repeated because I think she’s wrong.