Tuesday, 1st June, Talk: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

robindch

The next ISS talk will take place on Tuesday, June 1st, at 8.00pm in the Aston Suite, Alexander Hotel, Merrion Square, Dublin 2. Please note that this is taking place on a Tuesday, and not the usual Wednesday!

The talk will be given by the prize-winning science writer Dr. Matt Ridley, the author of a number of best-selling titles including Genome, Nature via Nurture and a biography of Francis Crick. This talk will be on the topic of his latest book:

The Rational Optimist: how prosperity evolves

The Blurb wrote:

Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years.

Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.

This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the twenty-first century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.

Admission, as always, is €3 for members and concessions; €6 for non-members.

sponsoredwalk

Woah, Matt Ridley! Awesome, I've read Genome & seen him in a panel discussion so I'll go along, do I need to book tickets?

Also, could you maybe point out where it is on the map?



Would it be where the 'M' in the bolded 'Merrion Square' is, or the 'o' in 'Lower Mount Street' :P I actually could follow those directions lol

MikeC101

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

Woah, Matt Ridley! Awesome, I've read Genome & seen him in a panel discussion so I'll go along, do I need to book tickets?

Also, could you maybe point out where it is on the map?



Would it be where the 'M' in the bolded 'Merrion Square' is, or the 'o' in 'Lower Mount Street' :P I actually could follow those directions lol

If it's the hotel I'm thinking of, it's actually closer to Fenian Street on that map (which is a weird looking map, I used to live around the corner from there and I'm not sure where the hotel would be on that map). But there's three or four hotels in that area - maybe this map is a bit better.

Zombrex

Good stuff, I'll try and make it.

It is good to see this stuff to counter the theist propaganda that we are living in terrible "Godless" times. :P

Zillah

Wait, we're really expecting too see an increase in biodiversity this century?

Might just arrive late again and continue my trend of defrauding the ISS. You'll never catch me!

Also, anyone feel like getting a drink afterward? Last talk I went to was exceptional by the way.

robindch

Bumping this thread.

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

Also, could you maybe point out where it is on the map?

The Alexander Hotel is at the junction of Cumberland St and Fenian St, across the road from the Ginger Man pub.

Or, at the green arrow here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=53.34179,-6.249371&num=1&sll=53.34503,-6.258881&sspn=0.006295,0.006295&ie=UTF8&ll=53.341914,-6.249354&spn=0.002947,0.006539&z=18

I'll be at the talk this evening, so PM me if anybody's on for a beer afterwards

kiffer

Ahhh crud... I knew there was a reason to hang round Dublin this evening... I was in town until about 6 anyway... How did it go?

Zombrex

balls I missed this

I had it in my head that it was on Wednesday, despite actually reading Robin's post saying it isn't and then getting confused.

See theists aren't the only stupid ones :pac:

Hope it was a good lecture, anyone want to give a quick summary?

Morgase

It was an interesting lecture. The thrust of his argument was that things are (generally speaking) better than they have been before, and will continue in that trend.

Ridley gave lots of examples to back up his opinion such as life expectancy being much better than 50 years ago (globally, not just in the western world). Same for child mortality; this has also improved globally. People have more money to spend; again not just in the west.

Same type of data were shown for atmospheric pollutants, diseases such as cancer and other stuff I can't remember.

He spoke about how he thinks the human's explosion in brain size occurred due not to the emergence of language or culture, but exchange i.e. trade. Humans are the only animals who have real trade.

He gave an example of a computer mouse and how no one person is able to make one, instead one group of experts drill the oil, another group of experts designs particular parts of it, another group builds it, etc. We have never been so dependent on each other but this is a good thing as we benefit from it so much.

He showed us a picture of a king and how he had someone to make clothes for him, hundreds of cooks making his dinner and compared this to a normal woman today who can choose from hundreds of different restaurants for her dinner and similarly for her clothes; hundreds of people are involved in making her mp3 player for her to listen to music. In a way she is as rich as that king of some centuries ago.

I'm not sure I was convinced by his arguments but it was certainly food for thought. He was an engaging speaker and I'm happy I went.

One negative thing for moany me was the really fúcking annoying girls at the back who were sitting just behind me and whispered to each other for the whole thing. Gits. Had to get that off my chest, sorry!

kiffer

any crazy questions at the end?

Morgase

kiffer wrote: »

any crazy questions at the end?

Not really. There was one chap who seemed to want to make a three part speech (he wanted to make three points and ask three questions based on those) but thankfully the Irish Skeptics chap didn't let him.

sponsoredwalk

Yeah Morgase, I'd agree with that pretty much.

However, for me the whole thing was mostly an exercise in dredging up things I'd read before or thought about before & refusing to address any hard questions.
It was still fun though & his talk about how many servants I have makes me feel kinglier

It seems as though the author was just too used to reading the influx of negativity and needed a positive refrain.

One guy asked him about oil and was just shaking his head the entire time Ridley answered which was funny, and another guy's question was that maybe some neanderthals had died because they were too optimistic

If anyone who has bought the book is intersted in a skeptic's view of the book I suggest you read this and then this blog after you've read the book, the author of the blog likes Matt Ridley but he had a bone or two to pick with him over this book.

Zombrex

Morgase wrote: »

Not really. There was one chap who seemed to want to make a three part speech (he wanted to make three points and ask three questions based on those) but thankfully the Irish Skeptics chap didn't let him.

It is hilarious when people do that, I was at a Darwin lecture last year and someone stood up and gave a 5 minute "question" about the merits of intelligent design and the flaws of evolution and then sat down again. He didn't even pretend he actually had a question to be answered by the lecture.

He got a weak round of applause from some people sitting beside him who I assume were religious nuts with him but the guy giving the lecture just said "Ok....? Moving on" and the place erupted in laughter. The religious people looked really pissed off that we didn't all suddenly realize the error of our ways and start praising Jesus. T'was brilliant. :pac:

antiskeptic

Wicknight wrote: »

balls I missed this

Balls I missed it too!

I would have asked him what he expects to occur as one resource after the other hits the economic point of no return. My guess runs along apocalyptic lines (addicts don't tend to react well to having the needle pulled out of their arm). Perhaps his forecast would be more upbeat: mining other planets or summit? Maybe a soft landing?

kiffer

recycling will become economic...
When it becomes cheaper to did through our mountains of trash for reasources than through actual mountains we'll do that.
Stuff(*) doesn't vanish after we use it, though it does take energy to get it back into a usable state...
We'll have to make use of other sources of energy but we're working on that... Again when it's cheaper to build huge hemp farms and burn that then drill for oil we'll do that... Solar, wind and tidal... We'll have to be more energy efficient as we may not have as much spare but things will press on...


Or the other option is that there'll be a big resource war and our numbers will be drastically reduced... We'll have to pick up the pieces in an environment without easy access to fossil fuels and as such will have to do it in a more sustainable way...

Of course from a Christian perspective you could just goof around till the rapture comes and God just destroys everything... Good luck getting raptured if you've done a bad job as a custodian of the Earth. :-)


* some stuff obviously does vanish when used or the energy cost to reset it to a usable state is stupidly high... Helium for example... If we run out of that there's no easy way to replace it... but metals can all be recycled... It'll be a long long time before it's more economical to go and grab an iron asteriod rather than spend some time and energy processing rust into iron.

antiskeptic

kiffer wrote: »

recycling will become economic...

Inevitably...as the cost of resources goes through the roof. That's not the kind of "economic" that sustains ever increasing consumption though. The world system (Capitalism) relies on ever-increasing consumption of relatively cheap resources. We can hardly miss the approaching train what with China and India desiring to climb towards the standards of life that we in the west currently enjoy: 2 billion to be added to the 1 billion currently sucking the world dry. If it weren't so tragic, you'd have to smile at our chutzpah - wagging our fingers at the rate China is building new coal-fired power stations.

Diluting virgin plastic with 10% clean recycled isn't going to do much to apply the brakes. The problem will become the availability of virgin plastic - not cheapening the mountain of recycled plastic.

Or the other option is that there'll be a big resource war and our numbers will be drastically reduced... We'll have to pick up the pieces in an environment without easy access to fossil fuels and as such will have to do it in a more sustainable way...

Given the nature and history of mankind it would appear inevitable that war will be the solution of choice. Not just over oil or water or uranium .. but over everything. It's ironic that the only time in history that mankind arguably clubbed together in Unity of Purpose was to preserve the very "pursuit of health, wealth and happiness" lifestyle that has him plunging now down into the abyss.

Perhaps some people think The World can dispense with individual and corporate self-interest/government-making Global Corporations .. and all the others forces that are bent on continuing in a more or less straight line, and come together in unity to switch course from an unsustainable system of world economics. I'm not one of those people. We just don't have the track record for doing this kind of thing. Quite the opposite in fact.

* some stuff obviously does vanish when used or the energy cost to reset it to a usable state is stupidly high... Helium for example... If we run out of that there's no easy way to replace it... but metals can all be recycled... It'll be a long long time before it's more economical to go and grab an iron asteriod rather than spend some time and energy processing rust into iron.

I was only kidding about heading into space. The World as we know has to come to an end whether that particular piggy flies or not. The key problem is in the; "How do we safely bring the world as we know it to an end".

If only the problem wasn't so drip-drip. So plausibly deniable. So slowly evolving (relative to election terms) yet so rapidly approaching (relative to everything else). If only we weren't so completely hooked on our living standards. If only those 2 billion in China and India didn't have TV's (about the only darn thing they do have) to see what their missing out on.

If only the problem was universally obvious and un deniably unavoidable - like a meteor on a collision course with Earth. Then we'd band together and do something about it.