Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › ted turner and carl sagan
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wv.
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October 14, 2016 at 9:33 pm #55257wvParticipantOctober 15, 2016 at 8:08 am #55268
TSRFParticipantRobert Anton Wilson had a very low opinion of Carl Sagan.
Just saying…
October 15, 2016 at 9:12 am #55278
nittany ramModeratorRobert Anton Wilson had a very low opinion of Carl Sagan.
Just saying…
Why?
Ted Turner is a bit of a dolt, isn’t he?
I got the impression that as Sagan talked Turner was singing the “Golden Grahams” tune in his head ala Homer Simpson.
October 15, 2016 at 12:07 pm #55293
Billy_TParticipantSocialism, to me, is really the only sane way to organize a society. Of course, then we get into the problem of how “socialism” is defined. It might be more accurate to say there are many socialisms, and then go from there.
My own view is that it really doesn’t make much sense to take money, after the fact, and then “redistribute” it to lift up the population, though this is light years better than our current way of doing things. To me, the most logical way to go is to make sure all work, all income, all the pricing for necessities, syncs up to guarantee comfortable standards of living without any back-end help. As in, up front, wages need to be sufficient to match up with goods and services so there is never any need of government supplements. Ever. For any person with a job, and everyone would be guaranteed that by right. Up front. As in, the original distribution and allocation of income, access, wealth, opportunity, resources, etc. etc. . . . all of that would work right off the bat to provide a healthy standard of living for all citizens — again, without exception.
To me, this can’t be done under capitalism. By definition, it can’t be done. Because capitalism automatically generates massive inequality, if for no other reason than it empowers the few to control the many, from the smallest business on up, and the few control all of that allocation of resources for the many. No way on earth will the few ever voluntarily distribute resources for the many with any remote connection to “fair” or “equal.” Reverse engineer this and you have to take away that power from the few and reestablish it among the many — rather, the “all.” There is no other way.
My view of “socialism” means egalitarian, fully democratic, cooperative economies, federated with each other . . . and I’d also do away with money as we think of it today, and any connection between “sales” and income. I’d sever that tie forever. Income (and all public funding) would come from absolutely separate public “banks” and would have nothing whatsoever to do with any sales totals for any good or service. And this would solve the problem of funding as well, and end the need for taxes, debt, etc. etc.
October 15, 2016 at 2:02 pm #55308wvParticipantRobert Anton Wilson had a very low opinion of Carl Sagan.
Just saying…
Why?
Ted Turner is a bit of a dolt, isn’t he?
I got the impression that as Sagan talked Turner was singing the “Golden Grahams” tune in his head ala Homer Simpson.
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R.A.Wilson was a quirky, ornery guy. He wrote quirky books attacking fundamentalist-religions, but he also wrote a book attacking ‘scientific fundamentalism’ (‘The New Inquisition”)
He was very open to….oh, i think you like to call it “wooo” 🙂
He thot of Sagan as a scientific fundamentalist. (I dont quite see Sagan that way myself, btw)
R.A.Wilson was more of a Buckminster Fuller kinda sciency-guy, than a Carl Sagan kinda sciency-guy.
In a nutshell, Wilson kinda sorta evaluated science-experts on a spectrum of how much ‘woo’ they were open to.
w
v
http://rawilson.com/trigger3.html
“….Sagan’s hilarious theory of “nuclear winter.”* Briefly, Sagan’s theory holds that nuclear war could result, not just in the horrors we all know, but in a freeze that would probably abolish all life on this planet. (He published this notion in Parade, where his mass audience could see it and gasp.) His refusal to accept valid criticisms of this sci-fi story led to the following summary in Science, official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “News and Comments” section, Jan 16, 1987:Sagan’s refusal to acknowledge merit in the NCAR [National Center for Atmospheric Research]’s analysis — known as “nuclear autumn” — sends some people up the wall. One wall-climber is George Rathjens, professor of political science at M.I.T….”(Sagan’s) claim that the original nuclear winter model is unimpeached [he says]…is the greatest fraud we’ve seen in a long time”….Russell Seiz, a fellow at the Harvard Center for International Affairs…gibes at [Sagan and his co-authors] for mixing physics and advertising.
Most scientists I have spoken to about Sagan share this dim view of his use of publicity to represent his pet notions as Scientific Truth even when — or especially when — a large segment of the scientific community has severe doubts about these notions.
(Similarly, in Brocca’s Brain, Sagan rejects data on so-called “out of body experiences” among near-dead patients because — he says — nobody in that state has reported anything they couldn’t have heard while unconscious. But the literature of OOBE has hundreds of cases of such reports, including numerous incidents in which the subjects reported things in rooms far away from the operating room. Once again, we can only wonder if Sagan habitually lies through his teeth or just doesn’t read any of the literature on the subjects upon which he claims Expertese.)
But returning to Dr. Velikovsky, and Sagan’s crusade against his ideas: … see link”
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