Isocracy and Bushfires, Impossibility and Philosophy, Gaming and Reviews

[tcpip]

The first real action of the Isocracy network (inspired by brock_ulfsen has been to generate practical ideas on prevention of bushfires for the impending Royal Commission. So, if you have any great (or even not so great) ideas on the subject (cause, prevention, cure), please feel free to contribute. The network itself is growing at the rate I expected and would want it to do so (i.e., roughly one person a day). I will this opportunity to highlight 17catherines's efforts with the vicbushfirefund.

Next Sunday at the Unitarian Philosophy forum I will be presenting on "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast", which discusses the (mis)use of metaphysics (logic, ontology and theology) in philosophy and modern criticisms of metaphysics from Hume, through to Kant and to Ayer and Popper. I will be concluding with the rise of epistemology, the need to separate theology from philosophy, and a universal pragmatism towards verification. Apropos a University of Hawaii lecturer in philosophy tries to explain what metaphysics is not (such things are actually possible in transcendent metaphysics because it doesn't rely on verification); hat-tip to erudito.

My review of the Zin Letters (a Finnish Glorantha 'zine) has been put up on rpg.net, and a review of Greg Saunders' Summerland should be there soon. Have just started a new PBeM based on the old Chaosium product Questworld but using Steve Perrin's Quest Rules. Karl B. ran a session of Gulliver's Trading Company on Sunday with good setting and character interaction; the FUDGE/FATE based system is slowly being bashed into some shape.

Comments

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Applicability of practical ideas and prevention for bushfire environments will depend on solving basic issues first. A friend who bought a holiday house block a while back received notification by council that they had to plant 20 extra trees. You've not doubt seen this story. To me, buying a piece of property on which to build a house should automatically give one the right to protect it against its destruction and the deaths of those within it. While local councils continue to be allowed to force householders to make their houses unsafe, the whole of the rest of the discussion is moot.

BTW, I don't see what purpose there is of including ludicrous sections such as "2.1 God" and "4.1 Terrorism" in your outline of submission. How about "2.1A Spaghetti Monster has a Bad Day"? Considering random acts by supernatural beings and acts of terrorism just distracts from the real issues.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

To me, buying a piece of property on which to build a house should automatically give one the right to protect it against its destruction and the deaths of those within it.

As much as purchasing title always comes as a bundle of rights; and hence the reference to the article about trees being in the right place.

For the two other articles you mention I agree there is a degree of facetiousness (but a surprisingly number of people do consider it true!) with the first, but the second is a form of arson and therefore legitimate, imo.

This is a scrapbook of ideas at this stage and should be viewed as such.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Who is to determine whether trees are "in the right place"? Some semi-literate council worker? My friend with the edict to plant new trees complied by planting 20 tiny seedlings, all of which have since died.

The government should, and indeed must, control the use of public land, but I see no excuse for any control of private land unless it presents a danger to others. If it's so important that land be kept in a native state, the government should prohibit houses being built on it and buy it back from the owners. The in-between state should never have been allowed to come about, whereby we have privately owned but with rules that are inconsistent, poorly managed and potentially deadly.

The source of the arson seems on the outer edge of relevance to me. If someone wants to light bushfires, this is a criminal investigation and intelligence issue. The bushfire will function in the same way whether it was lit by lightning or electric transformer explosion or car engine or arsonist.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The government should, and indeed must, control the use of public land, but I see no excuse for any control of private land unless it presents a
danger to others.

Who decides whether it is a danger to others? "Some semi-literate council worker?"

The bushfire will function in the same way whether it was lit by lightning or electric transformer explosion or car engine or arsonist.

But prevention is different.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Who decides whether it is a danger to others?

Laws and courts, usually. Man-traps, for example, are illegal. Nothing that needs to be on a council level.

But prevention is different.

Mostly, it's not. So long as the prevention of bushfires concentrates on their ability to spread and to destroy us and our property, the ignition source is a minor matter. Preventing a terrorist lighting a fire, only to have the same area ignited by some other means, buys you nothing and was incredibly unlikely in the first place. I'd guess "preventing bushfires" and "catching terrorists" are similar order problems. Number of terrorists who've actually started bushfires? None that we know of. Doubling the size of the problem space for no appreciable gain seems to me to be a massive waste of effort. Better to constrain the problem space. In many situations, prevention is better than cure, but with so many natural and human fire-starters already, devoting effort to a highly unlikely one just detracts from the real issues.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Nothing that needs to be on a council level.

Umm... So you're advocating the abolition of property-based by-laws, local building permits etc?

Doubling the size of the problem space for no appreciable gain seems to me to be a massive waste of effort.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

To be honest, yes, I believe that councils are so small that they gravitate easily towards unfair rules, nimby-ism, cronyism, corruption and bullying and that they are seldom competent to deal with much beyond collecting the rubbish.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Now do you actually have any empirical studies that show that local councils are more prone to such behaviour than larger forms of governance?

And, on the other hand, an argument can be made that local councils are most aware and responsive to local conditions. Thus building permits which are appropriate in one place are not in another. Even concerns like height restrictions, zoning etc will vary from locality to locality.

For a trivial example, the Hume City Council cover such matters in its local building code as "pedestrian and traffic safety, damage to assets, sanitary facilities, litter, waste materials, site identification and environmental amenity".

Trying to establish a universal set of regulations that covers these issues that transcends local contexts I suspect would be difficult. But please, go ahead and try. That's what this exercise is about.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Empirical studies? No, just common sense and personal observation. The smaller the area governed, the more easily it will be influenced by local pressure groups. If there's one state politician who'll be against increased airport traffic, it'll be the one representing the idiots who built houses near flight paths.

I lived in Camberwell a couple of decades ago when the council signed on a redevelopment scheme for the main shopping area. Next council election, every candidate was anti-development and there was nobody decent to vote for. The new council promptly reversed the development plans, and got sued for tens of millions of dollars (of our money) and lost. Camberwell junction should have been redeveloped, busting at the seams with people as it was/is, but the council got bought by the few mega-rich wankers within walking distance who didn't want their precious streets to carry any more traffic and serve the rest of the community adequately.

I don't think universal regulations are required for litter, height restrictions, etc. In much the way we have federal laws that states can't override and so on, I do think state-level regulations are required for not impeding home-owners from appropriately defending their homes from fire.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

No, just common sense and personal observation. The smaller the area governed, the more easily it will be influenced by local pressure groups.

That's exactly the idea of local democracy.

If there's one state politician who'll be against increased airport traffic, it'll be the one representing the idiots who built houses near flight paths.

Or have had new flight paths imposed upon them by another authority.

I lived in Camberwell a couple of decades ago when the council signed on a redevelopment scheme for the main shopping area....

Camberwell had a similar problem in the past. The solution is the same.

A few hundred people owned large areas of cow paddock and market garden and vacant land and refused to sell them for housing partly becuase they believed the speculative value of the land would rise. Such people blocked Camberwell's growth and contributed little to its municipal revenue. At Camberwell junction and other shopping centres, owners of old woodon shops were paying smaller rates than the enterprising landlords who built expensive shops and attracted business to the centre. In residential streets, landlords who allowed houses to go unpainted paid smaller rates, while the landlord who improved his property and therefor the neighbourhood's appearance and land values was penalised for his enterprise with higher taxes. The reformers argued that a new method of municipal taxation would accelerate the pace of Camberwell's growth and improve the quality of the suburb. Calling for a referendum, they carried the poll after a fierce campaign and Camberwell and Caulfield became the first Victorian municipalities to tax the land and not the buildings. From 1922, the new method of taxation undoubtably forced many large landowners to release vacant land for house building..."

Geoffrey Blainey, A History of Camberwell, 1980, Lothian Publishers, p86

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

I have an idea for bush fire prevention. As in an idea that will stop a plasma fire dead.

We should talk.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, you know how to contact me :p

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

One point you seem to have missed in your Zin review (I'd answer over there, but it insists on me trying to remember if I have an ID, and asking for the password and.... and life is too short)... that is, I'm told, and almost exact copy of the John Hughes Far Point website. That's been the definitive work on the Far Point for years, the only change here is that you don't have to do your own printing if you want a hard copy. If "official" Gloranthan history ever gets round to mentioning the area, it had better agree with this, or be laughed at, not the other way round.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, John Hughes and Jamie Ravel's contributions are mentioned in the credits for the article in question for the third issue.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Jamie Revell, I suspect? Trotsky?

Newt's (glowing) review of the Far Point suggests that this shouldn't be John Hughes getting a mention, more like John Hughes wrote practically everything in the mag.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, Revell, my bad.

On the matter, I can't judge because I haven't seen (nor can I find, google-fu fails me) Far Point.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

http://mythologic.info/questlines/questlines.html

There's more there than just the Far Place section, and it's all good.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I noticed Juha Makkonen's name is mispelled as Makkenon.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up on that.

[darknova666.livejournal.com]

might need to ban ppl from some state and national parks on really hot days and have security cameras to log cars entering them.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Do we want to stop people from being suicidal or, instead, strongly suggest that they shouldn't?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

the need to separate theology from philosophy

Always in agreement with. I find philosophy and faith rather like science and faith. Their intermingling cheapens both parties. Philosophy has conjured some absolute rubbish in trying to muck around with questions of theology, like Pascal's Wager, which is I think the most transparent game of philosophical 3-card monte around.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the one thing which Pascal's wager did introduce (and perhaps this is in the realm of 3-card monte) was game theory and probability involving infinity.

Dawkins and Carrier have proposed an interesting version where they postulate a deity which rewards honest reasoning which leads to atheism, as opposed to superficial and blind faith - leading to the result that a reasoned disbelief in god ensures a place in heaven, and blind faith leads to hell. :)

The logic of game theory aside, the theological component does however rest on the unverifiable assertion of the existence of God.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

The logic of game theory aside, the theological component does however rest on the unverifiable assertion of the existence of God.

Hence the 3 card monte bit. To be fair as well, Pascal's Wager was never meant to prove God's existence, it was an example of why 'proofs' of God's existence are facile.

I've read Dawkins' take and thought it was pretty funny, but still victim to the pleasing of an arbitrary daddy with arbitrary criteria. Why pick one trait like earnest belief or reasoned disbelief? Why not pick something stupid while you're at it - 'God rewards those with the ability to faithfully explain the Dark Phoenix Saga' or 'God rewards those with the most complete collection of BP petrol station Smurfs'. Trying to bend philosophical thought to this sort of arbitrary criteria is kind of an exercise in futility.