Niall Ferguson in Triggernometry

gbtaveira

Brilliant interview with Niall Ferguson, one of the most brilliant thinkers today.
By Triggernometry, one of my favourite shows.
Niall is a deeply knowledgeable historian with a classical liberal leaning.
When we leverage a critical thinking atutitde with profound knowledged of history we have great insights about today’s societal issues.

My main takes ( I may add some more later on):

  • Contrary to popular thought history doesn’t work in cycles. It is much more chaotic. It is impossible to predict the future from the past.
  • History is not about judging the past, but understanding what was in past societies mind. Unfortunately today’s history school books replaced understanding by judgement.
  • Younger generation’s (gener Z) view of history has been affected by this. Also as the left dominated eduaction, they become judgemental and ignorant. And they haven’t learned what it means living in an un-free society. They take our freedom for granted.
  • Niall welcomed some Trump achievements in his first term, but views a potential second term as a great danger to American democracy. The disrespect for election results and the Constitution, culminating in Jan 6 2021 made him ineligible.

Themes discussed:
00:00 Intro
00:43 Are We in the Last Stages of Civilisation?
08:45 How Do Civilisations Fall?
13:03 The State of the American Project
23:04 Sponsor Message: GiveSendGo
24:40 Why We Judge the Past
27:38 Why Are Young People So Nihilistic?
39:59 Is Totalitarianism Cyclical in History?
43:03 Sponsor Message: EasyDNS
44:05 The Failure of Our Historical Education
48:57 Do Men Think About the Roman Empire?
54:10 Why Are Greek Myths So Compelling?
57:34 Niall’s Thoughts on Trump
1:02:47 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About?

The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy – Book Review

gbtaveira

The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy, is a recent book by Lars Schernikau and William Hayden Smith

The standard of living and prosperity in the rich nations of the modern world relies on the intensive use of energy. The rise from poverty and the improvement in living standards of hundreds of millions of people in the third world in the past decades was made possible by a dramatic increase in energy use in these societies.

To keep improving our living standards, especially in poorer nations, the world will need more cheap, reliable and abundant energy. Not less

It is possible to achieve this goal with modern technologies and at the same time to preserve a livable environment as we can observe in modern societies.

This book approaches the questions of Energy policy from 3 fundamental principles:

1. A focus on human well-being as the cornerstone of any policy analysis.

2. The recognition that energy choices are constrained by the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry, geography, meteorology, and economics.

3. The evaluation of energy options requires a review of the complete supply chain from beginning to end, considering the full life cycle of materials.

This approach differs strongly from what we hear in mainstream media. There, the energy debate has been wrongly influenced by some environmental movements and activists. Worse because of demagoguery and virtue signaling, most political institutions let the debate of energy policies be politicised with serious consequences for our prosperity.

Therefore most of ongoing energy policy debate follows completely different principles, in a pernicious way.

They treat Humans as outsiders and not part of the biomass. As if all our influence on Nature were bad, and ignoring the our positive impact in making our planet more livable.

They tend to ignore the more basic scientific principles when evaluating energy policy. And they focus only on the end point of energy extraction and use, ignoring other massively important steps in the supply chain.

If you follow the writings of authors like Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, you will notice they arrive at some similar conclusions. But they approach this topic from a environment focused perspective, whereas this book provides a massive collection of data, facts and analysis on the hard science and technology of the energy supply chain, including the nature limiting factors of geology and weather.

In conclusion this book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding what is at stake in the Energy Policies of our governments, one of the most critical topics for the future of our societies.