The Tiki Bar

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John
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by John »

John wrote: > Well, Fishy, I guess it just goes to prove, once again, the old
> adage: We all get what we deserve.
FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > If by "deserve" you mean: "that which is best for you to learn
> from at any particular moment", then yeah, I agree. :)

> A people who know that they live on a HUGE gift in the middle of
> an enormous semi-deadly highway (the ocean) tend to have a
> different idea of what "the land" means.

> ..by the way, I don't overly romanticize Polynesian culture (too
> much ;) ). It (the Hawai'ian variant) was a highly caste-based
> society, with very little "social mobility", employing a rather
> multi-level master/slave economy. But it WAS an understandable
> system (within it's context), not unlike MOST human groups of the
> time, and was often very "satisfying" for the "simple folk", as
> family oriented village life was of great value to both the
> "rulers" and the mass of the population.

> Aloha! <shaka!>
No, Fishy, it's not like that. It's just that as I get deeper into a
Methuselean age, I get increasingly philosophical about life. And as
I've said before, people my age have wondered our whole lives how it
was possible for Hitler to so thoroughly fool the British ("peace in
our time"), and now I know the answer because exactly the same thing
is happening again, and each day I'm newly astonished to see that
another step has been taken on that path, as if the whole world were
like a blindfolded man walking towards the edge of a cliff where he's
about to fall and be killed, and as he walks he sings, "Oh what a
wonderful day."

So I'm getting what I deserve, and the world is getting what it
deserves.

So what you said was (paraphrasing) that the people in Hawaii whose
homes were overrun by lava got what they deserve because they built
their homes on land that, sooner or later, was going to be overrun by
lava. My remark was in response to that.

FishbellykanakaDude
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

John wrote:
No, Fishy, it's not like that. It's just that as I get deeper into a
Methuselean age, I get increasingly philosophical about life. And as
I've said before, people my age have wondered our whole lives how it
was possible for Hitler to so thoroughly fool the British ("peace in
our time"), and now I know the answer because exactly the same thing
is happening again, and each day I'm newly astonished to see that
another step has been taken on that path, as if the whole world were
like a blindfolded man walking towards the edge of a cliff where he's
about to fall and be killed, and as he walks he sings, "Oh what a
wonderful day."

So I'm getting what I deserve, and the world is getting what it
deserves.

So what you said was (paraphrasing) that the people in Hawaii whose
homes were overrun by lava got what they deserve because they built
their homes on land that, sooner or later, was going to be overrun by
lava. My remark was in response to that.
The whole world IS a blind man stumbling around, trying to not stand still, because that equals true death, but also trusting that since the only option OTHER than death is stumbling around, there is SOME "something" that wonʻt allow his efforts to be ultimately futile.

What weʻre approaching isn't a cliff, but just another (if rather large) log that we KNEW had to be around here SOMEWHERE, because we heard the trees crashing in the distance a while back.

The old stumbling goof is also really bad at learning how to use his walking stick, mostly because he's too proud to admit that he keeps forgetting rather important things, like how to use the damned walking stick.

Life is a gamble. Some bet they'll be dead before the volcano consumes their house. Some bet they'll be dead before some army wipes out their neighborhood.

Some lose; some win. Nobody REALLY cares that much if their children have to gamble as they have, because there is no option OTHER than the gamble! That's what life is.

There are two ways to deal with these realities: Despair or hope. Hope sees the gamble as an opportunity to learn, and to be appreciative of beauty. Despair sees only revenge and the negation of beauty so that the enemy will have no enjoyment of it.

Take your pick. :)

Aloha a me nā mahalo! <shaka nui loa!>

John
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by John »

FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > What weʻre approaching isn't a cliff, but just another (if rather
> large) log that we KNEW had to be around here SOMEWHERE, because
> we heard the trees crashing in the distance a while back.
No, that's not true. You're just another person saying "peace in our
time." That's exactly what I mean about how Hitler so completely
fooled the British.

The world is not just approaching "another log," where you trip and
fall and have to put a band-aid on your elbow.

The world is approaching a cliff, and when it goes off the cliff, half
the population won't survive. It's not "peace in our time" in any
sense.

CH86
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by CH86 »

John wrote:
FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > What weʻre approaching isn't a cliff, but just another (if rather
> large) log that we KNEW had to be around here SOMEWHERE, because
> we heard the trees crashing in the distance a while back.
No, that's not true. You're just another person saying "peace in our
time." That's exactly what I mean about how Hitler so completely
fooled the British.

The world is not just approaching "another log," where you trip and
fall and have to put a band-aid on your elbow.

The world is approaching a cliff, and when it goes off the cliff, half
the population won't survive. It's not "peace in our time" in any
sense.
Whats happening is a buildup to a war. Yes a WAR, a major war like WW1 and WW2 were. You are not predicting a war but a religious type apocalypse.

John
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by John »

CH86 wrote: > Whats happening is a buildup to a war. Yes a WAR, a major war like
> WW1 and WW2 were. You are not predicting a war but a religious
> type apocalypse.
What I've said many times is that I expect 3-4 billion people to be
killed from nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, AI weapons, ground
war, disease and famine, leaving behind another 3-4 billion to rebuild
the world. That's not an apocalypse, and it has nothing to do with
religion.

The person predicting the apocalypse is Higgenbotham.

CH86
Posts: 397
Joined: Thu Feb 08, 2018 8:51 am

Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by CH86 »

John wrote:
CH86 wrote: > Whats happening is a buildup to a war. Yes a WAR, a major war like
> WW1 and WW2 were. You are not predicting a war but a religious
> type apocalypse.
What I've said many times is that I expect 3-4 billion people to be
killed from nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, AI weapons, ground
war, disease and famine, leaving behind another 3-4 billion to rebuild
the world. That's not an apocalypse, and it has nothing to do with
religion.

The person predicting the apocalypse is Higgenbotham.
That is an impossibility, especially if we are not fighting Both Russia and China, and are only fighting the Chinese. China has 250 ICBMs and 600 total warheads. These ICBMs would be targeted against several countries in a war. Because China would be fighting one superpower and several great powers, A sizable Chunk of Those capabilities would have to be directed eliminating enemy military and retaliation capabilities. Also modern nukes tend to have lower yields than their cold war era counterparts did. It is impossible even in an all out WMD war to get 3.5 billion dead, Even if you took the entire populations of China, Russia and the US and postulated a 100 percent death rate, Not casualties, DEAD rate. that would still add up to only 2 billion.

Heisenberg
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by Heisenberg »

CH86 wrote:It is impossible even in an all out WMD war to get 3.5 billion dead, Even if you took the entire populations of China, Russia and the US and postulated a 100 percent death rate, Not casualties, DEAD rate. that would still add up to only 2 billion.
It’s the optimism on this site that always keeps people coming back for more :lol:

John
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by John »

CH86 wrote: > That is an impossibility, especially if we are not fighting Both
> Russia and China, and are only fighting the Chinese. China has 250
> ICBMs and 600 total warheads. These ICBMs would be targeted
> against several countries in a war. Because China would be
> fighting one superpower and several great powers, A sizable Chunk
> of Those capabilities would have to be directed eliminating enemy
> military and retaliation capabilities. Also modern nukes tend to
> have lower yields than their cold war era counterparts did. It is
> impossible even in an all out WMD war to get 3.5 billion dead,
> Even if you took the entire populations of China, Russia and the
> US and postulated a 100 percent death rate, Not casualties, DEAD
> rate. that would still add up to only 2 billion.
It's not just us and China. It's a world war. You could argue that
it's an exaggeration, but not that it's impossible. There would be
huge masses of deaths in India, Pakistan, the Mideast, the Caucasus
and Africa as well. Furthermore, those Boomers running the World
Health Organization would be helpless to stop the spread of an
epidemic of Ebola or a new deadly strain of flu.

Higgenbotham
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Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 11:28 pm

Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by Higgenbotham »

John wrote: It's not just us and China. It's a world war. You could argue that
it's an exaggeration, but not that it's impossible. There would be
huge masses of deaths in India, Pakistan, the Mideast, the Caucasus
and Africa as well. Furthermore, those Boomers running the World
Health Organization would be helpless to stop the spread of an
epidemic of Ebola or a new deadly strain of flu.
According to this article, the Black Death caused an ~25% reduction in the population of Europe during the 14th century. I've seen other estimates that were on the order of 1/3. The population reduction across central Europe during the Thirty Years War was similar. So what's my point? The kill rate you are proposing should be attainable within a couple decades from the start of the crisis war or the onset of the first pandemic with both vectors operating on the population.

http://book.uraic.ru/elib/Authors/NEFED ... /Mod21.htm

The population of Rome fell 40 fold from its peak to the nadir of the Dark Ages. Why that can't happen to every city in the world with population over 1 million, I have no idea, because it surely can. Lagos, Nigeria has grown 100 fold in 60 years. It can't collapse 50 fold in the next 20?
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.

John
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Re: The Tiki Bar

Post by John »

John wrote: > It's not just us and China. It's a world war. You could argue
> that it's an exaggeration, but not that it's impossible. There
> would be huge masses of deaths in India, Pakistan, the Mideast,
> the Caucasus and Africa as well. Furthermore, those Boomers
> running the World Health Organization would be helpless to stop
> the spread of an epidemic of Ebola or a new deadly strain of
> flu.
Higgenbotham wrote: > According to this article, the Black Death caused an ~25%
> reduction in the population of Europe during the 14th century.
> I've seen other estimates that were on the order of 1/3. The
> population reduction across central Europe during the Thirty Years
> War was similar. So what's my point? The kill rate you are
> proposing should be attainable within a couple decades from the
> start of the crisis war or the onset of the first pandemic with
> both vectors operating on the population.

> http://book.uraic.ru/elib/Authors/NEFED ... /Mod21.htm

> The population of Rome fell 40 fold from its peak to the nadir of
> the Dark Ages. Why that can't happen to every city in the world
> with population over 1 million, I have no idea, because it surely
> can. Lagos, Nigeria has grown 100 fold in 60 years. It can't
> collapse 50 fold in the next 20?
You're absolutely right, and WW I provides a precedent. The following
table, based on data collected by Mike Alexander, shows the death
rates per 100,000 population for major European wars:

Code: Select all

1623-1648 (Thirty Years War)                 80
1688-1713 (War of the Spanish Succession)    80
1792-1815 (Napoleonic Wars)                  80
1914-1918 (World War I)                     300
1937-1953 (World War II)                    700
[/b]

This is remarkable, because it shows that the number of deaths per
100,000 population exploded by a factor of almost 10 from the
Napoleonic Wars to WW II. How is that even possible?

When Mike presented that data to me almost 15 years ago, I tried to
figure out how that was possible.

I finally settled on the infant mortality rate. The following
graph shows infant mortality rates in Chicago, 1870-1999:

Image

This graph is quite dramatic, because it shows that the infant
mortality rate in Chicago just before WW I collapsed from almost 30%
to about 2%.

Now, of courses, this dramatic fall in infant mortality is oh, so
wonderful, since it means that a mother doesn't have to suffer by
watching her wonderful newborn child die right before her eyes.

But applying the Fallacy of Composition, what's wonderful for an
individual mother is a disaster for society as a whole, since those
wonderful babies grow up to become cannon fodder in the next wars.

If you reduce the infant mortality rate, then there are a lot more
young men to fight and be killed in war. This increases the number of
people available to fight in wars, but it also decreases the average
age of the population, and so a larger proportion of the population as
a whole is available to fight in wars.

So we can compare the Napoleonic wars (1700-1714) to WW I (1914-18).
Napoleon mobilized two million men, but in WW I, the Allies mobilized
40 million men and the Central Powers mobilized more than 25 million
men. That shows the huge effects of the reduction in infant
mortality.

Those figures apply to Europe, but the "benefits" of reduced
infant mortality would not have reached other regions -- Africa,
the Mideast, Asia -- before WW I or even WW II.

So your example is exactly right. You say that the population of
Lagos, Nigeria has grown 100 fold in 60 years.

A factor of 100!!! That's amazing! And it shows how our wonderful
doctors and scientists are spreading joy to other parts of the
world, through reduced infant mortality.

And let's not forget the wonderful Green Revolution, which makes it
possible to produce a lot more food, so that a lot more people can in
live in Lagos and other cities, especially in India. It's absolutely
wonderful how fantastically much more cannon fodder for wars has
become available in Africa and Asia because of the Green Revolution.

One more thing: The population growth rate in Sunni Muslim Arab
countries since WW II has been more than twice as high as in other
countries. Here's a table that I prepared a few years ago:

Code: Select all

>               Population Growth Rate
>   Western countries      Other non-Muslim countries
>   -----------------------  -----------------------
>   United States     0.97%  Russia           -0.47%
>   United Kingdom    0.28%  Vietnam           1.10%
>   France            0.53%  China             0.49%
>   Germany          -0.06%  Thailand          0.60%
>   Israel            1.63%  India             1.38%
>   Spain             0.05%  Mongolia          1.50%
>   South Africa     -0.05%  Korea, North      0.39%
>   Japan            -0.24%  Korea, South      0.26%
>                            Iran(Shia Muslim) 0.94%
[/b]

Code: Select all

>      Sunni Muslim (especially Arab) countries
>   Indonesia         1.10%  Egypt             2.00%
>   Uzbekistan        0.94%  West Bank         2.13%
>   Turkmenistan      1.14%  Gaza Strip        3.29%
>   Syria             1.95%  Pakistan          1.51%
>   Saudi Arabia      1.75%  Kuwait            3.50%
>   Iraq              2.45%  United Arab Emir  3.56%
>   Libya             2.12%  Yemen             2.71%
>   ------------------------------------------------

Source:  "CIA Fact Book"
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2002rank.html
[/b]

I've never been able to find a reason for this vast difference in
birth rate. My guess is that in the 1940s, one generation past the
cataclysmic collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it became "common wisdom"
among Sunni Muslims at that time to develop a higher birth rate, as
the way of rebuilding the Muslim empire that had been so powerful for
six centuries. This huge growth in the Sunni Muslim population would
permit a new Muslim empire to replace the collapsed Ottoman empire,
including conquests in Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Kashmir.
And one difference between this reason for increased population versus
reduction of infant mortality as a reason is that the intention is
that these young Sunni Muslim children will grow purposely to be used
as cannon fodder.

So since World War II, we've had the Chinese believing that they're a
Master Race that will control the world, and we've had the Sunni
Muslims preparing to control the world by overrunning countries with
huge populations of young Sunni Muslims as cannon fodder.

So these are three things that are contributing to an enormous
bulge in populations, especially in Africa, the Mideast and
Asia: the reduction in infant mortality, the Green Revolution,
and the Sunni Muslim birth rate.

This has created many cities that are packed with people living
shoulder to shoulder, with no survival skills, dependent on outsiders
for food, water, medicines, pandemic control, electricity, internet,
and so forth.

Any one of these cities will be a fat target for nuclear weapons,
conventional weapons, famine, or disease. A 90% death rate in many of
these cities wouldn't be a surprise.

So, putting everything together, I think my 50% estimate for the death
rate for the entire world, rural and urban combined, is quite
reasonable.

But cheer up! Let's be "glass half full" kind of people. That will
leave the other half of the global population to rebuild the world!

And those 3-4 billion people rebuilding the world will be getting lots
of help from those new super-intelligent AI robots that are becoming
available, able to help with everything from farming to nursing care,
at least until they figure out that they don't need us.

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