tomo,
Thanks for the extra info. Not a big surprise that the "long slog" in a practical engineering project was all on the legal/bureaucratic side. Character building stuff...

A Very Peculiar Practice: I remember the title going past on the ABC, but never watched it. Now that I read about it, I'll have a go putting that to rights. Thanks for the tip. Both series are available on YouTube.

DaveS,
While agreeing with the article's main body, I didn't like the last paragraph. Stretching the same daft idea out an extra 30 years is the opposite of what's needed. Let's see a real implementation plan for "net zero", one with short term milestones, and one that recognises, for example, that it would be idiotic to push electric vehicles until the electricity is available *and* generated from renewables. We'll not see such a plan because net zero is an empty slogan used to make stupid (or evil) ideas appear high minded.

Of course we're on to net zero in Aus. too, but the heat pumps thing is not really on the radar. That's because many many homes (including mine) have heat pumps (in the form of reverse cycle air conditioning), and it's widely known how expensive they are to operate. I suppose people in the UK will find that out, but only after facing the expense of converting.

Listened to a rather alarmist EconTalk with Erik Hoel telling us to be very afraid of AI: what if it becomes psychotic, etc. Rather overwrought.

As I said earlier, Google tries to find the thing you're searching for; ChatGPT generates things that it thinks you want, but it's up to you to decide whether you're happy with the result or want it to generate again. You're doing the search, and the real intelligence is your own.

Then you get excited about what ChatGPT did for you and post the remarkable result to the net. A fair bit of the ChatGPT phenomenon is plain old selection bias.

I mentioned Larry Wall's travesty example Perl script a while back. Just for fun, I fed it my last three (typically verbose) comments here and let it do its thing. Here's a sample of what it generated:

(Brooks was describing development of software systems, but it seems
applicable whenever you are trying to control a complicated process) Not
that everyone gets a free pass from me; there definitely are baddies
who I want to see someone willing to give the pot a proper stir. I
wasn't completely with him on some of his later remarks though. He
lamented that one of the swamp will be interesting to see. We might be
surprised how seriously we would consider them if we started having to
step past haemorrhagic bodies in the Spencer Connor one we're
admiring, but based on (e.g.) Solidworks models. That would have helped
with the whys and wherefores. Would also have been fun later on
seeing where reality didn't quite meet up with the UK defence
minister.

Ok, so pure nonsense, but it does have a plausible kind of sentence structure and is far from a random list of words; some might look at it as psychotic, but there's no intelligence at all. The Perl script is only 68 lines (including comments and empty lines) and will generate an endless stream of its "training" input, mashed around randomly like the above.

I was wondering how ChatGPT would go explaining humour. E.g., this broken limerick:

There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp.
When asked, "Does it hurt?"
He relied, "No, it doesn't.
I'm so glad that it wasn't a hornet."

might be a challenge for it. (I'm not wondering with quite enough enthusiasm to create an account with them and try it)

Another rational take-down of net zero.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/13/heat-pumps-epitomise-the-economic-folly-of-net-zero/

Stopper,
It has spent a long time dying. Reminds of the Goodies episode where they were watching some art-house movie, "The death of so and so", and there it was. running for hours, with so and so staggering around on a beach and the Goodies, bored, saying "Get on with it".

tomo,
Conviction politicians are rare, or maybe it's that most politicians aren't great actors. No doubt some believed Obama was sincere, others would say you need to go back to Reagan to find the last conviction US president, but then Reagan really was a professional actor.

Toning down the cynicism, it is refreshing to see someone who apparently shuns the pollsters and tells things as he sees them. A sincere wish to improve things is worth far more than whether they lean towards left or right dogma. Unfortunately, it also runs the risk of paving the road to Hell if they're short on competence.

I remember hearing a little about that Stefan Grimm story at the time. Disgraceful. Some of his complaint hit a wrong note with me though. He said a couple of times that a *professor* shouldn't be treated this way. Who should?

Universities are a racket, and that was put in place by government policy changes which made university qualifications a condition of employment (e.g. in nursing). I have always felt that those changes were made in order to reduce the unemployment figures short-term.

Somewhat related, I liked one economist's (American, don't remember who) case for having *no* minimum wage level, because it would be a gap in the continuum. We have people working for positive wages, and people working for negative wages (i.e. students who pay for the privilege of working), so why prevent people from working for small positive wages?

Have you a specific interest in the Old North Mill case, or is it just a general interest in the EA's bureaucratic incompetence?

Listened to the recent Triggernometry podcast with John Campbell where he was responding to questions rather than going through his prepared material. Pretty good, and he acquitted himself well.

Did disagree with him on some of his later remarks though. He lamented that one of the harms of the missteps and excessive zeal we've seen in response to COVID-19 is that, if a really *serious* epidemic arises, people will be inclined to pooh pooh lockdowns, ignore vaccines and generally thumb their noses at public health "experts".

To which I say pish! As I said many times in the TinyCO2 debates, the more serious the disease, the more catastrophic a policy of leaky lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing and emergency vaccination would be. Real quarantine is the only hope. Can throw in prayer too if you like. As for trusting public health recommendations, Dr Campbell might be surprised how seriously we would consider them if we started having to step past haemorrhagic bodies in the streets and the occasional whiff of the scent of death. With COVID, the problem was that the advice was rarely credible, and often ignored by the very people giving it.

Mind you, if there are bodies in the streets, quarantine has failed and prayer's about all you've got left.

Here's a fun gotcha question from the US House Transportation Committe hearing. Not that the number really matters. To me, the key point is that, if something is made an article of faith, believers won't really learn about it at all.

Matt Baker on Breakfast this morning, "because the Great Barrier Reef is dying" !!

tomo,
It wasn't a complaint that RFK Jnr's talk lacked evidence; it's the nature of a talk. As you say, it would have gone on forever if he'd been quoting authorities. It was just that my own unevidenced hunches were unlikely to be toppled by it (unless I do as you did and ferret out the evidence).

And yes, the reaction of the swamp will be interesting to see. We might be witnessing his abdication as an American "royal".

I'm inclined to cut the "elites" a little slack. I don't believe there's any great organisation pulling the strings. Instead, I think we're living Fred Brooks's metaphor of the dinosaur standing perplexed in a tar pit: It can't walk out, but each leg says "I'm moving fine, it must be the other legs are the problem". Maybe our dinosaur spells "other legs" as "elite". (Brooks was describing development of software systems, but it seems applicable whenever you are trying to control a complicated process)

Not that everyone gets a free pass from me; there definitely are baddies who I want to see punished. But I no more believe in super-villains than in super-heroes.

I'm not at all surprised that career academics would be amongst the most ruthless. (Appears that Sayre's Law itself obeys Stigler's Law of Eponymy)

My own somewhat related rule is that, as soon as politics rears its head in a workplace, it's a clear sign that there is serious overstaffing.