PBS Forum

Quote from: Martin Bohnet on January 24, 2023, 01:13:29 PMwinter starts running out of time

Meanwhile in the UK:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/23/national-grid-scheme-will-do-reward-heavy-energy-users/

"Temperatures have plummeted again, Britain is becalmed by an anticyclone, and the National Grid is warning that supply is going to be tight this evening. Coal plants are being dusted down several months after they were supposed to have closed, and the National Grid is activating what it calls its Demand Flexibility Service. This means customers signed up to the scheme can earn up to £6 per kilowatt-hour saved if they agree to turn off their appliances between 5 and 6pm.
It is not hard to spot a slight issue with this offer: the more electricity you use on a normal Monday, the easier it will be for you to cash in today. As with so many green subsidies, it perversely rewards the well-off at the expense of the poor. "

really? Forecast for London says last frost today, and 16 days without ahead and Edinburgh seems even warmer - I'm aware that currently any prediction past 5 days is extremely speculative while the stratosphere may or may not reach a major warming, but still that looks pretty harmless in terms of cold.

Surprising they have run the power saving scheme. Colder than average but nothing like as bad as before Christmas. Has not been much wind though. There is a web site:
https://grid.iamkate.com/
where you can see how UK's energy is being produced in real time. 26% Wind at the moment.

I wonder if they have run the scheme because they can, have it set up, and want to see if it works. Leave it much longer and they will run out of justification. It will be interesting for them to see what people can turn off happily.

I have not been taking part, because you need to have a smart meter and (qv) I'm not having one until a gang of big blokes with a legal notice appear at the door, because it lets a person behind a computer turn off your power on a whim.

It would make sense to have smart devices, so your freezer would not operate during the couple of hours of highest demand or whatever.

Rather than central control they could with smart meters just adjust the energy cost minute by minute and let you and your devices work it out.

My energy is supplied by Al Gore backed Octopus, when I first went on their website I was impressed that it told me to run my laptop off its battery because it was a time of heavy load on the grid. Slightly less impressed that it says that every time, regardless of the time of day or night.

Smart meters, central control... and I will be buying another, bigger, generator. I've seen my neighbours get smart meters and be without power for (in one case) days.

Today's papers are asking "do you have a device made in China spying on you".

Quote from: David Pilling on January 25, 2023, 03:57:16 AMSmart meters, central control... and I will be buying another, bigger, generator. I've seen my neighbours get smart meters and be without power for (in one case) days.

I can't imagine having a smart meter if you have to have crucial medical devices that run on electricity. It would be a disaster if big brother shut off your electricity for your home dialysis machine or your cpap.  A back-up generator would be essential in these circumstances. 

The same is true if you work from home via computer all day.  You're out-of-luck if they shut down your modem's power. 

I recently read this book and it had some very interesting topics from which to quote.

The Moral Sense; James Q Wilson; The Free Press; 1993

"A psychopath is not a lunatic suffering from disabling delusions or an obviously neurotic person displaying phobias and anxieties; rather, he or she is an outwardly normal person with an apparently logical mind who happens to be an emotional cipher. Hiding behind what Hervey Cleckley called the "mask of sanity," the psychopath is the extreme case of the nonsocial personality, someone for whom the ordinary emotions of life have no meaning. Psychopaths lie without compunction, injure without remorse, and cheat with little fear of detection. Wholly self-centered and unaware of the emotional needs of others, they are, in the fullest sense of the term, unsocial. They can mimic feelings without experiencing them. If man were simply the pure calculator (self-interested, utility maximizer) that some economists and game theories imagine, this is what he would be (a psychopath.)" Page 107

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That economists produce economic models that regard all people as hedonic calculators is telling.  When I listen to the news these days, I never hear the presenters refer to people as citizens anymore, only as consumers.

Probably there are very few hedonic calculators who garden.

"Traditional economics assumes that people are rational, but compelling research in the field of behavioral science says ... not so much. Behavioral economics is the study of decision-making and, human decision-making is, many times, very irrational."

 

Another book by James Q. Wilson and coauthored with Richard J. Herrnstein had a few related quotes and I include them below. 

Crime and Human Nature; James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein; Simon and Schuster; 1985

"This view of man as a self-interested rational calculator pervades the first great modern treatise on crime and punishment, Dei Delitti e delle Pene, by the Italian Cesare Beccaria, published in 1764." Page 515.

"A society made up of persons who are purely hedonic calculators is no society at all." Page 528.

If criminals were rational, why would they get caught. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. But rational self interest and you'd factor in being caught which would make a lot of things un-economic.

Quote from: David Pilling on February 03, 2023, 04:48:19 PMyou'd factor in being caught which would make a lot of things un-economic.

Professional criminals are said to accept being caught as part of the cost of being in business. So amateur criminals have other motives.

Adam Smith "It is not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

Keynes "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."

Thatcher " 'I am homeless, the Government must house me!' and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."

Good points all. There are many people with good quotes on this topic. Here are a few more from Wilson and Herrnstein.

The mind is under the influence of both pleasure and pain, but unlike in Hobbes and Bentham, matters cannot be left there. The mind must be taught to rule the body so as to shun immediate pleasures that lead to deferred pain and accept present pains that lead in time to greater pleasures (per Aristotle.) Little in Hobbes or Bentham prepares us for how the mind gradually acquires sovereignty over the body by coming to understand the circumstances in which pain ought to be preferred to pleasure. That philosophy should have difficulty with this problem is easily understood, since men so often fail to achieve the mind's sovereignty over the body's preferences. But to fail to note that mature humans differ from animals in part precisely because they need not be governed wholly by immediate pleasures and pains is to ignore the psychological process that is central to learning not to offend. Page 224

Jean Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century French philosopher, had read Hobbes and described his views as "pernicious," especially insofar as Hobbes viewed man as naturally wicked (or naturally scheming, which to Rousseau was much the same thing). Rousseau seized on the failure of Hobbes to consider compassion or sympathy as a natural sentiment. Page 519. 

But Rousseau's view of man, especially man-as-child was hopelessly romantic. One wonders what Rousseau would have done with willful children, or hyperactive ones, or those that rarely repay parental attention with spontaneous smiles and quiet nights. He sent his own children (all 5 of them!) to a foundling home. Page 520.

The anti-hedonistic remarks reminded me of a Chinese restaurant my friends and I frequented as undergraduates. It handed out bummer fortune cookies. Once I got, "A moment of pleasure, a lifetime of sorrow." I expect I was reading the Stoics around then, and much annoyed by them. These days, however, ataraxia looks pretty good. (Would that be a good species epithet for a plant that needs no care?)

Apatheia vs Ataraxia: what's the difference?

https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/apatheia-vs-ataraxia-whats-the-difference/

I'll take ataraxia also; there's much to vex the mind these days. 

Quote from: janemcgary on February 08, 2023, 03:31:35 PMThese days, however, ataraxia looks pretty good. (Would that be a good species epithet for a plant that needs no care?)

If ataxia was a plant species, and you could make a tea from its leaves, and drinking the tea would evoke a state of ataxia in you, would you drink it?

Quote from: David Pilling on February 05, 2023, 07:20:49 AMKeynes "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."

Is Keynes a good example of an hedonic calculator?

"A society made up of persons who are purely hedonic calculators is no society at all."

Quote from: Bern on February 09, 2023, 09:12:08 AMIs Keynes a good example of an hedonic calculator?

I am out of my depth. Google tells me Keynes "...recognized the limits to the rational use of the hedonic calculus in economic decisions." Wow there's a hedonic calculus, feed in a chocolate cup cake, get out a number.

Quote from: Bern on February 08, 2023, 05:23:41 PMthere's much to vex the mind these days. 

Problem is that the media are algorithmically driven to maximise "engagement". Write 10 stories, see which one gets the most view/comments/reaction etc. and then repeat that one only more so. It is not a new thing, newspapers have done it for years. Just that computers make it easier and more likely.

Perhaps I could save the PBS forum by starting a "round up" thread - since that subject causes the most upset on the list.