Generative Energy #33: Optimizing The Environment With Ray Peat

[Ras]

This is the typical argument for privatized healthcare. If government runs healthcare, then innovation diminishes. But we have seen with privatize healthcare not only a zero gain in innovation within the healthcare industry. But a decrease in health of the American population. This is a straight fact. Innovation is not done in the for-profit firms or corporations.

Unless I've misunderstood you, I disagree that we've seen "a zero gain in innovation within the healthcare industry." I work in healthcare, and I've seen a great deal of innovation in materials, procedures, and machinery. We alter our MRI protocols frequently as our radiologists attend conferences and read studies; we upgrade coils and software as our budget allows. Our 640 slice Toshiba (Canon) CT has some of the best metal artifact reduction algorithms I've ever seen. Tuesday of this week I did a cystogram on a patient with bilateral, complete hip replacements; the metal artifact absolutely obliterated bladder detail, so a leak was invisible. But after employing SEMAR, the artifacts were almost entirely eliminated.

 

[johnwester130]

Ray peat said his next newsletter is about autism at the end of the podcast.

Is autism just a natural bodily response to a stressful unstimulating environment, bad food, nutritional deficiencies, bad light, and unbalanced hormones ?

Or will peat tackle it from a philosophical point of view ?

 

[2thecloudsabove]

Someone should point Dr. Peat out to García-Trevijano's work and knowledge on politic science and philosophy before debating marxism or praising Ortega y Gasset. He'd be much more enlightened in the subject learning from a true master in the field.

 

[Atman]

Ray has written about stalin in a positive light? Interesting, I think Dr. Peat is too nice and gentle for political philosophy. Most of his ideas seem to be bridging on a libertarian, conservative stance, but then he likes to outwards embrace socialists and Marxists. I don't think he has enough real-world experience to see why Marxism is so deeply flawed, or perhaps he is unwilling to accept the right wing assertation that food stamps make people lazy (this is true according to studies)

Similar is this notion that societies in the temperate climates had competition and so were able to defeat societies from warm climates which had people with high metabolic rates. He claims societies in the equatorial regions had better nutrition and metabolisms and were thus peaceful and communal. This is simply false, you can actually draw a very substantial correlation between societies near the equator and tribal war. These regions like Africa and central america never advanced as far because they were preoccupied so heavily with warfare. Societies in the temperate zones developed organization structures and hierarchies of power (which Peat claims are authoritarian and violent) in order to survive harsh winters and bad harvests. This shaped their nations and strengthened their people, creating cultures more based on self reliance and rugged individualism. European and east Asian societies developed faster because of the seasonal shifts which brought competition which made them strong (Peat cannot accept this because he is too gentle and kind). Yes Darwin did believe that everything british was superior, but this was simply an observation that he himself was somewhat hesitate to assert. He did not finally admit this until his final book, after studying biology for decades. Pear is hypocritical to call this "psychotic" because Darwin was, ultimately, using empirical evidence to reach his conclusion that everything from Britain was best. It is what he had observed and made conclusions based on those observations, not on rationalistic thought, which Peat is supposedly against but actually using here to defeat Darwin's arguments.

Also when speaking of politics it is clear that Peat does not like to delve into details and numbers. He prefers broad ideas and conceptualizing, which is a habit of leftist academics. Talk about why socialism is so great in theory, but never give precise examples because the data typically denounces the merits of the welfare state...

This 100%.
Peat is a pacifist and egalitarian.

I think he is still stuck in cold war USA. He experienced the coercive nature of government and during that time being communist was taboo. That imprinted him.
The irony is, that you can be open communist today in Europe without a problem, yet you get put in jail for advocating for fascism or national socialism.

 

[cyclops]

Love the music at the beginning of these things.

 

[Waynish]

I couldn't make out why it wasn't important to Peat to provide evidence that corporate growth basically must increase poverty. Why must capitalism always be zero-sum? Anyone know what his favorite evidence is?

 

[Herbie]

I don't think we should debate about right and left or about history but about understanding Rays view about the subject, to see how he envisions that kind of society and no opinions on his personal life.

 

[cyclops]

I couldn't make out why it wasn't important to Peat to provide evidence that corporate growth basically must increase poverty.

Knocks out many people's abilities to start common small business's?

 

[jaguar43]

Unless I've misunderstood you, I disagree that we've seen "a zero gain in innovation within the healthcare industry." I work in healthcare, and I've seen a great deal of innovation in materials, procedures, and machinery. We alter our MRI protocols frequently as our radiologists attend conferences and read studies; we upgrade coils and software as our budget allows. Our 640 slice Toshiba (Canon) CT has some of the best metal artifact reduction algorithms I've ever seen. Tuesday of this week I did a cystogram on a patient with bilateral, complete hip replacements; the metal artifact absolutely obliterated bladder detail, so a leak was invisible. But after employing SEMAR, the artifacts were almost entirely eliminated.

Why would the healthcare industry update a CT to see if the metal plates from the hip replacement surgery is blinding the technician from seeing if the bladder is leaking due to the metal plate in the first place ? Because the healthcare industry is more interested (financially) to continue a harmful practice then to change its method, or to just stop the practice in general. If this is your definition of innovation then I am afraid that it is a very crude definition of innovation. And i would advise you take a history lesson from this video.



Isn't the main purpose of the healthcare industry to create health and cure diseases, Not to create artifact reduction algorithms for CT in order to continue harmful practices to patients.

 

[Sobieski]

Personally to me, Peat sounds like an anarchist of sorts. I wonder where he would situate himself on the right-left spectrum.

 

[Amazoniac]

Dan, have you ever imagined yourself of the size of a peanut? I wonder what went right that prevented you from going astray. For some reason Wagner had to become a vinyl disc.

 

[Waynish]

Knocks out many people's abilities to start common small business's?

We wouldn't want everyone starting so many identical businesses though... It isn't very antifragile. Today so many businesses are interdependent. While Amazon is an example of a monolith, doesn't it enable more businesses than it has destroyed? What about this zero sum mentality - how should we keep people down so their human nature to expand does not unfairly take from others? What about Price's law and similar natural distributions... Instead of being vague about the positive and negative potentials of society, why not be more specific? Higher metabolism is better when the fuel is there - and when it is not, then it isn't better and has problems occuring... Ditto: inequality is problematic, but trying to flatten inequality hasn't been shown to work - and growth in inequality hasn't been shown to always hurt the poor. Quality of life and inequality are still separate enough not to artificially squash inequality for the mere psychological benefit that you aren't so far from the top - wherein we know status games still exist, and may be even worse when so equally sparsed!

 

[cyclops]

We wouldn't want everyone starting so many identical businesses though... It isn't very antifragile. Today so many businesses are interdependent. While Amazon is an example of a monolith, doesn't it enable more businesses than it has destroyed? What about this zero sum mentality - how should we keep people down so their human nature to expand does not unfairly take from others? What about Price's law and similar natural distributions... Instead of being vague about the positive and negative potentials of society, why not be more specific? Higher metabolism is better when the fuel is there - and when it is not, then it isn't better and has problems occuring... Ditto: inequality is problematic, but trying to flatten inequality hasn't been shown to work - and growth in inequality hasn't been shown to always hurt the poor. Quality of life and inequality are still separate enough not to artificially squash inequality for the mere psychological benefit that you aren't so far from the top - wherein we know status games still exist, and may be even worse when so equally sparsed!

Maybe we would want some businesses to be identical and some to not be. Like more independent sandwich or coffee shops instead of subway and Starbucks etc. A person could open one up without having to worry about the big guys. Maybe food would be better, it usually is at independently owned places. I think corporations is probably why so much bad poisonous food was invented in the first place.

Amazon could still exist. It seems to provide a good service.

I think often times allot of money gets behind supporting crappy corporations though and some lucky individuals get richer and richer for their corrupt actions and bad services while more and more people have less opportunities and are poor. And then sometimes people feel forced to work for crappy companies.

 

[Waynish]

Maybe we would want some businesses to be identical and some to not be. Like more independent sandwich or coffee shops instead of subway and Starbucks etc. A person could open one up without having to worry about the big guys. Maybe food would be better, it usually is at independently owned places. I think corporations is probably why so much bad poisonous food was invented in the first place.

Amazon could still exist. It provides a good service.

I think often times allot of money gets behind supporting crappy corporations though and some lucky individuals get richer and richer for their corrupt actions and bad services while more and more people have less opportunities and are poor. And then sometimes people feel forced to work for crappy companies.

Pretty vague... That last sentence reads like "not everything in this world is perfect - why ((((." Sounds like a free market with some laws about lying, ripping off, and poisoning customers. Nice :)

 

[DaveFoster]

food stamps make people lazy (this is true according to studies)

Correlation does not imply causation. "Lazy people demand food stamps."

Dr. Peat has talked about how hypothyroidism causes laziness.

If only motivated by food, we'd work 10-hour weeks, particularly professionals who make high wages. Status, meaning and social purpose all direct our function.

If price trends continue, groceries will be around 3% of our income within 100 years.

 

[Waynish]

Correlation does not imply causation. "Lazy people demand food stamps."

Dr. Peat has talked about how hypothyroidism causes laziness.

If only motivated by food, we'd work 10-hour weeks, particularly professionals who make high wages. Status, meaning and social purpose all direct our function.

If price trends continue, groceries will be around 3% of our income within 100 years.

Again, what is this even an argument for? That bad things shouldn't happen and poor people would have better and more productive lives if they weren't poor (which is basically a tautology)? That you think the US is in a deficiency of handouts? It's such a common pattern to explain away the current system in a sentence or two implying that if the world were in your hands, then the solution could finally be implemented.

 

[cyclops]

That you think the US is in a deficiency of handouts?

Yes. Too many very poor people.

 

[Waynish]

Yes. Too many very poor people.

And the cause of them being poor is entirely the lack of handouts? What's a good limit for the amount that should be taken by force to supply the - often not even citizens - with enough resources?

 

[cyclops]

And the cause of them being poor is entirely the lack of handouts? What's a good limit for the amount that should be taken by force to supply the - often not even citizens - with enough resources?

There are probably a ton of different causes. Many are their responsibility and choice. Many things are unfair - people are born into harsh environments, terrible upbringings, abuse, illness, etc and it is difficult to escape poverty. Ray said here if we stayed in a nicer environment things would be better and we'd be less competitive and more helpful.

I don't have specific answers and I know the current welfare system is detrimental and wasteful at times. But lots of rich people are full of sh*t. Either born rich or making tons of money from creating chaos, harmful and unnecessary products/services or not doing much. There is lack of truly good, useful, and meaningful jobs for all the people. The system has always been largely corrupt and some people really got the short end of the stick. I think we should help each other. Nobody needs a billion dollars and that money could help allot of people.

 

[DaveFoster]

Again, what is this even an argument for? That bad things shouldn't happen and poor people would have better and more productive lives if they weren't poor (which is basically a tautology)? That you think the US is in a deficiency of handouts? It's such a common pattern to explain away the current system in a sentence or two implying that if the world were in your hands, then the solution could finally be implemented.

These problems have too many complexities for a blanket solution.

Humans function best interpersonally, and prescriptive ideologies lead to gross inefficiency, error and suffering, and worst of all, they perpetuate the same zeitgeist.

Propaganda has molded the parameters of discourse to endeavor agendas, rather than truth: generations of soothsayers, sycophants, cowards, nihilists and the worst psychopaths, narcissists, all playing the Pied Piper to the same broken tune, nihilists withstanding.