Comments (10)

• Juan Garofalo

  
  "I am not a scientist and have no authority to make judgments on disputed scientific questions." But on he goes.

  This is exceedingly funny. Posner admits he's talking nonsense. But do so called 'scientists' really know what they are talking about ?

  some scientists even believe particle accelerators could precipitate a "phase transition" that could destroy "all the atoms in the entire universe."

  Isn't that outrageously funny ? It seems to me that the word 'scientist' has acquired a new meaning in the 20th century.

  It means : charlatan on the payroll of the state.

  No government money, no risk that the Earth suddenly turns into a tiny ball - it's that simple.

  I can't believe Mr. Huebert believes this is a real 'threat' ??

  And surely RHIC's abolition would become more realistic

  The accelerator must be 'abolished' simply because it was built using stolen money. The rest is very cheap sci-fi. The kind of space-soap-opera people brainwashed in public schools can pay attention to.

  Mr. Posner is a supposedly serious judge in the American legal system ? Oh my.

  Published: February 5, 2007 12:11 PM

• Peter

  Isn't that outrageously funny ?

  It's not completely ridiculous, but no legitimate scientist believes that (i.e., physicists who actually understand what they're talking about; maybe some geologist or biologist or something believes it). I assume he's talking about the possibility of us being in a false vacuum; but particle accelerators are nowhere near powerful enough to trigger a collapse.

  Published: February 5, 2007 5:15 PM

• averros

  The reference should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum

  Anyway, the whole concept of false vacuum is highly speculative - this is nothing more than a hypothesis based on assumptions which cannot be tested with the current technology. It includes such assumptions as the existence of some scalar field of an unknown nature, and, basically, amounts to an attempt to make the fundamental drawback of the string theory (the fact that it yields way too many possible physical laws, instead of predicting one or few testable alternatives) to sound cool - by pretending that this landscape of theories somehow has physical reality, rather than being a mere artifact of a poor theory.

  Published: February 5, 2007 11:19 PM

• Peter

  Thanks for the link correction, averros...I don't know how that happened (I pulled up the page in another window and dragged the URL into the comment box, to avoid mistyping it, as I did with the global warming thing the other day!)

  Published: February 6, 2007 1:04 AM

• Juan Garofalo

  People seem to be confused about what so called 'science' is.

  'Science' must conform to a-priori logic. A fact I suppose is well known at Mises.org ? Physics must conform to a first and fundamental principle - mass-energy conservation.

  All this talk about the origin and ultimate nature of the universe is utter nonsense.

  It literally makes no sense because the human mind can not explain how something can be created out of nothing.

  There's a fundamental difference between an improbable event and an imposible one.

  The so called 'probability' of a flying pig being real is not a very small number - it is ZERO - if we bother to use the lame framework/jargon of statistical 'reasoning'.

  Since all this humbug can not 'empirically proved' (regardless of 'technology'), it's the perfect thing for the state to subsidize. If pigs don't fly it's because stingy taxpayers grudge us the money to develop the propper technology...

  I think the emperor has no clothes ?

  Published: February 6, 2007 11:05 AM

• quasibill

  Posner, with this book, makes the perfect example of where you end up when you try to create an objective morality based on dollars and cents.

  In fact, the whole Chicago school is the perfect example of this, and is why they do so much damage to the term "libertarian".

  Published: February 6, 2007 12:25 PM

• RogerM

  According to Wikipedia, Posner "is a major voice in the law and economics movement." But his economics is just plain silly. Has he completely forgotten about the scarcity of resources? Leaving aside the question of whether or not the state should do anything to respond to these potential disasters, Posner should be capable of understanding that we don't have the resources to address them all. We should rank threats based on the likelihood of their happening, the costs of addressing them, and the impact if we fail.

  The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg, has done such an analyis, (check out the Copenhagen Consensus article in Wikipedia), though not on all of the the issues Posner mentions. For example, he addresses global warming and assigns it a very low priority. A true cost-benefit analysis would put most of Posner's fears very far down on a long list of priorities.

  Published: February 6, 2007 3:04 PM

• M-la-maudite

  Is Posner, among all, calling himself a libertarian? You must be kidding; that would be the joke of the century!
  
  This being said, great review; i enjoyed it immensely -:)
  
  Now, Quasibill, do you sincerely believe that the whole Chicago crowd is causing damage to the term libertarian? Like Milton and David Friedman, a shame to the movement? Really? Because in my personal, and rather limited experience, discussing libertarianism with tenants of the omnipotent state, the law & eco arguments have marked quite a few points... Sadly, much more so than the basic rights approach, which is my own favourite line of argumentation.
  
  M-

  Published: February 9, 2007 11:52 AM

• TokyoTom

  More discussion on climate change is on the front of the Posner-Becker blog, for those interwested or wish to express their views:

  http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/.

  Mr. Huebert, your assertion - that "much of the pollution blamed for [global warming] is the state's fault. Government, after all, stands in the way of clean nuclear power" - is more than a bit weak. Yes, "superstitious ignorance makes nuclear power politically problematic", but the principal reason why fossil fuel use is so predominant is that fossil fuels are cheap, convenient and much more versatile than nuclear power plants, which we can hardly put in our cars. Even if we were steadily converting to nuclear power, we would still have significant CO2 emissions, both domestically and globally.

  It's hard to blame the problem of climate change (assuming arguendo that there is one) on the state. The real question is whether the state should play any role in its solution.

  "[A]re voters — and politically powerful automobile, energy, and oil producers — likely to respond any more favorably to Posner's recommended taxes?" Voters don't like taxes, but wouldn't carbon taxes that replace income taxes be revenue neutral and reduce the investment distortions from incomes taxes? I would prefer to see government hacked back and taxes reduced, but wouldn't that be a step neutral to libertarians?
  

  Published: February 16, 2007 4:44 AM

• Anonymous Coward

  Yeah! Posner sometimes comes out like a cropper, after all he has no professional economics qualification, that can draw you back sometimes.

  Published: February 18, 2007 11:52 AM