Charlie Rose

Textgenie  08/25/2011 01:07 AM Report

Sorry not to join the cheering squad, but Sir Paul strikes me as a silly man whose opinions are trite, uninformed and unoriginal for the most part. He doesn't seem to have a clue as to when scientific ideas might just be fashionable and lack real evidence or content. So he rises to the top of the administrative bureaucracy but makes one wonder what on earth he achieved scientifically, but somehow one feels too lazy to try and find out what it was. One cliche after another. Have to force myself to listen to this all over again to see if I am wrong. Maybe it is just his silly cheery British manner shortchanging his real depth, but I doubt it.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  08/01/2011 12:16 PM Report

Great encore performance. The second time was even better because I could refresh and get deeper.

Check out the comments from the first time:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11521

JohnGelles  08/01/2011 01:47 AM Report

"producing for the sake of production alone" ?

1. Production of necessities will allow those in need to have have the necessities of life. If we produce them, we can achieve freedom from want and full employment. Employment requires money for wages. Production of what the needy will buy will allow a nation to endow everyone with money enough to end poverty.

2. One of socialism's aims is to achieve freedom from want. The two words are not synonymous.

3. Capitalism in the form of laissez faire dogma also aims to achieve freedom from want. But capitalism is not socialism -- except in China.

robdverity  07/31/2011 09:12 PM Report

Gelles - producing for the sake of production alone evades me, as in your WWII example. Bombers and tanks wars are gone. Drones and remotes now and not as mass produced. Technology is already stepping on your idea. Some form of socialism is inherent in your ideas it seems to me. And it may evolve to that end.

JohnGelles  07/31/2011 07:53 PM Report

Thanks to both Doodah and Rob D.,

I believe we are all looking at the same evidence of where civilization and commerce are this August 2011.

The billions of desperately poor people in Africa and other places not yet developed with a minimum clean water supply, food supply, roads, housing supply, clinic supply, first responders (fire and police etc.) supply, etc., are the challenge Doodah demands we see.

My answer is China, Brazil, India. The engineers in these new giant nations have noticed the problem -- and are solving it faster than ever before in history.

Middle class anxiety in all the more advanced nations (outside a very few in Europe and, perhaps, Australasia,) must also be recognized. This is the anxiety Keynes challenged as unreal and unnecessary -- if politics can be prevented from pushing people into the wrong war.

However, there are right wars to prevent the spread of absolute evil that must be fought.

Ignoring war, for the moment, Keynes' answer to modernity and hyper-mass production is money reform on purpose to guarantee full employment all the time. Nothing could be easier -- we did it in WW II and we can do it again. It was not the killing that gave us full employment --it was the fear of the consequence of defeat. Today, the consequence of less than full employment is what we fear or should want to avoid if at all possible.

Rather than argue endlessly if full employment is possible for every willing worker, we should try it out on categories of people based on geography or some other simple classifier.

SirD  07/31/2011 07:10 PM Report

One of the better Charlie interviews. A real winner. Charlie closed it out with aplomb.

robdverity  07/31/2011 04:28 PM Report

From G. below: "Money is the price of all we work for. When we want MORE MONEY it means we must do MORE WORK.

The fact than currently full employment cannot be afforded is the CONTRADICTION in the system that Keynes and many others have discovered. It is easily remedied: Base our money on our product output not on our debt as input.

If such new money tends to need re-balancing under the law of supply and demand, do it with computers, information theory, simulations, intelligence, etc., . . . ."

But what happens if/when our technology advances to be out of sync with our ec. system? If technology (robotics etc) continues to replace workers, retraining can only solve a fraction displaced. Ultimately a different system of distribution of assets (wealth?) will be needed. The masses can't buy what the robots make without it.

It seems that ultimately a form of (gasp, choke) socialism will have to be initiated proportionately with technology. Probably with a lag that causes social disruptions caused by the unemployment. Making people feel useful may develop into a national dilemma.

So, "basing our money on product output" would become ipso facto inflationary, as product/capita exceeded individual input (production). Do we continue to load the top one per cent with 99% of the wealth?

If so, the world will become even uglier than a pessimist such as I foresees.

robdverity  07/31/2011 03:47 PM Report

Well said dood, one of your more cogent posts - and sans swearing. Maturity becomes you.

doodah  07/31/2011 08:20 AM Report

To JohnGelles 07/31/2011 12:52 AM

There will ALWAYS be Poor people, no matter what. It is the Most Natural human condition; And What Offers a currency it's Value. To have rich people within, amongst a majority of poor is Truly an advancement of a society, and is the seed core to an advanced form of medium of exchange (currency), over swapping and bartering. And then to generate a middle-class, that's where it gets tricky, and you Need those Polar Opposites . No getting around it. Try to eliminate the Rich and Poor?.(Democrats?) Doesn't work! And offers the opportunity to Republicans (WHO WANT TO ELIMINATE THE MIDDLE-CLASS) and get back to a simpler place in time when it was just rich and poor. That's what they're shooting for.

JohnGelles  07/31/2011 12:52 AM Report

This hour of great talk on science and our hoped for future was another magical accomplishment of Charlie Rose. Toward the end he and Sir Paul Nurse got into WHAT IS THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS that has succeeded where so many less self-critical processes have failed.

Here is MY answer:

..... ..... THE DUE PROCESS OF DISCOVERY

. An Eight Step Process that May Succeed when Tried

Within the Discipline

1. Observation

2. Imagination

3. Organization

4. Generalization

5. Verification

Outside the Discipline into Civilized Society

6. Communication

7. Valuation

Return to the Discipline to repeat all steps

8. Iteration

==========================

This was off the top of the head immediate thought on putting a three legged stool together:

Leg 1 Science - Leg 2 Art - Leg 3 Moral valuation

I am sure we all have many good ideas on this general problem of defining what we want.

The biggest fault I have to find with Nurse and Rose is that they tend to buy MONEY as we know it -- when MONEY as it must be CHANGED to promote a MORAL PURPOSE is more in line with where we are and have to be.

Austerity in England, if it favors science BUT not civilization is no damn good.

Wake up Charlie Rose. MONEY is where we are and MONEY must become YOUR expertise or YOU will remain part of the problem AS YOU ARE AT THE MOMENT.

Money is the price of all we work for. When we want MORE MONEY it means we must do MORE WORK.

The fact than currently full employment cannot be afforded is the CONTRADICTION in the system that Keynes and many others have discovered. It is easily remedied: Base our money on our product output not on our debt as input.

If such new money tends to need re-balancing under the law of supply and demand, do it with computers, information theory, simulations, intelligence, etc., more or less as Sir Paul Nurse suggested he would use Information Technology to discover more about biology.

normanm  07/30/2011 03:55 PM Report

Wonderful! The Gnome project discribed and the molecular biology upon which it is being built seems truly marvelous. I suffer from epilepsy among other neurological

problems and these new innovations offer real hope in the area of brain plasticity. Thank you Charlie Rose and Paul Nurse it was 60 minutes well spent!