Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
Can you make the world a better place after the fact?
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
Zalo, is this a thought experiment or do you have an offer on the table?
I'm shocked given the state of the industry they'd want anyone in exploration and development right now. Right now you can probably hide out in production and sit tight at a major but geology is the first place they cut in a downturn. I.e. They aren't trying to find new oil.
I worked a stretch at Shell when I was your age. Good pay good benefits. The location was (always is) some armpit of the world that is usually cheap to live in. I recall millionaire next door said a lot of small millionaires are mining geologists because you get good pay and can live cheap in some backwater. The same is prolly true about petroleum geologists. I could have stuck around, got married and bought a home. But I went to grad school instead.
The best ERE job would probably not be working for a major but for a service company where you work in a low tax zone and get hostile territory pay adjustments. (Angola was top paying destination of my day). You work like hell, live in the company compound or your truck, etc.. A buddy of mine did this and saved about $500,000 back in 1985-91. So, yes, this is a great way to ERE fast if you can get the right position. He was a wireline engineer based in Dubai before it was cool to be there.
Ethics...like a few others here I'd say do it. But that is a personal decision. It really depends on who you are and where your boundaries are. I dealt pot to put myself through school. I finessed FDA, CE, UL to get my devices to profitability faster. I made my manufacturing waste go away. But I told a big potential client who made tanks to F off when he wanted to install my device to sniff out people who were trying to hide in bushes. Sorry, that hit the stop.
If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't have gone to grad school. I would have milked my job at Shell, lived frugally and invested so I could ER as quickly as possible. I would have married my oil town GF and had some kids
. I would have skipped the whole entrepreneur thing which undoubtedly messed up the world a whole lot more than some litte kid working on a rig.
I'm shocked given the state of the industry they'd want anyone in exploration and development right now. Right now you can probably hide out in production and sit tight at a major but geology is the first place they cut in a downturn. I.e. They aren't trying to find new oil.
I worked a stretch at Shell when I was your age. Good pay good benefits. The location was (always is) some armpit of the world that is usually cheap to live in. I recall millionaire next door said a lot of small millionaires are mining geologists because you get good pay and can live cheap in some backwater. The same is prolly true about petroleum geologists. I could have stuck around, got married and bought a home. But I went to grad school instead.
The best ERE job would probably not be working for a major but for a service company where you work in a low tax zone and get hostile territory pay adjustments. (Angola was top paying destination of my day). You work like hell, live in the company compound or your truck, etc.. A buddy of mine did this and saved about $500,000 back in 1985-91. So, yes, this is a great way to ERE fast if you can get the right position. He was a wireline engineer based in Dubai before it was cool to be there.
Ethics...like a few others here I'd say do it. But that is a personal decision. It really depends on who you are and where your boundaries are. I dealt pot to put myself through school. I finessed FDA, CE, UL to get my devices to profitability faster. I made my manufacturing waste go away. But I told a big potential client who made tanks to F off when he wanted to install my device to sniff out people who were trying to hide in bushes. Sorry, that hit the stop.
If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't have gone to grad school. I would have milked my job at Shell, lived frugally and invested so I could ER as quickly as possible. I would have married my oil town GF and had some kids
. I would have skipped the whole entrepreneur thing which undoubtedly messed up the world a whole lot more than some litte kid working on a rig.
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
Different profession (publisher) yet analogous/relevant:
Murdurous housewife with automobile owners and drivers
curiosity of the people who like to read about it with Oil Inc employees
people who pander to that curiosity with oil corporations
necklace with your financial freedom.
Replace:The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand wrote: She said:
"That life story of the Bronx housewife who murdered her husband’s young mistress is pretty sordid, Gail. But I think there’s something dirtier--the curiosity of the people who like to read about it. And then there’s something dirtier still--the people who pander to that curiosity. Actually, it was that housewife--she has piano legs and such a baggy neck in her pictures--who made this necklace possible. It’s a beautiful necklace. I shall be proud to wear it."
He smiled; the sudden brightness of his eyes had an odd quality of courage.
"That’s one way of looking at it," he said. "There’s another. I like to think that I took the worst refuse of the human spirit--the mind of that housewife and the minds of the people who like to read about her--and I made of it this necklace on your shoulders. I like to think that I was an alchemist capable of performing so great a purification."
Murdurous housewife with automobile owners and drivers
curiosity of the people who like to read about it with Oil Inc employees
people who pander to that curiosity with oil corporations
necklace with your financial freedom.
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NewReality
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Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
From reading this thread, it's clear that there is probably no end to the ways in which people can rationalize the means to whatever ends they desire.
Why not just be honest and admit that values are trumped by needs and desires, and ease of doing so is in proportion to the size and social acceptability of the system you employ to meet those desires? (working for the IRS vs. being a burglar)
Why not just be honest and admit that values are trumped by needs and desires, and ease of doing so is in proportion to the size and social acceptability of the system you employ to meet those desires? (working for the IRS vs. being a burglar)
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
I suppose what you write is the reason why climate change and global inequity exist. Some people have a need for extreme wealth and comfort, and are willing to sacrifice the wellness of others to attain it. Likewise, many have a need for perceived convenience, and therefore live inefficiently by ERE standards--to the detriment of future generations and likely themselves. And most probably don't really think about it, likely to meet their need of safety/comfort via ignorance.NewReality wrote:From reading this thread, it's clear that there is probably no end to the ways in which people can rationalize the means to whatever ends they desire.
Why not just be honest and admit that values are trumped by needs and desires, and ease of doing so is in proportion to the size and social acceptability of the system you employ to meet those desires? (working for the IRS vs. being a burglar)
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
I found myself in the black hole of Reddit the other day and ended up reading a comment by a man who was extremely wealthy. He was talking about why he pays for convenience, and (paraphrasing) he said, "Once you have a certain amount of money, how much things cost becomes irrelevant. You're focused 100% on time. You know that's the one thing you can't make more of, and you'd pay almost anything to get more. I don't own a private jet because I'm lazy and don't want to interact with the masses. I own a private jet because the hours I save by doing it are more precious to me than the money I spend. I have enough money. You can never have enough time."Zalo wrote:Likewise, many have a need for perceived convenience, and therefore live inefficiently by ERE standards--to the detriment of future generations and likely themselves. And most probably don't really think about it, likely to meet their need of safety/comfort via ignorance.
I thought that was an interesting comment/perspective.
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jacob
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Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
@Augustus - Somewhere above, disparatum talked about the idea of a moral discount rate. One might define this rate in terms of both time and space. If the moral discount rate in space is high, then one only cares about oneself; as it decreases, one will also care about one's family, friends, ... nation, ... and if the moral discount rate in space is very low, then one might care about people on the other side of the planet to the same degree as oneself.
Similarly, there's a moral discount rate in time. If it's very high, then one will only care about the present... then as the moral discount rate in time decreases, maybe the present generation (next few decades .. or as long as one is alive); as it keeps decreasing, one will start caring about the next generation (the present generation's children), then grand-children, ... and ultimately all future generations of humans.
Incidentally, I think it's quite possible to match people's moral discount rates to political parties.
Doing the math of global warming is illustrative because it affects people both in space (the entire planet) and time (many thousands of years into the future). In particular, it has some physics based constraints that don't care what humans believe about them. It's just a way to calculate consequences fairly accurately, so we can set our discount rates accordingly.
There is a concept called carbon budget. That is the amount of CO2 (in emission tonnes) that can be emitted before a global average minimum temperature increase is locked in with a given probability. Think of it as being similar to if the medical community could calculate how much sugar one could consume over a lifetime before developing diabetes with a 33% probability; a 50% probability; and a 66% probability. E.g. if you ate more than 2500 pounds, you'd get diabetic with a 33% chance; at 3100 pounds, the odds would be 50%; and at 3700 pounds it would be 66%. I'm just making the sugar numbers up. I'm not sure such a calculation can or has been done.
However, the following climate change numbers can and have been calculated. Here they are:
Currently (spring 2018), then insofar we keep emitting CO2 at the current rates, humanity has about 6 months left before we will have used up the remaining carbon budget to avoid a 1.5C rise with a 50% chance. The budget with the 66% chance (of avoiding it) has already been exceeded. (The 33% chance will be exceeded a few years from now.) This means that if we proceed as we currently do with our emission and then stop ALL emissions (driving, heating, cooling, electricity, plastic, fertilizer, ...) around/after September later this year, our chances of avoiding 1.5C are 50%. Of course, us doing that seems highly unlikely at this point---there's not enough time left anymore. If we keep emitting the chances of avoiding 1.5C will decrease and converge on 0% within some years. By 2025, 1.5C will practically be a done deal. To avoid 2C with a 50% chance, we have about 17 years left to implement a zero-emission solution. There's probably not enough time left for that either. I don't have the 3C numbers handy.
The consequences of not fixing 1.5C within the next 6 months or 2C before year 2035 is that people in the future and people further away than the here and now will lead suckier and deadlier lives. For example, 2C would make extreme heatwaves that kill thousands of humans over a few months a regular thing happening every few years ... instead of something that only happens once every few decades. 3C would not be fun at all...but such a point would not be reached before the end of this century anyway... so when/if current babies reach the old age of 82.
This is where the moral discount rates come in. And this is where I'll finally make my point
A carbon emission is a carbon emission regardless of whether I (living in the present US) use it fly around the world for fun or to make money or someone in a poor country (in the present) use it to make fertilizer to eat. Here we can use our moral discount rate in space to decide which of us should use that tonne of carbon. Clearly, being able to eat creates more happiness than being able to fly, but if my discount rate is high enough, I would not care about whether other people (further away from me) get to eat.
However, since the budget is finite, if either or both of us use our carbon in the present, it means that people (our children, their children, etc.) will not be able to use it in the future (for flying or eating) INSOFAR they want to avoid increasing death rates all around (the death rates for our generation is fairly safe, but that of those being born now is not).
Clearly, the human capacity to enjoy life is similar between humans living now and humans living in the future, but if my temporal discount rate is high enough, I would not care that future generations would have to suffer for my happiness. Then again, humans have a remarkable capacity for suffering, so .. there's that. Hedonic adaptation and all that.
So that's the moral mathematics of one example of a physically constrained situation.
One could have exactly the same discussion about others things: e.g. charity (to me $1000 makes no difference, but to many it would make a big difference in the life of a poor person, so should I give $1000 away depending on what my discount rate is here... should I similarly give my carbon away so that someone else will enjoy it more than I will or should I just use it myself?), taxes, vaccinations, saving the whales, ...
Similarly, there's a moral discount rate in time. If it's very high, then one will only care about the present... then as the moral discount rate in time decreases, maybe the present generation (next few decades .. or as long as one is alive); as it keeps decreasing, one will start caring about the next generation (the present generation's children), then grand-children, ... and ultimately all future generations of humans.
Incidentally, I think it's quite possible to match people's moral discount rates to political parties.
Doing the math of global warming is illustrative because it affects people both in space (the entire planet) and time (many thousands of years into the future). In particular, it has some physics based constraints that don't care what humans believe about them. It's just a way to calculate consequences fairly accurately, so we can set our discount rates accordingly.
There is a concept called carbon budget. That is the amount of CO2 (in emission tonnes) that can be emitted before a global average minimum temperature increase is locked in with a given probability. Think of it as being similar to if the medical community could calculate how much sugar one could consume over a lifetime before developing diabetes with a 33% probability; a 50% probability; and a 66% probability. E.g. if you ate more than 2500 pounds, you'd get diabetic with a 33% chance; at 3100 pounds, the odds would be 50%; and at 3700 pounds it would be 66%. I'm just making the sugar numbers up. I'm not sure such a calculation can or has been done.
However, the following climate change numbers can and have been calculated. Here they are:
Currently (spring 2018), then insofar we keep emitting CO2 at the current rates, humanity has about 6 months left before we will have used up the remaining carbon budget to avoid a 1.5C rise with a 50% chance. The budget with the 66% chance (of avoiding it) has already been exceeded. (The 33% chance will be exceeded a few years from now.) This means that if we proceed as we currently do with our emission and then stop ALL emissions (driving, heating, cooling, electricity, plastic, fertilizer, ...) around/after September later this year, our chances of avoiding 1.5C are 50%. Of course, us doing that seems highly unlikely at this point---there's not enough time left anymore. If we keep emitting the chances of avoiding 1.5C will decrease and converge on 0% within some years. By 2025, 1.5C will practically be a done deal. To avoid 2C with a 50% chance, we have about 17 years left to implement a zero-emission solution. There's probably not enough time left for that either. I don't have the 3C numbers handy.
The consequences of not fixing 1.5C within the next 6 months or 2C before year 2035 is that people in the future and people further away than the here and now will lead suckier and deadlier lives. For example, 2C would make extreme heatwaves that kill thousands of humans over a few months a regular thing happening every few years ... instead of something that only happens once every few decades. 3C would not be fun at all...but such a point would not be reached before the end of this century anyway... so when/if current babies reach the old age of 82.
This is where the moral discount rates come in. And this is where I'll finally make my point
A carbon emission is a carbon emission regardless of whether I (living in the present US) use it fly around the world for fun or to make money or someone in a poor country (in the present) use it to make fertilizer to eat. Here we can use our moral discount rate in space to decide which of us should use that tonne of carbon. Clearly, being able to eat creates more happiness than being able to fly, but if my discount rate is high enough, I would not care about whether other people (further away from me) get to eat.
However, since the budget is finite, if either or both of us use our carbon in the present, it means that people (our children, their children, etc.) will not be able to use it in the future (for flying or eating) INSOFAR they want to avoid increasing death rates all around (the death rates for our generation is fairly safe, but that of those being born now is not).
Clearly, the human capacity to enjoy life is similar between humans living now and humans living in the future, but if my temporal discount rate is high enough, I would not care that future generations would have to suffer for my happiness. Then again, humans have a remarkable capacity for suffering, so .. there's that. Hedonic adaptation and all that.
So that's the moral mathematics of one example of a physically constrained situation.
One could have exactly the same discussion about others things: e.g. charity (to me $1000 makes no difference, but to many it would make a big difference in the life of a poor person, so should I give $1000 away depending on what my discount rate is here... should I similarly give my carbon away so that someone else will enjoy it more than I will or should I just use it myself?), taxes, vaccinations, saving the whales, ...
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
@jacob:
Wouldn't it be more rational, or practical, at this juncture to simply assume that all easily accessible reserves of petroleum, natural gas, and coal will be used by some human some time in the near future, and then plan accordingly? I mean, otherwise it's kind of like there is a keg of beer at a graduation party in 1984, and Jason is making his 4th attempt at getting some girl drunk enough to go upstairs with him, and his friend Donald has just made the exciting new discovery that 4 mostly empty abandoned cups of beer can be poured together to make 1 full cup of beer, so it's like the GREAT keg will never, ever be empty now!!, and you are trying to talk to them about how the basement toilet is already overflowing with vomit.
Wouldn't it be more rational, or practical, at this juncture to simply assume that all easily accessible reserves of petroleum, natural gas, and coal will be used by some human some time in the near future, and then plan accordingly? I mean, otherwise it's kind of like there is a keg of beer at a graduation party in 1984, and Jason is making his 4th attempt at getting some girl drunk enough to go upstairs with him, and his friend Donald has just made the exciting new discovery that 4 mostly empty abandoned cups of beer can be poured together to make 1 full cup of beer, so it's like the GREAT keg will never, ever be empty now!!, and you are trying to talk to them about how the basement toilet is already overflowing with vomit.
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
I mean, let's assume my actual concern is that future me will feel like cr8p because my great-granddaughter will be looking up at me with sad eyes saying "Why Grandma? Why?" , and current me is willing to go to a great deal of trouble to avoid ending my life on such a down note. Is even being able to honestly convey that I did "my share" to help likely to be adequate, given that I don't believe that it will make a rat's turd of difference in the ultimate outcome? Wouldn't future me be better served by focusing my energies on doing my best to secure a relatively better outcome for myself and those people and the realms in which I do hold or feel specific responsibility for care? Wouldn't this still be true or in alignment with more efficient plan even if my realms of responsibility were randomly, yet SPECIFICALLY (inherent of greater amount of information) assigned? For instance, based on rank of my current personal Emergy rating, World Government Lottery assigns me responsibility for 2050 outcome for myself, a 2 year old poor Bengali state resident named Sadeya, 5 acres of Oak/Pine Climax in Northern Michigan, and all books on the topic of barbed wire design and maintenance copyrighted in the U.S. between 1937 and 1954.
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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
I just want to point out that Augustus was triggered by something Fox posted 3 years ago because of Stahlmann’s seeming non sequitar.
I love it.
I love it.
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
I would say that if you want to work for Exxon you should work for Exxon. They have divisions which are not involved in petroleum extraction. Some of those divisions are developing technologies that either reduce carbon emissions or alternative energy sources. The United States gets 65% of its power from fossil fuels (34% natural gas, 30% coal, 1% petroleum), 20% from nuclear, and 15% from renewable sources.
Renewable energy isn't "clean" either. The constituent items that make up a fuel cell, circuit board, and the renewable energy distribution grid isn't light on environmental impact. Humanity faces, at our current level of technology, hard choices in regards to which poison they feel comfortable releasing into the environment. Maybe your employment at Exxon will be one of many that helps it reduce its negative impact on the globe.
Personally I would like to see more next generation nuclear reactors replacing carbon based fuels as a temporary measure as we transition to and improve renewable energy.
Renewable energy isn't "clean" either. The constituent items that make up a fuel cell, circuit board, and the renewable energy distribution grid isn't light on environmental impact. Humanity faces, at our current level of technology, hard choices in regards to which poison they feel comfortable releasing into the environment. Maybe your employment at Exxon will be one of many that helps it reduce its negative impact on the globe.
Personally I would like to see more next generation nuclear reactors replacing carbon based fuels as a temporary measure as we transition to and improve renewable energy.
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
@THF
How to calculate the amount of CO2 sequestered in a tree per year
"The average carbon content is generally 50% of the tree’s total volume.Therefore, to determine the weight of carbon in the tree, multiply the dry weight of the tree by 50%."
Perhaps you can plant trees in your spare time to help offset the carbon footprint you feel guilty about.
How to calculate the amount of CO2 sequestered in a tree per year
"The average carbon content is generally 50% of the tree’s total volume.Therefore, to determine the weight of carbon in the tree, multiply the dry weight of the tree by 50%."
Perhaps you can plant trees in your spare time to help offset the carbon footprint you feel guilty about.
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Jason
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
His name was Ronald.7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:35 am@jacob:
I mean, otherwise it's kind of like there is a keg of beer at a graduation party in 1984, and Jason is making his 4th attempt at getting some girl drunk enough to go upstairs with him, and his friend Donald has just made the exciting new discovery that 4 mostly empty abandoned cups of beer can be poured together to make 1 full cup of beer, so it's like the GREAT keg will never, ever be empty now!!, and you are trying to talk to them about how the basement toilet is already overflowing with vomit.
Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
Yeah, I don't really care about all this these daysMister Imperceptible wrote: ↑Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:46 pmI just want to point out that Augustus was triggered by something Fox posted 3 years ago because of Stahlmann’s seeming non sequitar.
I love it.
I just want a job I can ride my bike to in a sunny place. Maybe throw in some adventure every now and again (y)
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Kriegsspiel
- Posts: 952
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Re: Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?
A multimillionnaire profiled in Stop Acting Rich planted 10,000 trees a year on his Texas tree farm to get some fresh air and exercise (employees planted the other 3.5 million. Web of goals, brah.Campitor wrote: ↑Sat Mar 17, 2018 12:24 pm@THF
How to calculate the amount of CO2 sequestered in a tree per year
"The average carbon content is generally 50% of the tree’s total volume.Therefore, to determine the weight of carbon in the tree, multiply the dry weight of the tree by 50%."
Perhaps you can plant trees in your spare time to help offset the carbon footprint you feel guilty about.