Yet more zombies

Stewart Brand has certainly done some interesting and original work in his time, and _How Buildings Learn_ had a major influence on me. So I’m sorry to hear that he’s on the wrong side of this and I hope that he’ll quickly accept that he’s got this one wrong.

The DDT zombie is getting a whole new lease on (un-)life here in NYC, where the bedbug epidemic has given Glenn Reynolds yet another opportunity to expose his ignorance. Extra points for “this must Obama’s fault somehow.”

I was a longtime fan of the Whole Earths, CoEvolution Quarterly, and the Whole Earth Review in my long-ago youth. There came a time when I felt that Stewart Brand had started believing in his own myth and was issuing oracular pronouncements for the sake of it, with little or no careful thought behind them. Kevin Kelly was even worse, right from the (his) beginning with Whole Earth.

Or maybe by that time I had just grown up enough to see behind the curtain.

Either way, I suspect that if you stake your reputation and construct your self-image around bravely and creatively challenging received wisdom, at some point you’ll challenge the wrong thing.

“Right wing shill” suggests that Brand is taking corporate money. Is there evidence of this?

Merriam-Webster defines shill as follows: “to act as a spokesperson or promoter”. No mention of pay. Likewise American Heritage: “One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.” Wiktionary includes pay: “A person paid to endorse a product favourably, while pretending to be impartial.” It doesn’t look like pay is an essential part of the definition, however.

Snuh, no. A shill is by definition someone who is paid to pretend to a be enthusiast third party, not a genuinely enthusiast third party.

I think the word originally referred to people who played rigged games of chance and won a lot, to convince others in the public that winning was likely.

Apropos of nothing [a bit of a threadjack], a conjecture: John Quiggin could write the definitive book on the tobacco industry’s pernicious influence on the global economy & its constituent parts.

Fact: That book would be an incredible social good to bring into being.

…of course, maybe such a book already exists, in which case nevermind. But if there’s ever an industry that deserves to become intimately associated with the darkest sides of zombie mythos, it’s the tobacco industry

For the ties between tobacco lobbying, global warming denialism, and DDT mythmaking, see Oreskes and Conway,
Merchants of Doubt: the same people, institutions, and tactics all show up repeatedly.

I am especially surprised to hear of Brand hawking this, since as a Californian he very likely knows about what DDT did (for a while) to the fish and seabirds in southern California–though that was the effect of dumping, not use.

Merriam-Webster defines shill as follows: “to act as a spokesperson or promoter”. No mention of pay.

Sbh, if that were all it meant, it wouldn’t have any m0re of a negative connotation than those words. I wouldn’t mind being called a spokesperson, or even a promoter, but I wouldn’t call myself a shill. Indeed, the essence of shilling is that one never does call oneself a shill.

That said, “paid shill” is a common term; some shills may reap other rewards.

‘For the ties between tobacco lobbying, global warming denialism, and DDT mythmaking, see Oreskes and Conway,
Merchants of Doubt: the same people, institutions, and tactics all show up repeatedly.’

Is it not also the case that Intelligent Design proponents are also members (sic) of this propaganda circle jerk?

Well–one important difference between alcohol and tobacco is while the average drink is more harmful than the average cigarette, the average drinker is unharmed by drinking while the average smoker is harmed by smoking. (Alcohol use is much more concentrated, and the harms much more dose-dependent.)

“That statement alone ought to be enough to settle the issue”
It is both theoretically, and observationally true that a good propagandist never lets the truth get in the way of a good talking point. The Carson-Hiltler story is extremely effective at generating anti-environmental hatred among those who are naive to the facts (which covers most who are exposed to it).

Actually, sg, that is at very least contestable. Heroin is a very clean drug; so long as the quality is assured the health effects are quite minimal.

I can’t tell if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me, Red.

Sg, hepatitis C is not caused by heroin, it is caused by needle sharing which in turn is caused by the illegality of heroin.

that report is ridiculous. The only reason that heroin is less dangerous than aclohol or tobacco is that it is prohibited and most people don’t use it.

No, it’s not, since it’s assessing the status quo and in doing that it is correct. Heroin will never be legalized anyway, so it’s a waste of time talking about its potential harm and we should instead focus on the real harm inflicted on society by alcohol today, which is currently belittled and ignored, especially when compared to the energy and resources devoted to pointing out the harm of tobacco consumption.

Addicts do not have reliable access to clean needles at the moment of consumption. They could if we so desired. Heroin could be supplied with needles. More generally, the assumption that legalization would lead to an increase in consumption is contestable. It would probably lead to an increase in the number of people trying heroin, but since the factors which lead to addiction are complex, that fact does not entail that the number of doses would rise. Heroin usage competes with other activities (much more so than is true for tobacco), and illegality makes access to competing goods harder for the user.

we should instead focus on the real harm inflicted on society by alcohol today

Only if that’s what we’re setting out to do, and if so we should be honest about it. Nutt’s writing advocacy in the guise of science.

The point about the relative prevalence of alcohol use vs. that of the substances it’s compared with is a perfect example. When you’re discussing statistical evidence on drug harm, there are two routine moves which (to my mind) have to be made if you’re to be taken seriously. One is to acknowledge that some harms are associated with attempts to control drugs as well as – or rather than – the drug itself; the other is to acknowledge the huge variation in prevalence and control for it. Otherwise you could end up with a drug that reliably kills 50% of all users, but is only taken by a handful of terminally jaded ultra-Goths, being rated less harmful than chocolate.

Nutt quite openly states that he’s not controlling for prevalence, which makes any judgment about the drugs alcohol is supposedly less dangerous *than* moot (or, at best, makes them extremely historically local). He also fails to acknowledge that tighter controls on alcohol might have adverse effects, making alcohol more harmful. And, as far as I can tell, there’s no acknowledgment that economic harms need to be weighed against economic benefits and health harms against health benefits (male abstainers have worse health outcomes than moderate drinkers).

In short, he focuses on the real harm inflicted on society by alcohol today to the exclusion of all the factors which might qualify his denunciation. It’s a very disappointing piece – advocacy, not science.

when compared to the energy and resources devoted to pointing out the harm of tobacco consumption

I strongly suspect – and Nutt’s own writings support me in this – that a lot of the energy and resources, not to mention some of the specific tactics, currently being deployed against tobacco will be turned against alcohol before too long.

“Alcohol ‘More Harmful Than Domestos'” – Professor’s Shock Claim

Something wrong there, I think.

David@39: I admit that I’ve gotten a lot harsher about a lot of contrarianism in the past decade. Skepticism is necessary. Starting off with a stance that a bunch of meanies are harshing poor corporations’ mellow – or harshing the mellow of others who are being accused of systematically doing bad things – and must be called out isn’t. I think that people have a certain responsibility not to repeat such readily disprovable crap in public, not when they have a research budget and time to do homework and all like that, even though the claim will get a rise out of people they want to get a rise out of.

It’s awfully interesting that the people who wring their hands over the perfidy of environmentalists with regard to malaria eradication have so little concern for the tens of millions of people in poor countries who die each year from unsafe drinking water, malnutrition, war and non-mosquito borne tropical diseases. I guess if there’s no market-based solution, the problem must be intractable.

If you click through to the dissertation, you will find medical pictures of the damage.

“Stewart Brand has certainly done some interesting and original work in his time, and How Buildings Learn had a major influence on me.”

Brand’s Long Now Foundation has hosted many great lectures and great thinking.

I’m sorry to hear that he repeated anti-environmentalist BS about Carson. Now I’m going to have to turn a more jaded ear to his ideas.

“There was a German study about the significant number of men who stick their penis in Kobold vaccum cleaners”

1d4 hit points damage, I suspect.

Monbiot in his very relevant article here http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/11/10/a-charming-falsehood/ has something to say pertaining to the question of shill or not shill:

Like Patrick Moore, you trade on your credentials as a founder of the early environment movement. Like Patrick Moore, you now work as a corporate consultant. By the way, who does your company now represent? The list of corporations Sourcewatch gives as its clients – including ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Cargill, Dow Chemical, Shell and BP – makes my hair stand on end. But is it correct? And why have you ceased to carry this list on your website? Like Patrick Moore, you attack the environment movement in ways that suit corporate interests: calling us, in effect, to drop our campaigns for regulation and democratic control in favour of technofixes. ….

As I read more, I began to wonder if you are not, as you claim, pioneering a new form of environmentalism, but a new form of corporate consultancy. You seem to be seeking to shape the environmental debate to suit the businesses you work for. Our correspondence does nothing to dispel this impression. Can you disabuse me of my suspicions?

You are more dangerous than the other corporate-sponsored adversaries of the green movement. You don’t deny that climate change is happening. You don’t get abusive, you remain polite and charming, you sound reasonable at all times. You are, as a result, a more effective operator than them: you have persuaded a lot of influential people that you are working for the good of the planet. I fear that the campaign you are running is the most insidious and subtle exercise in corporate propaganda I have yet encountered. As a result, no one, until now, has called you out on it. With this response, that changes.