Nate Billings

Well, it's a strange place in the land of Thegreatnerd.

Monday, April 03, 2006

crazy man

Okay, I don't usually post things that I find absurd, but this deserves some thought.
The Citizen Scientist
This is a story about a guy who wants to eliminate 90% of the world's population. That's just shy of 5.4 or so billion people. I think the reporter is right; there's something wrong with this guy and the people who applaud him in the efforts. The Ebola virus idea is what really bugs me.
Dr. Pianka apparently believes the airborn version of this could be used "properly" to help save the world.
Now, if this supposedly for the benefit of mankind, why the hell (normally, I wouldn't say that) would some idiot put his efforts into this and not some other form of work to save mankind. I guess going to the moon and establishing colonies is out of the question. We're talking about a guy who put all he time and energy into the destruction of the world in an attempt to save it. This isn't moral; it's stupid and idiotic. If Pianka did it for attention, why in the world did he not give a disclaimer or something at the end?
There's a fine line between distinguished thought and erronous ways.
This doctor surely could have spent his time a bit better and worked on actually saving people instead of killing them off. There are other options available to us. If we are actually destroying the world, then perhaps we can work on saving that which we are wasting. Or, we could move on. That's just as radical of an approach as mass extermination. If you're going to focus on something, do it right. Pianka sure gave it his all though. Sure did.
Does this not remind you of anything? Say, GENOCIDE?
Moron. This guy is a moron, despite what his dissertation says. Remember the discussion on salute the title, not the man? Well, here we go. NEITHER!
I need a drink.

posted by Nate Billings @ 7:36 AM  

5 Comments:

  • At 2:22 PM, Blogger Jeff Martinek said…

    Nate:

    You are a journalist, so I'm surprised that you haven't looked further into this story and reported the professor's side of the story.

    There's plenty of evidence available from a simple Google search that at the very least complicates this story. For instance, a story from the local NBC News affiliate in Austin Texas http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=4720390 quotes the University of Texas professor, Eric Pianka, as claiming that the reports you referred to incorrectly quote both the letter and substance of his speech.

    "Pianka says he would never advocate genocide or extermination like some suggest he does.

    "I've got two granddaughters, man. I'm putting money in a college fund for my granddaughters. I'm worried about them," Pianka said.

    "He said he believes criticism of his theory about an inevitable plague on mankind comes from a rival jealous about his distinguished scientist award from the Texas Academy of Science.

    "He's an avowed enemy, and he's made this very clear that he's going to get me and take me down," Pianka said.

    The Wikipedia entry on Pianka says the following:

    "Pianka has suggested that the human population is likely to crash, and that a mutant strain of Ebola (which has up to a 90% mortality rate) is a possible culprit[2]. In response to Pianka's speech while accepting the Texas Academy of Sciences Distinguished Scientist of the Year award in 2006, creationist and Discovery Institute member Forrest Mims alleged that Pianka had "endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population" through a disease such as an airborne strain of the ebola virus.[3] This report was widely propagated through blogs including William Dembski's "Uncommon Descent" and "Telic Thoughts" (another pro-intelligent design blog), Drudge Report and the creationist Discovery Institute. [4] Dembski has also said that he has reported Pianka to the United States Department of Homeland Security.[5]

    As a consequence of this, Pianka and members of the Texas Academy of Sciences have received death threats.

    So, at the very least we have a dispute over what Pianka said. Did he use a speech before a distinguished scientific body to "advocate" the death of millions through the Ebola virus, or was he warning that such a doomsday scenario was possible? Is he a genocidal monster bent on killing off large parts of the human population or is he the victim of a vicious smear campaign by enemies of science?

    Read Pinaka's own statement here and see what you think:

    http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Everybody.html

    Here's a quote:

    I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don't want to hear it.

    Population crashes caused by disease have happened many times in the past. In the 1330s bubonic plague killed one third of the people in Europe's crowded cities. Smallpox and measles decimated Native Americans when Europeans transported them to the new world. HIV is a relatively new disease wreaking havoc in Africa. Another population crash is inevitable, but the next one will probably be world-wide.

    People think unrealistically because they have lost touch with the natural world. Many people today do not really know where and how our food is produced, and on what our life support systems are based. As we continue paving over natural habitats, many think that we can disrupt and despoil the environment indefinitely.

     

  • At 10:26 PM, Blogger Nate Billings said…

    Indeed.
    Though this is not the first time I've heard this argument debated, I still think he is pushing something a bit misleading. I need a bit of time, but for some reason I remember this same speech coming up before in the news.

    I agree, I didn't put all the facts up. But, that was the point of the first comment. I wanted more of a debate on ethics than the speech, but here goes. The debate gets pretty tiring. I've googled him as well.

    Pianka has given similar speeches as well. He is often quoted as taking the side that ebola is the "likely" killer. He's definately known as the "Lizard Man," and his work in this area is profound. However, I think he uses his statements to the wrong end. He has already been given the name "Dr. Doom."

    Several people have taken his ideas and blown them up of course, but he should have taken measures to insure this could not happen.

    http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio357/357evaluations.html

    These are the comments from the UT Web site where some students commented on Pianka's ideas. Down about the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, we find some comments where students say similar things about his advocations.

    The story IS complecated, but professors must be weary of their power of influence. Pianka's students love him as a professor and yes, it was a lousy shot for me to call him a moron out right, but how can we simply stand back and say this couldn't be misconstrued.

    He needs to have a new speech or a conference at least. Then, he may be able to clear up this item of interest.

    And, so he did.

    However, it still stands this is a very odd situation. Overall, it seems like he meant well. Which, I hope is the case. Yet, we can't put it to rest that people are talking about this even as we are. The speech wasn't taped and I don't know about the full transcript of the speech on the site, but somehow he must have made a drastic mistake.

    If we are to be responsible people, then we need to control our outright wrongness. Yeah, my blog post had that feel to it, but I want to make it up. My only defense to this is frankly admitting there's more to it. But, I will try to find the past news stories because somehow there is definately more to it.

    One last thing, how do people feel about this ethically? Is it right to even say this without given a solution to the problem? That's the biggest wrong with the speech, no solution other than "you need to hear this."
    I have heard, now what?

     

  • At 8:27 AM, Blogger Jeff Martinek said…

    Nate:

    While I agree that important ethical issues worth debating here, such a debate cannot be carried out without a firm basis in fact. At this point, it is not a all clear what the professor in question actually said and what he is advocating.

    I my thinking it is the job of journalists to "get the facts" so that others (including ordinary citizens) can actually debate the merits and drawbacks of various positions and proposals. Even if it can never be established for absolute certain what this professor said in his speech, it's the journalist's job to establish as many facts as possible and get as many people on the record as possible so as to give readers the best possible chance of estimating for themselves who is telling the truth here.

    Thomas Jefferson once wrote:

    "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

    I interpret this as indicating that the capacity of a free press to establish facts is even more important to liberty than the institutions of government themselves. A people with free access to accurate information will create free institutions or demand reform from those that already exist.

    Of course in Jefferson's day, most of the press was partisan (as it has become again in our own day) and one needed complete access to all the newspapers in order to sort out for oneself the truth amidst all the partisan spin. As I understand it, the idea of journalism as an honorable profession, in which journalists had a higher calling---and loyalty to the truth itself---did not become really established until the early part of the 20th century. The idea of journalists as independent professionals (rather than party hacks and propagandists) would have been a novel but very welcome idea to Jefferson, I think. It's a shame to think we are losing that (largely due, in my view, to the ecological shift in our media environment over the past several decades).

    In any case, I hope the next generation of journalists (yourself included) will take seriously the idea of journalism as a noble profession dedicated to establishing the truth. And I hope your awareness of the new media environment and the challenges it poses to establishing truth will allow you to do a better job of standing up for truth than some of your senior colleagues have done lately.

    So how about it? Find the facts about this case first, check your sources, get people on record, then allow your readers to form their own opinions about what happened here. If you've done that, you've done a journalist's job and you've made it possible to have an informed debate about the ethical questions here. And that is a great service to your fellow citizens.

     

  • At 3:13 PM, Blogger tim said…

    The content of the lecture, although I haven't researched it, is really the basis of what I plan to pursue as a career. Massive epidemic diseases can be prevented, and I estimate that is the ultimate goal of Pianka. The foresight in planning for sanitation and preventative measures against disease is the future of medicine, and however that message is conveyed is secondary. As I see it, due to the way the media sensationalizes everything, outrageous statements grab attention. I applaud anyone who can use the media to get a good message across.

    As to the direction the dialogue is headed, I have recently been thinking about the media's responsibility in democracy to inform the public. The role corporate consolidation plays in the media is an issue I plan to blog about in the future. I am an advocate of media reform.

     

  • At 4:30 PM, Blogger Jeff Martinek said…

    I found what looks like a reasonable attempt to sort out the controversy here by Jason Godesky:

    http://anthropik.com/2006/04/pianka-mims-misanthropy-genocide/

    I particularly appreciate the following quote:

    Environmentalists are often typified as "misanthropic" because, we're told, they hold animals and trees in higher esteem than their own species. What needs to be understood is that this is not an either/or situation. A healthy ecology is not simply a luxury to be preferred only by misanthropes--it is essential to human life. Any society that lives at the expense of its ecology cuts its own foundation out from underneath itself. In the end, environmentalism doesn't make sense as an attempt to "save the earth"--it only makes sense as an attempt to save the human species. Environmentalists aren't the misanthropes--it's everyone else!

    To prefer businesses, economies, or industry to ecology is to prefer monetary wealth to human life. Environmentalists prefer the health and welafe of the human species; everyone who isn't an environmentalist prefer something else above human life and happiness. What could be more misanthropic than that?

     

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