this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Solarpunk
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Agreed. It also leads to some self reflection when the answer essentially amounts to: "Nothing". As an automotive software engineer, I can't say that I learned anything I can practice myself in daily life in the solarpunk spirit. But it did get me thinking whether I could try and further some skills I acquired to that aim. Thanks OP!
My self reflection actually led me to a legit good answer. I'm a biochemist and my developing research interest is in how we can coordinate and integrate "big data" methodologies and insights; one of the hype trains that annoys me is the idea that AI means we're on the cusp of "agnostic science", which roughly means "yay, let's take the biased humans out of the science entirely and have MAXIMUM OBJECTIVITY". So effectively, it's looking like my career is shaping up to be "professional killjoy" — trying to derail scientific hype trains before too many board.
It's hard to imagine how that could help me in a Solarpunk society, but it's easier to frame it as "how can Solarpunk ideas help me in this quest?" because there's actually loads of that.
A thing I love about Solarpunk after all is that it isn't anti-science: Genetic editing is cool and awesome, but also biodiversity and ecosystems are super important; AI protein folding algorithms like AlphaFold are mindbogglingly good, but they're most useful when we take a slice of humble pie and understand how much we have left to learn; Objectivity is a great scientific ideal, but also we need to recognise that in practice, we can't extricate science from people and politics, and we should instead embrace the uniqueness of perspectives, which all have something to add to science.
These themes feel like Solarpunk vibes to me, and given that Solarpunk is still developing as an aesthetic, ideology and cultural movement, it's a useful thing to ponder.