231–240 of 443 posts
Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…
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Funny that you mention cigarette smoking. I was just ruminating last night in bed how hard it was to put down the phone and go to sleep. I had the same feeling of addiction that I hadn't felt since I quit smoking 15 years ago. It actually caused me to have a minor panic attack, and I'm now actively seeking methods to reduce my dependency on the phone and internet information feed.
+1 Smartphone is a universal addiction as opposed to cigarette smoking. If we do not do something about this, our future humans will walk around with stiff necks as this will be coded into our DNA and we will evolve accordingly.
It should be fun to look at the data after a few weeks of logging via a free app.
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I'll give you an example. I live in Ithaca, NY, not far from some of the richest shale gas deposits in the United States. This town is also ground zero for fracking hatred. Post something awful about fracking, and people will eat that shit up whether it's true or not. I know, because I was one of them. Then I started dating a hydrogeologist. As luck would have it, her very MS thesis was on fracking. She dispelled rum…
That's a very strange form of argument. First, you are arguing that fracking doesn't cause these things, then you go on to list the specific constituents of fracking activity that cause them. Then, you're saying that fracking doesn't have to cause these problems, but the fact is that it has. So, it's the fracking industry itself that has given fracking a bad name. In general, it sounds like industry PR and misdirecti…
...if you drive very fast and don't wear a seatbelt?
As I have said exhaustively (because I am getting quite tired of repeating myself), the process of fracking - which has been done hundreds of times to no ill effect - is not inherently dangerous or error-prone. No more so than deep-sea drilling (anything but Deepwater Horizon come to mind? Also, another case of underregulation leading to calamity) or nuclear energy (which is extremely safe but evokes an emotional fear response; fun fact: almost 200,000 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are still alive today![1]). It is the lack of effective regulation that results in pollution. I don't know how I'm particularly misdirected by PR given that I fully support NYS Gov. Cuomo's fracking moratorium, precisely because fracking companies don't want to deal with the very regulations that make fracking safe.
Side note: most of upstate NY's roads are pretty terrible. But just south of the border in PA - where fracking is ongoing - the roads are all new and well-built, because they are needed to truck the natural gas away safely, so everyone there has safer roads as a result. Can't just pick the pros and cons you like.
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/08/01/japan-hi...
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It is quite fair to blame hippies for ignoring science. Propaganda works on everyone. It is nobody's job but your own to do due diligence. Yes, the media, politicians and so on has a tendency to proclaim falsehoods as facts - nutrition advice and policy being a great example - but our legal system requires a modicum of intent to assign liability, just as society accepts that requirement for blame. (Blah blah criminal…
> Our understanding of the universe is always changing. But eschewing accepted science without a compelling alternative because it could be wrong is a path to nowhere but President Trump. Well. To be fair, it's a path also to President Hillary. Or President Cruz. Or President Sanders. It seems our politics is rife with science-ignorance and science-ignoring. I don't think it's particularly constructive to call out Tr…
Why back in my day, yadda yadda yadda.
Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…
There's some sort of future truth in this kind of thinking that I'm still sorting out. It seems to centre around a future ability to embrace and accommodate all the ways that humans and our minds are frail, instead of all the ways that we're great. And that seems pretty counter to the prevailing western culture of choice and autonomy. Accepting this might require social concessions, where we carve out safe spaces and practices, free from the all-too-easy possibility of manipulation. I can very much imagine, in a sci-fi-esque way, how this leads into conversations that will later involve trans-humanism :/
Hopefully the above doesn't seem dark -- I'm an optimist!
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The trick to taxes is in getting them right. Taxes are, to a rough analog, like the vacuum hose system within an automobile engine. (Hrm: I'm thinking that this may be a bad analogy if there aren't many auto gearheads here.) An internal combustion engine is essentially a self-powered air pump. It has a low-pressure end (intake) and high-pressure end (exhaust). It's got various bits and pieces which need powering. Cha…
This just begs the question though, what is the right way to tax? Assuming that you are redistributing wealth (as you describe above), taxing wealth instead of income has a profound effect. It creates an incentive for every individual to increase the total wealth in the system, no matter who creates it, or where it's created. When you tax income, it makes no difference to you whether the income was created wealth, or…
Whatever is more expensive, you have less of.
Your question can be restated: what's your overall economic goal?
You tax to achieve that.
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Nuclear power can be done safe, but we also have many examples of it not being done safe. Saying, "well it will be different this time. We will build systems to make corruption, laziness, and dangerous actions impossible!" is believing in a pipe dream.
We have come a long way from Chernobyl. Most of the people posting here probably weren't even alive when it happened. Nuclear power is so well-controlled (unless you build reactors on earthquake hotspots or tsunami zones, I mean c'mon Japan) that you can't even use regular statistical models because the only probable risks are human. Reactors are really, really well-designed these days to seal themselves off in the (…
There is plenty of energy out there. Recent advances in solar and wind technology make it within reach.
Nuclear is simply not an economical solution.
Apparently google has an Ethicist. Ctrl-F: Ad Huh. Zero mentions of the thing that manipulates people by design. I guess I don't blame him, because even with a blind spot to ads it would seem Google still doesn't give two shits about his input. He explicitly calls out a problem YouTube feature, which he certainly would have voiced internally before externally. And he doesn't work at Google anymore. Google must want r…
Does anyone else feel the slot machine effect here on HN is the karma displayed on the top-right? After a submission or comment, is that number the first thing you check when you come back to the site?
https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental... > If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.
On Reddit, HN, and SE, I'm always checking to see if I have any more points and any replies first.