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Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#211

Post by forthefuture »

metaphorm wrote: post #209
forthefuture wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm coming from the wrong side. I think happiness for its own sake is really meaningless. I'd much rather struggle and advance than be happy doing nothing until I die, but I guess I'm in the minority. Happiness, to me, is a choice to not let negative things make you unhappy. You can acknowledge negativities and not be consumed by them. Fighting for happiness is like fighting for peace. You win by not fighting…

well, that's not what you said. you said "Advancement over Happiness". I think most people would agree with "to be happy, don't struggle for it, just be". Your original post, the one that seemed satirical to me, sounded like it was endorsing some notion of material accumulation at the expense of human fulfillment.

Oh, yeah I didn't mean it to sound that way. In that context I'd say that I believe that moving humanity forward provides more fulfillment than just being happy.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#212

Post by metaphorm »

guelo wrote: post #208
hguant wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the core principle underlying all that is that human happiness is a good in and of itself, and a virtuous and stable society is good only in that it allows for the greatest potential growth of human happiness.

If your grandkids are less happy because you destroyed the environment in order to increase your happiness is that a negative or a positive in this philosophical framework?

it was unthinkable in the original Aristotelean framework. They had no notion of being capable of destroying the environment in the way that we can now.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#213

Post by astrodust »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #59
jfaucett wrote: post #19

Notice this is because 80% of the energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable - unlike wind and solar which in this case provided 7% and 0.01% respectively and are not reliable. It frustrates me that so many environmentalists are still against hydro because it alters ecosystems when nature itself is inherently violent, dangerous and in a constant state of flux.…

I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.

You have spent way too much time on Hacker News. Gross Domestic Happiness was coined in 1972 and the idea exists way beyond that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

For example, the US Constitution proudly proclaims that "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" are unalienable rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_...

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#214

Post by astrodust »

nixos wrote: post #198
solipsism wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "humans" with "white people" in your post, and you'll get a sense of how silly your beliefs seem to me. Not to say my beliefs are more right than yours -- to each his/her own.

Would you kill two black men to save a white man. I wouldn't. Would you kill two otters to save a human? Yes. Absolutely. Would you kill two bacteria to save a human? Yes. Absolutely. I would kill a million bacteria to save a human. In fact, we do it all the time. It's about the lack of consciousness in bacteria, as I would never kill even one mentally deficient adult, even to save the life of a genius.

"Two otters" is a non-issue. What about "all otters" to save a single human being?

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#215

Post by ZoF »

unprepare wrote: post #179
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Im not sure if english is your first language, but my response makes perfect sense to who i replied to, and we are discussing a comment by the grand parent. I really don't enjoy the passive aggressive insults here. I provided criticism to your comment because, to me, it sounded wildly off base. If you want to ignore that then that's fine but don't say it makes "perfect sense" when obviously it didn't if we're not o…

>The initial language wasn't "hard" in the first place Right, literally claiming to know the meaning of existence - totally an interpretable statement. My qualm was never that someone would put humans needs before animals, but that that should be the only consideration made is extreme - that its the very nature of existence to do so is beyond extreme. Have a good one!

Your responses are all combative and (from my perspective) seemingly off base; meaning I have difficulty parsing your intended meaning from your statements.

He/she's trying to have a discussion and you're trying to win an argument.

>My qualm was never that someone would put humans needs before animals, but that that should be the only consideration made is extreme - that its the very nature of existence to do so is beyond extreme.

If your initial comment had been solely about 'that religion that thinks the world is solely for us and us alone', that would make some kind of sense, but given the following statement(from the same comment) I didn't interpret it that way.

>To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism

^this is the sentence that people were responding to.^

On this point I also agree with other commenters; narcissism is excessive interest in oneself, not in one's species. I don't think it's narcissistic to say your species is more important than any other, especially given the dearth of evidence to back that assertion up(in this case).

I think it's definitely interesting that we as a species have been so successful that members of this species are quite literally advocating for it's demise.

We all have to build up our own framework of morality. If your framework says to save the animals at the expense of humanities advancement that's fine, but you won't have much company and from my perspective you're not a 'better person' for having done so. (I also don't think the people espousing this "humans are evil" narrative would _actually_ save more animals)

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#216

Post by jdmichal »

bpodgursky wrote: post #185
Arnt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is as reliable as the rain. When I was a child (and 97% of the power came from hydro) the newspapers would sometimes predict power shortage in the summer because there hadn't been much snow in the winter, and sometimes they predicted low power prices because of an abundance of snow. In a way hydro is rather like solar power, which is as reliable as the sun, and wind, which is as reliable as the wind. I know of…

No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_. The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it saved up from 30 years ago, behind the hoover and glen canyon dams. That is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE past what we can do with solar. Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.

> Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.

Define "battery". Pumped-storage hydro is literally hydro as a "battery".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

Also completely ignoring the fact that every joule provided by solar is one less joule that hydro needs to provide, which in turn extends their stored energy life.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#217

Post by tgb »

DougN7 wrote: post #177
unprepare wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

theres also religious folks who believe the earth was created specifically for humans, and so everything here is for us and us alone. I find it a rather disgustingly self centered ideology. To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism

# theres also atheist folks who believe they answer to nobody and can do whatever feels good. # I find it a rather disgustingly self centered ideology. Sweeping generalizations can go both ways and are rarely helpful.

There aren't just two ways to go in this possibility space, I'm quite happy ruling out both of these ideologies.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#218

Post by dragontamer »

kbenson wrote: post #165
chki wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the big difference is that the effects are almost completely local and not anywhere as threatening on a global scale compared to burning stuff and causing everything to heat up. This is actually a decisive point because whoever builds the dam will also lookout for the effects it causes and be more reasonable. On top of that I think that the extinction of species is really not comparable to global warming, which w…

Actually, if mhurron is referring to what I think they are, then it can be fairly global. Think fish migration and spawning, such as with Salmon. Global Salmon population is very susceptible to being disrupted by blocking rivers. That said, I believe there are modern ways to address this problem.

Every dam worth a damn has fish ladders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder

Poorly built dams can damage the environment. Except you know, its 2016 and we've figured out how to preserve the environment while providing clean energy now.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#219

Post by sliverstorm »

chki wrote: post #158
mhurron wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dams are an ecological disaster, just as much as burning fossil fuels. Dams have directly caused or are causing the extinction of several species around the world, that is not counting all the permanent environmental impacts a dam creates. Hydro is a green energy source if you define green as simply not burning fuel.

But the big difference is that the effects are almost completely local and not anywhere as threatening on a global scale compared to burning stuff and causing everything to heat up. This is actually a decisive point because whoever builds the dam will also lookout for the effects it causes and be more reasonable. On top of that I think that the extinction of species is really not comparable to global warming, which w…

The obvious impact is local, but rivers have sweeping ecological importance, and we dam every one of them.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#220

Post by squidfood »

astrodust wrote: post #214
nixos wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you kill two black men to save a white man. I wouldn't. Would you kill two otters to save a human? Yes. Absolutely. Would you kill two bacteria to save a human? Yes. Absolutely. I would kill a million bacteria to save a human. In fact, we do it all the time. It's about the lack of consciousness in bacteria, as I would never kill even one mentally deficient adult, even to save the life of a genius.

"Two otters" is a non-issue. What about "all otters" to save a single human being?

If the OP answers it is anecdotal of course, but I'll point out that there's a whole field of bio-economics that tries to find survey/public answers to these questions for the purpose of making policies. And the result is laws such as the Endangered Species Act which dictates how far society thinks you should go in this direction.
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