A great list to read through, when one thinks that there is no hope. Not through any miracles, but through dedicated work, a lot of issues have been improved at least. While there are no magical solutions, it shows that a lot is achievable and being achieved, by just working at the problems.
Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#22Some of these are objectively good, such as world literacy increasing, less pollution in the atmosphere or survival rates increasing for endangered species. Then it lost me with "Oh and smoking bans are good and global human population increases are good and also drilling=evil corporations so banning it across the board=good" Those are debatable. Not very politically neutral is it.
Less smoking is very good for the population health. While population increases are not good by themselves, all reduction in mortality is very good for everyone who has not to die. Interestingly this seems to have the consequence that the birth rates decline strongly as observed in many places. Drilling is not bad because of "evil corporations", but because it regularly is accompanied by harming the environment, be i…
> Less smoking is very good for the population health.
But what is population health good for if not enjoying life? Including (for some people) things like smoking a cigarette.
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#23First: Yay. At least something.
Nitpick: There are still many parts "announced" and the half-life of announcements is about one election cycle, so ... hoping that at least a few of these announcements will be replaced with actions by Dec. 2017.
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#24Some of these are objectively good, such as world literacy increasing, less pollution in the atmosphere or survival rates increasing for endangered species. Then it lost me with "Oh and smoking bans are good and global human population increases are good and also drilling=evil corporations so banning it across the board=good" Those are debatable. Not very politically neutral is it.
> Smoking bans are good. Sorry not sorry. Happy to not be paying for people's lung cancer treatment or dealing with secondhand in bars when I want to listen to live music. The vape bans are pretty preposterous though. > drilling = evil If it's in the ground it's not in the air.
That's an argument against tax-subsidized healthcare rather than for a smoking ban. Because otherwise you've just nationalized people's bodies.
Why stop at smoking after all? Anyone not doing an hour of cardio daily is being irresponsible with the body entrusted to them by society and is in need of a visit to a reformation camp.
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Smoking bans are good. Sorry not sorry. Happy to not be paying for people's lung cancer treatment or dealing with secondhand in bars when I want to listen to live music. The vape bans are pretty preposterous though. > drilling = evil If it's in the ground it's not in the air.
Making it to where people don't have the right to put certain things into their body, healthy or unhealthy, is a stepping stone to a more fascist world. And a bit hypocritical if you're pushing for assisted suicide. Second-hand smoke bans, that's great. But I'd tell someone who vapes to quit peacocking in a bar before I'd tell a cigarette smoker that they're destroying their body in the privacy of their own home.
AFAIK, there are no smoking bans on people in their own homes, and even in that case it might be reasonable in apartments without airtight party walls.
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#26Some of these are objectively good, such as world literacy increasing, less pollution in the atmosphere or survival rates increasing for endangered species. Then it lost me with "Oh and smoking bans are good and global human population increases are good and also drilling=evil corporations so banning it across the board=good" Those are debatable. Not very politically neutral is it.
It's hard to argue against public smoking bans being a huge positive for society. As long as it's legal in your own home, I don't have a problem with regulating it in public areas.
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#27I'm so sick of the meme that 2016 is a bad year. It's just confirmation bias.
Cons of 2016:
- Brexit
- Trump
- some famous people died
Pros of 2016:
- Brexit
- Trump
- some famous people died
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Smoking bans are good. Sorry not sorry. Happy to not be paying for people's lung cancer treatment or dealing with secondhand in bars when I want to listen to live music. The vape bans are pretty preposterous though. > drilling = evil If it's in the ground it's not in the air.
That's an argument against tax-subsidized healthcare rather than for a smoking ban. Because otherwise you've just nationalized people's bodies. Why stop at smoking after all? Anyone not doing an hour of cardio daily is being irresponsible with the body entrusted to them by society and is in need of a visit to a reformation camp.
The linked article is about improved health outcomes due to secondhand smoke bans in public areas:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD005992...
You're free to continue smoking in the privacy of your own home.
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#29Missing the biggest triumph of 2016 by far: the victory by DeepMind's machine learning algorith at Go over the greatest living human player. At this time last year it was highly questionable if humans would ever lose to algorithms at games as complex as Go. Now we have reason to be optimistic that an entire class of problems are amenable to solution through computation, and more evidence super-human synthetic intelli…
...and hundreds of millions worldwide who have been saved from malaria or lifted out of extreme poverty would likely disagree with you: what good is super-human synthetic intelligence several decades from now (assuming that's even a tractable generalization of largely task-specific ML models) if you're not sure where your next meal comes from?
Re: Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity
#30Missing the biggest triumph of 2016 by far: the victory by DeepMind's machine learning algorith at Go over the greatest living human player. At this time last year it was highly questionable if humans would ever lose to algorithms at games as complex as Go. Now we have reason to be optimistic that an entire class of problems are amenable to solution through computation, and more evidence super-human synthetic intelli…
To me, the biggest events of the year are probably Trump, Brexit, and AlphaGo.