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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#31

Post by kortilla »

car wrote: post #24

It’s great to see this passion and sentiment. I wholeheartedly agree. In my opinion, the deficiencies that the pandemic is unmasking in the american system need a political solution and change. Looking for heroic activism isn’t going to fix the systemic issues. The left starts out with a stronger bias toward the public sector in many of these areas. To which I say, prove the superior model! Look to the European democ…

I don’t think there is evidence of European governments being any more competent during this pandemic.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#32

Post by staticautomatic »

kick wrote: post #27

I expect this essay to be the target of criticism. Here’s a modest proposal to my critics. Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build, conceive your own! What do you think we should build? There’s an excellent chance I’ll agree with you. It's interesting that he manages to say completely uncontroversial things, yet do so in such a way that even he finds them controversial. Is there a word for this phenomenon? Rew…

It's called being defensive.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#33

Post by anoncareer0212 »

kick wrote: post #27

I expect this essay to be the target of criticism. Here’s a modest proposal to my critics. Instead of attacking my ideas of what to build, conceive your own! What do you think we should build? There’s an excellent chance I’ll agree with you. It's interesting that he manages to say completely uncontroversial things, yet do so in such a way that even he finds them controversial. Is there a word for this phenomenon? Rew…

It's partly because this is fantasy land stuff, it's provacative in that it spends the first paragraph wiping away any connection to reality, unwinds a lot of hope, then puts you in a position to be put down for being negative.

It's sort of a Jonathan Swift-style critique of American plutocracy in the early millennium. Very clever!

Re: It’s Time to Build

#35

Post by wbl »

battery_cowboy wrote: post #10
jdhn wrote: post #3

While I'm pro nuclear power, at what point do we say that nuclear isn't the way to go? The cost of solar panels and batteries are declining every year, and you don't have to deal with the terrible stigma that nuclear power has. Sure, new reactors are "zero emission", but will people actually want them to be built?

I love nuclear power, I used to be a 'nuke' in the Navy, but it's not feasible at today's tech level. There's too great a risk of nuclear accident right now, even if it's very uncommon (risk = severity x probability, if severity is 10/10 then any probability is too high, IMO). Someday, if the financials are right (if profit margins are good enough), or if we need it more than ever (if profit margins don't matter), so…

They already have lots of passively safe designs, but I don't need to tell you the difference between a real reactor and a designed reactor. With the economics of the power industry I doubt a lot of work will go into IFR commercialization.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#36

Post by exciaetcmyman »

battery_cowboy wrote: post #10
jdhn wrote: post #3

While I'm pro nuclear power, at what point do we say that nuclear isn't the way to go? The cost of solar panels and batteries are declining every year, and you don't have to deal with the terrible stigma that nuclear power has. Sure, new reactors are "zero emission", but will people actually want them to be built?

I love nuclear power, I used to be a 'nuke' in the Navy, but it's not feasible at today's tech level. There's too great a risk of nuclear accident right now, even if it's very uncommon (risk = severity x probability, if severity is 10/10 then any probability is too high, IMO). Someday, if the financials are right (if profit margins are good enough), or if we need it more than ever (if profit margins don't matter), so…

It's great to have you around. I worked for CIA Blackwater etc in the old days, non nuclear though, but, I accept your fucking shit man. I know how this shit goes. Para etc yeah I'm legit dude. Fuck nuclear man. Especially now. Surf safely man. Watch out for the fucking napalm.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#37

Post by MattGaiser »

vikramkr wrote: post #28
MattGaiser wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s spend the next ten years building a system that can produce a vaccine in three months. The big problem is that we have to test it long term on a bunch of live human beings to make sure it doesn't deform babies or something. That is the major delay. Build whatever system you want, but a perfect vaccine ready today would still be well over 3 months from deployment due to the need for safety checks. https://www.…

If we have a rapid, flexible platform and a great enough need, those 3 months could be enough. But the solution isn't just with the vaccine platform. If, in 10 years, we get lab on a chip working and replace mice with chip based experiments that better reflect human physiology, and/or see a moores law type spike in quantum computation, and/or see breakthroughs in ai, and/or some other set of breakthroughs I cant even…

We already skipped the mice and went right to human trials.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#38

Post by tathougies »

I broadly agree with him, but I do think his opinions on the 'right' are more due to media portrayals of right wingers rather than the actual opinions of those 'on the right'. He says.

> The right must fight hard against crony capitalism, regulatory capture, ossified oligopolies, risk-inducing offshoring, and investor-friendly buybacks in lieu of customer-friendly (and, over a longer period of time, even more investor-friendly) innovation. > > It’s time for full-throated, unapologetic, uncompromised political support from the right for aggressive investment in new products, in new industries, in new factories, in new science, in big leaps forward.

Regulatory capture is something the right is adamantly against usually. I mean, most right-leaning politicians in America are into reducing regulation.

Offshoring is also something that hasn't been on the right for almost a decade.

Finally, the right typically often has absolute political support for aggressive VC investment. Our current right-leaning president has supported a ludicrously low interest rate to encourage private investment in technology as well as set up economic opportunity zones to encourage investment in underserved communities.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#39

Post by sverhagen »

hasanas wrote: post #23

You can’t just solve everything by “building”. Build too much, and you end up with depleted resources, non-environmental solutions, and outdated artefacts. Recycling is surely an option, but it should be the fallback, not the default. While the current crisis could’ve been handled better, it is not at all badly handled. Nature is much stronger than us, and the fact that we are not totally screwed after over four mont…

He's saying build solutions, not just stuff, is he? So, you could build an environmentally sound solution to replace a polluting incumbent.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#40

Post by car »

kortilla wrote: post #31
car wrote: post #24

It’s great to see this passion and sentiment. I wholeheartedly agree. In my opinion, the deficiencies that the pandemic is unmasking in the american system need a political solution and change. Looking for heroic activism isn’t going to fix the systemic issues. The left starts out with a stronger bias toward the public sector in many of these areas. To which I say, prove the superior model! Look to the European democ…

I don’t think there is evidence of European governments being any more competent during this pandemic.

Certainly not all of them, but the German healthcare system has dealt extremely well. There is plenty of testing capacity, and plenty of ICU beds. Thanks to century old unified health insurance laws.

Edit: Otto von Bismarck actually instituted the health insurance system of Germany, certainly not a socialist!

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