141–150 of 315 posts
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I'll have to read up on Egypt and pre-XX-century China. How oppressive were these dynasties typically? What did the life look like for a regular subject?
The Vatican has almost a couple of millennia of continuance, but I'm not sure I'd want to say continual stability per se .
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IMHO iPhone (or smartphones) are under valued. Yes, they do not give you more (like antibiotics give more life or nuclear more energy) but they absolutely help you to lose less time (e.g. navigation that helps you to avoid traffic jams and get lost in unknown place). That replicated in billions of people changes the world’s pace drastically.
To be clear, I’m not saying the iPhone isn’t useful or valuable. It just simply does not compare to the key technologies of the 20th century in terms of transforming the basic parameters of human life on earth. My favorite example is the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and producing synthetic fertilizer (invented 1910). Surely a far more “undervalued” technology than the iPhone! It enabled us to scale up glob…
For the vast majority of people, food production is something that just "happens" out there. They don't grow anything, they just get it from a store.
I've seen people on the Internet who can't afford a simple boiler or an indoors toilet (but they have a phone/computer)... and that's sad, but also amazing.
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I'm not sure why the focus has been put onto greenhouse emissions and CO2 in general. If there's any direct threat to the planet, it's insane amount of industrial waste entering the environment daily that gets downplayed in this ridiculous song and dance about CO2. https://publicintegrity.org/environment/industrial-waste-pol... https://www.buschsystems.com/resource-center/page/why-indust... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.g…
Sperm counts keep dropping, and it very well may be due to chemicals that mess with our hormones and genetics. I don’t know why it isn’t talked about more. There has been a significant drop and at the current rate it won’t be too long until the average man is considered essentially infertile.
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Of all the things you need to be careful about on the net, predictions of climate doom are definitely one! Know that doom predictions, being very emotionally appealing, travel around the world before science can get its shoes on.
In principle you are right, but this is one case where you have it backwards. The reality that science shows is far worse than what has permeated mainstream culture, on the web or otherwise. The size of the climate disaster, and the urgent need for radical changes in the global economy, simply can't be overstated right now. Unfortunately, the amount of status quo propaganda, especially in the US, is also staggering.…
I'm really curious where did you get this information from. I suppose it must not be popular or mainstream media, because of course msm telling you that science shows a worse reality than msm is a contradiction.
So does which primary literature does it come from?
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You will never do this easily. If I run a developing nation there is absolutely no way I accept that you, a developed nation with a century of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, will merely accept a reduction of your annual emissions. I will pump as much CO2 as necessary to raise my population into prosperity and until you have taken out enough GHG to match my historic emissions you're going to have to either take me w…
It's absolutely true, but put this way, it lends an argument towards force-subjugating the entire planet under one government just to end the bickering about fairness. Global warming isn't fair. What I'd honestly want to see happening instead is developed nations doubling down on greentech, and donating all of that (+ expertise and IP) to developing nations, so that the latter can leapfrog the CO₂-intensive energy ge…
Increased space per person => increased fossil fuel usage => increased emissions.
Maybe the greatest “greentech” would be dissuading having kids, either culturally or economically.
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> Keeping global warming below 2°C is a pipe dream I think/hope it's possible by a war-mobilization type of effort, where industries start working together for the goal. We not only have to stop all emissions to zero, but should probably start removing co2 from the atmosphere as well: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/carbon-dioxide-remov... https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/wanna-limit-global-w... But th…
My covid takeaway is to be more certain than before that: > [a war-mobilization type of effort, where industries start working together for the goal] is a pipe dream. I'd love to be convinced otherwise. While technically possible, I'm wary of the social/economic/political aspects not being surmountable. (Edit: Your comment was edited while I pondered mine, and now includes mention of the social, etc. aspect :) )
I'd argue the cold war was closer to the 'hinge of history'. In fact on this very day 9/26 in 1983, a not very well known soviet lieutenant colonel prevented what would very likely have been all out atomic war. In the grand scheme of things, everything that happened this year is probably minor in comparison to Petrov's decision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
There were a great many other close calls. Rarely did it boil down to one person, but all sorts of things brought us dangerously close. And those are only the ones we know about. Who knows what mistakes have never been made public. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200807-the-nuclear-mist... >>As it happens, on this occasion there was no imposter – at least, not a human one. The figure skulking around the fence is…
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Nobody serious sees the Coronavirus as an existential threat to humanity unless it mutates in a way that really enables it to wipe out most humans. Climate change and the collapse of global ecosystems can absolutely manage that and according to every serious scientist we are pretty much on the worst case scenario path according to any peer reviewed model. The rise in nationalism and authoritarianism around the world…
> Climate change and the collapse of global ecosystems can absolutely manage that and according to every serious scientist we are pretty much on the worst case scenario path according to any peer reviewed model. Except that most models are piss-poor at predicting anything and that they only cherry pick the ones that happen to make it with new data. On top of that, climate change is a slow moving disaster, and we are…
That statement is laughably incorrect, in fact the complete opposite of what is pointed to by the evidence. Humans are much better at dealing with urgent crises than long term threats due to our evolutionary history. We even have three branches of emergency services and the military that are trained to deal with urgent crises.
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It's not just democracies. I can't think of a system of governance that's stable over centuries. Oppressive regimes tend to implode once amassed suffering reaches a peak of rebellion, or evolve into something more benign (and potentially get conquered then). Even Rome, the long-lasting empire, wasn't ruled the same way throughout its history. I think that's what GP meant when they wrote that "we could end up in a sup…
The millenary histories of the Egyptian and Chinese empires disagree. Yes, dynasties came and went, but those polities endured for thousands of years—indeed one could argue that the ongoing governance of China by the Communist Party is just the latest dynastic swing.
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The millenary histories of the Egyptian and Chinese empires disagree. Yes, dynasties came and went, but those polities endured for thousands of years—indeed one could argue that the ongoing governance of China by the Communist Party is just the latest dynastic swing.
I'll have to read up on Egypt and pre-XX-century China. How oppressive were these dynasties typically? What did the life look like for a regular subject?