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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#931

Post by [deleted] »

pubby wrote: post #885
throw__away7391 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the default assumption/mode of thought of the average uninformed person today seems to be a cynical one, at least judging from friends/family and top ranked posts from random people on the Internet. Given a situation in which they have zero knowledge, they will assume a conspiracy, cheating, corruption, malice, or some kind of deliberate inequality or unfairness in which they are the disadvantaged party. Usual…

> Given a situation in which they have zero knowledge, they will assume a conspiracy, cheating, corruption, malice, or some kind of deliberate inequality or unfairness in which they are the disadvantaged party. That's baloney. People have knowledge of Epstein. They see strong evidence he trafficked children (police findings), and strong good evidence he hung around rich and powerful people (photographs). The can see…

[deleted]

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#932

Post by coldtea »

celticninja wrote: post #815
coldtea wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that's a facile thought, that doesn't take into consideration second order effects and utility, only whether "god is true" or not...

Organized religion is a different kind of societal harm, where personal religion can be good or bad, organized religion will always be a net negative.

Actually, it's organized religion that can be good or bad. Personal religion is a personal affair, which seldom concerns society. But organized religion has been critical in the establishment of laws and customs, ethical change, societal norms, national expression against opression, etc.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#933

Post by pasabagi »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #926
pasabagi wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be sympathetic to this line of argument, but I'm no longer so sure. Organic farming has lower yields, so to feed the same number of people, you'd have to bring more land under cultivation. That would presumably outweigh any environmental advantages you get from using less chemical pest control. Second, the extra people you employ, aside from the obvious mind-numbing drudgery and hard labour you're ruining t…

Actually if you look at no-till and permaculture it 100% can have the same or higher yields per acre. The process of farming also doesn't have to be mind-numbing in this case. The combination of AgTech/Robotics and no-till/permaculture could produce vastly larger yields vs Organic traditional farming. That's for soil based farming, personally I think Hydroponics (raising plants in water with no soil), Aeroponics (Hyd…

Isn't that more mechanization, not less?

Aside from the no-till/permaculture stuff (which has been around for decades now, and has never seemed to take off), what you are talking about is ultra-automated, extremely centralized farming - and in general, I kinda agree that it's a part of the future.

One issue is just that if you're trying to convert solar energy into calories, you naturally want to spread out over a large area (a field) then use an efficient process to do this (photosynthesis). You then want to make these calories easy to process with machines (monoculture), and to defend them against pests (sprayers), etc. So there are advantages for traditional farming that are rooted in simple physics and economics, and a lot of that won't go away.

I do think the use of robots to apply pesticides in a more targeted manner is probably something we'll see more and more of, but I think for most crops, building a super-controlled green house is probably never going to be economical.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#934

Post by goatlover »

dnate wrote: post #141
goatlover wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?

At some point, the heat death of the universe [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

That's so far away that "indefinitely" applies. If I told you could live until there was no more usable energy left in space, would you worry about not being immortal?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#935

Post by goatlover »

dwighttk wrote: post #281
goatlover wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?

2nd law of thermodynamics

Indefinitely doesn't mean forever. I think hundreds of billions of years would suffice.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#936

Post by goatlover »

hotpotamus wrote: post #105
goatlover wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?

The fact that no one has figured it out in over 13 billion years kinda suggests not, doesn't it? That's pretty much the Fermi Paradox, and perhaps the answer.

We don't know that. There are a lot of potential answers to the Fermi paradox.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#937

Post by goatlover »

Johnny555 wrote: post #833
unsupp0rted wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so, but that would be straying from the point. GP said "there can't be any human civilizations that last indefinitely" and in response I gave an easily conceivable version of how human civilizations can last indefinitely.

But what you've posted is science fiction, in contrast there have been a number of historical civilization collapses. Something that's easily conceivable in the mind isn't necessarily practical or going to happen. It's been over 50 years since humans last set foot on the moon. While there's hope that man will land on the moon again by 2025, success is not assured, and a catastrophic accident could set manned space mi…

Yes, we might collapse and never recover, but the universe is a really big place, so there might be civilizations which avoid that. And if they did, then maybe we can also.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#938

Post by anonfornoreason »

lg wrote: post #710
somenameforme wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us imagine that starting tomorrow every single American is granted infinite endless and free access to anything available at any restaurant or grocery store or other food service. Do you think that in 10 years the obesity epidemic would be: better, same, worse? I have trouble imagining that it would be better. Look at people who come into access with large sums of money for reasons outside primarily mental achiev…

This is misleading for athletes and the article is clear that the BMI increase could be due to sports nutrition and new training methods.

Spot on. BMI is a bad indicator of individual health and fitness. I have a BMI of 25 right now but that’s because I added 14lbs of muscle over the last year while dropping a couple pounds of fat. Body fat percentage sitting at 18%.

Now, there are lots of big boys in the NFL that definitely have a couple extra pounds on them, which could also be skewing numbers.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#939

Post by judahmeek »

ozzythecat wrote: post #891
judahmeek wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you're saying is that you like your narrative & you intend to stick to it despite any contradicting evidence that may be presented. It's true that data must be judged for relevance & validity, but to just discard it in preference of your opinion is really egotistical. Also, statistical data doesn't offer solutions; it only presents a broader perspective than one's collection of anecdotes. So your example of Seatt…

> All you're saying is that you like your narrative & you intend to stick to it despite any contradicting evidence that may be presented. Not at all. I’m simply saying that anyone can fudge the numbers and claim to have “data” to support their argument. > Also, statistical data doesn't offer solutions; it only presents a broader perspective than one's collection of anecdotes. It offers an easily distortable “perspect…

> I’m simply saying that anyone can fudge the numbers and claim to have “data” to support their argument.

This is why reproduction & peer review of methodology are such important steps of the scientific method.

You're not supposed to take a single person's word on what data is.

This is also why certain fields like psychology have something of a credibility crisis, because so many "discoveries" have not been able to be reproduced.

I'm curious though: Can you actually recall specific events of a "leftist" using a false data set or are you just engaging in general slander against your political opponents?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#940

Post by rhacker »

Tepix wrote: post #560
oicU00 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah no doubt; I collate trends into reports for rich investors. Lately they have been focused on youth trends, and some numbers are wacky. 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride share appeared. Youth participation in sports, especially full contact sports, had been going down since before covid which just accelerated it, leading to forec…

> ...and some numbers are wacky. > I guess teaching kids to trust in science and not in imaginary friends is slowly paying off.

They still have imaginary friends on facebook though. At least god has morals. We haven't replace those and the number of mass shootings seems to be going up as belief in god goes down.
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