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The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

aphyr.com

361–370 of 830 posts

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. Let's simplify it to the individualist vs collectivist spectrum. Cars became a self-reinforcing driver of individualism, especially in net new geographies. The negative effects are resisted better in societies/regions that were built long before them. (For both the cultural reasons and plain physical reasons, like not having wide enough roads). In the car centric places, a few generations later they beco…

The thing is, the Amish don't try to tell the rest of the world that their way is the "obviously correct" way and that everybody else is doing it wrong, the way anti-personal mobility advocates do.

THIS. But the car/oil companies did do bad things like work to undermine public transport & EVs back in day. Now we have sprawling burbs & social isolation. Phones, death of 3rd spaces & church going, etc. made it worse as people stopped having bigger families, leading to even more isolation.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#362
post #111

Two years ago, I was enjoying a drink with my wife, her friend, a very senior female VC partner, and another friend. Somehow we talked AI in some depth, and the VC at one point said (about AI): “I don’t know what our kids are going to do for work. I don’t know what jobs there will be to do.” That same VC invests in AI companies and by what I heard about her, has done phenomenally well. I think about that exchange all…

In the other hand, shouldn't it be the objective of humanity to not HAVE to work for the most basic survival and to fit into society?

Not that we're in any way in that path, of course, with the people making the working machines also accumulating all the wealth. But still, there's something intrinsically good about automation, even when the system is not suited for it.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose in the Netherlands they use carts and horses to stock up the supermarket? To transport coal to the powerplant (or the wind turbine blades to where the wind turbine will be built)? Surely a bicycle isn't enough for that. You might be only talking about personal cars, but you've got to remember that trucks share the same infrastructure cars use. Modern city wealth wouldn't be possible without engined vehicles…

Sure, industrial scale transport and personal transport share a rolling platform with an engine, but they're different platforms with different requirements, different economics and different lifecycles. However, you're making my point for me. If you fail to invest in good public transport it will suck. That is downstream from designing your society around cars instead of transportation for everyone. Bikes do not wor…

> Regarding bad weather; if winter is bad enough for bicycles to fail, then certainly it is not safe to drive either, and lethality is orders of magnitude higher. Generally though people here ride bike paths that are shovelled and brined just as the roadways are.

Extreme hot weather and pollution are both a much bigger health risk for bikes than cars.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#365
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always lived in walkable cities. I don't own a car and with pollution, congestion, accident risk, pavement obstruction, etc. other people's cars unequivocally make my life worse. We can argue about whether this is a good trade off, but the claim that cars make everyone's life better is straightforwardly false.

I live in a walkable city. I cannot drive because I am blind. Cars make my life better. Uber exists. I use it to get many places that I otherwise wouldn't go to.

This doesn’t contradict or respond to the comment you are replying to in any way.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal cars are not the same as using them for logistics. Yes cars/trucks/busses are still useful overall and are an incredible last-mile solution for freight. But on a personal level, it means we all must live far apart and maintain our own individual vehicles, along with the average total costs of $11,500/year PER CAR. [0] I’m not saying they should’ve even been banned for personal use - owning a car and living i…

You don't get highways and the interstate system if vehicles are not for personal use. And if you don't get those, you don't get the modern logistics system. I guess what I don't understand is, given the current state, 1) what do you want? 2) how much will it cost? (and how will we pay for it?) and 3) what are the tradeoffs? On a related note, it seems like a lot of the anti-car/urban planning wonks have a belief tha…

I guess instead of answering your first three questions, I’ll say this:

Our world would be better without being completely dependent on cars. You can see this in a few select cities or neighborhoods that have avoided the worst of car dependency. There are still suburbs, but they’re a bit more dense and you can easily bike to a grocery store in 10 minutes. There are still rural suburbs, but it’s much more expensive to live there due to the extra effort to get where you need to go.

There isn’t an easy way back since we let the auto industry have such a huge influence in politics, they’ve shaped the world, and it would take us decades and a LOT of money to revert the damage. We can still make steps.

HOWEVER, to bring the point back, we’re still in the 1910’s auto industry with AI. Are we going to let the AI industry get heavily involved in politics and shape our world into a worse one to benefit them? We’re at a point where we can reap the benefits, like with early cars, without the damage that came later

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. Let's simplify it to the individualist vs collectivist spectrum. Cars became a self-reinforcing driver of individualism, especially in net new geographies. The negative effects are resisted better in societies/regions that were built long before them. (For both the cultural reasons and plain physical reasons, like not having wide enough roads). In the car centric places, a few generations later they beco…

The thing is, the Amish don't try to tell the rest of the world that their way is the "obviously correct" way and that everybody else is doing it wrong, the way anti-personal mobility advocates do.

“Anti-personal mobility” is beyond absurd, absolute loony-bin stuff.

“Anti-personal mobility advocates” do not exist. Transit advocates exist, and improvements in transit also massively benefit those who need to or prefer to drive.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. Let's simplify it to the individualist vs collectivist spectrum. Cars became a self-reinforcing driver of individualism, especially in net new geographies. The negative effects are resisted better in societies/regions that were built long before them. (For both the cultural reasons and plain physical reasons, like not having wide enough roads). In the car centric places, a few generations later they beco…

The thing is, the Amish don't try to tell the rest of the world that their way is the "obviously correct" way and that everybody else is doing it wrong, the way anti-personal mobility advocates do.

It's the folks pushing cars that are both the most strident and the most successful at pushing their "obviously correct" way onto everyone, at least in the US.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you just said was an elaborate tu quoque fallacy. You aren't comprehending my basic point, which is that individual ethical decisions are not going to make a difference when all of the broader incentives are causing people to act otherwise.

Really weird that you're basically advocating people to not have principles if they don't align with "broader incentives". Also lol at you pulling the "some people have kids to feed" bullshit in a thread where we're all making way more money than most people.

I know lots of families who feed their kids just fine on something less than a quarter million US a year. Just about all the families I know with kids, these days.
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