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Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

cjohnson.io

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Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#181

Post by hueving »

avz wrote: post #118
hueving wrote: post #115

The author makes some big statements about what Elon is doing and then wonders why everyone isn't guzzling the kool-aid like the author. It has nothing to do with the prisoners dilemma. First, there is a large portion of the population that doesn't believe global warming is an issue. Second, there is another large population that doesn't believe global warming can be stopped by a slow transition to electric cars. Thi…

You've alluded to "things which are optimal for humanity" and "our current problems". Could you elaborate? What do you think is optimal for humanity? Which current problems are more significant than planetary-level challenges like global warming and confinement of our specifies to a single planet? These put the existence of our civilization at risk. I would really love to hear which other problems are more significan…

Cut the melodrama. Your post reeks of first-world privilege.

Confinement of our species to a single planet is much lower priority than the suffering caused by violent governments, starvation, diseases, and drug problems. Colonizing another planet might be optimal for spreading of our species, but it does little to reduce the suffering here.

Global warming is a problem. However, making luxury electric cars is a drop in the bucket compared to convincing China and India to crack down on things like unfiltered coal power plants.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#184

Post by falcolas »

nawitus wrote: post #175
x0054 wrote: post #170

Patent discussion aside, I just want to point out that battery powered cars are NOT the solution to global warming, at least not at the current state of technology. Aside from all the environmental damage involved in producing the lithium cells them selves, you have to also consider that to charge those cells we are still burning cola and then transmitting that power over an incredibly inefficient, almost 100 year ol…

Your point should've been "transportation emissions are only a small share of total CO2 emissions". If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by becoming a vegan.

> If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by becoming a vegan.

I'm going to regret this, I have no doubt.

Vegan != no carbon footprint. In fact, I would imagine that when compared to a typical vegetarian diet, it is less carbon efficient.

Isolation from animal (by)products means that food bound for vegans typically requires specialized handling and processing. Loss of efficiency gained from the economies of scale.

Limited food processing means that food can not be easily stockpiled and distributed. This results in more frequent but smaller food shipments - the opposite direction you want to go for efficiency.

The small intersection with the average person's diet also means that vegan foodstuffs don't gain any production efficiency when compared to, say, a vegetarian's diet.

All of that, and vegan-bound foodstuffs still have to be planted, fertilized, harvested and transported.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#185

Post by Joeri »

waps wrote: post #104
robbrown451 wrote: post #19

This explains, at the very least, why rampant partisanship is an inevitability in a large Democracy, despite it being worse off for everybody (including politicians themselves). Instead of saying "in a large Democracy" it should say "in a large Democracy which uses plurality voting." Some voting systems (for instance Condorcet compatible ones) do not encourage partisanship in the same way as plurality does. In fact o…

Please note that the post gives an extremely bad impression. First of all, pareto efficiency and nash equilibria exist both in capitalism and other economic systems. And the obvious alternative economic system : centrally planned economies, are very much nash equilibria (if they are stable at all). But the second impression he gives is also very wrong. By definition, everyone is a "selfish dickhead" both in Nash equi…

I don't agree that the free market ever produces a pareto-efficient solution. If all market participants act selfishly in an unconstrained market you get a nash equilibrium because there are two avoidable downsides which the fully free market will naturally produce: the tragedy of the commons, and the concentration of resources.

The tragedy of the commons can only be avoided by changing the rules of the market through an external force (lawmaking) so participants must act altruistically to act selfishly.

The concentration of resources is typically avoided through wealth redistribution, another mechanism of mandatory altruism.

So, the thing is, the fully free market is only pareto-optimal if you narrowly look at the market, but if you look at the world as a whole, it is a nash equilibrium, unless you force market entrants to act altruistically (through bribe or threat).

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#186

Post by crusso »

deciplex wrote: post #172
crusso wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Koch-inspired bullshit they're selling on Fox News nowadays Please avoid these types of overtly political inflammatory arguments on HN. Capital markets are a tool for allocating resources In the modern sense, when someone on HN is advocating capitalism, they're talking about Free Market Capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Free-market_economy Fundamentally, it's the freedom to trade with others based u…

>Please avoid these types of overtly political inflammatory arguments on HN. Don't tell me how to post. >If you have another way besides laws and regulations that can force all actors in a market to not act according to their own free will, what is that thing called? I think I'm not getting your point. Your false dichotomy there between "capitalism" and "remove negotiation from individual interactions" did set some a…

I don't think I need one - laws and regulations will do nicely

Okay, then we agree that laws and regulations are the only tool we have to restrict free will and thus behavior of actors in the free market?

If you'll look back at my original post, all I was saying is that Capitalism (Free Market) is orthogonal to whether or not people are shitbags and if anything, you could say that the laws and regulations (the State) are put in place because the assumption is that people (and our society in the aggregate) need to be restricted from being shitbags. If anything, Capitalism is inversely related to the assumption that people are shitbags.

Well, perhaps I do this particular government

So basically you want to stay married to a woman even though she's horrible because somewhere out there is a different woman worth being married to? I'd rather be single for a bit and peruse govermenteharmony.com.

but not the idea of effective government

Once again, we're in agreement. Believe it or not, I would replace our government and culture with some Scandanavian country's tomorrow if I thought it could work. Sure, raise our taxes if there's markedly less corruption and the money is going to good use. But that isn't going to happen. Give more power to the State and they will just be validated that they've been on the right path for the past century.

one of the most ubiquitous and sophisticated propaganda campaigns in human history

Not sure which campaign that is, but I could guess based upon your comment about the Koch brothers. What do surveys like this say to you about who is spending the most on controlling the government and where they see the biggest bang for their bucks? Just look at the top 20 and explain to me why I should worry about minority contrarian voices in the messaging out there like the Koch brothers?

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

The Koch brothers are a red herring.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#187

Post by gamerdonkey »

x0054 wrote: post #170

Patent discussion aside, I just want to point out that battery powered cars are NOT the solution to global warming, at least not at the current state of technology. Aside from all the environmental damage involved in producing the lithium cells them selves, you have to also consider that to charge those cells we are still burning cola and then transmitting that power over an incredibly inefficient, almost 100 year ol…

Unfortunately, I don't have time for a more detailed response. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#188

Post by nawitus »

falcolas wrote: post #184
nawitus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point should've been "transportation emissions are only a small share of total CO2 emissions". If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by becoming a vegan.

> If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you should start by becoming a vegan. I'm going to regret this, I have no doubt. Vegan != no carbon footprint. In fact, I would imagine that when compared to a typical vegetarian diet, it is less carbon efficient. Isolation from animal (by)products means that food bound for vegans typically requires specialized handling and processing. Loss of efficiency gained from the economie…

>Vegan != no carbon footprint.

Well, no sane person has claimed that.

>In fact, I would imagine that when compared to a typical vegetarian diet, it is less carbon efficient.

Your imagination is not consistent with reality/studies.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet

>Isolation from animal (by)products means that food bound for vegans typically requires specialized handling and processing.

The average vegan food is a lot more efficient than any animal product. An animal is just a biological machien which converts plant matter to animal products. You could take out the inefficient converter and just eat the plant directly. For example, 99% of soy in the United States is eaten by animals.

>Limited food processing means that food can not be easily stockpiled and distributed.

What? There's no special truck for vegan products. Supermarkets ship vegan and non-vegan products together.

>All of that, and vegan-bound foodstuffs still have to be planted, fertilized, harvested and transported.

Yeah. And because animals eat plants, the average omnivore consumes more plant matter than the average vegan.

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#189

Post by crusso »

deciplex wrote: post #161
crusso wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I don't think that you and I are in that much disagreement on some of the basics. I think we'd both agree that Capitalism can be good. Government serves a purpose in maintaining the framework of items you listed. We also agree that the corrupt ruling class combination of the Government and Capitalists (along with way too much of the media these days, I'd add) is a disaster. Where I'd imagine that we differ…

>Where I'd imagine that we differ is that I think that the pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of the State. With a debt that is now bigger than our GDP and the last hundred years of mostly one-way growth of government and its agencies, the Government is a huge black hole for money that encourages, institutionalizes, and legalizes ever-increasing degrees of corruption. Also, I don't think there really is…

the more people agitate about reducing the scope of government (or, on the other side, reducing the influence of big banks) the better

The problem isn't that people are agitating about the wrong issues. The problem is that voters are suckers. They believe the leaders of their political parties that tell them that they're going to reduce the size of government or restrict the power of banks. Then when Republicans and Democrats get together to both dramatically increase the size of government expenditures and bail out the banks that failed the hardest, who is held accountable? No one.

Do you reckon it's time to be smart about achieving those goals, rather than pontificating about The Way Things Ought To Be

Pot/Kettle? We're sitting here arguing about this stuff on HN. We're not accomplishing anything. Worse, you actually tried to diminish me as a person by throwing out that red meat of "Fox News and the Koch brothers" when factually I haven't found how you disagree at all with my original point. Let's face it, we're just entertaining ourselves by going back and forth on a Friday. :)

Re: Anti-Tesla sentiment and the death of optimism

#190

Post by the_watcher »

bpyne wrote: post #174
marincounty wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to start a east coast vs. west coast feud over how rich boys spend their money, but there's a difference. I can spot an east coast transplant, even after they lose the accent--and they think, and spend their money differently too. There are always exceptions, but in my world East coast men are more competitive, less empathetic, and have taken more money out of my pocket than west coast men. Yes--I'm ster…

Interesting observation. Being a native Northeasterner, I'd love to know more about the spending patterns of East Coast men even if it's a wild generalization. I was in NYC over the weekend and Los Angeles - for my first time - back in April. Both large cities with large populations. Both trips were for mostly pleasure. In NYC I stayed in Williamsburg; in LA I stayed in Silver Lake. LA had a very laid back feel to it…

LA is also nearly always sunny and comfortable, so there's always a large number of people that just decided to spend the day outside, relaxing.
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