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EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

washingtonpost.com

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Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#191

Post by estearum »

mothballed wrote: post #184
estearum wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? What hypothetical car has the option to use your road or use the public road, but wasn't provided to you as a potential customer by the public road? Agreed, when a public road provides your customer, it's hard to win that competition. But again: you can just build your roads away from public roads, find your own customers, and then you don't need to compete with them.

>but wasn't provided to you as a potential customer by the public road? Mine, where I live the roads for miles and miles are all private with public easements and are privately funded. Of course by your definition that would make the public road illegitimate, because it has unfairly poached a private road user (not sure I agree with that).

What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads?

Separately, how do you handle it when a neighbor decides to neglect their portion of a road?

Not sure what the illegitimacy point is about.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#192

Post by mothballed »

estearum wrote: post #191
mothballed wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but wasn't provided to you as a potential customer by the public road? Mine, where I live the roads for miles and miles are all private with public easements and are privately funded. Of course by your definition that would make the public road illegitimate, because it has unfairly poached a private road user (not sure I agree with that).

What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads? Separately, how do you handle it when a neighbor decides to neglect their portion of a road? Not sure what the illegitimacy point is about.

>What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads?

Sometimes other private roads, sometimes private property/houses, sometimes public roads. Sometimes people travel exclusively on private roads, sometimes not. I don't understand your point here, a private road isn't allowed to connect to a public road but a public road is allowed to connect to a private road? It doesn't pass any sort of symmetrical test.

>Separately, how do you handle it when a neighbor decides to neglect their portion of a road?

If they neglect their road they can't go buy groceries or use their property. So it is extremely rare, as they're basically forced to do it out of practicality, they would be hurting themselves more than anyone else. Down to the point it's well within the tolerable amount of charity. Usually some retired person comes along with a backhoe because they have nothing else to do, and until then the roads are large gridded so the roads never become impassable. In practice your concern hasn't become a problem in my years of living on private roads.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#193

Post by estearum »

mothballed wrote: post #192
estearum wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads? Separately, how do you handle it when a neighbor decides to neglect their portion of a road? Not sure what the illegitimacy point is about.

>What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads? Sometimes other private roads, sometimes private property/houses, sometimes public roads. Sometimes people travel exclusively on private roads, sometimes not. I don't understand your point here, a private road isn't allowed to connect to a public road but a public road is allowed to connect to a private road? It doesn't pass any sort of symmetrica…

No, my point is that presumably the cars arrived on your self-sufficient private roads via public roads. Is this correct or not?

Re maintenance: Again, obviously doesn't work outside of an area that definitionally does not have very few people/businesses.

If everyone lived in density like yours, first of all we wouldn't have nearly anything good about modern life, but secondly yes we could obviously have the system you describe. I'll take public roads and modern life any day.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#194

Post by mothballed »

estearum wrote: post #193
mothballed wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads? Sometimes other private roads, sometimes private property/houses, sometimes public roads. Sometimes people travel exclusively on private roads, sometimes not. I don't understand your point here, a private road isn't allowed to connect to a public road but a public road is allowed to connect to a private road? It doesn't pass any sort of symmetrica…

No, my point is that presumably the cars arrived on your self-sufficient private roads via public roads. Is this correct or not? Re maintenance: Again, obviously doesn't work outside of an area that definitionally does not have very few people/businesses. If everyone lived in density like yours, first of all we wouldn't have nearly anything good about modern life, but secondly yes we could obviously have the system y…

>No, my point is that presumably the cars arrived on your self-sufficient private roads via public roads. Is this correct or not?

Sometimes yes sometimes no.

>If everyone lived in density like yours, first of all we wouldn't have nearly anything good about modern life, but secondly yes we could obviously have the system you describe. I'll take public roads and modern life any day.

I'd say high density public roads are causing a big problems for cities. Cars are subsidized in a way that distorts the market to overrepresent car travel over private mass transit or other more efficient alternatives. I believe our cities would be much safer and more enjoyable, without losing access to needed goods, if the roads were all privatized.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#195

Post by LexiMax »

zebomon wrote: post #185
LexiMax wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler than that. They believe in what they believe specifically because it contradicts the views of people they dislike. I guarantee you that the person you were talking to got a real kick out of you wasting so much of your time trying to explain a position. However, these people do have a weakness. They feel good when they win the attention economy and the emotion economy, and those are actually reall…

My experience has been very different from the one you're describing. The person I was talking to is someone who cares deeply for me (and whom I care for deeply too), someone I've known for almost my whole life. He wasn't having fun contradicting me. In fact, it was making him visibly uncomfortable to do so. He was engaging in the conversation in good faith. He just doesn't have the foundation to understand what he d…

I suppose I am fortunate that I don't know anybody who is that far gone that cares deeply about me.

However, the people I use this trick on aren't strangers. They are regular acquaintances that have conspiratorial views, but think I am one of the "good" ones. When these people tell me things like it's just a difference of opinion, you can tell that they derive strength and satisfaction from their ignorance.

My goal isn't to convince them, it's to stop them from reaching into their bag of conspiracy theories when talking to me. In that, it has been wildly successful.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#196

Post by zebomon »

LexiMax wrote: post #195
zebomon wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been very different from the one you're describing. The person I was talking to is someone who cares deeply for me (and whom I care for deeply too), someone I've known for almost my whole life. He wasn't having fun contradicting me. In fact, it was making him visibly uncomfortable to do so. He was engaging in the conversation in good faith. He just doesn't have the foundation to understand what he d…

I suppose I am fortunate that I don't know anybody who is that far gone that cares deeply about me. However, the people I use this trick on aren't strangers. They are regular acquaintances that have conspiratorial views, but think I am one of the "good" ones. When these people tell me things like it's just a difference of opinion, you can tell that they derive strength and satisfaction from their ignorance. My goal i…

I can see that your approach would be effective at shutting down conversation and stopping people from telling you their wild conspiracy theories.

I think that with my experience, I've had to recognize how fragile some of the most important incentives are. Like the safety that underpins trust. To have trust, it needs to be safe for people to be wrong. That means I often have to listen respectfully to views that I find abhorrent, in order to get to the point that I can share my own thoughts fully.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#197

Post by lukeschlather »

cdrini wrote: post #109
lukeschlather wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This perspective relies on seeing Chinese lives as worth less than American lives. On average individual Americans contribute more to the problem than individual Chinese people. One example is airline miles. Americans travel 2000 miles by plane every year. In China the figure is 1000 miles. So your argument is basically "sure, we could stop traveling by plane, but if Chinese people travel an extra 50 miles a year tha…

> This perspective relies on seeing Chinese lives as worth less than American lives. I'm not sure I follow this. If I was to summarise GenerocUsername's argument it would be "the Chinese government is less concerned with making their economy green, and if the US begins taking an economic/influence hit to make it's economy greener, it'll be yielding an economic advantage to China, which will canabalise more global ind…

I think you have to define what you mean by "less concerned." I'll take a stab at it, which is that Chinese energy use has grown 7% while US energy use has remained roughly flat. The reason I say that this only works because you devalue Chinese lives, is because Chinese energy use remains less than half (possibly even less than 1/3rd by some measures) what it is in the US per person. If the US reduced energy usage by 10% and China's grew by another 10%, it would still be the case that Chinese people relatively speaking are living in conditions that we in the US would consider extreme hardship, as a direct result of having less energy.

Essentially you're saying that the US should bully the Chinese people into increasing hardship because it's the only way to meet our climate goals.

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