271–280 of 322 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No I don't think it's that either: for example many seem to get especially upset when I suggest that most developed countries have naturally slightly declining populations so they should more or less be left alone rather than implement policies to drive population growth.
They are not trying to promote population growth. Rather avoiding a too steep decline.
I've noticed an even more disturbing trend of learned helplessness and misanthropic Malthusianism in these threads over the years. Not a single comment, at time of writing, has had a positive tone, and there are very few actionable suggestions. No consideration is given to the many positives in modern life, nor to realistic, productive tradeoffs. Everyone wants to wail in dismay at the perceived impending doom and do…
There's every reason to be optimistic and interested in this topic for investors and hackers. There are smart people all over the world doing some real problem solving and a lot of the solutions are a combination of highly profitable and disruptive.
Bird populations declining is a complex problem that has a few root causes of which intensive farming is the obvious number 1 to address. Intensive farming needs to be disrupted in a profitable way so we can replace it with something less likely to destroy what remains of our planet (much of it has already been transformed into desert) and actually turn around that process. Plenty of interesting companies in this space. Also plenty of money being invested. Here. More of that and less of the dooms day thinking.
In the US one form of intensive, large scale farming that is worth addressing is corn production. Corn syrup is not a thing that you need in a balanced diet. It's bad for you. There's no reason to keep on subsidizing corn production the way the US currently does that results in industries emerging to find uses for all the subsidized corn. Corn syrup, bio fuels, animal food, etc. are all things that are made with corn that are probably doing more harm than good. Simply putting a stop to that would improve people's health and free up a lot of land for more productive and less destructive purposes. Whether it is forestry, organic farming, or even having sheep/cows graze on the land, it's all better than over fertilizing and eroding the soil in order to produce corn.
Until human society stops serving abstractions (like money) over things that are real, then real things will continually face consequence. These will still over into our lives in a multitude of ways until we no longer have real systems to support these abstractions. Loss of natural life is such a failure. Today we speak of stock markets, governments, businesses. Someday, our main concern will not be these shared drea…
> "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" > YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. > "So we can believe the big ones?" > YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. (Death about belief and humanity, from Hogfather by Terry Pratchett) > Until human society stops serving abstractions […] Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of. No government to organize large sca…
I'm appalled that such a quote could be used to support such an argument. Grandparent, and Pratchett's Death, agree that humans and human society are supposed to support humans. Grandparent maintains, quite correctly, that our current society is, in fact, tooled to support abstract concepts like "valuation" and "wealth creation" instead of things like clean nutritive food and safe affordable shelter and supportable realistic hope -- and the biosphere itself that serves as backdrop, stage, and audience all in one.
Whether unintentionally or otherwise, the parent is missing the point. The grandparent doesn't argue against abstraction itself, but the reification of corporations as people, the conflation of the stock market as barometer of the economy, and enablers of all this in ostensibly benevolent governments.
If one chose the read the rest of the fucking book, one would see that it's all about fighting against those who would use human frailties -- like greed, and desperation, and the smallness of our own perspective -- to trick humans into destroying that which makes life worth living. Of course, it's all couched in the supernatural trappings of the Discworld, but as Prachett points out in several Discworld book intros, the Disc is a "world and mirror of worlds". On Earth, the antagonistic Auditors have names and addresses...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maximizing GDP doesn’t need to be the primary goal to as you say guide policies. There are plenty of policies aimed to increase economic growth as measured by GDP. Economists however are on all sides of this issue, it isn’t some monolithic field where everyone agrees on even basic ideas.
What economists are on the side that GDP is a perfect measure that precisely captures the increase in well-being? I have never heard of one. If you look at the IMF website you will find a nuanced explanation of what GDP is and is not. For example, it states that > It is also important to understand what GDP cannot tell us. GDP is not a measure of the overall standard of living or well-being of a country. Although cha…
You can’t say measure X is useful, and it’s flaws are well known therefore it’s flaws are irrelevant. If it’s useful then it’s flaws are part of any decision made using it.
Yet the article suggests a number of things for individuals to do, such as installing window screens or keeping cats at home. Why? If "the driving factor" of the decline of bird numbers is habitat loss because of agricultural development, shouldn't concerned individuals be encouraged to take more productive action, such as lobbying their governments or protesting, maybe, to stop the intensification of agriculture?
But, instead of doing something that counts, the article suggests doing things that have the only effect of giving people excuses that they "did what they could", so that they go on living as before, with a calm conscience, leaving someone else to figure out how to solve the real problem.
I see this a lot in environmental issues but I don't want to start yet another flamewar by pointing out obvious examples. It's probably the biggest reason why most people, who are now convinced that we are destroying the environment, are sitting on their hands and feeling good with themselves while the world is burning. Easy solutions that achieve nothing are constantly suggested as "what you can do", when all "you can do" as an individual amounts to a drop in the ocean compared to what our entire civilisation must do, collectively.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a question of excluding the model, it’s a question of the feedback loop where the model is used to both inform your decisions and validate they where correct. Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
> it’s a question of the feedback loop where the model is used to both inform your decisions and validate they where correct. Who exactly are we criticizing for doing this? Seems a bit like a straw man argument tbh. I'm not even sure how that relates to the more general concept raised above, of a single model of reality being reliable.
>> Experts believe that habitat loss due to agricultural development and intensification is most likely the driving factor. Yet the article suggests a number of things for individuals to do, such as installing window screens or keeping cats at home. Why? If "the driving factor" of the decline of bird numbers is habitat loss because of agricultural development, shouldn't concerned individuals be encouraged to take mor…
[0] https://nitter.1d4.us/andrwfhenderson/status/118738610196045...
I've noticed an even more disturbing trend of learned helplessness and misanthropic Malthusianism in these threads over the years. Not a single comment, at time of writing, has had a positive tone, and there are very few actionable suggestions. No consideration is given to the many positives in modern life, nor to realistic, productive tradeoffs. Everyone wants to wail in dismay at the perceived impending doom and do…
The builders? Of technology, you mean? Why, you can see their hand in all the technological advances that have caused the loss of habitat that the article flags up as the most likely driving factor for the decline of bird populations. The article mentions "intensification" of agriculture. That's the abuse of technology to increase production yields. That's the culprit, right there.
Your builders and your hackers are the ones chiefly responsible for the mess we're in, because of course that famous hacker mentality makes no space for any considerations of long-term safety and sustainability of economies or the environment. It's just a blind, magical belief in technology as something that can never go wrong, that can never destroy and harm, anyone.
The damage to the environment that was caused by abuse of technology in the first place is not going to be addressed by creating even more technology.
You want a solution? Less technology, fewer machines, less burning of fossil fuels, less use of pesticides, less deforestation, less soil depletion by ever intensifying agriculture. That is the solution. And it is blindingly obvious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" > YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. > "So we can believe the big ones?" > YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. (Death about belief and humanity, from Hogfather by Terry Pratchett) > Until human society stops serving abstractions […] Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of. No government to organize large sca…
>Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of I'm appalled that such a quote could be used to support such an argument. Grandparent, and Pratchett's Death, agree that humans and human society are supposed to support humans . Grandparent maintains, quite correctly, that our current society is, in fact, tooled to support abstract concepts like "valuation" and "wealth creation" instead of things like clean…
And it is the same thing I am talking about. Abstraction is humans’ way to streamline the process of maintaining the society. Money was created as an abstraction of a reward for one’s labor. Then atop of it more abstractions were built. Existence of stocks and markets is orthogonal to how to maintain a livable environment. In other case communism would do a better job at not starving people to death.
> Grandparent maintains, quite correctly, that our current society is, in fact, tooled to support abstract concepts like "valuation" and "wealth creation" instead of things like clean nutritive food and safe affordable shelter and supportable realistic hope
Give me an example of a society/culture, that cared more about the environment than the ones currently existing. Former societies/cultures were much smaller in scope and headcount to care about such things. Deforestation was a thing during the time of ancient Romans[0], the idea that a species can go extinct (at lest in European-centric culture) started to take roots during 19th century[1]. According to the Wikipedia, Thomas Jefferson was against a notion that species can go extinct (my point is: it wasn’t simply some fringe group’s dogma). Compare this with The South Sea Bubble[2], which was in 18th century.
In short, my argument is: the abstract ideas like “valuation” and “wealth creation” were there well before any coherent idea about taking care of the environment as a finite and common resource was widely accepted.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction#History_of_scientif... [2]: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/South...
> The U.S North American Bird Conservation Initiative estimates that our pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone. The 100M pet cats in US on average kill 26 birds/yr? Doesn't seem right. When I track the source[1] of research, the estimates include both "own" and "unowned" cats and rely on some assumptions like "a correction factor to account for owned cats not returning all prey to owners"…
26 a year for an outdoor cat honestly seems low to me… that’s 1 every other week. I had one cat that I started keeping inside because it was approaching one per day. Without us they’d be doing this for sustenance, so in theory multiple kills a day.