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The world has probably passed peak pollution

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Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#371

Post by casercaramel144 »

ipaddr wrote: post #126
casercaramel144 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by the tyranny of exponential growth, we should just start building massive breeding factories and forceably enslaving people randomly matching them to have children? Because this could actually be the optimal policy if we take your view of "second persons" to it's optimum. In your world governments forceably breed humans like chickens in massive factory farms churning out people to the carrying capacity of the pl…

Why not encourage through policy and taxation changes? Invest in culture that promotes. Restructure society to encourage having babies at an earlier age.

Since that's nearly certainly less efficient at population expansion compared to physical violence. Conservatively, modern humans seem to settle at having 2~4 children per woman but historically it was not uncommon to have families of size exceeding 10.

The whole point is that if you accept the fact that expanding population is good a priori, this leads to stupid conclusions by the tyranny of exponential growth. Who cares if the average person is a slave when you have several hundred billion of them. Who cares if mothers die horribly after being forced to carry child after child.

Personally I think the only consistent viewpoint is some form of logarithmic population * average well being metric to measure utility. From that perspective, I have no clue how a policy maker should act today. Hopefully smarter minds than mine figure it out!

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#372

Post by benatkin »

orthecreedence wrote: post #196
benatkin wrote: post #89

Many will regret being distracted by the world's problems when they could have been building their lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxYt--CFXK0 > Looking back, my only Berklee classmates that got successful were the ones who were fiercely focused, determined, and undistractable. > While you’re here, presidents will change, the world will change, and the media will try to convince you how important it all is. >…

It's possible to build a life that attempts to solve the world's problems. Then you have personal accomplishments and meaningful social contribution. But your comment reads like "who cares about the planet we live on, just do whatever you want" which isn't really great advice or a particularly sustainable mindset. I'm getting strong Ayn Rand vibes.

> It's possible to build a life that attempts to solve the world's problems.

The mere attempting is what I think isn't especially worthwhile. Actually helping is worthwhile.

And if someone is building their life to somewhat directly solve these problems, then they aren't getting distracted. They may have chosen to become journalists or sustainability experts.

Ditto if they're in a field like music paying attention but not so much attention that they're distracted. Their contributions to society within their field can often indirectly help.

I see people who are pulled in a lot of different directions by their heartstrings and I don't think it's effective. Many latch on to someone like Bernie or Andrew Yang. Sivers said "the media" and I think right now it's social media. And I'm distracted by it as well. I'm going to have to do something deliberate to cut my social media distraction.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#373

Post by xeornet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #360
xeornet wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. It's incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. I wonder how we would react if the soviet union was tipped to expand into Mexico. https://www.cato.org/commentary/four-western-provocations-le... That being said, this is the wrong forum for this both in terms of audience and topic. Awaiting the mass downvotes for an argument that holds merit…

> The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. No, it was created by the Russian Federation invading Ukraine in 2014. It was exacerbated by the Russian Federation launching a larger scale, broader invasion in 2022. > It’s incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. Whether or not there is some standard by which some other actor is “malicious”, Russia is, in fact, the aggressor in the w…

You clearly didn’t read what I posted and just repeat what we’re told on this side of the world.

That was the point, it was shut down - great! But to think that NATO expansion is not seen as a threat to Russia, having nukes on their doorstep is silly. And Ukraine creeping slowly closer to admission is a step too far for Russia.

“President Putin has made Ukraine's preliminary steps to joining NATO the principal grounds for the Russian invasion of Feb. 24, 2022.”

If a NATO-like power controlled by Russia was on our doorstep, we would do the same thing.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#374

Post by racional »

xeornet wrote: post #373
dragonwriter wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. No, it was created by the Russian Federation invading Ukraine in 2014. It was exacerbated by the Russian Federation launching a larger scale, broader invasion in 2022. > It’s incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. Whether or not there is some standard by which some other actor is “malicious”, Russia is, in fact, the aggressor in the w…

You clearly didn’t read what I posted and just repeat what we’re told on this side of the world. That was the point, it was shut down - great! But to think that NATO expansion is not seen as a threat to Russia, having nukes on their doorstep is silly. And Ukraine creeping slowly closer to admission is a step too far for Russia. “President Putin has made Ukraine's preliminary steps to joining NATO the principal ground…

That's what Putin said were his reasons. Does that mean they actually were the reasons?

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#375

Post by shkkmo »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #99
shkkmo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, I think the standard of living, at least in the long-term and for the many future climate refugees, is not actually that much improved. Compared to what? Where do you draw the line of the "pre" technology? Technology has been as part of human society since before we invented history. Do you have a specific point after which you think technology became a net negative? Do you think thinks were fine pre-indu…

A better way to think of it is in terms of proportions, I guess. To wit, the negative effects of technology are simply an increasing function of how advanced it is. There is no need to think in terms of "pre" or "post" good technology. As it becomes more powerful, we need greater wisdom to control it. And of course, we completely lack that wisdom.

> To wit, the negative effects of technology are simply an increasing function of how advanced it is.

Laughably easy to disprove. Gunpowder is less sinpler and older than antibiotics and sterilization techniques. Are you saying that somehow the negative effects of saving people from lethal and debilitating infections outweighs the negative effects of greatly increasing the our ability to kill eachother?

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#376

Post by shkkmo »

NateEag wrote: post #161
shkkmo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, I think the standard of living, at least in the long-term and for the many future climate refugees, is not actually that much improved. Compared to what? Where do you draw the line of the "pre" technology? Technology has been as part of human society since before we invented history. Do you have a specific point after which you think technology became a net negative? Do you think thinks were fine pre-indu…

> The only sensible way to draw a rational technophobic line is to look at specific technologies and their effects and decide if your life will be better or worse with each. Interesting to note that this is what the Amish actually do. The popular depiction is of people who blindly live as if they're in the 1790s, but it is not that simple. The various Amish communities all do things slightly different from one anothe…

> Interesting to note that this is what the Amish actually do.

It is indeed. I would argue that many people make this choice; we pick which technologies and tools make our lives better. The right and ability do this is one that I think our society would do well to protect as it promotes freedom, accessibility and choice.

The Amish differ only in doing it as a more cohesive social group and on a larger scale.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#377

Post by nordstreem »

sexy_seedbox wrote: post #160
rqtwteye wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point we can’t rely on ever growing populations. It may be painful for a while but at some point growth has to stop.

> growth has to stop But unlimited growth is always on the menu for startups and companies! Investors, am I right?! /s

[dead]

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#378

Post by dragonwriter »

xeornet wrote: post #373
dragonwriter wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. No, it was created by the Russian Federation invading Ukraine in 2014. It was exacerbated by the Russian Federation launching a larger scale, broader invasion in 2022. > It’s incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. Whether or not there is some standard by which some other actor is “malicious”, Russia is, in fact, the aggressor in the w…

You clearly didn’t read what I posted and just repeat what we’re told on this side of the world. That was the point, it was shut down - great! But to think that NATO expansion is not seen as a threat to Russia, having nukes on their doorstep is silly. And Ukraine creeping slowly closer to admission is a step too far for Russia. “President Putin has made Ukraine's preliminary steps to joining NATO the principal ground…

> “President Putin has made Ukraine's preliminary steps to joining NATO the principal grounds for the Russian invasion of Feb. 24, 2022.”

The escalation in 2022 was an attempt to complete the war started in 2014; Ukraine had abandoned efforts to join NATO years before Russia started the war and only returned to them after the invasion in which Russia directly occupied a large portion of the country and used proxy, mercenary, and regular forces under false flags to contest another large portion.

“They are trying to get help to defend themselves in the war of aggression we started and have been waging continuously for 8 years” may well be the actual reason for the aggressor escalating the forces committed to that war, but its easy enough to stop people from feeling the need to defend themselves from a war of aggression by, you know, not doing them.

Analyzing the Russia-Ukraine war as if it started in 2022 makes as much sense as analyzing the Israel-Palestine war as if it started in 2023.

> If a NATO-like power controlled by Russia was on our doorstep, we would do the same thing.

Well, maybe the US could just not wage long wars of aggression against its neighbors, and then they wouldn't feel the need to turn to this “NATO-like power” (which would never exist, because Russia is a crap ally, as evidenced by their attempt to create a NATO-like alliance with the CSTO.)

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#379

Post by bryanlarsen »

rgmerk wrote: post #349
bryanlarsen wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that they have a relatively easy lever they can pull to significantly lower emissions even further.

Undoing dumb rules that favour existing vested interests is hard everywhere. I mean, the US doesn't exactly cover itself in glory in its own utility regulations. "cost-of-service" regulation means that monopoly utilities are allowed to charge such that they make a regulated rate of return on the cost of providing the service. So the more they increase their costs, the more money they are permitted to make!

"Relatively easy" is a poor phrasing choice on my part. It's still very hard, but it's one of the easiest in a list of really hard tasks. Solving climate change involves a lot of really hard problems.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#380

Post by [deleted] »

xeornet wrote: post #373
dragonwriter wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The war in Ukraine was created by the US/Nato. No, it was created by the Russian Federation invading Ukraine in 2014. It was exacerbated by the Russian Federation launching a larger scale, broader invasion in 2022. > It’s incredibly naive to assume that Russia was the sole malicious actor here. Whether or not there is some standard by which some other actor is “malicious”, Russia is, in fact, the aggressor in the w…

You clearly didn’t read what I posted and just repeat what we’re told on this side of the world. That was the point, it was shut down - great! But to think that NATO expansion is not seen as a threat to Russia, having nukes on their doorstep is silly. And Ukraine creeping slowly closer to admission is a step too far for Russia. “President Putin has made Ukraine's preliminary steps to joining NATO the principal ground…

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