Reasons 2016 was a great year for humanity

Post by jsz0 » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 1:21 AM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #16

newswriter99 wrote: post #11

Some of these are objectively good, such as world literacy increasing, less pollution in the atmosphere or survival rates increasing for endangered species. Then it lost me with "Oh and smoking bans are good and global human population increases are good and also drilling=evil corporations so banning it across the board=good" Those are debatable. Not very politically neutral is it.

Less smoking is very good for the population health. While population increases are not good by themselves, all reduction in mortality is very good for everyone who has not to die. Interestingly this seems to have the consequence that the birth rates decline strongly as observed in many places. Drilling is not bad because of "evil corporations", but because it regularly is accompanied by harming the environment, be i…

Post by mistermann » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 5:41 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #64

mistermann wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're free to continue smoking in the privacy of your own home. Not where I live, was banned years ago.

Where is that, and is that in your own house or is it a apartment that is owned by a landlord/collection of tenants?

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 28, 2016, 3:36 PM UTC

estsauver wrote: post #65

candu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and hundreds of millions worldwide who have been saved from malaria or lifted out of extreme poverty would likely disagree with you: what good is super-human synthetic intelligence several decades from now (assuming that's even a tractable generalization of largely task-specific ML models) if you're not sure where your next meal comes from?

Well, I founded a startup that's using ML to help turn satellite data into credit risk profiles for the world's poorest farmers so we can sell them fertilizer and seed. So... I think tensor flow is going to be pretty great for the 1K farmers we're working with this year and ~50k we're going to try and reach next year.

Post by darkerside » Fri, Jan 06, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #63

darkerside wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to argue against public smoking bans being a huge positive for society. As long as it's legal in your own home, I don't have a problem with regulating it in public areas.

I disagree: telling consenting adults what they may and may not do _in private_ (because 'public smoking bans' have so far almost been bans on smoking in private establishments) is never good for society. And anyone who thinks that smoking in actual outdoor public spaces is a health threat is simply incorrect.