Sounds like you've got this all figured out buddy, global warming must be a big hoax because some of the people who think it's real are blowhards and/or poorly informed. There's none of that on the other side!
But more seriously, the "correct" temperature is what works well for our currently established civilization, which is directly at or very slightly above pre-industrial levels. This is also why it should be no comfort that CO2 levels were higher when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
And yes, this means that in the far future we may have to counteract natural climate change to stay at the "correct" temperature.
I like "climate conspiracy theorists." It avoids the denier/denialist label that they dislike so much, and it's accurate since their beliefs all rely on the Evil Liberal Science Conspiracy.
Scott Adams makes two great mistakes in that blog post: The first is that he blames science instead of industry for industry-led pseudoscientific disinformation campaigns (diet and tobacco specifically, and presumably also climate). He lays it all at the feet of science for failing to overpower these efforts with hardly a finger shaken at industry. He is saying that science has a credibility problem because of industry's lies. That's bullshit.
The second is that he fails to see that the wrongness of science is relative. Apparently until some extremely stringent rightness threshold is passed, science's answers are uselessly wrong, and telling people to cut down on fatty foods to prevent obesity was as wrong as telling them that they're fat because they're full of demons. That's also bullshit.
There is really no long term stable outcome where rich people go Hunger Games on the poor and can maintain control AND modern luxury.
But unfortunately it can happen for an infinite number of short terms, where "short" is well over a human lifespan, making the long-term sustainability an academic issue to everyone involved.
There may even be a long-term stable system that can work not too far from the "hunger games" scenario - there are many countries where there is a small class of wealthy elites among a sea of poverty. The people aren't starving but they're not doing a whole lot better than that, and they've remained stable for many decades like this. If the elites could keep their greed in check and keep siphoning the same proportion of wealth from the populace instead of growing their share, who knows how long this could continue?
The economic improvements have all gone to an elite few in Africa, that's why there's been no effect. That's what you get when an economic boom happens at a time of staggering inequality. The US could've suffered the same fate if not for the New Deal policies.
I think it should be done, even if it did indeed lead to a massive decrease in employment. A sub-livable minimum wage is an unorganized form of corporate welfare, the rest of society has to pick up the slack for the underpaid workers one way or another. So end the corporate welfare and let the companies pay for the full price for labor. If it's so high that they switch to robots instead of paying people a livable wage, then it will hasten whatever solution is necessary rather than prolonging the problem.
Bibles and guns. He's a darling of the open-carry nutjobs and believes in roughly zero gun control. The issue hasn't received much media attention yet, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if he won the candidacy. Even in the US, this is a fringe position that most would find highly disagreeable. My guess is that he'd suddenly change his mind and move his position on gun control to somewhere within sight of "moderate."
Reforming capitalism to halt and reverse wealth concentration will only buy a little time. Automation is coming, to not augment, but replace human labor.
As far as anyone can tell, "Cultural Marxism" is just an angry far-right barking noise, the presumed advantage over "BARK BARK BARK!" being that it sounds like it could be more clever and meaningful, until you examine it. Its relationship to Marxism is completely unknown, and it's meaning, again, is so unclear that it might as well be an onomatopoeia for angry barking vaguely in the direction of vaguely leftist ideas.
Yep, this is very bad news, human society isn't nearly mature enough for life extension technology. Hopefully the effect on lifespan will be minimal, because all this can do right now is exacerbate inequality.
There has been no real scarcity of the goods needed for subsistence living in the US for decades now (yet people will insist today their standard of living is lover now than 30 years ago - post that insistently to social media using their smart phone, then go back to gaming on their HDTV).
Their standard of living IS lower. Those people are under crushing student debt and are struggling to afford a home, at best. That HDTV didn't cost any more than their grandparents' black-and-white CRT did adjusted for inflation, same with that smartphone vs. maybe a fancy watch their grandparents had that they can't even imagine buying. Their grandparents, on the other hand, comfortably bought a house possibly without even going to college, and then bought a new car or two like it was no big deal. Netflix and quadcopters do not make up for a shitty standard of living. This mindset really irks me.
Worst of all it suggests that technology has some hidden increased value that isn't reflected in the cost but should be accounted for by the poor. By these standards, the trailer-dwellers from Ready Player One should count their blessings for their fancy VR headsets as they waste away in squalor.
Unfortunately jamming DC-DC converters into every consumer device (with case mods, perhaps?) isn't as popular a solution as just continuing to buy disposable alkaline batteries.
Throughout all of human history we've been struggling with scarcity, maybe if we aren't things will change. If you can't compete on money which is easier: to find another medium of competition of which there are millions, or to burn down your very comfortable existence and take to the streets in revolt?
Creative work is under just as much threat as anything else from automation - you couldn't have missed the news on AIs composing music, creating paintings etc. Interior decorating could probably be replaced with a small shellscript and a variables file containing the latest trendy items and colors...OK I'm joking, but only half joking. In all seriousness I think it will be one of the first creative fields to be automated, and good riddance to overpaid, overhyped interior decorators.
Yes, it's really about getting around firewalls, not giving you any sort of anonymity.
To copy a great analogy another user made in the story about Facebook's.onion site launch, in terms of anonymity it's "like putting a condom over the car you drive to the whorehouse."
Let's say for the sake of argument that the scenario in the above video is correct - that the demand for human labor will drop dramatically. Then what?
Why can't people one-up each other in something other than material goods? Sports, intellectual pursuits, arts, for example?
As MightyYar said, the reason we don't have Li-ion rechargeable AA/AAA/C/D/9v batteries is because the voltages would be wrong simply due to the chemistry differences. Alkaline cells are 1.5V and lithium cells are 3.6V so the two will never align nicely for any combination of batteries you're likely to see in a consumer device.
Basic income isn't the same as printing/counterfeiting money, as in your example.
If for the sake of argument the government had the equivalent of 9x every citizen's savings in an account and added a zero to everyone's account by transferring the necessary amount into it, that also shouldn't cause inflation and everything shouldn't be more expensive the next day.
Of course by the time the patent ran out, NiMH batteries were already obsolete. Luckily it was a short-lived technology in terms of usefulness. Imagine if the patent were on Li-ion vehicle batteries instead.
North Korea's been hurting under the new sanctions. The amount of money that was almost stolen is insane for a person to steal but makes sense for a country (or more specifically, a military and ruling party) to steal. It was a well-organized effort involving many people. They were caught because of a mistake that an English-speaker wouldn't make.
This is the "rising tide causes inflation" theory. It would defy all currently understood theories of inflation. Something more like gentrification might happen, except nobody would be pushed out because the higher-income people "moving in" would be the current inhabitants.
There's a chance it might happen though, it would be the ultimate test of "supply and demand" vs. "what the market will bear." If businesses charges more simply because they think their customers can afford it, it means all that "supply and demand" stuff was a bunch of bullshit. I think this would most likely happen only with monopolies, so your ISP bill might suddenly fly up for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like you've got this all figured out buddy, global warming must be a big hoax because some of the people who think it's real are blowhards and/or poorly informed. There's none of that on the other side!
But more seriously, the "correct" temperature is what works well for our currently established civilization, which is directly at or very slightly above pre-industrial levels. This is also why it should be no comfort that CO2 levels were higher when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
And yes, this means that in the far future we may have to counteract natural climate change to stay at the "correct" temperature.
I like "climate conspiracy theorists." It avoids the denier/denialist label that they dislike so much, and it's accurate since their beliefs all rely on the Evil Liberal Science Conspiracy.
Scott Adams makes two great mistakes in that blog post: The first is that he blames science instead of industry for industry-led pseudoscientific disinformation campaigns (diet and tobacco specifically, and presumably also climate). He lays it all at the feet of science for failing to overpower these efforts with hardly a finger shaken at industry. He is saying that science has a credibility problem because of industry's lies. That's bullshit.
The second is that he fails to see that the wrongness of science is relative. Apparently until some extremely stringent rightness threshold is passed, science's answers are uselessly wrong, and telling people to cut down on fatty foods to prevent obesity was as wrong as telling them that they're fat because they're full of demons. That's also bullshit.
1 child per family leads to a ton of retirees and not enough workers to support them, ask China about that (or even look at Japan's problems).
2 children per family makes a lot more sense.
Here are some man-made mountains under construction:
http://www.southernfriedscienc...
There is really no long term stable outcome where rich people go Hunger Games on the poor and can maintain control AND modern luxury.
But unfortunately it can happen for an infinite number of short terms, where "short" is well over a human lifespan, making the long-term sustainability an academic issue to everyone involved.
There may even be a long-term stable system that can work not too far from the "hunger games" scenario - there are many countries where there is a small class of wealthy elites among a sea of poverty. The people aren't starving but they're not doing a whole lot better than that, and they've remained stable for many decades like this. If the elites could keep their greed in check and keep siphoning the same proportion of wealth from the populace instead of growing their share, who knows how long this could continue?
The economic improvements have all gone to an elite few in Africa, that's why there's been no effect. That's what you get when an economic boom happens at a time of staggering inequality. The US could've suffered the same fate if not for the New Deal policies.
I think it should be done, even if it did indeed lead to a massive decrease in employment. A sub-livable minimum wage is an unorganized form of corporate welfare, the rest of society has to pick up the slack for the underpaid workers one way or another. So end the corporate welfare and let the companies pay for the full price for labor. If it's so high that they switch to robots instead of paying people a livable wage, then it will hasten whatever solution is necessary rather than prolonging the problem.
I meant "moderate" by US standards, which is "cartoon cowboy" by international standards.
Heh, mod parent Insightful.
Bibles and guns. He's a darling of the open-carry nutjobs and believes in roughly zero gun control. The issue hasn't received much media attention yet, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if he won the candidacy. Even in the US, this is a fringe position that most would find highly disagreeable. My guess is that he'd suddenly change his mind and move his position on gun control to somewhere within sight of "moderate."
Reforming capitalism to halt and reverse wealth concentration will only buy a little time. Automation is coming, to not augment, but replace human labor.
Funny that the classic communist's defense has become so popular with those defending capitalism over the last few years...
As far as anyone can tell, "Cultural Marxism" is just an angry far-right barking noise, the presumed advantage over "BARK BARK BARK!" being that it sounds like it could be more clever and meaningful, until you examine it. Its relationship to Marxism is completely unknown, and it's meaning, again, is so unclear that it might as well be an onomatopoeia for angry barking vaguely in the direction of vaguely leftist ideas.
All we know is that it seems to have roots in a term invented by Nazi propagandists.
Yep, this is very bad news, human society isn't nearly mature enough for life extension technology. Hopefully the effect on lifespan will be minimal, because all this can do right now is exacerbate inequality.
There has been no real scarcity of the goods needed for subsistence living in the US for decades now (yet people will insist today their standard of living is lover now than 30 years ago - post that insistently to social media using their smart phone, then go back to gaming on their HDTV).
Their standard of living IS lower. Those people are under crushing student debt and are struggling to afford a home, at best. That HDTV didn't cost any more than their grandparents' black-and-white CRT did adjusted for inflation, same with that smartphone vs. maybe a fancy watch their grandparents had that they can't even imagine buying. Their grandparents, on the other hand, comfortably bought a house possibly without even going to college, and then bought a new car or two like it was no big deal. Netflix and quadcopters do not make up for a shitty standard of living. This mindset really irks me.
Worst of all it suggests that technology has some hidden increased value that isn't reflected in the cost but should be accounted for by the poor. By these standards, the trailer-dwellers from Ready Player One should count their blessings for their fancy VR headsets as they waste away in squalor.
Unfortunately jamming DC-DC converters into every consumer device (with case mods, perhaps?) isn't as popular a solution as just continuing to buy disposable alkaline batteries.
Throughout all of human history we've been struggling with scarcity, maybe if we aren't things will change. If you can't compete on money which is easier: to find another medium of competition of which there are millions, or to burn down your very comfortable existence and take to the streets in revolt?
Creative work is under just as much threat as anything else from automation - you couldn't have missed the news on AIs composing music, creating paintings etc. Interior decorating could probably be replaced with a small shellscript and a variables file containing the latest trendy items and colors...OK I'm joking, but only half joking. In all seriousness I think it will be one of the first creative fields to be automated, and good riddance to overpaid, overhyped interior decorators.
Yes, it's really about getting around firewalls, not giving you any sort of anonymity.
To copy a great analogy another user made in the story about Facebook's .onion site launch, in terms of anonymity it's "like putting a condom over the car you drive to the whorehouse."
I disagree strongly. People have been claiming this with every generation of [a]utomation, and they've been wrong for 400 years.
You sound like a horse in the early 1900s
Let's say for the sake of argument that the scenario in the above video is correct - that the demand for human labor will drop dramatically. Then what?
Why can't people one-up each other in something other than material goods? Sports, intellectual pursuits, arts, for example?
As MightyYar said, the reason we don't have Li-ion rechargeable AA/AAA/C/D/9v batteries is because the voltages would be wrong simply due to the chemistry differences. Alkaline cells are 1.5V and lithium cells are 3.6V so the two will never align nicely for any combination of batteries you're likely to see in a consumer device.
Basic income isn't the same as printing/counterfeiting money, as in your example.
If for the sake of argument the government had the equivalent of 9x every citizen's savings in an account and added a zero to everyone's account by transferring the necessary amount into it, that also shouldn't cause inflation and everything shouldn't be more expensive the next day.
Chevron's purchase of the patent on NiMH vehicle batteries is the closest example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course by the time the patent ran out, NiMH batteries were already obsolete. Luckily it was a short-lived technology in terms of usefulness. Imagine if the patent were on Li-ion vehicle batteries instead.
North Korea's been hurting under the new sanctions. The amount of money that was almost stolen is insane for a person to steal but makes sense for a country (or more specifically, a military and ruling party) to steal. It was a well-organized effort involving many people. They were caught because of a mistake that an English-speaker wouldn't make.
This is the "rising tide causes inflation" theory. It would defy all currently understood theories of inflation. Something more like gentrification might happen, except nobody would be pushed out because the higher-income people "moving in" would be the current inhabitants.
There's a chance it might happen though, it would be the ultimate test of "supply and demand" vs. "what the market will bear." If businesses charges more simply because they think their customers can afford it, it means all that "supply and demand" stuff was a bunch of bullshit. I think this would most likely happen only with monopolies, so your ISP bill might suddenly fly up for example.