The cost of nukes has not gone up. The cost of legal and bureaucratic issues related to nukes, due to irrational hysteria, has gone up.
Just dig out the blueprints from a 1960s nuke design and use them as is. The resulting power plant will be safer and better for the environment than wind and solar (because energy production per unit of materials is so much lower for wind and solar).
This sounds like good old "shiver in the dark" environmentalism. The problem is not what we do the environment, the problem is the original sin that humans commit by existing and enjoying their lives.
It worked fine with Javascript until they moved from image-tile-based maps to vector maps (each of the streets is drawn on the map one by one in Javascript, which allows for more customization, but is slower). This change is several years old, though. I don't notice any changes of significance in recent weeks.
With precise control of the cars, it should be feasible to get inter-car gaps down to only a few feet, or even to zero, locking them together into an ad-hoc, very temporary train. If we assume only one car per second, that's 480-960 people per minute, in the same ballpark as a subway. At 4.4 cars per second it could carry 2100 to 4200 people per minute.
Ah, but this is science fiction. Currently we don't know how to do this in a safe manner. Musk himself only projects 30 second headways, a far cry from 1 second or 0.23 second headways like you suggest.
Petrol usage creates pollution (volatile compounds and particulates which damage the brain and lungs, not just CO2). It also creates traffic which prevents other people from getting around the city. So taxing petrol to reduce usage is about the smartest thing to you can do. You take some of the damage and waste that driving does, and redirect that lost value to the city budget where it can do useful things (or allow other taxes to be reduced).
(Assuming you're smart enough) It's pretty easy to find a tech job where you really work less than half the time and have to pretend to be busy working the rest of the time. There is little that's more depressing than having to pass time doing busy work or nothing at all.
Speed does not effect road capacity. No matter what the speed, you have to keep a 2 second distance ("the 2 second rule") from the previous vehicle. This limits a road lane's capacity to 1800 vehicles per hour, at any speed.
(If traffic is stopped half the time due to a traffic light, then this number goes down to 900 vehicles per lane per hour. And in fact the value that traffic engineers typically use is 1000 vehicles per lane per hour, since not everyone keeps the whole 2 second distance.)
Double deckers are usually used for suburban and intercity rail, which need more space per passenger, because passengers expect to sit most of the way. Whereas for subways, whose trips are shorter and quicker, it is considered more acceptable for some of the passengers to stand. So trains are single level, decreasing construction (and rolling stock) costs.
Musk proposes that each vehicle carry only 8 to 16 passengers. A full subway train, in contrast, carries over 1000 passengers. Musk plans for a vehicle every 30 seconds, compared to every 90 seconds for a modern subway line. So Musk's system will be able to carry 16-32 people per minute, compared to a subway which carries around 700 people per minute.
Construction costs would also be higher for Musk's system. He plans for tunnels to have 14' diameter. However, subway tunnels are often constructed with 12' or smaller diameter. Musk claims to be lowering the cost of tunneling, but those cheap tunnels could be used for any purpose, including a subway.
At higher costs for a tiny fraction of the capacity, why would a city ever choose Musk's system?
The UK spends much less per person on health care than other Western countries. So no wonder there is a shortage of doctors for individual appointments. The obvious solution is to hire more doctors. But when the politicians refuse to pay for more doctors, the only alternative is group appointments.
If a road were clogged with traffic and thus moved very slowly, would you say that the road was a failure and thus no more roads should be built and this road should be narrowed or closed? That would be beyond stupid. What you would do is build another road (or perhaps a mass transit system to divert the travelers). Same here. When there is too much demand for a public service, that means you should provide more of the service, not less.
Judging from my experience editing Wikipedia, it's very easy for SOME of the project participants to realize that the interface is horrible. But there is always one participant who has an effective veto power who disagrees. Either they have so much experience with the project that the unintuitive things have become second nature, or else they are weird and don't understand how anyone else's mind works. Either way they are completely unreceptive to other people's complaints about the interface, and since they have veto power, nothing ever changes.
A double standard might be unfair or immoral, but it's not a logical fallacy.
Whataboutism seeks to prevent discussion of X, by interrupting with accusations of Y any time X is mentioned.
There should be plenty of time to discuss both X and Y. What's incompatible with logical argumentation is seeking to prevent discussion of X altogether.
This article proposes, instead of the UBI, something called "universal basic assets". Looking online, this seems to be a grab-bag of three things: 1) some form of income redistribution such as UBI, welfare, or progressive taxation, 2) government-provided services such as parks and libraries 3) nongovernment-provided services such as Wikipedia.
How exactly does UBA differ from UBI? Assets #2 and #3 already exist. #2 can be supplemented by adding new government services, #3 cannot be supplemented because it's what individuals choose to provide. As for #1, we all agree that income supplementation is or will become necessary, but in what form? If the income provided is by UBI, then UBA ends up being exactly the same as UBI. If the income is provided by some other means, what makes that means better than UBI?
In effect, the only difference between UBI and UBA is in the clarity of thinking. UBI identifies concrete problems (inequality is rising, some people are likely to end up without any marketable skills, government aid programs are inefficient) and proposes a concrete solution to all of them, with clear benefits and downsides that can be rationally debated. With UBA, in contrast, the thinking is a muddle and the only consistent idea is that capitalism is oppressive so we must look at the world in *some* way that is not capitalism. The 3 components have little in common, and seem lumped together only to provide the illusion that attempts (like UBI) to solve concrete problems are insufficient. As for the actual difficult problems that UBI tries to address, UBA doesn't bother to think about - it has no opinion on whether UBI or welfare or something else is best. Similarly, it does not provide any concrete suggestions for improving #2 or #3, the two other things it claims are
Bottom line: UBA and this article don't seriously attempt to solve any problems, all they do is try to divide the world into Marxist oppressors and oppressed, and sling insults like "slaveowners" at anyone who isn't sufficiently oppressed. This is not a recipe for anything positive in the world.
Humanities in recent decades *is* about tunnel vision. Everything has to serve a single political position. Any idea that could possibly serve an alternative political position is vilified, and anything that simply non-political is seen as a waste of time.
Bring more humanities majors into tech will give it more tunnel vision, not less.
Slashdot Mirror
Because highways are subsidized by the federal government more than rails are.
The cost of nukes has not gone up. The cost of legal and bureaucratic issues related to nukes, due to irrational hysteria, has gone up.
Just dig out the blueprints from a 1960s nuke design and use them as is. The resulting power plant will be safer and better for the environment than wind and solar (because energy production per unit of materials is so much lower for wind and solar).
This sounds like good old "shiver in the dark" environmentalism. The problem is not what we do the environment, the problem is the original sin that humans commit by existing and enjoying their lives.
It worked fine with Javascript until they moved from image-tile-based maps to vector maps (each of the streets is drawn on the map one by one in Javascript, which allows for more customization, but is slower). This change is several years old, though. I don't notice any changes of significance in recent weeks.
With precise control of the cars, it should be feasible to get inter-car gaps down to only a few feet, or even to zero, locking them together into an ad-hoc, very temporary train. If we assume only one car per second, that's 480-960 people per minute, in the same ballpark as a subway. At 4.4 cars per second it could carry 2100 to 4200 people per minute.
Ah, but this is science fiction. Currently we don't know how to do this in a safe manner. Musk himself only projects 30 second headways, a far cry from 1 second or 0.23 second headways like you suggest.
Nope, it's because they promise that someday they will be able to do it much faster/cheaper than before, but not yet.
FTFY
Petrol usage creates pollution (volatile compounds and particulates which damage the brain and lungs, not just CO2). It also creates traffic which prevents other people from getting around the city. So taxing petrol to reduce usage is about the smartest thing to you can do. You take some of the damage and waste that driving does, and redirect that lost value to the city budget where it can do useful things (or allow other taxes to be reduced).
Robert Moses, who tore up a bunch of New York City neighborhoods to build freeways, never drove a car. (He had a chauffeur drive him everywhere)
(Assuming you're smart enough) It's pretty easy to find a tech job where you really work less than half the time and have to pretend to be busy working the rest of the time. There is little that's more depressing than having to pass time doing busy work or nothing at all.
Speed does not effect road capacity. No matter what the speed, you have to keep a 2 second distance ("the 2 second rule") from the previous vehicle. This limits a road lane's capacity to 1800 vehicles per hour, at any speed.
(If traffic is stopped half the time due to a traffic light, then this number goes down to 900 vehicles per lane per hour. And in fact the value that traffic engineers typically use is 1000 vehicles per lane per hour, since not everyone keeps the whole 2 second distance.)
Double deckers are usually used for suburban and intercity rail, which need more space per passenger, because passengers expect to sit most of the way. Whereas for subways, whose trips are shorter and quicker, it is considered more acceptable for some of the passengers to stand. So trains are single level, decreasing construction (and rolling stock) costs.
Musk proposes that each vehicle carry only 8 to 16 passengers. A full subway train, in contrast, carries over 1000 passengers. Musk plans for a vehicle every 30 seconds, compared to every 90 seconds for a modern subway line. So Musk's system will be able to carry 16-32 people per minute, compared to a subway which carries around 700 people per minute.
Construction costs would also be higher for Musk's system. He plans for tunnels to have 14' diameter. However, subway tunnels are often constructed with 12' or smaller diameter. Musk claims to be lowering the cost of tunneling, but those cheap tunnels could be used for any purpose, including a subway.
At higher costs for a tiny fraction of the capacity, why would a city ever choose Musk's system?
The UK spends much less per person on health care than other Western countries. So no wonder there is a shortage of doctors for individual appointments. The obvious solution is to hire more doctors. But when the politicians refuse to pay for more doctors, the only alternative is group appointments.
If a road were clogged with traffic and thus moved very slowly, would you say that the road was a failure and thus no more roads should be built and this road should be narrowed or closed? That would be beyond stupid. What you would do is build another road (or perhaps a mass transit system to divert the travelers). Same here. When there is too much demand for a public service, that means you should provide more of the service, not less.
Is this bad management? Or just evil management?
Judging from my experience editing Wikipedia, it's very easy for SOME of the project participants to realize that the interface is horrible. But there is always one participant who has an effective veto power who disagrees. Either they have so much experience with the project that the unintuitive things have become second nature, or else they are weird and don't understand how anyone else's mind works. Either way they are completely unreceptive to other people's complaints about the interface, and since they have veto power, nothing ever changes.
The US has enough oil to avoid buying from nasty petrostates. But Europe and Asia don't.
They kidnapped US diplomats the last time they had a chance, they blew up hundreds of US soldiers last time they had a chance, they still make "Death to America a common slogan. I think the burden is on them to show they are no longer the US's enemy.
A double standard might be unfair or immoral, but it's not a logical fallacy.
Whataboutism seeks to prevent discussion of X, by interrupting with accusations of Y any time X is mentioned.
There should be plenty of time to discuss both X and Y. What's incompatible with logical argumentation is seeking to prevent discussion of X altogether.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the clerics apply the laws rationally and fairly. The problem is what the laws are in the first place.
On the contrary, gas and road taxes don't come close to paying for roads.
Similarly, it does not provide any concrete suggestions for improving #2 or #3, the two other things it claims are
...necessary for livelihood.
Wish you could edit comments here until the moment that they have been replied to or modded...
This article proposes, instead of the UBI, something called "universal basic assets". Looking online, this seems to be a grab-bag of three things: 1) some form of income redistribution such as UBI, welfare, or progressive taxation, 2) government-provided services such as parks and libraries 3) nongovernment-provided services such as Wikipedia.
How exactly does UBA differ from UBI? Assets #2 and #3 already exist. #2 can be supplemented by adding new government services, #3 cannot be supplemented because it's what individuals choose to provide. As for #1, we all agree that income supplementation is or will become necessary, but in what form? If the income provided is by UBI, then UBA ends up being exactly the same as UBI. If the income is provided by some other means, what makes that means better than UBI?
In effect, the only difference between UBI and UBA is in the clarity of thinking. UBI identifies concrete problems (inequality is rising, some people are likely to end up without any marketable skills, government aid programs are inefficient) and proposes a concrete solution to all of them, with clear benefits and downsides that can be rationally debated. With UBA, in contrast, the thinking is a muddle and the only consistent idea is that capitalism is oppressive so we must look at the world in *some* way that is not capitalism. The 3 components have little in common, and seem lumped together only to provide the illusion that attempts (like UBI) to solve concrete problems are insufficient. As for the actual difficult problems that UBI tries to address, UBA doesn't bother to think about - it has no opinion on whether UBI or welfare or something else is best. Similarly, it does not provide any concrete suggestions for improving #2 or #3, the two other things it claims are
Bottom line: UBA and this article don't seriously attempt to solve any problems, all they do is try to divide the world into Marxist oppressors and oppressed, and sling insults like "slaveowners" at anyone who isn't sufficiently oppressed. This is not a recipe for anything positive in the world.
Humanities in recent decades *is* about tunnel vision. Everything has to serve a single political position. Any idea that could possibly serve an alternative political position is vilified, and anything that simply non-political is seen as a waste of time.
Bring more humanities majors into tech will give it more tunnel vision, not less.
Well, the 1.3 billion people in India aren't eating many cows...
More seriously: didn't they figure out that adding seaweed to cow feed results in a massive decrease in cow methane production?