But again the key is that robots will be so much better at certain things as to make them far more valuable then a simple spreadsheet analysis might indicate. In the case of a robot cook, if it is always preparing food in an extremely consistent way and always there then you might think that it isn't much better than a chef who only misses 2 days a year and only has 2 off days per year. But the reality is that an off day or a long wait due to a missing cook could kill off a few regular customers resulting in a much larger loss than the few nights directly impacted.
It'll be a long time before a robot gets that reliable. And you still have to deal with licensing fees and such.
The problem with all this is that labor just isn't that expensive in most of the world while capital and raw materials are. So replacing a lost cost, reliable person with a high capital robotics system is not an improvement.
Robotics would have a lot less traction if the developed world hadn't driven up the cost of labor so much over the decades.
The fact that we suck at predicting when doesn't magically make it a non issue.
But it is a good indication that the issue is being blown out of proportion.
If anything, that makes it all the more scarier because we likely won't be expecting it when it does happen.
Sure, it'll really suck when we brush off that zombie outbreak or alien invasion because of all those Hollywood predictions. As I see it, being very wrong for decades at a time is not a good indication that you will ever be right.
That was the previous poster's point exactly. Here, we have a person demanding the end of petroleum-based anything without consideration for how dependent we are on oil or any replacement technologies.
The US hasn't used this data to physically harm anyone.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There are plenty of allegations that the US used the data for economic advantage, but no examples of specific operations that did so. And if such operations existed Snowden would have exposed them.
Because? Even though the extent of Snowden's revelations are astounding, it's still incredibly foolish to expect a single contractor sys admin to have access to all US intelligence operations.
Another example backing my statement. Note here that the IPCC doesn't even have justification for the 7 F (or 4C) increase by the end of 2100! That claim is based on models which are already overstating temperature increases.
And a 21 F (12 C) degree warming in three centuries? Where's that coming from? We're not burning enough fossil fuels now to make the necessary number of doublings. That means we have to see enough of an increase in methane, CFCs, or other greenhouse gases to make it.
Looks like more FUD from the climate change propaganda machine to me.
Ok, where? I just see at that Wikipedia article a bit of discussion about James Hansen claiming that temperature sensitivity could suddenly jump a slight bit above the current range with his usual lack of justification for why that would happen. He routinely claims disaster scenarios with little to no justification.
The researchers think differently and I agree with them here. There are a huge number of stars slowly going through the early stages of becoming a red giant right now. It's quite possible that none of those stars have ever had life.
Nobody has indicated a scenario by which this could happen. At a long term temperature sensitivity of 3C per doubling and three doublings in half a millennium, you still are speaking of a mere 9C increase over today, most of which would occur in the colder parts of the world. It's not going to make the world uninhabitable.
Then get ready for price shocks and the crash to end all crashes as we run out of what little is left in mere decades, and not that many.
Why will that happen? We're already seeing one effect of "peak oil" that precludes that: higher oil prices when adjusted for inflation. For example, current oil prices are roughly 4 times more expensive when adjusted for inflation than they were in the 90s.
Again, while I agree in general with the previous post, your point has nothing to do with the relative viability of wind, solar, and fusion.
One can subsidize wind and solar, no matter how misguided that policy might be, and get more wind and solar generation. Fusion isn't to the point where it generates net power, much less is something which could be increased in supply with subsidies.
Why you did it doesn't matter. It doesn't change what you did.
Look back at your original post. No indication that criticism of the US is the only sort of criticism that applies. I think this is just another case of shifting goal posts. By the terms of that post, my "why" matters because it fits what you were describing as "criticism".
I was criticizing the original poster because their criticism was just plain wrong, and because because it indicated that they held a deeply erroneous idea in their skull which would (contrary to your assertion about the non-zero sum nature of holding bad ideas) crowd out good ideas. That holds with the ideals of "efficiency and productivity" which you mention in that past post.
Using shills to push your agenda is not having a public discussion.
Looks like one to me. Shilling has long been a feature of public discussion.
That invalidates their participation, as they are not honest, but instead deceitful.
And if they were "open" rather than deceitful, then their participation would be invalidated on different grounds. When you're forced to wear the black hat, you have no grounds on which to have valid public discussion.
Imagine the nerve of suggesting that people might not only live off the grid, they could invest their money in a means of production and then sell that product!
It's not a market. The purchaser is forced by law to buy the power.
Ok, I don't get the point of your link to a Wikipedia article about Germany's rather misguided energy plans. Base load power is not provided by wind or solar power in the proposed systems. In the link you mention, the base load is provided by foreign power generators, here, central Europe coal power and French nuclear power. Germany just succeeded in exporting base load power generation to neighboring countries.
As the Wikipedia article indicates, one result is extremely expensive German power for non-industrial uses. Reading some of the references provided, it appears that the residential electricity bill has doubled due to the cost of taxes and renewable energy subsidies.
Going back to earlier in the thread, I asserted that such subsidies indicate that wind and solar are viable in a way that fusion power isn't. Because they indicate that with a substantial drop in the cost of wind and solar, say a factor of 2, makes them naturally competitive with the other sources of power.
But suppose half of Germany's electricity bill went to fusion power generation subsidies. It'd still be a while before there was actual fusion power generation.
The GP is right that there are universal morals, he's just got the wrong moral. The universal moral isn't treat others like you would want to be treated. The universal moral is "exclude those you don't like", for whatever reason
Even if that were true, and it isn't, not everyone dislikes the same people. Second, "exclusion" is overly broad with a vast range of possible behaviors. I might "exclude" you by mildly disagreeing with what you say. Pol Pot might "exclude" you by dumping your corpse in a field.
As he noted, it's two steps. For example, my stride is roughly 9 paces in 50 feet (1 2/3 meters per pace roughly) which is 5500-5600 feet per 1000 paces.
I think a big part of any near future fix for the website will be a massive cull of features and functionality. For example, a number of features, perhaps even the entire website, could be handled by a human operator. They could have a few tens of thousands of "trained" operators in makeshift offices with the necessary telecommunication equipment and liability protection inside of a month, should they chose to go that route.
So I could see, for example, the entire website reduced to a shell which might collect some user data or discuss health insurance options with the eventual transaction handled over the phone.
So to go with the common analogy around here, instead of one woman having a baby in nine months, they'll have nine women hold babies for a month and leave the big fixes for next year or later.
Fact: It still won't work as base power, because materials do not allow us to build a gearbox that would survive high wind conditions long enough to be workable. I.e. modern turbines can only work with certain wind speeds, and are massively crippled by the RPM range of their gearboxes.
Wind isn't base load power and isn't used in that way. Even if we did get the technology to handle any wind speed, wind power still wouldn't qualify as base load power.
Slashdot Mirror
But again the key is that robots will be so much better at certain things as to make them far more valuable then a simple spreadsheet analysis might indicate. In the case of a robot cook, if it is always preparing food in an extremely consistent way and always there then you might think that it isn't much better than a chef who only misses 2 days a year and only has 2 off days per year. But the reality is that an off day or a long wait due to a missing cook could kill off a few regular customers resulting in a much larger loss than the few nights directly impacted.
It'll be a long time before a robot gets that reliable. And you still have to deal with licensing fees and such.
The problem with all this is that labor just isn't that expensive in most of the world while capital and raw materials are. So replacing a lost cost, reliable person with a high capital robotics system is not an improvement.
Robotics would have a lot less traction if the developed world hadn't driven up the cost of labor so much over the decades.
The fact that we suck at predicting when doesn't magically make it a non issue.
But it is a good indication that the issue is being blown out of proportion.
If anything, that makes it all the more scarier because we likely won't be expecting it when it does happen.
Sure, it'll really suck when we brush off that zombie outbreak or alien invasion because of all those Hollywood predictions. As I see it, being very wrong for decades at a time is not a good indication that you will ever be right.
That was the previous poster's point exactly. Here, we have a person demanding the end of petroleum-based anything without consideration for how dependent we are on oil or any replacement technologies.
The US hasn't used this data to physically harm anyone.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There are plenty of allegations that the US used the data for economic advantage, but no examples of specific operations that did so. And if such operations existed Snowden would have exposed them.
Because? Even though the extent of Snowden's revelations are astounding, it's still incredibly foolish to expect a single contractor sys admin to have access to all US intelligence operations.
Another example backing my statement. Note here that the IPCC doesn't even have justification for the 7 F (or 4C) increase by the end of 2100! That claim is based on models which are already overstating temperature increases.
And a 21 F (12 C) degree warming in three centuries? Where's that coming from? We're not burning enough fossil fuels now to make the necessary number of doublings. That means we have to see enough of an increase in methane, CFCs, or other greenhouse gases to make it.
Looks like more FUD from the climate change propaganda machine to me.
Ok, where? I just see at that Wikipedia article a bit of discussion about James Hansen claiming that temperature sensitivity could suddenly jump a slight bit above the current range with his usual lack of justification for why that would happen. He routinely claims disaster scenarios with little to no justification.
The researchers think differently and I agree with them here. There are a huge number of stars slowly going through the early stages of becoming a red giant right now. It's quite possible that none of those stars have ever had life.
Nobody has indicated a scenario by which this could happen. At a long term temperature sensitivity of 3C per doubling and three doublings in half a millennium, you still are speaking of a mere 9C increase over today, most of which would occur in the colder parts of the world. It's not going to make the world uninhabitable.
But no really, I think it's only a matter of time before we overcome the conceit that the speed of light is inexorably tied to causality.
It's not the conceit you need to worry about. It's the evidence.
Then get ready for price shocks and the crash to end all crashes as we run out of what little is left in mere decades, and not that many.
Why will that happen? We're already seeing one effect of "peak oil" that precludes that: higher oil prices when adjusted for inflation. For example, current oil prices are roughly 4 times more expensive when adjusted for inflation than they were in the 90s.
Again, while I agree in general with the previous post, your point has nothing to do with the relative viability of wind, solar, and fusion.
One can subsidize wind and solar, no matter how misguided that policy might be, and get more wind and solar generation. Fusion isn't to the point where it generates net power, much less is something which could be increased in supply with subsidies.
This isn't a natural limit, it's one imposed by the law.
And your own decisions.
It sounds like you may have agreed to limit your choices by living where you do.
Why you did it doesn't matter. It doesn't change what you did.
Look back at your original post. No indication that criticism of the US is the only sort of criticism that applies. I think this is just another case of shifting goal posts. By the terms of that post, my "why" matters because it fits what you were describing as "criticism".
I was criticizing the original poster because their criticism was just plain wrong, and because because it indicated that they held a deeply erroneous idea in their skull which would (contrary to your assertion about the non-zero sum nature of holding bad ideas) crowd out good ideas. That holds with the ideals of "efficiency and productivity" which you mention in that past post.
And you are forced by law to buy his power.
Not at all. You can always live off the grid.
How about not implementing this nightmare at all?
Not going to happen. Maybe the disease will be the cure.
Using shills to push your agenda is not having a public discussion.
Looks like one to me. Shilling has long been a feature of public discussion.
That invalidates their participation, as they are not honest, but instead deceitful.
And if they were "open" rather than deceitful, then their participation would be invalidated on different grounds. When you're forced to wear the black hat, you have no grounds on which to have valid public discussion.
Imagine the nerve of suggesting that people might not only live off the grid, they could invest their money in a means of production and then sell that product!
It's not a market. The purchaser is forced by law to buy the power.
Ok, I don't get the point of your link to a Wikipedia article about Germany's rather misguided energy plans. Base load power is not provided by wind or solar power in the proposed systems. In the link you mention, the base load is provided by foreign power generators, here, central Europe coal power and French nuclear power. Germany just succeeded in exporting base load power generation to neighboring countries.
As the Wikipedia article indicates, one result is extremely expensive German power for non-industrial uses. Reading some of the references provided, it appears that the residential electricity bill has doubled due to the cost of taxes and renewable energy subsidies.
Going back to earlier in the thread, I asserted that such subsidies indicate that wind and solar are viable in a way that fusion power isn't. Because they indicate that with a substantial drop in the cost of wind and solar, say a factor of 2, makes them naturally competitive with the other sources of power.
But suppose half of Germany's electricity bill went to fusion power generation subsidies. It'd still be a while before there was actual fusion power generation.
You're critical of people being critical of the US.
And I had good reason for doing so. Very misguided criticism just gets in the way of well placed criticism.
The GP is right that there are universal morals, he's just got the wrong moral. The universal moral isn't treat others like you would want to be treated. The universal moral is "exclude those you don't like", for whatever reason
Even if that were true, and it isn't, not everyone dislikes the same people. Second, "exclusion" is overly broad with a vast range of possible behaviors. I might "exclude" you by mildly disagreeing with what you say. Pol Pot might "exclude" you by dumping your corpse in a field.
As he noted, it's two steps. For example, my stride is roughly 9 paces in 50 feet (1 2/3 meters per pace roughly) which is 5500-5600 feet per 1000 paces.
I think a big part of any near future fix for the website will be a massive cull of features and functionality. For example, a number of features, perhaps even the entire website, could be handled by a human operator. They could have a few tens of thousands of "trained" operators in makeshift offices with the necessary telecommunication equipment and liability protection inside of a month, should they chose to go that route.
So I could see, for example, the entire website reduced to a shell which might collect some user data or discuss health insurance options with the eventual transaction handled over the phone.
So to go with the common analogy around here, instead of one woman having a baby in nine months, they'll have nine women hold babies for a month and leave the big fixes for next year or later.
Fact: It still won't work as base power, because materials do not allow us to build a gearbox that would survive high wind conditions long enough to be workable. I.e. modern turbines can only work with certain wind speeds, and are massively crippled by the RPM range of their gearboxes.
Wind isn't base load power and isn't used in that way. Even if we did get the technology to handle any wind speed, wind power still wouldn't qualify as base load power.
You're talking about either liars, who are amoral, or sociopaths, who I already exempted.
Then you just excluded a lot of people, perhaps even everyone, depending on your definitions of "liar" and "sociopath".