Many people are technophobic. Don't want to plug in a motherboard, don't want viruses & malware
Are you suggesting that one must be a technophobe to "not want viruses and malware"?:)
The stuff you've listed isn't about "technophobia," it's about "not wanting to spend several hours a week dicking with settings &/or virus scans on your computer." One need not be a technophobe to have things other than building their own computer rigs that they'd rather be doing.
I would agree with just about everything you've said, though I would question further on one particular point:
I'm not talking about taking things out of context.
I'll be honest, I often see people doing just what I referenced - lumping together two separate people as "THE REPUBLICANS", and turning those two people into a caricature of "what conservatives think." (And to be fair, again, conservatives often do the same to Democrats). If single individuals are being self-inconsistent with their statements, that is certainly a cause for... concern? further questioning? even ridicule, if necessary. But as you said too, you have to consider what the issue actually is, and what's at stake.
When I said "out of context," I wasn't using the term to mean the equivalent of turning this: "President Obama said, 'I am not a Muslim, I am a Christian.'" Into this: "President Obama said, 'I am [...] a Muslim.'"
What I was trying to say is, the statements are taken out of the larger "context" of his full rationale and reasoning - in other words, two quick sound-bite-worthy statements may appear contradictory, but if you dig a little deeper to understand the full position, it's often not as clear-cut as that. I saw Pres. Obama make more or less the two statements I cited in my last post in a speech on healthcare, and it was sort of humorous, because I sat there thinking, "Gee, I wonder how long until Rush Limbaugh is spouting off about those two comments?"
But if you're replying to me in order to suggest that I'm not doing those things, I think you're off-base. I'm not picking apart some particular instance where a single person misspoke, but rather I'm pointing out some of the self-contradictions in the theories of modern "conservative" thought.
No, my post wasn't directed specifically at you, my post was more geared to the general "you", as in, "people". I certainly wouldn't say you've been guilty of shooting from the hip - your post was thoughtful and well expressed, my apologies if it came out like I was railing *at you* specifically.
By my calculations, this means they've taken 2.5 months, which means they're about 5 years, 9.5 months ahead of schedule if they follow the 6 year benchmark set by the Linux kernel.
And to be fair, there's a lot of the same thing coming from Democrats, too. This doesn't make it right on either side, but let's not portray it as something that only happens on one side of the aisle.
You're lumping together a bunch of individuals saying these things, and saying "the Republican party line" is contradictory - and in many cases, it's not the same person espousing the contradictory views. Person A says "They're all corrupt;" Person B says "They're naive and have no idea how the world works" - they both identify as Republicans... is this contradictory? or simply evidence of the obvious fact that different people have different interpretations of the world?
Are "the democrats" engaging in double-think when Pres. Obama says, "We're going to fix healthcare, and make it better for everybody!" and then in the next breath, hastens to assure people that "Nothing about your current healthcare will change!" (What? If you're fixing it, and making it better, how come everything will stay the same?!) You and I both know that's not what he *means*, but when taken at face value and out of context, those statements are definitely in conflict with one another.
As I said before, a lot of the problem is the bumper-sticker / twitter update mentality people have today. We're constantly looking for the "AHA! GOTCHA!" moment that will allow us to "win," for some definition of "win." We don't even let the other guy articulate his point before we're jumping down his throat telling him how heartless/unpatriotic/barbaric/unfeeling/whatever he is. Conversation and civil debate is -- apparently -- a lost art these days, and its passing is not a good thing for the state of our union. Next time you're confronted with a single person espousing apparently contradictory positions... talk to them. Don't raise your voice, don't shoot from the hip - make a genuine attempt to understand what they're *really* trying to say - challenge their assumptions in a civil manner, and don't let your disagreement take control. You may find that there are some good points expressed poorly in there, or you may find that there is a mess of fear-based contradictions. Either way, you come out a winner from that experience: you either have learned some new things from the good points, or you better understand the mindset you're competing with.
Most people are not so well spoken that they say *exactly* what they mean when they say it. You're not, I'm not, and with the possible exceptions of Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill, maybe nobody's ever been. So engage in a dialogue, not in a shouting match. Learn what words YOU use are hot-button words that will cause the other person to get defensive - and *try not to use them*. Learn what words THEY use that are hot-button words for you, and try to learn to control your temper when they are used.
In other words - set the example that our politicians should be following. Stop encouraging them to be a bunch of mindless PR machines spitting out the same tired wedge issues and talking points - because just about every single one of them does it these days to one degree or another.
Hmm... so are you suggesting we should say "fuck the poor" and let them die off? Or maybe hasten the process, and drop a few nukes on them?
Because if you're not willing to do that, the only solution is to press forward with education and economic development, and develop technologies that will allow the poorer countries to develop in less destructive ways, as well as giving them the information & motivation to begin limiting their own reproduction as well.
Of course they would. The point is, all the moaning about "no resources" is bullshit. It's not a matter of not having the space and resources to support current human population levels, and evidence suggests that population growth rates are declining, especially so in the technologically advanced countries. Imagine that - perhaps technology, and enough understanding of the world around us, allows us to self-limit population growth at a reasonable level?
It seems to be the case. Perhaps we should focus on that, and stop suggesting that killing off huge swaths of the human race would be the better solution.
C'mon... "Tragedy of the commons"? THE original one, Hardin 1968?
I'm sorry, so because somebody wrote a paper on a problem he saw in 1968, there's no chance of a solution to that problem being developed that doesn't involve mass murder or mass suicide? Because I don't see much chance for any solution that doesn't involve "technology to develop alternatives and sustainable usage models" amounting to much more than that.
So, since you've identified that the solution MUST be political in nature, that means you must have some notion of what it should look like, since you know what it MUST be. Please outline it for us.
Yes, it is. You seem to think that your ideology which demands that mankind devolve back to a state of nature, and at the same time kill off, what, 90%, of our population, is a reasonable solution to the problem. I disagree with that idea, so yeah, it's definitely an issue of ideology.
As I suggested to oodaloop - if your solution calls for mass suicide or mass murder, by all means, go right ahead and try to start a trend by killing yourself to alleviate the burden on mother earth. If you're not willing to kill yourself, or take responsibility for suggesting that you wish to kill off millions or billions of people, I'm not interested in hearing you flap your gums about "the population problem" while you take technology off the table as a solution.
Turn off the computer, leave your house, and go live off the land in the "environmentally friendly" manner you seem to think that is appropriate to humans, foregoing medicine, agriculture, and all of the other accoutrements of modern life - and good luck learning to hunt, fish, and grow your own food without someone else doing it for you. If you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is, then you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.
Nowhere did I say "the world as it is is perfect" - I said the problems we are facing are problems of technology - not problems of "no resources being available". The poor Kenyan is not struggling to find food because "no land to grow food exists." The poor Kenyan is struggling because he is poor, and because his technology is poor.
Unless you're truly going to own the suggestion that, since the Kenyan's life is difficult, it would be preferable if he & his children were dead, you can go fuck yourself, you hypocrite twat. I'd talk about your nick and what it says about you, but you're apparently too chickenshit to own your genocidal environmentalism by posting under your own name.
Gee, you sure got me there. I have no idea! Where could we find energy sources that are not based on importing fossil fuels? It would be so great if those weren't the only sources of energy available to us, but I guess since there aren't any, it's the end of the world as we know it. We had a good run while it lasted, though!
But population is stabilizing... so perhaps you should be wondering why that is, instead of declaring mass death is the only way to solve the problem?
News flash: Even if there are 1000 people on earth, people are still going to want to have a nice place to live, decent clothing, good food; we're still going to "disrupt" our environment, because that is how humans survive - we adapt the materials in our environments to serve our needs. Thus the problem becomes "intractable" because you've defined it as unable to be solved via the only tools we have available to us - our minds, and our ability to change our surroundings to fit us.
Humans are technologists. That's our survival mechanism - we make clothes to stay warm, weapons to defend ourselves, we build shelter to protect ourselves from the elements, we plant trees and raise livestock to feed ourselves. When you start off with the assumption that technology cannot be used to solve problems, that it will only cause them, of course the only solution is death - you've taken away the only way man can survive.
... And as I demonstrated through the wonders of mathematics, we could fit *everybody presently on earth,* all ~7 billion of them, into cities with the same population density as New York City, and that city would occupy a space roughly as big as Texas, leaving absolutely NOBODY living anywhere else.
Think finding open land to use as farmland would really be that much of an issue?
Nothing to see here? Will you say the same thing when Microsoft waits 6 years to apply a fix to WinXP?:)
Yes, these things are less likely to happen with Linux. That doesn't mean Linux kernel processes are above reproach, and can't be made more responsive & accountable in cases like this where somebody obviously dropped the ball on merging a patch somewhere. I hope they spend a little time reviewing how this got missed, to make sure it's not a flaw in their process that could allow it to happen again.
Not sure how that setting defaults - it's ambiguous, and I haven't seen an explanation of it yet, whether or not it's something you have to explicitly opt-in or opt-out of.
Knowing facebook, you probably have to opt-out. However, it still requires you or someone you've friended to check you in from their mobile device before any of these concerns are relevant in the least.
The point is, you're not much of a genius if you're ineffective at what you're doing.
This assumes that "thinking" = "doing", and is demonstrably not the case.
Here's one you'll probably agree with: Karl Rove was a "diabolical genius" who proved pretty ineffective in guaranteeing republican control of the federal government for a long time forward... he had brilliant tactical insights about how to win the elections and run campaigns... and yet he still proved to be ultimately ineffective in achieving his goal.
It's the old "win the battle, lose the war" scenario - you can be a brilliant tactician, and still ultimately fail for strategic reasons.
Please explain how your hypothesis accounts for the fact that population growth is self-limiting in the most advanced ("first world") countries, while Africa, Southeastern Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America ("developing and third world") are contributing the most to population growth?
Our population would still be "blossoming," if at a slower rate, without technology, because that's the nature of population growth - it's not a straight line, or an asymptotic curve - it's exponential growth, until some other external limiting factor levels it off.
I think we all understand that we cannot continue to grow exponentially forever - but the solution is not to kill people off, the solution is to learn how to stabilize the population in such a manner that we are not destroying the environment we need to live in.
And the way we do that is NOT by saying "get rid of technology, it's just going to ruin things." In a "humane" world, the limiting factor will be education and reproductive choice across multiple generations, both given to us by technology - the ability to have a good standard of living, and support a family, and understand that "many children" is not the way to have that in the long run.
I'm not interested in living in an inhumane world where we let people die because "there's too many people," or where we shrug our shoulders as a new black plague decimates the population that's too poor to afford medicine.
It always blows my mind when I hear apparently-liberal environmentalists espouse this sort of philosophy, where "technology = evil" and "man = parasite", then go on to proclaim in the next series of breaths that war is evil (why? you reduce the population!), universal healthcare is a right (why? it's just more mouths to feed, let them die!), and feeding & housing the poor is the duty of every moral human being (why? it'd be more moral to address this overpopulation crisis you're so self-righteous about!).
The reason you have no workable solution to offer is that you're a hypocrite: you want people to die off, but you're too afraid to embrace your attitude fully and actually lay out criteria for culling the population. And make no mistake - that *is* what you are suggesting when you say that "technology is no solution, it's the problem," and that it's why "we're overpopulated." In other words, you feel that driving a prius is no solution, but mass graves, genocide, and complete indifference to the suffering of your fellow humans might just be.
Because technologically advanced countries, with their higher standards of living & higher literacy & education standards are NOT the countries contributing the lion's share of population growth, by and large. In fact, I remember reading that some European countries actually have declining populations, when you factor out immigration from other countries as an increase to their populations.
Your assertion that it's "always been the case until now" is not borne out by the facts. A population's growth will tend to stabilize or even decline as education and living standards for that population increase - we've seen this case play out repeatedly in industrialized countries.
Of course there's a practical limit to growth - and we are well short of it. The earth's land masses have a surface area of ~150 million km square - 1.5x10^14 square meters; with 7 billion people on earth, that translates to roughly 20,000 square meters per person, or 47 people per square kilometer. I think you'll find that population densities in quite-livable cities regularly exceed that - New York's density is roughly 11,000 / km2. Even if the average population density on earth doubled to 100 per square kilometer, we still would be nowhere near having a world that is one giant city with no natural open spaces.
If we fit everybody in the world into a city with the population density of NYC, it'd be a city of about 637,000 sq. km. This is smaller than the size of Texas, which is about 696,000 sq. km. So, at the density of NYC, everybody on earth could fit into an area the size of Texas. Leaving the rest of the North America, and all the other 6 continents... completely uninhabited by humans.
Once again, you're identifying the problem as "too many people". If that's the case, then why aren't you simply saying "Let the ones who can't fend for themselves die off?"
The problem is one of technology. Technology is not, in and of itself, "bad." Compare lifestyles today with lifestyles 200 years ago, and see how much it has improved things. If we can agree that technology is the solution, and it simply needs to get better / more sustainable / less damaging to the environment, then we have a basis for discussion.
If you insist on saying that the only way to live on this planet is for us to cull the population until we reach some sort of "golden number" which you've decided is sustainable, then all I can say to that is: "Sure, you go right ahead and suicide first. I'll keep working on a technological solution."
What's odd to me is it generally seems to be liberals who talk about how we're "overpopulated" and a "disease on the planet." And yet they're also the ones who are saying it's our duty as a society to feed the hungry... cure the sick... and put a roof over the head of the homeless.
If your view is that we're overpopulated and we need to reduce our population... why not just stop paying for food & medicine & housing for the people who can't get it themselves, and let the problem solve itself? Everybody saves a little coin, and the population becomes self-limiting: if you can't afford to care for yourself, you will die. So why not let AIDS in Africa & southeast asia run rampant? Why not let all the people in Pakistan die to the floods plaguing that country right now? Why bother sending aid to the victims of that tsunami in Indonesia a few years ago, or the Haitian earth quake victims?
This right here is the problem with the argument about the earth being overpopulated: You're arguing that SOME people who are living right now, deserve to die. And yet nobody's willing to actually propose a scale by which we choose who gets to live and who doesn't. You boldly assert what the solution IS NOT, but offer no concrete idea of what the solution IS.
The problem is not "overpopulation" - the problem is "technological innovation is not keeping up at the pace needed to support a large population." The solutions will include:
1) First, acknowledge & accept that "letting people die off" is not the fucking solution - a large population isn't the "problem". Population is population, and if you suggest that YOUR family gets to live while MY family should die, well, them's fighting words. And I think we can all agree that a 500 pound bomb and depleted uranium rounds will do a lot of environmental damage, too.
2) Develop sustainable energy sources that do not poison the environment - this means safe nuclear, efficient solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, hydro, cellulosic ethanol from waste, and I'm sure the list goes on; And yes, that solution did include nuclear, because it will not be cost-effective to use a lot of the other sources until economies of scale have helped drive down costs, or some additional technological advances come along.
3) Develop more effective & sustainable food sources - better fertilizers, better crop yields, better distribution methods; there is no reason for a single frigging person on earth today to go hungry - it's a problem of distribution & wealth, not a problem of yields.
4) Develop educational programs - how to care for yourself, how to prevent unwanted pregnancies (third world accounts for "most" of the population growth, thus sustaining the "overpopulation"), how to feed yourself, and create economic opportunities; vocational training programs, microloans, and other programs to leverage the productivity of billions of poor people around the world.
No, driving a prius or riding a bike isn't going to do it. But this is what's pitched to us as "saving the environment." Humans are technologists - tool makers. Telling us to solve a problem while robbing us of the single most useful trait we have which would allow us to solve a problem is no solution at all. None of this happens over night - it's a multi-generational shift; but starting today with driving a prius is still a step. Using fluorescent light bulbs tomorrow is another. It all helps, but let's stop talking about "overpopulation" as if it's a problem that we're going to "solve," unless you're willing to also suggest that we need to start culling our own species.
I am not disagreeing with your premise that there's a lot of wingnuts in the Republican party and conservative "movement". (Full disclosure: I think there's just as many nutters on the Democrat/liberal side of the fence as well). There's a lot of wordsmithing in order to garner support from a particular interest group on both sides.
But the stuff you're citing is not, on its face, contradictory: diabolical genius simply implies that the person is very *smart*, in a wicked way. I know lots of smart people who are complete incompetents in many ways. They're great at generating ideas, and they suck at implementation, and I would certainly call that ineffective.
As far as the rich/tax cuts issue, again, it is possible to be both: 1) For limiting the amount of the political landscape money will buy for reasons of being against corruption; AND 2) For cutting taxes on the wealthy for economic reasons, based on the premise that this will stimulate economic growth because the money will be reinvested.
They are (or at least, CAN be) two separate, and completely compatible, positions. Cutting taxes on the wealthy doesn't imply that you also must support the purchase of politicians with the money that is not taxed away from the wealthy. The idiot republicans who assert "1, therefore 2" are drawing a logical relationship that doesn't exist, and I suspect there aren't a whole lot of them - maybe Sarah Palin.
The problem mostly seems to stem from the fact that our news cycle and attention span demand "quick" responses. So instead of a 3 page essay on why limiting the influence of money in politics is good, and a 3 page essay on why tax cuts for the wealthy makes economic sense, we get: "Our government is a corrupt plutocracy and we need tax cuts for the rich." Nobody ever bothers to dig deeper and understand the position and the reasoning for it, we simply knee-jerk a response to the outrageously over-simplified bumper sticker slogan we think we've just heard.
Now, in this particular case: Maes is way off base, laughably so. Bike programs are a cool thing, we have a few bikes on the campus of my company for going from building to building - it's awesome, and I can only imagine how much more convenient this sort of thing would be on a city-wide scale - 10/10, would ride again, I'd give it a thumbs up.
This would be an awesome point, if only "corrupt," "ineffective," and "diabolical genius" were traits that were mutually exclusive of one another!
Just as calling for tax cuts on the wealthy need not conflict with the assertion that there are corrupt plutocrats who are purchasing the government wholesale, unless you're claiming that the only reason we have taxes are to keep people from getting too rich to corrupt the political process? Or are you suggesting that once someone gets some money, they will always turn to corrupting the political process?
Pairing a couple claims you disagree with doesn't mean that the positions are incompatible with one another. It is entirely possible to be a diabolical genius who is both corrupt, and ineffective. It is also possible to hold the economic policy that tax cuts on the wealthy are a good thing while decrying the fact that some wealthy people who happen to be corrupt are purchasing the government wholesale. The positions are not logically inconsistent with one another, you just happen to disagree with them.
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Such as?
If you're going to throw this tired canard out, you should at least spend a moment making it sound slightly authoritative.
Are you suggesting that one must be a technophobe to "not want viruses and malware"? :)
The stuff you've listed isn't about "technophobia," it's about "not wanting to spend several hours a week dicking with settings &/or virus scans on your computer." One need not be a technophobe to have things other than building their own computer rigs that they'd rather be doing.
I would agree with just about everything you've said, though I would question further on one particular point:
I'll be honest, I often see people doing just what I referenced - lumping together two separate people as "THE REPUBLICANS", and turning those two people into a caricature of "what conservatives think." (And to be fair, again, conservatives often do the same to Democrats). If single individuals are being self-inconsistent with their statements, that is certainly a cause for... concern? further questioning? even ridicule, if necessary. But as you said too, you have to consider what the issue actually is, and what's at stake.
When I said "out of context," I wasn't using the term to mean the equivalent of turning this:
"President Obama said, 'I am not a Muslim, I am a Christian.'"
Into this:
"President Obama said, 'I am [...] a Muslim.'"
What I was trying to say is, the statements are taken out of the larger "context" of his full rationale and reasoning - in other words, two quick sound-bite-worthy statements may appear contradictory, but if you dig a little deeper to understand the full position, it's often not as clear-cut as that. I saw Pres. Obama make more or less the two statements I cited in my last post in a speech on healthcare, and it was sort of humorous, because I sat there thinking, "Gee, I wonder how long until Rush Limbaugh is spouting off about those two comments?"
No, my post wasn't directed specifically at you, my post was more geared to the general "you", as in, "people". I certainly wouldn't say you've been guilty of shooting from the hip - your post was thoughtful and well expressed, my apologies if it came out like I was railing *at you* specifically.
By my calculations, this means they've taken 2.5 months, which means they're about 5 years, 9.5 months ahead of schedule if they follow the 6 year benchmark set by the Linux kernel.
What's the problem? They've got plenty of time!
You see, in the real world, not everything is as pretty as your MS project plan.
Somebody using the term "managing task dependencies," comparing a sysadmin to a Dilbert-style PHB? That's fucking rich.
And to be fair, there's a lot of the same thing coming from Democrats, too. This doesn't make it right on either side, but let's not portray it as something that only happens on one side of the aisle.
You're lumping together a bunch of individuals saying these things, and saying "the Republican party line" is contradictory - and in many cases, it's not the same person espousing the contradictory views. Person A says "They're all corrupt;" Person B says "They're naive and have no idea how the world works" - they both identify as Republicans... is this contradictory? or simply evidence of the obvious fact that different people have different interpretations of the world?
Are "the democrats" engaging in double-think when Pres. Obama says, "We're going to fix healthcare, and make it better for everybody!" and then in the next breath, hastens to assure people that "Nothing about your current healthcare will change!" (What? If you're fixing it, and making it better, how come everything will stay the same?!) You and I both know that's not what he *means*, but when taken at face value and out of context, those statements are definitely in conflict with one another.
As I said before, a lot of the problem is the bumper-sticker / twitter update mentality people have today. We're constantly looking for the "AHA! GOTCHA!" moment that will allow us to "win," for some definition of "win." We don't even let the other guy articulate his point before we're jumping down his throat telling him how heartless/unpatriotic/barbaric/unfeeling/whatever he is. Conversation and civil debate is -- apparently -- a lost art these days, and its passing is not a good thing for the state of our union. Next time you're confronted with a single person espousing apparently contradictory positions... talk to them. Don't raise your voice, don't shoot from the hip - make a genuine attempt to understand what they're *really* trying to say - challenge their assumptions in a civil manner, and don't let your disagreement take control. You may find that there are some good points expressed poorly in there, or you may find that there is a mess of fear-based contradictions. Either way, you come out a winner from that experience: you either have learned some new things from the good points, or you better understand the mindset you're competing with.
Most people are not so well spoken that they say *exactly* what they mean when they say it. You're not, I'm not, and with the possible exceptions of Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill, maybe nobody's ever been. So engage in a dialogue, not in a shouting match. Learn what words YOU use are hot-button words that will cause the other person to get defensive - and *try not to use them*. Learn what words THEY use that are hot-button words for you, and try to learn to control your temper when they are used.
In other words - set the example that our politicians should be following. Stop encouraging them to be a bunch of mindless PR machines spitting out the same tired wedge issues and talking points - because just about every single one of them does it these days to one degree or another.
Hmm... so are you suggesting we should say "fuck the poor" and let them die off? Or maybe hasten the process, and drop a few nukes on them?
Because if you're not willing to do that, the only solution is to press forward with education and economic development, and develop technologies that will allow the poorer countries to develop in less destructive ways, as well as giving them the information & motivation to begin limiting their own reproduction as well.
Of course they would. The point is, all the moaning about "no resources" is bullshit. It's not a matter of not having the space and resources to support current human population levels, and evidence suggests that population growth rates are declining, especially so in the technologically advanced countries. Imagine that - perhaps technology, and enough understanding of the world around us, allows us to self-limit population growth at a reasonable level?
It seems to be the case. Perhaps we should focus on that, and stop suggesting that killing off huge swaths of the human race would be the better solution.
I'm sorry, so because somebody wrote a paper on a problem he saw in 1968, there's no chance of a solution to that problem being developed that doesn't involve mass murder or mass suicide? Because I don't see much chance for any solution that doesn't involve "technology to develop alternatives and sustainable usage models" amounting to much more than that.
So, since you've identified that the solution MUST be political in nature, that means you must have some notion of what it should look like, since you know what it MUST be. Please outline it for us.
Yes, it is. You seem to think that your ideology which demands that mankind devolve back to a state of nature, and at the same time kill off, what, 90%, of our population, is a reasonable solution to the problem. I disagree with that idea, so yeah, it's definitely an issue of ideology.
As I suggested to oodaloop - if your solution calls for mass suicide or mass murder, by all means, go right ahead and try to start a trend by killing yourself to alleviate the burden on mother earth. If you're not willing to kill yourself, or take responsibility for suggesting that you wish to kill off millions or billions of people, I'm not interested in hearing you flap your gums about "the population problem" while you take technology off the table as a solution.
Turn off the computer, leave your house, and go live off the land in the "environmentally friendly" manner you seem to think that is appropriate to humans, foregoing medicine, agriculture, and all of the other accoutrements of modern life - and good luck learning to hunt, fish, and grow your own food without someone else doing it for you. If you're not willing to put your money where your mouth is, then you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.
Nowhere did I say "the world as it is is perfect" - I said the problems we are facing are problems of technology - not problems of "no resources being available". The poor Kenyan is not struggling to find food because "no land to grow food exists." The poor Kenyan is struggling because he is poor, and because his technology is poor.
Unless you're truly going to own the suggestion that, since the Kenyan's life is difficult, it would be preferable if he & his children were dead, you can go fuck yourself, you hypocrite twat. I'd talk about your nick and what it says about you, but you're apparently too chickenshit to own your genocidal environmentalism by posting under your own name.
Gee, you sure got me there. I have no idea! Where could we find energy sources that are not based on importing fossil fuels? It would be so great if those weren't the only sources of energy available to us, but I guess since there aren't any, it's the end of the world as we know it. We had a good run while it lasted, though!
But population is stabilizing... so perhaps you should be wondering why that is, instead of declaring mass death is the only way to solve the problem?
News flash: Even if there are 1000 people on earth, people are still going to want to have a nice place to live, decent clothing, good food; we're still going to "disrupt" our environment, because that is how humans survive - we adapt the materials in our environments to serve our needs. Thus the problem becomes "intractable" because you've defined it as unable to be solved via the only tools we have available to us - our minds, and our ability to change our surroundings to fit us.
Humans are technologists. That's our survival mechanism - we make clothes to stay warm, weapons to defend ourselves, we build shelter to protect ourselves from the elements, we plant trees and raise livestock to feed ourselves. When you start off with the assumption that technology cannot be used to solve problems, that it will only cause them, of course the only solution is death - you've taken away the only way man can survive.
*sigh* Do you think we MIGHT have enough farmland and raw materials on 5 continents + all of North America that is NOT Texas?
And last I checked, the earth has about 70% of its surface *covered* with water, and you can purify water pretty easily.
This is not a "resource" issue today.
... And as I demonstrated through the wonders of mathematics, we could fit *everybody presently on earth,* all ~7 billion of them, into cities with the same population density as New York City, and that city would occupy a space roughly as big as Texas, leaving absolutely NOBODY living anywhere else.
Think finding open land to use as farmland would really be that much of an issue?
Maybe they're trying to tell you something, and you should listen - a little color and shape to your lips might just be what you've been missing. :)
Nothing to see here? Will you say the same thing when Microsoft waits 6 years to apply a fix to WinXP? :)
Yes, these things are less likely to happen with Linux. That doesn't mean Linux kernel processes are above reproach, and can't be made more responsive & accountable in cases like this where somebody obviously dropped the ball on merging a patch somewhere. I hope they spend a little time reviewing how this got missed, to make sure it's not a flaw in their process that could allow it to happen again.
Not sure how that setting defaults - it's ambiguous, and I haven't seen an explanation of it yet, whether or not it's something you have to explicitly opt-in or opt-out of.
Knowing facebook, you probably have to opt-out. However, it still requires you or someone you've friended to check you in from their mobile device before any of these concerns are relevant in the least.
This assumes that "thinking" = "doing", and is demonstrably not the case.
Here's one you'll probably agree with: Karl Rove was a "diabolical genius" who proved pretty ineffective in guaranteeing republican control of the federal government for a long time forward... he had brilliant tactical insights about how to win the elections and run campaigns... and yet he still proved to be ultimately ineffective in achieving his goal.
It's the old "win the battle, lose the war" scenario - you can be a brilliant tactician, and still ultimately fail for strategic reasons.
Please explain how your hypothesis accounts for the fact that population growth is self-limiting in the most advanced ("first world") countries, while Africa, Southeastern Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America ("developing and third world") are contributing the most to population growth?
Our population would still be "blossoming," if at a slower rate, without technology, because that's the nature of population growth - it's not a straight line, or an asymptotic curve - it's exponential growth, until some other external limiting factor levels it off.
I think we all understand that we cannot continue to grow exponentially forever - but the solution is not to kill people off, the solution is to learn how to stabilize the population in such a manner that we are not destroying the environment we need to live in.
And the way we do that is NOT by saying "get rid of technology, it's just going to ruin things." In a "humane" world, the limiting factor will be education and reproductive choice across multiple generations, both given to us by technology - the ability to have a good standard of living, and support a family, and understand that "many children" is not the way to have that in the long run.
I'm not interested in living in an inhumane world where we let people die because "there's too many people," or where we shrug our shoulders as a new black plague decimates the population that's too poor to afford medicine.
It always blows my mind when I hear apparently-liberal environmentalists espouse this sort of philosophy, where "technology = evil" and "man = parasite", then go on to proclaim in the next series of breaths that war is evil (why? you reduce the population!), universal healthcare is a right (why? it's just more mouths to feed, let them die!), and feeding & housing the poor is the duty of every moral human being (why? it'd be more moral to address this overpopulation crisis you're so self-righteous about!).
The reason you have no workable solution to offer is that you're a hypocrite: you want people to die off, but you're too afraid to embrace your attitude fully and actually lay out criteria for culling the population. And make no mistake - that *is* what you are suggesting when you say that "technology is no solution, it's the problem," and that it's why "we're overpopulated." In other words, you feel that driving a prius is no solution, but mass graves, genocide, and complete indifference to the suffering of your fellow humans might just be.
Because technologically advanced countries, with their higher standards of living & higher literacy & education standards are NOT the countries contributing the lion's share of population growth, by and large. In fact, I remember reading that some European countries actually have declining populations, when you factor out immigration from other countries as an increase to their populations.
Your assertion that it's "always been the case until now" is not borne out by the facts. A population's growth will tend to stabilize or even decline as education and living standards for that population increase - we've seen this case play out repeatedly in industrialized countries.
Of course there's a practical limit to growth - and we are well short of it. The earth's land masses have a surface area of ~150 million km square - 1.5x10^14 square meters; with 7 billion people on earth, that translates to roughly 20,000 square meters per person, or 47 people per square kilometer. I think you'll find that population densities in quite-livable cities regularly exceed that - New York's density is roughly 11,000 / km2. Even if the average population density on earth doubled to 100 per square kilometer, we still would be nowhere near having a world that is one giant city with no natural open spaces.
If we fit everybody in the world into a city with the population density of NYC, it'd be a city of about 637,000 sq. km. This is smaller than the size of Texas, which is about 696,000 sq. km. So, at the density of NYC, everybody on earth could fit into an area the size of Texas. Leaving the rest of the North America, and all the other 6 continents... completely uninhabited by humans.
Once again, you're identifying the problem as "too many people". If that's the case, then why aren't you simply saying "Let the ones who can't fend for themselves die off?"
The problem is one of technology. Technology is not, in and of itself, "bad." Compare lifestyles today with lifestyles 200 years ago, and see how much it has improved things. If we can agree that technology is the solution, and it simply needs to get better / more sustainable / less damaging to the environment, then we have a basis for discussion.
If you insist on saying that the only way to live on this planet is for us to cull the population until we reach some sort of "golden number" which you've decided is sustainable, then all I can say to that is: "Sure, you go right ahead and suicide first. I'll keep working on a technological solution."
Thanks for letting us know. Do I get a trucker hat if I sign up, to show how hip I am?
What's odd to me is it generally seems to be liberals who talk about how we're "overpopulated" and a "disease on the planet." And yet they're also the ones who are saying it's our duty as a society to feed the hungry... cure the sick... and put a roof over the head of the homeless.
If your view is that we're overpopulated and we need to reduce our population... why not just stop paying for food & medicine & housing for the people who can't get it themselves, and let the problem solve itself? Everybody saves a little coin, and the population becomes self-limiting: if you can't afford to care for yourself, you will die. So why not let AIDS in Africa & southeast asia run rampant? Why not let all the people in Pakistan die to the floods plaguing that country right now? Why bother sending aid to the victims of that tsunami in Indonesia a few years ago, or the Haitian earth quake victims?
This right here is the problem with the argument about the earth being overpopulated: You're arguing that SOME people who are living right now, deserve to die. And yet nobody's willing to actually propose a scale by which we choose who gets to live and who doesn't. You boldly assert what the solution IS NOT, but offer no concrete idea of what the solution IS.
The problem is not "overpopulation" - the problem is "technological innovation is not keeping up at the pace needed to support a large population." The solutions will include:
1) First, acknowledge & accept that "letting people die off" is not the fucking solution - a large population isn't the "problem". Population is population, and if you suggest that YOUR family gets to live while MY family should die, well, them's fighting words. And I think we can all agree that a 500 pound bomb and depleted uranium rounds will do a lot of environmental damage, too.
2) Develop sustainable energy sources that do not poison the environment - this means safe nuclear, efficient solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, hydro, cellulosic ethanol from waste, and I'm sure the list goes on; And yes, that solution did include nuclear, because it will not be cost-effective to use a lot of the other sources until economies of scale have helped drive down costs, or some additional technological advances come along.
3) Develop more effective & sustainable food sources - better fertilizers, better crop yields, better distribution methods; there is no reason for a single frigging person on earth today to go hungry - it's a problem of distribution & wealth, not a problem of yields.
4) Develop educational programs - how to care for yourself, how to prevent unwanted pregnancies (third world accounts for "most" of the population growth, thus sustaining the "overpopulation"), how to feed yourself, and create economic opportunities; vocational training programs, microloans, and other programs to leverage the productivity of billions of poor people around the world.
No, driving a prius or riding a bike isn't going to do it. But this is what's pitched to us as "saving the environment." Humans are technologists - tool makers. Telling us to solve a problem while robbing us of the single most useful trait we have which would allow us to solve a problem is no solution at all. None of this happens over night - it's a multi-generational shift; but starting today with driving a prius is still a step. Using fluorescent light bulbs tomorrow is another. It all helps, but let's stop talking about "overpopulation" as if it's a problem that we're going to "solve," unless you're willing to also suggest that we need to start culling our own species.
I am not disagreeing with your premise that there's a lot of wingnuts in the Republican party and conservative "movement". (Full disclosure: I think there's just as many nutters on the Democrat/liberal side of the fence as well). There's a lot of wordsmithing in order to garner support from a particular interest group on both sides.
But the stuff you're citing is not, on its face, contradictory: diabolical genius simply implies that the person is very *smart*, in a wicked way. I know lots of smart people who are complete incompetents in many ways. They're great at generating ideas, and they suck at implementation, and I would certainly call that ineffective.
As far as the rich/tax cuts issue, again, it is possible to be both:
1) For limiting the amount of the political landscape money will buy for reasons of being against corruption;
AND
2) For cutting taxes on the wealthy for economic reasons, based on the premise that this will stimulate economic growth because the money will be reinvested.
They are (or at least, CAN be) two separate, and completely compatible, positions. Cutting taxes on the wealthy doesn't imply that you also must support the purchase of politicians with the money that is not taxed away from the wealthy. The idiot republicans who assert "1, therefore 2" are drawing a logical relationship that doesn't exist, and I suspect there aren't a whole lot of them - maybe Sarah Palin.
The problem mostly seems to stem from the fact that our news cycle and attention span demand "quick" responses. So instead of a 3 page essay on why limiting the influence of money in politics is good, and a 3 page essay on why tax cuts for the wealthy makes economic sense, we get: "Our government is a corrupt plutocracy and we need tax cuts for the rich." Nobody ever bothers to dig deeper and understand the position and the reasoning for it, we simply knee-jerk a response to the outrageously over-simplified bumper sticker slogan we think we've just heard.
Now, in this particular case: Maes is way off base, laughably so. Bike programs are a cool thing, we have a few bikes on the campus of my company for going from building to building - it's awesome, and I can only imagine how much more convenient this sort of thing would be on a city-wide scale - 10/10, would ride again, I'd give it a thumbs up.
This would be an awesome point, if only "corrupt," "ineffective," and "diabolical genius" were traits that were mutually exclusive of one another!
Just as calling for tax cuts on the wealthy need not conflict with the assertion that there are corrupt plutocrats who are purchasing the government wholesale, unless you're claiming that the only reason we have taxes are to keep people from getting too rich to corrupt the political process? Or are you suggesting that once someone gets some money, they will always turn to corrupting the political process?
Pairing a couple claims you disagree with doesn't mean that the positions are incompatible with one another. It is entirely possible to be a diabolical genius who is both corrupt, and ineffective. It is also possible to hold the economic policy that tax cuts on the wealthy are a good thing while decrying the fact that some wealthy people who happen to be corrupt are purchasing the government wholesale. The positions are not logically inconsistent with one another, you just happen to disagree with them.