News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instea... by mcguire on Thursday October 18, 2018 @01:59PM (#18250527)
The downside is that most "crazy" thinking produces crazy results.

Take Thanos: with one snap of the fingers he destroys 50% of the intelligent beings in the universe and ends all of the problems associated with overpopulation, right?

But, to quote a story I heard somewhere, if you have a coke bottle in a landfill growing bacteria, who double in population in 30 minutes, such that the number of bacteria will overwhelm the available resources at 12:00 noon, when is the bottle half-full? 11:30. At 11:00 they look around and 3/4th of the bottle is free. If they find another identical bottle next to them, that prevents the crash...until 12:30.

Thanos is a complete idiot.

On the other hand, sure, the majority may be completely wrong, but if you ignore them, your solution probably isn't going anywhere.

Re:Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instea... by username3 on Thursday October 18, 2018 @03:19PM (#18251294)
Are you saying that Thanos just delayed overpopulation for a constant amount of time, and didn't really solve anything?
Re:Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instea... by ikfmpwdsoz on Thursday October 18, 2018 @03:40PM (#18251457)
No, he's saying that Thanos just delayed overpopulation for a constant amount of time, and didn't really solve anything.
Re:Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instea... by mcguire on Thursday October 18, 2018 @05:37PM (#18252355)
Yes, I'm saying that Thanos just delayed overpopulation for a constant amount of time, and didn't really solve anything.
Re:Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instea... by derefr on Thursday October 18, 2018 @07:27PM (#18253208)
Unless the universe will only continue to support life for less than that constant amount of time. A temporary fix is permanent, for sufficiently large values of "temporary." (See also: UUIDs.)