Re:Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter
by brabel on Thursday March 30, 2023 @02:10AM
(#35368712)
> I'll toss in whaling as well.
Whaling stopped in the beginning of the 20th century not because they were worried about the environment, but because they had hunted down nearly all the adult whales in the Atlantic Ocean, and probably a large percentage in the Pacific too, to the point where finding whales was so difficult that whale products became very expensive... which happened to occur about at the same time as petrol produts became widespread. The late 20th century green movement to save the whales didn't really do much other than stop some of the last few countries that still practiced whaling (Iceland, Japan which actually has not stopped yet) for food, which killed magnitudes less whales than the mass production industry for rubber/oil/lubricants as it used to be before petrol came along.
Whaling stopped in the beginning of the 20th century not because they were worried about the environment, but because they had hunted down nearly all the adult whales in the Atlantic Ocean, and probably a large percentage in the Pacific too, to the point where finding whales was so difficult that whale products became very expensive... which happened to occur about at the same time as petrol produts became widespread. The late 20th century green movement to save the whales didn't really do much other than stop some of the last few countries that still practiced whaling (Iceland, Japan which actually has not stopped yet) for food, which killed magnitudes less whales than the mass production industry for rubber/oil/lubricants as it used to be before petrol came along.