desipis

> The core issue is the underlying system that values engagement over all things ... the advertising system.

I don't think you're digging deep enough here. It's not the business model. It's the technology.

We've invented technology that can, to a significant degree, control people. It is as addictive as hard drugs and people will just keep coming back to their dealer for more and more digital crack.

But it's worse than simply heroin or crack cocaine. It gives the dealers not just the power to keep people coming back for more, but also gives them far, far more control over not just what those people do, but what those people think.

The large companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) aren't in the business of search or social media. Nor are they in the business of advertisement. Their business model is selling complete control over people at the population level. At some point it will stop being a business model and start being a self sustaining model of raw power that strips us of our humanity.

We need to take a hard stance to all attempts at psychological manipulation via technology. A/B testing to see how changes affect behaviour should be seen as morally repugnant as selling crack cocaine to children.

Those with power learned they could use the internet to control people and accumulate more power.

This is my line of thinking. Which is why I see professions that deal with the real world (engineers, doctors, lawyers to some extent) remaining more grounded in their thinking when compared to those that focus on people's opinions (politicians, media, academics, professional moralisers). The former are regularly conditioned to think in terms of unavoidable realities, while the later are repeatedly conditioned to drift further and further into their collective delusions.

CCGT plants aren't generally used for handling peaks and unpredictable loads. They handle load change better than coal plants, however the grid usually has to depend on OCGT or batteries for stabilising the impact of unpredictable renewables (or unpredictable demand). Both these solutions are expensive and add significantly to the overall cost of pushing more energy generation to renewables.

> The thing is, truth does exert a pull on our beliefs. It's a slow force.

What is the nature of this force? Where does it come from and how does it influence our minds?

"You are the one with the knowledge of what needs to be done to deliver a project"

I think you're missing the point. Nobody has that knowledge prior to the project being complete.

The only exceptions are very small projects or projects that are just rolling out pre-established boiler-plate solutions. Any reasonably complex and reasonably sized software system contains far more uncertainty than humans are capable of thinking through.

What do farmers do when those weeds are genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides and pests and to grow faster and more aggressively than the desired crop, to the extent that existing weed strategies are no longer effective?