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ttt11199907

Or used money they had saved. Or would otherwise save...
Well said, thank you.
Re:Why you, personally, should want a larger human population on Sunday February 25, 2024 @01:51AM (#39498306)
> Historically, as we run out of a resource (whale oil, elephant tusks, seabird guano), we transition to a new technology based on a more abundant resource—and there are basically no major examples of catastrophic resource shortages in the industrial age.

I think the OP would say oil is "basically not a catastrophic resource shortage." This seems like a typical misinterpretation of exponential growth as linear growth. There's literally fixed mass on the planet. Growth cannot continue forever no matter how many geniuses it might produce.

You mean... Kind of like living? Are you the same now as you were a year ago? I find it scarier to think that my personality might become static! Plasticity is the ability to learn new things.
I think I can agree there's a happy middle ground somewhere between "paleolithic misery" and "late stage capitalism climate change induced neolithic misery". Both are extremes of misery of a sort. There's still plenty of suffering now... More if you consider the difference in population between the paleolithic and now.

A global society which works collaboratively to maintain both our modern technosphere _and_ a livable, habitable biosphere. Progress doesn't have to come with all of its current negative externalities -- most of them are driven by short-term profit driven thinking that doesn't take our collective biosphere into account.

Re:Capturing Avian Perspectives: Pigeon Photography on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @04:30PM (#39447183)
I hope not. Imagine how devastating conflict already is to the environment. Now make every bird shoot on sight, just in case.

I guess ravens really are the dark one's eyes and ears!

So the ideal is no one ever dies (most good!) while everyone makes more people (more good!). I guess eventually we'll figure out how to eat rocks. It's not sustainable. Earth is an island that has finite resources. We're covering it in crops to feed humanity, but in the process of doing so are making the planet less hospitable. Should we act now to prevent what we know will happen if we continue pretending like expansion is the only way?
Re:You are what you love on Saturday February 17, 2024 @07:46AM (#39408953)
Is this saying that slavery is justified as long as the goal is something "monumental"? As long as some slaves are "proud" of the work they're being _forced_ to do _on penalty of death_ then we can at least rest assured that their pride in humanity was boosted at the amazing spectacle of a giant pile of rocks built on behalf of an oppressor. Oof.
> Here's this one example, so therefore this is proven bullshit

Nice logic.

What is "a lot" that indicates the majority of tribes didn't understand that babies happen when sex happens? Have you ever heard folk stories or native stories about birth and death?

If you're on an island, having an uncapped population is a recipe for disaster. This much is on obvious. The goal of living isn't to create as many more humans as possible.

It's like you're offended that humans would follow the same natural path as animals where access to resources is finite. Or at least that it is "bad" or "evil" that humans could ever live in a situation where they can't just consume more andore resources

You honestly don't think they "knew how seeds work"? It's not like you can't turn over leaves and see a literal plant growing out of a seed.

Why clear the land and plant a "crop" when you get enough from the plants that all the other animals rely on? Why would you try growing something that doesn't want to grow there? Particularly "crops" that ultimately end up destroying the native life of islands. See palm/rubber/coffee/tea plantations.

Re:You are what you love on Sunday February 04, 2024 @09:14AM (#39250340)
I'm not sure many workers building cathedrals considered it a labor of love. Particularly those cathedrals that took many generations to build.

> Half of all the work done in the world is childcare and caring for the old.

This is a really profound statement, thanks for making me think slightly differently!

Re:Homemade Pasta Now Is the Time (2021) on Friday February 02, 2024 @08:25AM (#39228259)
I chuckled at this. Thanks :)
I read this the same way. Any divide will be exploited to keep us from getting mad over all time high corporate profits unaccompanied by any benefit to the workers, the actual value creators.
Re:How Will the Golden Age of "Making It Worse" End? on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @07:46AM (#39189458)
> I'd also submit that he and his cohort has no idea—no idea how much anger there is about what he and his cohort have done to make every aspect of life flatter and crueler and riskier and worse, and no idea how lucky he is that all that rage is still being pointed in, and not up.

This is pretty loud and clear to me!

"I have everything I need and more, but despite you asking you can't have it" is how we expect people who never learned how to share to act. When it comes to grown men we should have higher standards in society!
Would it still be theft if the money in your wallet was money that you found on the street the day before?
Well, history is certainly written by the victors eh? The military is a tool used to maintain the empire of an unsustainable culture of consumption. This military is KILLING people in Yemen (a country with which the US is NOT at war) because they are delaying shipments of stuff. Stuff getting from a to b on time and for cheap is worth more than human life.

Go live as a civilian in a country that our military has decimated with bombs and then say again that "military bad" is just a vibe.

Re:Ancient City Found in the Amazon on Friday January 12, 2024 @12:44PM (#38971293)
> But the world won't become a better place if all we do is to shame those people with self-flagellatory insinuations that they should re-think their place in the world or whatever.

Do you _actually_ feel shamed by the researcher, or by reading the researcher's opinion? Why feel shame over something you think is wrong? There were no admonishments or moral proclamations -- from whence cometh your shame?

Also, there's some irony that you say "if all we do is shame people..." --- Don't lump me in with you! Isn't that your problem with the quote to begin with?

Why throw all the working stuff away? I don't feel any need-for or right-to new & shiny things if there are less new things that work just as well.

I'm bothered by the fact that my partner doesn't want to use silverware from a thrift store... Despite the fact it's no different than eating at a restaurant... But mostly because why new? If everyone always buys new shit then we're always throwing out old shit and things start getting made for the sake of being new and shiny rather than by doing any one thing better. We add niceties like auto-adjusting steeringwheels and heated seats as an excuse to keep producing. Ah. Well. Steam ran out. I just prefer things simple.

Re:Cheap and They Don't Snitch: Drones Are the New Drug Mules on Saturday January 06, 2024 @08:13AM (#38891164)
Yes! These are all things that rely on the subjugation and abuse of other human and are bad for our earth-spaceship
There may not be societal costs in the consuming country, but there are certainly negative externalities to the people/countries that produce the coffee beans
Re:AI’s big rift is like a religious schism on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @05:50PM (#38619868)
> their community moralizing the use of nuclear weapons to shut down GPU clusters

Did I miss some news?

I've always thought that these apps are missing a feature-set: Manipulation of the sound clip prior to identification. In both this app and BirdNET the selection always selects from the lowest recorded frequency to the highest -- I would like to be able to select the frequency band I'm interested in. Maybe first select time, then put corners on the rectangle to be shaped. The sound file passed to the identifier would appear cropped such that the unselected region is totally silent to the identifier. I am often trying to identify an owl or other lower-registered bird but it is unidentifiable because of noisy crickets/cicadas.
Re:Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges on Thursday November 23, 2023 @12:49AM (#38389763)
Conscious/consciousness.

I like the thought experiment though!

Re:Living without a smartphone: The definitive guide on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @08:33AM (#36970002)
The sentiment is great, but it is truly mind bending seeing these truly hippie ideas -- being one with the earth, valuing relationships and community, self sufficiency -- couched in the language of global elite conspiracies and anti-education rhetoric. The other content by this author is filled with straw-men and insults and is a strange mix of prepper/sovereign-citizen/anti-millenial screed interspersed with really solid ideas. Maybe that's just the playbook? Start with an easily agreeable premise -- what makes humans human -- and then devolve into saying all millennial men are worried about which gender they are; the whiplash is real!