bobbydroptables
Joined 7 years ago
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239
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127
Member since
Sep 25
Recent submissions
Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
How is it undisputably bad? This woman now has access to higher quality men around the world instead of a random farmer without much to offer (no offense to the random farmers in the audience).
She now has the option to leave a dead end rural lifestyle is she chooses. And if she's into the dead end rural life (insert whatever dumb american tropes we have that idealize wasteful rural modes of living), she won't find rich, high flying city guys very appealing and it's all a wash. Or maybe she wants to move to a different dead end rural community with a better match than the random farmer she happened to be born next to. Now she can do that on farmers only.
You could say some good and some bad (and of course very bad for the random farmer whose main reproductive strategy was apparently counting on his mate not realizing he's not a catch and there are much better options), but you can't say it's only bad.
Ideally, none of these people reproduce at all since we already have plenty of humans. Hopefully the shift to digital relationships can greatly reduce our headcount in the long run. This trend seems well underway already thankfully.
Comment · 6 years ago
>Like rent an apartment? Have a car to get to work?
Then you rent an apartment or buy a car. Are you implying you can't do this after bankruptcy? It's much easier to do these with a bankruptcy on your "record" than with a $1000 monthly payment.
Comment · 6 years ago
Fair points, although to your last point, I wouldn't necessarily agree it solves the problem well. AMP makes some websites almost unusable (intentionally disables core functionality) and there's no way to disable AMP except manually re-typing the URL for every page. If its goal is just to serve a smaller page, it is a rough workaround with high costs IMO (often slower loading times, weird performance issues, disabled functionality, less open internet).
I appreciate that not everyone has fast data, but not having data speed to read a basic web page is really becoming the exception, not the norm. Data transmission is getting cheaper and faster and available in more remote places every year.
I wouldn't have a huge problem with AMP if I could opt out. Unfortunately I can't. So despite my blazing fast unlimited plan on a flagship device, I'm getting served crippled pages with degraded performance. It's like I own a Ferrari kitted out with all the extras and Google is saying "here have you tried out this cool bicycle? It has special pedals so you can't go too fast and we reconfigured the handlebars so you don't accidentally do something like steering! It even has a bell. Ting-ting, ting-ting! How cool is that?"
In all seriousness, it is neat if it makes the web more useable for low-connectivity users, but maybe then limit AMP to those places (which are shrinking every year) and don't serve needlessly crippled pages when I'm standing in downtown Amsterdam or Hong Kong at the center of the internet, connected to blazing fast Wifi.
Comment · 6 years ago
AMP seems like a solution in search of a problem. Are people really having trouble with loading speed in 2020? I travel to remote areas in third world countries regularly for work and still don't really have problems loading pages with mobile data.
Even if it didn't have all of the problems associated with it I just don't get the point. I don't need Google to repackage a website with less useability. It's frequently not even faster.
Comment · 6 years ago
Preparing for expected catastrophes is not a fleeting desire. It's basically the opposite. There are entire industries built up around this (FEMA, insurance, flood control systems, the CDC, banking reserve ratios, backup servers, many safety rules and systems). Saying we need to adjust these efforts to reflect the real world cost-benefit trade offs is common sense. You can disagree with the particular calculus they're doing (e.g. by thinking a pandemic is so unlikely that we shouldn't prepare very much), but I don't see a sound argument to say "we don't need to prepare at all for these costly events".
>If everything is turned into a priority, then nothing becomes a priority. Both time and the willingness to pay attention are in short demand.
I don't think people are turning everything into a priority. But if some ill-defined group is trying to do this, it wouldn't change the fact that certain things are a priority if we want to maintain our way of life. Disaster management is one of them.
I'm sure a bunch of people think irrelevant things happening on Instagram are a priority. But that doesn't change the fact that preserving infrastructure is a priority for maintaining our way of life.
As I said, if you don't care about maintaining our way of life, then of course you won't care about what we need to do to preserve that way of life.
>Here's how the vast majority of people reason, then. There are only 24 hours in a day. And life is rather short with just a few precious decades. How can I spend those valuable hours and my own talents in a healthy balance between taking care of myself and my loved ones, and deriving a due sense of personal satisfaction, meaningfulness and purpose?
I think I see the disconnect. No one is saying that the fry cook at McDonalds needs to align global resources better to deal with potential catastrophe. You are reading "we" too literally. (Rather, you are just misunderstanding the word "we". "We" doesn't mean an has never meant every human. We really just means a group of which the speaker is part. It need not include you.)
"We need to better prepare for certain catastrophes" means that politicians and other key actors (say businesses, insurers, bureaucrats, researchers, engineers that have relevant assets, skills, experiences, etc.) need to think better about these and non-key actors (say voters, consumers) need to shift attention, money, votes, etc. to supporting those key actors in this goal. If you are okay with disruptions like pandemics, then you can disagree with this. I think most people would prefer to avoid these disruptions though, given the comparatively low cost for doing so.
>at my doorstep, how am I as an individual supposed to even contribute towards solving that problem while including the entirety of humanity or society?
Support politicians that endorse science and logic, for example. Wear a mask as another example.
I don't think anyone is asking you to do anything that "includes the entirety of humanity or society". We are saying make the choices you can make and support the politicians and businesses that deal with these problems proactively.
>But it's not an argument.
No one is saying "we need to prepare for a pandemic" as a standalone argument. But the argument is not complicated. A pandemic could disrupt our way of life greatly by "harm X" (lets say decrease in quality adjusted life years or GDP). It has a chance of occur of "probability Y". Y here is close to 100% as we know. The cost of preparing systems to mitigate the risks to "harm level Z" is "cost Q". As long as harm X times probability Y is really big (which as we see, it is) and cost Q is less than harm level Z, then it is rational to invest Q resources into mitigation.
You can disagree with whatever numbers we might pick for X Y Z Q, but to say we shouldn't perform the calculus is just to say you don't think society is worth preserving. Again, you can have that viewpoint if you want.
The conversation that I think people are trying to have is "How should we preserve, improve and maintain society" and you're basically saying "don't bother". It's fine to say that, but the people having the discussion obviously aren't going to listen to you.
If we're discussing whether Liverpool should trade Coutinho then no one will be interested in your view that "football is stupid".
>How are you, as an individual acting on that sentiment? Who are you voting on? Are you making donations? Are you a researcher? Are you running for office yourself? Or are you endorsing politicians who will be making decisions? Or have you invested millions in factories that might one day supply vaccines, hopefully? What are you doing to show the way forward beyond a moot online demonstration of a due sense of self awareness?
I am doing things to my ability but this is irrelevant to our argument. I can make a powerful and logically airtight argument supporting thing X while selling a product that kills thing X. I can even make that same argument while personally killing thing X at that very moment.
I'm not holding this discussion to trumpet (or even to discuss) my own virtues or actions. I'm having this argument to disagree with a poorly reasoned argument made by the person I first responded to. I could be a computer simulation and it wouldn't take anything at all away from the logic of the points I make.
>"We should have had a (non-false) sense of urgency about this last year?" Who is this we? Why are you involving me into this?
I'm not involving you. You misunderstand the definition of the word "we"
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/we
"People in general" does not mean every single person and certainly doesn't have to mean you.
>I read the news and social media like the next person and I'm an individual with limited time and resources. I'm not an elected decision maker. I'm certainly not privy to intelligence reports. And when I voted for decision makers that ran for office, a pandemic sure wasn't on everyone's mind.
You shouldn't elect someone that campaigns on a single pet risk, so much as you should elect someone that takes a rational, cost-benefit approach to risks in general.
>It's an argument that could easily be met with could have, would have, should have, but "we" - whoever that is - didn't. Hindsight 20/20.
Well, that's not exactly right is it? "We" certainly did meet the risk where I am. Americans (or more specifically, some Americans in some places) are having issues understanding science. There's not much hindsight involved. Were there epidemiologists that said we didn't need to worry about or prepare for the risk of a pandemic? Pandemics have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future.
More importantly, everyone saw what happened in China. America saw this and part of it decided not to take steps to mitigate the risks. I can tell you steps to take to mitigate your risk starting tomorrow and many Americans will still ignore it. This is not hindsight bias.
You could argue China's failures shouldn't be criticized by hindsight bias. But why are many Americans continuing not to fix the problem happening today and tomorrow? Hindsight is not the issue. I can give you steps right now to fix this. But many Americans don't want to listen. As a result they are going to fail. When I point this failure out in the future, it won't be hindsight bias.
>Instead, a better argument is "I feel it's important to vote for politicians that are aware of the importance of public health and who are willing to endorse increased public spending on public health and social security. I feel it's important to hold politicians who don't do this publicly accountable. That's why I openly voice my concern because I care about the impact of their policies on my own community and other communities. I also call representatives, I vote, I support news organizations through donations, I attend rallies to show support and so on."
Ok, that's what this article is doing. I'm not sure who you're arguing against here.
>Showing how you're caring is far more important then just telling you're caring.
I don't care about showing or telling about my caring. I'm just trying to correct the person I originally responded to. What I do or don't do is irrelevant to correcting OP's point.
Comment · 6 years ago
I typed out a much longer response but this will do:
I think you are not following my argument or the OP. Neither supposes that "we need" is a standalone argument. OP provides specific examples for why "we need" to do these things.
"We" doesn't mean literally every human. Do you think people are actually being misled by this? It just means something like "society at large".
"We" need plumbing. This doesn't mean you can't individually live alone in the woods without plumbing.
"Need" doesn't mean you "must" have something. You don't "need" water if you're suicidal.
"Need" is just shorthand for "sustains our current way of life". If you want to see the downfall of civilization, you don't "need" agriculture. If you don't care about people on dialysis or the millions/billions of others that would die without power, then you don't "need" electricity or internal combustion engines.
You're allowed to have these opposing views.
The "we need" arguments assume that most people want to maintain or improve standards of living.
If you want to decrease standards of living, that's a fine opinion to have (although weird). More importantly, if you don't care about society, why bother arguing this at all? Why post on HN? No one is stopping you from living a pre-plumbing, pre-agricultural life if that's what you want.
"Society" of course tries to sustain itself. If society wants to keep existing in its current form, it does need to do many things (indoor plumbing, running water, electricity, or as the OP talks about, preparing for certain dangerous situations).
Comment · 6 years ago
Which part of the OP deals with megacorps?
I don't like megacorps either but I don't see which part of the OP you disagree with.
>Isn't it hypocritical to ask for money from common man to fix problems that they created in the first place (like pollution)?
No. I think a better word is "unseemly". I don't think it's hypocritical for a company or person to use carbon and then buy carbon offsets or donate to the rain forest or something.
Even if it were hypocritical I would still rather have a polluting corporation that fought pollution than a polluting corporation that didn't.
>if they really cared that much, why can't they donate a dollar (or whatever amount) from their profit every time I shop there?
Many of them do just that. I don't think corporate giving is the solution to society's problems but it is a real thing that happens and can make a difference for some people.
Corporations of course do things for marketing and PR reasons. If one of you things is to encourage you to donate or to donate themselves then I don't see the problem (although I am annoyed having to press a bunch of buttons to pay).
Comment · 6 years ago
>There’s way too much “we need to start...”
Not really. A world as complex as ours needs to be starting new initiatives all the time. Basically every convenience you take for granted (electricity, indoor plumbing, grocery stores) was because society said "we need to start". In places where they were slow to do that, it's generally less available and lower quality or they have to rely on technology from the places and people that took initiative.
We need to be starting much much more, not less.
Comment · 6 years ago
We don't fully understand the long term effects. Many people are experiencing prolonged sickness that may never go away. The disease can do permanent damage to basically any of your organs.
Seems crazy to adopt a policy of infecting the world with a dangerous disease that we don't really understand.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/coronavirus-scientists-he...
Comment · 6 years ago
Maybe what he's getting at is that the technologies the west "can't dream of" were invented in the west. Drones, for example. The west doesn't use drones to deliver medicine because it has very well developed infrastructure to deliver medicine.
It is cool Rwanda is doing this but I would guess the west has dreamed of drone deliveries of things and decided that its current system is ok.
More to the point, are you implying that it wouldn't be possible for a dead end community to grow food? If so, why? Seems like a bizarre argument but I'll bite.