crngefest

It wasn’t you but GP who started this thread stated:

> sub-Saharan African nations (many of which are on food aid) have fertility well above replacement levels

So which is it ? Are they above or below replacement levels?

> How does the government track anything?

While I get where you are aiming at this didn’t work in China and they have arguably the most perfect surveillance state worldwide - I don’t think this is desirable, the tradeoff in freedom and security is just too big.

This is true for every statement about people.

Did they ever work?

None of the things you listed need an internet connection so I would not consider them smart devices.

You can easily do this with a dumb mechanical clock switch.

No kubernetes backend architecture and AWS pods required here!

Do they need internet connection to do that? I have the same behaviour with a dumb light that just has some circuits to control the LED.

No smart devices needed to change Color/brightness dynamically.

That is a fair point but only applies if you are building a new home. I don’t think it’s feasible to retrofit an existing home in this fashion.

I have Hue lights actually. I kind of dislike them since they try to nudge me hard to create an account - dark pattern IMO - lights do not need security updates or accounts period.

> Why goto the park and fly a kite when you can just pop a pill?

Weird tangent. I much rather go to the park and chill instead of tinkering away on my smart home setup…

Thanks for the elaborate reply. I agree that it stems from a difference in values, my guiding one’s are being „always works - is resilient“ and „no unnecessary waste/labour“.

I know my time is extremely limited and while automating things like this might be a fun project I rather spend my time sitting in a park and looking at the trees. But this attitude also leads to living with unnecessary annoyances for a prolonged time sometimes

IMHO it’s because in our imagination anything is possible, we can imagine the bad situation in more and more elaborate and complicated scenarios. And we can’t see beyond the bad situation.

While once we are in the situation we can do very practical things and have agency to react to and improve our situation.

I once read a French „practical philosopher“ who expressed it much better than me, but yea essentially the most terrifying situations are in our imagination.

I never understood the need for smart lights for able-bodied people.

You just stand up for a moment and flick the switch, what benefit do smart lights or even a remote for lights provide? Even if you disregard all the issues these iot/smart devices have and assume they operate perfectly I really don’t see why we should expend any resources to make them.

A world without death would be the worst nightmare I can imagine.

All you need for dictatorship in general is a critical number of human accomplices. I don’t see how an LLM in the mix would make it worse.

IMO mass communication technologies (radio, TV, internet) are much more important in building a dictatorship.

Most excellent restaurants where I live would never post pictures of their food anywhere and have no web presence at all. In many you can’t even reserve a table - you go there and eat. Those who need a lot of web presence / pictures etc are usually not great (good but not great).

If you see lots of people in a place and it’s crowded it’s probably good.