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Is happiness the point of life? We just exist self referentially, to live, churn chemicals in our skull, and then stop living? The whole thing is just a self perpetuating chemical reaction?

Back-of-the-envelope - Road area. World road length ≈ 60–70 million km. Using an average paved width of ~8–10 m ⇒ area ≈ (0.9–1.3)×10¹² m². Earth’s surface is 5.1×10¹⁴ m², so roads cover ~0.09–0.13% of the planet.

- Albedo change. Dark asphalt is ~0.05–0.10. “White” coatings can push toward ~0.4–0.6 (fresh), but weathering quickly dulls them. So a plausible Δalbedo for roads is +0.2 to +0.5.

- Global albedo change. Δα_global ≈ (road fraction) × (Δalbedo_road) ≈ (0.001)×(0.2–0.5) ≈ +0.0002 to +0.0005.

- Radiative forcing. Globally averaged incoming sunlight ≈ S₀/4 ≈ 340 W m⁻². Forcing from an albedo change is ΔF ≈ −Δα_global × 340 ≈ −0.07 to −0.17 W m⁻².

- Temperature response. Using a standard sensitivity ~0.8 °C per W m⁻² (≈3 °C per CO₂ doubling): ΔT ≈ −0.05 to −0.14 °C at equilibrium.

Or the simpler answer: there’s a drug problem in the US and people want solutions.

The republicans make a show of solving it by “blowing up boats carrying drugs”. Democrats make a show of solving it with their own ideas

The republican base likes blowing up drug boats

Is an individual human raised alone significantly smarter than a chimp?

How much of the intelligence gap is culture and communication that lets us educate ourselves and compound knowledge vs biology? Homo lived for thousands and thousands of years with the same level of development as other apes

As long as the state has power over Google (and it does, even if the media cycle presents it like they’re powerless), they can surveil billions of people, control populations, distribute propaganda.

Look how the US is able to spread it’s culture everywhere, cut off regimes, debank people it doesn’t like, all by controlling a few choke points.

Look how China uses its corporations to increase state power. The US does the same but with a few more carrots (lucrative govt contracts).

A mega corp means you can do your coercion behind closed doors rather than with sweeping regulations

Really? 20 mid sized Googles is better for US power than 1 mega Google dominating the planet? Repeat for any corporation.

Breaking these megacorps benefits little guys like you and me, but I doubt it benefits state power on the global stage

Englewood for instance, increased likelihood of murder being the main disadvantage.

In today’s world is it actually in our best interest to have the government break up large organizations? Or is that the worse of 2 evils?

The state derives a lot of its power globally from wealth, influence, military power (funded by wealth). The state is only as powerful as it is - and only as capable as it is at promoting American interests in the world because it has many of the biggest winner-take-all corporations in its jurisdiction.

A world where it breaks them up while China keeps them is probably a world where China is far more powerful than the US

The meta as a state today is to cultivate as much wealth and power as possible by encouraging super corporations

White privilege is a specific case of the phenomenon: “if you live in the culture built by your culture, you will benefit”, which is the whole point of culture in the first place.

A Japanese person has Japanese privilege in Japan, an Egyptian in Egypt, etc

If you’re “culturally American” in America (regardless of race), you will benefit.

If you’re White and culturally American in parts of America where White American culture dominates (like our institutions, which reflect a country that has been historically 90%+ White), you will benefit

If you’re White and in a place where non White culture dominates, you will be relatively disadvantaged. Most countries around the world, and even parts of the US (parts of Chicago where you have significant disadvantages from being White).

Great to acknowledge luck but too often it’s used as an excuse. Even the story you laid out has to do with a lot of persistence, grit, determination, learning from mistakes, etc

A better way of putting it is probably: barring terrible luck, nearly anybody can be successful if they’re willing to make the sacrifices, work hard, learn quickly, and keep at it long enough. And even if you get terribly lucky, it just makes your odds worse - there are people out there who’ve had worse luck than you and still became more successful than you.

This is pretty obvious when you know what to look for.

How many people did it take to build the pyramids? Now how many would it take today?

Look at revenue per head and how it’s trended

Look at how much AUM has flowed into asset management while headcount has flatlined

AI and technology is already replacing jobs.

The way this manifests isn’t mass layoffs after an AI is implemented, it’s fewer people being hired at any given scale because you can go further with fewer people.

Companies making billions in revenue with under 10k employees, some under 5k or even under 1k.

This is absorbed by there being more and more opportunities because the cost of starting a new company and getting revenue decreases too as labor productivity increases.

Jobs that would otherwise exist get replaced. Jobs at companies that otherwise wouldn’t exist get created.

And in the long run until it’s just unprofitable to employ humans (when the max their productivity is worth relative to AI falls below a living wage), humans will continue working side by side with AGI as even relatively unproductive workers (compared to AI) will still be net productive.

It’d be strange if they didn’t. All human organization should be expected to behave like this, especially as rates of communication become faster.

As much as our brains seem to be evolved to delude us about it, we’re not uniquely able to resist the continuity between physics and chemistry and biology.

As self-replicating chemical and physical systems, we exist only because our atoms, molecules, cells, organs, bodies, and cultures all follow these rules naturally selecting for least action

The alternative is what? “Working to live” is often just making more money so you can spend it hiking, traveling, and maximizing your dopamine. Maximizing your happy chemicals is also materialist.

Working a substantive job contributing positively to the work is among the most important and fulfilling things one can do with their life, alongside raising a family

“A culture evaporating cannot be discussed and addressed because genocidal dictator multiple generations ago had adjacent motivations when he killed a bunch of people”

The problem with Hitler wasn’t that he wanted German people to be successful, it was his proposed solution that involved mass murder between genocide and global war.

This is a problem that requires thinking beyond lazy pattern matching