The News Thread

[Dak]

Hitler literally rode in cars.

 

[tagradh]

Yeah, but they were drawn by horses so it doesn't count.

 

[CiG]

Hamburg G20 featuring Antifa and their great civilization-shaking struggle against fences, rubbish bins, cars and business windows.

 

[Dak]

Mass movements focused on physical destruction of civilizational necessities are the habitats of the ignorant. Interestingly enough, that includes college students in many Western Countries. Like I said elsewhere, enabling has no inherent positive value.

 

[Einherjar86]

Nothing has "inherent positive value" except a proton. Actually, that's still a scientific concept. Stop being a sophist.

 

[Dak]

Nothing has "inherent positive value" except a proton.

Even positivity in the proton is simply a label. But I agree. My implied point is that the rhetoric in favor of transfer payments treat them as such.

 

[Einherjar86]

I took you as meaning that there is inherent positive value in alternative methods.

It may be true that rhetoric treats welfare program as having inherent positive value, but there are favorable reasons for them aside from "inherent value."

 

[Dak]

I took you as meaning that there is inherent positive value in alternative methods.

It may be true that rhetoric treats welfare program as having inherent positive value, but there are favorable reasons for them aside from "inherent value."

It might surprise you but I think it's possible that positive outcomes can occur due to such transfer payments (which I consider as including all government programs at a minimum). I'll refer to myself and my wife as exhibit A&B vis a vis the GI Bill and the Pell Grant. That doesn't mean that there's an empirical net benefit to society from one or both of those programs, or any others.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm more impressed that you described a particle charge as "simply a label."

 

[Dak]

I'm more impressed that you described a particle charge as "simply a label."

Well we could reverse the labels of positive and negative or use other labels. The same phenomena is observed (obviously with observer effects blah blah).

 

[Einherjar86]

Look at you, second-order cybernetics fiend up in here.

 

[Dak]

More like a fourth rate Shakespeare.

 

[no country for old wainds]

The Uninhabitable Earth
Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.

 

[rms]

finally. it's too late, let's have a blast.

there needs to be more good scifi on global warming and not just The Road surrounded by Day After Tomorrow

 

[Einherjar86]

You should read Kim Stanley Robinson, especially the "Science in the Capital" trilogy. But almost all his stuff deals with climate change, and his new book is no exception:

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/gr...-climate-change-and-why-he-s-still-optimistic

 

[rms]

maybe he'll have something on sale for prime day

 

[Dak]

The Uninhabitable Earth
Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.

I just read that and I'll admit here to being wrong on at least one initial argument I made as to why I wasn't worried much about increasing temps. I'm still not that worried about the rate of change per se, because all of the climate models have been shit so far that I know of, and most of what I've read says we really can't stop things at this point anyhow - so better to prepare than wrangle about trying to "stop it", especially since it's probably way more complicated and involves more factors than we know or can accurately factor in.

So, what I did not think about/was wrong about: Increasing growing areas canceling out decreasing growing areas. I did not consider the differences in soil quality. So maybe warming will create food production problems.

I'm still far, far more worried about cooling than warming, and I'm worried about warming because it could cause cooling due to melting enough ice to set it free into the ocean to slow down the oceanic conveyor belts of warm air, causing a new glacial period (the norm for the earth). This is the most problematic longterm outcome imo.

 

[CiG]

I've always found it hard to care about what happens after I am dead.

 

[no country for old wainds]

this article is talking about the fairly near future, not necessarily after we're dead in some cases. the underlying argument is that the earth could be uninhabitable by the end of the century (though i'm seeing counter-articles that accuse some of it as being overstated to say the least). i'm the same though.

 

[CiG]

Ah.

I haven't read it just yet, I clicked it and it was huge so I bookmarked it for now.