bostonwalker's comments

I agree and am in favour of carbon taxes. However this particular carbon tax is weak virtue signaling exactly because it is not sufficiently priced.

Q: Who decides whether the policy focus is on the supply side or consumption side?

A: The government and its voters.

That’s it. That’s who I am going to hold accountable.

Now, the point I am making that you seem to miss is that in Canada, the supply side is the larger issue. This is because we are a net energy exporter. So hence why to most Canadians outside of Alberta, blaming the consumer while giving the oil sands a pass feels like cheap political theatre.

OTOH Albertans feel very threatened any time the government starts to talk about doing something supply side, and I think many are actually very happy to go along with the political theatre of the demand side focus because they know it doesn’t directly threaten their jobs.

What should we do in an ideal world? Target both. But if I were designing an effective climate policy and had to pick only one, I would do supply side first.

On a side note, studies have estimated that the current carbon tax levels are 5-10x too low to effectively price in the externalities due to releasing the carbon. So yes, it’s virtue signaling.

This is currently our biggest unsolved political issue IMO. Without a focus on the supply side, all of our current consumption-focused climate change policies (carbon tax on consumption, electric vehicle mandates, most recently infrastructure issues etc.) effectively amount to weak virtue signaling that has mostly succeeded in dividing voters and provinces against each other, when we should instead be tackling the 500 lb gorilla in the room (Alberta’s oil sands). Hence the well-deserved Greta Thunberg snark towards Trudeau a while back.

How do we do that? Some think we should just leave the oil in the ground. Others think we should avoid building further export infrastructure (i.e. pipelines). These options strike me as politically unpalatable, and even our current government stepped in at one point a few years ago to bail out the troubled Trans Mountain pipeline.

One option I am strongly in favour of is nuclearizing the oil sands. AFAIK right now the process for extracting crude from the oil sands is very energy-intensive and is currently powered by nat gas since the producers have it on hand. There was a proposal a while back to power this process by nuclear energy, which failed because: a) nuclear energy was scary, and b) crude prices took off and reduced the economic incentive for cost savings.

I imagine that the nuclear option could be resurrected now alongside government investment in LNG infra as well as a supply-side carbon tax to provide extra incentive to push producers on board. Since we’re not going to leave the oil in the ground anyway, this would allow us to extract it in the cleanest possible way, while actually creating jobs and making our energy exports more competitive overall.

Now, if only Canada could elect a visionary government that actually cared about climate change and not just about virtual signaling…

2022: World's first psychopathic AI hailed as major breakthrough

edit: 2022. Didn't realize this was already around.

> (Sutskever) has an exemplar in mind for the safeguards he wants to design: a machine that looks upon people the way parents look on their children

The most troubling statement in the entire article, buried at the bottom, almost a footnote.

Imagine for a moment a superintelligent AGI. It has figured out solutions to climate change, cured cancer, solved nuclear proliferation and world hunger. It can automate away all menial tasks and discomfort and be a source of infinite creative power. It would unquestionably be the greatest technological advancement ever to happen to humanity.

But where does that leave us? What kind of relationship can we have with an ultimate parental figure that can solve all of our problems and always knows what's best for us? What is left of the human spirit when you take away responsibility, agency, and moral dilemma?

I for one believe humans were made to struggle and make imperfect decisions in an imperfect world, and that we would never submit to a benevolent AI superparent. And I hope not to be proven wrong.

Less than a year old, but I have been thinking about the issue proactively and there are things you can do for them even at this age. For instance, I set my son up with a Proton email account on the family domain name before we left the hospital (see my reply to sibling comment for reasons why).

Congrats on that!

My kid is too young for tech so far so I haven't fully dived into the issue yet, but one thing I've already done for him to start him off on the right foot is set up with a Proton email account on the family domain name.

It's great because family members have been sending notes for him to read when he grows up and we have been cc'ing him on baby pictures, medical records, and vital stats. And when you think about it, our email accounts are the foundations of our online identities, so it's kind of messed up that we normalize surveillance of our children's online activity from Day 1 by setting them up with inboxes from Google, etc. and you owe it to your kids to give them privacy and, eventually, agency.

I'll turn over the keys when he's old enough (of course I'll probably make a backup of things first)!

Parenting. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how to prepare my kid to grow up around the internet, smartphones, and AI. Our technology often takes an indifferent or even cynical view of children, and I can’t understand why there aren’t better tools available (e.g. smartphone designs) that put their developmental needs ahead of the need to exploit them for immediate profit.

What’s the difference between Honecker and a telephone? No difference! Hang up, try again.

It was dystopian, invasive tech back when the Glass-holes were doing it in 2013 and it's still dystopian and invasive now [0]. The two major differences are:

1. The product execution is better this time

2. We've become more complacent about this sort of thing

Wonder if we will tolerate it this time around?

---

[0] Reference: Black Mirror S01E03 (The Entire History of You)

No government should rely on Facebook to provide life-saving emergency information to its citizens. Of course, the Canadian government doesn’t really and this is just shitty political theatre.

Great question. Going to assume you mean English language and share my own findings:

- CBC: Propagandic, unoriginal, unimportant

- Global News: Clickbait, gossip, unoriginal, unimportant

- Toronto Star: Hyperbolic, propagandic

- The Globe and Mail: Unoriginal, unimportant

- The National Post / Postmedia network: Hyperbolic, propagandic

- CTV News: Clickbait, gossip, unoriginal, unimportant

Anything I missed?

I have found the best strategy is to take the sum of multiple sources to get a slightly less awful whole.

> solutions

What problem is Instagram solving?

You are eagerly reading an agenda into what is probably just an artifact of the plotting software intended to make the plot easier to read. Hanlon’s razor applies here.

Source please?

I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that we have hard evidence of aliens crashing here or visiting our solar system, but you’re going completely the other way and making an extraordinary claim without evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Would China allow US to spy on hundreds of millions of its citizens everyday? Answer: no, reference the Great Firewall.

For reference: this specific fallacy being invoked by the CCP astroturfers is called “whataboutism”.

A word of caution: Sodastream bottles aren't dishwasher-safe and can warp in the dishwasher.