goatsneez's comments

What is this nonsense?

How can people fall for this as holding any value? The propaganda is not mere set of statements true/false, neither extracting facts holds any value. This very page, the very form and the very content is a form of propaganda waged on unsuspecting Westerners (who, unfortunately, eat it up). Abysmal state of affairs finds itself the entire the western civilization. The most basic logic that is 5yr old can understand is inverted here and the entire adult world nodes approvingly... sad.

Humans are psychological and social creatures above and foremost. Facts and statements have exactly ZERO intrinsic value, they are valuable only in a narrative or, in other words, in-group attitude,; in a world view. Double speak, double think is the hallmark of this day and age, with PR firms, NGO and media companies spinning language into western biases of emotional responses and doing the biding.

What is the problem if you think this is the answer? >> Ethical Capitalism, that aligns individual profits to the Common Good. (Is this US model only, EU model only, CHina, or a global model? Depending on your answer you will have different force fields, and constraints. This is a dead meat from a get go).

This sentence indicates that your concept does not and cannot have depth. To unpack that sentence, you would need perhaps few dozens of volumes to get this into technical working concept.

Ethos -> which model, and why that one?

Capitalism -> another model of economic thought which has transformed so much since times of A. Smith that nobody even knows what is "capitalism", and it means different things to different countries/people

Common -> who is the common (a human, legal entities, a particular state structure, a nation, a set of allies. And why that choice?)

Good -> This is obviously beyond description or characterization in any meaningful way. Why?

And as Y.H idea of slowing down AI, this is of cause utter nonsense originating from (my judgement) him serving two different masters. I still think he knows better, but he cannot say so. It is intellectual dishonesty.

hmm, why is it never the case that <insert western country> propaganda is seeping into and poses as news or valid opinion (?)

It seems the power elites want to have it both ways, docile sheep-people which can be herded for/against anything on moments notice through overwhelming psy-ops (on a spectrum from blatant lies to pure disinformation by omission of cause and effect) assault on social media and main stream outlets. And, at the same time, they recognize that such deliberately trained obedient unthinking/confused but conveniently conforming beings can be also swayed but other actors through inserting messages into media products.

The solution is trivial, though not handy to the elites, so we keep hearing about other's propaganda (oh.. how evil the others are). We, the morally elevated uber-mench are never to be blamed for anything. We do not do propaganda against own citizens and against citizens of other countries.

At least one does not have to pay to watch this circus...

Pretty much full skeleton of an argument. Nevertheless, there s more insidious element, pretty much Tabu to add. The blatant double standards in applying the standards of International law and UN resolutions, as well as moral law of the west in addressing the inevitable results of ignoring them.

There has been written dozens upon dozens of books, one can go to UN resolution back to 70 years, every year dozens broken resolution by Israel. As per UN resolution Israel is occupying force, illegal settlements should be dismantled, as per international law armed resistance to occupation is allowed. In fact, to be consistent the EU and west should blockade Israel (economically, politically, culturally, militarily as they did with RU) until it withdraws to international borders. It seems, no pun intended, there is clearly nationalistic and ethnical element in the way West applies the law and projects its power one can argue with too much evidence in favor for such interpretation (and it is very sad to not have it in the conversation).

One cannot have it both ways, except politicians -- which then creates out of very simple situations very tragic ones for all parties involved.

Hmm, Im not sure what is the problem if the answer is reducing personal "CO2 emission" from 5 to 3 tons. With due respect it just indicates the plague of today, nobody being able to grasp scales of things. Second, reducing CO2, despite all you hear in mainstream perception control media, is going to do exactly nothing with supposed climate stability. Nay, in pursuit of this goal, we will actually destroy the responsible entity for stabilizing life supporting ecology (including climate) -- micro-biota [natural, large-scale and healthy ecosystems]. This is the proper ecological view point, not a modeler climatologist. But that is a separate issue.

Keep in mind that US military alone, in peaceful time!, just that it exists and polices the world, consumes directly equivalent of 15-20 tons per US capita. Im very much convinced (after studying the issue) that this estimate is grossly underestimated. Now, imagine adding China, Russia, EU and all the induced mess that was created by the west means in wasting resources, energy, our environment into producing things to be blown up and destroyed in general (one way or another)? It is preposterous that we are tricked into this false issue with ridiculous proposed solution. We shall say resounding NO to this. Anyone, individually, reducing from 5 to 3 tons of CO2 (even if you can do it, has nothing to do with anything, sorry for bursting the bubble).

On another level of analysis, war-machines and bigoted ideology/philosophy where the one side is denied what the other calls is god-given-right (yes Im looking at USA+UK+EU). When Western countries export their trash (e-waste, clothes, plastics, etc) to report how green they are. One can go on about the self-proclaimed and celebrated hypocrisy and bigotry so prevalent in the western collective psyche. How billions are spent on destroying countries and exporting their resources... common... how does one ignore that? It is beyond comprehension how we have such a blind spot, how we can be (collectively psychologically) so ruthless and stupid in so many ways to start discussing, pretending to be serious to reduce individually from 5 to 3 tons. Perhaps somebody more eloquent can write on this in a way digestible to a modern western semi-intellectuals (which most of us here are). (This shall not be taken personally by the poster, it is those sterile ideals, the assumptions behind this kind of questions that Im attacking here).

... the entire Germany in the most comprehensive and pervading (bureaucratic process integration kind of way) that is conceivable for a human being in 21st century. Germany.

https://www.dw.com/en/germans-use-more-paper-than-any-other-...

Im not sure why this got downvoted, its just an opinion reasonably argued. Of cause this view is prevalent among younger second-hand intellectual class as far as I can observe. We had many historical precedents like that, eg. when Newtonian physics occurred, when quantum 'brain' occured, etc.

Actual researches returns unequivocal no as far as LLMs being anything like our brain or a language model (worth googling for research how NNs are un-able to simulate any functionality of actual brain). In fact, even the NN concept as such is a pretty much a failure as an analogy to the brain. NN was in fact (many have argued) a marketing term more than anything.

Of cause, the underlying phenomenology is worth to question/investigate and research further, in both domains (NN and human learning). The failure of NN analogy to the brain, I would argue, is the same as failure of todays (hyped and false) analogy of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Nature generally does not optimize as humans to a single metric or a variable. On the contrary, collectively, nature seem to be more concerned with stability/robustness than any individual or a single group fitness. That statements would take too long to unpack, but I take it a better model to start with...(some researches already had began of a decade or so).

This figures; it is pathological of the entire failed world model of P.Eh. This guy singularly cause so much death, destruction of communities, his ideas cost humanity decades on progress (yes, his views influenced politics to such a degree that famines were preferred to a relieving efforts in middle Asia. Forced sterilization of Inida, Africa, etc are also under his belt... one is speechless to learn the truth).

Reality has debunked this sons of Malthus to the point of no return, and yet, here we are again with another 'boy who cried fire'. Your emotion of being alarmed is worth nothing Mr. Ehrlich, and that you are still in academia is a study case on its own.

For those interested in getting into the details, the starting point should be: Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism

and

Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak: Population Bombed!: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change.

Now, to the actual insane argument P.E. is making. The reality is that exact opposite. There has been virtually no family extinction past several thousands of years (species extinction is inconsequential: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species) . The biodiversity is in the number of taxonomy families is orders of magnitude larger now than ever in the history of earth as far as we can tell (factors over Cretaceous period before dinosaurs disappeared). Today, we have literally the most biodiverse biosphere in the history of Earth.

As humanity, we shall take the role of responsibility, first by understanding deeply nature - divorced from politics and narratives convenient to the ruling classes to keep control over the 'promethean fire'. P.E. unfortunately fails this repeatedly throughout his career.

Wow, that is a point in case on how disconnected things have became from real problems of population. The ruling class and their second-hand dealer pseudo-intellectuals are revealing their pathological confusion. A quote to this is in place by Th. Sowell:

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

I find this a trivial answer: yes

(there so much math understood about this on so many level of analysis that it baffling as to why this is even asked).

The first contention, the better we get to approximate human intelligence the worse it will get.

The second contention, ultimately there will always be a political will to bend the truth or narrative (historical as well as current). And if they cannot do it at the source (ie. controlling the machines) they will simply legislate it, which is what has happened since COVID times, as well as with past, and/or recent armed conflicts. Other thoughts/facts/narratives are outlawed in so many degrees and categories of our collective life..., which might be acceptable on some level, what is nauseating however, is how inconsistently and how self-righteously they are applied in double standards.

Many a greater men have reached before a conclusion that it is never ok to lie (period). If that was strictly followed by everyone then 100% of contrived situations that seemingly appeal to allow to lie (for greater good or whatever other reasons) would never occur. There would be no nacism, or any other ism (even green-ism of today).

But that would be true only on individual level. However, the crux of the problem is that societal institutions are not human beings, and human beings entrusted into decision making positions of such institutions cannot (psychologically speaking) hold their ethical/moral integrity as a value over the values they represent as representative of said institutions/corporations.

Therefore, the question is not well posed in my view. A more proper and interesting question is: is it ok to lie to institutions (nb, people representing during the interaction an institution)? [as per fact that you are not talking to a moral entity but to an abstract amoral --> immoral entity]. Same question in reverse is also an exercise....

Why? How does European culture and collective ethos benefits from something that is aimed at erasing, forgetting and twisting reality and turned into artificially created, (short-term) politically motivated, shallow-cheap-advertisement-like-substitute.

Somehow, unfortunately, it fits into the times into which the European elites got into and are unable to find a practical neither philosophical/ideological way out.

I would be of opinion that by 2035 the gasses to liquid fuels transformation of CO2 + CH4 from the atmosphere (using SE) will overtake the electrification idea of today. The liquid fuels are here to stay, not necessarily for the entire chain of transportation system, but for a significant portion of it (and certainly for humanty's ever larger scope of war efforts which cannot run on electricity).

It is not an issue of intelligence vs stupidity. Everybody/one can only make (mental) models of reality. The danger while "deadly" without being immediate lies in that people (true on institutional and societal level as well) try to avoid a feedback loop to inform their models. Feedbacks imply evolution.

People reject data points because they believe their models too much; they are in love with their intelligence. And this is in my view more proper way of start thinking about this. Do not love your intelligence, do not worship it less you become "stupid". There is always a circumstance, an issue or topic which you will be ignorant and your own mental model of reality and of yourself will be wrong.

Knowing is a process not a destination (perhaps too simple a statement but does cover the essence of things).

That is a rather well constructed rant... agreeable in the substance behind the rhetorical questions. Especially in this anti-intellectual social-climate that is all-pervasive through and through all institutions of the west, and the infantile ideologies of that took hold of the western elites. (I single out west here purely for the contrast of where we come from intellectually/philosophically to where we are currently which to me is easy study case).

However, while we would agree, I wonder which "natural" processes are really to be understood to stand behind this decay. Of cause, it is not new, we can read already in Sumerian tablets, Greek and Roman then witness accounts of their empire's disintegration and how in fact people did clearly perceived the rotting (just as we do now).

In other words, identifying the symptoms (as implied in the question you posed), is one thing. To understand processes inherent in the system of systems itself is yet another level. And then, thought I do not think possible, one can postulate how to slow down, or even reverse such trend. (I would say natural trend in the phase of natural systems of societies).

My own observations of this 'blame capitalism' trend in collective social murmuring gained amplitude perhaps a decade ago, becoming really strong in the past 5 years. I am profoundly puzzled at the 'ad-hocness' and superficiality of the oft presented argument (which this articles is just an sample of). It is not because 'capitalism' is some sacred cow, or that the social maladies affecting communities are irrelevant or unimportant. It is the lack of understanding the very assumptions one makes about the alternatives (as well as 'capitalism' as a concept).

Just as any non-material concept, such as democracy, love, courage, and etc, so capitalism is a model, an abstraction of reality, which is context dependent.

So my contribution to the argument is to bring to attention that just as social-democracy can be de-facto a dictatorship, or 'love' can be a prison, or dictatorship can bring religious freedom and the end of slavery (e.g. early Persian empire) and contrast it with early America colonization governments, similarly capitalism as a concept can be approached.

Fundamentally, it is the mixture of government (power) with private enterprise (wealth) that historically is known to generate the greatest human corruption. Just like there people recognized that religion and state should be separated to avoid corruption of both, it should be followed by a divorce of private enterprise and state. [if one should summarize it in one sentence]. It has nothing to do with capitalism, socialism, nationalism, communism... the principle lies elsewhere.

amen to that

This is excellent start of a debate, spot on on all points.

The precedents we are setting up here are ominous on several levels simultaneously: how we view private property of individuals, due-process, jurisdiction, as well as state-state non-military war waging, reciprocity is declared unjust -> no value no rule seems not worth the attempt, etc.

Im most concerned with attitudes and precedent this will have on understanding western value system of ownership, due-process, total surveillance and total control of an individual. In my reading, these developments spell a sad future on these issues.

That such fundamental questions and core values upon which we lay the very justifications of such proposals are undone nobody seems to be bothered with (no opposition from any political party or public at large). That is what is puzzling me.

Which state/country has not grown (or better reduced) its surveillance capability. As far as I observe, even EU countries are announcing ever more frequently its ever growing appetite (ad-hoc justifications) for more of it? [scandals of secret and not-so secret as well as illegal surveillance by states are features on countless post on HN, and theintercep.com for that matter).

Which country last 1-2 decades has grown less totalitarian? (I fail to think of one example).