erklik

> mythology

maybe that's why? Do we know if it's actually created in AD 230?

> Providing a loan of millions of dollars to a poor African country to build infrastructure, and when they default on their loan, China takes control of the land, effectively having a military base.

Are there specific examples of such areas? Like where China has built infrastructure, and taken over and now has a military base there?

> Iraq to prevent WMDs from being used against the USA

This is something that was proven to be a lie. There were no WMDs, and Bush knew that there wasn't enough evidence that they existed.

> The concept of Pi and the irrationality of sqrt(2) predates the universe itself. Think about it.

How? Get rid of the universe, and the concept of pi doesn't exist. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Circles didn't exist before the universe, thus no pi. There could be another universe where circles are impossible due to whatever laws of physics exist, thus no pi.

Down in Sydney. Intermittent errors when searching.

How am I supposed to work? Also, I don't remember when Google Search was last down. Either google has great uptime, or I have terrible memory.

I love how none of this mentions an illegal war based on lies. Feel like things are slightly biased.

Nearly all UBI is a recurring payment. Otherwise it's not really capable of living on.

That's a massively good point that I somehow failed to remember. Thankyou. My bad.

Who doesn't have uBlock Origin in this day and age? It blocks essentially every ad that Youtube pushes. Now, if you want no sponsors as well, go for SponsorBlock, it skips parts of the video marked as "sponsor" etc.

and they were right? Resources are practically infinite on a universal scale. We just keep progressing and we will get there.

Trees are literally infinite. Just plant enough of them while you cut them down.

Oil is not, but oil is energy, and energy is also practically infinite as long as we do it cleanly, and we have the capability to do so that today.

> That's a very selfish view.

Not sure how advocating for more people is selfish, but okay.

> More people also means more energy need, more recourses use, more garbage too. There is not unlimited recourses to exploits.

Energy can be practically infinite. Simply requires us to use nuclear power. Yes, Yes, there's issues of waste with that. It's overblown and a moral panic.

More resources are used. Yes. However, thinking of it on a universal scale, even resources are "infinite".

That's what i mean. Resources and Energy are practically infinite when you look at it on a long term scale.

I simply don't think, it's a good idea to advocate for humanity to simply reduce and fizzle out. No. Why should we? We should advance life forward. That does not mean in the same way as before. We can do better. But advocating for the reduction of humanity, of life, is wrong in my opinion.

After all, there is no other life we know of out there like us. Why stop?

> That's because humans exploited all natural recourses to the max and it created climate change and extinction of many species, exploited so many animals too, just look at Earthling the documentary. But whenever people talk about progress they don't care about this and turn a blind eye.

the max? I don't know about max. However, yeah, you're right. That does not mean we cannot continue in the future and do it better. Lab Grown meat is nearly a thing, and reducing the price of that will drop global emissions. EVs are becoming far more common and will be replacing ICE vehicles come the turn of the decade, we're building more and more solar and renewable energy resources.

We can fix these problems. Yes, the problems are created by us. That does not mean we cannot fix them while continuing to progress and reduce poverty. More people, more brains only benefits that effort. Not reduces it.

The system of our society needs tweaks. Our incentives are sometimes wrong. But again, reducing people doesn't fix that. More people aids us to build better systems.

> More people means less energy and resources per person though, and people with little resources wont be using their brains to solve problems.

I mean .... why? Why are we assuming that more people aren't working to create more energy, more resources? The Earth can feed, and provide far more energy than we currently are using. Pump out nuclear reactors for every town and we will have enough energy for 10 times the people. Granted, it's not as easy as saying that but my point is that energy is not finite, and resources are far more that we are currently not utilizing.

I don't imagine more people will be living with the same resources. After all, the growth to nearly 8 billion resulted in most people's quality of life rising and poverty decreasing. This is a fact. A cold hard fact, that nearly everyone on an absolute level has gotten better lives.

If we can do that for 8 billion, why can't we for another 8?

More so, increased population results in different, new problems and solving those problems results in us further progressing, not regressing.

I guess, I just don't like thinking of this as the end of history. We can grow and grow, and grow. I don't wish for humanity to simply fizzle out. We've done pretty well till now, let's keep going. We can do better.

As far as we know, we're the only species in the universe, in the whole wide universe that can truly appreciate the beauty of the universe. That can observe. Catalogue. Create Art. Sing songs and so on.

The vast wide massive universe. It deserves to be seen. It deserves to be documented. To be explored. We need to live, and grow far more than now to do that.

Why? I don't genuinely understand this pessimism. More people means more brains, more intelligence, more energy to achieve things. More people means more Einstiens, Newtons, Da Vincis etc.

I do think our systems need changing. Our society currently incentivizes the smart people into something that's not entirely productive but wishing for less people, hmm, I don't know. I feel like this is the start of history, not the end.

No other species can grow it's population exponentially. True. However, we aren't any other species (that we know of at least). The planet can support far more people, it truly can, and more so, the rest of space awaits. We can spread further and further. Is it really good to wish for a reduction of our species? of the only life we know that can truly observe and appreciate the beauty of creation?

We don't even have a Concorde though. It's genuinely frustrating to me honestly. I feel like the level of advancement during that time was truly fascinating and it impacted people's life. Today, what do we have? Another iPhone? More faster computers? It's all incremental.

Why can't we fly on a Concorde? (I know why obviously). I guess I am sad to see that tech that truly changed people's lives doesn't happen as much anymore.

> The great part is that tech (and other white collar) workers used that small window of opportunity where they had tremendous bargaining power to push for policies that will make it even easier to replace them.

Any examples of those policies?

So, is this the Extend part now? Embrace is over? (I don't understand each of the terms of the slogan enough)

Side note, I am guessing this means that Vim, Emacs etc using LSP don't get C# intellisense anymore?

Ahh. You mean your "in-group" of people who don't believe in "in-groups".

This is tongue-in-cheek. :)

That makes a lot of sense. Plus, as someone else commented, it does seem like Safari/Webkit is catching up now.

From an ethical/ideological pov, I really quite agree with you. I use Firefox :P More power to an alternative to the Chromium monopoly.

Thanks for the reply. I am looking forward to trying the beta.

I am not sure if it's been answered somewhere before. Why Webkit? Seems like a bad idea to use an engine that is currently running the "new IE"

> intellectual property laws are the only thing stopping Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product

Is that really the case? Does it work? Isn't Instagram basically cloning TIkTok right now? and cloned Snap before that?

Apple with Alfred, Spotlight, F.lux etc are also examples. Seems like for software, either patents aren't utilized or simply can't be enforced.

> Gun crimes usually happen in strict gun controlled areas because criminals know it's unlikely they will be met with force.

Huh. That's an interesting point. I wonder if there are statistics showing that there is less gun crime in states with more lax gun laws.

Edit: I found two things:

https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/22/3/216.full

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/a...

Seems like the opposite is true. States with easier gun laws have far more gun deaths. It does not seem like guns prevent crime really. If that was the case, then states with the most guns would have the least gun deaths, no?

Hilariously, I have literally asked companies to give me a 4 day week and take away the salary for the last day. I don't care. I just want a free day, but nope, no-one bit .. even the "smaller" employers.

> reselling at an opportunistic time

Are they reselling? I don't think China is really exporting any grain at all in any major amounts. They can't satisfy domestic demand and prices are soaring. To then sanction a country for not selling to you is kind of bonkers in my mind.

> In terms of active conflicts happening right now in 2022, none I could name off the top of my head. That's not say there isn't any, of course, but they're not as big/well known as the American ones.

Looked it up. The only current active conflict that China is involved in is "Northern Mali" where they contribute UN Peacekeeper troops. I can't seem to find anything else so maybe something is happening in secret but who knows about that.

> My comment was more about them propping up foreign dictatorships when it's in their national interest (again, similar to what the US does), such as what they've been doing for decades in Kazakhstan, Cambodia and North Korea and are starting to do now in Africa.

That's probably fair. However, I wasn't ever talking about that. I specifically stated Yemen and Afghanistan as the examples because that's actual conflict. Propping a friendly regime to you is bad, yes, and is terrible [1] but I don't think it can be compared with actually dropping bombs on people, which is what the US is doing.

China is clearly, as far as public evidence goes, not funding/involved in any sort of wars. The US is involved in multiple wars and is actively funding one, while supporting the other heavily. This is ignoring that the past two decades, the US has virtually been at war constantly. I really don't think the US and China are remotely comparable today. So, I don't see why it's hard to believe that the rest of the world, the people who are the ones getting bombed, wouldn't prefer China over US. It only makes sense.

1. although not hypocritical in the case of China to support a dictatorship but is very hypocritical for the US

> around the world

I am curious. What conflicts or wars is the Chinese governemnt funding around the world or is involved in? Who are the Afghans or Yemenis of the Chinese government?

> We’re talking about 18 year old kids who are absolutely not well-informed and their knowledge about the military will be what the recruiter tells them.

I mean there weren't front-page news stories about the US bombing weddings and schools in the past few years? I am not sure we should be underestimating 18yos that much.

They don't need critical thinking skills to know that America has bombed kids and schools and weddings and stuff in the past willy-nilly. Also, 18yo won't be going onto a drone the day after. This happens after years of training and remaining in the military, is it really fair to plead ignorance after all that?

> That being said, these other countries are often not saints themselves (looking at you China).

Depends on who you are, isn't it?

Ask the Chinese. I am sure they love their government (I believe surveys have shown that there is high level of approval)

Ask the Afghans. The Chinese aren't bombing weddings and schools.

Ask the Yemenis. The Chinese aren't funding the Saudis which are causing a man-made famine in their nation.

Ask the Americans. Ooooh. China is terrible. I mean, there's a bias, no? They're the ones at risk of losing their spot at the head of the table. Makes sense they wouldn't like them.

> Either way they do so with some expectation that the intel is sound, that they're helping to protect America/American values, that they're attacking Threats and not random civilians.

With the amount of information that's been released in the last few years, it's bonkers that anyone going into this and having done a limited amount of study won't be aware that shooting civilians is part of the job. It's quite unrealisitic to have such an expectation really.

> Even if they volunteered totally aware of what they would be doing and what would happen, it's one thing to Know and another thing to Have Experienced.

True. But if they volunteer aware that they'll be killing innocents. It seems kind of insane that they deserve any level of sympathy regardless of what they experienced.

> Excuse us Mr. S. Pamking from Armenia, paying with a credit card of an elderly french lady, could you please send us some id?

Amazon's cool with it. I guess they don't care as much? I do wonder where the fraud prevention requirements come from. It's an interesting question if they are even for fraud prevention.