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I'm no exception to your rule, but are you really so confident that all of humanity shares the same appetite for status signalling? I'm not a particularly social person, but even I can think of some counterexamples in my personal life. Obviously, we can also consider most of the extremely wealthy (Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc) as well.

No, they may not explicitly enjoy it, yet they likely appreciate the ease the automobile-focused society brings, even though it contributes to around 7000 pedestrian fatalities annually. Anyone rational would view such preventable loss of life as disastrous. However, the solutions — improved street layouts, less wide roads, use of speed cameras and so on — are often deemed so unpalatable that it prompts a flag on the article. It appears as though a number of readers here don't find 7000 annual deaths significant enough.

My guess: people dislike critical discussion about the things they enjoy.

What? Clearly this man receives a great deal of value(>$50k) in having these statues in front of his home. Just because in theory, he's creating value for the franchise that he isn't capturing, doesn't mean he's being exploited. He's no more an idiot than a Disney fan wearing a Mickey Mouse hat or shirt.

> it's far more eco friendly and lower carbon Footprint to own an rv and travel and stay in it in various places than to own several properties and fly between them.

It's considered worse to drive (vs fly) unless you have more than 2 people-- and that's for a normal car. With a truck+trailer the break-even point would need more passengers.

https://terrapass.com/blog/carbon-footprint-of-driving-vs-fl...

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-...

The prius is one of the most reliable vehicles on the road today. These are just priuses with larger batteries and more powerful electric motors.

According to this article, ebikes do produce fewer carbon emissions than conventional bikes overall, while considering manufacturing costs:

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/long-reads/cycling-enviro...

There's an interesting blog post about this topic: https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-biking-v...

Really? I ride a bike and I can't wait for lots of people to use e-bikes to get around. Research shows that "the more people ride bikes, the safer all bike riders are on the streets." [0]. Also... I'd much rather get hit by an ebike than a car.

[0]: https://www.calbike.org/studies-show-increases-in-biking-and...

I'm interested in these statistics, can you suggest a source?

I'm confused, I don't see any memes in the article. Were they deleted?

Too much distracted driving, and too little enforcement of existing rules for me to care. Every day, I see other road users take calls, record videos, all behind the wheel: why should I give a shit? My options are either to remain frustrated with the world, or simply adopt societal norms and drive my Chevy Tahoe stress free :)

Yep, this is exactly why I recommend everybody I know to buy the biggest, largest car you can buy. The outcome of vehicular collisions is based almost entirely on who has more mass and energy, and you might as well set yourself to win. Sure, big cars cost more to operate-- but $150 fill-ups are nothing compared to a lifetime of chronic pain and injury.

I don't really have any evidence for this, but I always imagined the nimby's who care most about property values would concern-troll about housing projects being "affordable", or their "environmental impact".

> The primary aim of NIMBY is to lower density because less supply=higher prices

I don't think this is actually true. If you spend enough time on Nextdoor and read what nimby's complain about, the chief concerns are traffic, parking, and congestion (after crime and safety). Obviously, there are nimby's who are concerned with their property values, but the average 75 year old nimby isn't interested in selling/moving their property.

I'm really skeptical of your argument. To start with, you mention that many presidents majored in History-- but the prestige came from the law degree that followed, not the history B.A. (which maybe is popular due to history's focus on political events).

Secondly, you suggest that the study of History centers around high level decision-making. I'm not really sure about that. Assuming you're right, this is also the case in business school, where the decisions being analyzed happen to concern private enterprise rather than the government.

I do like your point about the relevance of Silicon Valley history. But I suspect that it's much more important to be obsessive and passionate about a piece of technology than to know the story behind previous attempts. Palmer Lucky rebooted VR with incredible dedication to the product, not an academic understanding of the field.

You don't think they controlled for that?

Isn't this paper discussing land use, and not environmental friendliness? Concerns such as the cost of transport are ignored here.

I know you couldn't find it, but what was even the basic principle? It's hard for me to imagine that dramatically increasing land use, transportation and infrastructure costs could be environmentally beneficial.

According to wikipedia[1], an ebike is about 10x as efficient per passenger mile as a tesla. Also, an ebike is 2x(!) as efficient as a conventional bike.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transpo...

I don't think the risk to yourself is the reason why operating a motor vehicle is a licensed activity.

Why do you think that?

How is it clearly trash?

I apologize if I'm being too pedantic, but actually facebook closing would affect lots of companies who use fb ads to reach customers.

Purely out of curiosity: why does poor capital utilization concern you? It's their gamble, their resources, their right, I think.

It sounds to me like you have a problem with the concept of conglomerates utilizing their capital.

This wasn't my experience at all, go figure! I made a shrimp and a sardine (from frozen) one.

it's very common for professors to do contract work (not for lesswrong though, lol)

From that calculator, it seems that you need to be making $2.3M in Fremont, CA to get to 50%.

You're right, although vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death in young adults in the US. I'm just saying that SUVs and trucks externalize their costs onto other road users.