380 karma · joined June 21, 2014
But to _learn_ programming, I really, really don't see how using Haskell would be simpler than Python. Perhaps if you have a specific background (e.g., math), but else python is almost pseudo code already. You'll really have to convince me that a more abstract language is better...
Sure, I get it, we won't literally _stop_ fossil fuels usage in the near future. I get it, other countries are large CO2 emitters. But why is it an argument to do nothing?
In Canada, Carbon tax was a pragmatic, reasonable policy. It was even enacted by conservatives. It was done at zero and even negative cost for most people. And yet, it was gunned down because it was easier to just yell "ax the tax" without even understanding what it was. All of it under the cover of "pragmatism" (hey, families are suffering, businesses are failing, we need to do something -- and of course, that something has nothing to do with the root causes of these issues).
I could go on: you cannot put bike lanes to encourage bike adoption (that's pragmatism: people stuck in traffic in their gaz guzzlers produce CO2!). You cannot improve public transport (that's pragmatism, it's too expensive and families don't want that anyway). You cannot have laws to enforce maximal arsenic content in the air in a residential neighborhood (that's pragmatism, what will the workers do when the plant close?). I could go on and on, just in Canada.
It's tiring to see pragmatism systematically invoked as an justification for doing the worst possible thing, environmentally speaking. It's tiring to see that this always raises the bar of what is environmentally acceptable, such that next decisions are even worse.
Kudos on you if you actually make pragmatic choices to reduce your fossil fuel consumption, both at an individual and societal level. But somehow I doubt it. I've seen too many "pragmatics".
Because we would be the ones not _buying_ the fossils? There are multiple ways to reduce fossil fuels dependency, and they are known (and no, they do not involve genocide or colonialism). In Canada, carbon tax is an example, backed by economic studies (from right wight economists) and originally introduced by conservative (in Canada at least). Of course, then right wing parties started to convince people to "axe the tax" because it was the root cause of their problems (which is was, of course, not).
That's always the issue, and that's always been bugging me. Why is it that not being able to replace, today, 100% of the fossil fuels usage means "gee, we should do nothing, let's actually increase our production!"? How do we come from "such an energetic transition is a multi generation work" (which is true) to "meh too hard, let's double down"? How can we seriously make the argument "hey, I _could_ clean up the mess in my backyard, but anyway my neighbor is way worse and he has a larger backyard, let's do nothing instead"?
I really don't see how these positions are seen as the "voice of reason". To me, there at best the voice of laziness.
> The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense.
If you _must_ extract fossil fuel, you can arguably say that it's better to do it somewhere with higher environmental standards (of course, here I'm disregarding people disdain to see wilderness areas they know and have an emotional attachment with transformed into oil fields). But what about _stop_ fossil fuel usage? Sure, it would cost a lot of money. So is AI currently, for doubtful returns. Sure, it would require people changing habits. So has the Internet, and we went through it.
It's like hearing an alcoholic telling you that sure, he still drinks 3 bottles a day but hey, it's Canada-made alcohol, "all in all better than alcohol coming from Russia", right? Yes, I guess it's better for the Canadian economy, but what about just stop drinking?
About your Tesla, deciding to buy without any political consideration is your choice, which you are entitled to. But why would it be impossible to understand someone actually considering the political/social side of things? All your acts and conscious decisions are strictly driven by objective, scientific criteria, never taking into account anything else?
About the (unrelated) boycott question, I would invite you to consider the reasons motivating people to boycott Tesla. If think everyone do that to "hurt" or "punish" Musk, perhaps that's why it doesn't make sense to you.
>Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support: > Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR
And those are packages very difficult to thoroughly review. At some point, just saying "users have been warned, too bad" might hold from a _legal_ point of view, but I feel like it is deflecting the blame a bit too much.
Sure, if you assume that every attack would be as glaring as the ones we've seen before, that makes it easier. But think of an attack at the level of the xz one and virtually no one would catch it.
- someone with a good understanding will often come to a concise, clear answer while someone struggling will produce a convoluted paragraph.
- the way to get to the result will vary depending on your understanding (e.g., are you blindly applying some method or understanding what's going on). For instance, "hey, this is a vector field, I don't need to evaluate this complex integral, I just need to compute the difference between the start and endpoint of the curve!". Both answers will be correct, but one denotes a much better actual understanding (and will take way less time).
That's what many people miss about LLMs. Sure, humans can lie, make stuff up, make mistakes or deceive. But LLM will do this even if they have no reason to (i.e., they know the right answer and have no reason/motivation to deceive). _That's_ why it's so hard to trust them.
I'm arguing against : "So you know you are killing us in so many ways, and you can't be arsed to eat less meat? Aren't you supposed to care about us?"
You can replace "to eat less meat" by basically a thousand different "reasonable" things. Does that mean that _literally everyone on earth_ is willingly "killing their children and not caring about them"?
I really dislike those arguments patronizing everyone. They achieve nothing -- actually quite the contrary, at _best_ they do nothing for someone who do not feel targeted, at worst they turn people against your cause. There's a difference between stating that each of us can and should take action because those are needed and saying that everyone not doing X is a child killer. If someone suggest that I should stop drinking almond milk, I would consider it. If they introduce this by telling how ashamed I should be and how my children will hate me for this -- but not for long since they will soon be dead anyway because of me -- well, maybe I'll just ignore an otherwise perfectly reasonable and fact-based suggestion.
Again, not a personal attack, but do you follow all of these actions (I could add more similar ones)? Do you own or use a car? Have you ever taken a flight? Went on a cruise? Ate cashews or almond milk? If so, why are you doing this? Why are you (to use the terms stated by OP), so unreasonable, unwilling to do so simple things for your children?
I'm not saying that any action is futile, but that the cost (monetary or otherwise) to take them is _vastly_ underestimated and basically swept under the rug with arguments of reasonableness and simplicity.
And, just to restate, I am not defending my own lifestyle, it's not an emotional argument to make for me.
Note that apart from the rainwater one, I do none of the above, so I'm not even pleading for myself and my "way of life". I'm just showing how easy it is to boldly state that "it is obvious, we just all have to be reasonable" while, in fact, _not_ being "reasonable" yourself.
Basically (_very_ basically, there's more to it) the insurance company insures itself against large claims.
That's true, but most people forget to take into account the cost of the car itself. If you spend 10$ in gas and vehicle depreciation to save 8$ on average on your bill, are you really winning?
When I really need to do a big grocery or to find a specific product which my local store does not have, I rent a car from one of the 5-6 carsharing stations near my place (think ZipCar), it cost me 20$ and I can go where I want. Only, I do not have to pay for a car all the time.
Schools are another topic, of course if you live in a bad neighborhood, it might be problematic, but again with a nice public transportation system, it is not an issue (in my home town, _public_ buses have specific routes for students of a given school, dropping them directly next to the school).
We can always devise a situation where you are "limited" by public/active transport ("I am an ER doctor, what should I do if I get called at 2AM on a winter night to an hospital on the other side of the town to save multiple children lives?"). Sure, in these cases, you should take the car. That doesn't mean that for the overwhelming majority of people, car _would_ not be mandatory (assuming a decent public transportation system and walkable/bikable cities).
The same way it is unreasonable to think that less car centric cities would solve all our issues, it's just silly to equate "non car-centric environment" to "dystopian cities where people die on the street whenever there is a bit of cold".
This is definitely not a coin flip, actually somehow close to what a human would produce, IMHO.