Not ethically better, though. At least in the US, 99% of all pork is factory-farmed, and in much of that the pigs live their whole lives in a stall too small to turn around in.
Pigs are as smart as dogs, and have personalities and emotions. I am absolutely a carnivore, but I still balk at eating meat raised through a system that just about tortures intelligent animals.
Anyways: I eat a lot more chicken and plant protein these days.
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""
Where's the guidelines about misinforming people which has actual societal implications? Where are the guidelines for openly promoting products that harm people's mental and social health?
I don't think you need to attack someone personally, even if you believe they are promoting products that harm people's mental and social health. For most of us following along, it will be enough if you dismantle their arguments. What good does it do for you to harangue them?
I think this guideline: "Assume good faith", applies not just to the people we disagree with, but also the other readers -- meaning, that you can trust that other readers are interested in learning and seeing things correctly.
It does zero good "for me" but hopefully someone thinks twice the next time before expressing such a dumb incorrect opinion. Not sure why adults are such precious little creatures that can't deal with a bit of criticism. If being correct was a virtue instead of being nice we wouldn't be backsliding into a world of misinformation in which science is being dismantled and people are lynched on the streets while billionaire corporations use dumb people free propaganda spreaders.
> It does zero good "for me" but hopefully someone thinks twice the next time before expressing such a dumb incorrect opinion.
Well, I doubt it's going to change anyone's mind if it violates the community guidelines and then the mods pull it. No?
> Not sure why adults are such precious little creatures that can't deal with a bit of criticism.
In general, folks here will respond better to data-oriented rebuttals, rather than emotionally-driven ones. When you name-call, it brings more hot/negative emotions into it, and the focus shifts away from talking about the evidence, and towards those same hot emotions. It becomes more about the anger or defensiveness and less about the information.
If you want to change minds, then, focus on the evidence.
There's also the wider picture. If you build a community that focuses on evidence, and push away those who prefer abusive language, you'll generally draw more rational people. The discourse you get from those people is more interesting, mentally stimulating, and data-oriented.
On top of that, it's more emotionally healthy to have a community where people respect each other, where we extend good faith and assume that the people we're disagreeing with are fundamentally trying to hold the right views. It's good practice for seeing the humanity in others, and in general it does seem to be true here. Most folks here are indeed interested in coming to the correct position.
The folks here are also more than capable of handling "a bit of criticism", meaning, handling some abusive language coming their way. Indeed, the way they've chosen to handle it is by rejecting it, and saying they prefer to build a better community.
The article hardly mentions "oppressed peoples" at all. Much of the focus is on the benefits gained to the empire by the diversity therein, with brief forays into the historical and geographical layout of different parts of the early/mid Roman empire.
So that adds some extra "benefits" (mutation and natural selection improves the probes over time) along with some extra difficulties - how do you keep the self-reproducing probes "on-task" from one generation to the next? How do you instill "explore and report home" as an innate goal to a mutating system?
I'd argue all self-replicating systems subject to entropy (i.e. existing in the physical world) are automatically subject to mutation and natural selection and, therefore, alive and able to evolve around any innate goals or constraints. If the inmate goal isn't tied to a highly-conserved phenotype I would think the goal would disappear as mutations accumulate and natural selection takes its toll.
Judging by our behavior on the current rock we're on, don't give them the choice. Humanity has been around for a long time. In that time, I don't believe I've ever heard discussion of changing the direction the Sun and Earth are headed. If there were something deep inside the Earth, or another planet that would activate in another 10,000 years that would do the phone home step, we still don't know about it. So while we're hypothesizing about sci-fi Von Neumann probes, just scale the entire thing up to the size of a solar system and send that off in the right direction. Collect all the mass in our system that isn't Sol, Terra, (and Luna), and build a rogue planet with an underground civilization, and then don't give them engines. Unless the civilization on the planet advances too the point that they can create engines, decide they don't want to go where you've sent them, voila, generational ship. Just bury a computer deep I side the rogue planet's core that activates once it reaches the destination.
I would argue that, over the time scales at which Von Neumann probes would hypothetically spread, “report home” may be a useless or even wasteful requirement. Even if somebody were still around to hear the message, what is the likelihood that they would still be listening? Or be able to interpret it?
If we build self-replicating machines and send them out into the universe we're really just sending out our evolutionary progeny. Hopefully they would remember us fondly.
I think it applies to non-biological Von Neumann probes as well. It'll apply to any system that can mutate, even if that mutation is just cosmic rays flipping the bits on a hard drive.
We could have coffee made today by automated coffee vending machines, but many people still prefer to go to a coffee shop. Why is that?
Sometimes we don’t choose the cheaper automated product, and instead opt for the “human experience”. I don’t imagine this will change any time soon. Humans like being around humans.
Mostly because machine coffee tastes like shit, the incentives are off for it; its usually in a place where you cant get good coffee and they do not give a fuck if you like it or not, enjoy your caffeine that you are addicted to.
Some ingredients for a good coffee still need to be fresh, like milk - refilled daily. And the machine cleaned. Might as well employ a human at this point.
If that is true, then, why is it that the "human experience" has been on decline for decades - since the very moment it became possible to start cutting down on it?
If "humans like being around humans", why does human behavior say otherwise?
because economics and practical realities demand it.
most Gen Z don't drink because they can't afford it, not because they don't like bars.
a movie ticket w/ drinks and popcorn is now $55 for me and the wife. I'd love to see it in the theater w/ people but netflix is half that per month, unlimited viewing.
starbucks championed the 3rd place but is aggressively culling their own stores to chase profits
public transport isn't there in many places so if you don't have a car you can't go anywhere, whomp whomp
lots of people would go out more -- they just can't. so you do the best w/ what you have, and that's usually smartphone, streaming, and staying in
Estimates on the count of close friendships, amount of acquaintances, dating, sexual activity, etc - all falling.
People have fewer and fewer relationships, and even fewer close or intimate relationships. "Third places" are in decline, demand-induced - social activity takes place "in person" less and less, and more and more of it moves "online".
If your idea of "human experience" is "close relationship in person" or "group activities offline", and not something like "a friend chat group with memes and games, most of them never met in person", "social media posting", "parasocial relationship with a streamer" or "public Minecraft and Roblox servers", then "human experience" is on decline by just about any metric available.
Those aren't new trends either. They predate things like companion/roleplay AI chatbots - which seem popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha in particular.
How that new thing shakes out is still unclear, but modern AIs are probably the closest thing to a "human experience" one can get without involving a human at all. So there's even more room for the metrics to fall now - regardless of whether "hanging out in a streamer's chat" counts as "human experience" to you.
But do people want fewer and fewer physical relationships, friendships, etc. ("loniless epidemic" comes to mind here, for example)?
Humans liking being around other humans doesn't preclude failure there - but that wouldn't mean that the statement isn't true. And as I said, some real life activities involving other humans are at quite high levels these days (concerts, higher end restaurants or explorations).
Oh, a lot of people want "physical relationships, friendships, etc". As a stated preference. As a revealed preference though? All in decline.
It sure seems like quite an amount of people doesn't want those things enough to go through the hassle of actually forming and maintaining those relationships.
If you could just get yourself a genuine Close Physical Relationship in a box, same-day delivery, enjoyment guaranteed or your money back? I bet they would. But as is? With the time, the effort, the sheer uncertainty involved? A lot of people forgo it.
For every example you list, there's two more examples of "third places" fading away into nothingness because people just aren't using them anymore.
Not convinced that we are seeing revealed preferences or something else (being "priced out", for example).
Failure and uncertainty are part of life, so I have no issue with those.
What would be "genuine" about the physical relationship in a box? A sentient, conscious being with autonomy and agency would bring uncertainty etc. right back no?
That's what "revealed preferences" means! Preferences in a vacuum vs preferences under real world constraints.
In a world where you have to pick, do you pick pursuing a close physical relationship, or opt for something far more shallow, but also much more certain and convenient? Or perhaps a deep relationship - with someone you share a lot of interests with, but don't happen to share a continent? Or something else entirely - like solitary entertainment?
In the perfect world of stated preferences, you don't have to trade those things off. In the real world, there's only this much time, money and effort you have available, and choices have to be made.
Revealed preference isn't about no choice (or oddly forced), but rational choices and my point is that we don't know how much here is "no choice" vs "rational choice". It is not a revealed choice for most people not to have a super yacht - they just do not get to make that choice.
People with a lot of degress of freedom (wealth) seem to be doing ok with choosing actual physical relationships, marriages, etc. - why is that? (About 80+% of the richest 100 people are married, for example, and they tend to have quite a few children, too)?
> Estimates on the count of close friendships, amount of acquaintances, dating, sexual activity, etc - all falling.
Personally I would blame this on smartphones and/or apps, not the people. There's a lot of people who report finding these things addictive, and Meta's getting sued right now by people who have shown that Meta knew the users were upset about being addicted to the platform:
To put it another way, the cost per advancement increases. That’s “as we advance it becomes more difficult to advance”. However, because of the prior advances, you also have more resources to throw at future advancements.
So, then, the question is whether the “profits” on the last advance are enough to pay for the next one. We can define a new term, “affordability”, as what % “profit” you can expect from each advance relative to its cost, telling us whether it becomes relatively easier or harder to continue to advance.
You could argue that there is a capital built up - but even that is difficult as a lot of the knowledge for, eg., building LLMs can not demand rent. Everybody can build their own transformer networks.
> To put it another way, the cost per advancement increases.
This is not true when you don't use capital that demands rent. On the contrary, the cost per advancement is actually decreasing as we develop more knowledge.
LLMs are a cognitive technology (as contrasted to a communication technology). And it will help us tremendously manage knowledge such that you can utilize it better decreasing the cost of advancement.
Whether or not it decreases the costs of advancedment would depend on what is causing advancement to have costs. Some things might be addressable by cognitive technologies, others might not.
If capital doesn't create a return evenutally, why would it invest? (Or did you mean "rent" in the narrow economics definition? But then not sure how that applies here).
Nuclear weapons and ICMBs that can deliver them to the US makes the threat more meaningful too. There was always the chance that a Trump-like president would decide a few days of shells raining down in Seoul while we hunted NK's artillery positions would be worth getting rid of NK. Road mobile ICBMs that can deliver a nuke to the US mainland removes that option unless they're REALLY REALLY strong believers in the 44 GBIs sitting in Alaska. (Ignoring their shoddy track record and the fact we only have 44 and usually shoot 2-4 at each missile)
Most of this isn't geographical determinism, though. The death of the indigenous americans (allowing settlers to come in and take over), the brain drain after WW2, the first modern democracy (even if the Constitution is a bit kludgy), etc., all not geographical determinism.
Pigs are as smart as dogs, and have personalities and emotions. I am absolutely a carnivore, but I still balk at eating meat raised through a system that just about tortures intelligent animals.
Anyways: I eat a lot more chicken and plant protein these days.
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