Deaths from climate change

[AnalogPackrat]

It's not a lack of seriousness, it's a lack of hope, or perhaps emotional energy.

Self-motivation primarily comes from within. Yes, others can inspire and encourage which is very important, but the will to succeed, to keep on keepin' on, is an internal flame. Sometimes it dims to pilot light level and must be rekindled.

People became careless when they're apathetic because, well, they don't care.

Also a problem. But like motivation, caring (in the anti-apathy sense) comes from within.

Lack of upwards mobility is a serious and worsening issue in the current economy.

And it wasn't ever like that before? Life is full of challenges. As my grandfather used to say: "if it is to be it is up to me." That's the attitude of someone who understands that effort is required to make things happen, whether it's learning a new skill, finding a better paying job, raising children, helping your neighbor/community, or whatever.

Work ethic has its limits, especially in the current emotional and social landscape.

We have artificially promoted emotion above reason and replaced actual community with shallow social media pablum.

People are expected to be more and more productive, as always, while also having more and more taken from them in terms of community.

Eh? Productivity is higher primarily due to more technological leverage (automation, mass production, etc.) not because people are working harder. Who is taking community (other than Zuckerberg)? That's a choice people make.

People's nervous systems are shot from the constant and unavoidable overload if stimulus too, IMO.

I agree here. Smart phones are addictive and, at least with the current applications/uses, appear to be a net negative influence.

I don't think we quite understand what that means yet or what it's doing. If huge portions of young people are suddenly having difficulty withstanding life stress, my money is on something happening to them, rather than it being any kind of lack of resolve on their part.

I think there are multiple factors underlying this problem, the largest being not allowing kids to fail or experience negative consequences of decisions or actions they make or do. Failure is a necessary component of life and of learning. If you shield kids from it until they get their first job* at 22, they have not developed any way to process actual challenges with negative outcomes. They "lose hope" or become apathetic.

People say Millennials and younger are sheltered, but I think it's the exact opposite. Everyone is seeing so much all the time. It's a lack of shelter. I saw my first murder when I was about 9 or 10 years old, and so did most of the people I know. It's an inside joke with people 30 and younger like "What age were you when you discovered liveleak?"

That is a disturbing trend (access to the entire internet by children). No surprise, I blame parents.

But then there are farm kids who saw the cycle of life including butchering of animals for food, predation, etc. and weren't affected like that. Along the same lines, I still remember being 5 or 6 and hearing that one of my classmates had died. He'd fallen out of a moving car somehow.

I think the human mind isn't built for processing this much information all the time, and the adaptations that young people develop to allow that might literally result in reduced ability to perform other functions.

It isn't just kids being impacted. I see a reduction in attention span in other adults and myself. I resisted getting a smart phone until 2012, so I definitely felt the change from the outside looking in for the first few years as nearly everyone else started using them c.2006-08, especially in silicon valley where I was at the time.

I think a lot of young people just don't communicate with older generations because they don't think they'll understand. The not only psychological but spiritual effect of growing up in the internet age is difficult to convey to older people.

How so?

Seeing the computer not as a communication device but a vessel for the spirit or self, integrating it as a fully natural method of not just communication but presence. I think younger people have a sense of self and personhood that is built, from the ground up, totally differently from older generations.

That's an interesting insight. And frightening.

From some perspectives (including mine, tbh) in a way that's a net negative. It is an exhausting way to exist. It leaves little left over for participating in the world.

I can understand that given the addictive nature of social media. Is there any way to deprogram this? Actual socialization is also on the decline and that is not going to lead anywhere good, IMO.

Interesting, but sad and disturbing.

 

[cyrano]

Even the future was better in the past...

What we're seeing is mostly the spleen. It's a social/cultural feeling that stems from being at the turn of a century. And now we're at the turn of a millennium, so it's even stronger. It produces prophets of doom, but also what seems like carelessness. It isn't but it's the young people's way to get things that are important to them. Like freedom. We're at the end of the spleen now. Remember 1999? Especially new year's eve?

Sure, the net has some influence on it. But it's not what's driving people. It just amplifies and distributes it. Some like to blame it on social media (especially those who refuse to use them, witch shows the worst kind of bias, the religious one). Some things are due to social media, but it's not the origin of the phenomena. It's just the transport layer.

The spleen leads to change. Whether that's good, or bad, depends solely how you look upon it.

If you read about the introduction of other important new things, like the train, radio, or the telephone, you'll see the exact same resistance against change. And the reasoning is always the same. New things will drive crime up, fi. It's a given that if new things appear, criminals will also use them. Why wouldn't they? But it never was an important factor in the end.

It was first mentioned by Baudelaire I think. A funny thing is that there is no English Wiki page for it, so I can only give you the French page:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spleen_baudelairien

 

[JohnRoberts]

This seems unrelated to climate change but I read an newspaper piece this morning about children being targeted by social media.

Reportedly Meta Platforms sought to design products to take advantage of known weakness in young user's brains. An internal document shows that the company engineered products to capitalize on the parts of youth psychology that renders teens predisposed to impulse, peer pressure, and potentially harmful risky behavior. Teens are insatiable when it comes to feel good dopamine effects.

These were internal comments from meta about instagram being potentially harmful to well being of younger teens.
====

In my judgement Instagram is not the only dopamine fix available to young people on social media.

JR

PS: I appreciate that this probably makes me sound like an old dinosaur.... so be it.

 

[soliloqueen]

Self-motivation primarily comes from within.

I'll get to the rest of your message in a bit. My problem with this perspective is difficult to explain, especially as someone with brain damage. Trying to figure out how to word this. "Trying harder" itself is still a skill that can be compromised by factors in development, or taken by injury. There is not always, in every situation, an inherent "core" to the self upon which things in the world act with inwards force that can be responded to with outwards force. Good examples of this are brain injury or psychotic mental illness. Things like that compromise your very self down to the "core" of your being and cannot be approached with a "resilience narrative." Which as an extremely stubborn person was very hard for me to accept and understand. It is possible that there are certain things children are exposed to in this new social environment (like social media) that are not neurologically possible to be "resilient" to, regardless of how hard one tries or how much motivation one has. I think that's what should scare people.

 

[soliloqueen]

How so?

You ever read about those studies where they raised animals in captivity in designed environments that don't include horizontal lines? And then the animals couldn't understand horizontal lines when they were introduced to them in the way normal animals could? They could adapt, but perception was always different because something fundamental was different about the process of stimulus. For people above and below 30, the internet is the horizontal lines. People above 30 cannot understand younger people's perspective on the internet. They aren't wired in a way that even allows them to. I know that's existentially terrifying, but it's true. I see it in this thread all the time, people talking about marketing and peer pressure and dopamine responses and attention span like the internet is something that is "additional" to real life. A new technology. A new method of communication that might be affecting "things." That's all. Rather than being the tangible spiritual and mental place that my soul inhabits. My self exists in the internet. Just as much as it exists in my body. For some younger people, the self exists more on the internet than it does in the body. I know younger people who talk about feeling like they don't even fit in their bodies, like they feel like they're splitting at the seams. I've felt that too. When you are developing as a person, you develop boundaries--the outer edges of a self--naturally where your limits are. But on the internet, there are no limits, so people who grow up on the Internet develop an infinite self. A self with no edges. A personhood with no understanding of internal boundaries. Because of this, many teenagers and young adults don't even feel human anymore. Not in the same way as older people do. This is something that millennials and gen z don't talk about with older generations because we don't even know how to begin to have this conversation.

For older people, you sit down at your computer or unlock your phone and then you go to a website and you communicate. You take your feelings and thoughts from yourself and you translate them and you put them on the internet. For younger people, the internet is where you exist, your body is just what interacts with the material world. For a lot of young people it feels like the body is just a sock puppet you stuff a small lobe of your being into to do "real life stuff" but the rest of you, most of you, is the internet. Young people literally do not exist in material reality the same way older people do. This fundamental gap in perception of reality makes communicating with people who didn't grow up with the internet extraordinarily difficult. Older adults are worried about screen time, but they don't genuinely understand what's happening to us or how the true damage even works. The truth is, it is much, much, much much much much much much much much much much much much much much worse than they can imagine. Older people can only see the "shadows on the wall" of the damage that's being done to younger people. There is an entire aspect of the emotional, spiritual and metaphysical reality of young people that they cannot process. It will ultimately be up to us as the first generation who grew up this way to understand what's happening to us and adjust the world so that our kids are more functional.

That's I think one of the major miscommunications between young people and old people today. When you talk about the internet and the problems that causes and your child says "you don't understand." They don't mean "there's no problem," they literally mean "You don't understand my existence." Young people are not in denial of any of this, we just don't really talk about it with older people because they don't get it. If we tried to talk about it, they might try to fix it and mess it up worse because they don't have the perception of the "space" required to do it with the necessary finesse. We are quietly waiting until we are old enough that our generation makes policy and raises children so that we can do it properly, because this is so important that we feel it can't be trusted to a generation that doesn't have true perception of the issue, if that makes sense. We have no intention of letting this happen to our children.

 

[L´Andratté]

You ever read about those studies where they raised animals in captivity in designed environments that don't include horizontal lines? And then the animals couldn't understand horizontal lines when they were introduced to them in the way normal animals could? They could adapt, but perception was always different because something fundamental was different about the process of stimulus. For people above and below 30, the internet is the horizontal lines. People above 30 cannot understand younger people's perspective on the internet. They aren't wired in a way that even allows them to. I know that's existentially terrifying, but it's true. I see it in this thread all the time, people talking about marketing and peer pressure and dopamine responses and attention span like the internet is something that is "additional" to real life. A new technology. A new method of communication that might be affecting "things." That's all. Rather than being the tangible spiritual and mental place that my soul inhabits. My self exists in the internet. Just as much as it exists in my body. For some younger people, the self exists more on the internet than it does in the body. I know younger people who talk about feeling like they don't even fit in their bodies, like they feel like they're splitting at the seams. I've felt that too. When you are developing as a person, you develop boundaries--the outer edges of a self--naturally where your limits are. But on the internet, there are no limits, so people who grow up on the Internet develop an infinite self. A self with no edges. A personhood with no understanding of internal boundaries. Because of this, many teenagers and young adults don't even feel human anymore. Not in the same way as older people do. This is something that millennials and gen z don't talk about with older generations because we don't even know how to begin to have this conversation.

For older people, you sit down at your computer or unlock your phone and then you go to a website and you communicate. You take your feelings and thoughts from yourself and you translate them and you put them on the internet. For younger people, the internet is where you exist, your body is just what interacts with the material world. For a lot of young people it feels like the body is just a sock puppet you stuff a small lobe of your being into to do "real life stuff" but the rest of you, most of you, is the internet. Young people literally do not exist in material reality the same way older people do. This fundamental gap in perception of reality makes communicating with people who didn't grow up with the internet extraordinarily difficult. Older adults are worried about screen time, but they don't genuinely understand what's happening to us or how the true damage even works. The truth is, it is much, much, much much much much much much much much much much much much much much worse than they can imagine. Older people can only see the "shadows on the wall" of the damage that's being done to younger people. There is an entire aspect of the emotional, spiritual and metaphysical reality of young people that they cannot process. It will ultimately be up to us as the first generation who grew up this way to understand what's happening to us and adjust the world so that our kids are more functional.

That's I think one of the major miscommunications between young people and old people today. When you talk about the internet and the problems that causes and your child says "you don't understand." They don't mean "there's no problem," they literally mean "You don't understand my existence." Young people are not in denial of any of this, we just don't really talk about it with older people because they don't get it. If we tried to talk about it, they might try to fix it and mess it up worse because they don't have the perception of the "space" required to do it with the necessary finesse. We are quietly waiting until we are old enough that our generation makes policy and raises children so that we can do it properly, because this is so important that we feel it can't be trusted to a generation that doesn't have true perception of the issue, if that makes sense. We have no intention of letting this happen to our children.

Well, assuming that you are part of the generation you describe, you talked to "us older ones", and speaking for myself, you did a very good job and made me, at least, understand your perspective.

I read "Neuromancer" when it came out in 1985 and I was still a teen and it´s ideas still dystopian scifi... Now the real world only differs from that in the pittoresque details, not anymore in the big scheme of things.

Having seen the best of my generation being bought, coerced, pressured and betrayed into playing along the great bow-to-the-powers-that-are shit symphony and most of the rest sinking into extremism, depression or likewise misery, I wouldn´t bet a coin on any generation "doing it better", but I would be very happy to see it happen and instantly complicit.

I often think about the younger generations, how they get sold down the river of profit and the mess we are leaving behind for them, which makes me feel ashamed and angry. I don´t need the nine yo. child I have, to feel like that. It was mid 90s when scientists started urgently warning about global environmental destruction (I´m not even talking about the cultural implosion we are living through...).

Thirty years of callous ignorance, deflection and less-and-less democratically checked power later, humanity is stumbling around a mirror cabinet and the planet is, as was predicted, at the brink of a mass extinction event, which understandably but also terrifyingly is too troubling for many to accept as a fact. It is unchallenged though, by serious science.

Still there is hope. Even the hope for a much more humane place for humans and all the other wonderful beings of this world. Maybe it takes a generation as removed from the "old" ways of thinking as you describe, to get that going. I promise a lot of people from "older" generations, who would call all of this lunacy as of now, will be on board with that, then, and even feel unspeakable relief.

You can call me unrealistic, naiv, etc. and maybe you are right, but I say it is the last card we hold in our hands and we ought to play it.
Because the other way is just bleak darkness, much longer than anyone could hold out in their NZ atomic bunker sauna zone. Only spiritual acceptance can help there, if you can muster it.

Sorry, if this wasn´t exactly your point. Just wanted to make it.

 

[Ó Draighnáin]

Well, assuming that you are part of the generation you describe, you talked to "us older ones", and speaking for myself, you did a very good job and made me, at least, understand your perspective.

I read "Neuromancer" when it came out in 1985 and I was still a teen and it´s ideas still dystopian scifi... Now the real world only differs from that in the pittoresque details, not anymore in the big scheme of things.

Having seen the best of my generation being bought, coerced, pressured and betrayed into playing along the great bow-to-the-powers-that-are shit symphony and most of the rest sinking into extremism, depression or likewise misery, I wouldn´t bet a coin on any generation "doing it better", but I would be very happy to see it happen and instantly complicit.

I often think about the younger generations, how they get sold down the river of profit and the mess we are leaving behind for them, which makes me feel ashamed and angry. I don´t need the nine yo. child I have, to feel like that. It was mid 90s when scientists started urgently warning about global environmental destruction (I´m not even talking about the cultural implosion we are living through...).

Thirty years of callous ignorance, deflection and less-and-less democratically checked power later, humanity is stumbling around a mirror cabinet and the planet is, as was predicted, at the brink of a mass extinction event, which understandably but also terrifyingly is too troubling for many to accept as a fact. It is unchallenged though, by serious science.

Still there is hope. Even the hope for a much more humane place for humans and all the other wonderful beings of this world. Maybe it takes a generation as removed from the "old" ways of thinking as you describe, to get that going. I promise a lot of people from "older" generations, who would call all of this lunacy as of now, will be on board with that, then, and even feel unspeakable relief.

You can call me unrealistic, naiv, etc. and maybe you are right, but I say it is the last card we hold in our hands and we ought to play it.
Because the other way is just bleak darkness, much longer than anyone could hold out in their NZ atomic bunker sauna zone. Only spiritual acceptance can help there, if you can muster it.

Sorry, if this wasn´t exactly your point. Just wanted to make it.

I wish the billionaires would stay the f**k away, just makes us a target and drives up real estate even more. Apologies... carry on.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

I've been busy the past couple of days, but this conversation has been bouncing around in my head much of the time.

You ever read about those studies where they raised animals in captivity in designed environments that don't include horizontal lines? And then the animals couldn't understand horizontal lines when they were introduced to them in the way normal animals could?

Yes. I took several psych classes including early childhood development and grad level cognitive psych. As a computer vision engineer I was also very interested in the human visual system, including it's anomolies (be they optical, sensory, and/or "processing" induced), so I'm pretty familiar with the topic.

They could adapt, but perception was always different because something fundamental was different about the process of stimulus. For people above and below 30, the internet is the horizontal lines.

IMO that is an overstatement. Younger people were not completely denied interactions with the real world during their development. Yes, some of it was supplanted by social media, etc.

People above 30 cannot understand younger people's perspective on the internet.

Maybe.

They aren't wired in a way that even allows them to.

Do you have any research that backs that rather bold assertion?

I know that's existentially terrifying, but it's true. I see it in this thread all the time, people talking about marketing and peer pressure and dopamine responses and attention span like the internet is something that is "additional" to real life. A new technology. A new method of communication that might be affecting "things." That's all.

My generation was subject to a huge increase in psychological manipulation by targeted advertising (on TV, radio, and in print) that was developed based on psychological advancements. We received much more of this than any generation before us yet we managed to hold on to reality (and many of us developed a heightened skepticism as a result).

Rather than being the tangible spiritual and mental place that my soul inhabits. My self exists in the internet. Just as much as it exists in my body.

I've never heard anyone else describe such a phenomenon or belief.

For some younger people, the self exists more on the internet than it does in the body. I know younger people who talk about feeling like they don't even fit in their bodies, like they feel like they're splitting at the seams. I've felt that too. When you are developing as a person, you develop boundaries--the outer edges of a self--naturally where your limits are. But on the internet, there are no limits, so people who grow up on the Internet develop an infinite self. A self with no edges. A personhood with no understanding of internal boundaries.

Any research to back this? I'm genuinely curious.

Because of this, many teenagers and young adults don't even feel human anymore. Not in the same way as older people do. This is something that millennials and gen z don't talk about with older generations because we don't even know how to begin to have this conversation.

How? You talk about it like you just did. And how would you know that you feel fundamentally different than someone else when you can't/won't discuss with them how they view the world and their place in it? It all sounds rather self-absorbed to me.

For older people, you sit down at your computer or unlock your phone and then you go to a website and you communicate. You take your feelings and thoughts from yourself and you translate them and you put them on the internet. For younger people, the internet is where you exist, your body is just what interacts with the material world. For a lot of young people it feels like the body is just a sock puppet you stuff a small lobe of your being into to do "real life stuff" but the rest of you, most of you, is the internet. Young people literally do not exist in material reality the same way older people do.

Again, new to me. Looking for professional insight into this theory.

This fundamental gap in perception of reality makes communicating with people who didn't grow up with the internet extraordinarily difficult. Older adults are worried about screen time, but they don't genuinely understand what's happening to us or how the true damage even works. The truth is, it is much, much, much much much much much much much much much much much much much much worse than they can imagine. Older people can only see the "shadows on the wall" of the damage that's being done to younger people. There is an entire aspect of the emotional, spiritual and metaphysical reality of young people that they cannot process. It will ultimately be up to us as the first generation who grew up this way to understand what's happening to us and adjust the world so that our kids are more functional.

Sounds like you believe your generation is somehow able to grok themselves and us mere "old folks," but believe we cannot possibly grok you.

That's I think one of the major miscommunications between young people and old people today. When you talk about the internet and the problems that causes and your child says "you don't understand." They don't mean "there's no problem," they literally mean "You don't understand my existence."

It's up to your generation to communicate that to others, is it not? GenX and older can't force you to explain your perception, thoughts, and feelings.

Young people are not in denial of any of this, we just don't really talk about it with older people because they don't get it. If we tried to talk about it, they might try to fix it and mess it up worse because they don't have the perception of the "space" required to do it with the necessary finesse.

Sounds pretty arrogant (and naïve) to me, having had similar thoughts in my youth.

We are quietly waiting until we are old enough that our generation makes policy and raises children so that we can do it properly, because this is so important that we feel it can't be trusted to a generation that doesn't have true perception of the issue, if that makes sense. We have no intention of letting this happen to our children.

Wow. Don't you think that grandparents who experienced reality before (we apparently ruined it with) the internet might have better insight into how to live in reality and treat computers, software, social media, and the rest as they should be--as mere tools rather than some grandiose new reality? I know my grandparents passed on a lot of wisdom that was beyond my parents at that time. I learned a lot from people much older than me or my parents during my life.

There's something very "off" about this whole idea that you've outlined.

 

[soliloqueen]

Wow. Don't you think that grandparents who experienced reality before (we apparently ruined it with) the internet might have better insight into how to live in reality and treat computers, software, social media, and the rest as they should be--as mere tools rather than some grandiose new reality?

yes, and in fact that's exactly how i feel. In my post I was saying that young people feel this way, not that we're right. "We" does not necessarily mean "me." If I say "We" then I'm attempting to aggregate the opinions of the young people I know, even if they conflict with my own. I personally have worked hard to part from this perspective, but it's still common. If I have a minority opinion in my demographic, then if I'm speaking on behalf of my demographic like I have been since I interjected here, I sort of have a responsibility to represent the majority opinion, right? My post was intended as a summary of the current perspective I see, not a reflection of my opinion. in my opinion, it's partly due to fear of having this "new reality" ripped away that young people don't communicate with elders about this. the complete breakdown of personal identity that's happening due to the internet has bubbled over to real life in a few ways, like the tiktok tourette's thing, but there are a lot of concepts especially among millennials and gen z that haven't "broken mainstream" yet. Other medical-like phenomena, like the massive uptick in people identifying as having multiple personalities (which only got a sparse wikipedia article this year, despite a decent chunk of the young people I know believing in this on some level), or the general dissociation of the self i've described here. There are also even more out there ideas like alterhumanity and otherkin identities that have entered the wider cultural lexicon with young gen z and gen alpha that are actively hidden from parents and family. it's a real rabbit hole. only the mildest manifestations of this identity disturbance currently "get out" enough to notice and be researched. the bulk of it is kept secret. i knew a dude when i was younger who was hospitalized for a suicide attempt and had a whole story worked out to tell his family that played into their "traditional" notions of depression or stress-based suicide, but he'd actually tried to kill himself because he couldn't stand being "constrained" to a human body anymore. this sort of stuff is way more common than you'd imagine and it's different, in my experience, from traditional mental illness. it's more like young people are, literally, failing to form cohesive identities at all in this new online environment, and they are grasping at whatever allows them a semblance of stability in their personhood. for kids who have it milder, it's watching a tiktok and diagnosing themselves with adhd. as the depersonalization gets worse, so does the desperation to find an anchor for the self until it gets to a point where they genuinely think they're reincarnations of fictional characters, because that provides a complete blueprint for the "self." when a constructed reality like the internet is that interwoven into your development, the idea of older, more knowledgeable people around you injecting material reality into it feels like psychological violence.

 

[boji]

My self exists in the internet.

I do appreciate the terrible burden younger kids have. By way of ignorance or arrogance, parents have not adequately prepared their children for the ontological nightmare that is the internet/darkweb.

[Old folks] aren't wired in a way that even allows them to [understand].

That's...not completely it. For the majority of American greybeards, I'd say the "dividing line" is two things:
Perspective, and a deeply-inculturated, subconscious impartation of Judeo-Christian beliefs ie: "Trust > Information" (which younger generations are being seduced to reject).

Look at the (positive) U.S. history of organised religion through an anthropological lense:
A nationwide, multiethnic tribe urges families to locally gather together each weekend so to hear public words of encouragement, and offers individuals the practice or ceremony of public/private atonement whenever they've "missed the mark" in life. The mosque, synagogue, or church is charged with sharing a way of living which offers the faithful a cache of 'psychic protections', as relayed to them by way of personal testimonies and ancient stories. Stories and testimonies which are believed to be so powerful and beneficial to the hearers, that they are orally and scripturally passed down like prized heirlooms for a hundred generations.

TL;DR: The internet can not replace the IRL act of communities humbling themselves each weekend by meeting face to face in the spirit of forgiveness and renewal.

tiktok tourette's

eesh. All I got for that is the search term, "Gnostic Parasite"

 

[soliloqueen]

overall, i don't think people change much between generations. there's no real difference between an 18 year old on tumblr thinking they're an anime robot dinosaur and a 58 year old believing in qanon. they're the exact same phenomenon caused by the exact same thing (online echo chambers) and they speak to the vulnerability of human beings to social engineering more than anything.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

overall, i don't think people change much between generations. there's no real difference between an 18 year old on tumblr thinking they're an anime robot dinosaur and a 58 year old believing in qanon. they're the exact same phenomenon caused by the exact same thing (online echo chambers) and they speak to the vulnerability of human beings to social engineering more than anything.

Perhaps it the innate need for religion/philosophy/meaning in life that is common to humankind. Forcefully remove the "old" established religions and new functionally similar cult-like phenomenon rapidly emerge to fill the need (SJW, climate alarmist, followers of "the science," social media influencee, etc.).

As far as generational differences, some generations seem to have more defenses against cult trends/fads than others. Everyone is naïve as a teen and young adult. At some point we should have been exposed to enough life experiences (and helpful elders) to become serious and discerning adults. That appears to be happening much later or not at all in the last couple of generations.

 

[soliloqueen]

Perhaps it the innate need for religion/philosophy/meaning in life that is common to humankind.

this is my overall conclusion too. I am a bit of a luddite. I believe that humans are inherently social and spiritual and interruptions of that process cause issues. i don't think non-real-life communication offers the same function in humans as real life communication does. fundamentally, there's something missing, and if you grow up primarily exposed to it, you develop different. to some extent, i even think this is true of things like phone calls. i think the increasing social isolation over the last 3 generations is our era's leaded gasoline. though, i don't necessarily consider old traditions to be more substantial than newer traditions specifically. every tradition has its pros and cons

 

[boji]

that's pretty old technology

Indeed.

"In Torah, the Hebrew word often translated “sin” does not mean “sin” at all. Chet appears most often in reference to a slingshot that has “missed its target.” That is, chet is something, or someone, who has gone astray, who has missed the mark."

 

[cyrano]

My god, such an ignorance. If it doesn't happen in the US it doesn't happen worldwide. Someone, please inform him.

Just one example: No nuclear plant is insured in the US. Understandable, no capitalist company will take that risk. But there are certainly a number of plants worldwide that have insurance...

 

[JohnRoberts]

He's not running for president of the world. And is concerned that there is no recourse if anything bad happens.
Any thoughts on what he said about coal or solar?

What he said was smart almost... suggesting a "free market" true cost based energy approach, but as we have seen the talking heads have funny ideas about the actual real cost of things, often loading in, and/or ignoring significant costs.

He is IMO an unelectable politician with strong family name recognition who could serve as a 3rd party spoiler stealing votes from the democrats, and maybe stealing a few from the republicans if he keeps up the free market talk.

JR

 

[jabe]

When the hypothetical 2024 general election matchup broadens to include environmental lawyer and anti- vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is running as an independent candidate, Biden receives 39 percent support, Trump receives 36 percent support, and Kennedy receives 22 percent support.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Remember those great 2016 polls? I do. I also recall Nader in 2000 and Perot in 1992.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...ng-botched-the-2016-election/?sh=55d4e3ac3795

 

[AnalogPackrat]

He's not running for president of the world. And is concerned that there is no recourse if anything bad happens.
Any thoughts on what he said about coal or solar?

He failed to account for the other costs of solar, primarily the land area requirements. I remember when environmentalists were concerned about disturbing desert ecosystems. Now they're all on board for bulldozing and radically altering huge swaths of "unused land."

Here in the verdant southeastern US we have viable farm and pasture being converted to ugly solar. Also forest and pine plantations (lumber production) being clear cut and replaced with solar. When moving cross-country two years ago I spotted similar installations (and giant wind farms) all along the I-40 corridor.

What little will grow in the shade of a solar farm is not enough to hold the soil, so erosion runs off into streams and rivers. Herbicide is sprayed to prevent growth that would interfere with operations. Net CO2 absorption and O2 production is reduced. Loss of food and renewable construction material occurs. The opportunity cost of this conversion is ignored completely in these "green" analyses.

The claim that there is zero cost after construction is laughable. In desert environments, wind scouring by sand/dirt damages the glass or polymer panel covers. Everywhere outside is dirty and periodic cleaning is required to keep efficiency up. Any chemicals used to clean end up running off into nearby watercourses. The most efficient arrays use steerable bases. Motors and moving parts always wear and require periodic maintenance.

For solar to be viable at scale requires equivalent scale storage for nights and low output days (due to clouds, smoke, etc.). That tech is not in place.

A nuke plant is very compact per GW generated by comparison. It is very reliable technology with very high up-time percentage. We know existing nuke plants can be run for four or five decades. There's no reason to believe that design improvements cannot add decades of operation to future plants.

 

[JohnRoberts]

The renewable-power fantasy is being blown apart by furious financial headwinds.

Already this year projects have tumbled in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and now Danish wind-power giant Ørsted has canceled two wind farms in New Jersey.

Collapse of projects shows again that wind power is not affordable

JR