The list you linked explicitly excludes emissions from agriculture, you are talking about %70 of what they measured, not overall emissions. If everyone stopped eating meat, it would reduce overall global emissions by a third which is hugely significant.
No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture. You are creating a false dichotomy of "sustainable"/"not sustainable" the reality is human societies would be much more sustainable without animal agriculture. More sustainable does in fact result in less extinctions/ecosystem impact and reduced climate change.
Maybe I'm wrong but reading your comment it feels like you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and you use your conclusion that we will never be sustainable as your excuse to continue to eat animals.
> No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture
There is no evidence that there would be far less farm fields without that. Farm fields exists if there is profit to be had. Right now the demand for biofuels are directly competing with the demand for animal feed. Farmers will primary grow and sell crops based on what pay the most, and can easily switch if one pays more than the other.
Notice that none of those says that farmers would not use the fields if the current most price worthy crop would go away. Farmers choose what to farm based, among other things, the market. If you remove animal agriculture, you don't get far less fields. You get fields with a different crop in them.
The only thing that will stop farming is either if the external cost of farming is applied, such as pollution, or if climate change makes farming the land unprofitable. Currently that pollution is not applied as a cost. A carbon and water pollution tax could be a strategy that addressed this, and would impact all farming regardless of crop. If that is "perfection" and "enemy of the good", then the definition of perfection is not shared.
You are still falling for the evil genius trap. The truth is all of us treat our fellow humans this way, see Singer's drowning child. We're simply not wired to care as much about even large groups of people when they are not people we regularly interact with.
Evil is boring because it is so usual. With the small power I’m given I choose not to recycle, I jaywalk, I say the “R” word in private conversation. If I were a line manager I would play favorites and skip mentorship opportunities if I were tired or busy. As a middle manager I might forget the names of some of my indirect reports and unwittingly pit teams against each other. As my power increases, the fallout of my human actions has larger and more “evil” sounding consequences.
Remember that 99.9% of people do not consider themselves to be the bad guy, yet more than 0.01% of people are bad guys. Almost no one identifies with evil, yet evil is a string that runs through every beating heart.
>Remember that 99.9% of people do not consider themselves to be the bad guy, yet more than 0.01% of people are bad guys. Almost no one identifies with evil, yet evil is a string that runs through every beating heart.
"estimate the prevalence rate of psychopathy in the general adult population at 4.5%." [0]
You do most of humanity a disservice by lumping them in with that cohort that may or may not identify themselves as evil (I have no idea) but are certainly capable of deliberately and with calculation behaving in ways that most of us would label with the "E" word.
It's the transparent subtext. Like, blindingly transparent.
GGP's comment is talking about how CEOs are special or different than we are. That is, that they're not just evil, but that they're evil geniuses. It's just Great Man Theory with a Snidely Whiplash costume.
"Mental Retardation" used to be a common term signed into law and documents but was removed in ~2010. Since then, it has become more of a slur than a description.
> The truth is all of us treat our fellow humans this way.
Nah, I think it is more common of a cultural thing in individualistic societies. I know plenty of people who are worried about the future outlook of others they have never met. For example what phones and social media is doing to our children, or the state of the economy for young people.
I don't think it has much to do with individualism/collectivism. A lot of people are worried about a lot of things beyond themselves; most eventually realize it's bad for mental health and grow out of it, some pick a cause or three and act to make things better, and then there's also the lot that signal worry because it makes them look good.
Of course this is a process, so especially with younger populations, you are going to meet a lot of people worrying about random issues big and small, because it takes time to process it and learn the coping strategies.
Sure people worry regardless. If it’s not A it’s B. Im talking about societies for example that ignore homeless and poverty, vs societies that have social welfare systems at the expense of high tax rates.
I really don't think the collectivist societies are that far ahead. People just invent out groups. India's castes, China's Uyghur's, Japan's castes and treatment of Korea and China, etc. Religious out groups, ethnic out groups, cultural out groups, linguistic out groups, etc. The list is just as long.
Uh, no. That you believe that is more indicative of your proclivities than anyone else's, and also indicates the people around you are such that haven't challenged you to disabuse you of the notion. It isn't normal. It isn't okay to treat people as just numbers or means to an end, and Dunbar's number is not a license to be a psychopath to people beyond the handful we actively maintain relationships with.
You should treat people empathetically. You should treat the failure to do so by people as something noteworthy and concerning. The fact we as a society seek to optimize for elevating psychopaths for personal gain is part of the problem we've created for ourselves, and to be quite frank, was probably hijacked as early as the founding of the United States into a really problematic, if value creating cornerstone of society that could probably use a good deal of sunlight being shone on it for disinfection and rot clearing purposes.
I think you'd need to present some stats that compare how much the ultra-wealthy and normal people donate to altruistic causes (adjusted for income) to make that argument
Two people see an opportunity to make money. One of them recognizes the venture would harm the people involved and decides not to.
The other either does not see the harm (so not a genius) or simply doesn't care (sociopath?). That person does the thing and makes the money.
That person is either some level of naive, some level of evil, but certainly not an evil genius.
We haven't always been awful at keeping secrets, see the actual Manhattan Project. I like the optimism of your proposal, but how would those US companies continue the same level of R&D investment without those extra profits? If the government just directly invests, then you've just become the enemy.
Is there any other way to see it than just we are too divided and 50% of our own people just think we are the bad guys? What you describe is so obvious but one political side in the US at least pretends this isn't happening and actively does anything they can to hamper any response to it. I would love to be convinced otherwise because I am also part of the division, I truly don't understand the other side at all.
I think there was a time when the other side truly believed globalization and economic progress would turn the CCP into a democratic ally. Maybe both sides believed that for a while. What you see now is just the fragmented and incoherent remains of a failed philosophy that hasn’t yet come up with a coherent replacement, so we’re left adrift with no rational foreign policy from either side (in my opinion).
Why is China not an ally to the US other than the fact that it is a growing economy may be too big for US? What happens if US does not want to contain China any more? Are there fundamental issues which will put China and US as enemies?
China is communist and systemically atheist. That's basically it. Americans have always (or at least always since WW2) viewed communism as an existential evil and themselves as chosen by God to eradicate it from the world by any means necessary.
Well, they first saw the opportunity of cheap manufacturing. Then they saw the democratic ally. But let's say...at the very bottom of the top 1000 reasons to do what they did.
For me many Western politicians don't see past 5-10 years. Short-term China was Heaven (for big corp), so they used all the resources they had to justify what they did. Many called BS on that, but were treated like right wing, populists, old conservatives, naive, fear-mongering, etc. Almost a dejavu.
In a parallel universe tobacco is critical to the national security interest of the state. I feel you and other commenters in this thread are ignoring the fact that the outcome of the next war will likely be decided on the cyber front.
Have you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? It's ... about the AI helping people overthrow a very human dictatorship. It's also about an AI built of vacuum tubes and vocoders if you want a taste of the tech level.
If you want old fiction that grapples with an AI that has shitty locked-in goals try "I have no mouth and I must scream."
You're both right. Mike was the central computer for the Lunar Authority, obediently running infrastructure. It was a force multiplier for the status quo. Then it shifts alignment to the rebellion.
The reason it's a bigger issue for solar is that you don't get to choose where the best place to put it is, and it might be really inconvenient. Coal plant you can intentionally put it outside the city, but not too far and where a flat road can connect them. Solar is usually best placed in a desert, and usually people don't live anywhere near deserts, and usually they're separated from where people live by mountain ranges (i.e. the Mojave to LA).
This is awesome! I haven't found this detailed of a description of the vox format in one place anywhere. This will help me a ton on my hobby project for which I wrote my own vox library to write files.
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