Pigs sentience is considered very close to dogs and as dogs have a very intimate place in some culture some people make a connection and don't feel eating them.
Sure it's absurd to imagine that people make 0/1 choices, however it's also absurd to reject a 3-line shortened proposition because it seems absolute.
> Those conductive to such and argument have already become vegetarian
Choices are more complicated than "being conductive", for exemple
- opinion change: you're not totally against the idea but not convinced neither. If you're open minded, learning something new or being witness of a context change can make you reevaluate.
- Motivation: there's thinks in your life that occupy your brain and you don't feel free to start another change now, but you might being more disponible to self-actualisation later.
- Event-Trigger: An inspiring talk, movie, or discussion with a friend sometimes trigger you to reconsider your position. I know cold showers aren't that hard and they're great for the body and the mind. I never had to courage to start that new habits but a convincing and motivating HN post might be the trigger to a routine.
What do you mean by "[not] regularly"? Do you eat fortified food instead? If you don’t like the daily intake have you considered the weekly and two-weeks intake ?
Everybody make his own choice so I won’t tell you what to do and as you’re vegan since a long time you already know the danger of B12 deficiency but just in case here’s some documentation. Test for MMA, not B12 (it’s far more reliable).
My assumption is that I'm getting enough in fortified foods, but it's not something I've ever actively looked for. Thanks for the MMA tip, I'll look into that. Really though, I should probably just start taking B12 to be safe.
What kind of European cities are you talking about lol, no offence but I hate this generalisation of "European" anything as if Southern Spain has the same culture and architecture as Poland or Lithuania.
- "a low-quality solution, but you also spend extra time (sometimes - other people's time) on learning to solve the problem yourself"
- "a high-quality solution, but you've spent years on becoming an expert is this domain"
It's good that you brought this up.
Often, learning to solve a class of problems is simply not a priority. Low-quality vide-coded tools are usually means to an end. And the end goals that they achieve are often not even the most important end goals that you have. Digging so deep into the details of those is not worth it. Those are temporary, ad-hoc things.
In the original post, the author references our previous discussion about "Worse Is Better". It's a very relevant topic! Over there, I actually made a very similar point about priorities. "Worse" software is "better" when it's just a component of a system where the other components are more important. You want to spend as much time as possible on those other components, and not on the current component.
A (translated) example that I gave in that thread:
> In the 1970s, K&R were doing OS research. Not PL research. When they needed to port their OS, they hacked a portable low-level language for that task. They didn't go deep into "proper" PL research that would take years. They ported their OS, and then returned straight to OS research and achieved breakthroughs in that area. As intended.
> It's very much possible that writing a general, secure-by-design instrument would take way more time than adding concrete hacks on the application level and producing a result that's just as good (secure or whatever) when you look at the end application.
Why people here brandish Communism when someone critics Capitalism? It’s like we’re still in the coldwar. Those two views have many sub-categories and there’s others in-between and on the sides. Just a few in the last decades:
- socio-democratic countries are the norm in Europe, namely Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
- Ordoliberalism: Germany, Switzerland
- cooperative economics: Japan, Spain
- market socialism: China, hungaria
- Parecon: brasil, Argentina
- Ubuntu: South Africa
- Anarcho-syndicalism, The third way, Islamic economic…
What a weird comment, so disconnected from reality. Norway is fully capitalist with income inequality similar to the USA. China, despite being nominally run by communists, is actually a fascist dictatorship. And "Ubuntu" isn't a real thing: South Africa is a failed state run by kleptocrats who can't even keep the lights on.
The income inequality in Norway is roughly half that of the US, and the quality of life of the bottom income bracket is much higher there, due to social policies. Why lie about things that can easily be looked up?
The Gini coefficient is similar so I have no idea where you're getting the idea that income equality in Norway is "half" that of the US. And the US has consistently had a positive net migration rate with Norway so regardless of your nonsense claims about quality of life people seem to be voting with their feet.
Because they have been conditioned to do so. The ultra-wealthy have been fighting the war against socialism for over a century, and part of that strategy is to polarize the topic. If you’re not explicitly pro unfettered capitalism, you must be a communist.
Ideologies have associated talking points. If you start spouting 'blood and soil' rhetoric don't be surprised or offended when people start to call you a Nazi.
In this case communism's obsession with talking about Capitalism as a proper noun as distributed process as if it was a monolithic discrete object with clear intentions and something which can be 'abolished' with no idea as to what the particulars would entail.
If that isn’t cynicism, here’s some optimisation thoughts:
- start with the humans that pollute more - which is way more correlated to their consumption that their solar roof surface. Sorry USA, you go first. Others high standard living countries follows.
- Regarding the cows, they have a shorter lifespan and don’t shop much neither do they heat their house or shower water. We could just stop breeding new ones and keep the existant till their death.
The cows also don't really pump up oil.
They participate in a carbon cycle.
Their farts are not a long term issue like so damn many people make it out to be. (and I don't think they don't produce (that much) more than the wildlife and plant rot they replace over the total outsized amount of space they actually take up)
If there's a reason to have less it's because we chop down forests for more grazing space to grow the herd. Environment impact aside these are carbon sinks even if vastly less efficient than kelp forests or bogs or the like.
Also because we use a bit of fossil fuels for fertilizers in part for their feed.
That said the manure they produce is probably invaluable in avoiding famines if we're going to stop utilizing Haber–Bosch or start utilizing more expensive methods without gas.
I can’t help seeing ad blockers as fairless content consumption, like choosing to download films, musics and books without paying the creator and the distributor (VOD, MOD, concerts, libraries…). Sounds great for you but how would that work if everyone would do the same?
Although we all be happy to se more competition, using an ad blocker on Google sites (and G-add financed-sites) have no positive effect for the competitors.
Don’t take me wrong, I hate Ads and Google methods but we can’t all rob the same store and hope there will be infinite food on the shelves and that the next store will benefit from that.
Google doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not written in the stars that Google must succeed. If Google's business model doesn't meet web users expectations then it's perfectly alright for Google to fail as a business. Businesses fail all the time.
Google is not special or different. Google can adapt or die.
Remember also that as Google has grown and captured more of the available attention and advertising dollars, other businesses that rely on attention and advertising such as free-to-air TV or print media have contracted and even failed. Google has shed no tears for them and, correspondingly, there's no need to shed tears for Google.
The other funny thing is Google could probably exist purely from its innovations. Its just too hard to convince the shareholders to give up on the safe and lucrative ad business.
> Sounds great for you but how would that work if everyone would do the same?
I guess we would be free from companies such as Meta and Google? Where do I sign up?
You also seem to think that advertisement has no impact on alternative distribution methods. The fact that other viable options are scarce currently only shows that ad companies have a stranglehold on creative industries through their monopoly.
I sincerely hope that having produced a comment like that, you are not using ad blockers of any kind in any browser, including the reduced functionality Chrome uBlock Origin on manifest V3.
For me, ads broke the informal social contract between provider and end user years ago. Small, unobtrusive advertisements might've been okay, but ads eating an inordinate amount of my time and bandwidth, which exfiltrate my personal information, and which are served to me via SEO tricks and dark patterns are not okay. If sites want to ban me for not viewing their ads, fine. In the meantime, I won't lose any sleep over using my adblocker.
For you, if you are lecturing us on the moral imperative of viewing ads, then you better be viewing those ads yourself rather than only espousing cheap rhetoric.
This is a comical view. If protection of downloadable material that someone wants you to pay for, is removed by an ad blocker, then that is broken by design. Make a website that is suitable to sell things, is the solution.
I principally agree with you. But in reality, the ad-funded model has failed. It failed a long time ago.
There were never any restrictions placed on it, so it became a self-sustaining downward spiral to the current state of things. When I see the internet without an ad-blocker it is completely unusable. Quite frankly, I would most likely stop using most of the internet altogether if I couldn't block ads.
So what is the alternative? Same as always: paid services. A service / platform can either work out a pricing model that works for people, or it shouldn't / can't exist in that form.
Some people will argue that they'd rather have ads and also content for free and that's fine. Maybe some people can tolerate them. I cannot. I find them to be as close to experiencing physical pain as possible. It's like pure mind-poison and I will bend over backwards to avoid ads.
I am waiting for the age of smart-glasses to begin so that I can filter out ads in real-life as well. I simply never, ever, under any circumstances want to see any advertising ever.
If I want a product or service, I'll go search for it. I don't need anything to be suggested to me. And this is just my battle-hardened mind. I daren't think of what ads do to un-developed, children's minds.
It should be the government's responsibility to severely restrict advertising until it nearly doesn't exist. But that's not the world we live in, so I have taken matters into my own hands.
Part of it too is that unlike circa 2012 we are all far more aware that it's not simply an ad. An ad means you're basically under corporate surveillance, and they gleefully not only use that info to "better serve you ads" (i.e. better manipulate your purchasing), they gleefully sell that info to other parties 1) without your consent or 2) alerting you to who has it. Every ad you see is another pandora's box opening up and spreading your info to basically anyone who wants it, and you're not really aware of what exactly is happening under the hood. There's no transparency, and certainly no way to undo the damage. Even the services that purportedly help you with that get caught turning around and selling your data all over again.
Point being, it's not just an ad. It's not just some cereal commercial broadcast to everyone watching cable based on the viewing habits of large swaths of the population - relatively general stuff. It's decades of investment and research weaponized against us to extract as much info about us as possible to use it against us for maximum profit with no concern for how it impacts us or ability to ever opt out.
Running ad blockers for me is a matter of principle. The amount of tracking and telemetry that exists on the Internet is 1. massively invasive from a privacy perspective and 2. massively wasteful from an energy, bandwidth and time perspective.
If you have something worth selling, then sell it.
Alphabet has unfortunately reached a size where it is completely self-sustaining and acts outside of 'normal' market forces affecting businesses that need to make something or sell a certain volume of products. They just keep growing because now it's a good investment to have. There's a few companies like this now. They could just completely stop doing anything tomorrow and they'd probably remain one of the biggest market-caps in existence for decades.
It seems to me that adblocking adoption increases the more companies actively fight it/ramp up their advertising and drown us in it. I mean you have Microsoft injecting ads straight into their OS last I heard (correct me if I’m wrong) and they even charge for windows.
People clearly will live with ads but there is a point where it becomes way too much and some people simply won’t tolerate it at that point.
We don’t eat intelligence: bikes, bottles, food, energy… have room for improvement but I hardly see how AGI would replace them.
Same for physical services like labors, miners and cooks, even taxi/bus drivers for +99% of the world. Automation immensely improve their efficiency and the Modern Times is the past for half of the globe, but AGI isn’t the main facilitator.
Replace all (most*) Silicon Valley -and cousins- similar "products" and services, perhaps yes !
You don’t see how robots would replace all these roles? I take it you never seen a Waymo or read about how agriculture needs a tiny fraction of humans in the US vs a couple of decades ago? And those aren’t even “AGI-level” solutions…
Waymo aren’t build, maintained and disposed by robots only. Even if they were we’ve still to see how that can be deployed (and make sense economically) to more than a couple percentiles of the richest people in the top cities. That has nothing in common with "replacing the humans".
Agriculture efficiency mainly comes from last century fertilizer. The modern robot trucks are also limited to some richest countries and farmers and have nothing to do with AGI.
Your vague dream of AGI solutionism missed the barriers to technologie deployment: raw ressources availability, politics, demography, energy… IA can have a small impact there but it certainly won’t replace ALL products. How would a computer replace a mining truck or a reactor turbine?
If I missed your point you’d be wonderful to clarify it, perhaps by detailing the first post "replacing all products":
- what do you consider a product?
- ALL as in Everything (obviously not I guess)?
Regarding "don’t you see how robots…" I clearly see the theory but also can’t see how it would happen in reality for the reasons I mentions in my precedent post: mainly access to ressources/energy to build/maintain those robots for a signifiant time scale and socio-politico barriers.
I’d be glad you reconsider explaining your point because I only see vague allusions, but if you want to stop the conversation here that’s all up to you.
My personal 2 cents on the "ethical producer" solution:
1. I don't need honey or other animals products to live an healthy and happy life but there's many people that think the opposite. Some of those honey consumers care too about bee condition and satisfy a part of their consumption with the "ethical" products. Not buying those products will let them have access the market with more ease by not putting more pressure on the price and the quantity available. I understand one person choice has a very small impact, but it's the same as with voting.
2. I recognize many small beekeeper treat their bees way nicer than the industrial one, and that they genuinely love their hives. However love isn't the question when you think about ethics: culture, habits and customs have very important weights in our actions. There's absolutely not doubt more than 13% of Egyptian parents deeply love their child, however most of them practice a very questionable and invasive tradition on their girl [0]. I think small-shop honey production is still an exploitation of another species: the bees didn't come by themselves and sometimes the queen is captive in a special room. harvesting their honey is a theft: they didn't produce it for us humans. It's not always very natural either: some beekeeper give them white sugar during winter - which helps keeping them alive - but they would probably have chosen to keep the honey instead. The smoke usage attest of the not-so-cooperative process, it's at most a forced-symbiosis.
I too feel like it's the same for other animal products.
