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> The main product AFAICS is virtue signaling. Friendly reminder that people do care about things you don't care about. Claims of virtue signaling say more abo

• quadrifoliate 3y ago
  This. I lose any hope for us as a species being able to reverse climate change if the top comment about an article that goes quite deep into meaningful ways to “reduce, reuse, recycle" is that this is virtue signaling, and that we should buy Macbooks every year instead because they are "expendable tools". Guess what, their impact on the environment is very much noticeable. There is no way we are going to reverse or even meaningfully delay climate change with this kind of collective attitude.
  • redroyal 3y ago
    That issue can’t be solved by reusing laptops or sorting cans from cardboard. The argument that every little helps is totally flawed. Fantasy, make believe. The other 8 billion people simply don’t care and why would they? 50 years from now they’ll all be dead. Since when did people care about future generations and the good of humanity? It’s a very recent western fashion. The only thing that truly motivated the vast majority of people is sex and money or objectives closely descended from that tree. To modify mass human behavior you have to incentivize based on that leverage. But - even modification of the behavior of the crowd won’t be sufficient. The only way to fix this is w new technology
    • flangola7 3y ago
      This is lazy defeatism and an immediate disqualifier I use in the selection of both friends and employees.
      • gotoeleven 3y ago
        How much climate change do you think has been allayed by sorting garbage into 3 kinds of trash cans and drinking from paper straws?
      • bloomingeek 3y ago
        I agree, all branches of science should invent ways to recycle almost anything. We know we have a waste problem, yet society doesn't demand enough to have ways created to deal with recycling. Forget Mars and looking at the Titanic till we find ways to deal with real world problems. Burying our heads in the sand will hurt future generations!
        • lotsofpulp 3y ago
          The evidence indicates that recycling is burying our heads in the sand. It is reduce>>>>reuse>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>recycle. As far as I can tell, very little recycling actually ever happened or does happen. It was always just poorer countries willing to look the other way and trash it and claim it was recycled.
          • bloomingeek 3y ago
            I'm guessing you're assuming I meant throw everything into the landfill? That's the problem with assuming, it's almost always dead wrong. And besides, I didn't say that. Perhaps you though I said "throw away"? I meant we have to quit adding to landfills and reuse materials from discarded objects, or in other words "recycle".
    • liamN 3y ago
      You're falling prey to the fallacy that just because 1 person's actions can't make a world of difference on their own, those actions aren't worth taking. By your logic, you may as well not vote either, because everyone else is voting. Every little bit DOES count, because the more people believe they can make a difference, the more of a difference they will make collectively. You have to lead by example. Rolling over and dying because you dont think you can make a difference makes you part of the problem. New tech certainly would help, and it isnt/shouldnt be on the shoulders of just individuals to make all the change. But Im not going to use that as an excuse not to change my own behavior for the better.
      • redroyal 3y ago
        I mean you’ve got to appreciate the scale of the problem here and be pragmatic. The danger of recycling is it gives the illusion of progress, but I’m not against it otherwise. Philosophically you might be correct but voting blue in a non swing red state is completely meaningless
        • paulryanrogers 3y ago
          We need not be locked in a two party system forever. If enough of us demand same day primaries and ranked choice then other parties have a chance. Only voting in blue strongholds certainly isn't going to break the duopoly.
      • piaste 3y ago
        > By your logic, you may as well not vote either, because everyone else is voting. Correct. Voting is the worst possible example, because while e.g. individual recycling has a negligible but technically non-zero impact, voting is overwhelmingly* likely to have exactly zero impact. * unless the voting base is either extremely small, or extremely close. Your vote only matters as much as the likelihood that at least one result is decided by exactly one vote, which is only realistic in something like a local town election. Which are the only elections most people should actually pay attention to. > Every little bit DOES count, because the more people believe they can make a difference, the more of a difference they will make collectively. That's pure wishful thinking. What actually happens is that people believe they are making a difference, even when they actually aren't, but since they feel personally good about having put in an effort, they stop worrying about the actual problem, and stop even thinking (let alone acting) towards solutions that might actually work. Why do you think the "carbon footprint" idea was actively pushed by BP and other super-polluters? Out of the goodness of their great? Or because it drew attention away from other, less corporate-friendly CO2 reduction measures?
    • vel0city 3y ago
      There's 8 billion people so my actions don't matter. I guess I'll pour all my old paint and paint thinner down the storm drains. Maybe my motor oil and used coolants as well. After all I'm just one person out of 8 billion, my actions don't matter. I'll just litter all my stuff as well. Single use plastics? Sign me up, I'll just throw it out in the street. I'm only one of a few million in my city, my actions don't really matter. Or maybe my actions really do matter.
      • piaste 3y ago
        Your actions do not, indeed, matter. Neither does your vote, or your boycotting of $global_evil_corp, precisely because there's millions or billions of people involved. (To be pedantic: while not literally zero, your actions matter several order of magnitude less than would be necessary to be able to perceive their effects.) But that's a really hard pill to swallow. Your post is a beautiful example of that difficulty: you spell out examples of how your actions don't matter [as much as you would like], and then wildly swing into open denial with "Or maybe my actions do really matter". My advice - if you focus on the consequences of your actions that you can actually perceive, instead of the ones you only wish you could, you'll be less frustrated. For example, helping your local community will typically give you far better returns than trying to improve any global issue.
        • vel0city 3y ago
          So you're saying my neighbors and I should feel fine throwing old car batteries in the lake and switching back to leaded gas?
          • piaste 3y ago
            I'm saying that lakes don't get saved when people virtuously choose to individually stop throwing trash into it: they get saved when the entity in control of the lake forbids throwing trash into them, and enforces that ban. If leaded gas was still being legally sold alongside unleaded one, people like you would be passionately arguing for decades about why it's everyone's moral duty to pay extra for unleaded gas, and you would feel so proud every time you stopped at the green pump instead of the black one. And meanwhile we would all be breathing lead.
  • Shekelphile 3y ago
    Owning a macbook vs owning a framework laptop isn't going to effect climate change in any way. In fact, Apple's track record is that their products generally outlast the competition, even when they do otherwise stupid things like software DRMed screen and battery replacements and soldered SSDs. It is purely virtue signaling. If you want to do good by the climate and still want a powerful tool there is no better option than a used macbook.
    • kelnos 3y ago
      I don't think Framework is expecting to compete with Apple. They're competing with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, etc. Apple's laptop market share is what, still under 10%? Assuming Framework's thesis bears out, that their customers will actually upgrade their laptops piece by piece when given the opportunity to do so, rather than buy a whole new laptop, then it's a matter of increasing their market share, especially through corporate IT contracts. Every new company/concept has to start from zero. Maybe Framework has a sub-1% market share right now, but what if, over the next decade, they can grow that to 10%, maybe beyond? While there will certainly be some e-waste (likely most users will not find a use for their old Framework mainboard when they upgrade, and some mainboard upgrades will presumably require new RAM), it'll still be a lot less than people chucking complete laptops, including chassis, keyboard, touchpad, and screen, once every few years. > Apple's track record is that their products generally outlast the competition Not sure I agree with this, though my personal experience is pre-Apple-Silicon, which may have changed things for the better. When I used Apple laptops for software development, I only got around three years out of them before they felt uncomfortably sluggish, given the general bloat increases in software development tools (and the increasing number of lines of code we need to compile) over time. Apple certainly does fairly well by their users who have more modest computational needs; my partner has a ~10 year old MacBook Air that's still usable for light web browsing and video playback, though not much more. At any rate, telling people that their desire to own an upgradeable laptop is mere virtue signaling is just lazy thinking. I might venture to suggest it's a defensive reaction to justify their own purchasing habits, but perhaps that goes a little too far.
      • Shekelphile 3y ago
  • nine_k 3y ago
    Laptops are expendable tools, no question. The problem is that their price does not include the expenses of the global warming accelerated due to their production and transportation. So they are sold artificially less expensively than they will turn out to be. When laptop production, transportation, and recycling become largely carbon-neutral, it would be easier to argue for throwing them away once a slightly better model is available.
  • Gigachad 3y ago
    Who is buying macbooks every year though? I'm using the M1 2020 for work and it still feels like a brand new laptop.
  • hdivider 3y ago
    Worth remembering this is HN, where all too often, people hide behind screens and make less-than-considered comments for points. This is just one of many echo chambers. Apple worship in particular is quite prevalent in this thread -- but in reality, way more people use Windows. The folks who spearhead the real fight against climate change aren't likely to spend much time on threads like this. They're in meetings with supply chain and logistics folks trying to figure out how to hit an ambitious decarbonization quota. My point: there is hope, and usually, it's not found online, but out in the real world.