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> if you are just shilling for polluting billionaires. What an acidic thing to fling. I want us to build infrastructure. Nowhere did I say we need do whatever

> if you are just shilling for polluting billionaires. What an acidic thing to fling. I want us to build infrastructure. Nowhere did I say we need do whatever Musk says. I want us to use cost-benefit analysis to judge infrastructure projects rather than the heavy moral framing we get a lot.

sleepybrett 1y ago
Well isn't the boring company trying to build his dumbass single lane tesla road? Is this really infrastructure or just 'trains with extra steps and no safety'
- hollerith 1y ago
  This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars. Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the microplastics and other pollutants emitted by the technology of the elastomeric tire and which might be an intrinsic property of cost-effective use of the technology.
  - AlienRobot 1y ago
    >From the very first run of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen on October 1, 1964, until the present day, there has never been a single derailment or collision on the entire full-standard Shinkansen rail network resulting in a passenger fatality https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fatal%20Passenger%20Accidents,collision%20in%20the%20network's%20history. https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fa... Sounds like trains are pretty safe to me.
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Huh. Thanks.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > actually seems intrinsically safer than trains because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow Trains don’t “regularly” derail. And when they do, they aren’t as fatal as the median highway crash. There are unlikely to be too many fatalities in this system because it runs slowly. (Unless Li-on batteries cascade combust somehow.)
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    Derailments are really rare in properly maintained railroads; even the NYC subway with a century of chronic underinvestment derails rarely (think one every few years). Cars get into accidents way more frequently. The American freight rail system derails at a more frequent rate because the private operators are incentivized to really not do any maintenance at all.
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Looks like I was wrong. According to an unreliable source of fast answers, "passenger rail lines appear to be two to five times safer than intercity bus lines on a per-passenger-mile basis".
miltonlost 1y ago
You need a moral framing for big infrastructure projects, or else that's how you get redlining and the destruction of minority neighborhoods for "urban renewal" and the inner-city highway system. You can't do a "cost-benefit" analysis without some sort of moral system inherent in the costs and the benefits, or else how can you calculate the effects on humans. Your "just the numbers" has its own moral system you are ignoring and instead saying everyone else isn't a cost-benefit and is only morality. I want to build infrastructure too. Just not at the cost of the destruction of the world we live in.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  Can't build new infrastructure without destroying what was there previously, so yeah, you actually don't.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
> What an acidic thing to fling. if you don't automatically assume bad faith when dealing with hypercapitalist private infrastructure projects, you're going to be taken advantage of. every time. that, or you're on the payroll. there's not a ton of wiggle room here.
- Seattle3503 1y ago
  You are falling prey to the myth of the cynical genius > A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks. Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that-at low levels of competence-holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others' cunning. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29993325/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29993325/
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    i may be stupid but i'm not wrong.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment GP explicitly specified such an environment. Musk is the epitome of a hypercapitalist - an outlier in terms of wealth, fame, ambition, and micromanagement.
    - hn_acc1 1y ago
      This 1000x. I can't believe Musk is still fooling people..
anigbrowl 1y ago
It's a parody of your comment, which ascribes all environmental regulation to NIMBYs. If you blow a raspberry and someone blows a similar one right back at you, maybe you earned it.
- ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
  >It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment. >it's not clear if you know what environmental regulations are or if you are just shilling for polluting billionaires. This is pretty clearly an escalation beyond what you're describing. e: Because you did already read these lines, I guess I should spell this out: the former says we can't trust this datapoint as reflecting the issue we're concerned about; the latter says that the former person is either completely ignorant about the subject matter or lying due to corruption. The former is disagreeable; the latter is an ad hominem assuming bad faith against HN guidelines.
  - HelloMcFly 1y ago
    You did not include the more equivalent quote from the OP in my view: > The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development This doesn't just say we can't trust a datapoint, it starts with a position premised on bad faith motivations for all environmental regulations. Still not totally equivalent, but I don't think the original commenter was exactly being neutral or reasoned in their opening argument.
    - ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
      A charitable reading of their comment would be that they meant NIMBYs write and use environmental regulations to stunt development, rather than that there is no such thing as a legitimate environmental regulation. It's definitely poorly phrased in a way that lends itself to the uncharitable interpretation, but their subsequent remarks are very clear that they don't agree with that. As you note, even the uncharitable interpretation isn't equivalent- you say 'not totally equivalent' but they're different quite critically in that the one is attacking a political position and some laws and the other is attacking an individual person on this forum.
freejazz 1y ago
>I want us to use cost-benefit analysis to judge infrastructure projects rather than the heavy moral framing we get a lot. By framing a regulation as some ploy? You're just as ridiculous
- jackphilson 1y ago
  Regulations can often be bad for progress so a CBA is probably best. Doesn't matter about the framing.
  - freejazz 1y ago
    What do you mean framing doesn't matter? You just called the other post 'acidic' The idea that a CBA is somehow useful outside of any moral context is facially ridiculous anyway. You're just spewing word-mumbo-jumbo. The entire point of the law is to uphold the basic moral values of society in its function.

sleepybrett 1y ago

Well isn't the boring company trying to build his dumbass single lane tesla road? Is this really infrastructure or just 'trains with extra steps and no safety'

hollerith 1y ago
This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars. Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the microplastics and other pollutants emitted by the technology of the elastomeric tire and which might be an intrinsic property of cost-effective use of the technology.
- AlienRobot 1y ago
  >From the very first run of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen on October 1, 1964, until the present day, there has never been a single derailment or collision on the entire full-standard Shinkansen rail network resulting in a passenger fatality https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fatal%20Passenger%20Accidents,collision%20in%20the%20network's%20history. https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fa... Sounds like trains are pretty safe to me.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    Huh. Thanks.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > actually seems intrinsically safer than trains because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow Trains don’t “regularly” derail. And when they do, they aren’t as fatal as the median highway crash. There are unlikely to be too many fatalities in this system because it runs slowly. (Unless Li-on batteries cascade combust somehow.)
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  Derailments are really rare in properly maintained railroads; even the NYC subway with a century of chronic underinvestment derails rarely (think one every few years). Cars get into accidents way more frequently. The American freight rail system derails at a more frequent rate because the private operators are incentivized to really not do any maintenance at all.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    Looks like I was wrong. According to an unreliable source of fast answers, "passenger rail lines appear to be two to five times safer than intercity bus lines on a per-passenger-mile basis".

miltonlost 1y ago

You need a moral framing for big infrastructure projects, or else that's how you get redlining and the destruction of minority neighborhoods for "urban renewal" and the inner-city highway system. You can't do a "cost-benefit" analysis without some sort of moral system inherent in the costs and the benefits, or else how can you calculate the effects on humans. Your "just the numbers" has its own moral system you are ignoring and instead saying everyone else isn't a cost-benefit and is only morality. I want to build infrastructure too. Just not at the cost of the destruction of the world we live in.

terminalshort 1y ago
Can't build new infrastructure without destroying what was there previously, so yeah, you actually don't.

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago

> What an acidic thing to fling. if you don't automatically assume bad faith when dealing with hypercapitalist private infrastructure projects, you're going to be taken advantage of. every time. that, or you're on the payroll. there's not a ton of wiggle room here.

Seattle3503 1y ago
You are falling prey to the myth of the cynical genius > A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks. Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that-at low levels of competence-holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others' cunning. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29993325/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29993325/
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  i may be stupid but i'm not wrong.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment GP explicitly specified such an environment. Musk is the epitome of a hypercapitalist - an outlier in terms of wealth, fame, ambition, and micromanagement.
  - hn_acc1 1y ago
    This 1000x. I can't believe Musk is still fooling people..

anigbrowl 1y ago

It's a parody of your comment, which ascribes all environmental regulation to NIMBYs. If you blow a raspberry and someone blows a similar one right back at you, maybe you earned it.

ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
>It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment. >it's not clear if you know what environmental regulations are or if you are just shilling for polluting billionaires. This is pretty clearly an escalation beyond what you're describing. e: Because you did already read these lines, I guess I should spell this out: the former says we can't trust this datapoint as reflecting the issue we're concerned about; the latter says that the former person is either completely ignorant about the subject matter or lying due to corruption. The former is disagreeable; the latter is an ad hominem assuming bad faith against HN guidelines.
- HelloMcFly 1y ago
  You did not include the more equivalent quote from the OP in my view: > The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development This doesn't just say we can't trust a datapoint, it starts with a position premised on bad faith motivations for all environmental regulations. Still not totally equivalent, but I don't think the original commenter was exactly being neutral or reasoned in their opening argument.
  - ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
    A charitable reading of their comment would be that they meant NIMBYs write and use environmental regulations to stunt development, rather than that there is no such thing as a legitimate environmental regulation. It's definitely poorly phrased in a way that lends itself to the uncharitable interpretation, but their subsequent remarks are very clear that they don't agree with that. As you note, even the uncharitable interpretation isn't equivalent- you say 'not totally equivalent' but they're different quite critically in that the one is attacking a political position and some laws and the other is attacking an individual person on this forum.

freejazz 1y ago

>I want us to use cost-benefit analysis to judge infrastructure projects rather than the heavy moral framing we get a lot. By framing a regulation as some ploy? You're just as ridiculous

jackphilson 1y ago
Regulations can often be bad for progress so a CBA is probably best. Doesn't matter about the framing.
- freejazz 1y ago
  What do you mean framing doesn't matter? You just called the other post 'acidic' The idea that a CBA is somehow useful outside of any moral context is facially ridiculous anyway. You're just spewing word-mumbo-jumbo. The entire point of the law is to uphold the basic moral values of society in its function.