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The assumption in your comment is that those changes were all net good. In hindsight though, the automobile has had possibly existential costs for humanity, the
by antonvs 9mo ago
The assumption in your comment is that those changes were all net good. In hindsight though, the automobile has had possibly existential costs for humanity, the internet has provided most benefit to those who most abuse its power, and so on. In the end, it doesn’t seem as though you’ve actually made any sort of case.
- jdross 9mo agoThe set of people who believe the automobile (or the Internet) are net negatives taken as a whole for society is extremely small, for good reason
- Retric 9mo agoIs it? Do you include everyone that’s died or lost a loved one due to personal automobiles in that assessment? We are so far post automobile that it’s hard to compare, but many of the benefits are illusionary when you consider how society has evolved with them as commutes for example used to be shorter. Similarly the air used to be far cleaner and that’s after we got rid of leaded gas and required catalytic converters decades ago.
- notanastronaut 9mo agoHow many people have lived or had a loved one saved due to automobiles? We have the benefit of hindsight but we're also making judgment calls looking back on fuzzy recollections, forgetting just how the past used to be before an innovation came along.
- Retric 9mo agoI agree it’s difficult to do these calculations as society evolves with technology. Trains enable long distance evacuation from hurricanes. Street cars and subways allow for medical transportation but it looks very different than an ambulance. Similarly do we exclude helicopters assuming cars were simply banned rather than our failing to design IC engines or whatever. That said, there are modern enclaves without cars mostly on islands or in very remote locations. They make due just fine without cars, it’s the low population density that’s at issue for medical care.
- EdwardDiego 9mo agoLet's refine terms - internal combustion engine driven automobiles have lead to lead poisoning, air pollution, and CO2 emissions.
- zozbot234 9mo agoThe automobile on its own was actually far less polluting than the horse wrt. air quality. It's just that there's a whole lot more of the former than there ever was of the latter. Even wrt. climate change, it turns out that horses produce methane emissions which are far worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.
- mikelitoris 9mo agoYou are immensely discounting induced demand though.
- simianwords 9mo agoinduced demand is a good thing - it means there is more utility going around.
- simianwords 9mo agoI would like to get actual numbers. 1. how many people died because of lead poisoning, air pollution? 2. how many people were saved and had qualitatively better lives because of automobiles?
- EdwardDiego 8mo ago1. Is a very hard question to answer, airborne lead pollution isn't fatal, but it does impact cognition. Perhaps ask yourself how many people lead lower quality lives because of it, and the flow-on effects from that lower cognition. The people who did Freakonomics claimed that the drop in violent crime in the US in the 90s could be correlated to the phasing out of leaded fuel, but I'm not a statistician so can't speak to the accuracy of that correlation. 2. How would you even measure that? How would you define a better life thanks to a vehicle? I feel like you're ice skating uphill a little given the deleterious effects of leaded fuels are well studied, but the question you're asking isn't.
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- antonvs 9mo agoThat reason is along the lines of, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Coal miners will fight for coal mines, the oil industry will fight for dependence on oil, and so on. Sometimes they’re aware of what they’re doing, but in the case of a comment like the above, apparently not so much.
- bad_haircut72 9mo agoThe Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
- shimman 9mo agoI often wonder that if cable news was around say, during the American Civil War, how likely would the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments have passed? I'd say extremely unlikely. Throughout our entire race as a species, abusers have always fucked the commons to the extreme using whatever tools they have available. I mean take something as "innocuous" as the cotton gin, prior to the cotton gin there was a real decline in slavery but once it became extremely easier to process cotton slavery skyrocketed. Some of the worse laws the US has ever passed, the fugitive slave act, was during this period. To think that technological progress means prosperity is extremely delusional. We're still dealing with the ramifications of nuclear weapons and the likelihood that someone makes a committed nuclear attack will assuredly happen again in our species, just hoping that it doesn't take out all life on Earth when it happens.
- MSFT_Edging 9mo agoSeriously, these types of comments are always really narrow in their view. Industrialization has rapidly accelerated planet wide climate change that will have disastrous effects in many of our lifetimes. A true runaway condition will really test the merit of those billionaire bunkers. All for what? a couple hundred years of "advancement"? A blink in the lifespan of humanity, but dooms everyone to a hyper-competitive death drive towards an unlivable world. As a society, our understanding of "normal" has narrowed down to the last 80 years of civilization. A normal focused around consumption, which stands to take it all away just as fast. The techno-optimists never seriously propose any meaningful solution to millions losing their livelyhoods and dignity so Sam Altman can add an extension to his doomsday bunker. They just go along with it as if they'll be invited down to weather the wet-bulb temperature.