wizofaus

43 ms·

481.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I wouldn't exactly pay to much attention to news.com.au as a reliable source for whether a pro-environmental policy has been effective. I'm personally skeptical about the likely overall effectiveness of plastic bag bans, but I&#x
482.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I never thought reducing emissions was the reason for trying to reduce disposable plastic bag usage, though I don't doubt many might believe it does.
483.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Hence demonstrating there was at least one other key factor behind which nations/empires were able to successfully establish overseas colonies - but arguably that itself was not an "ultimate" cause that was out of the control
484.
by wizofaus 3y ago
The availability of suitable species for domestication always struck me as the most interesting part of his argument, as it's not one I'd seen before - but strangely it's the one that's not captured by the title "
485.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Assuming your assessment is accurate (I don't pretend to have any expertise in the matter!) then the question becomes why certain countries/ regions suffer such corruption and lack of rule of law, and more importantly, why is it s
486.
by wizofaus 3y ago
How is south Asia possibly not "big enough - it's literally based around the most populous country in the world! But yes, obviously logistics and friendly regulatory regimes are a big part of it. (FWIW I was including China/J
487.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Mexico stands out to me as a country that hasn't lived up to its potential in that regard. Certainly there's no shortage of potential cheap labour, given the number of refugees making their way across it. And regional security and
488.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Only half, over 50 years? That would imply less than 1.5% productivity growth rate on average, pretty sure it's been higher than that!
489.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Source for that claim?
490.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I don't think GP was implying we should expect it. But it's fair to point out that there's a certain hypocrisy in complaining about jobs being lost to overseas while simultaneously buying goods made offshore in preference to
491.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Surely though there's still plenty of places in the world that, on the basis of labour costs, it would be vastly cheaper to operate than in the US. On that basis I'm not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the U
492.
by wizofaus 3y ago
BTW...I actually asked ChatGPT (just 3.5, don't have 4 access) what story it might be based on a description. Couldn't do it, gave lots of nonsense answers along the way, but when I prompted it with the name of the author and the
493.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Forever is far too long a time to make useful predictions about. But in the meantime... https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/abso...
494.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Pretty sure we'll stop wanting to reproduce at the required rate long before food/resources becomes the real issue (which isn't to say starvation etc. isn't likely to be a major problem for much of the world's popul
495.
by wizofaus 3y ago
That's the one, I read it pretty recently actually!
496.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I suspect time-travelling and Shakespeare is a whole sub-genre, the one I know is one where Shakespeare travelled forward in time and enrolled in a university Shakespeare course - which he then failed... There must be at least one where all
497.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Well, sure, it's possible my consciousness is one that's travelled along every single branch where the backwards-time-travel didn't happen, but that strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely if there have been even only a fifty
498.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I'm probably more positive alien intelligence exists than I am that humanity will last long enough to discover such a mechanism. To be clear, I'd say both are quite likely - I just very much doubt the mechanism actually exists.
499.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Orca behaviour does seem to indicate they inflict pain/misery on other creatures largely for the "fun" of it. But we don't really know, and certainly don't know whether they're capable of properly understanding
500.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I do. If it were possible we'd surely see them everywhere. Even if time travel was a one-way trip there's enough future billions of us that there'd be massive numbers with the sort of incurable fascination seth the past that
501.
by wizofaus 3y ago
I'd even suggest a good percentage of reports are either deliberate hoaxes themselves or genuine reports of hoaxes carried out by others. If not hoaxes, then deliberate misreporting to cover up worse truths. Ultimately almost any other
502.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Do non-humans also create YouTube videos showing off their bravado (or whatever it is) where they knowingly inflict pain and misery on other species?
503.
by wizofaus 3y ago
It's only functions that "block and wait" that it makes sense to be async - the point being that blocking and waiting doesn't use up CPU cycles, so you might as well free the thread up to do other stuff. If a function is
504.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Yes, it's fair because I wouldn't expect that stipend to be required to pay for whatever extra medical costs said cripple had. Further a "fair" system is never going to abolish all unfairness inherent in human existence
505.
by wizofaus 3y ago
If there were evidence that a substantial percentage of people would simply opt out of contributing to society at all but it still required considerable levels of human labour to support the standard of living a UBI is expected to provide
506.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Again, nothing to do with whether UBI is fair. I accept progressive income taxation isn't fair and in fact I'd rather we did look for better ways to structure how tax is collected. An ideal economy wouldn't tax income at all
507.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Taxation is quite separate though - we all have the same access to government provided services and infrastructure regardless of how much income tax we pay, I don't see anybody arguing that's unfair.
508.
by wizofaus 3y ago
> If you work at "big shipping co" and "box" 1 item a day and your colleagues do 100, should you not be fired? If each of those boxes earns >100 times the profit, the boss would be kinda dumb to fire me. At any rat
509.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Such as? And more importantly, is there the slightest evidence that putting such monitoring in place actually helps increase output?
510.
by wizofaus 3y ago
Covid printer money worked just fine, in terms of allowing businesses to stay afloat while not being able to operate at normal capacity. But it was never set up as a long-term sustainable program. There may well be things to learn about ho

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