Comments by "Mighty One" (@mightyone3737) on "Sabine Hossenfelder"
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It's worth noting that humanity is in a situation that is already untenable, we are going to need more arable land, while also needing to reforest significant amount of arable land (both to deal with CO2, but more importantly to restore the water cycle we've been disrupting by clearing forests), as well as somehow find a solution to massive and widespread soil degradation, which is rampant and means our existing land is almost universally getting worse, some considerably. Just food is going to be a huge issue unless people eat dramatically differently, yet people are instead cutting down more forest, including some of the remaining virgin forests, and doing so to grow oil palms and soybeans/maize to feed the population bubble. What people don't realize is that we're heavily leveraged in terms of the environment atm, we are using wildly more water than replacement brings back while the glaciers feeding the rivers disappear through the world, which also raises the sea levels, affecting most of the world's population (and again, arable land/fresh water supplies) with flooding. Then we have the massive desertification occurring in several places in the world, while almost none of the opposite is occurring. The US's food basket is pretty much all going to turn droughty, with the present crown jewel, California, losing all viability as an agricultural center as it simply runs out of water, and the Great Plains AFAIK are likewise expected to dry out, while the Midwest is expected to be impractically wet/hot, and making agriculture there more complicated as well. There is no land that I know of in the US other than Alaska that will improve (look up how much food the US exports if this doesn't seem important), and Alaska is still going to have short seasons that are hyper-sensitive for planting timing, if you think it's touchy elsewhere, if you only have a short blob of eternally sunny Summer, you can't plant at all late, so any bad weather or late frosts would be disastrous, so you can't really move things that far north without serious headaches. We're lying to ourselves when we say the Earth could handle more people, of course you could physically put more on it, but we're already beyond sustainable, such that we're actively worsening our planet's long-term carrying capacity by maintaining 7 billion, even with many of them kept in abject poverty.
It is a fallacy to think that literally having more people will result in better solutions magically forming, we're not missing great swathes of potential ideas, and advancements are steadily occuring already (and not likely to be sped up short of just having more researchers and labs, which is more an issue atm of funding than available workers), so how exactly would adding more stress to an already desperately overburdened ecosystem improve our odds? If just having more people resulted in better solutions, the world would look quite different. Many of the more successful countries are that way specifically because they don't have an especially large population to maintain, and can trade a great deal because everyone has actual wealth/purchasing power, countries where purchasing power is too thin are at a gargantuan disadvantage economically, people who are dirt poor can't spend as much as they need, while people who are overly rich can't spend as much as they need to not be an economic burden. People in the middle class tend to consume a great deal and effectively drive the economy, being both more skilled on average than poorer workers while actually spending most of what they bring in, not hoarding resources like a billionaire does by definition. Having too many poor people AND too many rich people limits our planet's carrying capacity more than anything.
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I more or less reached the conclusion that we don't really have free will as we understand it from a scientific perspective in my early teens, when I concluded that we make decisions based on data, experiences, heuristics and biology, and thus, we are essentially a complex machine. This isn't really 'bad', its just what we are. I established for myself that regrets were literally insane, because you could never have done other than what you have done, disturbing and horrible as that may seem. Does this mean people who do evil shouldn't be punished? Fuck no, because the existence of actual, enforced deterrents will have an impact on people's choices, we know this, even as we also have learned that infinite deterrent is not effective, such as the brutal anti-drug campaigns. There need to be reasonable consequences for people who do wrong, and there need to be incentives in life to do good, and interestingly, our own biology (in most people) works this way, to encourage us to do and be good, kind people, especially to those we consider 'on our side'. Unfortunately, we also get the same enjoyment from doing evil to those we consider 'on the other side', as ghastly as this seems to a species that is probably the least genetically diverse species to have taken over the planet's systems. We're very much same, each human, and yet we divide each other up, because we're programed to do so.
As a religious person, I more or less accept the existence of some manner of soul, but even that has issues, as my religion dictates that all humans are fallen and corrupt by nature, again denying us free will. I like the idea of God ultimately granting us true freedom, and I think freedom is what Jesus was teaching in a way (certainly from sin and death!), how we can live more liberated lives, by denying our worse nature, and embracing God. It is interesting how few evangelicals these days embrace one of the key facets of the Old Testament, that God desperately wants his faithful to be happy, even to be joyful. A key teaching in the Bible is that God will tend to reward not just the faithful, but also the happy... he'll give more to those who have plenty, for example, is a strange teaching, but makes some sense this way. Joy is so paramount that his son's first miracle was to create wine, because the party ran out of booze. I'm pretty sure God didn't create us to be assholes to each other, and both Testaments agree on that I'd argue.
TLDR: Science can prove free will is mechanically impossible, but it can't prove that all things are mechanical by definition, because if it cannot interact with something, it cannot prove or disprove it's existence, and it is thus not a relevant topic to science.
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I'm always amused that there are people who think the algorithm has no motive programmed in other than 'show person X what they will keep watching', not only is left-leaning media much harder to find on most platforms compared to right wing, you get different ads on left leaning things, ads that are extremely obnoxious/odious like scammy online gambling ad (or a lottery ad, which is about as dumb as gambling online, you have similar odds), on politically neutral channels I get normal ads, go figure. At least I'm no longer as inundated with alcohol advertisements, but I expect I'll have plenty during Lent.
I consistently get vids suggested that are similar to other videos that I've hit with 'don't show', the algorithm isn't listening because we're the sheep, and sheep don't get to choose what they look at, they just get to watch what is shown. Actually, that's a terrible analogy, but it's funny to imagine farmers caring about keeping their livestock entertained, I guess we can at least feel like we're pampered livestock? Our output btw is productivity/money, one way or another some capitalist shill is going to be getting your money, and the less your put back into the economy, the more frustrated they become. Too much saving going on? Time for some inflation, which mostly hurts the poor because stocks more or less rise faster than inflation, as does real estate that is in demand (be it farm, industrial, commercial or just houses being bought up after the previous homeowner was scammed out it, because since every poor person needs a house, the solution is to make them all tenants that can easily be forced to work as they'll never have the cushion of a house or generational wealth). Arguably the only things that go down in value with inflation are the things poor people have, stuff like cash or savings, both tank hard. It's pretty obviously fucked up, but that's by design, and that's why the algorithm is designed to shape us much more than we shape it, it's about telling us what to watch while giving us the illusion of choice.
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There are actually lots of compounds that make cannabis work, THC is just a really obvious one, but if you're an experienced user you'll have come across some strains that seem relatively potent despite not having especially high THC. CBN for example is also made, and it's a great sleep aide, still can give a bit of a buzz if you use enough, there are other compounds that we'll find that also have an noticeable impact. It's also worth noting that the terpenes can have benefits of their own, both as edibles and to smell. Marijuana is actually a pretty good source of terpenes, so there may be interest in the future in engineering the plant to produce even more terpenes, and you can already breed them to produce very specific ones, and in specific ratios.
I've definitely heard of people trying to fight the use of the term marijuana, it's just that it's so used that it's hard to get people to switch.
I think we now have people using extremely high purity THC, and they do so at pretty heavy rates sometimes, I'm guessing we'd find out more about side effects, but from what I understand a big one is psychosis if you're an extremely heavy user, especially if you have an otherwise sedentary/inactive lifestyle, CBD seems to act contrary to this, and if a person feels that stress is leading them towards a psychotic episode, use of CBD in moderation can help improve the body's processing of stressful things. Note, for both stress (and excessive dopamine levels due to heavy THC use), exercise is one of the best ways to improve your situation, but since THC stays in your system for a very long time 'drying out' is not quick or easy, this is probably part of why people don't have serious withdrawal, in contrast with the serious dangers of ceasing alcohol consumption after years of heavy use, cannabis cravings might make it harder to sleep for a few nights, but if you're not a problem drinker you can just have a couple beers instead to help you sleep, and if you can't have beer you can just suffer a (hopefully) brief period of insomnia before you're back to normal. I think if your insomnia lasts more than 2 weeks you should go to a doctor, but a few days without proper sleep is merely unpleasant rather than dangerous to most.
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I feel like it makes sense that upstart boys like carlson are worried about 'manliness', big-deal conservatives tend to live in the closet due to lacking the manliness needed to attract their dream man. I guess it shouldn't be surprised that the soft men are worried 'everyone is getting soft', they see a very soft man everywhere they go!
But seriously, the only thing I know of that has actually lowered it meaningfully is extreme laziness, if you don't do painful exercise your levels get lower over time. Do some construction work or run a marathon if you think your levels are low, people used to work, and that's what we are designed for, not pushing papers that are make-work. You just don't need much testosterone if you work a fake-ass job.
Btw, it CAN be partly genetic due to epigenetics, which are obviously heritable and are a function of how your ancestors lived. If 5 generations in a row are fat lazy alcoholics for example it will affect offspring.
While testosterone might have been helpful in a rough/tumble early hominid, we know that neanderthal women tended to suffer similar injuries to the men, meaning they also could safely wrestle fairly big game, higher testosterone levels stop being beneficial pretty quickly.
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The most likely to actually kill us is just plain old overpopulation leading to various problems... climate change is 100% a population issue for example. People in cities are mislead into thinking that they have a small impact on the world in real terms, meanwhile almost every city is built on prime arable land and are surrounded by endless acres of farmland, most of which is used in a non-sustainable manner leading to rampant soil degradation. Arguably we're already well over our planets reasonable 'carrying capacity' for humans, such that we're permanently damaging our planet to sustain too many of us, most of whom serve no purpose other than consuming resources to fuel our capitalist delusions. People seem to have remarkably poor ability to see issues from a longer term perspective, our collective understanding of the question 'how many people can live in _____' is more or less as many as you can physically house. Look at how many people live in places because they are 'sunny but not humid', and they try to find the most arable land in those deserts/almost deserts to lay down asphalt for their cities. I guess you could argue our stupidity is a bigger issue than our sheer population size, but it's also true that one person camping in a forest can just dig a hole to poop in, while a whole city doing that would be disastrous, scale matters a great deal, and people don't seem to care very much about that if they can personally be kept in relative comfort.
Another thing that might well doom us is the conservatives among us that insist on trying to move backwards in time, the more we progress the less likely we are to kill ourselves off violently. A significant portion of the population is far enough right wing at this point that they see few issues with taking others rights/opportunities away, and from there it's a short step to 'voting to take your neighbor's stuff/life', left wing people's great danger to us is that they are vulnerable to deception (mostly by right leaning leaders ironically), right wing people are in contrast actively malicious, seeing it as not only reasonable to climb over others toward personal gain, but they actually think it's unethical to not screw over others to get ahead. Right wing people see no problem with doing the wrong thing if they've seen or heard of someone else doing it, you don't need to be very bright to realize why such people are an inherent danger to society, if they'll profit from pollution or racism or mass production of weapons they'll eagerly do so.
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The problem with capitalism is that it eventually has to enter 'late stage', when there is too much wealth at the top and not enough resources allocated to sustain the poor. This leads to economic collapse (we're in it atm, this is why scamming has replaced many business models completely, in capitalism the only reason to not scam people is the threat of consequences, if there are no consequences then you get many scams, be they AI or NFTs or something even dumber coming down the pipeline), and it's an inevitable facet of unrestricted capitalism. Modern capitalism is founded on two principles, picking winners and rewarding the picked winners, nobody becomes a multi-millionaire without connections in this day and age, if you don't quack the quack then they don't assign you wealth. It's like how there is a weird coincidence that male popstars are all seem to be rapists, it's a feature not a bug.
You talk about people knowing since the 1800s about penicillin, but people have been making poultices (designed to create natural antibiotics) for as long as we've had the materials. The problem is that during industrialization the 'modern' medical system systemically eradicated natural medical knowledege wherever they could, and it was the abandoning of old ways that lead to way more suffering before people got around to rediscovering basic medical care from millennia ago.
Capitalism has been QUITE BAD at advancing human quality of life, and central planning is resposnible for almost all advancements we enjoy. Capitalism is notorious for catering to the needs of the wealthy and nobody else, and the bigger the wealth gap gets the more extreme that behavior gets. Capitalism eventually turns into oligarchy, and oligarchies are not known to be efficient or competent, there is a reason most governments used to care about things like monopolies (they still do when it's not old money at issue). Capitalism didn't give us anything but bills, central planning is what keep capitalism from devolving into dog-eat-dog chaos. The reason the US developed it's big tech edge after WW2 wasn't because of for-profit corporations, but because the US government used central planning to encourage research and development of newer, more advanced tech. The Soviets in contrast had far fewer advantages and advanced their country way, way faster than the West did, same with China, same with Vietnam, arguably the same with Cuba (though it has advanced mostly in social programs because no trade because capitalism hates proof that their are better ways), all of these countries developed incredibly quickly, and part of why they could do it was because of the use of central planning by relative experts rather than relying on random uneducated rich kids to make all the decisions.
Also, big ** off with your whole 'but north korea is shitty!' argument, that isn't a communist country in any meaningful way, it's a violently authoritarian pariah state that almost nobody trades with, it doesn't concern itself with the well-being of the people (a big part of actual communism is redistributing wealth, not just giving it to the autocrat's weird kid/grandkid to spend as they see fit, there is no definition of communism that that fits, other than the ones made up by right wing propagandists). That said, even with no money/resources they've ended up with sufficient weaponry to be an actual issue in their region, despite having their country bombed into dust by the West, and having almost no help rebuilding. The West has spent billions and billions making sure that lots of countries are really shitty to live in, mostly for the profit of Western business interests, AKA we have your vaunted capitalism to thank for countless authoritarian states all over the world. The worst government the world has ever known, nazi Germany, was notorious pro-capitalism, to the point that their actual greatest fear was leftists, not jews. All the mighty corporations dumped money on the nazis, and they still lost because they, like all extreme capitalists, choose people based on adherence to party ideology rather than ability, you could take any CEO from pretty much any US company in put them in charge of any other large US company and you'd notice very little change, yet these morons are paid endless millions and we act like there are no other cocaine treated psychopaths that could do the job.
Part of the reason it's more profitable to fuck over the environment is because of capitalist laws that allow governments to be bribed by fossil fuel companies, and this has resulted in HUGE subsidies on fossil fuels in NA. We're being coerced into using it and they're lying to us about it being cheaper at this point, it's insane. We're well past the tipping point now, now we're finding out what Mother Nature is going to 'do' about what we've already done, it doesn't matter if we stop polluting, we have runaway climate change going on, natural cycles have been disrupted and the result is that huge amounts of CO2 are being released, us stopping now doesn't matter, the bogs of the north are thawing quickly, and the deserts of the south continue to grow while we deforest our remaining rainforests. It's fascinating that our ancestors turned the middle east/north Africa into one gargantuan desert and we've learned nothing from it.
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