Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Kyle Hill"
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Great exposition Kyle...
I think it's really hard for people not familiar with Japanese culture to really understand the size of the loss there, because modern western societies don't value community as much as Japanese society anymore. Japanese urban centers are also going that way.
But it's even worse than it might seen. Particularly for those small towns close to the plant.
Small towns in Japan, lots of them have an entire identity to themselves, they have particular traditions, particular cultures, community practices, celebrations, etc - and there is a strong bond formed between people living there that goes a bit beyond just - everyone "knows" everyone else...
And so, when you have a disaster like this happening, it's like the whole died, even in cases no one individual actually died.
I hope Japanese politics listen to reason and do the right thing there, though I don't have any trust in Japanese politics these days anymore.
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First world problems... xD Or, to be fair, problems of countries with proper winter with snow and all time, versus tropical countries - at least in part.
Problem here in my mom's apartment isn't about finding the right balance, it's about hoping that the water gets hot enough during winter.
Electric shower that although new and fancy by country standards, it's yes, that famous type with exposed resistance in direct contact with water... Even Mehdi was kinda surprised by it (Electroboom).
Also, I guess a symptom of winters not getting cold enough, insulation here is kinda poorly done, not only for internal spaces, but also pipes and water tanks. As temperatures never goes bellow freezing, the attitude towards insulation and putting up thermal barriers on houses and apartments in the entire country is... cavalier at best. xD
What this translates to is that when the weather gets cold here (by our standards, single digits C), the water temperature also goes down by a lot, and then electric showers struggles to bring the temperature up.
We're not even in winter here yet, cold days probably dropping down at least some 10-20 degrees C more than it is right now, and we're already hitting the limits of how hot the electric shower can go. Cranked to the max, reducing flow rate to get to the right temperature.
I'm not really sure why, but it's like, it's hard to even find different options in the market... of course, basic electric showers are cheaper and so they'll sell more in a country that is mostly poor, but it's not like there is zero market here for fancier alternatives.
For some reason though, for electric, you either go with very simple exposed resistance wire electric shower, or you need to get huge tanks that requires separate and complex installation. No in between option like small wall mounted systems that can go all in the shower box or something. I used to think it was about market monopolization, but we actually have at least half a dozen big brands cornering the market, it's weird how little innovation there is.
The "fancier" more well known local brand have a huge range of electric showers which... well, don't have much difference between models at all, outside looks. You get some fancy slim line multi shower head with smooth flow control yadda yadda with internals that is exactly the same thing as the cheapest model - one or two exposed standard resistors in direct contact with water flow. So, you can change things around a bit, but water temperature, the most important point of contention there, will only get so hot no matter if you take the cheapest or the most expensive model. :P
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Reality doesn't matter (and barely is a thing I guess), and Matrix has to create an ideal narrative and character for the story to make sense, which proves just that. Mr Anderson, no friends or family, fits nowhere, feels something has always been wrong with his life, to the point of following strangers and believing in some outlandish claims... which ends up being the whole point of his existence, etc.
Heck, it's basically jumping into the unknown and resetting life... Some people might do it, but I'm willing to bet that if people were really presented with the choice, most wouldn't. But some would. You kinda need the right situation, impulse and motivation, together with the mindset though.
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@cfromnowhere I'm an outsider, and not a specialist in any way in the area, so keep that in mind. I'm just a dude that reads a lot on the subject. xD
But honestly? The more I hear about Japanese politics the more I think it's just a mix of corruption, bad or outdated hierarchical internal structure, and living in a bubble disconnected from Japanese people's reality...
While I agree that communication is indeed different in Japan, I don't think it really comes down to only that. There are deeper problems in general, and unfortunately it has to do with politics and culture.
The Fukushima-Daiichi meltdown specifically only happened because both the government and TEPCO, the electricity company that administered the plant, spent 10 years ignoring repeated warnings that an earthquake plus tsunami was possible to happen at Japan's west coast, and that they needed to move backup generators to higher ground. That's exactly what led to the disaster. You can look up for articles about TEPCO and Japanese government judgements regarding culpability in this particular point, it happened kinda recently, more than 10 years after the incident.
And yet, there was no justice there. Neither government nor the company was punished.
Ignoring warnings happened both because of a vertical hierarchy structure inside the company and government that meant the messaging stopped at some point because people in the chain didn't want to incur extra costs to the plant, because that would look bad on them, because they wanted to climb up the hierarchical ladder. And government also received warnings but didn't act due to being complicit to several cost cutting measures going against regulations inside TEPCO for ages, having close ties with key figures inside the company.
Other examples of more recent corruption: There was the whole scandal about LDP party's ties with the Unification Church that culminated in Shinzo Abe's assassination, and only then the party admitted having ties and started distancing themselves from it. They call themselves a "Church", but it's actually a radical right wing cult, also known as "Moonies". A whole ton of people of the governing faction had direct ties with the cult.
More recently, a corruption scandal that has been going on for... I think well over decades now was unveiled about LDP politicians pocketing money from some supposed charity drive schemes there, I didn't understand the whole thing, but it was just that type of very deep and very dirty corruption scheme that is closer to organized crime rather than politics. Politicians involved in the scheme are supposed to have garnered money in the hundreds of millions of dollars from this, while the whole thing lasted.
Problem with all of this is that the LDP has been the only political party in power in Japan for several decades now... it has become a single party affair, Japanese people are also kinda fully disengaged with politics particularly younger generations, and so they end up doing whatever they want. It sounds like the mentality for young people around politics is that they don't want to engage because they don't have a voice anyways - it's an "old people" thing.
It just so happens that the LDP faction that is currently in power, because this party has tons of factions including some that are on ideological opposite spectrums, is considered somewhere between conservative and ultra conservative.
Which is what leads to these overzealous measures, particularly in regards to technical stuff they don't understand.
So the logic is, if there was a nuclear disaster already, and public opinion has turned against the idea, even though it's actually a corruption and mismanagement problem, they'll just follow the FUD mentality of the crowd and not touch it, even if it's at the sacrifice of people's welfare and well being.
Something like this more or less. I hope it helps. But don't trust me alone on this... there are good analysis out there to read and watch. :D
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It's a social construct, and a bit of semantics play perhaps, to have things that are far more encompassing than what it first appears to be.
On a purely scientific and theoretical degree, I personally understand that there is no actual complete free will, freedom of choice, among other related concepts.
Most people have the power to imagine alternate scenarios in their minds because that's also a useful biological tool for species growth and maintenance perhaps. Or just part of the chaos that defines our species, and potentially the universe.
But if you take an absolutist approach and don't think about other semantical meanings of free will, taking only the literal scientific approach - then even the criticism about violence against criminals is also a moot point. If criminals don't have free will while committing crimes, then those who punish them with violence also don't have free will to chose how they feel and act upon it.
Everything becomes justifiable, because everything is deterministic.
In the very same way that you could attribute criminal violence as deterministic, you could also determine violence against criminals as also being deterministic. There is no separation there.
Violence is also just a result of evolutionary processes, that if it's already determined to cease at some point in the history of our species, it will. You don't have to do anything about it. Or rather, you will already do something about it as it's pre-determined.
We also start making all sorts of questions around ethics, morality, religion, radicalism, and other concepts that are valid or invalid on the basis of it not actually being a choice, but just something that came up due to genetics or environmental factors. And you know, there is definitely some of that happened that people overestimate in being purely a matter of choice, but we need thresholds to define responsibility and actions to be taken as response. Interpretation is important because if you frame everything as being deterministic, then why would you take action for anything? Hedonism, ennui, emptiness or something takes over and you do whatever, or do nothing, and go with it.
See that it's contradictory to ask for a change in the system, when you are questioning the concept of free will entirely. Everything is deterministic, so why are you fighting? Is that your own determinism?
Ex. if I as a person who wishes the most gruesome punishment against those who commit crimes don't have a free will to chose whether this is right or wrong, why should I change my opinion on that? Isn't that just my genetics telling how I should feel about it? And for that matter, who chose what is right or wrong anyways?
And further, isn't wishing horrible stuff to happen to people you don't like also not a product of free will, but rather a consequence of physics, genetics, or evolution as a whole?
This also can have dire consequences in terms of hedonism and plain amoral behavior. Mostly because of semantics. Free will is like a structure or scaffolding to think about your relationship to the world that surrounds you, or rather the construct made in your brain to interpret it. That structure supports the way you think you should deal with relationships, with yourself, with communities and societies in a larger scale. It may not be a literal sense of acting freely according to your own will, just part of a deterministic event that's like an invisible hand that guides your actions, but it is still there, and you can still think about it as something that guides your actions.
The fact is, we humans have limited perception, limited capacity for reasoning, and a limited interpreted understanding of the physical world that surrounds us. We can only process and interpret so much of the "real". Allegory of the cave and all that.
We could go on and on in this discussion. For instance, how cruel and unusual punishment became a thing for our species. Does it really purely entails immoral and unethical behavior, or is it a coping mechanism for our species, plus a tool for social behavior enforcement? Is looking at it (cruel and unusual punishment) as a "wrong" thing to do purely scientific, or just another social construct? Did it make more sense on other settings and societies? Is it really evolution, or just a different way of thinking, different ideology, different politics? And how do you decide which is right and wrong? If your decision on that is not the product of free will, but rather determinism, would the choice of others to reject it also not be free will, but rather deterministic?
Anyways, it's kind of a discussion that folds into itself.
For the free will paradox, I kinda think about the simulation hypothesis. Whatever the result is, I don't think the brain is equipped to have a full understanding of it. It goes beyond our capabilities.
So I tend not to consider those for real life choices, as it's not practical to think in those terms. For the good and the bad.
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Power failure not leading to a meltdown is huge by itself already, so kudos to the team in China! But the thing that immediately strikes me when I see the design is containment breach and leak of radioactive materials into the atmosphere.
Just because we're talking about a gas pressure chamber. Then again, current reactors already have that problem, right? If containment is breached, most nuclear reactor designs would end up leaking radioactive gas or vapor into the atmosphere, quite explosively.
With water or without water, you are still dealing with either gas or water vapor inside a pressurized chamber to move the generator, with a radioactive material thrown in the mix, is that right?
Seems that this design is better in that sense because water never comes in direct contact with radioactive material though, not sure how much of a difference this makes.
So the risk of a huge explosion if the vessel fails is still there, but without the self sustaining reaction.
What I'd worry about a design like this is the same as a spicy gatcha. xD Clogging. And what Kyle mentioned - constant refueling. Particularly because it's a pressured chamber. If you'll have to be emptying and refilling content more frequently, considerations need to be made about that, because it means more wear and tear, moving parts, and whatnot.
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Westworld + Skynet + Psycho Pass + Ex Machina... Serial Experiments Lain
Forget about it. We're already living in super intelligent machine simulation number 1938402485, and this one doesn't lead to interstellar conquest and domination too. :P Needs more tweaks on the problem that came up with fake news and climate change. The next one is running in parallel microseconds after this one was created. At least it didn't finish in nuclear catastrophe back in the 70s like the past one did.
Yeah... the problem with the whole singularity thing is far more basic than most people seem to realize. It comes from basic concepts like it being a black box, opaque, we can't follow it. And from the limits of our own brain processing power. And the whole idea is older than most people realize too... you know the saying be careful on what you wish for? Those funny stories about evil geniouses making wishes come true by using the most gruesome routes possible for it?
World peace? Sure, just kill all humans. You wanna be the richest person on earth? Sure, just make everyone else miserable. Etc.
Yep, that's the whole thing. Humans don't have enough processing power to understand the full consequences of what they want, ask for. So comes an impossibility of programming a super intelligent AI to do something while being aware of the full scope of each tiny action it's gonna take to get there.
Say you send the whole thing to another planet and ask for it to do while in isolation there. What you get is Borg. xD Or perhaps Gray goo.
It's also weird how many seemingly benefitial wishes coming from individuals gets far easier once we as a species either go extinct, get controlled, oppressed and dominated by a superior being, or suffer such a high ammount of change that it's just not us anymore.
For lots of current problems, an AI would most likely start with the Thanos solution.
Looking at it from another perspective, this is one step above the problem with nuclear weapons. It's too much power given to an individual or group of people to use, that would have an effect for the entire world, indiscriminatedly.
And the final point of analysis I'll point out in my already too long comment, perhaps, goes to the Matrix or living inside and under a machine's control. If we value free will, freedom of choice, evolution whatever that means for each one individually... even if we got a superintelligent AI that fully understand us, developing into an utopia rather than dystopia... we don't have those anymore, right? No free will or freedom of choice because we'd be living under the invisible hands of AI to, even if subtly and imperceptly, guide and change outcomes to maintain the utopia somehow. Or not utopia, but whatever is the objective of whatever outcome the superintelligent AI is seeking.
And then, perhaps humanity's final objective is giving rise to something like a superintelligent AI after all. xD Selfish gene aside, who knows? You gotta see that, from a disconnected out of the box overview, if a superintelligent AI dominates us and guide us for the rest of our history, who cares about our species anymore? It's the AI that will be on the top of the foodchain. Eventually, we'll become kind useless. Just extra work for the AI to deal with. :P
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1000 Chernobyl meltdowns wouldn't be able to match the damage Instagram influencers have brought upon the world... the fact that I'm not surprised by Kyle's accounts here is already horrible in itself. Everyone that lives in any place that attracted Instagram influencers at some point will know about their reckless behavior, how entitled they think they are, and how ultimately bad things became even if for a while it brought some money in. It's predatory tourism in it's ultimate form.
I really do sincerely believe that we more urgently need to learn how to stop these people and these trends from happening rather than be worried about the dangers of nuclear power. And of course, in the grander scheme of things, just stop social media in general.
What is the real point of reversing Climate Change and trying to undo the damages we humans did to the planet if we're going to leave it to a future society where everything revolves around corrupt communications systems such as social networks and group chats that we have today and are already rearing their ugly heads for everyone to see how damaging they can be?
It might be Chernobyl's second disaster, but I think social media and the culture that is being generated around it is more a sign of our own extinction event. I'm not even joking here. The disruption this reckless uncontrolled means of communication that came in with the advent of technologies such as the Internet, smartphones and whatnot might just be too much for human societies to control and bear. These things have a hand in the current state of democracy erosion, misinformation take over, countries taking a turn to the radical right, and a whole host of things that incentivizes thoughtlessness, hatred, violence, and a tribalistic mindset that when amplified leads to war and destruction.
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Yap, nicely explained! :D
In comparison to past accidents, not only more modern nuclear power plants are closer to an onion with several layers of exhaustive protection and prevention, you basically already have a sarcophagus pre-built there for the worst case scenario.
Most nuclear power plant incidents in history happened due to a long and frankly jaw dropping chain of incompetence, incredibly poor practices, corruption and sometimes ignorance too. Given the situation of the USSR and Chernobyl, plus it's era and place in history, people don't get too surprised to know the chain of errors that happened.
But I think international press and just general perception made a poor job explaining the chain of events that led to Fukushima.
Of course, an unprecedented off the charts earthquake followed by tsunami hitting the plant directly played it's part there, and I guess it's the focus of most coverage due to the devastating effects of the combined catastrophe - but it was only because of a chain of corruption, hubris, bad decisions fueled by bad corporate/government culture that the meltdown really happened. And in some way, people were already biased against seeing that side of things - how come Japanese culture so famous for it's... supposed correctness lead to something you'd expect from 80s USSR or something? Well, it so happens that these sorts of corruption problems plus chains of incompetence also do exist in Japanese culture, politics and private enterprise.
There had been at least 10 years of ignoring recommendations of extremely basic structural adjustments which would have specifically prevented the meltdown.
The one valid criticism that I can always agree with to people adamantly against nuclear power is this: Can we ever 100% guaranteed eliminate those (corruption, hubris, incompetence, poor practices, etc) from big projects such as nuclear power plants? I don't think so!
The way I answer this to myself is - almost every single big infrastructure project that lots of people rely upon, asks themselves the same question at some point. Dams, bridges, buildings, roads... people who watch Plainly Difficult will know. xD
But, it is not only about the potential for failure, which every single power plant type in the world inherently has anyways - it's about the balance between what it offers versus what risks are acceptable.
Nuclear power has a particular image problem that is like planes falling from the sky taken to it's absolute extremes.
Almost everyone around the world knows about Chernobyl and Fukushima, sometimes down to the tiniest details. Almost no one knows how much we already rely on nuclear power, don't know how many of those plants have been working with zero incidents for several decades, and how much those power plants offset the need for exponentially more fossil fuel plants. It's also poorly understood how many current renewable sources infrastructures would be needed to cover what a single nuclear power plant can generate. Current tech considered, we just cannot scratch the surface yet. You need to look at statistics for that... how much is generated by each type of power plant proportionate of how much infrastructure we have on each plus money put into. Then you start understanding why we still need nuclear power.
I think we all hope that someday tech advances, building technologies, optimization in usage of power and other factors develop in a way that we can cover all our needs plus a large safety net with renewables alone. It's just that, for the time being and the near future, we just can't get there yet. And we're running out of time to bridge that gap.
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Weird, I never understood this supposed problem. Didn't the fellowship ride, run, walk and then sneak towards Mount Doom the way they did because they were trying to do it stealthily in the first place, avoid the Eye of Sauron? Giant eagles riding straight in the "eyesight" of Sauron would've gave them away straight up. In fact, any alternative method that was big and showy would attract Sauron's gaze and make things harder. This is also why the fellowship didn't go with a full army prepared for any situation that might come up. It was, if not the whole reason, a major part of why hobbits were chosen to play the major part, despite being a race of peaceful small stature people - because they wouldn't attract the Eye of Sauron gaze.
I though that was the entire logic of their journey... to avoid the attention of Sauron until they got there. From that point on, I think it was even understood by the fellowship that all bets were off... once Sauron found out the intentions and imminent defeat, he was going to do everything to stop it, and it was likely that they would all be in mortal danger, scrambling with whatever they could to get to Mount Doom. It was a huge bet, a bit unlikely even.
In fact, wasn't the final battle at the Black Gates also another point to distract the Eye of Sauron? This is the whole deal... lots of actions in the entire story are there to distract the Eye of Sauron, it was all a ploy for the hobbits to get to Mount Doom undetected.
It makes sense for unrealistic supernatural eagles to come up only later on when Sauron was already defeated, for the rescue, because there was no need to avoid his sights anymore.
Or am I missing something? It always sounded like an argument made by people who didn't understand the purpose of the journey in the first place, and it's right there in the movie, let alone books. It's decided when the fellowship is formed. It's why Boromir is arguing with "one does not simply walk into Mordor" meme. :P The idea was ludicrous, but there were alternative hidden rough routes that they could try on foot, and it was basically the only chance.
Of course, this is all to favor a fantasy story after all... or else you could argue some of those powerful magicians should've come up with a contraption to shoot the ring straight into Mount Doom, with no need for fellowship, or whatever. Create a mini volcano right there in the Shire and throw it there. Neutralize Sauron's evil and ring with powerful magic. Take it to Valinor or some supernatural land where Sauron or Nazgul would never reach... there are tons of excuses and options you could go for while still not straying too far from the fantasy realm. But the journey is the story. It had to happen the way it did because it had to happen that way. xD
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