Comments by "clray123" (@clray123) on "Motherboard" channel.

  1. Haha it's like the "spirulina solution to world hunger" - full of nutrients, but tastes like shit and nobody wants to eat it, not even as a last resort in poverty stricken countries. It's only consumed by "health food" nutcakes who pay a good price.
    2
  2. +Nathan Sifuentez Are you stupid? You can't really dose those things properly anyway, you don't know the potency of the batch or your susceptibility to the particular substances.
    1
  3. Whichever system you choose it needs to harness somehow the "negative" traits that influence much human behavior such as laziness (and its sister stupidity), aggression, envy. It has to work because of these traits not against them. I lean toward "enlightened selfishness" in which aggression is directed toward virtual conquests (intellectual achievements, status & power, resourcefulness) and laziness punished by ostracism. But I'm afraid there is little room for real democracy in such a system.
    1
  4. As for the electric car, I'm afraid you are misinformed. The problem with electric cars - even today's modern ones - is that they only run for a very short distance and cannot carry much load. If you consider the total cost of generating electricity for them and recycling used batteries, they are not so great for the environment either. It's true that super-rich people have extravagant spending habits, though I doubt if they are really able to consume a lot (spending does not equal consuming).
    1
  5. I'm not sure if increasing competition is the key. It's similar to the evolutionary arms race - predators are getting better at getting prey while prey is getting better at running away from predators, but both tend to consume more resources to "win" this race. In dense forests only the highest trees get their light, but to grow higher they must consume ever more nutrients from the ground. In the long run, it can be a pretty self-destructive behavior - for the competitors.
    1
  6. Noone appears to be the misspelled (misspelt?) friend of no-one and none.
    1
  7. The wealthy are already reproducing less - maybe that's a reason why they manage to accumulate wealth (e.g. celibacy in Catholic church). Other than that, I don't see a great challenge in convincing wealthy (usually well-educated) people to become more environment-friendly and to waste less. It's just a matter of making it "hip". The problem is the much larger number of poor/average people still hungry to improve their lifestyle in the good old fashion (can't blame them, can we?)
    1
  8. The challenge is how to retain a reasonable degree of individual freedom and upward social mobility, which is what really fuels capitalistic societies, while restraining the negative side effects. I think it's a matter of changing social attitudes - if we can manage to make it uncool and undesirable (rather than punished by some authority) to behave in a self-destructive way, that would be best. In fact such role models existed before ("pillars of society" rather than a bunch of rich morons).
    1
  9. Actually, there is a "simple" solution to this - we should stop reproducing before nature forces us to exterminate ourselves.
    1
  10. Noone is going to give up power. You have to factor in the "negative" (are maybe just "realistic") human traits, can't hope for consensus. Many problems in the world are rooted in the discrepancy between what people think "ought be" and what really is. I think in all attempts for change, we should start with describing, understanding and being able to predict how actors in the real world behave, else it's just empty ideologies that can draw in people, but eventually collapse upon themselves.
    1
  11. "Voting" may be a good mechanism if you already have a society of enlightened individuals. The sad reality is that many (majority of?) voters are hardly capable of caring for their own good (it's telling that most people tend to blame external forces). The other problem is that social systems are chaotic - you can't really design them upfront as there are unintended consequences. You must evolve them slowly, monitor them and tweak slowly while changing minds. I think it is already happening.
    1
  12. Historically, small communities tended to get in conflict with other (competing) small communities and ended up enslaved by better organized neighbors (this is how states were originally formed; the guy with the bigger stick decided to "protect" his vassals). Apart from that, I see problems with insufficient economies of scale - it is often more efficient to have a centralized, shared infrastructure, policies and standards rather than everyone reinventing the wheel for themselves, so to speak.
    1
  13. Well, exploitation of natural resources to fuel growth and increase turnover is sort of built-in into capitalism because of the idea of profit maximization. It's a lot more difficult to maximize one's own short-term profits while still conserving resources and looking out for the long-term "common good", so usually capitalists just don't bother (unless commanded to, which of course they don't like).
    1