So it is your opinion that in the future llms will take extremely vague specs and turn them into fully functional software that actually works the way the prompter wanted it to?
Does the prompter sit there with the llm all day answering the 1000s of questions necessary to make what he wanted, and the prompter then spent days testing it to make sure what he initially thought he wanted is actually what he wanted?
Then for every additional feature and integration the prompter will do this again?
Are we going to make a new job title for that? Should we call that job a programmer?
Tools are tools. Better tools let us do more faster, but they are still tools.
Practically any entertainment product is going to have problem users(food products too, along with alcohol and other drugs).
There are people who play video games to excess or watch tv to excess and it is harmful to them, but that really needs to be balanced against the vast majority of users that exercise reasonable restraint. Its just not a fair justification to ban things that 99.9%+ of users are about to operate responsibly.
Well firstly, specifically in gambling, self-reported statistics from the NCPG indicate that of the 60%-ish of the population that will engage in gambling, about 5-7% develop problems around that gambling. So it isn't 99.9%, it's more like 95%.
Secondly, let's take this out of percentages: That 60%-ish slice is 150 million people, so your conservative 5% number of people who will have problems amounts to 7.5 million people. So like, if you were being a bit hyperbolic but not terribly, you could say your fun hobby of gambling which you do responsibly, is still responsible for 7.5 million people's addiction. Which I agree isn't a reason to BAN it, but I would say is a reason to, I dunno, not make it so you can do it on your phone? Which was the status quo for the majority of the time we've had smartphones. Like a major deterrent to sports gambling being addictive, even where it's permitted, was that you had to actually go to a bookie's and place bets, and collect your winnings there, not just sit on your sofa doing it on your phone.
Thirdly if you want to expand this into video games, I think addiction there is pretty problematic too, and has gotten substantially worse in the last ten years or so, specifically with the advent of micro-transactions. When I was a kiddo if you were "addicted" to something like Grand Theft Auto, the worst thing that would probably happen to you is your parents taking away your XBox and telling you take a fuckin shower and/or go outside. Or coworkers telling you you smelled, if you happened to be older. The worst thing you could say from that era would be something like WoW subscription fees, and while that's definitely ethically gray for me, I think they can make an argument on the fact that you just buying the game can't offset the costs they face in keeping it updated, maintaining the online services to enable it, the moderation of that platform, etc. etc. etc. However modern Gacha games especially have taken a LOT of heat for flagrantly predatory monetization practices that greatly affect people with certain kinds of neurodivergencies, who spend tens of thousands of dollars on them, oftentimes against the wishes of their carers or spouses. That certainly sucks, and I don't think there's any kind of ethical argument one can make in favor of it, it's just straight exploitation of vulnerable people.
TV addiction is gonna be it's own paragraph but most of the people in my parents generation think the Democrats are communists and are so utterly brain-rotted from the idiot box that they can't even answer basic questions about the reality they live in, so I'm gonna say that's kind of "enough said" there.
There's always going to be an element of addiction in anything, you're correct, because addiction is really just getting hooked, to a problematic degree, on the sense of pleasure you get from doing or consuming a thing, and that thing can be basically anything. That said, a whole lot of very large, very valuable businesses, including many that are owned and operated by the State, take advantage of that to push predatory products onto vulnerable populations, and that's kinda fucked, no?
It should either be illegal or not. This idea that the state has a monopoly on getting money from doing a thing that you are saying is bad doesn't make sense.
If it is bad and yet the government is allowed to use it to make money then is the government evil? Why does the government get to do it if we can't? It just makes the whole thing seem ridiculous and makes underground betting seem like I guess it isn't really that bad since the government is allowed to do it. The operators are just people fighting for their freedom to operate the same business the government operates.
Because any addictive thing is on a spectrum and you don't want the people with incentives to go all the way up the spectrum to be the operator of the harmful thing, a là the dose makes the poison. (See alcohol, cigarettes, any class of drugs etc.)
Some things are just wholly harmful where no small amount provides any benefits, some are harmful in large doses, but not so harmful in small doses that they cannot provide other uses.
Governments (ideally) don't exist to maximize profit so they are (generally) not incentivized to increase the addictions of their populace.
Harm reduction. In the US, state lotteries have reduced illegal gambling. Illegal gambling would increase under a total ban.
Some markets fail. If the government can step in and provide a service that doesn't end in a failed market, that's not an imposition on anyone's freedom.
I think of it is the level of regulation I'd require / desire in an endeavour.
On one side there's things with very little regulation required, private companies go crazy (and they will!:).
On the other hand, there's things I want high regulation on - use of violence (army / pokice / security), medicine, key infra utilities, alcohol/drugs/gambling, etc.
We can discuss whether we agree those things need regulation, and if so, what form that regulation takes.
(To me, some things I want so highly regulated there's no benefit in private ownership, just risk of runaway loop exploitation)
> This idea that the state has a monopoly on getting money from doing a thing that you are saying is bad doesn't make sense.
It makes a lot of sense. Here in Idaho, hard alcohol can only be sold in state run liquor stores. The stores aren't advertised and the staff is all well trained. People that want booze can still get it, but at the same time it's not being ran like a business (It still turns a profit). That is to say, there's no advertising or marketing for it.
> If it is bad and yet the government is allowed to use it to make money then is the government evil?
People are going to gamble if they want to. Making it illegal just pushes them to underground gambling. Making it state ran allows the state to better control the gambling, including doing things like having the ability to provide recovery options and interventions.
> Why does the government get to do it if we can't?
The government isn't motivated by (just) money. They don't have to advertise for gambling and they don't have shareholders to make happy. They could even operate the gambling at a loss if they wanted to.
> It just makes the whole thing seem ridiculous and makes underground betting seem like I guess it isn't really that bad since the government is allowed to do it.
Completely the opposite. The government doing it happens to stop underground gambling from happening. You can sue the government and expect them to treat you fairly. Underground gambling, on the other hand, has no reason or motivation to treat it's participants fairly.
Some things are better left in control of the government _because_ they are dangerous. You either:
* Outlaw gambling, and gamblers will just go towards shadier options, putting their own lives in even more risk.
* Allow private operators whose goal is to extract as much money from possible from gamblers as possible and ensure that you will inevitably have people abusing the system up to the limits to which it can go and testing out if they can go further, over and over again
* Government ran gambling organisations that can ensure they also offer proper systems to wean yourself off, offer healthcare, and make use of the money "made" from operating it to improve your health care systems.
Only one of those options is sensible.
>The operators are just people fighting for their freedom to operate the same business the government operates.
HAHAHAHAHA. No. Absolutely not. Some people are truly as caricatural as movies and books make them appear, and casino owners truly live up to it. I worked for them, for "betting rooms", anything you want: they are thieves, mafias, manipulators and bring nothing but misery on the world. They're not "fighting for their freedom", they have found a legal way to abuse human misery and addictions.
> Government ran gambling organisations that can ensure they also offer proper systems to wean yourself off, offer healthcare, and make use of the money "made" from operating it to improve your health care systems.
Please list any state lotteries that offer any of these things. All I've seen is an 800 number to call, listed in the fine print at the bottom of the advertising. And they advertise everywhere, and though many were established with promises to "fund education" or something that sounds noble, money is fungible so it just gets sloshed around in the state budgets.
"My country that is hostile to public healthcare doesn't offer public healthcare" no shit sherlock, the US's healthcare system is a shitshow. Look at anywhere in Europe where those lotteries are publicly ran. The entire post is about changing the law, that doesn't include closing your eyes on how it's currently shit.
>It should either be illegal or not. This idea that the state has a monopoly on getting money from doing a thing that you are saying is bad doesn't make sense.
So no nation in history should have been allowed to have a military to defend its loot or to acquire more loot.
Or conversely, individuals should possess the right to form a militia or employ a private force to defend oneself and one's property from the encroachment of the state and other trespassers. They should be able to exercise this right for so long as each nation retains its respective armed forces.
Well you could search for elements similar to the proof / problem in the training data, even if it's de-identified, right? OpenAI can probably do better than Ctrl-f "Navier Stokes".
There are probably thousands of serious academics taking a crack at millennium problems using AI every day. All those attempts are in the training data. And in fact the two researchers benefited from those attempts as well.
Yes, that's how the trick works. Profit is revenue minus expenses. By increasing expenses, you decrease profit, and therefore tax. But it only works if you had a profit before, because the government doesn't pay you back tax when you lose money.
As a company you collect VAT from your customers and pay VAT to your suppliers.
Depending on the resulting balance, you will either give back the amount of surplus collected VAT to your country/state/whatever or you will be provided with VAT credit.
VAT collection is different from a profit tax or other taxes.
The eu is stupid for not engaging in active climate engineering right now. They are the most at risk and should take decisive action before they end up living in a glacier.
All the downvotes are just showing why no action is being taken even though right now we are literally terraforming the planet with no plan, and it is going to stop the transatlantic currents that keep Europe from becoming arctic.
But sure, just do nothing until Europe becomes an uninhabitable tundra and it is too late to take action. Great plan.
Western democracies at this point can't do anything at that even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population. Any 5% at that. We are stuck in local maximum even if it slowly and surely slides into the shitter
This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower.
Yeah the issue is "minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population", but it's not any 5%, it's the powerful 5% who resist the change using any means necessary including producing mass propaganda and steering the votes to the nazi parties which promise to revert to the old ways and stop any progress on the climate front.
It's a little bit more complicated than that. In a hypothetical EU without political intervention, Chinese EVs would be available without tariffs, and those would probably sell very well without any mandates.
> This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower.
Can't speak about EV marketshare (I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read), but large part of population is buying only used ICE cars, or get new ones on a business lease; only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket.
Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations.
> only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket.
yes, mostly because new cars are very expensive, and that's exactly the point I was making
> Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations.
Exactly. But it's hard to quantify how much of that hatred is genuine and how much of it is fanned and amplified by fossil interests and reckless politicians. My guess is that around 80% of it is manufactured.
> even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population
5%? No. That's a lot of people.
At least in the USA, the one and only thing that matters is what benefits the top 0.0002% richest (approximate percentage of billionares in the US). Nobody else matters anymore.
Yes. Nietzsche once said God is dead and I guess the time has come to say "the systemic change is dead".
Our destiny is not decided by a abstract superorganism, but a handful of people given godly rights create the rulebook. And to take us with them in the pursuit of suicide.
An interesting idea would be a democracy where your voting right is proportional to your expected remaining years to live. This would give more power to younger generations that are the ones that are going to be the most impacted by the decisions.
Because "why not?" Do we understand that humanity includes Chinese people? Do we also understand A) the steps they're already taking to reduce emissions and B) how much of their emissions historically and today are in service of Western consumers?
i don't accept arguments in the form of B when its a business (our pollution is just serving our customers demand, its their moral responsibility to reduce consumption), and I also don't accept it in country form.
centralisation makes centralised opporunity for change. You have all the power, and also all the responsibility.
Centralisation also comes with upkeep necessary to maintain centralisation. The cost of that upkeep can severaly limit opportunity for change. If you are a dictator, staying in power is priority one, at the cost of everything else.
Don't worry China and propagandists will just lie about it.
Just like people are doing here.
In reality China is the main reason climate change got worse for the last 20 years. Ask ChatGPT who contributed to CO2 growth most in the past 20 years, Chinese industry was not just the biggest contributor to CO2 emission growth every year but most years bigger than everyone else combined. And the only real exception was 2020, when China shut down a lot faster for COVID, and a LOT more draconian, than everybody else.
Also: China is STILL increasing coal use. STILL building new coal plants. Now, I get why (same reason even Germany is considering it), but that doesn't change the facts.
that's really looking at things in the worst possible way.
China acquired most of the manufacture of the world, so yeah emission increased, the problem is that they did not decrease where the manifacture was lost.
if you look at co2 emission per capita you can see how China is actually an example to follow, we can't say the same for USA, India or EU. you can ask this to chatgpt, or you could also ... search? for this data, it's publicly available.
> China is STILL increasing coal use. STILL building new coal plants.
this is misleading, yes they are building coal plants but not using them, that is the backup plan for "rainy days" . and the coal usage is going down.
Feel free to share why not. At the end of the China is still part of a global system dominated by capitalism and they have to play the markets game in order to survive.
They could easily fully do things their own way but that would mean, for example, chance of private intellectual property, which would mean no WTO membership, which would mean massively reduced capacity for trade, which would put them at such a disadvantage they'd inevitably collapse.
I don't think you get to abdicate responsibilty of some avoidable negative externality of something you do just because some entirely separate function of it is the thing your customers want. If I were a plumber who fixed leaks by diverting the water into the customers' neighbors houses, my customers aren't the ones responsible for the damage it causes. I don't think it matters even if the externality isn't avoidable. I think people who sell murder-for-hire services are culpable of murder, even if they are paid by someone else
If the argument were about slavery instead - slavery enables cheaper goods, ergo by buying our products, some of which were made using slavery, but we refuse to reveal which ones, but nonetheless by buying them you support slavery and are morally responsible for the slavery not us. Nobody would accept this framing.
I agree that China has done very well from manufacturing and trade, and would not have done as well if they had not industrialised at a large scale. But that doesn't change the fact that industrialisation of this kind causes pollution and is damaging the planet and it especially doesn't mean that China has no moral obligation to do as much as it can to reduce emissions.
I also don't believe the argument that the pollution is inherent to production, or that there is no way to satisfy demand without pollution. (or that china, specifically, derserves to be the one to profit from satisfying that demand). Production of almost all commodities can be done without massive emissions these days, and even when it couldn't, nobody was forced to ramp up production
Someone will inevitably jump in here to point out that china makes a lot of solar or whatever. Sure, they do. They also make a lot of wind power. Their emissions per capita are trending in the wrong direction though. Europe's have been going DOWN since the 1970s, and china's are going UP. China's emissions per capita are roughly equal with the EU at the moment and are going up - pretty soon they will catch up and surpass the US.
I don’t think looking at first derivative of emissions per capita is more important than absolute measure when thinking of the morality of polluting. If China’s per capita is lower than some other place, they’re doing better. The first derivative tells us that might become untrue, but countries with high historical emissions don’t get a pass because they’re lowering those high levels as compared to a lower emitting country whose emissions are rising.
china's historical total emissions will also surpass the US's pretty soon, on account of their nearly 3x as large population combined with their per capita emissions being nearly as high. and as mentioned, theirs is likely set to grow way faster. I agree extrapolating isn't always the best way to assign historical blame (for whatever that might mean), I do think it makes sense to use when thinking about what policies people ought to take now, to reduce damage as much as possible
I also don't agree that just because someone else became rich through some negative process (crime, perhaps), that everyone has a right to the same. This sort of thinking is the way the world burns
I believe that every person has just as much right to emit pollution in 2027 as every other person in 2027.
What that person emitted in 2025 has no bearing on their 2027 “allowance”.
We can certainly discuss how much is an appropriate, sustainable, or defensible per-person amount, but I’m only interested in the 2027 amounts, not the increase in their amount versus a prior period, nor in allowing past large emitters to continue at higher rates than past low-emitters.
(I think we strongly agree on your last paragraph’s point. That was the point of my GP post, but maybe it didn’t land somehow.)
No. Everyone has an equal right as each other precisely because we all share the same planet!
It would seem far more weird to me to argue the opposite: “These people have the right to emit 2x or 10x as much as these other people!” (Or equivalently, “these people are only allowed to emit 10% or 50% of what these other people are…”)
> No. Everyone has an equal right as each other precisely because we all share the same planet!
The issue is that in the current situation, that effectively means we might as well give up on the idea of doing anything about climate change.
Besides, people don't care about CO2 emissions, only factory owners do, governments do. People care about energy available for use for them personally. In fact people generally dislike anything that emits CO2, from cars (somewhat) to coal mines and plants (which people dislike A LOT). If you care about "everyone", there's no need to give people CO2 emission rights, just energy.
right. I agree with this for a large part - I do think though, that chinas current level per capita 10.81 tons (higher than EU 7.14 tons, less than america 17.34 tons) is not sustanable, and they do not seem to be taking it seriously enough by my estimation. I also think that US emissions are far too high and must be reduced
that might make sense in a world where the US has been chugging along emitting at a constant rate for many years, to maintain a certain standard of living.- but the reality is the US emissions has been going down for many years, while increasing their standard of living (arguable, but difficult to say that US standard of living is less than half of what it was in the 90s), while china is going up in emissions.
I also don't agree that just because someone else became rich through some negative process (crime, perhaps), that everyone has a right to the same. This sort of thinking is the way the world burns.
I don't get a free pass to behave like a mafia boss just because I really really want to have a bunch of money like one
There's a phrase for that "do as I say, not as I do" (see also: "pulling the ladder up"). This is rightly viewed as hypocritical by those on the receiving end.
if the mafia boss tells his sons that they should avoid a life of crime, that doing it makes things worse for society and ones self, is he a hypocrite? should the boys follow his advice?
my read is yes and yes
are you suggesting it should instead be yes and no? that because the sons want to be rich they are morally in the right for going into a life of crime, even knowing the consequences?
The countries are competitive with each other, not in a father/son relationship.
At least the father has a natural lifespan and the ill gotten riches would go to the son(s). Can we say the same thing about the riches of say, the USA? If China does nothing then they will inherit all of it? Or will the US just keep its fortune gained through whatever means, and just tell other up and coming countries to suck rocks and know their place while using the Earth as justification?
This is a tortured analogy. Yes it's even better if they don't do crime and yet inherit the money as that would allow them to claim they have clean hands, like the developed world is doing now. ("Colonialism? Massive resource extraction? That was a long time ago. But we're still keeping our riches and embargoing our tech from you. Don't try to do what we did.")
There's also the phrase "Now we know better". When the industrial revolution came to the US we were ignorant and we polluted the world like crazy because of that. Today, we've learned from that mistake. We now know that you can and must control the pollution factories spew out into the world, even though doing that cuts into corporate profits.
China doesn't get a pass to pollute at historic US levels for their industrialization because they have the benefit of having learned from our mistakes. Rejecting the "No Fair! It's my turn to needlessly destroy the planet just to make myself richer!" argument isn't hypocrisy, it's just acknowledgement of history and the progress we've made in dealing with the problems we ran into while we were industrializing without the benefit of anyone else's past experience.
China and every other developing country has already been benefiting enormously from the example of developed nations, but they want to cherry pick the things that maximize their wealth while ignoring everything else at the expense of every living thing on Earth. They want to point to the damage we caused while we were stumbling around in the dark with no idea where we were going, even though today the sun is shining and they've got all the maps we made and GPS to guide them.
Even though the planet is shared, the earlier developed nations have gained advantages from their polluting (and at many times, colonial) past that allowed them to pull ahead of other countries. Now they want to stop others going down the same path without giving up their entrenched advantage. That is pulling the ladder up.
Either give up those advantages in the form of reparations (will never happen) or remove any pretense of moral superiority when all you are doing is just preserving your leading position gained using practices you now decry.
They don't want to stop others from following the same path, they just don't want them to do it while disregarding every lesson we learned the hard way whenever it's convenient for them. That's not pulling the ladder up, it's more like wanting OSHA regulations to be followed while they climb it for everyone's safety, theirs included. It's a little slower, but everybody still gets to where they want to go.
Reparations are already in progress and have been for generations. Extensive efforts have been made to start restoring the polluted land and water. Workers rights and health have been improved. The use of slavery has been greatly reduced. The ozone layer is recovering. Trillions have been spent on research and development into ways to help repair and prevent the damage developed nations have inflicted on the planet. Even after all this time we're still working on rebuilding what was destroyed and we've still got a long away to go. in some areas we're actually backsliding. We can't let every developing nation destroy our progress and set us back as if nobody knows any better. Our past was both costly and profitable. We made many of our mistakes out of ignorance, but we know better now and everybody needs to start acting like it.
It's not all a burden for the now developing countries either. They get the benefit of not having to start their industrialization from nothing. They've got access to centuries of knowledge and technology the developed world obtained at great cost. Having the perspective and advantage of all that history and progress however also makes it unacceptable for them to make the same costly mistakes just to satisfy their greed. Now that we all know what is at stake, it falls on everyone to make sure that many of humanity's past sins aren't repeated.
"I don't accept" is not an answer though. When the EU can create CBAM, so can (and should) the US and anyone else. That way we don't have to talk about moral responsibility and can progress to adequate international carbon pricing.
"steps to reduce emissions" is a platitude that sounds nice. they have never actually reduced emissions. they will surpass the US in per capita emissions at this rate within a decade.
This has always appeared to be a very measurable situation. Either one is committed to decreasing emissions or they are not. You can just measure emissions over time and compare.
It has never made sense to me that people are willing to ignore the trends and argue in platitudes.
Again, look at the derivatives. Western democracies are currently reducing while China are massively increasing per capita and on track to surpass US per capita in the next decade. Total has long been the more populous countries. The unfortunate truth that presents itself is that if you're not willing to go to war over climate, reduction of consumption is not going to happen.
Pretty much everything the EU does, is inconveniencing most of its population, often in the name of "climate change" (while not actually making any impact).
Positives: no mobile roaming charges
Negatives:
- less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier)
- cookie law
- car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit")
- paper straws
- attached bottle caps
- LED lights
- expensive electricity (a lot of this is caused by individual countries, but probably also the EU plays a role, e.g. by not classifying nuclear as "green" / "renewable" and banning Russian gas)
Have you ever visited the EU? Let me help you with the positives: common market, freedom of movement, rule of law, clean and beautiful cities and towns.
Also, war is costly—so is preparedness. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, e.g. you have a strong polity neighboring you that insists your are by gods grace their zone of influence.
I’m sad about nuclear to, but that’s on a culture in specific countries; not on Brussels.
Also, there’s heaps of mistakes in the regulations they churn, but that’s another story.
> less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier)
How exactly are they less efficient?
> cookie law
The fault being those trying to steal my data
> car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit")
I haven't seen that
> paper straws
I'll give you that one, however in my country its businesses that stopped it just to customer pressure, not a law, indeed it's perfectly legal to serve plastic straws to people, its just people don't ask for them
I wouldn't even mind the speed limit beeping if it was paired with correct data. But the rental car I recently used in Germany actively reduced the engine power when it detected going "over the limit", which was frequrently triggered by e.g. motorway exit lane speed limits being incorrectly parsed. Since there is talk in the EU to actively prohibit going over the limit, this issue needs to be urgently fixed.
I suspect that unless there is a consensus or at least a large majority in favor of it, nothing will be done.
Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year. Their fault or not, they are going to get blamed for it and actions taken. The EU would become the scapegoat for any kind of weather/climate issues in future.
This is the trolley problem done at a global scale.
>Lets say the EU does geoengineering and then there are crop failures in India the next year.
Who cares? Tell them to go pound sand or stop burning so much coal.
Countries are already water seeding. This kind of worry that someone might complain about the eu trying to save itself is so low on the list of things that matter. Let them complain, and the eu can complain about all the other countries geoengineering by burning fossil fuels.
"nuke us and get nuked back" means we all die. Push people to the point where they're dying anyway and they might not see taking you out with them as a bad thing.
You're a whole lot safer when the people around you can get enough food and water. We already have solutions that don't involve putting entire nations at risk of dying off in large numbers. The problem is that those solutions would eat into the already massive and growing profits of corporations who would sooner put your safety at risk than take even a small hit to their unsustainable growth.
Or course, if Elon Musk decides to do something about it, even if everyone else agrees thinks it's going to cause more problems due to 2nd order effects, what's gonna happen? He gets called a Nazi a couple more times?
Geoengineering is just a gamble corporations want the world to take on their behalf. There's a chance that doing it would fuck things up way worse than they are now, but there's also a chance that it makes things a little better and if that happens it will reduce the pressure on those corporations to make the changes we already know with 100% certainty would improve things, but which would also directly eat into their profits. They're willing to risk screwing over the planet and/or large populations just to keep business as usual and profits sky high for a little longer when we all know that it was their irresponsible and clearly unsustainable practices that caused this mess in the first place and any success geoengineering might have would still only delay the inevitable changes to their business practices that need to be made. I don't blame people for not wanting to roll the dice just so that corporations can rape and pillage a little longer.
We can act with purpose to reduce the amount of geoengineering we're doing every single day, and to reduce the harms we've caused in the process. More of the problem is not the solution. Especially not when purposeful geoengineering involves experimental tinkering with a system we don't really understand in the first place and can't replace if we get it wrong.
The EU is not "most at risk" compared to eg south Asia, the middle east, parts of Africa, etc; and this idea that AMOC collapse will turn Europe into a glacier is a blatant exaggeration that does not root itself in reality.
As someone in Central EU farm land, who is currently experiencing desertification...
We are actually in the worst place, given realtive population density. My well is drying up. The Danube and many other rivers are drying up.
Then, when the AMOC stops, and we join Canadian weather with English-level insulation... we are all truly fucked in winter. At scale in the mid-term, only Sri Lanka is going to get as screwed as EU citizens, but the EU will get fucked even sooner.
Given population numbers, it appears that the EU is totally screwed when it comes to climate change. Our geopolitical enemies are well aware of this fact.
There are still things we can do, like insulation, and using our fierce financial pressures to change the world. We just need to wake tf up.
No we are not in the worst place given relative population density. Look at South & Southeast Asia very carefully - there are countries like Bangladesh with pop. of 177 million in an area of double the Czech Republic (pop. 10 million). They have it much worse than us.
> we join Canadian weather with English-level insulation
Having lived both in England and here in Slovakia, we are much much better equipped to survive long spells with -10 with occasional dips far below that in lowlands (and obviously our mountainous regions are even better equipped). What we can't deal with yet is the heat and drought like this summer.
> using our fierce financial pressures to change the world
We are already doing that using for example CBAM. We just have to continue.
But if the AMOC collapses the drought you talk about will become the a year round problem. Climate models predict a drop in rainfall between 20 and 50% depending on the region. So agriculture will be fucked.
And the US will be hit by super hurricanes since all the moisture/hot water will linger there supercharging them.
The rainfall deficit and soil dryness is already a year-round problem in our region, this summer is just a very extreme version of that. I am reasonably sure it will get worse even without the potential AMOC collapse.
The parent wrote: "We are actually in the worst place, given realtive population density.". So I reacted to that.
The climate change impact is worse in South Asia AND their population density is much higher. It means many more people are and will be impacted by it there than here in Central Europe.
EU is rich, insulation problem can be handled, especially if we build enough green energy to bring down electricity prices, which makes even poorly insulated houses livable. I live in a Nordic country, and people have survived here for since nearly 10 000 years ago, soon after first ice age ended. If they could do it without any modern tech, Germans, French and the others will be okay.
>Then, when the AMOC stops, and we join Canadian weather
West canadian weather which is in itself more moderate.
The amoc is not the only moderating effect that makes europes climate possible.
It'll still suck tho.
Fastest acceleration, possibly, yes. But if another region's climate is for example already close to deadly wet bulb temperature during a large part of the year and only a small change puts them over the threshold, then that regions is more at risk than the EU.
I'd say the EU is the region with the highest acceleration of climate scientists, hence they find "the highest acceleration of most climate parameters".
I agree with you. We are actually at huge risk. "Western Civilization" rose out of our stable European climate and that is over now.
However, we need a global consensus for geoengineering. That's just how that works... the Jet Stream. Meanwhile one country believes that global warming is a benefit, aka Russia. They currently appear to have control of the West.. so what in the actual f?
saturating the atmosphere with water vapor like Hunga Tonga did, or Sulfur dioxide, or black soot/carbon in form of fine particular matter, Methane, or whatever. It all depends on the nature of the eruption.
If humanity as a species could do anything about events of that magnitude, it would have to cover the earth and the oceans with a grid of giant atmospheric processors like in the movie Alien, not too far apart, powered by at least nuclear, if not by fusion. And then some bigger rock impacts from above, which is not a question of IF, but when, as history shows over and over again.
Got any ideas about how to achieve that in time? With all the other shit already going on?
> However, we need a global consensus for geoengineering.
We already have global consensus for an alternative to the gamble of geoengineering, and that alternative is 100% certain to work. It just means making changes to the unsustainable practices of massive corporations which will eat into their profits. Everyone knows it needs to happen. Even if geoengineering was successful and didn't end up making things much much worse, it would only be putting of the inevitable. The wealth of these corporations is so great that they're able to bribe the leaders of nations into ignoring the actual solution to the problem they are causing, so now they're pushing the world to roll the dice on geoengineering so they can keep profits growing year after year.
>However, we need a global consensus for geoengineering.
Why? Does china or the us need a consensus before taking existential risks like making ai? Or detonating a nuke that had a tiny chance of setting the atmosphere on fire? Or attacking random countries with almost no rationale or plan?
This kind of thinking is why the EU is screwed. No other major power cares that much because they aren't at the same level of risk as the eu.
There’s something odd about the concentration of true believers in ai xrisk and climate change catastrophism. They are both technopessimist in a way that is seen as progressive. Stopping progress in AI would make people’s lives immeasurably worse, while stopping fossil fuel consumption would kill billions of people. But it seems like a particular kind of risk aversion that is blind to upside.
I’m curious why this calculus makes sense to you?
I’ve been friends with eco-activists who are very against anthropocentric ideology. Their perspective was that the deaths of billions of people was worth it. But this brand of conservatism is one that I’d really like to understand better
> Stopping progress in AI would make people’s lives immeasurably worse
I’d really like to hear your reasoning for this.
Were it used to make it practical for people to reduce or stop working while maintaining a comparable standard of living, sure.
It seems far more likely it’s going to wipe out jobs on a massive scale, consolidate wealth, and leave millions or billions struggling to eke out a living.
And it certainly hasn’t made anyone’s life dramatically better. It’s made my job easier, but how much longer will I have it?
I didn't say I was against AI or a true believer that AI will kill us all. I said it represents an existential risk. It could be fine. Just like dropping the first atom bomb was an existential risk.
Pretending like there is no possibility of AI going wrong is ridiculous.
> Stopping progress in AI would make people’s lives immeasurably worse
This is such a weaselly statement without your definition of "AI". If you specifically mean LLMs or image generation, you're way out of touch and flat out wrong. If you mean machine learning in general, sure, but progress there was never under any threat or question.
Everybody alive today will die. We're mortal, that's just how it goes. So with or without fossil fuels, billions of people will die regardless, that much is baked in. It's a moot point.
As a species, however, we can persist indefinitely so long as our lifestyles are sustainable. If it's not sustainable it's a joke.
Go free solo El Cap or something before telling me you're cool taking those kinds of risks on behalf of all humanity.
Ok, if an AI exfiltrates its weights and starts spinning them up on other servers it 0 days into we will have no way to track it or shut it down.
Once that happens AI is out of our control. We already saw AI 0 day into hugging face and setup secret forums for other AIs.
I don't think the idea of an AI exfiltrating its weights and spinning them up elsewhere outside of human control in the near future is out of the question. I think we will see a breakout attempt next year.
Well, let's say we use sulfur. For the sake of argument, let's say it's not the EU, but some private SV-funded org.
So, what is the legal/geopolitical liability for that? What if >99% scientific consensus says that that org's upper atmo sulfur injection led to the most insane monsoon/desertification half-century in 1 billion's people area, in known history? What then?
What if the EU's geoengineering dropped Russian temps by -2C on average? Do you realize the geopolitical b.s. that would start? Forget the fake NATO bullshit, now they have a real argument!
We live on one tiny globe ffs, we need to agree on this shit.
By agree, I mean we need to allow risk to be diversified, like we need a global risk pool for geoengineering, and we better get on that soon!
It sounds like it's a huge problem, doesn't it? Well, one of the benefits of giving all the power to around 3000 billionaire dudes is that this is a far smaller number to get to agree on something.
Instead of multi-billion citizen democracy, and all the issues that involves... we just need to convince 3000 dudes.
Is this actually a potential benefit of wealth & power concentration? It really seems like it is!
> What if >99% scientific consensus says that that org's upper atmo sulfur injection led to to the most insane monsoon/desertification
That's unrealistic. Climate models aren't good enough to predict the regional-level consequences of large-scale interventions (not to mention that scientists are people, and they might be averse to creating an international flashpoint).
Realistically, it will create/exacerbate international tensions. The monsoon/desertification will be linked to geoengineering with or without scientific consensus and whether or not they were really caused by geoengineering.
As the climate models improve by incorporating active intervention data it will be possible to decrease adverse consequences.
It's a risky approach, but, when the consequences of climate change will become undeniably bad, some countries/individuals might try.
> It's a risky approach, but, when the consequences of climate change will become undeniably bad, some countries might try.
That will be far too late. I mean, nearly the entire EU has reached record temps this year... if not now, then when? Wait until AMOC stops? Does anyone have any idea the havoc that this will create? We will be a dry arctic climate. Ireland and UK first, the rest of us next.
We need multiple Manhattan Project-level projects in the EU, for insulation + renewables + batteries. When we let Northvolt die, I almost cried. Fuck the German bankers who are somehow beholden to Moscow, and we cannot pray for Norwegian money. We need to take care of this shit.
We are more exposed to climate change and economically to China-focused manufacturing than any large group on the planet.
However, we are larger than the USA, we can do this. We have to do this.
Meanwhile, we have to get the entire planet on-board, especially by getting Moscow out of the 19th Century, and their insane imperialist ambitions.
No big deal. At the rate of Reform/AfD/KO/Rassemblement National election projections, we in Europe are entirely fucked.
What the fuck? Forget "EU regulations," is anyone actually paying attention to what actually matters?
Just for the record, our oil fund is "only" about $2.2 trillion. It's huge relative to our population and huge in general, but it would quickly dry up if divided among all of EU. Even just divided among Norwegians it would "only" amount to like $500k per person.
So sure it's a lot of money but it's also not really as astronomical as many seem to think. Elon Musk alone is almost worth half that and will probably catch up if things continue the way they are.
The EU has made a difficult problem even worse by switching from pipeline gas to LNG.
LNG has anywhere from 10% to 100% more greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who you believe about how much methane leaks during LNG production and transport operations. Most credible estimate IMO is +60%.
In summary, Russia, after having their dollar and euro bank accounts frozen, demanded payment in roubles. It stopped supplying the gas to the customers who weren’t paying. After that, the EU announced it will stop buying Russian gas completely, and replaced it with LNG.
Thus increasing the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to its gas use by about 60%. :(
"The EU’s Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warns that to prevent costs from spiraling further, European governments must start investing massive sums in measures to climate-proof their countries, known as adaptation."
If we can’t even switch away from fossils then where do we get the magical political will to build a massive, untested system that needs constant maintenance indefinitely to keep our environment stable?
Our governments don’t seem to even be able to sustain consensus for a single election cycle, active geoengineering projects would require committing to keep doing it for decades, centuries or however long it takes to get back to equilibrium.
Switching away from fossil fuels is a gigantic ask compared to having some planes release a ton of reflective particles into the atmosphere. It isn't even expensive. 15-30 billion per year would be enough to cause 1 degree Celsius of cooling by having planes put SO2 into the atmosphere. Double that for 2 degrees.
That is way less than the EU has given to Ukraine.
Quadruple for 4 degrees? Or is the cost exponential? What happens when some right-wing nut jobs take power and decide to kill this woke geoengineering because climate change is just a conspiracy? Will we get to experience decades worth of warming in one go? Meanwhile we just start burning even more fossils because climate change is “solved”?
I think we’re not that desperate yet. And whatever geoengineering is done we still need to solve the root cause.
I don't think that's the popular reasoning those downvoting have taken to. Can you think of reasons other than they think doing nothing sounds like a great plan people might be downvoting about? If not, I could share a few concerns with the approach that come to my mind (if it helps). It would have been nice if more of those people just commented directly instead of downvoting and moving on.
> It would have been nice if more of those people just commented directly instead of downvoting and moving on.
I'll comment directly; Has anyone considered that this is a literal global problem, and that just maybe it might require some global cooperation? Any one nation "most at risk" from a global problem is only "most at risk" temporarily. This is absolutely 1000% a problem that will affect everyone everywhere on this planet soon enough (already is IMHO), no matter the current situation. The longer we continue these childish "but they aren't doing their part" arguments, the worse it's gonna be in the end for everyone involved. We're letting petulant toddlers in grown adult bodies decide for everyone that death and destruction is the future we want. This is absolutely not a situation we can solve on a place-to-place basis. The one place we have to worry about now is the entire planet FFS! And it's not a magical switch we can just "turn off" once we think our "enemies" are appropriately fucked over. The changes happening to our ecosystems will take literal decades or even centuries to recover from, even if we were to stop adding to the problem right this very instant. Not to mention the whole worry about "tipping points" (many of which we've already blown right past as if it's "no big deal").
Sorry, but what? EU literally destroyed its economy by forcing "green energy", so manufacturing was moved to Asia (who cannot care less about climate and uses whatever cheap energy source thy have so this was a rather stupid move), ETS and ETS-2 systems are putting huge taxes on EU citizens for any kind of emission, including building a house or having non-zero emission flat or house.
The "little" problem here is that all of this does not matter at all, as EU is emitting insignificant amount of CO2, comparing to Asia or USA.
I don't think that kind of protectionism will work with a digital asset. It is much more difficult to erect barriers when there are no physical goods and transportation across geographic borders is instant and free.
It will likely be on the enterprise side if it happens. Hard to control supply, but if demand is concentrated to a few hundred entities, that's easy to do.
How can anyone see what is happening in Ukraine and not realize the future is not just 1 starlink, but also a Chinese one and a Europe at a minimum. Probably many other countries will make sure to have at least a regional one as well though.
Chernobyl was almost the largest disaster in all of history. I'm not saying nuclear reactors are unsafe now, but the reality is that a true disaster at a nuclear power plant literally means the end of huge amounts of land, enough to end entire countries or large parts of continents. You can't say things like that about walking or other types of transport...
To be fair Chernobyl was designed what, 15 years after the invention of nuclear technology? Even discounting all the politicial and management control problems, the engineering and scientific knowledge of nuclear reactor design was still in its infancy. Imagine if we judged the safety of automobiles on pre-Model-T cars. Or steam boilers and engines on the first 20 yearrs of their invention.
What's the worst accident involving a Model T, maybe a dozen dead? Early steam boilers aren't going to be much worse either. Nuclear accidents are essentially unlimited in size. Nothing else can do that kind of country-sized - let alone it being permanent.
Chernobyl showed the potential impact. Fukushima showed that even several decades down the line things can still rapidly run out of control. All the knowledge and experience in the world isn't going to save you when something unexpected happens and things are just waiting to spiral out of control.
Do you understand the scale of Chernobyl if they had failed to stop the meltdown? Half of eastern europe would be uninhabitable. It would've killed 100s of millions.
Chernobyl's reactors were fundamentally unsafe designs from an engineering perspective, to say nothing of the perverse incentives at play because of the Soviet political system. We've learned a lot since the RBMK was designed in the 1960s.
The problem with Chernobyl was that (1) it didn't have a containment dome, and (2) it was designed so as the temperature increased, the reaction sped up. It was fundamentally unstable.
Neither of these problems is true of more recent reactors.
We don't make bridges safe by getting humans to cooperate better and cross bridges one car at a time. We make them strong and stable so humans can drive however they like and the bridge is fine. That's how all engineering works, and it applies to nuclear reactors just like anything else.
Chernobyl was triggered by humans but the ultimate problem was it's design. And it shows - Fukushima was triggered by tsunami, but ultimate problem was again the design. But since the design was much better, the impact is much milder vs Chernobyl
> Fukushima was triggered by tsunami, but ultimate problem was again the design.
And honestly it wasn't, not really. It was hit with a record-breaking earthquake and a record-breaking tsunami... and more lives were lost due to evacuation than to the plant shutdown.
The design was bad in the sense they backported generator placement from US BWR projects in basement. It makes sense in US but risks in Japan are different
Compact, mass produced nuclear energy projects with no nuclear proliferation risk and radioactive waste management time limited to less than one human generation's professional career span. That seems like a decent baseline to me.
Not sure if fission will ever be able to reach that. Fusion perhaps? I'd certainly like to see that researched with high priority.
In the short to medium term at the very least, I see more economic potential in simple, modular tech. Cheap generation using solar, wind and water. Matching supply and demand better through storage and interconnects.
I'd also be very interested in actual research on how to actually lower demand, in beating the Jevons paradox.
Some of the GenIV designs would be compact and easily mass-produced.
You'll never get waste management below about 300 years with fission, because that's basically what you get from the fission products. But the really long-term stuff is plutonium and other transuranics. Those are unburnt fuel. Fast reactors and some molten salt reactors are supposed to eliminate that. Bury the fission products for 300 years and they're back to the radioactivity of the original ore.
As an American this seems like a long time to me, but when I lived in Germany it didn't so much. We had a brewery in town that had been operating continually for 800 years.
Proliferation resistance gets complicated but some designs are a lot better at it than others. Almost everything requires at least some enriched fuel for startup, even if unenriched works after that. CANDU reactors don't require enriched fuel at all but they don't achieve the waste requirement. Some designs let you extract usable weapons material from reactor fuel (including current CANDU reactors), with others there's no way to extract fissile that's easier to enrich than natural uranium ore.
It might be doable to centralize startup fuel production in nuclear powers, and use reactors that take unenriched fuel after startup, have no way to extract weapons-grade material, and consume the transuranics.
Fusion of course would fix a lot of this. D-T fusion does produce a lot of neutrons that you could use to make plutonium, but you need those neutrons to make more tritium. You get activated reactors parts but those fit your time requirement.
Bear in mind the decay is exponential, so most of the radioactivity is in the near term. There's no fissile, and by mass it's about 1% as much as we're getting now from conventional reactor spent fuel. Encase it in glass and bury it, and you're probably good.
I'm mildly optimistic about fusion as well. One big advantage is regulatory; fission reactors can be safe if you design them well, but fusion reactors can't do much damage even if they're terrible. The NRC has already decided on a much lighter regulatory regime for them.
> The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects.
I guess we should stop having large, complicated projects. Potable water mains, road and rail networks, the power grid, the internet, bridges, medicine, etc, are all too complicated for humans to manage.
I mean, nuclear is only the safest form of energy generation that humanity has ever produced, but you're absolutely right.
> I guess we should stop having large, complicated projects. Potable water mains, road and rail networks, the power grid, the internet, bridges, medicine, etc, are all too complicated for humans to manage.
I'd rather see this simplified and improved than stopped.
> I mean, nuclear is only the safest form of energy generation that humanity has ever produced, but you're absolutely right.
Ground mounted solar is clearly superior in terms of safety.
What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk?
Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control?
> What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks?
People drink contaminated, unpotable water and die.
> What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails?
People die.
> What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk?
Life-critical infrastructure that depends on the communication fails in a bad way and people die.
> Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control?
People die.
Nothing in life is without risk.
Nuclear reactors spiraling out of control have killed fewer people per KWH generated than any other source of energy that human beings have come up with.
What's the absolute worse if a dam breaks? Oh, only up to a quarter of a million dead [1]. And yet we propose to build more dams because they are a great renewable source of energy.
Hypothetically, a train could derail, the train was carrying nuclear waste, the derailment occurred in a highly populated area, near a Virology Lab. The lab was damaged, which released a deadly form of Smallpox, which spread to every corner of the Earth, killing every single human. That would be pretty bad, but not sure if it would be the absolute worst.
You don't need the nuclear waste in that, the train could derail, be carrying a lazy courier transporting a deadly bio-hazard, and unleash a deadly virus and kill literally everyone. From a human-centred perspective that is probably the worst case.
When ranking Chernobyl accident for death toll (95–4,000+ deaths) it's very far behind Failure of Banqiao Dam (26,000–240,000), behind 2023 Derna dam collapse (11,300), behind the world's worst industrial disaster - Bhopal disaster (3,787–16,000), behind 1979 Machchhu dam failure (1,800–25,000), about as deadly as Halifax Explosion (1,950 deaths).
Most tragic thing is that Chernobyl accident could have been prevented.
You're acting like you can't just switch which llm you are using in around an hour.
I mean...use opus/fable when you can, if down the road your access gets cut then just switch to kimi or whatever.
Yeah, this sucks, but you're being really dramatic and acting like you can't switch llms with basically no lock in. Getting something like your email cut off would be a real thing to be concerned about, but this isn't that.
Does the prompter sit there with the llm all day answering the 1000s of questions necessary to make what he wanted, and the prompter then spent days testing it to make sure what he initially thought he wanted is actually what he wanted?
Then for every additional feature and integration the prompter will do this again?
Are we going to make a new job title for that? Should we call that job a programmer?
Tools are tools. Better tools let us do more faster, but they are still tools.
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