Yes yes the goal of life is to flourish and this metric doesn't measure flourishing directly so what's the point? And indeed is the fact that we talk about observable metrics rather than whatever else I had in mind not an indictment of this forum, nay, society at large?
I'm not super optimistic personally, but isn't the optimistic outcome obvious? If AGI takes over, solves robotics, (and doesn't kill us all,) then we could see the elimination of all human labor for the purposes of meeting necessities.
Unless AI can solve the "people with access to capital would prefer to keep it rather than share it freely" problem, this doesn't actually lead to human flourishing. You need to pay for the labor-bot and you don't have any money to do so because there are no jobs available for you.
Given that AI doesn't seem to be solving the allocation problem even for things like distributing fairly inexpensive TB drugs to people who need them, I'm not holding my breath.
> To fully understand the difference between
the embodied robot running an algorithm on a chip and the biological mapmaker, we need to remember
that for the latter, subjective experience is a given, not because of abstract information processing, but
because of a specific, metabolically constituted physical reality.
Total drivel. Consciousness in biological systems is "a given" because of metabolism?
Have you considered that would do nothing to solve Donald Trump's political problem that he promised to make boomers feel like they were reliving their halcyon days one last time?
Zohran isn't proposing putting any new units under rent control (really rent stabilization), only temporarily halting raises to rents for existing stabilized units. This will make it harder for the city to attract new buildings to join rent stabilization in the future, but will benefit existing habitants. It won't have any effect on the ability to profitably develop market rate units at all.
Property developer here. I have zero faith that NYC would not put rent control on new units in the future. I will invest nothing in NYC and will tell every other developer I know to avoid it like the plague.
If NYC actually makes it easy to build there's practically infinity investment available. Sure dude, nobody will build >1M condos because you told them not to.
I'm optimistic that he will actually be a positive force in reforming how the city operates. I think he is pragmatic in that he understands that efficiency in government administration is something that progressives have insufficiently prioritized. His policies are more populist than I'd prefer, but I think not the crazy socialist fever dream that Rs portray it as. The scariest thing for me is the prospect of active sabotage from the federal level, although I don't know how much they have held back.
The gov't may try to fuck with NYC using ICE or whatever, but honestly I think the fears about federal funding are overblown.
NYC generates like 2+ trillion GDP all on its own. It is the largest metropolitan economy in the world let alone the United States. I don't know how much NYC actually depends on federal money, but if there's any city that has a chance to figure out how to make it through a government funding squeeze, it's NYC.
Honestly I think the only recourse the fed has to put pressure on NYC is the actual gestapo shit they've already been pulling in Chicago.
> think not the crazy socialist fever dream that Rs portray
That's because he's a democratic socialist, not a communist like they want people to think. If people really looked into the policies of the DSA they would support it. There is a reason Einstein, Keller, and more were adamant supporters.
You may be shocked by this, but comrade has been in use since the French Revolution, in fact it doesn't mean "friend" like most think - it quite literally means "fellow party-member", someone who is a member of the same party. You, yourself, are comrades with your fellow party members, even if they are not communist. Even if you go to the root of the word, it's Spanish in origin. It's an egalitarian/gender neutral word similar to 'colleague' or "coworker" but effectively it _just_ means "ally" in modern parlence.
Even if you require the link to communism, 'comrade' in the popular sense _is_ used by _socialists_ to describe one another, not just for communists, communists are just a subset ideology of socialism. Similar to anarchists, progressives, and more on the umbrella of "the left", communists are just another branch on the tree of ideologies, and as a branch, they used their mother's language of comradery to describe their fellow party-members and allies.
You can always admit when you are prejudiced by assumptions, you know, so I hope you take an interest in reading this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comrade
Edit:
> The distinctions between socialism and communism are rather academic and irrelevant in the long run
That's quite literally the biggest difference between socialism and communism, the long run. Communists want a communist society as the end-goal of socialism; Socialists do not have that hope, in fact most are not focused on the end goal as we can't ever ascertain what that would look like - so they focus on the values of socialist ideas right now, what we can do now to ensure equality, freedom, and personal rights by protecting all living beings in health and sickness, success and failure. A society of equals first.
I appreciate that you put a lot of thought into your response but I think you missed the plot. I know damn well what "comrade" means. It's one of those words with a stereotype attached to it. There are lots of words that change meaning in that way. I could call someone "my dear _" and people will assume that I'm talking to a romantic interest, because it's so weird to use the expression now in normal conversation. Likewise, if you shout out "I'm so gay!" the first thought people will have is that you are a homosexual, rather than you are in a good mood.
>That's quite literally the biggest difference between socialism and communism, the long run.
Without getting into a huge discussion on this, books have been written to try to draw a line between these two things. Ultimately they refer to the same thing, a deviation from a free market and society. To support people who have less, they must steal from those who have more. Socialism or socialist policies (such as the type we have in the United States, not the kind that most original socialists were writing about) is like a concerning lump that might turn out to be nothing more than a nuisance. Communism is Stage 4 cancer.
>A society of equals first.
This is easiest to achieve when people have a certain amount in common. But even among the most homogeneous society, differences are ever present and naturally result in different outcomes. The only sense in which we can fairly approach equality is in being equally protected by the law. If you insist on siphoning off the financial resources of those who provide valuable services to benefit others merely for existing, the worse off everyone is going to be. Many books have been written to prove that this is the case. Helping people who have experienced some kind of unforeseen setback is fine, up to a point, but I think that ought to be voluntary too.
How is a multiple square-kilometer radiator not just an inevitable Kessler syndrome disaster?
Edit: Some back of the envelope calculation suggests that the total cross-sectional area of all man-made orbiting satellites is around 55000 m^2. Just one 4km x 4km = 1600000m^2 starcloud would represent an increase by a factor of about 300. That's insane.
Not sure what the slippery slope is here. The linked page imagines a 4km x 4km radiator/solar array. The cross-sectional area of the array is going to be directly proportional to the probability of impacting high velocity space debris. In such an event the amount of debris that would be generated could also scale with the area of the array. This seems bad
See my edit. Just one starcloud would represent an increase in a risk factor of over 300 c.f. status quo. Then multiply that by the number of starclouds you think would be deployed.
Even with a numerator-only view, I suspect it's not fair to characterize the "risk factor" as going up 300x. There's a lot more nuance about orbits in space.
Tell me the nuance then. If people have concerns about Kessler syndrome at the starlink scale then why wouldn't something literally 1000x bigger be even more concerning.
I already did. Your reply/edit merely repeated your prior observation.
Getting back to the point:
You literally claimed that one of these would "inevitabl[y]" trigger a Kessler effect with no proof.
> something literally 1000x bigger be even more concerning.
Again, this isn't convincing if you don't have the denominator/context. Think about it: you still can't answer how many of these are needed to trigger the Kessler effect.
BTW, "increase by a FACTOR of about 300" != "increase in a RISK FACTOR of over 300"
I know this in the same way that even though I don't know the exact credence to assign the probability of particular bad effects from global warming, I can confidently say that an increase by a factor of 1000 of the CO2 emissions would be a bad thing. This is not because I have done a simulation, but instead my beliefs are based on the assumption that while concerned experts might be wrong in the details, they are probably not wrong with a gap of 3 orders of magnitude.
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