• 2 Posts
  • 46 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 21st, 2023

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  • You’re right, doesn’t sound great. In the example they shared, sounds like the issue wasn’t that the car couldn’t drive around the fire truck, but that it couldn’t break a programming rule about crossing into a lane that would normally be opposing traffic. Once given the “ok” to follow such a route, the car handled it on its own, the human doesn’t actually drive it.

    I could imagine a scenario where you need one human operator for every two vehicles. That’s still reducing labor by 50%.

    Obviously they want it to be better than that, they want it to be one operator per ten vehicles or no operator at all.

    And the fundamental problem with these systems is they will be owned by big corporations, and any gained efficiency will be consumed by the corporation, not enjoyed by the worker or passed on to the customer.

    But I think there’s true value to be found there. Imagine a transportation cooperative - we’re a thousand households, we don’t all need our own car, but we need a car sometimes. We pool our resources and have a small fleet that minimizes our cost and environmental impact, and potentially drives more safely than human drivers.










  • You’re right, we’ve got to get rid of fossil fuel. As one example, the article talks about how energy storage has reduced the need for gas peaker plants. In California in April the power required from those plants was half what it’s been in April the prior three years.

    Still plenty of progress that needs to be made, but what’s notable is that it’s now cheaper for a business to turn to green energy and storage to solve a problem. There’s not an incentive to build new polluting tech. So while the impact of climate change is going to get worse (because those emissions and warming are already baked in) the business argument for fossil fuel is no longer viable.



  • With respect, I think you’re projecting a discussion with a different person onto this article.

    You’re right, the climate is going to get worse before it gets better. You’re right, the impacts of climate change will disproportionately affect poor and underdeveloped areas. We can’t make that go away with positive thinking, and it’s not enough for humans as a species to survive, we need to focus on reducing suffering while we’re turning the ship.

    What I took away from this article is that the market forces for cheap renewable power and the means to store it are now stronger than the forces for CO2 emitting power. And those forces are moving faster than predicted. That’s good, and it’s ok to talk about something good when it’s true!

    People who have been paying attention and care about others have good reason to be wary about the narrative “oh, everything is going to be fine” because that’s what industry and politicians have been saying for a long time instead of taking needed action.

    We’re at a point where most people recognize climate change is real, and they can see it’s effects. We’re also at a point where many people don’t have hope for the situation. It’s dangerous to tell people “shit’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it” because they might believe you and do nothing.