Big data is very important, it will make a planned economy viable. The whole socialist calculation debate has become moot because of it
will make a planned economy viable.
It already has, how do you think Walmart and Amazon manage massive global supply chains? Those supply lines can be more complex than the economies of some countries.
Amazon manage massive global supply chains
I mean by abusing the United States postal service requirements to have to deliver to any address regardless of location. However point made that there is massive macro efficiencies to make to have a centrally planned Amazon-like logistics chain.
The point of the nuclear argument is that even under the mismanagement of capitalism, it results in less deaths, less environmental damage, less exploitation, and more energy output. The only energy source that outdoes it in this regards to safety is wind power on land. Of course, not every country has a good way to harness wind, and hydro and solar are problematic in how they disrupt the environment as well. With the right nuclear technology being harnessed and researched, potentially any country anywhere on the globe could develop their own energy in the most ethical way.
Unless something has changed in the last few years, wind is more deadly than nuclear power (per unit energy). Mostly maintenance accidents and fires.
Wind in general is worse than nuclear, however wind on land (say the great plains) is safer than nuclear, though that resource is obviously limited.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
These obviously don't take into account the imperialism required for various things
Neither of these separate wind out by onshore vs offshore? At least anywhere I see?
Yeah I'm having a hard time finding the study that I used for that information, I know it exists for sure though because I found it surprising
Regardless, here's materials required to produce the various kinds of energy: https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis
That's a neat breakdown! It's kind of funny seeing hydro there: yup, it's just concrete.
I don't think this is really an unpopular opinion, at least not on the internet. I am certainly pro-science. Or at least pro- pursuit of knowledge and improving quality of life.
However, it's worth recognizing that a lot of atrocities have been committed in the name of scientific progress. Phrenology, eugenics, forced/concealed testing, etc. These things are associated with science because they're a part of its history, and I lot of it is still ongoing, sometimes under different names.
You're thus going to be fighting an uphill battle, especially if you're talking to people from communities that were victims of those atrocities.
Idk if I have a point I'm trying to make...
nuclear > everything else. lithium is the devil, bolivia was couped due to lithium. if we develop our nuclear physics program we'll have the least exploitative energy source on the planet in regards to upkeep and resources, while having very safe current gen nuclear reactors until we get nuclear fusion.
green libs love themselves some solar energy. yeah sure ill love to see how 'renewable' and 'safe for the environment' these things are when you have to replace the panels due to ablation every year or so at plants across the country.
Nuclear power has the fewest deaths per kilowatt hour of any energy source and the choice to use anything else is a choice measured in blood.
2/3rds of all Nuclear Reactor accidents occurred in the U.S.
Nuclear reactors blowing up is a CIA op, change my mind.
take a look at china and france's current gen reactors. afaik theyve yet to score above a 2 on the nuclear event scale in the past 30 years. meaning that theyve only had very minor issues that were easily fixed. those two countries are currently the gold standard for nuclear tech.
The best argument I've heard against expanding nuclear power in the US is that there's no way we'd do it as competently as those countries, and it's the sort of thing you really need to do well or not at all.
sure, just because our government is dysfunctional doesnt mean it isnt the moral choice. also, solar power creates a lot of waste so if youre doing that argument hydro and wind are the way to go.
Haven't you heard that nuclear just isn't a viable practice solution for current climate crisis, considering the breakthroughs in the renewables? Shit, I would pull up some good chapo posts on the topic, but, you know...
That's as far as I understood the argument, whilst LFTR and similar generation reactors are great they're still 20-30 years from reaching first power whilst efficiency's of solar/wind and other renewable are at such a point that's its worth just sprinting them now to help the problem.
You’d like the author Leigh Phillips, he’s the premier eco-modernist thinker of our time and does a lot to expose the anti science tendencies on the left.
Take for example the obsession with wind and solar energy. They are actually incredibly inefficient, extremely expensive and resource intensive. Do you think the copper, cement, aluminum, steel and other resources needed to make those just comes out of the fucking air? No, they come from open pit mines in Brazil and Australia.
Organic food is another example. Extremely inefficient and in some ways much worse for the environment. And yes, organic food uses pesticides, but they are organic pesticides. What does that mean exactly? It means it’s shittier and in some cases they need to use eight times as much because it’s so ineffective.
I actually don't mind it all that much. In a way it's a backlash against this popular apolitical "progress" ideology exemplified by reddit techdude ethos, that treats politics as irrelevant and considers any emerging technology to be beyond reproach.
It's obvious that under capitalism the fruits of progress are going to be wielded by the rich, most likely for nefarious purposes, so ruthless critisizm is nessesary.
On the the other hand after the moonhexgate a bunch of people who I thought was smart started unironically talking about how it's impossible to hex the moon because it's too powerful or something, so you should probably take what humanities people are saying about science with a grain of salt.
I like science. I don't like when people are obsessively positivist, but science is important so that we can all agree on the terms of discussion.
I guess in a way it depends on the room/audience. Unfortunately culture war combined with intentional obfuscation/jargonization has resulted in a lot of people being taken in by alt right populist propaganda.
Its easier on the mind!
Then you have the issue of academia/science falling being co opted by neoliberal institutions into the control mechanisms(work/cost of living, energy, food, etc.) that science has the answers for. So on one hand you have a group blaming intellectualism for the current state and on the other hand a group using intellectualism almost as a bludgeon. Resulting in a dillilusioned and hopeless group of people primed for aforementioned propaganda.
Good thread thanks
YES
But "being leftist" is about basically having fucking empathy, so it can happen to anyone to fall in antiscience tropes.
Also:
Transgenesis is a good and important technology. And it could be more exploited if it wasn't because lots of scaremongering.
i think the online atheist pipeline that developed in the 2000s as a response to bush-era evangelicals did damage to "sciencey" attitudes in some leftists' eyes. in the bush years a lot of "i fucking love science" people became invested in being "skeptics", which then to being online atheists then some went on to become fash-adjacent or idw types.
many young people at that time were super eager to dunk on creationists or wacky born-again christians. the lack of public leftist discussion and spaces at that time led those people down a more positivist path which over time became a right wing recruitment path.
there are probably people here who can tell that history much better than i can. but i think as more online leftist spaces have blossomed in the past few years there has been a real aversion to an alignment with science, as for many leftists it is still associated with the obnoxious positivist type that emerged from those bush years.
To some degree, the left should be critical of science, especially as a product of the capitalist institution of The Academy® which produces research through the systematic exploitation of low-power laborers and students. Scientists reflect the cultures they live in, including deciding who/what are valid and worth protecting and advancing.
That said, science isn't inherently doomed to be it's past and it isn't the homogeneous, well organized threat some perceive it to be.
A big part of the barrier the left may have with fully embracing science is that in general people have a very narrow view of what science is, should be, and could be. For a lot of people, science = technology, and technology is loaded. The less well-known (but much more common) side of science and non-scientific research are all the folks working to make technological and policy advancements more participatory, fair, just, and equitable.
And things like data! Data is good to have pretty much no matter what, as long as it was taken ethically. Edit on this point: data makes everything way more efficient.
Disagree quite a lot. You should watch this talk on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAXLHM-1Psk
TL;DR: Data has actually obscured progress in many industries, slowed it, or actively hindered work in a lot of ways. Data should be gathered as little as possible, not kept, and what is gathered should be STRICTLY what is needed and then dumped when it is not needed.
Watch the talk.
Data is great! It makes everything more efficient. Like manipulating you into buying shit you don't need! Or spying on you and your associates! Just make sure you collect that data ethically.
No one is againts 'data'. That's a dumb strawman argument. That's like being againts 'math'. We just hate the technocratic obsession with data and optimization, which alwa ys ignores the human aspect (like work at an amazon warehouse being so optimized you don't have a second of rest which is so hard on people they end up burned out and depressed). How the fuck are we supposed to be like 'yay data' when the vast majority of it is being collected without our consent and used to manipulate us and control us. Oh and it's use is becoming more dangerous each year.
Right. The problem however right now is the intention to just collect and collect and collect. It is just a massive, dangerous, hazardous collection of completely unparseable data that, in many cases, attempts to parse it is actually slowing down work done conventionally. Many industries have slowed since the collection of data because of the incredible inefficiency that data has introduced. It has also introduced a lack of decision-making too, the inability to progress without make a data-based decision but not being able to efficiently parse the data in order to make that decision where, previously, people were making informed and education decisions on some element of best guess and generally speaking making the correct ones at a faster speed than the current data-driven approach.
The balance is all wrong and the mountains of data companies are just holding sitting around are dangerous.
