I have long said that if we look at typical success stories somewhat soberly, it is always a combination of luck and privilege. Hard work and talent can be very helpful, but they are in no way a prerequisite for success.

To illustrate: Whenever someone says "taking risks must be rewarded", it is always worth pointing out that you don't get rewarded for taking risks, but for getting lucky while taking a risk. Also, you have to be in a position to take a risk in the first place (i.e. have time, resources, and the means to not starve if it goes belly up); in other words, some degree of privilege.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve

I've never agreed with Peterson much, and this article was really eye opening. I think the expression "not even wrong" precisely nails it: he talks in such broad strokes and general terms that you cannot even start a debate before he swamps you with more generalizations.

The problem is, as OP experienced, that Peterson (although he would never admit as much) and his followers use this rhetoric to justify misogynistic, racist, sexist, and other "traditionalist" views, that are a real danger to the people on the receiving end.

I totally agree that current nuclear power generation should be left running until we have enough green energy to pick up the slack, because it does provide clean and safe energy. However, I totally disagree on the scalability, for two main reasons:

1. Current nuclear power generation is non-renewable. It is somewhat unclear how much Uranium is available worldwide (for strategic reasons), but even at current production, supply issues have been known to happen. And it goes without saying that waiting to scale up some novel unproven or inexistent sustainable way of nuclear power production is out of the question, for time and safety reasons. Which brings me to point 2.

2. We need clean, sustainable energy right now if we want to have any chance of fighting climate change. From start of planning of a new nuclear power plant to first power generation can take 15 or 20 years easily. Currently, about 10% of all electricity worldwide is produced by about 400 nuclear reactors, while around 15 new ones are under construction. So, to make any sort of reasonable impact, we would have to build to the tune of 2000 new reactors, pronto. To do that within 30 years, we'd have to increase our construction capacity 5 to 10 fold. Even if that were possible, which I strongly doubt, I would wager the safety and cost impacts would be totally unjustifiable. And we don't even have 30 years anymore. That is to say nothing of regulatory checks and maintenance that would also have to be increased 5 fold.

So imho nuclear power as a solution to climate change is a non-starter, simply due to logistical and scaling reasons. And that is before we even talk about the very real dangers of nuclear power generation, which are of course not operational, but due to things like proliferation, terrorist attacks, war, and other unforseen disruptions through e.g. climate change, societal or governmental shifts, etc.

More than 90% of the money we use does not come from the central banks, i.e. does not exist as cash and is not backed by the government directly. Instead it is book money. Here is how this works:

When a bank lends you $1000 at 10% interest for a year, they don't physically have that money. Instead, they write into your account: We owe you $1000. They also write into their account: Skaterboy42069 owes us $1100.

See how the $1000 you have in your account just appeared out of nowhere? They are of course balanced by the bank's $1000, but there is an extra $100 (the interest) that was created permanently. It's up to you to come up with a way of making those extra $100 in one year. Now apply that to the entire monetary system and the whole economy, and you see how the only way is up.

As an aside: This is also precisely the reason why we need ~2% GDP growth annually, and any standstill or even shrinking is an absolute disaster. Debts don't get repaid and are defaulted on, and money literally evaporates. Ask yourself this: imagine GDP drops 10% over night and what that would do to the economy. Why would that be such a disaster if it would simply send us back to about 2018 GDP-wise (when we all lived in caves)?

Yes, this might prompt the harshest reaction in decades: a letter with a stern condemnation. But I wouldn't count on it.

I will have to strongly disagree here. The timelines are actually the main reason why I would disqualify Nuclear power as a solution to energy, even as a temporary one.

The time from inception to going online for a new Nuclear reactor is in the range of 15-25 years. Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety. So indeed, if we want to stop using fossil fuels asap, building solar, wind, and hydro, which come online in a matter of months (maybe years for hydro), is much faster.

Aggravating this are two further issues: Current Nuclear energy production is non-renewable, and supply problems are already known to occur at current energy production levels. Second, the global construction capacity is limited, probably to around current levels. Even if we do not push for faster construction times, the number of companies and indeed people who have the necessary expertise are already at full capacity, and again, expanding that would probably imply safety problems.

That is to say, currently running Nuclear power plants are save and clean, so by all means keep doing it until renewables take over. But expanding Nuclear power to solve the energy problem is a non-starter for me, due to the timeline and it being non-renewable. And that is before we start talking about the very real dangers of Nuclear power, which are not operational of course, but due to proliferation, war, and governmental or general societal instability (due to say, climate change).

Funnily enough the TSA specifically allows them in carry on bags: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/skates

I would think removable blades might be an issue, but who knows ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I faced a similar challenge a few years ago; from my own projects to a large policy management system at an insurance company with literally 100s of thousands of source code files.

Of course it was extremely daunting at first, but what definitely helped me most was coming up with a strategy to find code where similar things had already been done.

This is easiest with a good IDE (search for aptly named classes, functions, etc.), and of course then asking somebody more experienced if you found the right bit of code. The last point cannot be overstated; most people love to show off their knowledge. If you come to someone with a question about a specific piece of code, they are usually extremely helpful. And importantly: if you don't know who to ask, simply ask someone whom to ask! Again, make people show off their knowledge.

Ich finde es schön dass jetzt auch endlich mal ein Mann Kanzlerin geworden ist. Bei "Kanzlerin" sind Männer natürlich sinngemäss mitgemeint, das sagen wir halt schon seit Jahren so und das werde ich jetzt auch nicht ändern.

It's really there from the beginning: you don't get paid to do work, you get paid for your time. What happens when you finish all your allotted tasks in 4 hours instead of 8, you think you can just go home?

The real title is obviously "The bus that couldn't slow down".

I lived close to their "national hq" in my country for years, and apart from the occasional loud motorcycle they were absolutely unnoticable. I wouldn't even have known they were there had someone not pointed it out to me.

As others have said, stay out of their way and they will stay out of yours.

After getting located because you got your ego bruised by a teenage girl on twitter

Zizek actually said as much in an interview some time before (or after?) the debate. He was well aware that debating Peterson directly would be extremely difficult due to the "techniques" he uses. So Zizek focused on getting a message to the audience.

The few times he did engage were hilarious smackdowns though ("where are all these 'postmodern marxists'???")

If you really want to read a paper, it's often easiest to e-mail one of the authors and ask for a copy. I published a fair few papers in my time, and shared many of them like this many times without any issues.

The only issue might be that after a few years, it's possible that none of the authors can be reached via the addresses on the paper anymore, so you might have to go through their university (I've never tried this, so ymmv).

Make sure to take out his two healers first

Yes, but it also kinda depends on what happens at and after junction 34, from which point on more than the entire population of earth is at stake.

If anything, this shows how ludicrously fast exponentials grow. At the start of the line it seems like there will be so many decisions to be made down the line, so there must be a psycho in there somewhere, right? But (assuming the game just ends after junction 34) you're actually just one of 34 people, and the chance of getting a psycho are virtually 0.

Very interesting one!

Kill fewer people now is obviously the right answer, and not very interesting.

What is interesting is that the game breaks already at junction 34, which is unexpectedly low.

So a more interesting dilemma would have been "would you kill n people now or double it and pass it on, knowing the next person faces the same dilemma, but once all humanity is at stake and the lever is not pulled, the game ends.". Because that would involve first of all figuring out that the game actually only involves 34 decisions, and then the dilemma becomes "do I trust the next 33-n people not to be psychos, or do I limit the damage now?". Even more interestingly "limiting the damage now" makes you the "psycho" in that sense...

It's sqrt(2) for all formats. As you may know, that means you can fold it in half and still have an aspect ratio of sqrt(2).

That is a very interesting report, thanks!

Reading through the summary and overview, they address exactly the problem that I've highlighted: how can we build more reactors faster and more economically, without compromising safety? Of course that means that this issue remains unresolved for now, underscoring my point.

They avoid discussing the other risks I've mentioned (stability, war, proliferation) and admit as much, which is fair enough, but I cannot find any comment regarding the availability of fissile material in the supply chain, which I would think is a rather crucial point.

What I take away from this report is that Nuclear power has a place in solving the climate crisis, if we:

• Implement a host of regulatory changes and new project management practices, and focus R&D to resolve the remaining problems
• Focus mainly on economic viability (which is a fair point, unfortunately), where Nuclear provides clear benefits if their assumptions hold (including thst point 1 is fully implemented)
• Disregard that fissile material is non-renwable and availability might be limited
• Disregard the immense risks of political instability and proliferation.

All in all, they conclude that sweeping changes are needed (which is always a risk) and disregard crucial present and known risks. Both these points are simply non-issues with solar, wind, and hydro-power.