Humans build friendships and relationships on shared experiences. There is an element of relationship-through-experiencing-a-thing. Whether it's going for a walk together or the classic first date template of dinner and a movie. The shared experience is the thing.
With stories that shared experience is between author and reader. Book clubs etc will try to extend that "shared experience" but primarily it is author <-> reader relationship.
Remove that "shared feeling with the author" and what meaning does it have?
It means, "Wow. Cool. I'm a member of a species that taught rocks to think. Holy fuck. That's pretty insanely fucking awesome. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Fuck."
That's about all it means. Nothing was removed from your life, but something optional was added.
I think "I'm a member of a species chasing our own extinction by worshipping an idiot machine god for the purposes of profit. That's so insanely depressing. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck"
birth rates have already tanked everywhere that isnt religious. youd think people would move back to religion and save their culture, but the sex doll argument has already pervaded. we werent designed to have our senses constantly hyperstimulated; resultantly, people increasingly dont care about reality. only sociopaths and the well disciplined thrive in this environment, everyone else becomes lost in hyperreality. id love to send it and join the masses ... after contemplating eternal damnation, a few years of sensory pleasure just arent worth it.
People without sex dolls also have lower birthrates. It's because the time previously used for fucking and childrearing has instead been owed to our masters since before we were born.
the sex doll thing was intended as a metaphor throughout this thread. we've been slaves for thousands of years, that bit hasnt changed. what has changed is that people nowadays no longer care about themselves because they are fried. watching life on a screen feels close enough to the real thing - why bother living at all, living is risky and can hurt you. the usual answer to that would be testosterone pushing us to do risky things, but test rates have cratered. in the absence of risk attraction, values would help, but nobody has any values, because we decided to throw religion in the bin under the expectation that values would spontaneously manifest (which they didnt, no surprise, we are literally monkeys). and after all that, yes we are being worked to the bone more than ever - at least serfs owned their land.
My guess is we'll end up divorcing human reproduction from human sexuality at some point anyway. I don't know if that'll be a net good thing or a net bad thing, and don't have a strong opinion either way, but I do know that regardless of any debate about the causes of low birth rates, we are no longer subject to the evolutionary pressure that, however accidentally, gave us what intelligence we have. (Many of the religions you seem to be advocating would say we never were.)
Anyway, none of this is an emergency. Near-term survival is the real concern, accompanied by continued technological progress. Neo-Luddites are working up the courage to take direct action (see comments elsewhere in this thread), and they will be using tools far more effective than the shoes, angry words, and monkey wrenches their predecessors employed. Meanwhile, the most popular religion in America has convinced its followers that a nuclear war is just the ticket to bring Jesus back.
I wish those words were as stupid as they sound, but we live in times that celebrate stupidity and are ruled by those who embody it. If we can get through the next 50 years without any major civilization-level setbacks, I think we'll be home free. So that needs to be the focus.
i do not intend to advocate for religion, least of all american neo-christianity (which has very little to do with the ten commandments and very much to do with a hyperreal facsimile of jesus being puppeted to make money for a select few). the intended argument is that when progress down one branch falters, one would be best off reverting to the known stable state. deleting morality has reverted us much further than anyone on this forum will give us credit for - i look at oration a century ago and cry at what we've lost. sexuality already is divorced from reproduction; its the example that woke me to hyperreality having come true. people do not have sex to make babies, they run around fucking like animals for the sheer pleasure of it. our senses have become detached from the purpose they serve - the map of the territory has overflowed the territory, baudrillard's very definition of hyperreality is embodied. i do agree with the next steps of your guess, that is going further down the track of huxley's brave new world. thanks for sharing your perspective and sharing a little bit of hope.
I have one, but I haven't used it since I got a smart watch (I mostly used it to track my speed). I actually really dislike navigation apps, since they tend to take you on strange routes that maybe are slightly shorter? To be fair, I haven't owned a car in 15 years, so I rarely drive.
How about you prove your claim by providing some evidence that the richer you are the more speeding tickets you get. Otherwise you're solving for a problem that doesn’t exist.
I read the grandparent comment's point as being about suggesting %-based fines.
> prove your claim by providing some evidence that the richer you are the more speeding tickets you get.
How/where did the grandparent comment claim that the rich get more speeding tickets? Even if the rich speed at a lower rate, would that make %-based fines a negative improvement?
> a problem that doesn’t exist
My assumption was the speeding is a problem no matter whether rich or poor, and that both exist. Is there disagreement there?
Instead, I think their point was that even a $100 fine for a poor person may impact their ability to pay for groceries, childcare, etc, whereas for someone who has $10 million, etc., even a $1,000 fine will not impact their ability to pay for groceries, childcare, etc as they still have $9,999,000.
Expensive cars tend to accelerate faster, and it can be vastly harder to feel the speed. It would be unsurprising if up until some limit there was a correlation between wealth and the frequency of getting speeding tickets.
I have a problem with the current physics of this. A car requires a LOT of energy to run. The electrical requirements "at the pump" are going to be pretty hefty for 10 minute charging.
Unless:
1. Reduce capacity requirements. IE Cars evolve smaller and smaller until they are practically aerodynamically efficient go-karts. A trend opposite of current affairs....
2. Charge for longer timeframes but swap in less than 10 minutes. IE standardise and replace batteries as needed.
I suspect that the "10 minute recharge" meme will be obviated by ridiculous ranges allowing us to then charge while sleeping instead.
2-3 min battery replacement is already a thing in China for trucks. The largest manufacture CATL is also pushing for safety and compatibility standards so all trucks can use all truck batteries in future.
And for charging they are building charging stations with batteries that are charged slowly but can charge cars fast.
The electricity revolution is just picking up pace
Trucks are a far cry from cars. There's a lot more space and specialized service facilities and maintenance procedures are the norm. Drivers are expected to understand far more about their vehicles.
I don't understand what you mean Nio the car manufacturer is already doing 100k+ battery swaps a day for passenger cars. I mentioned ev trucks as some mentioned that hydrogen would be easier / cheaper for trucks which I think is wrong as using explosions to move object won't be as cheap or maintenance free as using electricity to move magnets/motors.
I've gone and watched a video on this now and am impressed, it is a lot further along than I knew about.
Consider this as it scales up, though - I can get electricity from anywhere for my car, from a 120V socket in front of a building that a nice owner lets me borrow for an hour, to a 600VDC superfast charger. I can get gasoline anywhere. Heck, there are even hydrogen stations around here now.
I just don't see this kind of thing being scalable to anything other than small urban areas, which are exactly the place they're not needed, because you can charge a car with 300-400km battery range once a week or less and be fine in the city. Where I need my battery swap is more likely to be while I'm on a road trip going for distance. How could I be confident a full battery that's compatible with my car is going to be available for me, and that all the automation to replace it will be in perfect shape, and that the bottom of my car hasn't rusted to the point where this doesn't work anymore?
Actually battery swaps and needing fast charging are for city car owners for rest of the people that own houses they mostly don't need fast charging. They can install solar and can easily charge at home. Most private cars run for less than 2 hours a day. And are parked somewhere most of day I think need for fast charging is mostly about non ev owners not realising they do not need to do things the way they used to with gas cars. Battery swapping is more useful for commercial vehicles that are constantly running
I like the idea of swappable batteries in theory, but in reality... well... that's a lot of logistics and a lot of potential for things to go wrong. Consider the swappable propane tank market, for instance; it's clear that returning cans need refurbishment and testing before you can give them back out to people. This implies it probably can't be just done on-site at a gas station.
They also weigh an absolute ton, so specialized lift equipment is needed; they take up space and will be very difficult to move around. So, are we expecting to stock a huge pile of batteries somewhere with an automatic loader/unloader that can handle multiple people at once with a quick turnover rate that can put away a 2000 pound battery? It's just too much infra, compared to a charging station...
And then there's the matter of the vehicle design; chassis rigidity is important and batteries, being a huge weight, need to be positioned properly with enough load bearing structure around them to support this. I'm imagining a hydraulic lift raising a 2000 pound battery up into my car; some massive brace needs to be attached below it to hold it up. Talk about difficult to get right; we've got harsh conditions like road salt and rust to deal with, and we have to make a fully automatable fastening device that can work at a random gas station with any brand of car... yikes.
You're actually much closer to the idea with the reduce-capacity idea. I had a Ford Focus Electric a while ago that had about 80km of range on a good day. This was more than enough for 90% of my driving; my old SUV handled the rest. Net carbon savings were huge; pity it was totaled in an accident or I'd have kept it going. Even at almost 10 years old it still kept a charge no problem and was a delight to drive compared to a normal Focus. My current EV has far more range but feels heavy and ponderous despite nearly 500 HP.
They just announced a while ago that they performed their 100 millionth battery swap, and just now "Nio's 3,750 battery swap stations delivered 2,073,500 battery swap services between February 10-23" (Chinese new year). Seems to work fine.
Another commenter pointed that out, it's impressive, but when one imagines trying to do that kind of thing in North America where we can't even build new train tracks it seems somewhat infeasible
Very much simplified, a 10 minute charge would mean 6C charging throughout the curve. 100 kWh battery would thus require 600 kW on average. Right now the most powerful MCS chargers deliver 1440 kW.
So not impossible, as long as the battery can handle the current. It's obvious that charging technology is not going to be the bottleneck.
(A real battery would probably have a charging curve that slows down towards the end, so more than 6C would be required in realistic conditions.)
Not an expert, but my suspicion is that the camera following lips can add an extra streaming data point making transcription accuracy much higher even at low volumes. Again a hunch and I guess the computational power and battery needs might still be insurmountable
What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic?
Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is? What if that authority wants to move the line to include everything? Or nothing? Do they even need to provide notice to the public of their actions?
Who should be able to access to all this footage? Public? Government investigative branches only? What about the system administrators?
Does this footage require attestation to prove it's legitimacy in a world where AI can generate footage?
How long should this footage exist for? Do I have to trust not just current admins and their superiors but all the people who may be in those roles in perpetuity? IE do I have to trust people who haven't even been born yet?
Is it allowed to be centralised, so people can easily be tracked from one site to another for every step outside their house? Or should each site have separate data housing with access terms to match so that tracking a person is a significant task?
..
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There are a lot of concerns. You may argue that there isn't a lot of nuances because you have a set idea of how it should all go. But others may differ.
There's just....not. It's a pretty well established concept by now. For almost 50 years or so.
> What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic?
Yes to all of these.
> Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is?
Not a person, but a sound methodology ideally. Kind of like what we've mostly been doing even if it isn't formalized.
> What if that authority wants to move the line to include everything?
Yes, the slippery slope is a problem, agreed. That's why we need to be vigilant in responding to government plans.
> Do they even need to provide notice to the public of their actions?
In a civilized democracy, they should.
> Government investigative branches only?
Yes, pretty much.
> What about the system administrators?
Not if it can be avoided.
> Does this footage require attestation to prove it's legitimacy in a world where AI can generate footage?
No.
> How long should this footage exist for?
3 - 6 months is typically standard.
> Do I have to trust not just current admins and their superiors but all the people who may be in those roles in perpetuity? IE do I have to trust people who haven't even been born yet?
You have to trust the system is accountable.
> Is it allowed to be centralised,
Ideally, no.
> Or should each site have separate data housing with access terms to match so that tracking a person is a significant task?
Bingo.
> There are a lot of concerns. You may argue that there isn't a lot of nuances because you have a set idea of how it should all go. But others may differ.
I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades.
> I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades.
The issue is that times are changing. "Worked fine for decades" doesn't apply to the Ring Doorbell or Flock. Or that authorities exactly want to have all footage in the one place, from train stations too.
Modern computers allow for scaling of capabilities that are only tolerable at all when limited in number.
IE the capability to track an individual's every movement is tolerable if it is limited in number, has oversight, and only used by appropriate authorities against bad people that everyone can agree are bad.
But being able to track minority groups en masse as modern systems are capable of is clearly an issue.
I see your parameters to the above questions as mostly reasonable although I'd rather not have the cameras everywhere in the first place. But do you think even your reasonable seeming desires are being adhered to?
I'm not arguing for mass surveillance, I'm arguing for keeping surveillance in busy places which as you admit has worked well for decades. I'm against the Ring/Flock dystopian nightmare as well.
> But do you think your desires are being adhered to?
No, but I think an apathetic population are the problem, and I don't know how to solve it.
With stories that shared experience is between author and reader. Book clubs etc will try to extend that "shared experience" but primarily it is author <-> reader relationship.
Remove that "shared feeling with the author" and what meaning does it have?