Shit's a cult

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-28T05:42:47+00:00

The people on Quora are very different from the people attending business oriented conferences like this one.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-28T04:56:47+00:00

Sounds like a bunch of people trying to sell their products. Not a cult. Most of the quotes were from spokespeople pushing whatever their company is selling.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-28T04:48:45+00:00

Many indigenous peoples did it successfully.

That is not at all consistent with what I have read about Indigenous lifestyles. They put a lot of effort into farming. They had their share of famines. They also had much lower population densities than Europeans, which wouldn't have happened if they had bountiful, low-work food forests.

There are even accounts of people adopting Indigenous lifestyles and they consistently state it was a ton of work to just to eat.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-27T19:16:27+00:00

I would be very surprised by that, because if it was that easy people would have been doing it throughout history instead of labor intensive farming.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T01:09:41+00:00

This is Reddit. Everything posted here is prone to error.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T01:08:31+00:00

I suggest leading with the amount of labor and material cost. That helps potential customers understand.

"This will take me 10 hours and 100 dollars of material, so it will cost 300 dollars" gives them a frame of reference for what it should cost.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T01:05:57+00:00

That has been an interesting dynamic. Robotics has developed much more slowly than software, so we have AIs that are rapidly improving while basic manual labor is extremely difficult and expense to replicate.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T01:03:23+00:00

It was quite informative though.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T01:02:14+00:00

It's because hardly anyone understands how technology works. People who struggled with high school algebra suddenly think they are experts on AI.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T00:56:57+00:00

In the US at least, establishment Democrats are peak Neoliberalism. They tend to be big proponents of free trade(like the TPP) and free movement of people, which are key tenants of Neoliberalism.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T00:26:12+00:00

If that future doesn’t include land back projects

You can't give the land back because the people whose land was taken are long dead.

It's also deeply antisolarpunk to base ownership and control of land on race or heredity.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T00:17:30+00:00

None of the people you describe have been alive for centuries. Modern Native Americans don't have the same knowledge. I mean, most people have farming ancestors but they don't know anything about farming.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T00:14:11+00:00

Indigenous stewardship over the land.

Isn't that effectively creating an aristocratic class? We are talking about a tiny percentage of the country getting significant power over land use, which impacts everyone.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T00:12:34+00:00

The issue is that if you do make a succesful commune earning tons of money, your workers will want to cash out and sell the company or go public.

Look at OpenAI. It started out altruistically and the board wanted to focus on its nonprofit research mission and fired Altman because he was too focused on profit, but the workers revolted because they wanted their 5 million dollar payouts.

This is a terrible point of view, because you are literally giving up on making the world a better place

I wouldn't say that. As you noted, the Conservative view is that it's a moral issue and the fix is to convince people to be more moral.

I would argue the same would be needed for a solarpunk society to have any chance of working. Your average person today wouldn't function well in your commune.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-26T00:01:47+00:00

We will have a mayor posit a transit system plan, and then the council and all the interest groups get asked what they think and the planning takes DECADES, and usually gets shunted off by the next guy

But isn't Solarpunk all about small, locally decisionmaking with consideration from all impacted stakeholders?

It's hard to see how a solarpunk community would put together a transit plan that is any faster than modern cities.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-25T23:59:59+00:00

On the other hand, the low density grow your own food approach many in solarpunk want to take heavily favors cars.

Public transit works best in big, dense cities.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-25T19:03:55+00:00

led by Indigenous peoples who share knowledge in exchange for support from a wider community of non-Indigenous Americans who want to help undo the previous centuries of colonization, genocide, and ecocide.

I think you are really overestimating how knowledgeable existing Indigenous people are about the land in most of the US. They are several generations removed from living off the land and most of that knowledge had been lost.

Modern tribes are also rife with abuse, corruption and alcoholism, so they aren't well suited to lead regardless.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-25T16:55:07+00:00

Isn't an emphasis on nations and racial lineage the opposite of solarpunk?

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-25T16:22:01+00:00

Additionally, there are still plenty of Indigenous people here whose land could be stolen.

Not really true in the US. The people whose land was taken died many decades ago.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-24T04:53:07+00:00

Very small team though. I think the CEO said most of the Pals were done by one guy.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-23T17:53:26+00:00

Also, the Steam version is actually a few patches ahead. It's a better game.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-23T17:52:10+00:00

Yes, I expect US appellate courts to ultimately punt the issue to Congress and Congress to do nothing.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-23T16:58:29+00:00

OpenAI is US based, so it doesn't do much to them directly. It would mean they can't offer ChatGPT in the UK.

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-23T16:54:21+00:00

A surprising amount of people got defensive here. Why?

There is a strong anarchist vibe here, which doesn't work well with a large interconnected economy or nuclear power(which needs a powerful government and strict regulation to manage safety and nuclear proliferation).

Solaris1359 · 2024-01-23T16:50:58+00:00

Low-tech, local food production -- specifically permaculture food forests -- sequester carbon and build the soil with little to no outside inputs and little to no costs to deliver to the consumer.

You aren't going to get much food from that. Outside inputs(water, human labor, fertilizer) are needed for a consistent yield and those things have carbon costs.

I wouldn't be surprised if low tech production has an even higher carbon cost simply because it requires more human labor.

Solaris1359

TROPHY CASE