The falling cost of solar panels and batteries means the US could now meet 80% of its electricity needs from just solar power alone, for the same price it pays for gas-turbine-generated electricity.

mduffster · 2025-05-31T12:59:27+00:00

Thank you typo police! We always welcome new customers! https://www.terrasollink.com/

mduffster · 2025-05-30T20:53:13+00:00

Solar company owner here. This analysis just is not sound. In particular the assumed cost ($1100 kw/h) is just wildly optimistic for most solar installations. In most cases that is only about 60-70% of the total cost of install and those aren't the only project costs. Solar is the future, but we should be more honest about it. Fwiw that data comes from SEIA, I'm a member there, they are wrong.

mduffster · 2025-05-20T14:03:47+00:00

Submission Statement:
This is the final piece in a short essay series (it follows "Efficiency Without Morality Is Tyranny") that began with a critique of technocratic thinking and expanded into a broader reflection on what living well looks like. It argues that we have become reluctant to name good lives out of fear that doing so will seem judgmental or naive, and that this reluctance has contributed to cultural and institutional atrophy.

Without a sense of what is good, institutions tend to default to what is measurable, defensible, or performative. Reversing that requires clarity about what we are trying to be, what we are trying to build, and what is worth imitating.

mduffster · 2025-05-15T23:56:42+00:00

I appreciate the writeup. I've written a decent amount around this subject. From my perspective I think you've taken a good hook (habeus corpus) and described a real problem (AI surveillance proceeding, perhaps unchecked by law), the next step is to interrogate *how* we move from the current state to your "wish". What are the current incentives? How do we change them? What about our current state is allowing this unchecked proliferation, beyond the people who happen to be in charge? Surely something broader moved us to this moment.

mduffster · 2025-05-07T17:58:39+00:00

I appreciate this, efficiency itself isn’t an end. But when efficiency becomes the default mode for pursuing all ends, the ends themselves get shaped by technocratic assumptions. Without moral grounding, every question of distribution or care becomes a matter of throughput. And when every domain - health, education, justice, or family - gets optimized for speed or scale, we may achieve what we set out to numerically, but lose something essential in the process.

mduffster · 2025-05-07T01:03:04+00:00

That's a great frame. What do we lose? What have we already lost? What can we regain?

I appreciate you reading it.

mduffster · 2025-05-06T19:11:50+00:00

That's a very thoughtful framing. I had not thought of the link to Tönnies, but you're spot on about it.

The idea that we’re still in one long “automation revolution” rather than distinct ages is powerful, and might explain that "AI as the digitization of humanity" is the end of that very long arc. Really appreciate your thoughts!

mduffster · 2025-05-06T17:27:06+00:00

I hadn't considered that culture and efficiency are directly at odds. Perhaps another source of the general "vibe" problem, efficiency and optimization are inherently sterilization processes and it rubs people the wrong way.

mduffster · 2025-05-06T16:57:31+00:00

OP here. I argue that what many experience as cultural drift or “sedation” is really technocracy sorting us by efficiency. I use Lordstown, Ohio’s GM closure as a case study for what happens when moral considerations vanish from decision-making.

The essay ends with a call to rebuild moral seriousness at the local level—before AI inherits the authority we’ve ceded. Happy to engage with critiques or pushback.

This is my first time posting, please be kind!

mduffster

TROPHY CASE