Opposing nuclear power was probably a mistake at scale. Now? it's too late to be effectively useful at scale, we can solve the problems via other methods but we've wasted 50 years of the problem by being "too green"
> Opposing nuclear power was probably a mistake at scale
Tell that to the folks in Ukraine who now have to worry about one of their plants melting down in addition to everything else they're dealing with.
Imagine a conflict on the scale of WWII with developed countries bombing each other day and night. Sooner or later one of those conventional weapons accidentally, or not accidentally, hits a nuclear reactor.
Nuclear plants are great in Sim City, they just don't work in the real world.
The tech community is not only not smarter than most other communities, in many cases tech workers are less capable and intelligent than the average person.
Half a century of conformist education and a financial machine around scaling companies has made tech workers soft. And their choice to insulate themselves in specific metros/social circles has made them unable to see this.
The ocean as we know it to be is probably done for. We, as a race, are not even starting to get a handle on all the plastic going in the ocean. It's a ridiculously, stupendously huge thing next to a human, and if you think that for every video of someone rescuing a turtle or documenting a whale that swallowed plastic, there is an entire ocean's worth that aren't being saved or seen, it puts into context the magnitude of what we've done. It's probably a slaughterhouse out there.
Fighting a proxy war with Russia is better than fighting a hot war with either Russia or China. But, the people doing the proxy fighting are really unhappy being used this way.
People of Ukraine are not being used. They want to fight the invaders and are thankful that some Western nations are helping them. That the same western nations benefit from this is not the cause of their fighting. That cause is Russia.
The context here is Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, a range of hotspots in the middle east aside from the war with Ukraine, not to mention Afghanistan, and all the places in Africa where the Wagner group are at play. Arming Ukraine was the least thing they could do but also the most. I totally do not mean to invalidate your war.
C'mon man, we all saw the president of Ukraine very vocally and forcefully asking the West for help in the form of advanced weaponry.
Back in February, at the outset of the war, the U.S. offered to evacuate President Zelensky. His exact words were, "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride".
Nice try though. I'm sure the pro-Russia contingent on HN will throw a few up-votes your way.
The internet might have been a mistake, socially, educationally, politically. I tend to the upsides outweigh, but you have to be very mindful of the downsides.
Hmm. Well the OP did say "unpopular" -But, "rest of us" suggests you think I'm in a camp of 1. I assure you a lot of people worldwide accept constraint on their freedom of speech, for social gain. Would I want to have my social credit measured by an app? Nope. Not even close. But, asked about it, most shrug.
Plus, the misunderstood bit. I mean I get you know this, but do you think people actually know their 1st amendment rights? Like, its about specific things, not all things, and no, you (nor Trump) do not have an axiomatic right to say anything you like on Twitter, because "freedom of speech" (hint: Twitter is not a commons, or public space, or bound by laws in Congress)
Do you think "free speech" is going to save the defendents in the Dominion Voting case, Specifically Fox? Remember, the fine point here is "misunderstood" not "is important" -I think the libel laws may save Fox, but it won't be Free speech, it will be Libel laws. I kind of hope they lose because even if $1b is an over estimate, they trashed a corporate entity for political gain, by lying. Thats really bad. They could do it tomorrow to anyone else. Thats bully pulpit bad.
I think the USA has seen the good side of free speech for a while. Most of the former British colonies see the bad side - riots, deaths, civil wars.
The Sunni vs Shia wars and torture in the Middle East. Israel. The race riots in SE Asia. India's Muslim vs Hindu conflicts, as well as Pakistan. You need a minority whose votes are negligible enough. Often those with enough power to be a viable threat (Jews, Chinese billionaires, hardworking educated immigrants).
Trump/MAGA is just following the standard politician playbook of vilifying minorities for votes. When it works, future politicians do the same because it's easy and proven. And then the hatred turns to violence. It's not just MAGA, it's also the people who compare Trump to Hitler and compare MAGA to Nazis.
"Trump/MAGA is just following the standard politician playbook of vilifying minorities for votes. When it works, future politicians do the same because it's easy and proven. And then the hatred turns to violence. It's not just MAGA, it's also the people who compare Trump to Hitler and compare MAGA to Nazis."
It started as the well-trodden "Southern Strategy" but now US' adversaries have poured fuel on the fire and its burst into full on fascist rhetoric and thinking now. This is quite literally, exactly how the Nazi party started and evolved. Stop downplaying this as anything but and start reading how the Nazis started and evolved - the StormTrumpers and GOP appear to be using it as their playbook.
Can you elaborate please? I'm interested why you think this. Nobody in the UK really thinks free market rail, free market water, free market gas, free market electricity has been a good idea. The overwhelming majority of consumers want renationalisation, its just about for how long really. Scotland, which retained significant state control over infrastructure is faring better.
- Green/Sustainable trend is overrated and doomed.
- Corporate ESG sucks.
- HR departments have been hijacked by social justice people, mostly women. Subjectivism has taken over objectivism.
- Society/Technology has been deteriorating, not accelerating. Despite of what people say about progress in last 50 years.
- Anti-capitalism is going to lead to demise of USA and largely the west while APAC has been embracing what worked in the west, i.e. Hypercapitalism that's pulling people out of poverty.
- Hard work and pushing yourself to the limit mentally should be encouraged.
Let me explain. ESG is a way for politicians/administrative-class/elites to force ideology on the public without having to go through the legislative process and gaining public support, thereby bypassing writing laws. Constitution has deliberately made lawmaking process difficult and lengthy, that's a feature, not a bug. Instead, power is exercised through the proxy of corporations.
It is anything but democratic. It is totalitarian (even though I agree with some of the ESG initiatives).
America's rule by Gerontocracy is no better than anyone else's and the electoral college system is a giant shell-game to hide the reality behind "democracy" as practically experienced by most people in the US
Yes. It's said to me all the time. And, I try to listen. I think reddit is home, HN is where we hang out pretending to work. We're expert generalists.
The people I really have a problem with are the autodidacts. It's very hard to argue with somebody convinced of their genius, when it's never been formally tested, or constructed in a methodology.
Staying in lane means asking questions in the other field, make assertions in your own.
After mastering *nix userland, Windows is suffocating. Not having ads slipstreamed into my start menu, or not having the calculator take 10sec to start due to telemetry, or not having my CPU/HD/RAM hammered by Cortana no matter how many different ways I disabled it, or not having updates+reboots forcing themselves at the absolute worst time, or...
The advantage over OSX is commodity hardware: easy upgrades/downgrades/repairs, & lower cost. Swapping HD in my macbook involved ordering special screwdrivers & prybars, then at least 30min worth of disassembly/re-assembly. Last linux/PC upgrade consisted of slapping the old HD into the new PC and powering on--10 minutes max. Aside from that, OSX is nice.
> "...not having the calculator take 10sec to start due to telemetry..."
Calculator fires up in 2 seconds even on my elderly Intel m3-6y30 machine.
Not to pick on the parent poster, since I've seen far too many on HN say the same thing, but if the person who started this topic wants a prime addition to "unpopular opinions here that should not be", it's that those who aren't skilled enough to use Windows properly are also pretty much guaranteed not to be skilled enough to use other operating systems which expose much more complexity to the user, like Linux, properly either.
Not a CPU issue, but a network timeout one. Disconnect from ethernet/wifi, try again, report back. Circa 2016, it took 5-10 sec before it would give up on phoning-home & finally open. I put wireshark on it & timed it myself. No idea what it does now.
With Windows, who can tell? And that's the real issue. Is it a bug? Is it Micrsoft telemetry? Is it Microsoft being underhanded (which happens!)?
I've noticed that Windows programmers are very quick to work around what they perceive as bugs in underlying library code, and opaqueness in both code and motives is why.
Aside from that, amen. "Get a byte, get a byte, get a byte byte byte" is a breath of fresh air compared to MS documentation. The situation has improved--if only because we can go to StackOverflow and ask Jon Skeet for the answer--but in the bad old days (where you might as well be on a desert island with your MSDN DVDs) it was pure pain.
Tech/Hacker culture has a lot of overlap with gamer and meme culture... These are the places where far-right (racist, fascist, and anti-intellectualism) ideologies have been subtly and not-so-subtly introduced. You're now seeing the fruit from the seeds that have been meticulously planted the past 10ish years.
String theory is a hoax because "there's no experimental evidence". How about we build bigger and better experiments? No, colliders are just hand outs to the industry and a waste of money /s
The usefulness of armed citizens in preventing/fighting tyranny is greatly exaggerated. Americans would be served better if the second amendment is abolished.
Our technician caste dislikes religious doctrines. Most of these doctrines discourage--or even prohibit--our most treasured creature comforts, so of course, we take the easy way out and shun these doctrines. And we pay for this. Boy do we ever pay!
Such people have spiritual holes, which they deny, but are there none the less. They try to fill these holes with material comforts--food, sex, pills, money, et. al. The problem is: you can't fill a spiritual hole with material substance, but in our ignorance we keep piling-on. More restaurants, more drugs, more trips, more money, more hookups--metabolizing the earth, degrading the body, poisoning the children. None of it will ever be enough, because we are using the wrong medicine & operating on false premises.
> Such people have spiritual holes, which they deny, but are there none the less. They try to fill these holes with material comforts--food, sex, pills, money, et. al.
What about people who are agnostic, don't abuse these things, and feel happy? Do they have spiritual holes?
> More restaurants, more drugs, more trips, more money, more hookups
All of these things are on the decline in the United States among young people. They are using drugs/alcohol and having sex less frequently than any previous generation. They are also the least religious.
Is it possible that agnosticism is not a predictor of pleasure-seeking activities?
You say they are using fewer drugs, but I don't see that. They've merely upgraded their dealers--from street hoods to doctors & pharmacists. Talking to kids today (and hearing about all of their drugs) is almost as boring as talking to my grandparents (and hearing about all of their drugs): SSRIs, ADHD meds (and how do I convince my doc to prescribe them), hormone treatments (for the trans & the old farts trying to re-live their 20s), PrEP, finasteride, dick pills (because they've already messed that up in their 20s with the hair pills), etc. From this board alone, I know more about adderall & HRT that I ever wanted to.
And I would be interested to know more about all of these self-denying agnostics you've claimed. Closest thing I have seen to what you have said "in the wild" would be ordinary status-chasing--foregoing the booze and the broads for clicks & social-climbing--which is no better, and no less material, than the comforts I've already listed.
OP asked "What are some unpopular opinions here that should not be?"
OP didn't ask for explanations, long or brief.
If you want those, that's what we have scripture for. "Which scripture?!" you may ask. I prefer the New Testament. Nearly any scripture is preferable to the modern materialist quantity-cult--even ones outside of the Abrahamic fold.
Truth is being obfuscated by making us mentally fatigued and thinking too much about problems which are largely irrelevant. As long as there is bread and circuses, the truth will not reveal itself.
I've been upvoting some of the greyed out ones because they seem to actually contribute to the topic. Which ironically makes them non-greyed out and harder to find.
