ScienceNostalgia101

Fair enough, it's possible the online communities I've encountered are an unrepresentative sample, so I'm not sure if linking to them would prove my point anyway. (Even if I hypothetically could recall the context.) It's also on closer examination possible I just notice these sorts of excuses more often than others notice them, and notice the reverse less often than others notice the reverse, having grown up with games like SimCity that focus on the challenges of managing traffic, or GTA2 which make riding the subway look interesting, and as such having a nostalgia for taking the subway everywhere last time I was in a major city, and therefore growing more of a fixation on this sort of thing than others. One lingering question remains, though. Why, if Europe and East Asia manage to keep lower per capita GHG emissions than the USA, and aren't starving, do people (including specifically within this thread) often invoke commuting to/from small towns as justification for motor vehicle use, and distribution of food as justification for commuting to/from small towns?

It was not my intention to do so. My intention was to compare driving to the alternative, which is more relevant than comparison to something unrelated. Of course, it's still comparing unlike terms when comparing deaths to, let's say, how much more time would be consumed by commuting if one were to switch to a more transit-driven society. How much of a factor like that justifies how many deaths would constitute a coefficient of priorities, if you will. However, there is also the fact that taking transit could more effectively be multi-tasked with work that doesn't require one to be physically present at the workplace at the immediate moment, done before and/or after the work that does. If one were using, let's say, data on one's cellphone to crunch the numbers on something one needed to act on once one arrived at one's workplace, and then crunched the numbers on the results on the way home, that would be safer than attempting to do so while driving. With all that said, at least we're getting somewhere with a comparison like that, whereas a comparison to something that has nothing to do with driving either way is arbitrary. If driving is such a necessity, why would anyone feel the need to invoke libertarian appeals to "freedom" to drive in the first place?

But transitioning toward a more transit-based society gradually, rather than abruptly, would be more doable. Europe did it. East Asia could do it. The United States could at the very least stand to do relatively more of it than they do now. Rather than comparing traffic deaths to "other deaths," which would have happened with or without automobile use, wouldn't it be more relevant to compare traffic deaths to whichever lives automobile use has supposedly saved? I hear a lot of fearmongering about crimes committed on subway trains and in subway stations, but on the whole aren't they... generally safer than the risk of getting in a car accident if one were to drive instead? Besides, aren't traffic deaths usually the standard excuse people use to dismiss other risks people take? Like how more people die of traffic deaths than HIV? (Again, I don't agree with the validity of that point either, as unprotected sex isn't typically something one would do as an alternative to driving; at least for most purposes; but it seems like it's a benchmark in and of itself, rather than the other way around.)

Until/unless home delivery of groceries and medications is made efficient (for which we should've had a system in place if only because of the pandemic anyway, for what it's worth) there will always be a pressing need to walk or ride one's bicycle, if only to the nearest transit stop. Or to/from their cars, for that matter. Motorists need to do some walking too, if only because not every parking spot can be equally close to the building in which it's located. Eventually, a motorist still in their car will have to cross paths with a motorist who temporarily becomes a pedestrian. Yes, we have laws that protect pedestrians in parking lots; to some degree; but not to the degree that having fewer cars on the road in the first place would do.

Because you are also imposing the risk of being run over onto pedestrians and cyclists, despite pedestrians and cyclists being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Shouldn't that warrant them being protected more, even if at the expense of motorists?

On other sides, back when I was more vocally opposed to mandatory phys. ed. in schools, I've been referred to as "an athlete even if I don't realize it" when mentioning cycling (which I did more for environmental reasons than health ones) as one of my hobbies. I think when the case against the death penalty correlates with people hypocritical enough to complain about the "unfalsifiability" of deterrence, while jumping to unfalsifiable conclusions about the motives of its advocates, it establishes as plausible the possibility that those funding the experts are pandering to said hypocritical activists. Expert consensus is a good starting point, but it shouldn't be worshipped as absolute. Wouldn't a more durable tarp be able to withstand the wind? Especially the kind that somehow makes it around the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan. (As for the cold and wind... if Winnipeggers can handle cycling in winters colder than Mars, I'm pretty sure New Yorkers can handle their relatively-milder winters.) Surveillance requires electricity, and maybe the occasional cleaning of the lens, but I would think it would otherwise be a "set it and forget it" sort of deal. Otherwise how long will London's take to pay for itself? Rural America began before oil began to flow, but that was before the economy became more urbanized and the carbon-intensive way the USA distributes its food became rural America's continuing claim to fame. How much of a purpose will it have if an oil crash forces more energy-efficient ways to distribute food? As for stats on abuse: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120413100854.htm Anyway, if school sports are so "fun," why do people willingly select French classes over phys. ed. on their course selection sheet?

I didn't mean to sound like I thought demand went to exactly zero at night, but rather that it should've dropped enough that the aforementioned wind, solar, and hydroelectric could've met it. I could be wrong, of course; my background's physics, not engineering.

1. If Manhattan doesn't have adequate bike paths for non-student commuters, they ought to fix that ASAP, if only for environmental reasons, let alone the risk peak oil hits before electric cars become affordable to the poor. As for Montana... perhaps splitting the difference, then? Are there perhaps cargo-train routes that could double as passenger-train routes, with bicycle racks kids coming home from school can put their bikes on, then it stops at various routes corresponding to various neighbourhoods, and smaller groups of students race to their respective equivalents of former bus stops? 2. Ah, neglected that consideration, fair enough. If this fails to replace buses, one could always fund vouchers for cab fares for those with good enough reasons to be exempt or something like that. 3. Tarps are a one-time investment. Paying someone to coach them is a continuous annual expense. And regarding point #4, aren't kids more often known to be molested by their baseball coach than by strangers they encounter on a bicycle path? 4. Aren't most of the states known for executions the (relatively) more rural states that can't cover every nook and cranny with surveillance as efficiently as New York? That sounds like it's basically daring criminals to tell themselves "I'll never get caught," even if that's what they all say. Executions can't be a substitute for surveillance, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't supplement them in a manner for which the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, if the cameras are there in plain enough sight that they cannot be denied by anyone short of the most willfully ignorant of criminals... who would probably drive past a school bus with its lights on if they thought they could get away with it too. And it's not clear how much longer rural America will last when the oil runs out. (Depends on how affordable electric cars become, I guess?) 5. This is based on the assumption that the deterrence referred to in #4 would eventually push it below the already established "background radiation" that is the risk of automobile accidents. An unfalsifiable assumption, to be fair, but most of the people calling it unfalsifiable invoke unfalsifiable assumptions about the motives of death penalty advocates (you are the first exception I have encountered) which establishes a sort of correlation between this complaint and a lack of concern for falsifiability, as though they come from the same source. (Again, yourself excepted.) If you don't mind my asking, what led you to side with those doubting the deterrence argument? . . . For what it's worth, the conclusion I'm increasingly coming to is "the bicycle option is looking more and more suitable to urban areas, and less and less suitable to rural and suburban ones." Especially in light of points 1 and 4. But that still leaves the question of why, at least in urban ones in particular, it's considered less suitable than sports.

So I was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping today and I noticed the fragile item they sold me was handed to me in bubble wrap. I presume that's at least partly because it's quicker, easier, and possibly cheaper than paying someone to attach a bunch of springs in all directions, but I also wonder if that's partly because the pressure would still be high enough at the exact points of contact with the spring as to still risk breaking the item. This got me thinking; it's one thing to protect property, but what about protecting people? Old-fashioned armor; be it scale, splint, plate, or chain mail; has metal in direct or semi-direct contact with the body it's protecting, so falls from a great height would still transfer most of the momentum through the armor to the body. Modern military armor, I would presume, is more sophisticated, but I would also presume it is more focused on slowing knives and bullets on impact than on cushioning falls. What about a suit of armor for playing, though? These days people fight the uphill battle against childhood hyperactivity; the kind of hyperactivity that people find cute enough to pay to see it in fiction, and that if embraced could help encourage exercise in real life; because a hyperactive child could so lose themselves in their own hyperactivity as to get themselves injured. If one designed a suit of armor that had air cushions; and/or a lot of small springs; between the outer plates and the inner plates; how well would this protect a hyperactive child; and/or fully-grown stunt performers, for that matter; from injuring themselves from falls? For that matter, would an adequate number of springs be safer than air cushions? Why or why not?

Question: Why do you need continuous power anyway? Wouldn't just about any warm climate need more power during the day, if only to air-condition their homes? Don't the vast majority of people live in climates warm enough that severe heat is a greater threat to life safety than severe cold? Though yeah, hydroelectric is good too. Probably best to build downstream from populated settlements in case the construction workers take shortcuts on safety, though.

Why not set up bike paths, teach kids how to ride these bikes, (and offer fun activities for those who've already demonstrated proficiency, like we do for doing well on math "pre-tests") set up weather resistant tarps and surveillance cameras along said bike paths, and give the death penalty to anyone caught on said surveillance camera attempting to abduct, molest, or otherwise severely harm any of these children? That would scare any would-be troublemaker out of trying, and give the parents reason to believe the risk is lower than that of, let's say, of a school bus getting T-boned at an intersection by a reckless driver. Or a child getting run over by a driver who ignored the school bus's stop sign.

Right now only a few million Americans are farmers. That's a very small fraction of the USA's rural population. They don't all need to be farmers. As well, Europe has lower per capita greenhouse gas emissions than the USA, and Europeans aren't starving to death. Surely there have to be more energy-efficient ways to farm than the USA currently uses. Presumably people could be paid a little extra to go to the remaining farmland via train, and load the crops onto a cargo train. Or perhaps this would get the ball rolling on automation of farm work, if how much extra employees have to be paid to do the more energy-efficient farming were to force the issue. But so long as we fail to force the issue, electric and/or self-driving cars will still enable people's continued addiction to motor vehicles, and continue to get people killed. I've seen people driving in major cities, along routes parallel to the subway train. It can't ALL be out of necessity.

Gah, I forgot all about sky lanterns, even though I've literally seen them in person. I'll look into aluminized mylar, then. Any particular kind of stores known to sell aluminized mylar balloons in large sizes?

Hmm... I didn't know cast iron could resist hydrochloric acid. Would it be comparably resistant against aqua regia or piranha solution?

My interest is primarily in geometry... preferably geometry as generalizable as possible so as to apply to everything from physics to geography to fields involving both physics and geography. So if region can apply to 2-D and 3-D regions alike, why is there no supercategory for 3-D regions the way "surface" often is used for 2-D regions?

"Oxidental"? I'm just spitballing possible alternatives here. I was thinking bicycling would be one such alternative. Chopping up firewood would be a more vigorous workout, especially if done to cool off while in an angry mood. So... if competition is what kids going, why not replace schools' "bus stops" with "racing checkpoints" where students can gather at them and race to school, and/or race to them before cycling home?

Have you ever had your opinions dismissed out of hand, on other webforums, by people who invoke the other things you've gotten wrong as justification for dismissing them out of hand? Have you ever noticed that a majority of people on these sites either made, or failed to distance themselves from, a comparable number of incorrect statements, and ignore your comparisons of these to the things you yourself got wrong? I feel reminded of this by recent political trends. The right spent the late 90s howling at the moon over Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, yet lets Trump get away with something similar. A majority of Republican voters let them get away with it, claiming to find worse the supposed hypocrisy of the left caring more about the sex assault allegations against Trump than those against Biden, though personally I consider the former more credible. Obviously the first and foremost message of this is "we need ranked ballots, fast, if only to give people a chance to choose a real third party alternative." But the secondary message is; is there any objective metric of tarnished credibility? Many of my views are shaped by following the gradient of credibility upwards. But this gradient of credibility doesn't always lead me in the right direction. The one-child policy thread on this very board features a reference to how I used to defend it based on the flawed arguments of a majority of its critics, and have come to regret that upon discovering better arguments against it. Fearmongering about the supposed attractiveness of so-called "bad boys" supposedly causing other males to imitate their behaviour to be perceived as attractive caught my attention for being an alarmingly cynical take on love, but Attack Of The Clones also had an alarmingly cynical take on love without me finding it convincing; it was the fact that people who say it were dismissed as "just jealous" (a phrase that doesn't exactly have a strong track record on being used by the right sides of history; see also market worship) that made the attention-grabbing fearmongering also convincing, until I saw people give my sister grief for dating a dropout... and now I no longer know who to believe on this sort of thing. But then the question becomes; what's the alternative? If something has expert consensus on its side, but a majority of its supporters are ignorant and/or arrogant, should the experts be dismissed out of hand for being on the same side of the issue as said majority?

The same applies; would this have forced rural areas to adapt as quickly as possible to a surge in the price of oil, and/or force their inhabitants to leave for more densely populated areas?

People love to drive. For some people, it's literally to die for; the tens of thousands who die driving have not deterred people thus far. In practice, it's not just those who drive who can be killed, but those who get run over by cars while walking. So "I have the risk to assume the risk" is not as valid an argument as it would be for, let's say, eating junk food. On top of that, even the individuals who claim they'll drive more safely than others do (which I suspect is mostly said by those for whom its not true) are still harming others through greenhouse gas emisisons that result in flooding. But it's still popular enough that libertarian and non-libertarian voters alike don't want to go as far as banning it outright. As a natural consequence, the market has stepped in to supply the demand in a way that might partly address environmental and/or safety concerns; electric cars, and self-driving cars, respectively. But then that leaves another issue; the opportunity cost of what could've happened if we passed peak oil without electric cars, or self-driving cars, ever becoming available. If no one ever developed electric cars, would this have forced motorists to switch to public transit, bicycling, walking, or any combination thereof? Would this have eventually saved more lives than climate change is expected to cut short, or is the tendency of climate change to cut lives short expected to be a continuous annual permanent feature of climate change as much as it is for traffic deaths?

My apologies, I forgot I had worded it that way. . . . I really need to make a point of re-reading stuff I typed before going to the pharmacy and back. In the meantime, is there any way to edit the post to reflect the present tense? I must've forgotten mid-typing whether I intended to go for the hypothetical past or the money that could be saved in the future. (Earlier on I was considering asking both, but they are distinct questions, if somewhat related, and I consider where to go from here the more important one.)

I'm not referring to how much we "would have" saved if we started on solar sooner; I'm talking about how much we "could" save if we invest in setting up the concave arrangements of mirrors, starting today, instead of investing in more nuclear energy that'd continue to be expensive in maintenance cost. Am I correct in assuming that thermal!solar is less expensive, as far as maintenance goes, than nuclear energy?

https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1848-i-work-in-nuclear-power-plant-5-insane-realities.html "A small mistake during the reassembly caused 50 gallons of thin, flammable, corrosive oil to go spraying everywhere. Another time, the control room people goofed and shut a massive valve to the cooling tower before turning off the pump. The resulting pressure caused the pipe to burst, and we had ourselves a man-made geyser. Of course, this was in the winter, so the whole thing then froze solid. Yes, I realize I'm painting a very Homer-Simpson-ish portrait of the operation. But to be extra clear: None of that put the public in danger. These are expensive problems, but not dangerous ones." - Alex Dolphin I'm not making any claim either way on whether or not to believe the author; Cracked's articles are vetted, but their quality control isn't quite foolproof. However, if nuclear energy, and the inevitable screwups therein, are so expensive, this leaves a question; how much money could've been saved, in the long run, if we had just switched to the presently* available set of renewables? I'm thinking especially of solar, as theoretically a bunch of reflective surfaces arranged in a concave shape, however much initial investment may cost, (couldn't a bunch of used aluminum foil be donated and washed/flattened or something, though?) should theoretically be low in maintenance costs and eventually pay for itself, if not in direct energy, then in the added benefit of taking solar radiation that would've otherwise hit the surface and putting it to human use, cooling the desert and offsetting the CO2-induced warming of the surface. What exactly is holding solar back at this point? Surely a return on investment, even financially, should be not a matter of if but of when. However, I'm of course also thinking of hydroelectric, wind, or tidal. I know with moving parts these will probably require more maintenance than solar. The only question is how much. Are they comparably expensive, in maintenance dollars per kilowatt-hour, to nuclear energy? *As opposed to the hypothetical "alternative" renewables I came up with in prior threads, though if you are interested feel free to search them. (Hurricane, forest fire, and volcano, to be precise.)

Revisiting this thread after finally having finished the article (okay... text-to-audio thereof) I am taken aback by how recurring is the theme; and how strong a case is made; that the likelihood of children living to adulthood is tied to parents not feeling the need to have as many children. I'm kind of left wondering one thing, though. Why, if the case against population control is so strong, is the first instinct, of the vast majority of its opponents, to either say something like "what if you were never born" or to request the suicide of the person advocating population control? The former is a weak argument if only for the case for population control attracting people who perceive themselves; rightly or wrongly; as caring more about the environment than others do, hence the "need to not be born" lesser than that of others (hence eco-fanatics like David Suzuki having several children and telling others not to do the same) and the latter has the additional flaw of all the time and money that already WAS spent raising and educating oneself going to waste, if only because one dies before one can contribute to the economy and/or environment, let alone before one can experience the later stages of life.

That sounds like it would be a lot more feasible if teachers had more time to do so. Teachers are in practice overworked to the point of being overwhelmed, until or unless they are highly experienced to the point where marking is a breeze and lesson planning is made nearly obsolete by prior familiarity with what works and what doesn't in the context of the courses they teach. Most teachers aren't necessarily that far along in their careers, and many of them don't end up staying in the profession long enough to get to that point. This, I think, is another benefit of the "one time slot of one course per teacher" approach. The less of a teaching burden there is per teacher, the less of a marking and lesson planning burden there is to go with it, and the more time one has to get to know one's students as individuals.

I start with a fictional example of the topic being discussed, partly because the whole Internet's talking about this show in anticipation of a new installment coming out next year, but partly because naming any real-life examples would make people far more focused on the confounding factors in their supposed attractiveness or lack thereof. WARNING: Vulgar language in linked image. https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/821341-neon-genesis-evangelion So this meme is satirizing the in-show attraction female characters have to Shinji Ikari, the protagonist of the Japanese anime NGE. Shinji isn't exactly your stereotypical macho man. He refuses to accept conscription into combat under any circumstances short of a wounded girl his own age having to fight in his stead, outwardly admitting it's because he's afraid. He acts like a house-husband cooking for Misato, and he apologizes to Asuka for things he has no reason to believe are his fault. His self-doubt is notoriously a recurring theme of the show and he is known for crying a lot. (Sidenote: The gradual decline in commentators' patience for him is a lot more noticeable when you skip several episodes at a time.) I say this not just to talk about NGE; and a part of me almost wonders if this belongs in the Lounge; but also to discuss that meme as a jumping-off point to discuss, with those more educated in the sciences than an NGE site might necessarily attract, the real-life implications of the phrase used in that meme. In real life, I can think of many reasons machismo could be attractive. I can also think of many why it wouldn't. But since it need not be a package deal, I'll dissect each component individually. I will address causes and effects, for each. For causes, I will focus primarily on evolutionary psychology, in the context of gene-centered evolution in particular. For effects, I will focus on how people talk about this indirectly, in the context of spontaneous sincerity. Eagerness vs. reluctance to go into battle: If among our ancestors a tribe were to launch an invasion against another tribe; and lost so badly that only those who refused to join were the only ones surviving; isn't it those few who refused who'd sire a disproportionate share of the next generation? On the other hand, if the other tribe were the aggressors, the few who refused to fight back could also be considered partly culpable for the aggressor tribe's reduction in the victim tribe's population through mass slaughter, or the interbreeding between aggressor and victim tribes through mass rape. So the question is by what particular means would evolution incentivize attraction to a willingness to go into battle, and/or to sound judgment in which battles are worth going into. Whatever effects this may have are murky; sometimes soldiers are seen as tough guys, other times they're seen as "suckers" who supposedly were fools to risk their own lives like this. Tens of millions of Americans voted for a man who referred to them as such. More precisely on the matter of attraction, there was also the "girls say yes to boys who say no" campaign, but it's not clear whether this was sincere or just a means to use horniness as an incentive to encourage draft dodging. Self-confidence vs. self-doubt: Well, confidence in general, in a platonic context or otherwise, is kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. If a politician doesn't bother to prepare a concession speech, his supporters will call that confidence, and his critics will call that arrogance. So the question then becomes how useful attraction to confidence would be among our caveman ancestors. Would the more confident ones have been more willing to "sell" their ability to pleasure her, and the self-doubting ones therefore been less convincing, or would the more confident ones have been seen as overcompensating for sexual skills that don't "speak for themselves"? Unapologetic vs. apologetic: Obviously apologizing too much just tarnishes the perceived sincerity of one's actual apologies. But if you go too far in the other direction; and apologize too little; it could create an image of someone too in denial about having done regrettable things to admit it, and in turn, also untrustworthy. Where would the tradeoff be? Would it be different among cavemen? Why or why not? Would there be less to apologize for if a less sophisticated society had more predictable consequences? Conformity vs. nonconformity to gender roles: Obviously many of our gender roles are artificial. But once something's gender-normativeness has been established in our heads, would any perceived straying from it be a point in its favour (ie. a willingness to be oneself that is resilient in the face of social pressure?) or a point against it? (Resistance to the norms of the tribe?) Obviously we have to have some emotional recognition of a willingness to stray from gender norms, or else ours wouldn't have been able to differ from those of a caveman in the first place. Defiance vs. subservience: In a perfect converse to the above, the advantage of subservience is obvious (useful to a superior who needs someone willing to do what they're told) but there are advantages in defiance, such as a willingness to trust one's judgment that is resilient in the face of social pressure. I keep hearing that our evolutionary cousins, the great apes, are known for "egalitarian" societies, yet I've always been skeptical such a term can even be defined, let alone found in nature. How would they handle someone with a disability, for instance, who can't contribute in necessarily the same ways as everyone else? Even those who claim to believe in "equality" can be caught making cheap shots at the appearance or superficial frailty of those they don't like. Stoicism vs. crying: To suppress or conceal one's crying is to feign greater stoicism than one actually has, unless one replaces that crying with rage, in which case... actually, I would've always thought being enraged would be more embarrassing than crying, as that tells other people "I am so helpless against my own rage that you could provoke me into doing violence that would land me in jail!" No one goes to jail for crying... that I know of. But I guess the advantage would be to feign being more of a threat. Again, I'm trying to picture how this would've worked out around cavemen. "If I'm angry, I can kick the ass of whoever in that other tribe threatened to punch you in your pregnant belly" or something like that. Or if they suppress both their crying and their rage, "I'm so rational I can figure out how to most effectively protect you from whoever in that other tribe threatened to punch you in your pregnant belly." But alternatively, the advantage of crying would be "at least I care that he threatened that, and I care in a way that isn't going to make me do anything rash" perhaps? All things considered, if I had to guess, I would assume that women are more attracted frail/subservient/apologetic/self-doubting guys than society claims. It's just that it's not in society's interests to promote that. After all, could you imagine the potential ramifications of a society where every man and boy on the face of the Earth now had an incentive to feign all of those traits, just because they thought it's what women were attracted to? Feigned toughness/dominance/shamelessness/confidence can be mildly irritating, but the feigning of self-doubt and poor self-worth, on the part of most men and boys, could make everyone so used to hearing it that those who really need help with their issues might be mistaken for faking it. . . . Sidenote: The more I think about evolutionary psychology, the more grateful I am that the 21st century is a century of laws.