lsd5you

In the UK 60%+ of people have consistently supported reducing immigration, over decades.

It's more correct to think that when 60% of the elites support something change occurs.

This is a lot of media. Bizarrely no skepticism, just writing articles matter of factly using dubious (or at the very least opaque/unverifiable) figures from foreign governments.

Likely a rhetorical question, but they're trying trying to become the place where people go to look for things ... since apparently there is a massive amount of value (at least enough to risk the windows user experience) in controlling that entry point into search.

So you won't conceed that this is problematic that there is according to you presumably relevant data they could cite - even if it doesn't directly apply to yemen in that particular perioud, but they chose not to? I mean what ever happened to 'citation needed'.

I mean uncertainties is a bit of an umbrella term. You should be able to be certain about predictions if you make the error bars big enough. If you still can't come up with a reliable assertion doing this then things are spurious.

Which is problematic.

They are citing it as a cause but have no quantative basis for it what so ever apparently. The effect could be 0, or negative, they've apparently just brought feelings on the situation.

So figure SPM.7 looks pretty serious. It is 60-80 years in the future (probably further at the time of the models) and based on models (albeit on the agreement of presumably independent models). However current shortages are being attributed to climate change. To do this it should be possible to a) show a long term drop in precipitation and b) show climate related causality somehow. This should be easier than accurately predicting the future - but of course is less easy than innaccurately predicting the future.

So what you show I would say reenforces my point. We have predictions based on models (which we can take seriously or not), but then we also have current events which are being attributed to climate change with no quantifiable basis for doing so - despite the fact it should be possible to come up with some kind of proxy for climate induced problems(other than just a shortage happened).

There have always been droughts though, and things have varied from location to location. This effect you are invoking needs actually quantifying, and then comparing to the change in population. Would these regions coped if their populations hadn't drastically increased? Has water supply actually even decreased?

e.g. Yemen, population has gone up x4 in 40 years (or something like this). They have wars, and water shortages. What is the relative contribution of climate change?

So, see this article.

https://climateandsecurity.org/2016/08/03/a-storm-without-ra...

It is fairly balanced and fact filled, but when it comes to reduced rainfall and climate change, they are invoked, but left completely unquantified. No source, no estimate, no numbers (let alone a nice impartial unmanipulated graph). Did it decrease 10%, 1%. So if they have absolutely no handle on the quantification how can they make the claim at all? If there is a large uncertainty then that should be expressed.

This is what I mean, we are being primed to accept climate change as an explanation. When we have other massive, dominating factors - massive population growth and running out of acquifer runway (i.e. they have been in deficit for a long time).

I dunno, either we lurch from crisis to crisis and possibly end up with an ungovernable world, or look at implementing something like a one child policy in countries with very high population growth (or pressuring them to do so by preventing them from exporting population).

Certainly move the discourse beyond ... so well population is going up, nothing can be done about it.

We will have overpopulation and environmental crises in the future and they will get explained away mindlessly as being completely caused by climate change, when that may be only a partial or even not significant factor in the events.

Not enough fresh water - climate change! Not the fact that the population increased by a factor of 4, and the local acquifers have been drained.

but we will be able to genetically engineer ourselves out of it before it becomes a serious issue.

What is your level of uncertainty regarding this? It would seem to be merely a possibility, especially if we undershoot due to falling intelligence levels ...

IQ being 'a load of crap' doesn't follow from some journalists glib (and incorrect) claim. What is more, if it were true and the IQ differences were such that todays average measured as a genius then, if you were to witness someone ace the test, you could reasonably hail them a genius at least in the colloquial sense.

Erm surely ability is important as well. Programming is no different in this regard to pro sports - some people have more talent (which probably in turn breaks down into innate attributes, determination and learning opportunity earlier in life).

And probably also the non-local effects of using a framework - and a fairly magic one at that. All the effects of which are understood when creating the functionality, but the maintainer (even when it is the author) has a much harder time with probably only a partial understanding with certain things being out of mind.

Which is why precautionary and moderate tariffs are suitable, with some discretion for cases where things are especially egregious and/or where the economics are different (low margin vs luxury goods need different levels of tariff).

Probably ideally tariff levels should not directly made by the executive, but rather some kind of review system - (although quangos are another problem).

I'd argue that trump is a break from those past dogmas and regulatory capture (to some extent). Certainly he wasn't approved by the media - who are controlled by big business via advertisements.

Trump is rightwing in the same way that the german national socialists were right wing. i.e. Not really economically, or at least big business has to be aligned with the nation. I am not drawing an equivalence - he is to the Nazis what Bernie Sanders is to the Soviets i.e. not comparable in scale at all.

Which is why tariffs make a lot of sense. Yet there has been this massive movement of reaganite/right wing tariffs bashing for decades now - where the mantra of tariffs causing economic harm is mindlessly repeated. You would think they didn't generate tax revenue (and thus reduce taxes/improve economics elsewhere), and where not easier to collect than many other taxes.

I'm not denying the dangers. I can see how countries could fall into populist/short term positions or get involved in harmful escalating tit-for-tat increases, but this is a strawman when it comes to having moderate tariffs.

You don't seem very convinced about your own alternative though do you? More people might join your cause? And maybe they won't. Yet you may be right that they are setting their cause back. In which case there are no answers. We carry on, destined to be governed by crisis.

It feels like something the (non-corrupt) left and right should be able to agree on. Plenty of people on the right seem disappointed that Trump seems to have lost his pre-government isolationist tendancies.

I suppose the only hope is this time around it's a 'trumpian' ploy. i.e. War or give us what we want, with the emphasis on getting some deal. Not that that is ok. The impression very much is that the deal may be in fact that he may get is give the 'deep state' a war and then he gets some media support and a chance at a second term.

It is presumptious to think that anyone could say anything constructive without generalising or insulting. You personally could be the one in a thousand who just is genuinely different, but when there are a e.g. million+ people in japan who don't leave their bedrooms and never grow up or grow out then there is obviously a new unsustainable pattern of anti-social behaviour, and it's not a stretch to say it's probably not good for the people involved - despite current trends for acceptance and sensitivity.

I can relate to this somewhat, but was anyone saying things like this before the internet? What would someone 30 years ago think about this position. It strikes me as internet enabled behaviour. Canaries in the mine as it were - the first tranche of people to fall out of the natural social order.

This is a ludicrous position. Apart from the fact that they have different editorial positions from each other. They cannot be both unbiased.

The BBC makes some effort to be unbiased - by giving air time based on e.g. based on success at the ballot, but inevitably reflects the metropolitan position of most of it's employees.

This feels to me like hubris, a kind of 'end of history' prediction that we have finally progressed to at least the beginnings of a final moral order. Personally I don't believe this to be the case, and the ways it can go wrong will leave us wishing that freedom of speech protection had not been eroded.

My god, I know we can't qualify absolutely everything we say, but I feel like you need some error bars on those predictions. Actually that is an understatement. It is wildly speculative to talk about GDP proportions and technological solutions in 80 years time.

I say make the world more interesting not less... People are adults and they can decide. To the extent that I agree that society 'needs to change' the most serious problems (abuse) are all things which have happened in private. It someone wants to be borish in public, everyone is aware, everyone can deal with it.

For all the criticism that Vice gets from the anti-pc crowd that read - to me at least - as a perfectly neutral and fact based article about someone who is something of a curiousity.

Been using dvorak for perhaps 10 years myself. Ctrx-c/v/x, well they're not next to each other anymore (and kind need 2 hands to use)!

I recommend using this, in my mind a way bigger improvement than just moving to dvorak itself. It's like having vim navigation everywhere, but better.

   https://manybutfinite.com/post/home-row-computing/

But this is a completely zero sum consideration, and as such from a policy point of view it makes no sense to make any allowances for this.

Rules and technicalities have always been important? Because the EU is a technocracy and not a democracy in essence. Government is meant to control the rules not the other way round. In anycase this is a weak line given the EUs inconsistent stance on this. Preaching a morality for others that they don't themselves subscribe to.

The reason I said gas lighting is because of the lack of acknowledgement of another point of view, and essentially 0 concession or charitability. We can have different values, and if you are honest you have to allow for the fact that that means I can value the bad in the EU project greater than the good. But instead you just say, no it's stupid, it makes no sense to want to leave, rules are rules.

The population are marginally agreeing it was a bad idea (something like 48%-42%) because of the difficulty of the process and the embarassment of the national government. That is it may not be worth our while getting out. To me however it proves that you should get out since it is not a consensual or honest project. If it had been I wouldn't be wanting to leave ...

Well that is subjective, but traditionally the leaders have been France and Germany and there has been an animus against the UK and its interests.

Then if you break it down, there is the question of eurosceptics. Where is their influence? Have they ever successfully reigned in the EU or got it to reverse anything? They are represented in the parliament but it is a toothless/show organisation.

No, schengen was another irreversible progression that we opted out of like the euro. The discount is because the rules so heavily favoured continental farmers. The UK was always the 2nd biggest net contributor after Germany (and top 5 per capita), but without the influence to match it. This is despite being told we are 20% less productive than the french ...

What we wanted out of the EU was a consensual free trade arrangement not to support an expansionistic political project that ultimately wants to disolve it's constituent nations.

They allowed favored nations to flaunt fiscal rules for decades and cannot get their accounts signed off. Plus if some rule doesn't suit then it can get changed. It's not meaningless what you are saying but it's hardly the whole story. In this example (I don't even particularly care personally) they could easily grand father existing .eu domain holders. It would not threaten the existence of the EU to do that, or undermine the integrity of the institution. In fact it would reassure all other holders that they have bought into a stable system.

The general EU position on rules is also deeply undemocratic in the sense that the unlimited commitment was not properly communicated or admitted to at the time all this was put into place.