theknown99

I was replying to the parent, who suggested a cure for all cancer cannot come soon enough - I'm not so convinced we should be aiming for immortality.

Point taken though...

I appreciate your arguments, but why then is the world population graph basically linearly increasing since the 60s? It's not slowing down.

Remember when they said we'd run out of coal in the year 2000? Or that the ice caps would have melted by 2012?

https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...

World population. Up and to the right.

* Population growth in the first world is stable, low, or even negative.

A quick google search shows that whilst population was pretty stable in UK in the 80s, since then it's been steadily rising. Growth is now 0.75% a year.

But that growth rate is deceptive. Look at

https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...

But that growth rate is deceptive - it "looks" low. But if you check the absolute numbers:

In the UK, population has grown by around 10% in the last 20 years, and it's on an increasingly upward trend.

https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...

Just anecdotally, if you live in the UK, you'll know how many new homes they're building all over the countryside.

World population: https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...

I'm glad you can see that graph levelling off, but I can't see it...

There is no solution I can see, and that's worrying. While we're all running around curing diseases, solving global warming etc, the thing that will kill off our species is our own "success".

35 is too young, and I really do feel for anyone in that situation.

But cancer when you're over 60? That's basically just dying of old age...

IMHO we should focus on quality of life. Not quantity.

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much?

Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else?

Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners...

edit: Downvote brigade... why am I wrong? What's going to save us from our own 'success'? How many more billion people can the planet take?

Political correctness is such a depressing drain on the world. Leave it how it is. It's fine.

Reminds me of when they tried to rename Manholes to "Personnel Access Units" to avoid offending women.

If you're offended that something is named a 'manhole', you probably have too much time on your hands.

He didn't "invent" JSON.

JSON is a subset of javascript which already existed. He just coined the phrases 'json' and wrote it down.

unless you work in a truly remarkable place men considerably outnumber women.

That in no way points to inequality. It points to the fact that men and women want different things, and have different strengths and weaknesses.

The idea that there aren't as many women in IT as men because of some sort of discrimination is laughable.

You can still be an outlier in terms of the population as a whole. With all due respect, perhaps you're in a bubble.

Do you watch American Idol? Do you read celebrity gossip magazines? Do you play bingo or the lottery? Do you watch Fox news? Do you buy a newspaper? Do you click on ads?

Millions and millions of people do all of the above - they are not outliers.

On your previous point "How should a lie be useful to me? I just can't see it.", we have this problem all the time outside of advertising with general information. Look at the average news story on Reddit. It's probably biased, probably a half truth, probably out of context, probably only half the facts of the story. Everything is biased and needs careful inspection before you can take it at face value.

However, there are obvious ways to do this. For example, I "trust" Lego. That means if they advertise a new awesome Batman Lego Arkham Asylum set, I'll know it's going to be quality, and awesome, and I'll buy it. If however it's some new unheard of company, I'd probably want to go examine it in a toy shop before I buy it.

I'm not trying to convince you that advertising is useful, I don't think you'll change your mind. But hopefully you'll see that you're not in a majority, and the majority think advertising is useful.

Advertising shows you things you might want to buy. It's useful. if you have money to buy such things.

Who wouldn't want to see adverts for cool gadgets, toys, houses, suits, holidays, etc?

What was your last product you did not hear about before and bought after seeing an ad?

Probably buy something each week that I saw previously advertised somewhere.

The last thing was probably some pig electric fencing that was advertised in a pig magazine last week.

You're an outlier. Perhaps you're just so determined to be against advertising you can't see the value in it. Without advertising, how would we know what products exist?

When you go see a movie, do you enjoy seeing the trailers showing what other movies are coming out? Because I do. It's useful information.

Same with adverts in magazines. It shows me products and services I didn't know about, some of which will be useful to me.

They're not a pain to most people though. That's the point.

If I buy a car magazine, guess what... it has some adverts for cars and car related products. Some of which are interesting and useful to me.

FWIW, It's trivial to detect adblock and degrade the users experience. It's also trivial to get around adblock and show the user adverts.

If adblock usage ever became mainstream, it'd become an arms war which advertisers would win.

So about 2% of their hosting bill...

IMHO, the type of person who installs adblock isn't the type of person you can sell things to easily. They're decidedly anti-mainstream, anti-corporate, probably not particularly rich, etc.

So it's not just a matter of convincing their userbase to stop blocking ads, you'd need to tell their current userbase to go away, and invite a better userbase to come and click on ads.

Reddit created this problem by fostering a culture of anti advertising early on.

Reddit should probably just become some non-profit foundation like wikipedia and show begging adverts.

The conclusion is, that if you want to make money, you probably don't want to think of yourself as a customer, especially if you're such an outlier.

You want to think about what 'normal' people do, and like. Because there's a hell of a lot more of them.

Of course you can have success with a niche product catering to minorities, but it's a lot easier to just make something most people want.

I've never understood advertising on Reddit. It's basically a very anti-advertising community, who will very likely be hostile to your product/service.

If Reddit ever became profitable, I think their userbase would revolt. The average Redditor is pretty anti-corporate, anti-rich, anti-profit, etc etc.

It's more in line with wikipedia.

Do you understand you're an outlier?

You're a small but vocal minority.

Just like people who don't own TVs, people who don't listen to pop music, watch reality TV, indulge in celebrity gossip etc.

You're an outlier - understand and accept that the vast majority of people are not like you.

I disagree. There are many things that are illegal because they are bad for society.

"crowdfunding" is completely unregulated, and just like other startups that decide regulation isn't a good idea (Mt Gox, airbnb, that unlicensed taxi thing, etc etc), things rarely end well.

For every 1 legitimate crowdfunding campaign, there's probably 100 that are just there to scam people out of money. And when people are increasingly scammed out of money, who will they look to to compensate them? Their government.

For me, it'd be like "virtual-parent.com! No need to be a parent to your kids, just point them at this website and we'll be their parent for you".

If you want less stress, or to calm down, the last thing you should be doing is staring at a computer screen. Go outdoors. Exercise. Meet real people.

If you want less stress, turn off your computer and go out for a walk, do some exercise, be with friends/family.

Can't put into words how horrible this idea is.

"People are quite concerned. Mt. Gox's crisis communications have been wildly below the level of professionalism one would hope to see from a company with several hundred million dollars of financial assets."

That's kinda why banks are regulated surely.

I agree, and the banks should have been allowed to fail. There should not have been any bail out. But that's a completely different argument to the one of "is there cheap enough housing".

Not sure you understand quite what free market means.