Comment by komali2
12 hours ago
I do wonder about the tradeoff between convenience and the various negative externalities.
Example: trains are better for the environment than planes. I need to get from Copenhagen to London for a wedding next month. The train schedule is roughly 20 hours long, starts at 6am, several transfers, and something in the range of 250USD. On Skyscanner there's flights from Copenhagen to London essentially every 20 minutes, it takes an hour, and it costs 50USD. No wonder the ferry to London ended! No wonder everyone chooses the flight!
If you walk around Taiwan you'll see all sorts of failures of governance. 60 year old crumbling buildings with double stacked illegal builds on top, each floor worth 1 mil USD because there's just no supply here. Pedestrian hell because it takes coordination with 6 different agencies to get a green line fake sidewalk put on the road, let alone an actual infrastructure change. Rapidly escalating in-your-face wealth concentration as most new buildings are luxury condos that are immediately purchased, held, and kept empty by the ultra wealthy while their failsons cruise around Taipei in Lamborghinis, flagrantly violating traffic laws.
PRC propaganda against us is escalating and as soon as they learn to stop calling us separatists (and drop the Han Chauvinism angle that just centers Taiwanese identity around the island itself) and instead focus on how shit in the PRC Just Gets Done mostly to the benefit of the working class, you just gotta trade the right to protest and the right to privacy, I think that'll be the end of Taiwan sovereignty. I mean, wouldn't most people take that trade? A small increase in quality of life, an escalation in security and certainty, and all it means is you have to be a little more careful about what you say online?
I think about this a lot. I think this is the root of a lot of the problems that grew in our world - the absolutely understandable tendency in people to just want to get on in their lives, and how this makes them vulnerable to exploitation by people who are very willing to put in a bit of extra effort exploiting them.
Do you also think about your use of AI in posts? It's such a tradeoff. On the one hand - no one wants to read, on the other no one wants you to submit AI content.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What evidence do you have to support your accusation? Emdash usage? You have an emdash in your post, do you use LLMs?
Go look at my blog. Any LLM use there? I care about writing, I use LLMs to write code but never let it touch my prose, hence why I'm on a no ai webring.
I'm very annoyed by your drive-by accusation.
not the accuser but I have seen even AI to drop its usage of the emdash... thankfully! (Whats wrong with brackets?)
Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. No I am not a bot, I'm for reals.
My two cents with the EU tinted glasses. I completely agree with failures of governance that you mention. Especially the plane/train cost comparisons are infuriating. My personal view is though that the slippery slope of "security" -> "control" -> exploitation. I heard the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" in history class and time and time again, authoritarian systems have exploited the masses more effectively. All it takes is one bad ruler to turn thing around and syphon more than is "acceptable". Not that the western world is looking that great right now in terms of class divide, but the laundry at least is open for everyone to see. Freedom > Security for me.