Citation please.
“Fossil fuel subsidies reached $90 billion in the OECD and over $500 billion globally in 2011.[1] Renewable energy subsidies reached $88 billion in 2011.[2] ”
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
(This is without even considering that fossil fuel usage imposes external costs such as pollution, that the fossil fuel user does not pay. Some have argued that this amounts to an effective subsidy of the order of a trillion dollars per year).
If we need to look to economics for rationality quotes, we are getting towards the bottom of the barrel, Robin Hanson notwithstanding.
The less you care about “the respect” others show towards you, the less power idiots can exert over you.
I don’t think this is generally true. Do you mean:
“The less you care about “the respect” idiots show towards you, the less power idiots can exert over you.”??
I am having trouble understanding the message here… and consequently how this is a good rationality quote.
Is this trying to say “don’t bother trying to please people in childhood”?
Is it “don’t bother trying to earn respect as an adult”?
Both are poor advice, in general, IMO.
The problem is underspecified in a more fundamental way: It does not tell you what to optimise!
One needs to specify both the parameter (eg. expected value) and the time (eg. after 1000 days).
Stalin was almost universally loved and worshipped among the not-yet-jailed population
This is plain not true, the level of his popular support (not “love and worship”) is disputed, but at the “more than half” vs “less than half” level.
But I kind of agree with your conclusion.
The problem is that the cost of installing say individual hot water meters to each apartment would more than eliminate the upfront savings, and reading the meters and doing the paperwork would eat up the operating cost savings.
That’s an excellent point! Lets just do some maths:
Water cost here is $2.00/m3
Cost of heating 1000 kg of water 20-->60 deg with gas@ $0.02/MJ: ~4010004*.02/1000 = $3.20 (this is central, individual would be abt double)
So the cost of heating is not far from the cost of water… I think this could work.
Thanks, I will try this and see how it turns out. Might report back in a month or so!
It is a bad idea. Have a delicious meal instead (it really is not hard), preferably in the company of interesting people. Unless of course you do not derive pleasure from delicious meals, or you do not consider pleasure to be of intrinsic value.
Do you feel about talking to a realistic AI-engineered chatbot often?
Hmm, is this not the correct solution for two super-rational players:
Player One: Pick C with probability of 2⁄3 - e; pick B with probability of 1⁄3 + e, e being some very small but not negligible number. Player Two: Pick Y
Expected payoff for Player One is 4 2⁄3 −4e; way better than playing A. For B is 2⁄3 + 2 e, a tiny bit better than playing X—so B will play Y, since he knows that A is totally rational and would have picked this very strategy.
A question with no data is something like: Will the Emperor of Alfa Centauri eat fried lummywaps or boiled sanquemels today?
I get your point, but your example is poor—I think we have more than enough data to answer this question: No, with 99%+ probability.
I am certain that someone will point out to me an example of a high-value industrial work that was allowed to fall into decrepitude and neglect
Ok, since no one else has to date, I will. My example is the Longford Gas Plant, one of the largest and most profitable in the world. It processed pretty much the entire gas oitput of Australia’s richest oil province, and supplied virtually all the gas and LPG needs of the city of Melbourne. The revenues generated by the plant were several million dollars PER DAY. Still, the American bungee-management decided to save costs by cutting maintenance “’till it hurts”.
Then this happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esso_Longford_gas_explosion
I worked at Longford in 1999-2000, on a backlog of modifications and maintenance requests, some dating back to 1979. Documentation decay was well and truly happening. One example that comes to mind is that certain drawings of underground piping, carrying gas and LPG, were lost. Excavations were a bit of a problem...
From some WSJ article:
The setting of Einstein’s initial salary at Princeton illustrates his humility and attitude toward wealth. According to “Albert Einstein: Creator & Rebel” by Banesh Hoffmann, (1972), the 1932 negotiations went as follows: “[Abraham] Flexner invited [Einstein] to name his own salary. A few days later Einstein wrote to suggest what, in view of his needs and . . . fame, he thought was a reasonable figure. Flexner was dismayed. . . . He could not possibly recruit outstanding American scholars at such a salary. . . . To Flexner, though perhaps not to Einstein, it was unthinkable [that other scholars’ salaries would exceed Einstein’s.] This being explained, Einstein reluctantly consented to a much higher figure, and he left the detailed negotiations to his wife.”
The reasonable figure that Einstein suggested was the modest sum of $3,000 [about $46,800 in today’s dollars]. Flexner upped it to $10,000 and offered Einstein an annual pension of $7,500, which he refused as “too generous,” so it was reduced to $6,000. When the Institute hired a mathematician at an annual salary of $15,000, with an annual pension of $8,000, Einstein’s compensation was increased to those amounts.
What ship are we on, dude?
That’s not what happened on the Titanic.
I don’t think the article is saying that… what they are saying is that the way WW1 happened was akin to someone saying “Ram the iceberg...” etc, i.e. for clearly stupid reasons.
Maybe...
a) having and raising well-educated and well-brought-up kids is expensive, but in the end it is a fantastic investment (and from my own experience, makes one happy) b) having and raising kids who will require charity to survive is cheap, and also immoral
Unfortunately, giving to famine relief promotes b).
If … … then you are likely to believe you have free will.
Well, that is a bit underwhelming, eh? A self-administered test that tells you what you are likely to believe?
Apart from what g_pepper has correctly pointed out regarding size/power of hydro plants…
With the right terrain, this is pretty trivial, all you need is a relatively small dam wall closing off a small ravine between mountains… here is a nice example:
http://www.iwb.ch/media/de/picdb/2012/366/nant_de_drance_stausee_vieux.jpg
http://www.iwb.ch/media/de/picdb/2012/367/nant_de_drance_stauseen_vieu.jpg