Zero Contradictions
Why Most Academic Research is Fake
Climate Change And Global Warming
If you think that “humans will be living on Mars and O’Neill cylinders 30 years from now”, then you clearly haven’t done the math for realizing just how expensive and economically impractical that is, nor have you thought about how practical it is to get to Mars and live there:
The Square/Cube Law makes it physically impossible to build megastructures like space elevators, mass drivers, orbital rings, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law
12km is the maximum length that a steel cable can support its own mass at Earth surface gravity. If it is any longer, it will snap under its own weight.
O’Neill Cylinders will never be economically feasible to build. If we built an O’Neill Cylinder that’s 10km long and 6.4 km in diameter, with a 1m thick hull, then it would weigh 3 trillion kg (2 trillion kg of steel, with 1 trillion kg of material).
Putting 1 kg into LEO varies between $50,000 and $1,500. The lowest cost being the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX, but with only 3 completed launches, this is a somewhat optimistic estimate.
So, if we assume a cost of $1000/kg, then putting a 3 trillion kg cylinder into LEO would cost $3 quadrillion ($3,000,000,000,000,000), and that’s only for one cylinder.
For comparison, the world’s nominal GDP is less than 100 trillion dollars.
And that’s only the cost to put an O’Neil Cylinder in Low-Earth Orbit. If we had to send an O’Neil Cylinder to Mars (or something that’s comparable for sustaining human life), then the costs for space travel get exponentially worse than that due to the Rocket Equation.
For more information, you should read Futurist Fantasies by T. K. Van Allen. The book packs an impressive amount of information into just 100 pages.
in which case the fundamental Georgist argument of “you can’t make more land” isn’t true.
It is true. You can’t make more land. Humans still must obey the laws of physics, whether you like it or not. Both the Moon and Mars are absolutely horrible places for any human to live, so humanity has nothing to gain from trying to live outside the Earth.
I already covered how it’s way too expensive to try that, and I didn’t even go over all the physical challenges that would make it virtually impossible. Unfortunately, it will probably take many people and most LessWrongers a long time to realize all this.
In the 1960s, people thought that Humanity would’ve achieved the technological advancements in 2001: A Space Odyssey two decades ago, and that still hasn’t happen by now. People need to recognize that technological process has clearly slowed down, and we’ve nearly reached its limits.
Another misconception that’s worth clarifying is that the value of land matters more than the supply of land. There’s obvious reasons why lots in Manhattan are worth more than acres in the Sahara Desert.
It seems like you can get 90% of the benefit of Georgism just by going full YIMBY and you don’t have to wait 30 years to do it.
Nope, that’s a huge oversimplification, and it’s much more complicated than that. Any society would have to wait at least a few decades to transition to Georgism, but then the benefits will become progressive and compounding. I recommend reading Georgism Crash Course for a concise introduction.
If it will take at least 30 years to transition to Georgism because otherwise we screw over most people who have >50% of their net worth invested in their homes, then why bother?
Because we live in reality, not a sci-fi fantasy world where humans are invincible.
Even if humans could live on Mars, why would anyone want to live on Mars when you can live on Earth instead? Even Antarctica is a thousand times better than Mars. I will never understand why people fantasize about colonizing Mars when humans haven’t even colonized Antarctica.
If your goal was to post stupid comments with the intent of angering me, then you did not succeed. The only thing you have accomplished is wasting your own time. I will not respond to you any further.
One can only imagine how empty and miserable your life is, given that you have nothing better to do besides trolling strangers on the Internet. Out of everything else that you could do with your time, that’s really what you like to do for fun?
If you’re just going to mock my ideas without rationally engaging with them, then take a hike. You clearly don’t have anything to offer to this thread, besides making comments that suggest that your intelligence is quite lacking.
You still don’t have any rational arguments to defend your views, so there’s no reason to consider anything that you say. Again, your behavior is pathetic, disrespectful, irrational, and unacceptable.
My point is that when LessWrongers see not enough water for a given population, we try to fix the water not the people.
That’s also what I proposed. On my Georgism page, I explained that I support taxing water so that water will be used more efficiently. In the Overpopulation FAQs, I explained why that’s only a temporary solution, not a long-term solution to overpopulation, but you didn’t know that because you never bothered to read it and engage with the arguments that I made.
I read your argument that preventing people from dying of starvation and/or disease is bad:
And you’re still misrepresenting it. I didn’t say that it’s “bad”, I explained that it’s putting the cart before the horse. Abundant food and increased disease resistance would increase the population and the risk of overpopulation. If we have a viable long-term solution to overpopulation, then we won’t have to worry about that if we proceed to reduce starvation and disease.
I would rather we do the hard work of supporting a higher population.
I explained in rigorous, comprehensive depth that raising the carrying capacity is not long-term solution to overpopulation, not without population control.
I also explained that population control would protect human rights, rather than harm them.
solar panels
Solar panels have a low EROI, so they are an inefficient use of resources.
Desalination
Desalination could work in some areas, but it also has environmental consequences, and it would be better to focus on using water more efficiently in many countries.
I want to read actual interesting posts and not posts about “Why doesn’t LessWrong like my content? Aren’t you a cult if you don’t agree with me?”.
That was not the point of the post. The post has many interesting linked essays for you to read, if you bothered to click on the hyperlinks and read them.
how we’re going to run out of water
The Overpopulation FAQs is about overpopulation, not necessarily water scarcity. Water scarcity can contribute to overpopulation, but it is only one of multiple potential causes.
if we don’t forcibly sterilize people
That is a strawman accusation. I never proposed forcibly sterilizing anybody, except for murderers, rapists, thieves, and other criminals. A hundred years ago, that policy would’ve had strong public support.
EA is bad because altruism is bad
I wrote that EA is mostly misguided because it makes faulty assumptions. And to the contrary, I did praise a few things about EA.
Sorry, I just can’t escape my cult programming here.
Yeah, I can tell. You can’t make any rational arguments. Your behavior is the antithesis of rationality.
It would be more rational for you to engage with the bullet points and the essays that are hyperlinked on the page. There is nothing wrong with giving a comparison of disagreements between two different movements. If anything, it’s necessary to do that in order to explore different (and potentially better) ideas. Your paragraph of mockery and gibberish is pathetic, and it doesn’t accomplish anything.
A Comparison Between The Pragmatosphere And Less Wrong
Plant Chompers by Chris MacAskil has some good videos on this topic. The descriptions for these video have more links to other videos and articles on the same topic.
The Poop Whisperer: Dr Johan Van Den Bogaerde on Gut Health—Plant Chompers
Actually, this was supposed to be a linkpost. I thought had I had submitted the post this way, but I guess not. In any case, the PDF version and the video version were already included I first submitted this post, and I edited this to be a linkpost to link to the original essay.
The post makes a separate claim with each sentence and, instead of going on to reasons, continues with yet another claim.
I don’t think you read the entire essay then. Only the essay’s introduction can be seen directly on this post. You’d have to view the PDF, the video, or the blog post to see the rest of the post and the justifications for the claims made in the introduction. That’s pretty normal in most writing.
Freedom of speech can be limited by the state, corporations, the mob or individuals acting alone. Any use of coercion to suppress ideas is an attack on freedom of speech.
In the PDF version, you can most clearly see that there is a section of the essay dedicated to explaining how each of these can happen.
It [freedom of speech] protects people with minority views from persecution by the state or the mob.
As the author defined “freedom of speech” in the first paragraph of the essay, “Freedom of speech is the principle that coercion should not be used to suppress ideas.” So of course having freedom of speech would protect people with minority views from persecution due to their ideas.
This seems significantly misleading.
How is it misleading? There are plenty of examples throughout history where not having freedom of speech lead to persecution.
Ideas should be selected based on their merits
You’re missing the point of the essay. The author agrees that ideas should be selected based on their merits. If a society truly has social rationality, then it’s already implied that the ideas that get selected and promoted by the society will be rational ideas. The point of free speech is to ensure that society never misses out on hearing a good idea.
And how are you defining “merit”? And from what perspective? When the Catholic Church put Galileo Galilei under house arrest, they censored him on the basis that his ideas contradicted their sacred texts. From the Church’s perspective, his ideas did not have any merits.
Thus, suppression of ideas could be a positive thing to social rationality.
I don’t think so. Can you give some examples of what you’re talking about?
Ideas should be selected based on their merits, and that requires that some ideas do not survive.
If a society has social rationality, then it’s going to reject irrational ideas by itself. The irrational ideas won’t survive. That means that it isn’t necessary to suppress “bad” ideas. If any ideas were being suppressed at all in a rational society, then there’s a risk that the society will limit its exposure to good ideas.
Why do you think that it’s better to forcefully suppress ideas that a fully rational society would reject anyway? How would you suppress the ideas that you think should be suppressed? How can you be sure that you would be suppressing the right ideas? You’re doing exactly what you’re accusing the author of doing in the essay.
Freedom of Speech
Well, it looks like GitHub is running again. You should be able to view those links now if you click on them.
The problem is that my site is hosted on GitHub, and GitHub is currently down. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to view those links until GitHub is up and running again.
it’s necessary for it to be morally acceptable
What is “morally acceptable”? I think morality is an illusion. I’ve also argued that eugenics can be defended within the humanist value/moral framework of the West.
Your brother should get to go into cryonics and be revived once we can heal him.
That’s a terrible idea. Cryonics is unlikely to succeed. My family also can’t afford to put him into cryonics. It’s also not any more likely that we could fix my brother, even if we did revive him with cryonics.
Failing that, it’s just the risk you take reproducing.
Why? And according to who? Numerous historical societies chose to let severely disabled people die on their own in the past, because it was maladaptive to take care of them. My parents can’t take care of him forever, and neither should society if he’s not able to make his own positive contributions.
Having to take care of a severely disabled person is a burden that literally nobody wants to have, if they have the choice of avoiding it. That’s the reality. If you disagree with me, then you better put your time, money, and effort where your mouth is and bear the burden yourself. If you won’t do that, then you’re a hypocrite.
I agree. I would support genetic engineering in some cases, but I’ve explained why I don’t believe that is an adequate solution for humanity. It won’t solve the problems of dysgenics or overpopulation.
you don’t get to take “eugenics being good” as a given when you make a post, and you have to argue first that it’s worth talking about, but like, that’s exactly what this post is trying to do.
Yeah, that seems to be one of the most common criticisms of my FAQs pages. I actually agree that some people would be more receptive to my arguments if I tried to argue my support for it more gradually, but that’s just not my preferred writing style. It would’ve made it harder for me to write everything in this post. I have autism (it runs in my family), and my brain just doesn’t work that way, at least not for this topic.
Diana Fleischman has written a different essay that takes that approach, and some people might like it better. It’s good that there are differently written essays out there on this topic.
If we can’t get tech advanced enough to become shapeshifters, modify already grown bodies, we don’t get to mess with genes.
Why not? As I explained in the essay, modern civilization will collapse without some form of eugenics.
I will never support tools that let people select children by any characteristic, they would have been used against me and so many of my friends.
You’re probably still a eugenicist in some sense. Some people would argue that opposing incest and supporting abortion of any kind counts as eugenics.
Also, negative Eugenics laws have existed in many Western countries in the past. They only would’ve be used against you and your friends if you were violent criminals, or something along those lines. Are you saying that you support the reproduction of violent criminals, who will have offspring that also carry genes that predispose them to commit more violent crimes against others?
Wars have been fought over this, and if you try it, they will be again.
Nazism is not the same thing as eugenics. Eugenics doesn’t require fighting wars.
Abortion should be blind to the child’s attributes.
If abortion should be “blind to the child’s attributes”, then you should put your time and money where you mouth is and be willing to take of disabled children who will never have a future or be able to take care of themselves. If you won’t do that, then you should concede. Your dogma will not create a sustainable, long-lasting civilization.
Also, this is kind of personal, but my own brother is so mentally disabled that he cannot take care of himself. Both of my parents, my siblings, and myself all agree that it would’ve been better to abort him, if they knew that he would be as disabled as he is. Instead, my parents and myself will have to take care of him for the rest of our lives or until he dies. I love my brother, I don’t hate him, and I think it’s very unfortunate that he is disabled. But my parents and I still believe that it would’ve been better for everybody if he had never been born.
If you had to put up with everything that my family has had to put up with, I think you would change your mind. My hypothesis is that most people are against preventing dysgenics, until they have to experience the consequences of it for themselves.
Also, some social conservatives would insist that attribute-blind abortions still count as eugenics.
Eugenics would absolutely further rationality. The hard truth that most people can’t accept is that the ability to be rational and intelligent is not equally distributed among humans. Intelligence and IQ are both estimated to be ~80% heritable. Humans won’t become more rational or intelligent in the long run without eugenics. As I’ve explained on my website, reproduction licenses are the only viable way to accomplish this and prevent overpopulation. Reproduction licenses will kill many birds with just one stone. Reproduction licenses will protect human rights, not harm them.
The most important problems of our time are the ones that we can’t discuss. A truly rational forum has to be able and willing to talk about controversial topics. Humanity cannot afford to stop talking about these topics just because they offend people and trigger emotions.
I don’t think there’s any authority that can be trusted with guided eugenics.
I could make the same argument about anything that a government does.
“I don’t think anybody can be trusted to control the police.”
“I don’t think anybody can be trusted to run the military.”
“I don’t think anybody can be trusted to collect taxes.”
Et Cetera.
Anybody who oppose eugenics on the belief that “nobody can be trusted” might as well embrace anarchism, which is doomed to fail. It’s clearly not a rational argument against eugenics.
that it’s only ever usable for evil.
“Evil” is not a coherent concept. Morality is an illusion.
I’m not going to respond to most of what you wrote here because I think this will be an unproductive discussion.
What I will say is that I think it would help to reevaluate how you’re defining all the terms that you’re using. Many of your disagreements with the OP essay are semantic in nature. I believe that you will arrive at a richer and more nuanced understanding of epistemology if you learn the definitions used in the OP essay and the author’s blog and use those terms to understand epistemology instead. Many of the things that you wrote in your comment seem confused.
As for how you’re using subjective and objective, I recognize that there are various dictionary definitions for those two terms, but I believe that the most coherent ones that are the most useful for explaining epistemology are the ones that specifically relate to the subject | object dichotomy. You’re disagreeing with the statement “knowledge is subjective” because you’re not defining “subjective” according to the subject | object dichotomy.
I’ve also written a webpage that might help some of these concepts. You mentioned JTB in your response, and I’ve written a section explaining why JTB is not an adequate way to define knowledge at all.
I already know that. I addressed these considerations in greater depth in my sequel essay: https://zerocontradictions.net/epistemology/critique-of-academic-research
Regardless, you’re missing the point of the essay. The overall academic enterprise is not designed to seek the truth. It’s clearly explained that ideological bias, perverse incentives, social circularity, naive/fake empiricism, and misleading statistics (e.g. p-hacking) compromise the production of truthful research. The sequel essay elaborates on all of these ongoing issues.