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Theft

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I wish these activists put more effort into making a proper dialogue and requesting more reproducible results, instead of trying to discredit people speaking in defense of science. It's not like there aren't valid complaints about transparency and corporate involvement. The bigger problem is that tampering and misrepresenting data is surprisingly common in all profitable science (GM included). Medical science, for instance, had a study in 2012 find 47 of 53 medical papers weren't reproducible (wikipedia, study). The thing is, of the people who speak out and try to reach the public, almost all of them aren't doing the disingenuous research. It's hard to take these movements seriously when they spend more time going out of their way to be contrary than actually pushing for some form of reasonable change.

Theft  ·  3090 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Chernobyl and Other Places Where Animals Thrive Without People

I only skimmed the conversation below, but I wanted to give my own two cents and argue a different perspective.

    The best planet will be one with no wildlife, where mankind manages and maintains the status and environment of the entire planet.

This is just plain wrong on so many levels. First of all, maintaining the status of the entire planet is impossible without wildlife. You want to manually control flooding, bacteria/algae levels, sedimentation, decomposition, carbon sequestration, ocean acidity, climate control, nutrient levels, and much more? Can you even fathom the amount of financial resources that addressing a single one of those would require? It's possibly the stupidest economic decision that could be made considering natural environments can do many of these for the low cost of sunlight and surface area. The value of developed land in terms of services is much lower than natural habitat in almost all cases. For example, much of Florida was wetlands before it was developed. Well, coastal wetlands provide an estimated $23.2 billion per year of storm protection alone in the US . Considering these habitats can also increase fishery productivity among other services, no matter how nice a beachfront property is, it's never going to be able to compare in value to coastal wetlands.

Another example, the value of cropland compared to the value of rainforest is an another atrocious deal. Rainforest soils are so low in nutrient value that rainforests can be considered 'wet-deserts.' The value you get out of it is practically nothing in comparison to the services the natural habitat provided, carbon sequestration and climate control being just one.

Instead of removing wildlife, cramming people in a smaller space would be infinitely more economically feasible.

    we have people who live substantially more deep, complex, and meaningful lives, who build things that will, at the very least ,influence society and help develop a group which builds upon what was built before, rather than starting over every generation.

Build upon what was built before... isn't that exactly what nature does? How is society more important than nature? We have a history of a few thousand years, compared to the legacy of millions/billions of years of genetic change. Yeah, we're a pretty cool species, and advancing our society to the point of survival on an astronomical scale is an important next step, but the vast majority of people are not going to live deep, complex, meaningful lives relative to the grander scale. The grand majority of people are working class, and technology is going to replace them much sooner than it's going to be replace ecological services.

Losing wildlife is much more irreversible compared to slightly delaying society. With extinction there is no going back; we can't just use science to replicate millions of years and innumerable generations of subtle genetic changes. At least not any time soon. Destroying wildlife and nature can cause serious damage to scientific advancements. Our understanding of sciences such as natural systems, genetics, and biochemistry are only skin deep, and they rely heavily on nature. We'd be destroying something we don't even understand half of.

    Fuck nature, fuck animals, humans are better.

No matter how much you dislike nature, you have to acknowledge that people and technology are not all-powerful. Even if we can accomplish a lot of cool stuff, there's many things nature just simply does better, cheaper, and more efficiently. There's some pretty interesting work being done to use economic valuations of ecosystem services; it's used to put a dollar value to represent the value of services that nature provides. In a study done in the Middle East/East Africa area, the annual costs of environmental degradation was found to be as high as 5% of the GDP. That's a pretty sizable chunk of change lost for simply not maintaining current conditions.

And, that's just an argument for the economic value of wildlife. Some of the best parts of nature are priceless; to imagine a world without nature is terrible enough. That's a future not worth living, regardless of how "cultured" we are.

Theft  ·  3095 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pacific Rim countries reach landmark trade deal, U.S. lawmakers skeptical

I hope this passes through the U.S. lawmakers; regardless of how American industry is affected, globalization is unavoidable. If it's bad for American industry, that says there needs to be changes to policies enabling American companies versus hampering foreign ones. Plus, reducing tariffs should benefit companies in the U.S. exporting, which has been on the rise.

Edit: With all the news about exporting U.S. IP regulations, I'm much more skeptical of this deal. I still think there's a lot of benefits for US industry with this deal. Unfortunately, I don't think setting American IP regulations as the global standard is even close to acceptable.

Theft  ·  3100 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sustainable development goals - United Nations

I think the ordering of these goals is pretty interesting. It looks like they're more focused on societal and social issues compared to environmental issues; but, fortunately, it doesn't seem like the goals reflect the same thing.

I would like to see more strenuous sanitation goals though. Halving untreated wastewater by 2030 doesn't say anything about their standards for "treated" wastewater. There's also basically nothing about improving the outdated wastewater treatment infrastructure that's in 1st and 2nd world countries. There really needs to be improved standards for wastewater facilities across the board. They do address it somewhat in the water resources section, especially by implicating nutrient pollution, but it still seems like a bit of a blind spot to me.

Theft  ·  3102 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Israel Worries About Russia’s Increased Role in Syria

I can understand Israel's concern considering Russia is known to support Assad, while Assad has been supplying weaponry to the Hezbollah. There's definitely some indirect (and direct) connections between the Hezbollah and Russia. I kind of hope that eventually the Hezbollah get cut out of the whole conflict in hopes of placating all parties considering they're really the odd one out. Unfortunately, Assad may be unwilling considering they've basically saved his entire regime.

Theft  ·  3105 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Out of the frying pan, into the fire: 4chan now belongs to 2chan

I was under the impression that Gamergate started with 4chan. It's possibly talking about that. Whether that can even be considered a proper sjw movement is a different matter though...

Theft  ·  3107 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Bugs in space: How microbes are surviving on astronauts

Yeah, the idea that our body is a unique microbiome is fascinating. There's a pretty interesting study about the diversity of bacteria in the bellybutton alone. The fact that one individual was found to have extremophiles living in their bellybutton is quite mind-boggling.

I'm interested to see what kinds of effects our interactions with microbes are causing, especially since there's a pretty limited understanding right now. An in-depth study focused on human health was launched in 2008, but we're probably still a ways out from seeing any major results. I'm looking forward to what kinds of discoveries can be made as our monitoring methods and relevant tech improves.

Theft  ·  3108 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Bugs in space: How microbes are surviving on astronauts

I feel like a lot of people underestimate how important the relationship we have with the microbes is. I honestly feel bad for people who are germaphobes, I imagine they don't react well to finding out their body has 10 times as many bacterial cells than human cells.

Also, on a somewhat tangential subject, a quick word of caution. Probably should avoid antimicrobial soaps or other products that use Triclosan, there's research showing it can potentially have negative health impacts. There's also little evidence antimicrobial soap is any more effective than normal soap, so why risk it.

Theft  ·  3112 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: China warns Japan over expanding military role abroad

That's probably exactly why they're so opposed to Japan taking a more active role in the region. They've been able to do as they like and go unchecked for quite awhile. I imagine they're not happy considering any 'peace efforts' will mostly likely be targeted towards the smaller powers China is crowding out.

Theft  ·  3114 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Zipf Mystery - Vsauce

That makes me a bit curious if purposefully breaking the zipf is somehow unpleasant. Like you said, you'd think twice about saying 'sauce' a bunch of times in a row, but we don't give a second thought to repeating common words. Kind of freaky to think that we have some sort of unconscious bias.