doombolt

So many people have zero understanding of mathematical modelling but insist that they're in position to judge research in this area from moral standpoint.

It's The Holy Inquisition, crowdsource edition.

Thank you!

So I went through more than half of abstract versions and the article itself, struggle to find anything scandalous there. I persuade everyone to do the same.

Monogamy is something that is mathematically well defined.

Yes it is a good thing, as far as my opinion is concerned.

> so maybe our society just isn't mature enough yet to have that conversation.

Basically you're telling us that "maybe" you should have the power to censor us. For some values of (you, us).

Maybe not. Definitely not.

(I also think that you're factually wrong in 1)

Can you please add links for your pp. 1-4?

Otherwise it looks like you assume the result of this path without helping us actually walk it.

Don't see why the math should be serving your taste.

Nowhere in my message I am applying mathematics to a domain. I'm just stating that such math exists. Applying, or not applying, them to any real society is left as an exercise for a reader.

It's not a question of science. It's a question of math. Math is a model which allows you to over-simplify other scientific fields in the first place, and then devise solutions which turn out to be useful even in their over-simplified form.

This is the reason for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. However, here I'm not pushing any direct resemblance between model and any society anywhere. You're doing that, not me.

E.g. do you want a real eye opener?

In a monogamous society, given that Darwin's observation about increased male variability holds, when partitioning by desirability, women in the top half will have access to males with desirability greater than their own, while women in the bottom half will only have access to males with desirability worse than their own.

Go figure.

(There's a lot of assumptions here but none of them particularly unrealistic).

He's not criticizing the mathematical model, rather the application of this model to modern human society, which is something that nobody ever claimed. Straw man and a bad one at that.

He does have some arguments but math is nowhere found, making this a joke of a refutation.

> let me assure you that strong Chinese government will find a way to use all the freed up labour/capital resources,

You're telling us that they have found The Holy Grail. Let me stay confident that it isn't the case.

Maybe they have more room but then they have catastrophic failure scenario like USSR and unlike liberal economies.

Think Greece vs. Venezuela.

There's no longer any sexual liberation. Instead you are told that you need to be controlled from outside in order to not be taken advantage of. It's 50s once again?

Russia.

I don't think so. Leader for life == trouble.

I'm really unconvinced by Xi Jinping concentrating power. It does look like he desperately wants to be China's Putin (with the charisma of Medvedev), and there's nobody to stop him.

It's a question of culture. I live in a country with awful driving culture, but blaring horn is still considered very rude. Car alarms sometimes misfire, which is more of concern.

> they are investing so heavily in reducing corruption

I am extremely sceptical about such claims. Claiming to fight corruption is usually more of PR stunt. To really fight corruption you have to do institutionalized changes, such as increasing transparency, which is painful for most of regimes on Earth. Fighting corruption without changing the system is busy work and reality show.

Trolleybuses are not trams - you can still block them, but it takes much more effort. With Chinese city density and love of infrastructure I would have expected them to have a massive number of trolleybuses.

I wonder how EVs really compare to trolleybuses (tech from XX century) pollution and money-wise?

EVs have more route flexibility, and don't need expensive infrastructure, but they need expensive (and polluting) batteries and spend idle time charging.

The city I live in ponders EV-Trolleybus hybrid. I can routinely see them minding their business with poles down. Still I'm not really sure if they'll waste a lot of time manually setting it up and down and whether pure EV is a better idea.

Big-screen TVs start from $150 these days so I think they should not be mentioned as splurge wealth anymore.

I have a hunch that space engineers have suddently invented Huffman coding.

(Which leads to a general observation of "just throw in transparent compression instead of optimizing your data format")

EDIT: s/encryption/compression/

If you as a society ignore it and let it loose, why won't it?

See GDPR as a solid example of trend reversal.

Yes, but people in Europe and US are among the last to be affected by Climate Change. This means they will only cooperate if you manage to not piss them off. Telling people they should not have a second child is very potent at pissing them off. If you're curious how a pissed off person looks like, see a case of Trump, a person who totally declines to cooperate with you.

This is unless you have an army to extort measures from unwilling people in the Europe and US. I think you really don't have one. So please consider how you can avoid annoying the very people who could help you.

It's more important to not lose points in the eyes of 2/3 of population (people from, or with, families of more than 1 child), than scoring points with 1% Climate Change fanatics who. A person being told their second child is a sin against planet, a Trump voter next season.

There is also a case of not understanding geometric progression. At fertility of 1.5, 80 mln germans are 60 mln in a generation and 45 mln in two generations. At fertility of 3.9, 140 mln nigerians are 270 mln in a generation and 530 mln in two generations. Who would produce more CO2, 45 mln germans or 530 mln nigerians? This without consideration that germans will move to green tec, while nigerians will prop up their consumption standards.

You're talking about Egypt suddently becoming uninhabitable. That's not the case here. The case is that first it will be capable of hosting 100 mln people, then shrink to 90, then to 80, etc... Each transition will probably take five years. Of course there's a possibility of disasters there a wave of "sea people" may hit your wall.

There is a case of Israeli-Egyptian border.

Israeli don't have to actively kill Egyptians because they, for almost all purposes, can't enter.

Nothing much wrong in having my daughter participate in some wall building.

> How many couples will have more than one child?

I think this speech should be aimed at nations of Africa, Middle East and India. After all, they have way greater fertility rate than Europe, US and Far East, and they are also in greatest immediate danger from Climate Change.

Why this moot point is being made to HN audience, I fail to understand. We're on track to dwindle our numbers anyway.

> there is nothing to stop this trend of ridiculous ToSs.

That's easy right here. Let's just tax corporations 1¢ per user per word in their ToS.

Their second strong correlator is bicycle parking. Meaning you really have to understand the context for such correlations.

It is only a matter of comfort, and not survival, if you own a car and drive it around exclusively. If you own a car, well, impact(car) > impact(any number of pairs of shoes).