luis_cho

From Donella Meadows [1]:

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM (in increasing order of effectiveness)

9. Constants, parameters, numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).

8. Regulating negative feedback loops.

7. Driving positive feedback loops.

6. Material flows and nodes of material intersection.

5. Information flows.

4. The rules of the system (incentives, punishments, constraints).

3. The distribution of power over the rules of the system.

2. The goals of the system.

1. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.

Regarding point 2: What is the goal of the current system?

[1] https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-t...

Consider a graph in which one side shows how easy it is to achieve a goal, and the other side shows how useful it is,

At the beginning of industrialisation we were solving easy and useful problems. For example, sanitation, refrigeration, etc.

Now we're solving problems that are not only useless but potentially destructive, such as the attention economy, artificial intelligence and planned obsolescence. At the same time, these problems use up a lot of energy and cause pollution.

Portugal is the country from OECD with more houses per family (almost 2 houses per family), and we still have a housing crisis

I love this. I would like to see a mod that turn the ipod into a easy to open device live the nokia's from the 2000

The objective is not to increase renewables but to reduce non-renewables.

Michael Burry, one of the guys that shorted the house market in 2008, started to invest in water since 2013

From Wiki: "In 2013, Burry reopened his hedge fund, this time called Scion Asset Management, filing reports as an exempt reporting adviser (ERA) active in the state of California and approved by the SEC.[19] He has focused much of his attention on investing in water, gold, and farm land. He has said, "Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not—water is political, and litigious."[20]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Burry

We should all have a personal postal code that would link to our current address.

When we change our address we would link the postal code to the new directory. By having this the companies would not know where we live and we would have a place to select the mail we want.

When you say crackpots are you referring to Sam Bankman-Fried?

This takes programming by coincidence to a whole new level.

We could add taxes for cement that could be redirected to a carbon dividend.

There is a environmental cost that we are not paying when we build houses, and having a tax it's a fair way to incorporate this externalities. I don't trust the state with the money from this taxes so lets share them equally with the population.

We can do the same with aviation that would also reduce speculation of the house prices.

Why do we need more cement?

In my country there are 2 houses for each family, and we in a housing crisis.

Maybe the solution can be less speculation, a social solution instead of a technological one.

The problem with remote work is that it effectively solves more problems than it creates and this is a nightmare for those who live off speculation under the guise of "changing the world".

Now they have at risk the millionaire rents they charge their employees.

The worst part is that the decentralisation of talent puts their monopoly at risk.

All the other people that are attending the facetime call should also be using the glasses and why not an apple headphone. That way instead of talking to my brother I could talk to a Daft Punk member.

We could change the name of the app to robottime.

Thanks, raising 1,5 degrees on a average of 13,9 it's really a lot.

In my opinion the only way to slow down involves changing this growth oriented economy. I hope the EU conference "Beyond growth" is a start of a new movement.

It's not the goal but the value itself (1).

It's strange that we don't a value but a definition of a value.

I totally understand that we need a target to motivate politicians (sad but true).

Ok but what is the value? Is there hard value like "15.4 degree celcius"?

Does anyone here knows what is the temperature value that we are comparing to?

I cannot find that anywhere.

Try to buy a kobo and connect with your getpocket (firefox read it later).

I cannot read blog posts on my computer but I can read this way.

It has a very nice feature. You read the articles offline (after you sync the kobo with pocket), and when you click on the blog links, it presents you with the option of connect to the internet or store the link in pocket. That way you can read the link later and focus on the blog post

Just before the pandemic, when I moved house, I carried out an experiment and did not install internet for 6 months. It should be noted that I use a dumbphone (fruit of another experience), and therefore did no have access to any social network, youtube, etc.

The scuttlebutt network, was a way to cheat. As it is offline first, I would sync it to a wifi network that I found on the way to home, and watch the user posts at night;

I must say that the community is one of the best I've seen, even though I haven't interacted with them much.

After the pandemic I was part of the great resignation and with the delivery of the work PC I uninstalled the network, but it was one of the best communities I've met.

Lately I'm really thinking of creating an SSB-room [1] and invite some friends to this social network.

[1] https://github.com/ssbc/go-ssb-room

I don't know if you know the concept of degrowth

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Degrowth-Giorgos-Kallis/dp/15095...

There is a famous quote from Kenneth Boulding “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist."

Sadly we will know in the next years how fragile is the current food production system. High centralised food system based mainly on fossil fuels gives high yields until it doesn't.

Every time I listen to Steven Pinker I think that he would learn a lot with Nassim Taleb books.

> we see that "depletion of mineral resources" is #53. So why #53 as opposed to #191, or #67, or #3?

I think the list is on alphabetic order.

Regardless of the reasons above the real problem is that we are putting all the eggs on one basket. When we listen to Elon Musk saying we need to be an interplanetary society we think "the guy is right", but we have difficulties on accepting that having a single global economy is dangerous.

Resilience is the new buzz word but anti-fragility is what we should strive for. Nassin Tabel give Switzerland as an example. Again you see the pattern, instead of one big and fragile system you have 26 cantons with some degree of independence.

I confess I haven't read the article yet but it gave me the feeling of being related to limits to growth.

It intrigues me that growth is one of the goals of sustainable development (the 8Th), when we have a group of brilliant MTI scientists warning of its limits since the 1970s.

At a time when all we hear about is hyper growth, I hope the work of Jay Forester and Donella Meadows is revisited by new engineers. It's time to question the goal of the system.

For those who don't know Jay Forester is one of the persons responsible for world3, and the limits to growth report 50 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

I agree with you, the other problem is to rely on only one system. Our global economy is fragile in this sense.

What you are talking its called environmental decoupling. Studies suggest that is not possible to have absolute environmental decoupling globally.

Absolute decoupling is when emissions going down while we have economic growth, relative decoupling is when emissions diverge from economic growth. The last one os insufficient for mitigate climate change.

https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/

Another good resource is Tim Jackson "Prosperity without Growth".