Me: Cars
Advertising.
The only correct answer in this thread.
It’s the biggest industry in the world by a very large margin and the most destructive one on a global scale.
Some level of advertising is surely okay, right?
If I open a bakery and put a sign out front that says “Baked good for sale!” I don’t think anyone would complain but that IS advertising.
This begs the question: What level of advertising is okay?
I miss the days of requesting big thick catalogues be sent to you in the mail from companies you’d want to do business with. They’d send you a catalogue once or twice a year and then stop if you don’t buy anything for a while. I think that was a good method, the same way I don’t mind seeing other things available on websites I’m buying from.
I also don’t mind stuff like local coupon/advert mailers that come once a month or whatever, but those tend to all just be big companies advertising “sales” that always run these days, rather than anyone I’d want to try to support. But I like the idea of packaging up all the ads they want to send out and delivering them in one go. Maybe with an opt-out. All other junk mail, stuff you didn’t request, should be banned.
And I think signage on store windows and stuff is fine, as long as it’s not an eyesore, but billboards and rooftop signage should definitely be banned. Protruding signs like that hang off the side of buildings should also go.
Meatspace advertisements are the worst imo, because there’s very little you can do to avoid them.
This begs the question
Nope. It just raises the question.
A level that does’t require selling people’s data
Religion. So many of today’s issues stem from the magical thinking inherent in religion.
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Amen
nuclear weapons, too feckin dangerous to have
I’m in mixed mind about them because you’re right, they’re too destructive, but for the time being their existence has prevented conflicts from breaking out, and since wars are typically only waged with the promise of financing it afterwards via looting or expansion, nobody is really willing to render land unusable in the process of conquering it.
The problem is that it only takes one ruler insane enough to use them to wipe out most of humanity.
You’re right. But if that ruler does decide to nuke a city or something, the next bomb to drop will probably be where said ruler is.
It will inevitably happen. One day a dumb enough ruler will use it.
But what happens next? Do we just stop there, apologize and go back to our normal lives?
And you’re probably right, the next bomb would destroy that ruler, but only if the receiver has nukes as well. If he doesn’t, who’s going to do anything to defend/avange him? No one wants to enter an nuclear war.
The reciever doesn’t need nukes. I live in Canada and we don’t have any. But the threat of retaliation from our allies that do protect us from that threat.
If Trump decides to launch a nuke at Vancouver, which of your allies are bold enough to send one his way?
The US probably since they’ll also be nuking part of their own country if they did that. The fallout would 100% affect Washington.
Well, none. He can do whatever he wants.
His government is slightly smarter than him so for now we’re safe, however no one’s going to stop a dictator.
This is a good point I never considered before.
That comment is the first time you’ve considered MAD? I mean, congrats on being one of today’s lucky 10,000, but I’m surprised you didn’t learn about it in school.
When it’s presented in school, it is presented as thing of the past and localised to how Russia and America treated/still treat one another, rather than threading the needle by explaining that it still applies today. I’m pretty sure I only picked up on it after reading online explanations/justifications of nukes.
Or in other words people focus on the panic of it so much that they don’t stop to think of it as a good thing
TBF I think even without Nukes we wouldn’t have war between big countries. Because the UN would discourage it. Ukraine being a big exception to that
Except the part where we have exhaustive evidence that nukes do not always render land unusable.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima are entirely fine. The radiation levels were back at safe levels in days. Yes, we definitely fucked up a lot of land with nuclear testing and power plant overloads, but the actual nukes humans have dropped on other humans? They’re most effective when used in an air burst, and they clear up within days.
The power generation and medical applications of nuclear science cannot be overlooked based on warmongering, especially when the part youre concerned about isnt even an issue in that application of the field.
So far crypto currencies. So far they seem to expend a huge amount of electricity and used mostly for speculation.
A financial system that breeds billionaires
It’s a three way tie between:
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Leaded Gas
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Aerosols
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Nuclear bombs
Interesting fact, the same man, Thomas Midgely Jr, invented both tetraethyl-lead as a fuel additive and CFCs, almost killing everyone on earth twice over.
Karma got him in the end after he got tangled in one of his contraptions after he became bedridden with polio and died of strangulation.
I first read of him in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (fantastic book). It really shows how awful this man was.
I also love this quote from the wiki article on his legacy -
He “had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history”.
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Easy question:
AI
Net negative pushing us toward unavoidable global ecosystem collapse: it produces nothing but the unfulfilled promise of eventually replacing human workers, which it has never shown the capability to do and according to the researchers who founded the AI companies will never do due to “AI Scaling Laws”. It has increased power consumption and costs by over 30% in some US States.
24 hour news networks.
News used to just be the news when there was a half hour of local, half hour of national twice per night with a morning show for fluff, weather, and brief news updates. 24 hour news needed to fill the whole 24 hours and also pay for itself by getting eyeballs on advertisers. That’s when all of the sensationalist stuff started taking over.
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Slavery. Even after banning it pretty much everywhere, people still find ways to treat others as disposable property.
Shareholders.
The wheel. Everything went downhill from there.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
What, you expected gravity to take it uphill?
Well, gravity wasn’t discovered until much later…
Religion
Head on! Apply directly to the forehead
https://youtu.be/Is3icfcbmbsNever actually did anything and never actually claimed to. Most people assumed it was a headache relief but the company never said that. They just said to put the shit on your forehead
It’s likely LLMs in their current corporate circular funding form and cryptocurrency.
