The paper opens with "to feed a growing population" without asking is that what we need? want? where we are actually heading to?
Is feeding the world a real problem? I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.
edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
Yes, but it is not a production capacity problem. The constraints on food are mostly in the logistics chain, often having to do with corruption or distribution targets (food goes where the money is), or regulation (did you know that cherry growers in the Upper Midwest are required --_by Federal law_-- to destroy unsold crops?).
A huge amount of food goes to waste simply because of regulation or subsidies, at least within the United States.
Tart cherries are supply-controlled because they are processed into other goods, like pie filling, and can be stored for long duration (multiple seasons). The supply-control regulation is designed to prevent a surplus crop from depressing the market to the point where it's no longer viable to grow tart cherries - reducing future supply, ie. the regulation is designed to provide a consistent, stable supply.
Surplus tart cherry crops are rarely destroyed. In the event of a surplus, they are often exported, diverted to secondary markets, donated, or carried-over into next-season's stock.
Yup. The regulations on food in the US is exactly to make sure the shelves stay stocked no matter what. Without such regulations, you'd experience random items being unavailable and price shocks.
One thing people often don't figure or realize is food takes time to grow. It requires long term thinking to make sure supplies are sufficient. Left to their own devices, farmers will often chase after last season's cash crop. That is bad. It's far better for farmers to stick to more predictable growing and for more dedicated incentives to be issued.
Did you intend to be so insulting, condescending, and dismissive? "Left to their own devices, farmers will often chase after last season's cash crop. That is bad. It's far better for farmers to stick to more predictable growing and for more dedicated incentives to be issued."
I grew up on a farm and lived around farmers. This is my lived experience.
I saw first hand farmers tear up a barley fields to plant wheat when the price got high enough.
Farming is a game of speculation. Planting last year's cash crop can be a successful strategy just like buying APPL today will likely yield good returns. Yet, it's a very hard market to predict with a lot of luck involved. Maybe only a few chase the cash crop and you win big. Maybe everyone does and you lose. Maybe there's a natural or political disaster that pumps up your crop.
There was nothing insulting, condensing, or dismissive about my comment. Highly speculative markets, like food, have booms and busts that can swing wildly. That's bad for something like food. The free market does not work with crops.
I'd argue that this should be refined to something like "farmers that speculate heavily struggle in an under-regulated free market".
Financial stability in highly volatile markets depends on appropriate planning, saving, and distribution. I say this from the investment perspective, but I would venture to guess that it also applies to hard goods like food-stuffs.
The nature of farming is speculation. It's inescapable. In a completely free market there's no way to guarantee success. Even with the best planning and saving you can't know what the rest of the market is doing and because of the long tail, you are locked in to harvesting and selling your crop no matter what.
You can speculate and be the farmer that always plants and grows wheat. You'll see booms and busts based on that. You can also switch up what you are growing based on your best guess about demand. Both strategies can be successful.
Funnily, one way to make farming less risky is a futures contract. And, if you know anything about futures commodity trading you know they are some of the most risky forms of trading.
It's true though, these regulations exists because speculation and profit-chasing in agriculture is what lead to the dust bowl and worsened the great depression. We really, really don't want a repeat of that.
The amazing thing about people failing to learn from history is that everybody thinks they're too smart to (a) learn history or (b) follow rules enacted to prevent the disasters of yesteryear.
Learning from history is important but it’s much more important to do so in an inclusive manner. In fact, inclusive language is more important than anything else.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot lately. We've already asked you a whole bunch of times not to do this. Eventually we ban accounts that won't stop.
Sure, but I think you should strive to run your community in a way where you’re policing the “I don’t endorse X, but I don’t understand why more people don’t do X” that this comment espouses https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773488
You’re busy policing this while people are out there saying “Destroy their things and firebomb their houses”. So is it just that I made a mistake in my phrasing? Should I just frame the same comments in the style “I would never endorse X, but I don’t understand why others don’t do X”?
I can do that easily without LLM assistance if you like. But if you want your community to be exclusively endorsers of violence against enemies of a chosen tribe, then you should ban me so you can keep your little tribe of Ted Kaczynski fanboys.
This is one of those cases where the word "but" negates everything that precedes it.
If you think we haven't been moderating the type of posts you're talking about, you haven't been tracking HN moderation lately*—which is fine, why should/would you? But in that case you shouldn't be taking snarky swipes at the mods based on galactically mistaken assumptions.
More importantly, you shouldn't be pointing fingers at others instead of taking responsibility for your own bad behavior. Even if you were right in what you said, it wouldn't justify your breaking the rules. Moreover you have a longstanding pattern of doing this and we've been cutting you slack for years.
Okay, admittedly when I read these things I lose my mind and become a viral host for the nonsense because I feel the need to retaliate against what is clearly some kind of Blue Tribe mobbery. Clearly it’s a mistaken belief that you allow targeted mob-forming on your platform. Actually you’re just drowning under the load. Fine. What I can edit out I shall and I’ll try to keep in mind that you’re trying and failing, and doing this is just participating in the crap.
I’ll follow your comments for a mod log to see and I’ll refrain.
I do think it would justify breaking any rules that allow targeted mob-forming but since that’s not happening I’m happy to stand off.
I think your fun cherry fact is pretty inaccurate. If you're referring to USDA Marketing Order #930, it's basically about setting sales limits in bumper crop years to avoid a situation where so many cherries hit the market that farmers lose money simply by harvesting them. They're free to donate the cherries etc. but again, they would be essentially wasting their own money by putting in the time and effort to harvest them beyond the amount they're allowed to sell.
This is for good reason though. You want to overproduce significantly in ordinary times so that if there is a big negative shock you will still be able to produce enough to feed everyone merely by not destroying the excess anymore.
But in a pure market that would mean that during overproduction times, prices should be low. Which they artificially aren't through industry price fixing.
The result that free markets are Prato optimal, though, requires conditions like low barriers to entry, perfect information, and low cost transactions… none of which seem very well met in the case of agriculture.
That's a nice bit of trivia but it doesn't really affect the comment you're replying to. It's still food, full of flavor and calories, and able to be used by a home cook (by making a pie).
If you researched this regulation even a little, you'd see the crops are rarely destroyed. They are far more often exported, diverted to secondary markets, donated, or carried-over into next-season's stock.
It's interesting to me how people are quick to comment about things they know nothing about...
> It's still food, full of flavor and calories
Tart cherries have about 1-2 calories per cherry, and do not taste good without a lot of sugar. That's why they are used in commercial processing, not generally sold as a fruit in grocery stores.
Coming back later, I realized earlier I looked up the calories but I didn't compare them to anything else. So while tart cherries "only" have 50 calories per 100g, sweet cherries are up around 60, not very different. An apple also has about 50-60 per 100g. So does an orange.
Fruit isn't super dense in calories to begin with because it has so much water, but it's still a meaningful amount, and tart cherries are pretty standard among fruit.
So we're moving goalposts? Where did I say people in need don't need any fruit?
People in need don't need single/one calorie tart cherries that are rarely eaten on their own. Consuming tart cherries typically involves processing that is more costly in terms of ingredients and time than simply using the pre-processed versions. Tart cherries are sometimes donated and are rarely destroyed.
Which argument will you come up with next?
You've bounced all over the place in this thread. Just let it rest...
> So we're moving goalposts? Where did I say people in need don't need any fruit?
You gave calories as a reason people don't need this fruit.
But that logic would apply to almost fruit.
So I said it would be bad to say people in need don't need fruit, while pointing out that contrast. I'm not accusing you of thinking that, I'm accusing you of using flawed logic.
> People in need don't need single/one calorie tart cherries
There's plenty of calories in a reasonable serving, and again that argument would apply to almost any fruit. It's like complaining about a single blueberry having too few calories.
> are rarely eaten on their own. Consuming tart cherries typically involves processing that is more costly in terms of ingredients and time than simply using the pre-processed versions.
They can cook with them. Lots of things are rarely eaten on their own and need to be processed, costing more ingredients and time than the pre-processed form. This includes flour!
> Tart cherries are sometimes donated and are rarely destroyed.
This is true and has nothing to do with my point.
> Which argument will you come up with next?
If you bring up a new reason to imply that donating tart cherries is unreasonable (even though it does happen!), I might disagree with that reason. Otherwise I have had one single argument and it hasn't changed: Donating tart cherries is a good idea.
I don't know why you're so fixated on whether people eat something directly. That doesn't affect what all2 was saying or what voxl was saying or what anyone else has been saying, but you keep acting like it does.
So you understood the crop we're discussing is rarely destroyed - and more often donated, diverted to secondary markets (ie. sold in grocery stores), or exported - yet still felt compelled to say a home cook could use them?
What was even the point of your snarky comment then?
> So you understood the crop we're discussing is rarely destroyed - and more often donated, diverted to secondary markets (ie. sold in grocery stores), or exported - yet still felt compelled to say a home cook could use them?
In the context of someone talking about home cooks using them, and you acting like "People do not eat tart cherries directly." is a counterargument, yes I felt compelled to correct that.
The incorrect thing you were implying had nothing to do with how often they're actually destroyed. So why would that stop me?
People do not eat tart cherries directly. The overwhelming majority of people will never process them into something edible either.
"People in need" are not going to spend time and money processing tart cherries into juice concentrate or pie filling... especially when a can of either is cheaper than the raw ingredients to make your own.
Your point is ridiculous, absurd and pedantic beyond any reasonable purpose.
Most of what you are saying is correct, but I feel the need to respond to your far too many repeated assertions that "People do not eat tart cherries directly": Except for when they do!
I grow several varieties of sour cherries in my yard, and frequently use them whole and without further processing. Usually I use them in a recipe like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clafoutis. Sometimes I pit them first, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'll even happily snack on them raw.
No, like most small fruit you aren't going eat them because you are desperate for calories. But they actually aren't any harder to prepare or use than lots of other tasty things that people traditionally grow.
It's the leading cause of deforestation which is a major factor in climate change. It also is a major contributor to climate change for other reasons. Since you mentioned energy, it's also much less energy efficient.
I recommend you visiting the Brazilian region of Pantanal, if possible travel through Mato Grosso do Sul -> Mato Grosso -> southern Pará where it transitions into the Amazon.
You will see vast areas of cattle ranching, soybeans plantation used for cattle feed, and other crops that can be used as cattle feed. All that area used to be the Pantanal and Amazon, now transformed to grow beef.
If we would reduce the calories wasted on beef, this area could still have a lot more native vegetation. Of course, it's purely wishful thinking because this ship has sailed, beef consumption will take a long time to stop growing, these farms will fight for their lives to keep producing, and we've lost a huge area of incredible nature to eat some steaks and burgers.
If you want to save the rain forest you got to make saving the rain forest more profitable than cutting it down. If its not beef, it will be the next most profitable thing which generally is corn for ethanol production, something that already has eaten a huge area of incredible nature. If not corn, it will be some form of oil. If not oil, it will be some form of rare wood to make fancy furniture for rich people.
The reason we have lost a huge area of incredible nature is not because people want to eat some steaks and burgers. It is explicitly because that land made some people money. Without that incentive the forest would still be there.
People starving come from parts for the world affected by global warming, which unsustainable farming is one of the reasons. Which, in turn, crates mass migration issues. Which, in turn, is a major reason behind massive shift of Overton window and the current world situation we're in.
Every country that has a problem with starvation has huge population growth.
They have at least 2.5% population growth yearly which translates to doubling population in 28 years, while some have as high as 4.5% which means they double every 15-16 years.
If a population has a food problem, why does it double every 15 years?
Solve our energy problems first? How would decreasing cattle stop work on improving our energy system? I think a lot points to that we need to do both (and yesterday). It’s not like agriculture is a small part of our greenhouse gas emissions (25-35% globally).
Exactly. The current world population is 8.3 billion and is expected to peak at 10.3 billion in 2080 and then begin declining. Now, there are a number of other reasons we might have food shortages, but population per se I don't think is a significant factor.
Even if food shortages aren't an issue, reducing the amount of land dedicated to food production is a win for ecosystems.
Not saying people have to go vegetarian, but reducing meat consumption or using more efficiently produced meats (in terms of land use) would overall make the world a nicer and more interesting place.
And, really, with the whole neu5gc thing, it might be that humans would be better off focusing on chickens and seafood anyway (clams being a pretty good option for seafood that is relatively environmentally friendly).
Grass fed cattle can use land that is generally not fit for vegetation farming... because of excess rocks, etc. Ruminants that are being naturally (grass) fed are also regenerative in terms of soil health.
They don't tend to "bulk up" as much as conventional (grain fed and/or finished) options though, so are more expensive to produce... the gas emissions are another issue that is largely different for grass fed, where the off gases are roughly the same as the grass's natural breakdown would release anyway.
In terms of water use, naturally grass fed cattle are mostly using water that fell on the land as rain in terms of how much water they use. It's not much from municipal sources, unlike vegetation farming.
Of course there are other ruminant options that are more efficient than cattle, such as goats and sheep, with similar benefits to the soil.
It just bugs me that cattle gets such a bad repuation... especially in that it's one of the few things I can eat without issue.
So, I was saying ecosystems. Filling the world with cows is not the same as natural ecosystems.
Also, kurzgesagt did a pretty good episode on meat production (edit - they did several, but one was on the production demands in terms of energy and environment), and if I'm to trust their figures, the "cattle grazing exclusively on the pampas" is far from the majority of world cattle. If it was, that probably would be an improvement, esp if it was done in a way that allowed other species to exist too (maybe bring some buffalo back?). The percentage would be dramatically improved if finishing lots were eliminated though (still a minority though). So maybe that's a simple option. Plus, that's the cruelest part of the cow's existence.
I don't think the answer is reduce though... I think it's increase... humans wiped out so many of the ruminant animals (buffalo mainly) that kept the grasslands healthy... we've largely over-farmed in the interim since. We need more ruminants, not less.
This means raising much more than we currently do, and probably a reduction in slaughter numbers for the next 50+ years to increase the domestic supply. Can't speak for other nations... but it's literally expanding grasslands as opposed to desert.
Yes. I saw that TED talk about desertification being reversed by ruminants, and while it got a lot of critics, it had some pretty good points. But, those ruminants would be better off not being beef cattle in terms of biodiversity. Also, if they were beef cattle due to the lack of anything better, hopefully it would be short term, and if you're making a case for use of marginal land, they really shouldn't be finished in a feed lot, since that is using a lot of cropland to support that.
... and only some places would (possibly) benefit from that.
I think cattle are fine... though I'm also okay with more Bison, goats, sheep, deer, elk, etc. I'm also more than okay with less use of feed lots and direct butchery of grass fed ruminants.
As for marginal land... personally, I can only handle mostly eating meat and eggs, doing much better with ruminants. I'd be just fine with the majority of uninhabited lands being used by mostly wild ruminants over any kind of farming, especially farming that is using chemical fertilizers and stripping the land.
I mean we have the strategic buffalo herd in Montana, and the cattle grazing you talk about is often by for profit farmers on public land.
Seems like we could reintroduce buffalo from our reserve, a much better solution than government managed/subsidized free range cattlemen. Get government out of the cattle business, end government handouts and all that other free market talking point stuff.
> Grass fed cattle can use land that is generally not fit for vegetation farming
Can, but that doesn't mean it always is. There's lots of cattle that never even comes outside, and is fed food that humans could also eat.
I recall reading that during the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, Ethiopian farmers were exporting beans to feed cattle in Europe because that was more profitable than feeding people in Ethiopia.
Beef is simply extremely inefficient. And so, unfortunately, is cheese (I can do without beef, but not without cheese). If cattle is grazing on land that's simply not usable for anything else, that's a completely different matter, but that's not how most cattle are fed.
I’ve vegan for 20+ years and find weird the obsession people have with meat that without even talking about milk. Literally there are hundreds of alternatives better for health, for the environment and for the animals yet we keep looking for justifications to consume them.
Yeah. I used to be vegetarian (I eat some meat again), and I love cheese, but I'm well aware that it's almost as bad as beef. Quitting cheese feels like a bigger sacrifice to me than quitting meat. But I've been reducing my cheese consumption lately. That's something at least.
I'm not arguing for ditching cheese either (I love cheese, esp goat cheese - which conveniently is often a more pleasant experience for the goats) but here is a recipe that I quite liked for a cheese-like cashew/brewer's yeast spread.
I'm pretty sure I transcribed this correctly. Let me know if anything seems off :)
Pimento Cheese Spread
Blend until smooth:
1c. water (may use water from pimentos)
¾ c. cashew nuts or sunflower seeds
2 T sesame seeds
1¼ tsp salt
3 T Brewer's yeast flakes
⅔ c. rolled oats (only if being used for lasagna)
1 tsp onion powder
⅛ tsp garlic powder
⅛ tsp dill seed
½ c. pimentos
¼ c. lemon juice (or to taste)
May add 2 T. arrowroot or cornstarch if used for spread
Cup and Tablespoon. Sorry, I probably faithfully transcribed a bit too well. Do let me know if it works. I haven't made it in a while. I guess I should try it again.
A little belated followup - I tried it, and I feel it was way too thin, even after adding corn starch. I would cut that water way down. Maybe even add as needed after initial blending. Not sure why that is, don't remember it being that thin.
The flavor is completely different but the umami of miso is crazy, if it would not be so salty i’d eat it by the spoonful. Honestly I don’t miss cheese at all, there are some replacements good enough for the occasional sandwich or pizza.
I'm not convinced by some of those. I'm a pescetarian, so I still eat cheese, but I enjoy unusual foods.
I don't find tahini to taste anything like yeast/cheese, though to be fair I mainly use tahini in hummus.
I'm not familiar with lactic acid fermented Tofu - does that go by a different name?
Tempeh seems more nutty than cheese-like to me, though I rarely eat it as my wife doesn't like the flavour or texture of it.
Personally, I'd recommend Japanese Natto if you're after a cheesy flavour - it's soy beans fermented in straw/hay and ends up becoming somewhat slimy/stringy, so it's a bit of an acquired taste.
> Natto
Any advice to try it? I haven’t had the courage yet but I guess it's time to face my fears.
> lactic acid fermented Tofu
The english name of the one I buy is "Lactofermented Tofu" [0], although their ingredients [1] lacks a coagulant but have ferment instead: I guess the tonyu+ferment produce lactic acid, which then coagulate the fermented tonyu into tofu. I wonder if that make a big difference with classic recipes that ferment the tofu directly [2].
> Tempeh
It's a fresh product and the taste really differ depending on:
- Ripeness. It can be ripped a few days to build an intense flavor when homemade or bought fresh.
- Ingredients. Same fungus (Rhizopus oligosporus) can be used to ferment others legumes/grains. I once made black-lentil-tempeh which had a very strong gorgonzola flavor with a firm and non-fat texture.
The only Natto that I've tried is pre-packaged and frozen, bought from a Chinese supermarket in Bristol, UK. It comes as five little polystyrene packs that have a small quantity of Natto (maybe 25g?) along with small packets of mustard and soy sauce. The Natto itself consists of the beans, but the oustide is somewhat slimy and very stringy (like cheese) and the flavour is very cheese-like. Incidentally, Natto is extremely high in vitamin K, especially K2, so be careful if you take an anticoagulant like Warfarin.
I don't think the fermented tofu is popular here, but I have seen fermented tofu sold in the same Chinese supermarket - it's sold in either glass or porcelain jars and doesn't usually have any english translation on them. I have got a jar that I bought a while ago, but I haven't had the courage to try it yet as the tofu looks blackened and murky.
Similarly, I've only tried Tempeh from mainstream supermarkets, so that might be why I don't find it to taste cheesy.
>Not saying people have to go vegetarian, but reducing meat consumption or using more efficiently produced meats (in terms of land use) would overall make the world a nicer and more interesting place.
I've seen articles and threads like this for decades at this point. And the only thing any of you have convinced me of is that I must start securing my own production of meat. This is, I think, the exact opposite of "more efficiently" at least from your point of view. I will be unlikely to reach the feed-to-gain ratios that professionals regularly achieve.
Swine and poultry already in progress, beef and more exotic stuff within the next 2 years.
shrug poultry is already several times more efficient than beef in regular production (to say nothing of if your coop just has chickens wandering around finding their own food), and healthier for you. And hopefully your swine and poultry are having overall decent lives. And, if your beef is entirely grass fed (I doubt you can afford a finishing lot) you're still overall not using cropland to fatten up cows (but maybe that's your goal, who knows)
Anyway, you do you. Just offering my opinion on this 'cause it seemed like a good place to do it.
>I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
is there a rational argument in here or is this just a cheap psychological reflex to keep eating beef? Because it's not clear to me how solving our energy problems and the consumption of beef even intersect so that we couldn't do both at the same time.
You might as well have said "man I really should stop drinking and smoking, but we gotta solve the energy problems first"
Isn’t that entirely their point? Stop bitching about cows (not a real problem at all) and fix an actual problem. Seems like you nailed it.
People aren’t going to stop eating beef, full stop. Won’t happen, full stop. It’s akin to suggesting we need to stop eating eggs, also will never happen.
These threads pop up on here every so often and it amuses me in a morose way. Nothing will ever change in the beef industry, not even in places like California, who are actively causing a water shortage in order to grow crops. That is a much bigger problem than farting cows, the whole region is aware of the problem, and no movement has been made to create a fix.
Give it up on the cows, there are bigger fish to fry.
but it is an actual problem. The beef industry has a large ecological impact. You yourself bring up the water shortages as a result of crop production... who do you think are the crops grown for?
You're just yelling "lalala I'm not listening" basically. The world doesn't consist of "real" and "fake" problems depending on how much you're offended by the topic, the world has a million problems, the more we tackle of them the better.
Sure you can say nothing will ever change, I don't care, but that's not an actual argument, that's just screaming like a kid who doesn't want his toys taken away, how is that an adult conversation. If you can't even tackle the cows how are you going to tackle bigger fish? Are the bigger fish being dealt with?
The only people who ever pretend you can ignore an ostensibly small regional problem, to fix the world are people who literally fix neither because in reality they're nihilists who don't want to solve anything because they never want to take any personal responsibility.
Not just bigger, but actually tractable problems. The revolutionary fall in the price of solar power and batteries means we can actually displace coal, and have, without really asking much of anyone to do it. That's a massive advantage to have with a big problem!
There's a world coming where automation means electrified heavy equipment stops using diesel entirely, already happening in mine sites in Australia.
Agreed. The market should decide if beef consumption is viable. Ultimately energy is the basis all food production. Cheap and plentiful energy solves the food production and distribution problem, then its just matter of preferences.
"The market" doesn't work as long as costs to the environment can be externalized. If the cost of climate change and lost living space would be added to the cost of beef it might be fair. But it isn't. Methane released by cows, cutting down rain forests for feed, and all the transporting costs us all dearly. But it doesn't cost the manufacturers anything directly so beef can be cheap.
We're more than 40 years past the first boycotts on rainforest beef. Not small boycotts, either; big ones which were effective at scale. If we translated the concerns here into Chinese, would it affect the current top importer of rainforest beef?
In the US agricultural subsidies for 2024 were overwhelmingly for corn ($3.2B), soybeans ($1.9B), cotton ($998M), and wheat ($960M). Pasture comes in 5th ($741M).
Tofu and ethanol may be more price-distorted by the US government than is beef, but I dunno how to quickly support that idea with hard data beyond what I cited above.
Have you been to the Midwest to observe the scale of corn and soybean operations? I would wager the number of calories per dollar subsidy produced by the corn and soybean industries outweighs handily the calories per dollar subsidy produced by cattle operations, especially given the 10% reduction in efficiency per trophic level.
Also, how much does beef benefit from cheap feed prices (corn and soy) due to subsidies as well?
1. yeah, i know, soy is packed full of them though and considered a complete protein hence my reply :)
2. i imagine eating a pound of most unprocessed food sources would be bad, tofu and tempeh are very competitive and have macros similar to egg or cheese
3. not sure where you're going with this? surely you're not referencing the well debunked claim that soy feminizes men or something?
---
I'm not even vegan and I make plenty of room for soy derived foods in my diet because the benefits are so concrete. It helps with muscle recovery and inflammation via soy isoflavones, and the gut health benefit from diversifying protein sources is very important. It has marginally less leucine, but I am ingesting 200g of protein a day because I actually lift so that really doesn't matter.
>3. not sure where you're going with this? surely you're not referencing the well debunked claim that soy feminizes men or something?
pray tell, which part is deboonked - that xenohormones disrupt our own hormone production, or that legumes and some other plants contain a lot of phytoestrogens?
This is stupid thinking indulged in by westerners who were born in the lap of luxury. The market is incredibly moral. When my dad was born in a village in Bangladesh, 1 out of 4 kids didn’t live past age 5. Thanks to market reforms and the resulting economic growth, child mortality in Bangladesh has plummeted. Bangladesh’s under-5 morality rate is better today than America’s was at the same time my dad was born.
If India and Bangladesh hadn’t fucked around with socialism for decades after independence, we could have reached the same point many years ago. Millions of children would have been saved. Talk about immorality.
Bangladesh has done well, in difficult circumstances
Market reforms helped. But those reforms could not have happened unless the state did sensible things
Those same market reforms impoverished the entire middle class in New Zealand, where the state did not do sensible things (the reverse)
Markets are good at fully allocating resources, which feudalism and central planning is not. But they also concentrate wealth into the hands of very few (that is what wrecked New Zealand's middle class) and it takes deliberate government policy to avert that.
> Market reforms helped. But those reforms could not have happened unless the state did sensible things
The state did almost nothing sensible! Bangladesh’s government, and the culture of the people more generally, is one of the most dysfunctional in the whole world. We just overthrew our government again! The free market is just a hardy plant growing in inhospitable ground as long as you don’t completely strangle it.
> Thanks to market reforms and the resulting economic growth, child mortality in Bangladesh has plummeted.
I agree that market reforms have been great for most countries that adopt it, provided they have stable and competent institutions.
However, it doesn't make sense to attribute decrease in child mortality to "market reforms". Cuba, Russia/USSR, North Korea all have seen huge declines in child mortality since 1960.
There’s a Civilization-game style “tech tree” for cultural and social development. Some societies are further along in that development than others.
Pakistan faces the same cultural problem as Afghanistan and parts of the middle east: in large parts of the country, extended kinship groups dominate society, precluding the development of civic institutions and functioning government. That’s not true for the whole country. Parts of Pakistan are culturally like India or Bangladesh: it has a long history of governance by central institutions, even if that governance is dysfunctional. Imagine if 50% of the U.S. population was Appalachians. The U.S. would be a much less successful country also.
The opposite is true! You’ll get farther in life when you realize that how groups of people are socialized to behave matters a lot—and that’s true whether you’re talking about corporate culture or a country’s culture.
People whose brains are as soft as their hearts sell false equality, but its harmful. It’s like telling the obese person they’re great and that their problems are due to “bad genetics” or factors outside their control. It’s a polite lie and it is damaging.
Understanding that culture is just a type of technology is how you get miracles like Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923. He thought culture was destiny, and he harnessed that realization to make his culture rich.
> And you'll get a lot farther in life if you stop thinking of real people and their development and culture as video game abstractions.
Oh, it’s far too late for that. As the kids say, he’s cooked. He’ll be complaining about hypothetical Appalachians invading New England or New York or the United States (all actual examples, see below) in the nursing home.
I don’t understand. Do you (1) think Appalachia is great, or (2) you agree that Appalachia lags the rest of the U.S., but think that has nothing to do with how Appalachian parents socialize their children to behave what they teach their kids to value?
Pakistan spent quite a bit on education in East Pakistan up until 1971. and I've even pointed you to the article in Prothom Alo where Bangladeshi experts admitted that but you do you. It's not like Ibn Khaldun didn't hit on similar points with asabiyya but saying we have A/B testing here is wild.
You mean the Socialism that produces higher quality of life in Scandinavia as compared to to say the US where the oh so moral market decides if you weren't born into the upper end of society you deserve to die of disease and conditions that can be treated?
The market is not moral, it is amoral and it serves those with the money to direct it.
I know a number of people who have immigrated from Scandinavian countries to the US, generally for high-prestige or high-paying work. If quality of life in Scandinavia was consistently higher than in the US, they wouldn't be doing this.
People also immigrate in the other direction. And more generally, it obviously happens sometimes that people move from one country to another with a lower average quality of life.
How are you extrapolating overall quality of life from some anecdotes of high-prestige or high-income workers? Seems like a fallacy of composition slipped in somewhere.
My understanding is that a large portion of Scandinavian socialism is paid for by sovereign wealth funds, ultimately backed in their oil production and reserves.
> You mean the Socialism that produces higher quality of life in Scandinavia as compared to to say the US where the oh so moral market decides if you weren't born into the upper end of society you deserve to die of disease and conditions that can be treated?
Scandinavian countries have highly market oriented economies. Denmark and Norway are in the top 10 in Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index and Sweden is #11. Capitalism is what generates the surplus to feed the socialists in Scandinavia.
Every single one of those economies are highly regulated to prevent 'the free market' deciding peoples lives.
Without it, you get the US. You get the life your wealth dictates, if you're not wealthy, you didn't deserve life.
Sweden's costs for insulin are over 10 times lower than that of the US, because the US let the free market decide and Sweden has a socialist political system.
At a place I lived earlier, my neighbour got out of the hospital after heart surgery with a $100k medical bill that they never recovered from. My dad had heart surgery in Canada and left the hospital with a $150 parking bill.
But no, please lets continue to try and argue the free market is moral and just.
> than that of the US, because the US let the free market decide and Sweden has a socialist political system.
Sweden doesn’t achieve lower prices for insulin through “socialism” or regulation. In Sweden, middle class people tax themselves heavily to pay for insulin for poor people. It has nothing to do with free market versus socialism. It’s free-market capitalism with very high taxes on individuals and low taxes on capital and corporation.
> But no, please lets continue to try and argue the free market is moral and just.
It is just and moral. Before Sweden had the free market, it was poor as shit and one quarter of the population of Sweden came to America. Whatever socialism you think Sweden has now, it got only after becoming rich through capitalism.
It’s not unique at all! When my dad was a kid in the 1950s, Singapore, China, South Korea, and Taiwan were poor—all under $1,000 GDP per capita. They were a little ahead of Bangladesh but less than a factor of 2. The U.S. at the time was around $10,000.
Today, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea are rich, and China is getting there. Multiple dirt poor Asian countries getting rich within a few generations thanks to One Simple Trick!
It’s hard for the market to decide on its own when the environmental damage of meat production is left as an unpriced externality and when government subsidies are handed out like candy.
Pretty sure the western US states are in a water shortage because they grow almonds et. al. In places that were not meant to be agricultural, importing water, fucking up the entire ecosystem of the region and causing massive water shortages, and massive environmental damage.
But yeah, we can keep focusing on the farting cows, that’s the problem.
Ask yourself why they are growing almonds there if it’s such a problem? Because those almond growers have water right contracts that are absurdly cheap and are use it or lose it.
Fine by me though, add in the environmental costs for almonds too. Would you support an initiative of pricing these externalities on food, or is it just a snarky comment about cow farts?
> In terms of the Amazon... that was done BY humans... the cattle didn't tear down any trees.
This is a pedantic distinction that accomplishes nothing.
The humans did it to grow cattle for food. If the price of that destruction had to be paid by the producers/consumers there would be a lot less people eating meat.
> Agreed. The market should decide if beef consumption is viable.
Until The Market™, especially in the US, starts dealing with externalities (like climate change), it should not. Something like carbon pricing (per Greenspan and Volcker):
It was actually a disgusting set of edicts and regulations called the Penal Laws, enacted by the English crown, which formalized and wrote into law the informal restrictions imposed on Irish Catholics after the Tudor conquest, as part of a broader genocidal colonialization scheme. Very cool attempt to try and sweep that little fact under the rug. Fun fact, Adam Smith cites the penal laws as an example of the dangers wrought by mercantilism.
We have 8 billion people. We have enough people to solve both the energy problem and the food efficiency problem.
That said, it's very, very funny that you responded to an article about energy inefficiency (calorie -> calorie) and said we should solve our energy problems. Beef is an energy problem! We're putting 30x the energy into the product against the energy we get out! Thats wasted energy!
Eh. Grow beef mostly grazed on marginal land that can't support other agriculture.
This is how a LOT of beef is produced and how most of it SHOULD BE.
They're not "lost calories" if they're produced on large swaths of semi-arid land that don't support any other kind of agriculture.
And on the opposite side... a LOT of those "lost calories" are corn. Corn is substantially more productive than other crops and people don't want to replace large portions of their diet with cereal grains or corn syrup so much of those "lost calories" would also be lost to much less efficient crops.
This is a pretty basic fact about agriculture but you'll find people are selective about sharing facts when they have a narrative in mind. There are VASTLY different environmental impacts which depend on HOW you raise an animal, not just if. (and places where arguments about water usage per animal are pointless because water is very plentiful)
It is also a pretty fundamental driver of much of human history and caused a lot of conflicts when you'd have migrant/nomad peoples who either followed wild herds or managed their own herds and peoples who stayed put, owned land, and planted crops -- both of these strategies often driven heavily by geography not by choice. These people would meet at the margins and there'd be war.
There are plenty of places around the world where you have maybe a hundred acres per animal or more. Whereas the best farmland can support one animal on the order of an acre of land.
There are large areas of British Columbia not at all suitable for farming due to lack of water, or mountains, but you still see cattle ranchers. On top of that, most of Alberta is classified as semi-arid because the Rockies block the vast majority of the rain. Alberta is easily the largest supplier of beef in the country. Crown land in both provinces gets opened up from spring until fall to allow for cattle grazing. It's fairly widespread in some parts of the world.
An additional suggestion, go to youtube or wherever and look up Mongolian herding where people are still nomads and conventional farming is done very little because it's not particularly possible.
It's not just cattle, you live yourself on some pretty marginal land and need to eat? Raise you some goats. They eat anything, not a lot, you don't have to feed them, you can eat them, milk them, and use their hair for making cloth.
> edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
There's no "first." There's not a queue of problems that the people of the world work on one by one. It's not a matter of limited labor/money either, we're talking about policies to change allocation. If anything is limited here it's political will, but that doesn't really work like money or physical limitations, it's more abstract and nonlinear. It's quite possible that a platform containing more changes earns more will than one with fewer, so budgeting is the wrong impulse.
When they complain about these lost calories is anyone asking them if they have a better way to turn grass into food we can eat? Eating beef lets us eat grass we couldn't otherwise, indirectly. It also has a whole bunch of minerals and nutrients that are particularly beneficial.
We don't need a steak every day, but two servings of beef a week can be a truly great infusion of protein and nutrients in someone's diet.
meat uses up enormous quantities of water. potatoes for instance use about 75 gallons to produce 2000 calories compared to say 1500 to 2500 gallons for 2000 calories of beef.
For grass fed cattle, the vast majority of said water is from rain that would have fallen on the land with or without the cattle. It's not generally municipal supplies of water in use for naturally raised cattle.
Would it really be though? From my experience, most of the anti-meat crowd is against all meat, for any reason.
As to alternatives for real meat not grown as animals... we don't even get micro-nutrients for baby formula right... I won't trust alternatively grown meat for a very long time. I and my brother wouldn't have survived on conventional baby formula... I have issues with just about everything outside eggs and red meat.
As for all beef being grass fed/finished... I'd be way more than happy to see it become the norm, exceptions for snowy parts of the year only. I'd like to see regenerative farming, which pretty much requires ruminant cycles, be the norm everywhere... we need more ruminants, not less imo.
The most vocal anti-mean crowd, perhaps. I eat only free-range, sustainable meat from animals that had a happy life outside, instead of being locked up into tiny boxes. A lot of meat comes from factory farms where animals are force fed in boxes and never see the light of day.
I don't have a problem with hunting, as long as it's done sustainably. I have no problem with fishing, as long as it's done sustainably. The problem is that there are too many people and we cannot possibly feed them all meat every day in a sustainable manner.
A lot of the "meat uses too much water" arguments are stupid because they're based on food grown in places where it rains all of the water they ever use.
We drain the land in Iowa otherwise the north half of it would be a swamp. Complaining about water usage for all but the western edge of Iowa is much the same as complaining about how solar panels use up the sunlight.
This is being downvoted, but is raising a serious point.
- Nearly 90% of Americans eat red meat [1].
- Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat. This issue does not poll well [1].
- Despite the above, Americans are eating less red meat than we used to [2].
- The vast majority of people who choose to reduce their meat intake do so for cost or health reasons, not environmental [3].
Putting all that together... studies like this do not help the environmental cause. Sure, they find something that's vaguely interesting, and can possibly be a bullet point on an environmentalist slide. However, a far better research study would be one focusing on human health impacts of red meat, or demonstrating economic benefits to red meat alternatives.
tl;ld - This study is not useful, and is probably damaging to it's own cause.
> Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat
I'd guess that has more to do with something like half a dozen different Fox hosts saying a few years ago that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act would prohibit Americans from eating hamburger more than once a month.
I think it's probably a mistake on any topic to conduct or not conduct research based on what's most useful to a particular side of an argument. Especially in this case, where the party split in the poll results suggest reasonable debate on this issue is yet another casualty of partisan culture war nonsense.
It's not like people aren't aware of the environmental arguments around red meat production. Deliberately ignoring research on that front to avoid triggering people concerned about a red meat ban and to make a better argument for people who want to reduce red meat consumption seems just as likely to backfire, leading people into believing they're being manipulated into supporting what's really an environmental argument with the Trojan horse of health and economic reasons.
Laying out all the facts but focusing the actual argument on the most relevant ones seems like a much better strategy. I personally have been cutting back on red meat for health reasons and because, while I can afford it, paying that much for beef is annoying when pork or chicken fits my cooking needs just fine for much cheaper. But I still find it useful to know that choice also has a positive environmental impact, even though that wouldn't otherwise be a deciding factor for me and certainly wouldn't be justification enough for me to support banning red meat. In fact it seems like a strong argument for caring about environmental things is pointing out to folks how there can be plenty of other reasons to do things that also have environmental benefits.
I think we have a serious problem with people being and acting stupid. One way we can improve that state of affairs is stop treating them as if they are stupid and that's what we expect of them.
> I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.
I don't know how to respond to this. It's like saying you don't think breathing underwater is difficult, except for the secondary effects of water. War is a problem. Energy supply is a problem. Logistics is a problem. All these problems lead to starvation. People starving is a real problem.
Another reason people starve is economics and market forces. The market decides it wants to use up more water and grain to feed cows. That grain and water is now not available for purchase as human food. That means it is more scarce on the human-feeding market. Scarcity drives up prices. So livestock feed makes grain more expensive, making it harder to purchase, for people to eat.
(I'm using "starve" as a euphemism for "malnutrition that not only severely impacts bodily health, reduces quality of life, and increases mortality, but also decreases economic productivity")
Now, if the point you're trying to make is "we could solve world hunger", then absolutely the answer is yes, humans produce more than enough grain to feed everyone in the world, and we have the money to transport it everywhere, even assist with cooking fuel. But because of all the categories you think don't apply, and markets, and economics, we are not fixing it. We are choosing to let people starve.
>Another reason people starve is economics and market forces. The market decides it wants to use up more water and grain to feed cows. That grain and water is now not available for purchase as human food. That means it is more scarce on the human-feeding market. Scarcity drives up prices. So livestock feed makes grain more expensive, making it harder to purchase, for people to eat.
None of these are logistics, energy supply, or war. The paper is specifically talking about increasing efficiency in food production, the originally commenter is saying that efficiency of production is not the main driver for undernourishment and your comment doesn't address that.
Something doesn't have to be the main driver to still have an impact on the problem. Increasing food production efficiency would have a marked impact on the problem, without requiring you to to figure out how to end war or "fix" energy or logistics.
You could make corn in the US free and that would not help it get to people in the DRC who are blockaded by Rwanda backed militias. It would not make transporting that corn to Syria cheaper or easier. I will give that it would make ethanol cheaper, so that's cool at least.
Of course it's a political problem. So what are we going to do? Sit around and pray for a miracle that solves all of politics? Meanwhile people are suffering. Increasing efficiency of food production will actually create more food, which makes it cheaper, which makes it easier for people to get. That we can probably actually accomplish, unlike solving politics.
The question is, whats the bigger environmental impact, more people using smart phones, computers, cars, planes, buying the newest fashion to show their style,... or feeding them with beef?
Feeding the world is mostly a political-economic problem. Political-economic decisions make it hard to feed everybody, when we technically have more than enough to feed everybody. But one of the decisions that make it hard to feed everybody is the decision to eat lots of beef in rich countries. Land that's used to grow food for cattle could (in many but not all cases) also be used to grow food for poor people, but there's no money in that.
That's not the only one; there's lots of other ways in which food is wasted or used inefficiently. Although the situation has improved tremendously over the past half century, there are still a lot of people suffering from malnutrition.
In most places where there is chronic, widespread malnutrition the root cause problem is not lack of arable land but rather local violence and corruption. It doesn't matter how much food you grow if a rebel group with AK-47s shows up and steals it all.
Congratulations on being overly flippant without trying. Evidently a lot of people care, and environmental impacts and energy problems are closely related.
There's plenty of obvious reasons we shouldn't be wasting land, energy, water and labor on producing things that don't get utilized. Even in the most selfish capitalist sensibility, we are wasting money. Yes the energy issue is much bigger than this but wasted energy utilization is part of that problem. I know this is politically fraught, but that should not have any bearing on scholarship. This is just data to add to our understanding.
And also that this study is global, not purely applicable to America. Republicans can exploit outrage with lies to their base, but that isn't such a slam dunk everywhere in the world
Doesn't matter because LLMs also benefit greatly from typed code bases in that they can run the type checker and fix the problems themselves on a loop.
I haven’t seen much discussion about this point other than “llm handle languages x y and z because there’s a lot of training data”. Watching Terence Tau using llm for writing proofs in Lean was a real eye opener in this regard.
* work from the gym, if there is a lounge area
* work from the library
* join social clubs pertaining to your interest
* change your job to be in-office, the commute and errands that occur incidentally result in more interactions
I see so much creativity coming from young developers I just can’t agree. Yes most developers in the past 20 years who were only chasing big tech money were useless. Good riddance
Same thing was true of his interview with Tony Blair. It was such a night and day difference between the two. Tony's skill, knowledge and polish saved the interview and made it enjoyable despite the interviewer.
a primary source is not inherently the accurate one, and collab tools like wikipedia allow for more sources -- this makes the difference.
yeah it's game-able, and a bad actor can ruin work, but we're comparing it to a literal singular gospel source of information from a three letter agency.
p.s. I noticed I used an em dash, appropriately or not. i'm leaving it in. I like it. maybe im turning bot. changing the way I speak/type to avoid being taken that way irks me to hell.
You should steel-man the argument. GP is talking about qualia, obviously for the sake of the argument you assume the comparison is between two people with similar eyes.
The steel men (armored enemy knights) are exactly the inverse of the straw man (training dummy) metaphor. I think it's a fantastic term since it directly addresses the point (tackle the best opposing arguments head on instead of a poor subset/facsimile of them), it fits within the existing straw man metaphor, it's terse, and it's very clear.
> The colors of traffic lights can be difficult for red–green color-blind people. This difficulty includes distinguishing red/amber lights from sodium street lamps, distinguishing green lights (closer to cyan) from white lights, and distinguishing red from amber lights, especially when there are no positional clues (see image).
> All but one admitted to difficulties with traffic signals, one admitted to a previously undeclared accident due to his colour blindness, and all but one offered suggestions for improving signal recognition. Nearly all reported confusion with street and signal lights, and confusion between the red and amber signals was common.
The wild success of traffic lights comes from having 3 colors at fixed positions. You put those 3 colors in a single color changing light and I would assume the accident rate would measurably increase.
I used cursor over the past three weeks to update a 12 year-old Ruby on rails project. While it has been slightly updated throughout the years, this was my first proper modernization of the code base.
It’s been a real pleasure getting back into Ruby after so many years in typescript, python, and rust.
Happy to see the update. Real shame about the haters here, the Ruby community is a supportive and positive bunch that has shipped real products while others seem to worship at the altar of computer science alone… that’s about as counter snarky as I want to be here
I spent ~16 years with Ruby (as a non-primary language for the first 5 years, but then as my primary for the remainder), from ~2006/2007 til 2022/2023. I had a couple of hours free to spin up new personal project this morning. At first I was going to default to Python since I use it heavily at work. On a whim, I decided to see what Ruby 3.4 has to offer since it's been a few years. I am very happy with that decision. I really miss Ruby the language a lot, it's such a joy to work with.
Social justice fundamentalism asserts that there are favored (“oppressed”) groups, and disfavored (“oppressor”) groups.
True believers have created a largely arbitrary grouping called “white people”, assigning it the “oppressor” label.
If a favored group’s nation were flooded by “white people”, that would be seen as an emergent situation requiring remedy; the opposite is what we’re seeing play out in societies like Britain, and is Not a Problem. I’m committing an act of violence by even describing it in this way.
How or when a disfavored group is restored to neutral or favored status is undefined; one would presumably have to consult a head priest of the movement for an answer (and I wouldn’t expect any coherence or clarity).
False. The English are the extant indigenous people to England, and descend from ancient populations: "The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who settled in eastern and southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Western Roman Empire, and the Romano-British Brittonic speakers who already lived there." [0]
QED.
>The best case for an indigenous culture is the Celts, Cornish, and Welsh.
Those are also "White Brits" who are indigenous to their respective areas.
>None of this has anything to do with being white
Glad you finally agree and admit to this.
>it's the language that defines belonging to these groups.
English language and culture is the current indigenous, native culture to England.
The OP was me. I pointed out how DHH's uses the term "native brit" to mean "white person" even though that is not the meaning of "native", which means you were born somewhere.
>I pointed out how DHH's uses the term "native brit" to mean "white person"
Nowhere in his post does he mention "White person." He specifically mentions "native Brits." The only indigenous Brits native to the Britain are White Brits.
He links to a wikipedia article and cites a percentage for "native brits". That number on the wikipedia page is for white brits.
The only groups who could call themselves indigenous to Britain are the Celts, the Cornish, and the Bretons. The English (Anglo-Saxon) culture is foreign to the British isles.
Even then, none of this is related to skin tone. It's the culture that defines these potentially indigenous Celtic groups.
>He links to a wikipedia article and cites a percentage for "native brits". That number on the wikipedia page is for white brits.
White Brits are the only indigenous, native Brits to Britain.
>The only groups who could call themselves indigenous to Britain are the Celts, the Cornish, and the Bretons. The English (Anglo-Saxon) culture is foreign to the British isles.
False. The English are the extant indigenous people to England, and descend from ancient populations: "The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who settled in eastern and southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Western Roman Empire, and the Romano-British Brittonic speakers who already lived there." [0]
QED.
>Even then, none of this is related to skin tone.
Glad you finally agree and admit to this.
>It's the culture that defines these potentially indigenous Celtic groups.
English culture is the current indigenous, native culture to England.
That's funny, your own statements are in contradiction with your conclusions. You say the English are descendants of west germanic tribes from the continent, and "Romano-British" groups (do you think the Romans were an Indigenous people? of the British isles?), then you say this proves they are indigenous.
Please do the minimum effort and connect the quote you did to what you claim it states. This does not contradict anything in my previous post. QED? Nothing was demonstrated. Demonstrate, please.
It is funny, because I did not introduce the term indigenous to this discussion, you did (for some strange reason).
The term "indigenous" refers to a non-dominant, often colonized group of people with a connection to the land and traditional living on that land [1]
The English are neither. The Celtic people, if anyone, has a claim to this status on the British isles. They were living on the land for hundrds of years before they were colonized by the Romans (and other groups later, including the English).
I think it's sweet that you're trying to muddy things up by claiming I "finally agree" about skin tone being unrelated to culture or the adjective native. That's been my argument the whole time. You are the one stating that "White British" is the same as "Native Brit".
>That's funny, your own statements are in contradiction with your conclusions.
Your failure to understand basic anthropology does not constitute a contradiction. There is not contradiction.
>You say the English are descendants of west germanic tribes from the continent, and "Romano-British" groups (do you think the Romans were an Indigenous people? of the British isles?)
It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, a people of Celtic language and custom. [0]
>then you say this proves they are indigenous.
"Indigenous Britons" QED.
>Please do the minimum effort and connect the quote you did to what you claim it states.
I just did and have, multiple times.
>This does not contradict anything in my previous post. QED? Nothing was demonstrated. Demonstrate, please.
It directly contradicts your erroneous claims. Everything has been demonstrated with facts and links. You have nothing.
>It is funny, because I did not introduce the term indigenous to this discussion, you did (for some strange reason).
I did, what's your point? You failed and making any claim to the contrary.
>The term "indigenous" refers to a non-dominant, often colonized group of people with a connection to the land and traditional living on that land [1]
Hilarious because White Brits are no the dominant group of people in London, foreigners are. The English are the "people with a connection to the land and traditional living on that land."
Oops, you just proved my point for me! QED!
>The English are neither.
The English are both, native and indigenous, as proven above.
>The Celtic people, if anyone, has a claim to this status on the British isles.
The English descended from the Britons, they're literally British.
>They were living on the land for hundrds of years before they were colonized by the Romans (and other groups later, including the English).
This is hilariously incorrect. As proven above, the English descended from the Celtic Britons. It's quoted directly above.
>I think it's sweet that you're trying to muddy things up by claiming I "finally agree" about skin tone being unrelated to culture or the adjective native.
Glad that you agree DHH isn't a White supremacist since it has nothing to do with skin color.
>You are the one stating that "White British" is the same as "Native Brit".
From your source that defines " indigenous people":
"peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions."
That is literally the definition of the English people, in England, which is part of Great Brittan.
Are you seriously claiming that White Brits are not the dominant ethnic group in the UK? Who's running the country? Out of the last twenty PMs, how many have been people of color? One?
You seem to love to write QED after a quote. That makes you look dumb. The English did not "fuse" with an indigenous people, they colonized or dominated an already colonized people, and in the process removed their "social, economic, cultural, and political institutions" [1].
This in turn does not fit in with the definition of Indigenous people. No scholar would ever claim that the English are indigenous to the British isles. That would be absurd. The same is true of the Romano-British. Whenever settlers "fuse" with an indigenous culture by importing their customs, the result is not an indigenous culture, it's a settler-colonial one.
Did you see the part underneath what you quoted in the UNESCO definition?
"According to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the system has instead developed a modern understanding of this term based on the following:
Self-identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member.
- Historical continuity with pre-colonial and or pre-settler societies
- Strong links to territories and surrounding natural resources
- Distinct social, economic and political system
- Distinct language, culture and beliefs
- Form non-dominant groups of society
- Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities"
Does that sound like the English to you? Hardly. There is no continuity with pre-settler society. The Anglo-Saxon settlers replaced pre-existing culture.
And, again, skin tone does not relate to culture. Which is why the fact that DHH tries to claim it does makes him an ethnonationalist, a fringe far-right position.
It is funny to see you fail to argue like an adult. All the "QED"s and "erroneous claim" make you sound like a tiny Ben Shapiro in my mind. I wonder why you would subject yourself to this kind of humiliating self-own. You are constantly misinterpreting terms, simply saying "No" or "False" without ever citing anything but wikipedia. It's obvious you have no understanding of either anthropology nor of where to find information or how to interpret it. Thank you. It heartens me to get to confirm that racists are idiots.
>Are you seriously claiming that White Brits are not the dominant ethnic group in the UK?
No one made this claim. White Brits (The English) are the native inhabitants of London, and are no longer the majority there. The definition you provided literally describes the exact scenario of the English in London.
>Who's running the country? Out of the last twenty PMs, how many have been people of color? One?
The current Mayor of London is a person of color (non-native ethnicity). Once again, you're doing all the work for me, proving my point.
>You seem to love to write QED after a quote.
Because I have shown and proven my points.
>That makes you look dumb.
Don't interpret your inability to understand something as "dumb."
> The English did not "fuse" with an indigenous people, they colonized or dominated an already colonized people, and in the process removed their "social, economic, cultural, and political institutions"
You are categorically false. Your source links to the Anglo-Saxons, not the English. "The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who settled in eastern and southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Western Roman Empire, and the Romano-British Brittonic speakers who already lived there."
QED.
Your poorly constructing a straw man, possibly unknowingly, because you're out of your league here.
>This in turn does not fit in with the definition of Indigenous people.
Yes it does, not that the definition of indigenous people is something that you can claim. There is no singularly approved definition: "There is no singularly authoritative definition
of indigenous peoples under international law and policy, and the Indig-
enous Declaration does not set out any definition." [1]
>No scholar would ever claim that the English are indigenous to the British isles.
No scholar would ever claim that the English are not indigenous to the British isles. That would be absurd.
>The same is true of the Romano-British. Whenever settlers "fuse" with an indigenous culture by importing their customs, the result is not an indigenous culture, it's a settler-colonial one.
Of course it is, especially considering English culture was created in, developed, and is indigenous to... England. It's literally in the name. English culture wasn't created outside of England, it was created in England.
>Did you see the part underneath what you quoted in the UNESCO definition?
The part that literally proves my point, yes? Also, UNESCO definition isn't authoritative as shown above. Even then, English people/culture in London is indigenous considering the definition.
>Does that sound like the English to you?
That is exactly what the English in London are. Every point can be applied to the English in London.
>And, again, skin tone does not relate to culture.
No one made this claim.
>Which is why the fact that DHH tries to claim it does makes him an ethnonationalist
DHH did not make that claim either. You have poor reading comprehension if that's what you took away.
>a fringe far-right position.
There's nothing wrong with promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous people over those of immigrants or foreigners. This is not a fringe far-right position. Countries like Turkey, Japan, Palestine, South Korea, Israel, China, etc. all share this position.
>It is funny to see you fail to argue like an adult.
It's funny to see me eviscerate you. You're flailing around like a child that can't swim. You thrown insults out, share sources that prove opposite of what you're proposing, and don't understand basic anthropology.
>All the "QED"s and "erroneous claim" make you sound like a tiny Ben Shapiro in my mind.
All the nothing you've provided makes you sound like Trump in my mind.
> I wonder why you would subject yourself to this kind of humiliating self-own.
"I'm getting destroyed by this guy. Quick! Let me pretend like he's humiliating himself and not me!"
>You are constantly misinterpreting terms, simply saying "No" or "False" without ever citing anything but wikipedia.
"He has sources that correctly backup his statements. The sources in Wikipedia are right there, but I'm going to ignore them."
>It's obvious you have no understanding of either anthropology nor of where to find information or how to interpret it.
"I know you are but what am I?" Are you a toddler LOL?
>Thank you. It heartens me to get to confirm that racists are idiots.
Thank you. It heartens me to get to confirm that (anti-White) racists are idiots.
The paper opens with "to feed a growing population" without asking is that what we need? want? where we are actually heading to?
Is feeding the world a real problem? I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.
edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
reply