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rationaloptimist.com
Personal blog · rationaloptimist.comscienceeconomics
rationaloptimist.com is a personal blog at rationaloptimist.com about science and economics. Since 2010, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 49 times, most often “The benefits of carbon dioxide”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-06-01
- The benefits of carbon dioxide2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-10-29
- Innovation Can't be Forced, but it can be Quashed2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-20
- /books/rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-08
- Reasons to be cheerful2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-05
What Hacker News says?
Evolution encourages diversity. That's quite a general statement for the discussion here, which you then use to make a specific conclusion about the human behavioral issue under discussion in this thread. Could you kindly fill out the reasoning steps you are implicitly following with more citations to research on each factual assertion you are relying on? even though their standard of living is rising continually Th…
Comment linking /
on “Why do you think people are poor?”Submitted Badgers are driving hedgehogs extinct as a story · 54 points
HN discussionIt was kind of Charlie Stross, a participant here on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=cstross to take time out from writing his latest novel to post the interesting blog post shared here. Thanks too to the HN participants who shared the link and have commented already while I was coming back from work. I especially like about this post that Stross looked back at Earth 500 years ago to show readers what time…
Comment linking /blog/go-dutch.aspx
on “The Year 2512”Submitted Why most resources don't run out as a story · 48 points
HN discussionSome that caught my eye: "Improve our modelling of impact winter scenarios, especially for 1–10 km asteroids. Work with experts in climate modelling and nuclear winter modelling to see what modern models say. " I think impact scenarios is a definite, but nuclear winter is actually an extremely questionable "theory". Many people are not aware, but the the Russian KGB boasted that they literally made this up in order…
Comment linking /blog/nuclear-winter/
on “Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline”Submitted The Censorious Age as a story · 14 points
HN discussionI checked the other commments here before looking for the full report "OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction" http://www.oecd.org/document/11/0,3746,en_2649_37465_4903655... by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Executive Summary of the report http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/oecd-environmental-... sums up the future challenges: "Over the last fo…
Comment linking /blog/readers-digest.aspx
on “Hot, crowded, and running out of fuel: Earth of 2050 a scary place”Submitted Peculiar human sex differences as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI've found Travis Bradford's book Solar Revolution to give a good overview of the solar industry, with the same numerate feel as this article: http://www.prometheus.org/research/solarrev The best rebuttal I've heard (to renewables generally, not PV specifically) is the second to last chapter of Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-... (Sorry I can't link di…
Comment linking /books/rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves
on “Solar PV rapidly becoming the cheapest option to generate electricity”Submitted Theory of Nuclear Winter may have been a KGB Hoax (2018) as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThis was long overdue. > It is an open secret among international diplomats and public health experts that WHO is “not fit for mission” (as one of them put it to me), riddled with politics and bureaucracy. Given its previous failures and the warning that was Sars, its leadership has no excuse for reacting so oddly, and so tardily, to the current crisis. http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/who-must-answer/
Comment linking /blog/who-must-answer/
on “Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization”Submitted Innovation Can't be Forced, but it can be Quashed as a story · 9 points
HN discussionHere is one plausible theory: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-censorious-age
Comment linking /blog/the-censorious-age
on “Tumblr refugees trying to save its NSFW content”Submitted Coronavirus Is the Wolf on the Loose as a story · 8 points
HN discussionHas anyone ever reviewed the code and analyzed the software engineering practices behind the climate models? I used to take these things for granted and just believe articles and studies like this one but after humongous public failure of Imperial College Coronavirus model I'm not so sure anymore. We need code and tech reviews in addition to peer review. https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/ h…
Comment linking /blog/lockdown-and-mathematical-guesswork/
on “One Billion People Will Suffer from “Unliveable” Heat Within 50 Years”Submitted The evolution of Covid is not random as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThe number of fires has been going down over time, although the number of firefighters haven't. They do have to be close enough to fires, so can't decline as much. The overall declines are however good from a quality of human life perspective. US Fire administration stats showing ~20% declines in the last decade: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/ Firefighters don't fight fires "Over the past 35 years, the nu…
Comment linking /blog/explaining-the-steep-decline-in-the-frequency-of-fires.aspx
on “With Porches and Parks, a Texas Community Aims for Urban Utopia”Submitted Did the Covid-19 virus escape from a Wuhan lab? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI was reading on my phone in bed, but your comment so missed the point that I was compelled to get up in the middle of the night and write a full response. 1) Yes, the author confused Penn State with the UPenn. The Financial Post should probably correct it, but I find it excusable that a Canadian author writing in a Canadian paper might not properly distinguish them. This did not cause me to discount the rest of the…
Comment linking /blog/delinquent-teenager
on “DOJ takes bloggers laptops over reader comments left at Wordpress hosted blog”Submitted Amara's Law as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe Ars Technica article kindly submitted here is based on a World Bank press release that has prompted many news articles today. Several of the articles mention the underlying World Bank report .PDF file "Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided," http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_... which was a dead link for me the first few times I tried to follow the link, but is work…
Comment linking /blog/go-dutch.aspx
on “World Bank envisions a +4°C future”Submitted The Ozone Hole Was Exaggerated as a Problem (2014) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI am a beekeeper. So, I care about bees. So before people start to throw that idea that we are all going to die from lack of pollinators, let's look at the facts. Here's a good start: "What decline? The number of honeybee hives in the world is at a record high. The number in Europe is higher than it was in the early 1990s when neonics were introduced. Hive mortality in Britain was unusually low in the year before th…
Comment linking /blog/bees-and-pesticides.aspx
on “A Sharp Spike in Honeybee Deaths Deepens a Worrisome Trend”Submitted The benefits of carbon dioxide as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBut one thing I'm rather certain about: the world will be significantly poorer in 50 years. That's the one thing I would most resolutely bet against among predictions about the future fifty years from now. I've been hearing predictions of a poorer world to come throughout my more than fifty years of life, and they have consistently been proved wrong. I may not have total buy-in to the views of the author I cite belo…
Comment linking /books/rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves
on “The future of old: If you’re 30 now, what can you expect at 80?”Submitted My life as a climate lukewarmer as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYes, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/ . Though this guy traded (barter).
Comment linking /
on “The man who lives without money”Submitted Do people mind more about inequality than poverty? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis reminds of the The Rational Optimist. Not that I agree with all the arguments made, but the contrary optimistic point of view is refreshing. http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog http://www.rationaloptimist.com/publications/the-rational-op...
Comment linking /publications/the-rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves.aspx
on “The Doomslayer (1997)”Submitted Bitcoin and block-chain could transform the world as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
