Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

I had a lot of conversations around my old home town this week and there is a common theme. So let me ask the #fediverse (please boost for more reach)

A partial or or complete social collapse by 2033 is

@platypus Time to pull this out again: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

@takeitev As someone trying to buy 13kWh of Li batteries for my solar power backup system (PG&E likes to turn of my power when it get too hot out), yes, they are as expensive as I think. At the current market rate the battery packs in my Tesla would sell for 2/3rds the total new purchase price of the car. I'm just glad they are harder to extract that Catalytic converters.

@garyackerman This is true, but one size fits all in education is still better than one track for white affluent students and another for BIPOC students and poor students. We have 70 years of data showing that when we try to track students by interest and ability the actual result is to track them by race and economics.

@takeitev Two factors in high EV costs: 1) Battery raw materials. This will come down gradually as more metals are extracted, then more dramatically as batteries begin to be recycled in significant quantities. 2) High demand with little inventory. We can see Tesla adjusting prices to try to keep their waiting list at 3-6 months. most other manufactures are 12-18 months behind. Once there are EVs sitting on dealers lots waiting to be sold, the price will drop.

@namd4kids And the truth is that public health is politics and sometimes the best thing for public health and safety is what actually can be implemented politically. Covid burned a huge amount of public trust in government institutions like the CDC. The GQP is salivating at the idea that the CDC might even hint that mask mandates were coming back (the the point of inventing sources at the TSA) because they know that a majority of Americans will be actively hostile to them and in by proxy hostile to the democratic administration.

The CDC implementing mask mandates now would be about as effective as Nancy Reagan was at stopping AIDS by calling abstinence from sex.

@johnettesnuggs slightly more nuance to your HVAC comment. Windows stopped opening when building codes started mandating energy efficiency. For example, in California [Title 24](https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards) makes it impossible to build commercial spaces with window that open. There is just no way to meet the efficiency requirements. It also makes it very difficult to up the air exchange rate without adding a significant amount of extra equipment.

**A though on #AI #SelfDriving vehicles:** There is clearly a strong market out there, and the technology is mostly there. The challenge is that the current environment is designed for human drivers. For a historical comparison look at the [high wheeler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_wheeler) cars at the turn of the 20th century. These vehicles had to operate on the infrastructure designed for horse and buggy. My #Tesla M3 is in every way a superior car, but it would have been useless on the rutted dirt tracks of the era. My modern car needed the modern road and highway system to develop first.

I predict that the big advances in Self-driving will come from upgrading transportation infrastructure to be more predictable for the AI rather than the abilities of the AI reaching the point where it can successfully navigated every conceivable hazard and situation found on today's roads.

@skry Poor implementation, but the market is there. I would love to have a (sound) medical advisor who didn't need $500 per interaction and whose advice was not always tinged with the thoughts of "the more they do the more they make."

As a repeat victim of unjustified over-treatment in medicine I would love to have a medical AI that didn't have a financial incentive to prescribe a treatment I didn't need.

@flexghost If you loan an acquaintance $20 and never see them again, it was worth the $20 to be rid of them. I say let him run and good riddance.

@Bryce@mathstodon.xyz @julesh "Heros in a Semigroup. Monoid Power!"

@georgetakei I seeing the virtue in the way Russia deals with people who lead failed coups. Now, in having written that have I engaged in "stochastic terrorism?"

@TarkabarkaHolgy