I’m not sure I understand why the headline is wrong.
Whatever the reason might be, the point is that African forests have gone from absorbing more carbon than they release, to releasing more carbon than they absorb.
IOW, they have become net emitters as opposed to net absorbers.
One could argue the forest itself hasn't started emitting carbon, its the loss of biomass due to clearing that has had a net reduction in total biomass.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the first couple of claims. But I think the author pulls a sleight of hand to make their case (to be fair, I suspect they themselves didn’t realize they’re doing this).
- The first claim is that language is not intelligence.
I think this is true, but am not sure. However, for the sake of argument, let’s accept this as true.
However, this leads to the obvious objection stated by the author. General intelligence doesn’t need to work the same way as human intelligence does. The author counters this with their second claim.
- We have no evidence that a language based model can lead to intelligence.
For the sake of argument, let’s even accept this as true. But here’s where the sleight of hand comes in. Lack of evidence in X being true is not the same as evidence that X is false.
Just because we don’t have evidence that language can evolve into something like intelligence, doesn’t mean language cannot evolve into something like evidence.
And so far our experience in language evolving into something like intelligencr has been surprisingly positive.
Intelligence is wordless. Basic fact. And words are used in the aftermath of thought/intelligence, not prior. They are aftereffects, not effects. Words have no prior. That's a big problem.
Tfa ddn't imply lack of evidence is evidence of impossibility.
What he is referring to is that this whole bubble is predicated on promises that it actually is possible. And very soon, at that.
When they said there is no evidence they meant that the bubble is expanding due to these promises being made without the evidence. Meaning everyone should be warier about a much bigger risk then they are led to believe. But if that were true, the actual insane amounts of money moving around wouldn't be so insane. So "graph go down"
Ultra processed foods is not a well defined category, so saying avoid UPFs is meaningless.
There are several “UPFs” that have better health outcomes than NOVA 1 “unprocessed” foods, because the NOVA system was never developed to categorize foods by how healthy they were but instead how closely they matched a fairly regional Brazilian diet.
There is no evidence that “seed oils” are bad beyond their caloric density, and seed oils like Canola oil are some of the healthiest fats we have, far more than the lard they’ve been encouraging people to consume instead (which is almost certainly worse than most seed oils, except possibly rhe single scenario where a fast food chain may be heating and reheating the same fat source many times over).
No one is buying and consuming oesticides, so that’s in actionable advice for people.
There is absolutely no evidence fluoride levels in US water are anywhere near dangerous levels. Having people buy and maintain expensive filters simply to keep fluoride out of their water likely won’t help with anything, and will likely displace some other more healthful actions they could be taking, like spending the money on buying berries for their kids.
1. The idea that UPFs being poorly defined == UPF is a meaningless designation has always sounded like absurd whataboutism that stops real progress to me.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that just because UPFs aren't perfectly defined, that means there's no fundamental difference between a diet composed of skittles, donuts, and ice cream cookie sandwiches versus a diet composed of organic, plant-based whole foods, right?
2. You say there is "no evidence" that seed oils are bad... yet when I search for "canola oil health hazards", the very first thing I see is "Canola oil has been associated with potential health hazards due to its high omega-6 fatty acid content, which may contribute to inflammation and chronic diseases when consumed in excess. Additionally, the refining process often involves chemicals like hexane, which raises concerns about the presence of harmful byproducts, although these are typically present in very low amounts in the final product."
Am I crazy to prefer that the amount of hexane in my food be as close to absolutely none as possible? Am I crazy to not wanting to be loading myself up with something that's at least clearly associated with inflammation and chronic disease?
3. Why do we have to assume that the optimal replacement for seed oils is lard? Is it possible to consider that maybe we'd all be better off if we stopped eating french fries, rather than merely switching what greasy junk we're frying them in?
Is EWG not a generally reliable and trustworthy source of information? Do you mean to suggest that no foods grown outside ever have any pesticides on them, or that the pesticides never follow the food all the way to the grocery store? Haven't plenty of agricultural products over the years, including Round Up, been linked with high probability to various cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, etc?
5. Why do we assume that filtering water means taking away other healthy actions? Do we need to be giving kids MORE sugar just because it's natural (berries)? Is there not extensive scientific literature linking fluoride ingestion with decreased IQ?
6. Why can't we have a open, good-faith conversation about these topics without engaging in tribal politics? Why do we get so emotionally attached to current narratives and beliefs about these kinds of things even when we know those beliefs are formed based on incomplete information and should be subject to change as we learn more over time, a standard exercise of basic epistemic humility?
Skittles are bad for reasons having nothing to do with "ultraprocessing". This is just the new incarnation of people believing Mexican Coke is healthier because it's made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup.
Care to engage more substantially than this, or are you just repeating the argument that because UPF is imperfectly defined, that means UPF as a category is absolutely worthless and therefore we should dismiss all precautionary options surrounding any and all UPFs with prejudice?
"Ultra processing" is corollary to unhealthy food, not causal. It's not the ultra processing that makes it unhealthy.
That's the crux of this disagreement. Assuming the relationship and then assuming the next step that the antitheses must be true. Unprocessed foods aren't inherently healthy and ultra processed foods aren't inherently unhealthy, the two things have nothing to do with each other.
Parent comment is begging you to understand that correlation is not causation. That you infer it to imply causation leaves you less well-informed about the world.
It’s even cheaper to just eat the potatoes, corn, wheat, soy directly like humans have at least for 1000s of years. It would also be healthier and less damaging to the planet as well as local environments, and save tens if not hundreds of billions of animals lives.
The processing is simply unnecessary and the output isn’t food but essentially drugs that people get addicted to. That’s completely different from the actual food that we grow.
Code of Conduct cannot stop someone from doing something.
It’s just a document.
However, in this case, the presence of the code of conduct has made it trivially easy to point out the language as wrong in a way whoever wrote this for Zig cannot refute.
How is it working? The post is still there, referring to people as "losers" and "monkeys". Was the author of the post chastised? Have they edited the post and apologized?
Heh. You've rediscovered Critical Race Theory, which was a graduate-level theory about how rules/laws are systematically applied to minorities/the powerless, and not applied to the powerful/project leaders.
Holding the powerful to the law is unfortunately, a separate issue to whether it's worth it to have written rules/laws in the first place.
A CoC could still be better than no CoC, even if it fails to rein in abuse from the top.
It’s just that in other countries they call you stupid and fail you out of education destroying the lives and futures of millions of lives because those places have too many people in power, who like you, believe that if you don’t personally experience something then it mustn’t exist.
No one was accusing Apple of e-waste when for decades the world had decided common standards were a great way to reduce e-waste.
Outside of America this has been obvious since the mid 2000s when people complained about a proliferation of chargers with phones because pre-iPhone the non US cellphone market was far more advanced.
Really? Do you remember the user shit storm when they dumped the dock connector and went to lightning? People wouldn’t shut up for years, even though lightning was way way better.
So, your position is that some users whined about that… so what? Apple knew those users were, quite frankly, wrong, the 30-pin was fragile and one-way. And the cables themselves were never expensive, and used scarcely more resources than many disposable items we throw out every day.
Apple never apologized for the changeover, the iPhone 5 sold like hotcakes, everyone quickly loved having a reversible and small cable that was less fragile than 30pin, and everyone lived happily ever after. The whiny boomers annoyed that they had to finally replace a dock they bought in 2004 for an iPod made zero difference to anything. People whining online are not a problem at all unless they stop buying — and nobody stopped buying. After all, switching to Android would have necessitated buying a new cable anyway, at any point prior to 2023!
Whatever the reason might be, the point is that African forests have gone from absorbing more carbon than they release, to releasing more carbon than they absorb.
IOW, they have become net emitters as opposed to net absorbers.
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