All of this happens because the author wills it according to his personal, eugenicist, politics. I’m not questioning in-universe strategy. I am questioning the politics of this subgenre of science fiction.

And eugenics does not require killing anyone if the desired biological traits can be altered post birth. The Portiids resolve the conflict by using the nanovirus to re-engineer humans to be more empathetic. This reflects the author’s liberal politics that key parts of human (individual and social) psychology are pre-determined by physical substrate rather than social relations. “Human nature,” whether “material” or metaphysical. We already have a way to expand human empathy without conceding to the arguments of 19th century liberal scientists — it’s called communism.

What did I miss? The resolution seemed egregiously eugenic, and that’s ignoring the fact that uplift fiction hinges itself on sentience being primarily a biological phenomenon.

Just read Children of Time. Uplift eugenicslop, unfortunately!

Because they’re Marxist degrowthers, not Marxist degrowthers. They want Marx to agree with degrowth instead of applying the Marxist method to ecology. Saitō is a figurehead for this sort of thing.

I’ve already read some of Hickel’s papers. They’re easy to understand, scientific, and productively advance the debate on degrowth. Would reading Less is More achieve something that reading more of his original research won’t? Because I don’t want to read an entire book for a worse understanding of something that can be gained through reading a few papers. Saitō already got me once.

Saitō Kōhei is right — Marx (and thus Marxists, until Saitō arrived) was completely wrong to assert “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of the development of the productive forces.”

How did Engels let this get published in 1848? Right, he was a Stalinist.

Saitō Kōhei is right — Marx (and thus Marxists, until Saitō arrived) was completely wrong to assert “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of the development of the productive forces.”

https://xcancel.com/drprevost/status/1886469097560719594

No, I feel the same way

A lifeless schema. The obvious answer is the dialectical negation of sexual relations.

At that point it’s better to limit your interactions with them

Boku no hero academia lol

The great thing about forgetting much of your high school education is you can relearn using Soviet textbooks this time.

Unfortunately it is possible to spin propaganda on objective facts as well, even though the US often prefers entirely fabricated pretenses.

It’s worse than you can possibly imagine. They took the projected warming in Fahrenheit and then added 32 to it for some godforsaken reason.

In 2016, the Paris Agreement proposed the goal of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to no more than 35.6°F (and if possible, 34.7°F) higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution.

34.7 - 32 = 2.7, as in the 2.7 from the famous “1.5°C (2.7°F)” limit.

The traditional Chinese translation says warming of 5°C, and although I can’t procure a digital version of the original Japanese edition, I am assuming this is Bergstrom’s fault.

I am reading Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto written by Kōhei Saitō and translated by Brian Bergstrom and the editing is absolutely infuriating. They went with Fahrenheit instead of Celsius and are conflating average temperatures with temperature increase:

would result in a rise in average global temperatures by 38.3°F by the year 2100

Nordhaus later became stricter in his recommendations for how to combat global warming, but still with an aim to keep the rise in temperatures between 35.6°F and 37.4°F, rather than between the more accepted 34.7°F and 35.6°F range.

No one speaks on climate change like this! I am not sure if Saitō and/or Bergstrom are just incompetent and willing to dumb things down for uneducated Americans, or if they are maliciously phrasing it like this to make climate change sound even more dire.

Racism, yes, but also sexism

I love jazz music with synthesizers

Yes, current economic relations don’t really create an incentive for a family unit to reproduce. There was a very interesting article posted on this website some months ago that I can’t seem to find that discussed the population growth dynamics of various stages of capitalism. It alluded to the possibility of a semi-permanent state of high population growth, low urbanization, and lack of development as seen in Nigeria, although I am not sure how accurate that is. Regardless, the obvious progressive move that communist should be advocating for is for the state to take on the entire cost of reproduction, which would make previous subsidies look insignificant.

Contemporary capitalism is absolutely drowning in contradictions.