[Seattle3503]

> if you are just shilling for polluting billionaires.

What an acidic thing to fling. I want us to build infrastructure. Nowhere did I say we need do whatever Musk says.

I want us to use cost-benefit analysis to judge infrastructure projects rather than the heavy moral framing we get a lot.

[anigbrowl]

It's a parody of your comment, which ascribes all environmental regulation to NIMBYs. If you blow a raspberry and someone blows a similar one right back at you, maybe you earned it.

[ToValueFunfetti]

>It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment.

>it's not clear if you know what environmental regulations are or if you are just shilling for polluting billionaires.

This is pretty clearly an escalation beyond what you're describing.

e: Because you did already read these lines, I guess I should spell this out: the former says we can't trust this datapoint as reflecting the issue we're concerned about; the latter says that the former person is either completely ignorant about the subject matter or lying due to corruption. The former is disagreeable; the latter is an ad hominem assuming bad faith against HN guidelines.

[HelloMcFly]

You did not include the more equivalent quote from the OP in my view:

> The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development

This doesn't just say we can't trust a datapoint, it starts with a position premised on bad faith motivations for all environmental regulations. Still not totally equivalent, but I don't think the original commenter was exactly being neutral or reasoned in their opening argument.

[ToValueFunfetti]

A charitable reading of their comment would be that they meant NIMBYs write and use environmental regulations to stunt development, rather than that there is no such thing as a legitimate environmental regulation. It's definitely poorly phrased in a way that lends itself to the uncharitable interpretation, but their subsequent remarks are very clear that they don't agree with that.

As you note, even the uncharitable interpretation isn't equivalent- you say 'not totally equivalent' but they're different quite critically in that the one is attacking a political position and some laws and the other is attacking an individual person on this forum.

[anigbrowl]

Let's look at the opening of the two comments which clearly mirror each other in tone and structure.

The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development. Even if, on balance, the infrastructure is a net positive.

The tricky thing about deregulating the environment is that deregulations are uncrafted and utilized by amoral capitalists who want to make money no matter what, including by poisoning the land and sea and air as much as they want.

Perhaps missing the point like this was not deliberate, but you nevertheless missed it.

latter says that the former person is either [...] or [...] [...] the latter is an ad hominem assuming bad faith

You went from characterizing it as an either/or comment in one sentence, to characterizing it as a bad faith assumption in the next. This is equivalent to: 'he says it's either odd or even...he says it's odd.'

[ToValueFunfetti]

I don't think that taking umbrage with a rude part of a comment can be called missing the point because another part of the comment was better. Am I missing yours?

And yeah, looks like I dropped an 'or' between 'hominem' and 'assuming'. My bad, I wasn't sure how long the edit window lasts and rushed it.

[miltonlost]

You need a moral framing for big infrastructure projects, or else that's how you get redlining and the destruction of minority neighborhoods for "urban renewal" and the inner-city highway system. You can't do a "cost-benefit" analysis without some sort of moral system inherent in the costs and the benefits, or else how can you calculate the effects on humans. Your "just the numbers" has its own moral system you are ignoring and instead saying everyone else isn't a cost-benefit and is only morality.

I want to build infrastructure too. Just not at the cost of the destruction of the world we live in.

[terminalshort]

Can't build new infrastructure without destroying what was there previously, so yeah, you actually don't.

[freejazz]

>I want us to use cost-benefit analysis to judge infrastructure projects rather than the heavy moral framing we get a lot.

By framing a regulation as some ploy? You're just as ridiculous

[jackphilson]

Regulations can often be bad for progress so a CBA is probably best. Doesn't matter about the framing.

[freejazz]

What do you mean framing doesn't matter? You just called the other post 'acidic' The idea that a CBA is somehow useful outside of any moral context is facially ridiculous anyway. You're just spewing word-mumbo-jumbo. The entire point of the law is to uphold the basic moral values of society in its function.

[sleepybrett]

Well isn't the boring company trying to build his dumbass single lane tesla road? Is this really infrastructure or just 'trains with extra steps and no safety'

[hollerith]

This seems intrinsically safer than trains, or so it seems to me (although I am not an expert). It seems safer because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow, but blowing a tire is unlikely to damage the whole train like a derailment is. At the least, the operator has the option to increase safety against blown tires by increasing the separation between cars.

Instead of bringing up safety, I'd bring up the microplastics and other pollutants emitted by the technology of the elastomeric tire and which might be an intrinsic property of cost-effective use of the technology.

[AlienRobot]

>From the very first run of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen on October 1, 1964, until the present day, there has never been a single derailment or collision on the entire full-standard Shinkansen rail network resulting in a passenger fatality

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01045/#:~:text=Zero%20Fa...

Sounds like trains are pretty safe to me.

[hollerith]

Huh. Thanks.

[bobthepanda]

Derailments are really rare in properly maintained railroads; even the NYC subway with a century of chronic underinvestment derails rarely (think one every few years).

Cars get into accidents way more frequently. The American freight rail system derails at a more frequent rate because the private operators are incentivized to really not do any maintenance at all.

[hollerith]

Looks like I was wrong. According to an unreliable source of fast answers, "passenger rail lines appear to be two to five times safer than intercity bus lines on a per-passenger-mile basis".

[JumpCrisscross]

> actually seems intrinsically safer than trains because trains derails regularly. Tires can blow

Trains don’t “regularly” derail. And when they do, they aren’t as fatal as the median highway crash.

There are unlikely to be too many fatalities in this system because it runs slowly. (Unless Li-on batteries cascade combust somehow.)

[GuinansEyebrows]

> What an acidic thing to fling.

if you don't automatically assume bad faith when dealing with hypercapitalist private infrastructure projects, you're going to be taken advantage of. every time.

that, or you're on the payroll. there's not a ton of wiggle room here.

[Seattle3503]

You are falling prey to the myth of the cynical genius

> A further three studies based on the data of about 200,000 individuals from 30 countries debunked these lay beliefs as illusionary by revealing that cynical (vs. less cynical) individuals generally do worse on cognitive ability and academic competency tasks. Cross-cultural analyses showed that competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment. Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that-at low levels of competence-holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others' cunning.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29993325/

[anigbrowl]

only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment

GP explicitly specified such an environment. Musk is the epitome of a hypercapitalist - an outlier in terms of wealth, fame, ambition, and micromanagement.

[hn_acc1]

This 1000x. I can't believe Musk is still fooling people..

[GuinansEyebrows]

i may be stupid but i'm not wrong.