It’s the same, lame, self-fulfilling excuse that gets used for every bad thing someone does dressed up as a necessary thing.

You can see it right now with AI barreling forward. If we don’t develop it, someone else will, so we will ensuring it happens.

Of course we can never prove or disprove their claim of “someone else will” because they went ahead and did it.

Technology doesn’t make slavery obsolete, it just makes your slaves more efficient.

There had always been abolitionists who were against slavery simply because they thought it was immoral, not because they thought slaves weren’t needed anymore.

The problem that moral opposition (or support) of something runs into is that when the economic benefit is positive, those who are willing to set aside morals will have more influence, power, and wealth than those who are unwilling. So it makes difficult for things to ever really change, especially in a permanent way. Even between nations themselves - those that side aside morals will tend to end up with more influence than those that try to act morally.

The economic problem with slavery is that you're paying for absolutely everything for a slave - their food, housing, healthcare, and more. And if they ever get sick, injured, or whatever else then you're also paying for that. And that's after you pay a huge lump sum up front to purchase them in the first place. In the US a run of the mill slave cost about the same as a house, and it continued to track that price oddly closely.

The industrial revolution created a wide availability of cheap hourly laborers where the person hiring paid only their wages, and had no obligation for any of their expenses. People utilizing this labor suddenly not only had morality on their side, but even had an economic edge over those still clinging onto slavery.

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Another relevant point I think is that cognitive dissonance also tends to kick in when something is lucrative. For instance I think Aristotle's work, Politics, is amazingly insightful and informative. Yet his defense of slavery was not only the weakest part of his work, by far, but basically just garbage. Unlike his other arguments which clearly started from first principles and worked their way forward, it's clear with slavery that he started with an assumption that he wanted to be true, and concocted an argument going backwards from there.

Incidentally, he also predicted the end of slavery with an industrial revolution, some 2500 years ago: "For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, 'Of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods.' If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." [1]

[1] - https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.mb.txt

Unless you’re planning to be completely independent up until the moment you die, today’s children will be caring for you in your old age.

Damn, you're right. I forgot that we are supposed to have children so that we have someone to take care of us in the future.

Well, yes, unless you’re advocating for the extinction of humans or plan to throw yourself off a cliff the moment you’re a burden on anyone.

Today’s kids are tomorrows doctors, engineers, tradesmen, drivers, etc.

> Where is SO important that you need to take a baby with you on a plane?

I would guess that in most cases, someone is flying with an infant because they are going somewhere important and traveling with their infant was the best option available to them.

Traveling by air (or at all) with an infant is not fun and I can’t imagine that ever being anyone’s first choice.

So when you see frazzled parents at the airport with their young children, assume the best and be kind.

They’re not coming here and forcibly injecting people. Maybe we should be asking ourselves why so many are choosing the oblivion offered by drugs similar to and including fentanyl.

The only reason they’re selling it is because people are buying it.

It’s an American problem.

Russia is being bombed by the country they chose to invade.

It asks for a name.

And an age

Steam thinks I’m 126 years old.

You’re only losing cold air, which has very little mass compared to what you’re actually storing in your fridge. The energy cost to re-chill the air in the unoccupied volume of your fridge can’t be that significant, I’d imagine.

It’s be an interesting experiment to put a temperature probe in something like a block of cheese, let it cool to the ambient fridge temperature, then open the fridge door for a few minutes and see if the temperature of the cheese even measurably changes over the next few hours or whatever amount of time.

How do you make 3 equal charges by splitting a charge in such a manner?

Which isn’t surprising at all if you turn off your adblocker and look at how these AI chat products are marketed to the general public. They’re presented as all-knowing oracles that can deliver exactly what you want with only the vaguest and briefest of prompts.