The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.
Even if there were no reliable studies, the precautionary principle would suggest to limit food that is highly processed and somehow of a novel form, very different from what was consumed in the past.
Anticipating a critical misreading, this does not mean that everything that was consumed in the past is automatically good.
More likely, by a huge margin, since it takes only checking a box in some software system, whereas the alternatives you mention need a lot of messy work to achieve.
Sorry if my question appears ignorant, but how quickly is quantum really coming? If your prior belief is "nothing practical is ever likely to come out of quantum computing", then so far there is nothing that would seriously suggest you to reconsider it.
I do not say this lightly, having followed the academic side of QC for more than a decade.
Yes, I guess in most of Europe the 200-250 years between Rembrandt and van Gogh is exactly when family names solidified from a simple description "the one from village X" or "son of Y" or "the one with a red hair" to become a hereditary name essentially detached from its meaning.
That's an interesting perspective, that could be used as an argument by both camps. You say more social democracy, someone else might say, more social cohesion due to shared cultural background and low immigration.
I think the midwit meme captures this best, where at both ends of the IQ bell curve the characters say "I hate technology", and the guy in the middle loves it.
I think the point of disagreement is even whether "things have already happened" have really happened or not. From reading his posts, my understanding is that he thinks the claims so far can be explained by statistical errors and fudging the data. I'm not speculating whether he is right or wrong, just that the disputed facts are at a lower level.
I think he is playing it smart. The more fringe/contrarian it is, the bigger the payoff if he turns out to be right. So far nothing of much use came out of QC, and if nothing will, then the hype pendulum swings back at some point, and he will win big. If not, his position will seem silly, but not much risk to his reputation, being skeptic of a new model is intellectually fine and even courageous if it goes against the mainstream. I see it as those who called out "replication crisis" in social sciences.
I find the opposite, he often makes some ridiculous claim in the post, the comments (the ones he lets through) rightfully point out how wrong he was, then he cherry-picks and engages one of the more outrageous comments, so a superficial observer is left with the impression that the original claim was OK.