Technically speaking the crime of fraud has three elements: (1) A materially false statement; (2) an intent to deceive the recipient; (3) a reliance upon the false statement by the recipient.

So, if you want to lie to people and want to avoid being charged with fraud, it's actually quite simple. You lie by omission. You distract. You prevaricate (dance around the facts). You encourage people to jump on the bandwagon; you lead them to spurious conclusions. It's so easy to lie without making any materially false statements that anyone who does lie that way when people are going to check up on him is a fool.

Not only is this way of lying *legal*, it happens every time a lawyer makes an closing statement to a jury. It's not a problem because there's an opposing counsel who's professionally trained to spot omissions and lapses of logic and to point them out. But if a lawyer introduces a *false statement of fact* to a trial that's a very serious offense, in fact grounds for disbarrment because that can't be fixed by having an alert opponent.

We have similar standards of truthfullness for advertising and politics because in theory there's competition that's supposed to make up for your dishonesty. In practice that doesn't work very well because there is *nobody* involved (like a judge) who cares about people making sound judgments. But still, any brand that relies on materially false statements is a brand you want to avoid because they don't even measure up to the laxest imaginable standards of honesty.

Now investors have lots of money, so they receive a somehat better class of legal protections than consumers or voters do. There are expectations of dilligence and duties to disclose certain things etc. that can get someone selling investments into trouble. But that's still not as bad as committing *fraud*, which is stupid and therefore gets extra severe punishment.

If I understand your argument properly, you're suggesting that things will be OK with the reefs because "survival of the fittest" will produce a population of corals better adapted to warmer conditions.

Let me first point out is that this isn't really an argument, it's a hypothesis. In fact this is the very question that actual *reef scientists* are raising -- the ability of reefs to survive as an ecosystem under survival pressure. There's no reason to believe reefs will surivive just because fitter organisms will *tend* to reproduce more, populations perish all the time. When it's a keystone species in an ecosystem, that ecosystem collapses. There is no invisible hand here steering things to any preordained conclusion.

So arguing over terminology here is really just an attempt to distract (name calling even more so) from your weak position on whether reefs will survive or not.

However, returning to that irrelevant terminology argument, you are undoubtedly making an evolutionary argument. You may be thinking that natural selection won't produce a new taxonomic *species* for thousands of generations, and you'd be right. However it will produce a new *clade*. When a better-adapted clade emerges due to survival pressures, that is evolution by natural selection. Whether we call that new clade a "species" is purely a human convention adopted and managed to facilitate scientific communication.

You don't have to take my word for any of this. Put it to any working biologist you know.

Outside of the /. crowd

Sometimes I wonder why this particular website bothers to cover issues related to that particular crowd. They're such an insignificant minority!

Customer service jobs have seen high losses. As soon as the current AI is combined with a physical presence then jobs like stocking, shelving, janitorial services, security, and many more will see rapid replacement.

I agree there's a problem with confabulation. But see the CNBC article, 'TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers donâ(TM)t tell the full story" where it says, "According to a recent report of 750 business leaders using AI from ResumeBuilder, 37% say the technology replaced workers in 2023. Meanwhile, 44% report that there will be layoffs in 2024 resulting from AI efficiency."

As I said,

You haven't been following A.I. closely have you? Because it's being used in many high value applications and exceeding the current human experts in those fields.

Even in it's current dumb state, combined with robots, the current A.I. can replace about 60% of human beings and that includes some fields that require a masters degree or doctorate to get a job.

Most manual labor jobs are easy to replace (stocker, shelving, janitorial services, landscaping, simple assembly, etc. etc. etc)
And A.I. is already replacing radiologists and other analytical jobs.

I won't return in coin by calling you an idiot, because I don't think you are one. What I think you are is too *ignorant* to realize you're talking about evolution. "Survival of the fittest" is a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864 to refer to natural selection, a concept that's in the actual *title* of Darwin's book.

I agree with the other guy, if your breakeven is over 9 years, then solar isn't worth it yet.

Get a smaller off grid system for disaster planning and then wait for prices to drop further (and another 40% decline is due within the next 5 years.) Plus the panels are getting smaller for the same power. 10 years ago, a 100w panel was 32sq feet and $750. Last summer, a portable 100w panel was 16 sq feet and $129. A fixed panel was under $100 and also about 12 sq feet. And that's after 10 years of inflation on the price.

You face significant risk of inverter failure over 15 years. Maybe twice. At about 10 years, you would need new batteries.

But you can have a small, non-grid tied system to keep your refrigerator, a fan, a router, a laptop/tv, and a couple lights going. Saving a fridge full of food is both a reduction in misery *and* potentially a $200 to $400 savings so one disaster outage will reduce your payoff period quite a bit (2 to 4 panels are suddenly "free" or 1 battery is suddenly "free").

You haven't been following A.I. closely have you? Because it's being used in many high value applications and exceeding the current human experts in those fields.

Even in it's current dumb state, combined with robots, the current A.I. can replace about 60% of human beings and that includes some fields that require a masters degree or doctorate to get a job.

That's why you combine generation and storage (and note I didn't say "batteries"). That storage can include turning atmospheric co2 into fuel.

But underlying your point is that we simply have too many people. Generating baseline power for the current population is rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Seems to me that focusing on increased efficiency would have huge payoffs. Brains do this with a very tiny amount of electricity so the potential power efficiencies are vast.

Oops... senior moment. Should have said 2024.

No 3rd either, so the king can even do that in time of peace!

'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.'

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and -- one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency -- bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

'There, comrades! That's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look.' She bent over again. 'You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better,' she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

Geroge Orwell - 1984

Well, no *one* of us in a position to save the coral reefs. Not even world leaders can do it. But we *all* are in a position to do a little bit, and collectively all those little bits add up to matter.

Sure if you're the only person trying to reduce is carbon footprint you will make no difference. But if enough people do it, then that captures the attention of industry and politicians and shifts the Overton window. Clearly we can't save everything, but there's still a lot on the table and marginal improvements matter. All-or-nothing thinking is a big part of denialist thinking; if you can't fix everything then there's no point in fixing anything and therefore people say there's a problem are alarmists predicting a catastrophe we couldn't do anything about even if it weren't happening.

As to the loss of coral reefs not being the worst outcome of climate change, that's probably true, but we really can't anticiapte the impact. About a quarter of all marine life depends on coral reefs for some part of their life cycle. Losing all of it would likely be catastrophic in ways we can't imagine yet, but the flip side is that saving *some* of it is likely to be quite a worthwhile goal.

Well, you bringing *evolution* into the argument shows that your views are so far off base theyr'e not even wrong.