𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠

No, life expectancy was used to show that life was better in Russia under the Soviet Union. Which is only true if you look at the direct chaos after the fall, but the comparison is much, much less rosy when you zoom out a little and realise that under modern Russia living standards actually increased, whereas they stagnated under the Soviet Union.

I argued that the Soviets were already behind most of the world, and that their stagnation was indicative of worsening living standards. Developing countries did not show such stagnation unless there was either severe civil strife or external factors (like the fall of the Soviets) impacting them.

And sorry for saying this, but I think it’s kind of a given that as the world’s number two superpower, it’s kinda expected that their life expectancy is higher than developing countries in Africa. I don’t see how that’s this supposed slam dunk you’re pretending it is. “Yeah life in the Soviet Union was better than in Chad”, no shit Sherlock. But life in Chad is actively improving, which the Soviets failed to do. It’s an enormous nation filled with natural resources, the Soviets not improving living standards in such conditions is almost an achievement.

I’ve been talking about the stagnation in the rise of life expectancy between 1960 and 1980. It only started rising again around 2000, after the fall of the Union. Try to keep up.

Developing countries obviously had a lower life expectancy, but one that was still on the rise, indicating improving living conditions. Same goes capitalist nations and many of the more developed nations had passed the SU by a fairly wide margin.

The SU, as one of the very few nations in the world, managed to completely stagnate, which indicates that living conditions weren’t improving, and likely worsening somewhat (as advancements in medicine normally leads to a longer average lifespan).

By the way, you yourself steered towards comparing the Soviet Union with developing nations in Africa, as any other comparison was somehow unfair to you. I compared them with western nations, nations in Asia and now random countries in Africa to play along with your demands. And now that you can’t shift further, you throw in a “Imagine thinking” reddit-like response.

How about you either address the flatlined life expectancy during these 20 years directly then, skip the comparisons. Why didn’t it improve? Or just come up with a country that is a fair comparison to you. Because if you’re not going to seriously engage and just throw out silly soundbites then there’s no point to this.

Very specific.

I’ve looked at some examples for you. Countries like Chad, Mali, Gambia and Gabon show a continuous rise in life expectancy, just like other developing countries do.

Then there’s countries hit by the fall of the Soviets, likely due to a dependence on Soviet trade or support, like Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Lesotho, though these nations do not show the same stagnation that the Soviets showed before 1980.

The only example I could find of a stagnated life expectancy in the same period as the Soviets pre-fall (so 1960-1980) was Rwanda. But that’s likely due to the Hutu revolution in 1959 and the years of Tutsi repression that followed.

I’m sure there may be a handful of other African nations with a similar pattern, but it’s certainly not true that the vast majority of them showed this pattern of stagnation that the Soviets had. Africa taken as a whole also doesn’t show it, it is however dented after 1980 due to the fall of the Soviets. In fact, Rwanda being the counterexample here is kinda a bad look for the Soviets, given the internal conflict that caused the stagnation.

Feel free to name some counterexamples then. Otherwise, don’t bother commenting if you have nothing of substance to contribute.

That’s not how you phrased your comment. Try being clearer in your phrasing.

Also try responding to the rest of the contents of my reply instead of deflecting by saying “reddit dumb” and thinking that’s winning an argument. I very clearly demonstrated that a wide variety of developing nations did not show the same stagnation in life expectancy that the SU did.

You said “non-western”. I named two. If you want to shift goalposts further that’s fine but don’t act like you’re being all smart or anything.

Even for other developing countries the overall trend is clear: continuous rise in life expectancy, leveling off as it gets closer to 80. The SU plateaud just below 70 and remained there until its fall (after which it rose again). The vast majority of developing nations do not show this pattern of levelling off early.

Take Iran, or the Philippines, or even Vietnam (bar the civil war). All of them didn’t level off like the Soviets did. Same thing in other socialist countries like Cuba and the PRC.

It indicates a fairly severe mismanagement that the Soviet Union is one of the very, very few countries that managed to keep their life expectancy at 67-68 for over 20 years, when other countries kept rising and a good number had already surpassed them. Only after the year 2000 did they manage a sustained growth in life expectancy, rising to 73 after dropping to 64 (likely levelling off a little now due to the war in Ukraine).

The argument was that under the Soviet Union life was better. That may have been true when compared directly to the very tumultuous fall that directly followed. But the reality is that growth of life expectancy had completely stagnated in Soviet Union (it was even declining very slightly). It only started rising again after Russia had mostly stabilised post-fall, and is now higher than it’s ever been.

Japan’s life expectancy was even higher than most of those in the west.

Sure, plenty of developing capitalist nations had barely caught up at that point (e.g. South Korea). But they did manage to keep a positive trend going, whereas the SU had levelled off and wasn’t improving anymore.

Not what I said.

Also, where the Soviet Union fairly quickly seemed to plateau off with their life expectancy, the PRC managed to much more continuously trend upwards. Not necessarily faster than the SU at first (which makes sense), but they did manage to keep the momentum whereas the SU did not.

Compared to other capitalist countries it was worse during Soviet times too. Average US life expectancy at the USSRs peak in 1986 was approx. 75 years old, whereas in the USSR the average is 5 years less… Quite substantial.

You really won’t short something, and wooden toothpicks are at risk of splintering and leaving more behind than getting out if you’re not careful.

You generally won’t be touching the contacts much, since most gunk like lint can just be scooped out. Just be a bit gentle and you’ll be fine.

China is investing more in solar. But China is also very power-hungry, so any energy they produce will get sold to the market, so their market looks significantly different. Their economy is different and so is their power usage.

The same could be said of solar. ‘It’s a very expensive capitol investment and as soon as the sun goes down it’s just a stupidly expensive roof costing money’.

Solar is significantly cheaper. Like it’s not even funny how much cheaper it is. This means that other than the sun going down, they’re always going to be producing because it’s by far the cheapest power available. And because they easily earn back what they cost, it’s perfectly fine if they don’t operate at 100% efficiency.

For nuclear to remain economically viable in these market conditions it has to be similarly profitable, and it just isn’t.

You’d have similar problems doing this under communism tbf. It’s expensive under any economic system. Solar at least has the advantage that any Joe Shmoe can put it on their roof and produce their own power, not being dependent on big energy corpos.

Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope.

In the power grid of today (and even more so in the future), that’s fairly slow. On good days wind and solar already produce more than 100% in several countries, so it needs to be able to drop to 0%. Worse however is that nuclear is already expensive, and shutting it down means it’s just a hunk of a building costing money. It’s why private investors have largely shunned nuclear in the modern days: it’s not econonically viable anymore, or even if it is it’s just not profitable enough. And that picture seems to be getting worse and worse every year.

The costs are just externalized and safety is, comparitively, neglected.

Sure, but the power companies don’t pay for that so to them it’s cheap, which was the point.

The main issue with nuclear is that it just doesn’t make economic sense. It’s far too expensive to build and it takes ages to get running too.

Second problem is that due to the variability in output of other renewable sources, anything that intends to be the “backup power” has to be very variable as well. Nuclear can’t quickly scale up and down, and even if it could it’d make nuclear even less economically viable. It’s why currently gas plants are used as backup: they’re cheap and can scale up/down very quickly.

And then there’s the big advantage that solar has, which is that people can own the power generation themselves, saving a lot of money and in some cases even making money. It’s also decentralized: an accident or attack at a nuclear plant would have huge consequences for electricity availability (not to mention other safety problems). Solar is also dirt-cheap and getting cheaper every year, faster than most scientists predicted it would.

I did feel like Ousterhout kind of undermined his own “comments go a long way in explaining code in longer functions” argument when his example code featured some incorrect comments, which is exactly what Martin warned about.

Honestly neither of them were really wrong anywhere, they just have a different approach. Sometimes I find Martins code split into too many functions, but halfway through there’s an example where Martins code is imo definitely clearer than Ousterhouts.

Both of their experience is valuable and is best shared, but not taken as gospel I think.

Nice avatar

Feel free to be offended I guess.

The program started off as IMP, Image Manipulation Program. They added a G (General) to make it a reference to a character in Pulp Fiction.

The name’s history has nothing to do with ableism. Besides, not many artists care; look up what a “gimping machine” is :).

Words can have multiple meanings and context matters a lot. Besides its usage as a slur is pretty outmoded by now.