X Corp. is majorly owned by Elon Musk

it will ruin the character of the neighbourhood

“Boy, I sure love the sound and smell of cars! Imagine if people walked quietly instead, that would be awful - who would I yell at for speeding?”

after someone […] ran over a residents dog along the street.

Why does it seem like safety measures only ever get approved after someone died?

(Visibility bias, probably - a death is just a lot more noticeable than a “would have died in an alternative timeline but didn’t because…” - but that doesn’t make such deaths any less tragic)

I was contesting the general logic of this sentiment:

Which “experts” do you need for what’s common knowledge?

I took this to mean “If common knowledge suggests an obvious understanding, an expert’s assessment is can add no value, as they would either agree or be wrong.” Put differently: “If it seems obviously true to me, it must be true in general.”

TL;DR: If you think you know more than experts on a given topic, you’re most likely wrong.

On a fundamental level, this claim in general holds no water. Experts in a given field are usually aware of the “common knowledge”. They also usually have special knowledge, which is what makes them experts. If they claim things that contradict “common knowledge”, it’s more likely that their special knowledge includes additional considerations a layperson wouldn’t be aware of.
Appeal to Authority as a fallacy applies if the person in question isn’t actually an authority on the subject just because they’re prominent or versed in some other context, but it doesn’t work as universal refutation of “experts say”.

For this specific case, I’m inclined to assume there is some nuance I might not know about. Obvious to me seems that large, central power plants are both easier targets and more vulnerable to total disruption if a part of their machinery is damaged. On the other hand, a distributed grid of solar panels may be more resilient, as the rest can continue to function even if some are destroyed, in addition to being harder to spot, making efforts to disrupt power supply far more expensive in terms of resources.

However, I’m not qualified to assess the expertise of the people in question, let alone make an accurate assessment myself. Maybe you’re right, they’re grifters telling bullshit. But I’d be wary of assuming so just because it seems true.

Yeah but wind power plants are ugly here instead of even uglier somewhere else that’s NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).

If experts disagree with your “common knowledge”, it’s probably actually a “common misconception” which, given the sheer complexity of information in our world, is a fairly common phenomenon. There’s no shame in being wrong about things you’re no expert in, just in doubling down on your error.

(Of course, if you’re an expert too and have evidence to the contrary, it becomes effectively impossible for laypeople to assess without knowing the history current state of discussion in the field.)

Until it does, we shouldn’t exacerbate the climate and resource issues we already have by blindly buying into the hype and building more and larger corporate-scale power gluttons to produce even more heat than we’re already dealing with.

“AI” has potential, ideas like machine assistance with writing letters and improving security by augmenting human alertness are all nice. Unfortunately, it also has destructive potential for things like surveillance, even deadlier weapons or accelerating the wealth extraction of those with the capital to invest in building aforementioned power gluttons.

Additionally, it risks misuse and overreliance, which is particularly dangerous in the current stage where it can’t entirely replace humans (yet), the issues of which may not immediately become apparent until they do damage.

If and until the abilities of AI reach the point where they can compensate tech illiteracy and we no longer need to worry about the exorbitant heat production, it shouldn’t be deployed at scale at all, and even then its use needs to be scrutinised, regulated and that regulation is appropriately enforced (which basically requires significant social and political change, so good luck).

But the best people - all the best people - and these really are good people, you know? They’re good, the best, just wonderful people, and they say - I didn’t ask, they told me!

Fair point

The (ideal) most reasonable approach for public information organs, in my opinion, would be to use all the channels that are available - Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, but also X for the share of people that can’t be arsed to move (or don’t want to, because the people and communities they care about haven’t). I’d even count Facebook, Instagram, Reddit among those channels, as much as I resent those companies, as well as Lemmy and the other fediverse services (I’m not super informed here), a blog, RSS feeds, maybe an email subscription service too, just to be sure.

In fact, I think diversifying your presence would be a great thing in general - platform exclusivity is turning out to be a quite toxic and disadvantageous concept. Well, it has been for a while, but it’s starting to become more visible.

The real restriction is of course the technical infrastructure and personell to maintain all these presences. You could use of a content distribution system that takes a picture, a long text and a short summary to generate appropriate posts for all these platforms, but you’d still need people monitoring and responding on the various platforms, ideally people sufficiently familiar with the respective culture to communicate effectively.

Couldn’t you set an alert in your calendar tool of choice with the comment link in the notes or title?

That’s the permanent arms race between attack and defense: Every time the defender comes up with a way to protect themselves, the attackers go find a new way to deal with that defense. Unless some superior force makes the attackers sit down and shut up, or the cost of attacking becomes greater than the return on investment.