[HN Gopher] Time flies in Google Earth's biggest update in years
___________________________________________________________________
Time flies in Google Earth's biggest update in years
Author : braymundo
Score : 1181 points
Date : 2021-04-15 15:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| tails4e wrote:
| Is the resolution of the images off? In my area where recent
| images have decent resolution, all images in time-lapse mode are
| very low res, including ones from. 2016, 2020.
| skeletonjelly wrote:
| Looks like it's written in web assembly too.
|
| https://earth.google.com/static/wasm/9.134.0.0/earthwasm.was...
| r34 wrote:
| I predict ML models predicting how will the Earth look like in
| the future:) loads of fun!
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| I remember when GE was Keyhole and we we're paying $600 a year
| for 1m per pixel digitalglobe imagery.
|
| Still zooms into 15th and Kasold in Lawrence on default.
|
| RCJH
| Nition wrote:
| Wasn't this exact feature already at
| https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse ?
|
| Previous discussion from eight months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005047
|
| There's also the "Historical Imagery" feature in the downloaded
| version of Google Earth ("Google Earth Pro") which has even more
| detail. I get that there's some benefit to making it more visible
| as a feature in the browser version of Google Earth though.
| neither_color wrote:
| _With Timelapse in Google Earth, 24 million satellite photos from
| the past 37 years have been compiled into an interactive 4D
| experience. Now anyone can watch time unfold and witness nearly
| four decades of planetary change._
|
| This is amazing, will this be included in the VR versions of
| google earth? For those who haven't tried it yet Google Earth is
| the first thing I show friends who've never tried VR before by
| giving them a Godzilla's eye view of Tokyo. I've yet to find
| someone who doesn't ":o"
| Impossible wrote:
| Google has bailed on VR apps (for the most part, Owlchemy is
| still there), so I imagine not. It'd be cool if Google Earth VR
| was opensource like Tiltbrush. Like Tiltbrush it was one of the
| foundational early VR apps that people demoed, it's fun to
| imagine a world where Google continued to put money into VR,
| but I'm actually not sure how that fits into their business
| outside of just another platform for Android.
| gpspake wrote:
| It's a shame. Google Earth on VR is probably the most amazing
| and practical use for VR for normal people at the moment. I
| like to street-view in to other countries and stand in the
| middle of crowded places with people around me imagining that
| it's a thousand years from now and humanity is gone and it's
| the documentation of life on earth.
|
| I've had good times passing the headset around in a room full
| of people to share places we've been.
|
| It's also cool to look down, as a giant, at paths you've
| taken irl and get a sense of scale.
|
| I love google earth in VR
| ourcat wrote:
| Google Earth VR is fantastic. Especially during the
| lockdowns. It felt like going out! ;)
|
| I'm wondering if the Timelapse will get added to it.
|
| (Used on a Quest 1 and 2 over Virtual Desktop to a PC)
| lwhi wrote:
| I also love it in VR. Will this be rolled out as a VR
| update?
| derekdahmer wrote:
| I've lost literal hours zooming along railway lines from
| the city the suburbs to the country then back to the city.
| ngokevin wrote:
| It's an absolutely amazing experience especially for first
| timers (once they figure out the controls). But like most
| things with VR, you use it a few times and forget it about
| (besides giving demos here and there).
| vidar wrote:
| What headset did you use?
| StavrosK wrote:
| I don't know about the GP, but I use a Quest 2.
| saurik wrote:
| Via Link? (I hadn't ever gotten around to verifying that
| would work. I partly ask, as the Google Earth VR
| experience was particularly epic in a way the Google
| Street View app--which was available on Quest--was not,
| even if the latter still causes a feeling of wonder in
| me... and the GP is talking about street view and people
| surrounding their position and the such.)
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I have yet to run into anything on Steam VR that won't
| work on the Quest 2 with a link cable
| crazygringo wrote:
| Of course the kicker is that you need Steam VR.
|
| Which is PC-only, no Macs.
| [deleted]
| StavrosK wrote:
| Wirelessly, actually, via ALVR.
| Agentlien wrote:
| Also not OP, but I use Vive Cosmos.
|
| I'm very happy with it and haven't experienced the
| tracking issues others complain about.
|
| At work I've previously tried some of the early oculus
| dev versions, the original Vive, and the PSVR. The Cosmos
| was the first which felt like a really great product and
| not just tech with potential if it were a bit better.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >Google has bailed on VR apps
|
| Yeah, whats up with that? Unless its all under wraps, Google
| is letting what lead they had whither away. Its silly to
| think they had working inside out tracking (Tango) in 2014.
| ehsankia wrote:
| "Bailed" is a bit over the top. I would characterize it
| more as being at a stand still.
|
| Earth VR and Tilt Brush are still around, and as mentioned
| about, Tilt Brush is even open sourced. They just haven't
| had as much interest making new stuff. VR didn't pick up
| the way most hoped it would, and at this point there isn't
| really much to do until we get another wave of innovation
| that pushes the boundary forward.
|
| Also Tango was more AR than VR. I don't think they ever had
| any lead in VR. Cardboard was neat but just that.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >Also Tango was more AR than VR. I don't think they ever
| had any lead in VR.
|
| They had inside out headsets before Oculus. Check out
| their partnership with Lenovo and the Mirage Solo
| headset. Despite working well for 6dof tracking it had
| the same terrible Daydream controller.
|
| A year later Oculus released the quest with a better
| industrial design, camera array and 6dof controllers to
| much more success. The chip was a generation newer but
| arguably the success came from things that could have
| happened a year sooner.
| Naracion wrote:
| Not just that, the Mirage Solo cameras create a _much_
| more believable stereo image when you get pass-through.
| It's my favorite pass-through system. Have you seen the
| Rift S pass-through image? Horrendous. Quest is also
| terrible, but Rift S is just unbelievably bad.
| Impossible wrote:
| Tiltbrush is opensource, but not actively being
| maintained by Google and hasn't been for a long time.
| Some of the original team is involved in maintaining an
| opensource fork, however, but this is not a Google
| product. Daydream was sunset a while ago and cardboard
| support has stopped also. VR is an interesting category
| for Google because there are often no services to
| maintain in VR apps. So, like an indie developer with a
| failed game, they can leave their VR apps on the Steam
| store with zero maintainence as long as SteamVR works.
| There are zero employees working on Google's VR apps
| except for Owlchemy, which I suspect is still around
| because they cost very little or they're profitable.
| Google Poly, which is a service related to VR, is getting
| shutdown.
|
| As for VR not picking up, it didn't pick up on startup
| folks timeline but there has been steady growth in the
| market and it's close to sustainable for many developers.
| Facebook, Valve, Sony, Microsoft and Apple have been more
| persistent and came in with realistic expectations. I
| think this is a case where Google was premature entering
| the market and also premature exiting. If they re-enter
| they'll probably look like Microsoft trying to re-enter
| the mobile or tablet market in the 2010s after not
| succeeding in the 90s and 2000s. That's not to say that
| VR will "take over the world" like smartphones, but its
| on its way to evolving into a sustainable category with a
| variety of compelling use cases.
| ehsankia wrote:
| You kinda alluded to this, and kinda got the wrong
| conclusion, but when a game developer releases a complete
| game, and then after fixing some patches, it moves on to
| other things, no one claims that they "bailed out" on the
| game. Do you think Valve "bailed out" on HL:Alyx? It just
| makes no sense.
|
| Earth VR and Tilt Brush are pretty complete apps, not
| everything needs to be worked on forever. At some point
| you get diminishing return and start wasting your time.
| joeberon wrote:
| It's standard Google practise to abandon old projects and
| move onto fresh new ones. It's due to how the internal
| promotion system works. Everyone should be aware of this by
| now..
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Technology enthusiasts (read: HN users) may not like it,
| but it's a business practice that's working as intended.
| Sometimes Google may seem shortsighted but often times
| they're just measuring the market correctly.
|
| I worked on AR/VR at Google and the projects have mostly
| paused because there's no visible financial benefit. No
| one in the real world cares enough about VR to justify it
| as a business. We prototyped hundreds of applications--
| every idea you can possibly think of--and all of them are
| either impractical with today's technology, or not useful
| enough to bother putting a VR headset on your head.
|
| AR/VR is one of those things that feels so magical that
| you think, "There must be amazing things we can do with
| it!" but it turns out there's not. At least not yet. The
| situation is pretty clear because Facebook, Apple, and
| Google all bet big on AR/VR and all of them have stalled
| indefinitely.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Thanks for commenting - like others, I'm a big VR fan and
| hugely perplexed by how Google has walked away from it.
| Leaving us with Facebook is a horrible outcome and
| locked-in Apple not much better. Even if I'm disappointed
| by what you say, its really helpful to know this was the
| thought process within Google.
|
| I guess I think Google is taking a huge risk here by
| taking their hat out of the ring so early. Even if others
| have slowed their investment, Microsoft/Apple/Facebook
| are under the radar continuing very significant work and
| it really feels like we could flip over a tipping point
| and Google might be way behind. This may be more like
| gcloud than Android and they could find themselves a
| decade behind other players.
|
| My personal use case is being able to have any number of
| monitors of any size and shape, eg: [0]. So far its been
| limited by screen resolution and lack of good hand
| tracking and dedicated accessories, but these are very
| close to being solved with the next gen. devices.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/oculus/status/1286345820699340801
| /photo/...
| Agentlien wrote:
| Oculus isn't your only alternative. I've been very happy
| with Vive, especially the Cosmos, and I've heard great
| things about Valve's Index.
|
| If you're on more of a budget the PSVR is quite good if
| you happen to have a PS4.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Yes - its just so unfortunate all the good alternatives
| don't offer (easy, cheap) wireless / stand alone support.
| After using Virtual Desktop, I actually think there's a
| huge opportunity for a super "thin client" device that is
| just a companion for your laptop/tablet and offloads
| everything there.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I think the problem is that you really need quite high
| resolution and frame rate for it to be a good enough
| experience to be worth the hassle. Which then means you
| need a lot of GPU power, more than your typical laptop or
| tablet can offer.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You can say that but Microsoft just landed a $21B AR
| contract, the Quest2 has sold 2-3 million units and Apple
| is poised to enter the wearable market.
|
| I'm not surprised when Google walks away from things, but
| this seems premature and short sighted.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| Yeah the Microsoft contract is _up to_ $21B, and it 's
| over 10 years. It's also a military contract, which is a
| different beast from consumer goods.
|
| And if the Quest 2 has sold 2-3 million units so far,
| that's unremarkable. The Apple Watch was considered a
| failure in its first year and it made 10 million sales.
| We've already passed Christmas so you're not going to see
| a further spike in sales.
|
| If Apple enters the market it might reignite the spark.
| Apple can do that because they deliver extremely high
| quality products that inspire people. Google can't do
| that because it's not in the company DNA and Googlers
| knows it, so it's a waste of time.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| And yet there was a recent re-org at Facebook so now the
| AR/VR focused Reality Labs division headcount is approx
| 10,000
| 101008 wrote:
| I have a Play Station VR headset and it's awesome but I always
| felt sad that I coudln't experience this. How is the
| experience? I know a lot of friends felt sick when we play a
| space videogame or some game where the environment isn't clear
| and they can't see where they are standing, I guess having a
| view from outer space can trigger same feelings.
| andybak wrote:
| It's got the usual "comfort controls" (i.e. vignetting while
| moving). If you leave those switched on then it's OK for
| people that haven't got their VR legs yet.
|
| But - yeah - with everything switched off it can be at the
| "intense" end of the spectrum.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| It's amazing.
|
| The motion sickness factor isn't zero, but its' small.
| hawk_ wrote:
| Are there headsets other than HTC Vive and Oculus Rift that
| work with it?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| It works on all the usual suspects (anything that supports
| SteamVR). Valve Index, HP Reverb G2, WMR headsets, Oculus
| Quest (via link cable or wifi streaming) etc
| crazygringo wrote:
| I can't find any way to get it to work with the Quest on my
| Mac. (Short of installing Bootcamp that is.)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Unfortunately SteamVR dropped Mac support last year
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Any headset that can use SteamVR, so like, damn near all of
| them
| pow_pp_-1_v wrote:
| That's pretty cool!
|
| Like it or not Google does all this with the ad money they bring
| in. Imagine if all Google service were subscription based. Will
| they even have 25% of the capabilities they have now?
| dmos62 wrote:
| Ads are ok. Subscription would be too. It's the monopoly that's
| generating all this throw-around cash.
| andrew_v4 wrote:
| I agree with you, its something only possible because they are
| throwing off cash. But is it worth them having turned much of
| the internet into a cesspit?
|
| I'm conflicted. On one hand you could argue it's like some
| dictatorship putting on lavish parades while conditions in
| their regime are generally terrible (I'm not trying to compare
| the magnitude of the problem, just the idea that having
| something fancy to show doesn't necessarily cancel out all the
| harm done)
|
| Or is it a natural positive byproduct of capitalism that the
| internet has garbage strewn corners filled with listicles and
| "content" alongside genuinely cool stuff. And trying to clamp
| down on this would just make everything mediocre.
|
| Anyway, there are definitely lots of good things Google had
| done, in research, in public availability of tech, and in cool
| stuff like this. Are we making the right tradeoff against all
| the bad they have done, I don't know.
| pow_pp_-1_v wrote:
| FWIW, I was not trying to pass a value judgement on whether
| Google, on net, is good or bad. It was just a thought I had
| when I saw the time lapse thing.
|
| But I don't think Google turned internet into a cesspit. Yes,
| Youtube's recommendation algorithms are pretty bad. But there
| other actors who deserver a bigger share of the blame.
| dharmaturtle wrote:
| Are we blaming listicles on Google now?
|
| There's plenty of shit to throw at Google (Timnit Gebru).
| Let's not dilute concrete criticisms with bland whatevers
| like "turned much of the internet into a cesspit".
| npteljes wrote:
| I appreciate the cool stuff, but I could also accept a reality
| where there's much less tracking going on, and Google Earth and
| smartphones are less impressive.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >unfold and witness nearly four decades of planetary change.
|
| four decades of meaningless uncontrolled overpopulation,
| destruction of pristine nature and its ecosystems, a march of
| techno-globalism across the planet. Every time I see these
| timelapses it depresses me quite a bit.
| system16 wrote:
| While I don't disagree, you're not exactly a spectator. If
| you're on a computer in a western country, you are in the top
| percentage of the world contributing not so insignificantly to
| this problem.
|
| People sitting in traffic complaining about traffic or cancer
| cells complaining about the devastation caused by cancer sounds
| a bit silly.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| A problem like a traffic jam needs systemic coordinated
| action though to be able to solve. Complaining about the lack
| of perceived ability to get everyone acting is legitimate.
| indymike wrote:
| Something to get excited about: we now have a tool that will be
| used by the world to see the changes. Sometimes a picture can
| be a much more powerful argument than a billion data points.
|
| p.s. username checks out.
| alex_anglin wrote:
| Have a look at mortality and poverty rates globally. There is
| good news, as well as bad.
| lm28469 wrote:
| One could argue a cancer spreading faster is bad news
| alex_anglin wrote:
| I would respectfully suggest that referring to people as 'a
| cancer' says more about the person than whatever point
| they're trying to make.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Humanity as a whole, not individual beings. Our boundless
| quest for growth is clearly getting out of hand on many
| levels. What else exponentially grows until the death of
| its eco system ?
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > What else exponentially grows until the death of its
| eco system ?
|
| Most life forms?
| daemoens wrote:
| Overpopulation isn't really a problem currently.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If you assume total consumption is a problem, and you assume
| that total consumption will not go down because consumption
| per capita will not go down, then the conclusion you end up
| with is overpopulation.
| Rompect wrote:
| Underpopulation is actually the problem in most Western
| countries.
| SamBam wrote:
| Not really sure how you can call it underpopulation. Was
| underpopulation also a problem in the preceding 30,000
| years or so of human civilization in Europe leading up to
| today, when the population has always been always smaller?
|
| The population in Europe is larger than it has ever been in
| any point in history.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Not under-population, per se, but low rates of growth.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Low rates of growth lead to a population collapse in 2
| generations or so and an inverted demographic pyramid
| where mostly old people exist with few youngsters. Not a
| good recipe for the species or a civilization.
|
| Look at predicted population numbers in Japan for
| example.
| SamBam wrote:
| I'm unsure how low rates of growth in Europe will lead to
| a collapse of the species.
| hycaria wrote:
| With our western ressource and energy consumption, and
| nuclear family lifestyle, it kinda is. I wish there were less
| people and that we could keep using cars and the internet,
| and eating meat. Instead we have more people, accelerating
| the rush for resources (water in third world, or for us
| developed countries, housing).
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I agree that we're doing things that harm the planet, but I
| downvoted you because it's more complicated than just "there
| are too many people", and "We're cutting down forests".
|
| If you look at the advanced countries, they are often the ones
| who exploited their resources and grew in size early. Britain,
| for instance, slashed their forests generations ago to get
| ahead. The US used to shoot herds of bison from trains. Now
| Britain and the US wag a finger at less developed countries for
| consuming the forests and ecosystems in their countries.
|
| Similar with population growth and the concept of
| 'overpopulation'. If you assert we have overpopulation, you
| _have_ to assert how you 'll address it, and there's no way to
| do that without saying, "Some group of people doesn't get to
| have kids." That seems like a really bad thing to say.
|
| I'm incredibly lefty, a self described socialist and eco-
| socialist, but I believe that we need to think differently than
| just "those people over there are destroying their environments
| and having too many babies!" We could start at home,
| transforming our own economy and society to live less
| exploitatively. We could reduce our own use of meat and dairy,
| for instance. We could ensure we had adequate housing for
| everyone, and medical care for everyone, both of which would
| lead to less waste. We could strictly limit single use
| plastics, remove older dams to improve fish stocks, set aside
| more land for forests, etc.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The overpopulation crowd is like a meta-NIMBY. People with
| high income, "concern" for various problems, and who are
| amused by their toys and aren't family oriented usually fall
| into that position.
|
| Of course, like all NIMBY types, _their_ consumption of air
| and Brazilian hardwoods is just fine.
| dint wrote:
| This is a straw man. There are absolutely people who are
| concerned about both overpopulation, and individual
| overconsumption.
|
| I am one. I limit my personal carbon footprint. I do not
| own a car (and hopefully never will). I rarely eat meat. I
| live in a cheap, inefficient apartment because I'm living
| on a student income, but I keep the heat low to try to
| limit my energy consumption.
|
| I probably won't have kids, because it wouldn't be
| consistent with my concerns about climate change to bring
| another high-consuming American into the world.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Just for the sake of fun and clashing some worldviews, I
| _am_ quite concerned that the population size will be
| shrinking.
|
| As soon as some nation makes contraceptives economically
| available, the native population growth goes negative. Do
| you know many families with three children? Because that
| seems like a minimal number, no?
|
| Immigrants who (1) come when younger, and further (2)
| have more children mask this problem a bit, but their
| supply is limited. (Sorry for my insensitivity, I'm not
| from The West myself.) The easy contraceptives will get
| to even poorest countries in a generation or two. There
| will be a Big Shrink before the narrative of fertility
| takes hold again.
| [deleted]
| rexreed wrote:
| I'd love to see a timelapse over the past 20 years showing
| Google's energy usage / consumption across all their data centers
| and offices.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Google has invested quite a bit into decarbonizing their data
| centers. They do a lot better than AWS for example.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Propaganda only goes one way. More power to those on the top.
| meowkit wrote:
| Me too.
|
| And then normalize it against the benefit Google provides with
| its services and I bet it would be super clear that they are a
| great use of energy.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it does have a
| timeline:
|
| https://sustainability.google/commitments
|
| And if you open the PDF at the bottom, I think it has the data
| you wanted.
| voldemort1968 wrote:
| Is it just me or is this feature not showing up? When I put in my
| address, the little place card on the side doesn't show any
| controls to move through time.
| 2ion wrote:
| You can get there through the "voyager" menu.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| It's a little unintuitive, but seems like you need to search in
| the search box in the timelapse side card panel thing, rather
| than the main search box
| q_andrew wrote:
| The growth of Dubai is crazy, as well as most major Chinese
| cities. What are some interesting, less obvious things to look at
| with this feature?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Filling of the three gorges dam?
| samstave wrote:
| Or find some of the ghost cities in China as well
|
| Rainforest everything.
|
| Singapore
| q_andrew wrote:
| Also, it's too bad this doesn't go before 1980, because I'd
| love to see how the Mt St Helens eruption affected the
| landscape around it (I know there are pictures, but google maps
| makes it feel more hands-on)
| teekert wrote:
| Does anyone know where to find this feature in Google Earth for
| iOS?
| sbehlasp wrote:
| Outstanding!! now we can have a look at how we all were blessed
| with our planet (history) and what we have had done to it.
| Hopefully we all contribute to restore it for better future...
| neolog wrote:
| It would be much more useful for learning about climate change if
| the timestamp included the month instead of just the year.
| Nition wrote:
| The original, downloaded version of Google Earth shows the
| month (and has already had a historical imagery feature for the
| long time). Get "Google Earth Pro" (it's still free, that's
| just what they call it now), go to View->Historical Imagery,
| and you can scrub left and right on the slider.
| halfeatenpie wrote:
| This is very fascinating and great. I mean this dataset has been
| available for a while know (from what I recall), but re-packaged
| and organized in this manner would be very useful.
|
| One thing that really stands out to me is the change in our land
| use/environmental changes over time. You can even see the
| different reservoir levels for various years and can
| "guesstimate" what year certain droughts were.
|
| I'm sure there's some amazing ideas to use this tool, I'm just
| excited about it.
| amelius wrote:
| Nice, but it would be even nicer with emissions data, e.g. from
| ESA's Sentinel-5P satellite:
|
| https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Coperni...
| nynx wrote:
| Looking at Google earth always gives me a feeling that I suspect
| is similar--though lesser--to what astronauts feel when they look
| down at earth.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Already had this tool for over a decade. Why did google took so
| long to implement it ? Anyways, better late than never.
| thrower123 wrote:
| For most places, this looks to be incredibly low-resolution at
| present. It's still kind of interesting to watch chunks of forest
| that my dad clearcut twenty years ago regenerate though.
| log101 wrote:
| I found the video unneccesserialy dramatic.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Quite bearable without sound. Nowadays I default to watching
| Youtube muted, unless it's music.
| slacktide wrote:
| Pretty cool. Just the other day I was using timelapse to research
| the history of an aircraft radio navigation aid that used to be
| around the corner from my house.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-frequency_radio_range It had
| been part of the four-course radio range network, which was
| discontinued in the 1960s. The transmitter site was identifiable
| until 2006 when it was developed for housing.
| macando wrote:
| Google Earth often is the most mind-blowing thing for the people
| who never used the Internet in their lives.
|
| I don't use it often but I have to say that it's one of the
| delivered promises of the Internet. It's tech done right.
|
| What an outstanding video.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| It makes the loss of the Amazon rain forest actually tangible
| instead of some vague conception of 10% gone.
|
| This is outstanding.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| There's lots of great tools to explore such things as well.
|
| https://www.globalforestwatch.org/
|
| https://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-...
|
| I built an app which visualizes global fire history per year
| from 2001 to 2020, still working out some kinks but maybe will
| share here.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I'm no fan of the deforestation that is being shown here, but for
| a Westerner to tell people in the Global South to not deforest is
| hypocritical and economically deceitful. Look at pretty much all
| of Europe and the Eastern United States. It has almost been all
| deforested and replaced with farmland at some point. Agriculture
| is an important step in a county's economic stability and
| progress. Some trees need to be cut down and that land be turned
| into farmland to help that developing county's citizens. Imagine
| being a poor framer supporting a growing family with an
| opportunity to grow more of your crop by cutting down some trees
| and having rich white people in a post scarcity society telling
| you you're a bad person.
| bricemo wrote:
| Bill Gates covers this extensively in his recent excellent
| book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Even if all the rich
| world countries went to emissions zero, that wouldn't be
| enough, because the developing world needs to continue to
| develop. This is a good thing but it is a problem of progress,
| and underscores how complicated the solution is
| varispeed wrote:
| He is one of those do as I say, not as I do type of toxic
| people (e.g. tells everyone to cut emissions while himself
| enjoying private jet flights). I don't feel that he is
| genuine, but for entertainment value could be worth a try.
| GcVmvNhBsU wrote:
| He also does a lot to offset his private jets.
|
| > I have a higher-than-average carbon footprint, so I'm
| taking extra steps to do my part. In the book I briefly
| mention how I'm offsetting my own emissions. I spend about
| $5 million every year to offset my family's carbon
| footprint. As of now, the standard calculation for carbon
| footprints is based on an estimate of $400 per ton of
| emissions. But since the way we calculate carbon footprints
| is still in its infancy, I take our family's carbon
| footprint and double it to make sure we are fully covering
| our footprint and then some.
|
| > I also like to think of my investments in zero-carbon
| technologies as another kind of offset for my emissions.
| Investing in companies doesn't make my carbon footprint
| smaller. But if I've picked any winners, they'll be
| responsible for removing much more carbon than I am
| responsible for creating. I have given more than $1 billion
| toward innovations and ideas that I hope will help the
| world get to zero--including affordable and reliable clean
| energy, low-emissions cement, steel, meat, and more.
|
| https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/What-you-can-do-to-
| fight-c...
| fctorial wrote:
| > I spend about $5 million every year to offset my
| family's carbon footprint.
|
| And how much carbon does he emit to earn that 5 million.
| That emission isn't part of his family's emission because
| it comes from microsoft. It's like tax evasion but for
| carbon emission.
| varispeed wrote:
| > I spend about $5 million every year to offset my
| family's carbon footprint.
|
| It's not like this money magically got created. In order
| for him to have $5 million, someone had to pay it, maybe
| by creating even more pollution. At least he is aware
| that he is doing bad thing, but the attitude "I am rich,
| so I can" is narcissistic and wrong.
| otterley wrote:
| You're treating economics as a zero-sum game, which is
| false. The world as a whole is _significantly_ better off
| than it was before, and we cannot attribute all of our
| productivity and qualify-of-life gains solely to the
| exploitation of natural resources and oppressing people.
|
| Does terrible things happen as a result of moral hazard?
| Sure. But does anyone who earns a dollar take a dollar
| from someone else, or the world, to obtain it? No.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| He's done more than most -ref. Polio eradication, his
| (foundations') work on malaria... What have you done in
| this space? I know I've done shamefully little, but ride an
| electric scooter and take my son to school and back in a
| Bakfiets, trips I used to make in the car.
| SamBam wrote:
| Are the 200,000 acres of rainforest being cut down each day
| being cut down by "poor framers supporting growing families" or
| by mega-corporations?
| varispeed wrote:
| > and having rich white people telling you you're a bad person.
|
| While their predecessors done exactly the same.
|
| Rich people become gatekeepers. If everyone could be rich, then
| they wouldn't be so special anymore. That's why they lobby for
| high taxes (with appropriate loopholes, so they don't pay them,
| but anyone who starts from 0 won't get rich), excessive
| regulation (so that poor man's company will never be able to
| compete) and other measures to keep population "in check".
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is why we need a plan to build enough cities in the United
| States for a billion citizens and swap land in the "global
| south" for a free home and prompt citizenship. We can't just
| let the world's lungs be cut down by the logic that we made the
| same mistake 200 years ago.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > Look at pretty much all of Europe ...
|
| Europe is actually reforesting, and not by a little bit either:
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/...
|
| http://coffeespoons.me/2014/12/the-reforestation-of-europe/
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Google Earth may be one of the most wondrous things ever created.
| When else in human history can you zoom in on the entire
| geography of the Earth, and now the timelapsed geography of the
| Earth? Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton,
| Galileo, or Darwin would say using this tool?
| khazhoux wrote:
| > Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton, Galileo,
| or Darwin would say using this tool?
|
| "Does it run on Linux?"
| paxys wrote:
| Agreed. I remember Google Earth's initial release (called
| Keyhole at the time I think) as one of the times my mind was
| genuinely blown by technology. "Holy shit I can zoom in to my
| front yard!!"
|
| Funny enough I also remember thinking that it was only a matter
| of time before they changed it to a live feed and we would all
| have to be more careful about drawing our curtains a little
| better.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Visualising the Earth at planet scale is incredible. I was
| blown away when the first wind map [1] made it's way onto HN
| almost a decade ago. I always thought of wind being localised
| but to see all the currents flow across the USA was soooo cool.
| It's inspired me to work on my own map of live mountain shadows
| across the Earth (link in my user profile if you're interested)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3767889
| folli wrote:
| Shade map is cool, which data source are you using for the
| height map? I've been working on something similar (link also
| in user profile).
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Mapbox free-tier for Digital Elevation Model (DEM) map
| tiles. suncalc NPM library to calculate the position of the
| sun. OSM buildings (hopefully) for buildings in urban
| areas.
|
| Your app looks great. I like the way you visualise
| twilight/golden hour on your map. There is another project
| called shadowmap.org you might like.
| ehershey wrote:
| That shade map is awesome!
|
| Does it include buildings? (Could it, if not?) I've been
| dying for this for ages.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Including buildings in urban areas and choosing a custom
| date to see how shadows change over the course of the year
| are next on the backlog. Contact info is in my profile if
| you want to keep in touch.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Woah, your shade map is awesome! I was playing around with it
| for a long time there, lol.
| splonk wrote:
| The two biggest "wow" reactions I ever heard at Google's
| company wide meetings were from the Keyhole/Google Earth demo
| right after they were acquired, and the first Google Maps demo
| with scrollable maps. IIRC the Keyhole demo started with the
| full planet view from space and then did a smooth continuous
| scroll into the Grand Canyon. Pretty mindblowing back in 2005
| or thereabouts.
| Slitted wrote:
| It's amusing how quickly Maps overtook Earth and then
| absorbed it.
|
| The practicality of having a total guide to location via
| search/address/direction far outweighed the appeal of a
| visual location you can find.
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| Interesting to think: What demos are happening now that
| elicit a similar response?
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Boston Dynamics maybe.
| colineartheta wrote:
| Looking at the last ~8 years of "technology" releases but
| I'd deign to say no demos are eliciting that response.
| SilverRed wrote:
| There have been a few but they were mostly marketing
| bullshit. The google glass announcements impressed many
| even though they never delivered the initial demo. There
| was also that demo where they showed googles AI calling a
| store for you to book a haircut which also ended up being
| fake and never delivered.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Automatic booking of restaurants via telephone
| splonk wrote:
| I don't believe this was the UI that was eventually
| released, but I got a demo of an Glass prototype where the
| way to interact was to focus your vision on the buttons in
| the corner of the virtual screen to click. When the guy
| told me that, at first I thought "you've got to be kidding
| me" and very shortly thereafter it was "holy shit this is
| awesome."
|
| That reminds me, a couple years ago I ran into a guy
| working for a company that could wirelessly power displays
| in a contact lens. Not remotely practical and I think it
| was maybe a couple hundred pixels at most, but definitely
| more of that living in future vibe.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Many years ago I visited the International Spy Museum in DC,
| and one of the last exhibits was a terminal with this brand new
| amazing thing by a little company called Keyhole, and somehow
| it was more amazing than any number of hidden bugs or weapons.
|
| Later, seeing Google Earth, I was like "Wait I've used this
| before."
| mschuetz wrote:
| I consider Google Earth something like a modern digital world
| wonder. These things are absolutely amazing, especially in VR.
| doersino wrote:
| I've built a Twitter bot around these timelapses a while ago -
| just updated to use the newly released data set:
| https://twitter.com/earthacrosstime
|
| You can take a look at the source code here if you're interested:
| https://github.com/doersino/earthacrosstime
| swyx wrote:
| feedback - the bot might be a bit more compelling if it
| reported the city it is focusing on. hard to tell.
| doersino wrote:
| There's reverse geocoding data at the end of each video - and
| most of the time, it picks spots in the middle of nowhere,
| which is difficult to reverse geocode in a way that's useful,
| so I don't show this information more prominently.
| theknocker wrote:
| Eat shit, corporation so evil and dystopian that it's like
| satire.
| cozzyd wrote:
| ok, but what about reaching parity with the desktop version?
| [deleted]
| faldore wrote:
| why they have to make it political. why not just show information
| without spinning it.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Seeing forests disappear and Iceland's ice having less and less
| ice was quite saddening and eye opening.
| izolate wrote:
| Most striking to me is that Google registered a custom TLD (.gle)
| just to use as a URL shortener. Impressive use of funds.
| jamespwilliams wrote:
| In theory Google could serve their URL shortening service on
| the root of their .google TLD (links like
| https://google/xyz123).
|
| Would probably break some apps which don't correctly handle
| TLD-only domain names though, I suppose.
| SamBam wrote:
| I would assume most fairly-tech-savvy people wouldn't trust
| such a link. It doesn't obey the rules for what we've been
| taught a real URL should look like.
| hobofan wrote:
| IIRC, once you've proven that you can reliably run a registry
| (which Google does anyway for their other TLDs), the
| application and fees for an additional TLD is much cheaper than
| you would expect (5-low 6 figures/year)
| Ayesh wrote:
| I think I remember hearing at DNW that the uncontested TLD
| application fee and annual fee are flat $185K and $25K.
| Donuts probably owns many more TLDs than Google, but I'm
| pretty sure they still paid the $185K fee.
| detritus wrote:
| I want to love this, but the interface is too opaque.
|
| How on GoogleEarth do I get back the timeline option that I've
| somehow closed?
|
| I'm probably being an idiot, but I'm not a total idiot, and it's
| not at all clear to me how I access the timeline now.
|
| The "I'm feeling lucky" icon is WAY too prominent. A misclick
| there quickly screws whatever it was I was just looking at.
| nevster wrote:
| I was totally confused by this as well. If you click the close
| button on the Timelapse panel, how do you get it back?
|
| The trick is to click on the Voyager icon and then choose
| Timelapse in one of the panels that comes up.
| lastgeniusua wrote:
| anyone still believing global warming could be stopped, and more
| than that, stopped with capitalism?
| simias wrote:
| This is really cool. However I'm going to bring you the
| Traditional HN Nitpick: it's very odd to see Google use these
| horribly over-compressed gifs over proper videos:
| https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ori...
| judge2020 wrote:
| Ya, it seems like someone really wanted a gif and threw it in a
| free video -> gif converter. Gifs can have over 256 colors
| (with some tricks) or they could have used `video autoplay loop
| muted` and achieved the same effect.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't think the surprise is they made a bad gif as much as
| they used gif at all considering this is the company that
| literally made vp9 and webm for this exact use case.
| krm01 wrote:
| This is the stuff I'd like to see Google do more of. Build things
| that are true to their mission of Collecting and organising the
| world's information. Truly remarkable.
| [deleted]
| arjunkava wrote:
| I really liked the presentation of the blog, it is actually
| making me uncomfortable and guilty.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| I kinda wish that there was a timelapse for Google search. Search
| seems to be heavily biased towards stuff popular right now. It
| seems older things disappear fairly quickly.
|
| I've been in a position where I wanted to search for a website
| that was popular in 2012 without having the exact name, and
| having to find an old forum post that linked to it to find it.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I miss the ability to get the cached version of a page easily,
| without having to jump into the advanced search settings - if
| it is even possible to do that anymore, they may have pulled it
| completely.
| skeletonjelly wrote:
| https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272
|
| Does this help?
|
| foobar before:2012
|
| It's not perfect but quick and easy for what I mostly do which
| is trying to find older news articles on stories that have
| changed
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| That helps actually!
| pirocks wrote:
| I believe this is actually a thing that Google implemented as
| part of a googling game. I don't have the link on me right now
| sorry.
| saurik wrote:
| Google Search does let you limit the results to old sites
| (though I realize this isn't quite equivalent).
| ehsankia wrote:
| At the very least, I wish they would update the UI for that.
| Every time I want to use it, it's like 4-5 clicks and very
| hard to use. I wish they could just give a nice timeline and
| let you slide across a given range, and maybe also see a
| graph of the activity (basically like Google Trends)
| the-rc wrote:
| There's a good chance that the additional clicks are
| deliberate. Certain queries are a lot more resource-
| intensive than the average and it's not very difficult to
| turn Google Search into a money losing business, even with
| the ads.
| Black101 wrote:
| A time-lapse of the search algorithm is what I would like to
| see
| gipp wrote:
| Given that the set of possible searches is unbounded, first
| instinct is that the whole system would have had to be
| designed around that use case from the bottom up for the
| problem to be remotely tractable
| Black101 wrote:
| a git history of Google's code would suit me
| fomine3 wrote:
| A bit off topic: The Google's feature requires me to input
| date on MM/DD/YYYY format even though locale is ja-jp (We
| NEVER use it). When I just wrongly input "2021/04/16" to
| field and search, they even don't show format error, but show
| the result of 184/05/04. What??? I believe it never tested by
| locals. I've sent report but of course no response.
| dweekly wrote:
| I hear you - it would probably need to be cross integrated with
| web.archive.org in order to actually vend most results given
| how rapidly we are seeing bit rot.
| xnx wrote:
| I think I read somewhere that behind-the-scenes the Google
| crawler is in-effect a super-archive.org, keeping a copy of
| every page it has crawled. This sounds outrageous, but I
| believe it's feasible with compression.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Many of the timelapses uses images from different time of year
| etc so you see different hues across frames. Would it be possible
| to apply something like neural style transfer across the frames
| (from a representative frame) to smooth the colors out without
| changing the features in the frames?
| OrbitRock wrote:
| There's a tool called landtrendr that sort of does this, but
| it's less for visualization than for analysis of trends
|
| https://emapr.github.io/LT-GEE/index.html
| adelarsq wrote:
| Its like to watch the Earth to be destroyed. Afraid from the
| coming years.
| aimor wrote:
| Is this different than the historical imagery feature that was
| introduced in 2009?
|
| I played around with it a bit. Timelapse seems to only exist at
| large scales. I can't seem to resolve anything more detailed than
| a highway. Previously Google had higher resolution historical
| data. I used this to see how my house, neighborhood, and city
| changed over decades. There was black and white photography at
| the far end of the data. This was in the desktop version of
| Google Earth.
|
| I just downloaded the desktop version of Google Earth and was
| happy to find out the historical data is still available there.
| :) Hope that makes it to the web version.
| PEJOE wrote:
| AFAIK the imagery you want has been relegated to the desktop
| app (now called google earth pro), and is still available.
|
| There is a little clock icon above the imagery area with a
| counter clockwise green arrow you must click to access
| historical imagery.
|
| Luckily they do release a version of the desktop app that works
| on linux.
|
| [Download page]
| https://www.google.com/earth/versions/#download-pro
| devenblake wrote:
| Google Earth pro (I think) used to be a paid product. I
| remember downloading it and using GETPFREE as my activation
| key thinking it was so cool that benevolent Internet leader
| Google would give that out for free. 2013 was a different
| time.
| Finnucane wrote:
| It's like watching mold spores growing.
| dsaavy wrote:
| This is an incredible tool. I know there are other ways to look
| at timelapses of aerial views but this is just so easy and
| useable.
|
| Watching the change of specific suburban areas in the US brings a
| lot of negative emotions for me. Seeing what used to be green
| areas slowly transform into more suburban sprawl, I can't help
| but think of the number of species who experienced their
| ecosystem's walls closing in on them.
|
| As someone who builds a lot of data visualizations, this would be
| in my top experiences for the category. It's in a way... an art
| piece.
| dekerta wrote:
| Hasn't this tool been available at
| https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/ for several years
| now?
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Yep, but now it's on Google Earth instead of Google Earth
| Engine
| OrbitRock wrote:
| I'm into geospatial science, and I get so much aesthetic
| appreciation out of it. It is super artistic. The earth is
| beautiful!
| samstave wrote:
| Agreed, and great username.
|
| I cant wait to see what everyone, including myself can create
| with this!
|
| EDIT; This should be one of the most important augmenting
| data tools for Environmental Impact studies.
|
| Take a site that was built at the beginning of this dataset -
| which had an EIS done, compare the results seen in this tool
| to the predictions in the EIS... and use that for MANY EIS
| which had some of the same impact or variables and see how
| the surroundings compare etc...
| skybrian wrote:
| What's an example that you particularly like?
| ttty wrote:
| Growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different
| than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes,
| says keithwhor. We think of ourself as special, as having
| conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out
| you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the
| achievements of a sufficiently robust slime mold simply using
| available resources to continue growing, he says. If we start
| mining and settling space, our growth would in fact be
| essentially unbounded, he adds.
|
| We're another level of the fractal of life, replicating patterns
| seen in bacterial biofilms, slime molds, circulatory systems,
| nervous systems, leaves, all manner of multicellular
| architectures. It's certainly a bad thing that we are growing in
| a sort of zero-sum manner against many original ecosystems
| though. We need to learn to restrain our own growth (a tough one
| that we're in the process of trying to beat into all of our heads
| it seems) It'd be cool to see 30% of the planet's surface as
| protected areas by 2030.
|
| This week's episode of Dr Pimple Popper is the first episode in a
| series on the growth of the universe. The first episode is
| entitled "Growth" and is available on YouTube. The second episode
| is titled "Theory of Growth" and runs for over two hours. This
| week's show is hosted by ThalesX, the leader in the field of
| artificial intelligence and machine learning. The show is
| sponsored by Google, and can be watched on YouTube at
| www.YouTube.com/DrPimplePopper.
|
| Idea has been around for a long time. Most versions compare our
| civilizations progress to a cancer or virus, because of the way
| we treat our environment. Joe Rogan talks about the idea in an
| old clip: I think human beings are just a very complicated form
| of bacteria. There are vast number of parallels in the behavior
| of systems from the microscopic to the macroscopic. You are a
| plague, and we are the cure, says the Matrix. "We do precisely
| what bacteria does, albeit at a much more more complicated
| level," says slver.
|
| Human history is a function with material conditions as an input.
| The bacteria within us certainly don't know anything about our
| consciousness. Yet somehow the sum total of their activity
| results in a conscious being. If we as humans look and act like
| bacteria when we zoom out, do we suffer the same myopia of our
| bacteria friends, unable to recognize the consciousness our
| collective activity creates? It's fun to think about. At least,
| we know but choose or are too lazy to do anything about it. We
| have to understand at a micro-level, how we can make an impact in
| aggregate.
|
| Yes, there's a ton of complexity in there, but when you zoom out
| enough, it looks and acts very similar to the lower level. I
| sometimes think that it is a valid mental model to think of us as
| not much different from ants in a hive who think they possess
| more control and freedom than they do. What the rational one
| wants isn't necessarily what we do, says OrbitRock. To a
| Brazilian cattle rancher or Indonesian logger at the frontlines
| of the biodiversity crisis, things look different. For a consumer
| of those goods and materials, they likely don't realize the
| connection.
|
| With Timelapse in Google Earth, 24 million satellite photos from
| the past 37 years have been compiled into an interactive 4D
| experience. Google has bailed on VR apps (for the most part,
| Owlchemy is still there), so I imagine not. It'd be cool if
| Google Earth VR was opensource like Tiltbrush. It's fun to
| imagine a world where Google continued to put money into VR, but
| I'm actually not sure how that fits into their business outside
| of just another platform for Android.
|
| Google Earth VR is "fantastic" during lockdowns, "felt like going
| out!" "Bailed" is a bit over the top, I would characterize it
| more as being at a stand still. VR didn't pick up the way most
| hoped it would, and at this point there isn't really much to do
| until we get another wave of innovation that pushes the boundary
| forward. I don't think they ever had any lead in VR. Cardboard
| was neat but just that. Google is letting what lead they had
| whither away. Its silly to think they had working inside out
| tracking (Tango) in 2014.
|
| HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets work with Google Earth. Works
| on anything that supports SteamVR. Works with any headset that
| can use SteamVR, so like, damn near all of them. Motion sickness
| factor isn't zero, but its' small. Google Earth may be one of the
| most wondrous things ever created. Can you imagine what someone
| like Socrates, Newton, Galileo, or Darwin would say using this
| tool? . It's inspired me to work on my own map of live mountain
| shadows across the Earth (link in my user profile if you're
| interested) Timelapse timelapse tool allows users to watch aerial
| views of urban sprawl at a glance. Can be used to see how the
| environment is changing over time. Could be used in environmental
| impact studies to look at the effect of climate change on the
| environment. Can also be used for environmental impact data
| visualizations to help scientists better understand the impact of
| natural disasters. Google Search does let you limit the results
| to old sites. I miss the ability to get the cached version of a
| page easily. A time-lapse of the search algorithm is what I would
| like to see reply gipp to do.
| fudged71 wrote:
| What's exciting to me is that children/students will be able to
| see an incredibly local and objective history of their area. As a
| sort of "how did I get here" perspective.
| shortlived wrote:
| Is the data open source and available without using google earth?
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Pretty sure it's just Landsat data, which is freely available.
| As is Sentinel, MODIS, and a number of other satellite
| platforms.
|
| Google has been a pretty great pioneer on geospatial data
| science and visualization platforms, especially with Earth
| Engine (also free to use and allows you to access vast
| repositories of free geospatial data and use Googles computing
| resources to do data science with them).
| devrand wrote:
| Almost certainly not. I'm fairly certain Google is licensing
| the imagery.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Google spun off its own satellite imagery business a while
| again, but retains usage rights: https://www.theatlantic.com/
| technology/archive/2017/02/googl...
| ketanhwr wrote:
| Incase anyone is having trouble finding this feature, visit this
| link: goo.gle/timelapse
| gallegojaime wrote:
| Something cool and kinda sad to behold - the plastic greenhouses
| in El Ejido grow as a white blob.
| intrasight wrote:
| Is this only in the web version? I don't see a new version of the
| desktop.
| dognotdog wrote:
| There's also https://earthtime.org/explore which is based off the
| same satellite imagery, but in the browser. And, it has a lot
| more available data layers with social, economic, and
| environmental data on a global scale.
| briffle wrote:
| Google earth also works in the browser. A few years back, they
| made that the default way of accessing it.
| dognotdog wrote:
| Geez, I'll just go and blame the pandemic for a complete loss
| of sense of time on that! I could've sworn I saw a beta of
| that just not so recently, but I had no idea it's been
| mainstream for that long.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| Congrats google, most obnoxious voiceover ever.
| calylex wrote:
| What's this whole guilt shaming all about? And must the voice in
| the video be British and the sound of a girl on the verge of
| crying? Finally I don't think there is anything wrong with more
| farmlands in poor countries in South America. That's extremely
| hypocritical when the West did the same thing only a couple of
| hundred years ago and continues to do to this day, but oh if the
| poor South Americans learn how to farm on their own, the world
| will end.
|
| The answer to side-effects of human progress is not stopping it,
| it's to accelerating the growth of technology so we can mitigate
| the issues we create and fix the harms the cause. F*ck Google!
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| Regardless of the spin put on by the video producers, the tool
| itself is very useful for letting people see reality, which may
| work to _temper_ alarmism. If the reality is that most of the
| earth hasn 't changed that much, then that is now available for
| view. And if the reality is that the Brazil rainforests really
| were a vast sea of dark green not long ago but are already
| medium-brown-looking today, then that is also now available for
| view.
|
| I'm curious to see people search for the growth of the "Great
| Pacific Garbage Patch". I'm pretty sure most people will be
| surprised to find that there is nothing to see. But I'll try it
| out.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Well, there's a tipping point of deforestation beyond which the
| Amazon rainforest might collapse.
| 8note wrote:
| What's keeping google earth running?
|
| I find it surprising that it hasn't been shut off and/or merged
| into maps years ago
| keithwhor wrote:
| What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth
| is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements
| on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial
| and fungal colonies on Petri dishes.
|
| We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments,
| technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain
| everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of a
| sufficiently robust slime mold simply using available resources
| to continue growing.
| devenvdev wrote:
| Apple tree "apples"(v) Earth "peoples" Alan Watts
| marc__1 wrote:
| in this case you should definitely read Vaclav Smil book
| _Growth_.
|
| It covers how similar growth patterns can be identified, from
| cities, vegetation, motors and human life.
|
| It is a long book, but recommended by none other than gates [1]
|
| [1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Growth
| remir wrote:
| I agree that from a certain distance, we look like simple
| bacterias doing their thing.
|
| But to me the fascinating part is that we're _aware_ of looking
| like bacterias. We are matter that became conscious of itself.
|
| Isn't that the weirdest thing?
| amelius wrote:
| Who says bacteria don't have a (simple) form of
| consciousness?
| remir wrote:
| Could be possible. Who knows?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| that would seem to follow from a historical materialist
| perspective (which makes sense to me, if you consider cultures
| to optimise their ideals to fit their environment). Human
| history is a function with material conditions as an input.
| winter_blue wrote:
| This is a really sad (and rather disgusting) comment. Your
| comment takes an incredibly depreciating view of humanity, and
| it ignores / rejects the beauty and wonder of humans, by
| comparing us to bacteria. Humans are the peak of Earth life;
| humans are the most glorious form of life that's existed on
| this planet. I agree with everything that the user Grimm said
| in reply to you. I have no clue why such a horrible, repulsive,
| and repugnant comment would be the most-upvoted/top comment on
| HN.
| detritus wrote:
| The only difference being that we can understand the impact
| we're having. And yet...
| ditegashi wrote:
| If we REALLY understood it then maybe we would stop doing it.
| My bet is that we don't really get it.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| We understand it but humans are composed of a variety of
| minds and what the rational one wants isn't necessarily
| what we do.
|
| Although conservation probably has more to do with reality
| looking different depending on your own local observations,
| to a Brazilian cattle rancher or Indonesian logger at the
| frontlines of the biodiversity crisis, things look
| different. For a consumer of those goods and materials,
| they likely don't realize the connection.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think "we" do, but we don't quite care as much about
| future generations as we like to think we do. Especially
| not when others today are disproportionately benefiting.
| hackflip wrote:
| If you tell me to deprive myself of some conveniences
| because some people in another part of the world in
| another decade/century will suffer as a consequence of my
| actions... I agree with the selfless option in theory,
| but in practice I will usually choose the selfish option.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I think humans have a hard time with sustaining
| independent action. If you knew that everyone around you
| was going to be deprived of some convenience, say a
| restriction on driving to every other day (like they do
| in some countries based on the last digit of your license
| plate), I think it'd be easier to accept and adhere to
| for a long duration. I think this is both because you
| know the burden is shared, but also because the impact of
| a large adherence will tend to be more measurable.
|
| If, on the other hand, you independently decide to stop
| driving your car because you know the world is getting
| smothered with carbon dioxide, but see people daily
| driving modified diesel pickups belching smoke into the
| sky, you're going to feel a bit like you're pissing in
| the wind even trying.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| We do. Problem is, while individually, we're much smarter
| than bacteria, as a large group, we're just as dumb as
| groups of them.
|
| Take our main coordination mechanism - the market. For all
| that's been said and written about it, it's still basically
| gradient descent. As greedy as it gets - in the technical
| sense. It's what's been driving the development of humanity
| ever since we formed societies. It's what controls the
| behavior of everyone.
|
| We may think we're smart and have principles - and we do.
| But the reality still is, everyone is spending most of
| their lives trying to align themselves to exploit the local
| economic gradient - because that's how individuals get more
| of what they want, and less of what they don't want. Nobody
| is strong enough to single-handedly reshape the larger
| economic gradient. So while individually, we play complex
| games, at macro scale, we're not all that different from
| slime molds or fungal growths.
|
| Maybe one day our economy grows so sophisticated it'll gain
| sentience. But that doesn't necessarily mean things will
| get better - much like an individual human being sentient
| doesn't mean their cells are happy.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Because individual motivation and macro-behavior aren't
| necessity aligned, individual understanding might not be
| enough to changes behavior of the system as a whole. Maybe
| individual bacteria understand the impact they might have
| on a host system and are concerned about outcomes as well.
|
| I sometimes think that it is a valid mental model to think
| of us as not much different from ants in a hive who think
| they possess more control and freedom than they do
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I sometimes think that it is a valid mental model to
| think of us as not much different from ants in a hive who
| think they possess more control and freedom than they do
|
| I think it is the opposite. We are different from ants,
| and have a lot of control and freedom, so we know that if
| others will not make the sacrifice, why should we?
|
| In an ant colony, I imagine the orders are being given
| top down and they do not think about what others are or
| are not sacrificing.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| As I understand it, ants and other similar it's like bees
| don't have a hierarchical structure that issues orders.
| Instead they follow quasi-baked in behavioral patterns
| and pheromone signals provided by peers.
|
| I'm not a biologist though and also have no experience in
| what it's like to be a bee or ant
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| My question is what would not look like microorganisms
| colonising? There is a range of manners that they expand from
| growing from a core, spores, milliary, fronds. I imagine most
| simple growth patterns possible are taken advantage of by
| microorganisms.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| You can say the same thing about ant colonies. I think it's
| probably just what anything that groups and branches around
| resource deposits looks like. If I recall slime molds are
| optimal planners regarding surrounding resources so it just
| sounds like a natural optimality to me.
|
| I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look like
| for an "advanced" species besides optimal?
|
| Looking at it is disparagingly is weird to me, when the
| conclusion is maybe humans in aggregate are optimal with
| regards to finding and using resources to grow.
|
| Not that we're growing unbounded either because that would be
| bad, we're in population decline across many major nations
| right now and are working towards a greener future in multiple
| industries to avoid resource collapse.
|
| The level of doom and gloom and misanthropy is generally
| unwarranted if you look around at the steps we're taking to
| better ourselves as a species and every time I read things like
| this I can't help but think people revel in the supposed
| helplessness of our potential destruction and inability as some
| perverted pleasure.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Speaking of ant and slime simulation, this recent video
| Coding Adventures video was pretty mind blowing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-iSQQgOd1A
|
| (Especially part 2 starting around 10m in).
| enchiridion wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! Great channel!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The level of doom and gloom and misanthropy_
|
| I's not misanthropy to note that we're not so different from
| other species and that our growth/behavior is in many
| respects similar to other natural phenomena involving complex
| systems. Our long term success is correlated with our ability
| to shift resources away from negative-sum behaviors so as not
| to exceed the carrying capacity of our environment.
| timeslip1523 wrote:
| Better to increase carrying capacity through innovation.
| gbrown wrote:
| > I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look
| like for an "advanced" species besides optimal?
|
| In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization should be
| able to develop in a coordinated and self sustaining way,
| rather than as a grand experiment in tragedy of the commons.
| Microbes don't coordinate their growth, and therefore fall
| into boom-bust cycles that dominate and exhaust their local
| environment. Humans can reason about these issues, but we see
| insufficient ability to collectively coordinate in response
| to them.
| ishjoh wrote:
| Are you suggesting government mandated population control?
| smt1 wrote:
| Sustainable development eans more like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy to me.
|
| Information systems are very important in this regard
| IMHO. For most of human history information was a weapon.
| GareyBaldo wrote:
| Are you? That's a strange response. Your question is a
| non sequitur.
| ishjoh wrote:
| I'm strongly against governments controlling population
| growth.
|
| OP I was responding to stated:
|
| "Microbes don't coordinate their growth, and therefore
| fall into boom-bust cycles that dominate and exhaust
| their local environment. Humans can reason about these
| issues, but we see insufficient ability to collectively
| coordinate in response to them."
|
| Government is how we collectively coordinate. Microbes
| exhaust their local environment by reproduction, hence
| the question.
| gbrown wrote:
| No
| bngybmgrglflps wrote:
| Who does the coordinating, to what purpose? By what right,
| at whose expense?
|
| Why isn't coordination the grand experiment? Glancing
| nervously through history, or in the mirror, it's never
| sufficient -- and not for lack of vigor.
|
| Suppose each microbe is unique: every one has a name,
| dreams, fears, love, grief, joy -- stories.
|
| I can't understand the enduring appeal of reducing people's
| lives to fungible grey mush.
| ledauphin wrote:
| I agree that it's _possible_ we're headed for the boom-bust
| cycle that you're talking about, but unlike microbes that's
| a hypothesis, not a scientifically verifiable fact, as
| humans have never (to my knowledge) experienced the sort of
| planet-wide bust that you're implying.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| One interesting counterexample is the Bronze Age
| collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq4G-7v-_xI&ab_
| channel=Histo...
|
| I'm not sure if it's technically a counterexample, but
| it's fascinating. Society seemed to collapse due to a
| series of causes, more or less unexplained to this day.
| (We have hypotheses, but it's still something of a
| mystery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples)
| jcrites wrote:
| Wasn't it hypothesized that the collapse was due to an
| Ice Age? I thought there was strong geological evidence
| for that, and the challenges it put on human population,
| but I don't know enough about history to place the last
| Ice Age on a timeline relative to the Bronze Age without
| doing research.
|
| Update: Upon some brief research, the last Ice Age ended
| about 12,000 years ago, whereas the Bronze Age Collapse
| was around 1200 BCE. So totally unrelated.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might want to look up the Younger Dryas
| drivebycomment wrote:
| I think humanity is, and has been going through a
| collective learning experience over thousands of years, and
| any "advanced" civilization will necessarily have to go
| through a similar phase to get to that "advanced" stage. So
| while it's true humanity can do better, I think this - the
| global coordination challenge - is fundamental and
| irremovable in any collection of self-interested
| individuals.
| gbrown wrote:
| More cynical take: because most societies have to go
| through this experience, most societies don't make it to
| "advanced". That's one of the ideas behind the "Great
| Filter" hypothesis.
| tkinom wrote:
| Google needs to start the "Google Mars" time-lapse
| database now.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| http://mars.google.com/
| exporectomy wrote:
| It may be sustainable on a longer time scale than you're
| thinking of. For instance, perhaps we use fossil fuels to
| provide the value needed to find new sustainable sources of
| energy. Could we really make nuclear fusion reactors
| without ever having first burnt a lot of coal and oil?
|
| Lots of things are unsustainable in the short term but
| sustainable in the long term. Hunter-gathering for
| instance. If you pick the berries off a bush, they're gone.
| You can't keep doing that all day every day or the plant
| will never reproduce and eventually stop producing berries.
| But if you look at the hunter-gatherer's berry picking
| habits over a whole year, it may well be sustainable
| because he's not doing it at the same rate all the time.
| Similarly, our unsustainable behaviors may be limited to a
| few centuries of rapid change taking us into a new and
| different sustainable future that wouldn't have been
| possible otherwise.
| gbrown wrote:
| That's some excellent wishful thinking, and I hope you're
| right. Meanwhile, I've read plenty of articles suggesting
| that we're likely in for unavoidable and hugely
| disruptive warming, at the very least, and I don't
| currently see us globally acting quickly enough.
|
| I've also taken an amateur interest in ecology and the
| natural sciences, and once you actually learn a bit about
| the species around you, the loss of habitat and
| biodiversity we're undergoing becomes a staggeringly
| obvious fact that most people are just completely
| oblivious to.
| heartbeats wrote:
| I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure
| something out as global warming gets worse.
|
| There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down
| for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if
| you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for
| starters.
|
| There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black
| stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming
| sunlight.
|
| The idea that humanity couldn't deal with this situation
| if it spent anywhere in the ballpark of 100% of its
| resources on it seems to me frankly laughable.
| sellyme wrote:
| > I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure
| something out as global warming gets worse.
|
| We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of
| people could be dying and some would find it politically
| expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring.
|
| We absolutely have the resources and capability to solve
| these problems. We just don't have the will or the
| policy.
| heartbeats wrote:
| > We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of
| people could be dying and some would find it politically
| expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring.
|
| I'm sorry, I don't follow, who do you mean? Colonialism?
| The Uighurs in China? People in India/Pakistan? Possible
| victims of global warming? The Holocaust?
|
| >We just don't have the will or the policy.
|
| Right, that's what I mean. The minute things get anywhere
| near serious, people are gonna figure something out real
| quick. Restarting the nuclear power plants and closing
| the coal plants would take weeks, be profitable in
| economic terms, and hugely reduce greenhouse gas
| emissions. The fact that nobody's done this means we
| aren't serious about it.
|
| I mean, if you were really serious, you would just
| deregulate nuclear power totally. If the estimates of the
| harms of global warming are true, you could take 1
| Chernobyl-scale incident per year and still come out on
| top. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't
| serious about it.
|
| The combination of facts that (1) we aren't serious about
| this and (2) there's plenty of low-hanging fruit we could
| reap if we were, leads me to believe this will not really
| be a problem, as soon as we do get serious about it.
| ix101 wrote:
| Maybe he's referring to what has been dominating news
| headlines for the past 14 months.
| gbrown wrote:
| That's a very common line of reasoning which I would call
| magical thinking. Sure, there's not really any risk that
| humans will go extinct in the near future, but our
| technological global civilization is much more fragile.
|
| First, we look at the numbers concerning best case
| scenarios and see that a few degrees of warming is
| basically inevitable. Then, we ask how likely it is that
| well make rapid corrections now - personally I see little
| evidence of that, but I hope I'm wrong.
|
| Next, try to remember that nothing in the world is
| disconnected. There's a long scholarship concerning
| resource conflict and the destabilizing effects of mass
| migration. We don't have a good track record of dealing
| with this, and I see little reason to expect us to become
| better at it soon.
|
| The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me -
| what we're really talking about are emergency
| uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster.
| We've organized our entire global economic system around
| carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only
| compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from
| the atmosphere, which is a problem you're underestimating
| the difficulty of.
|
| Meanwhile, we need to worry about positive feedback
| cycles from various sources of methane, and the rest of
| the related threats to our biosphere (ocean
| acidification, wildfire, extreme weather).
|
| To close, what has humanity done to convince you that
| we'll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively
| solve this crisis "once it gets bad enough"?
| heartbeats wrote:
| > our technological global civilization
|
| Good riddance. If our technological global civilization
| results in conditions that make technological global
| civilization impossible, then so be it. It wasn't fit to
| exist to begin with. It's a self-regulating problem.
|
| > There's a long scholarship concerning resource conflict
| and the destabilizing effects of mass migration. We don't
| have a good track record of dealing with this, and I see
| little reason to expect us to become better at it soon.
|
| I don't know what you mean here - are you suggesting mass
| migration is inevitable?
|
| > The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me -
| what we're really talking about are emergency
| uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster.
| We've organized our entire global economic system around
| carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only
| compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from
| the atmosphere, which is a problem you're underestimating
| the difficulty of.
|
| No, I mean spraying dust into the atmosphere to make it
| darker, so less sunlight comes in.
|
| It's not just a matter of economy - people aren't even
| picking the low-hanging fruit. If any country wanted to
| severely cut CO2 emissions, there's a simple thing they
| could do:
|
| 1) reopen all the closed nuclear plants 2) deregulate
| nuclear power plant construction, focus on mass producing
| cheap power plants with no regard for safety 3) shut down
| the coal plants 4) throw everyone who protests in prison
|
| Obviously, this isn't done because all of these steps are
| politically impossible. But it just goes to show - if we
| were serious about this, we'd have picked the low-hanging
| fruit already. _If we haven 't even picked the low-
| hanging fruit yet, how can you say it's impossible?_
|
| > To close, what has humanity done to convince you that
| we'll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively
| solve this crisis "once it gets bad enough"?
|
| It's like people procrastinating their homework until 5
| minutes before the deadline. Eventually they'll get it
| done.
| ix101 wrote:
| > all of these steps are politically impossible.
|
| Probably fair to say that it's not low hanging fruit
| then.
|
| I think a lot of time is being spent on finding
| politically correct solutions, but maybe we'll come full
| circle back to your solution after wasting a lot of time
| with fancy solutions that don't have a significant enough
| effect.
| gbrown wrote:
| > Good riddance.
|
| Matter of preference I guess. I like to hope humanity
| will continue to learn things about and explore the
| broader universe rather than descent into feudal
| oppression (or some-such) in the ashes of our former
| civilization, but whatever.
|
| > I don't know what you mean here - are you suggesting
| mass migration is inevitable?
|
| At this point, that's the conclusion, yes. Climate
| impacts cause incredible destabilization for folks who
| rely more closely on their local environment (subsistence
| farmers and the global poor generally), and yes -
| disruption leads to mass migration.
|
| > No, I mean spraying dust into the atmosphere to make it
| darker, so less sunlight comes in.
|
| .... yes, an emergency uncontrolled experiment to solve
| some of the symptoms of a global problem. The global
| economy as it currently exists _is_ geoengineering at an
| absolutely monumental scale.
|
| Also, your reply is just incredibly baffling and
| frustrating, to the point that I half think you're not
| being serious. "Oh, we'll just spray some dust in the air
| and reflect more sunlight to solve the problem" - it's
| ludicrous, and nobody serious who studies geoengineering
| shares your attitude. I _do_ believe we 're going to have
| to engage in geoengineering, but it's not something to be
| taken lightly (and the experts who study it generally
| agree). Never mind the fact that even if your "solution"
| worked, it wouldn't solve things like ocean
| acidification, and would at best buy us some time...
| while having potentially unforeseen consequences on
| cancer rates, crop production, solar efficiency, etc.
|
| > It's like people procrastinating their homework until 5
| minutes before the deadline. Eventually they'll get it
| done.
|
| Talk about unearned optimism. Not everything is a problem
| you can just go "fix".
| exporectomy wrote:
| You're big on worrying about problems which you seem to
| only have subjective feelings about the severity of. How
| do you know "hugely disruptive warming" is bad enough to
| be worth all that worry or worth people paying a high
| price to try to prevent?
| prox wrote:
| You probably described my complete complaint of humans in a
| perfect paragraph. We keep choosing this laissez-faire
| attitude (also conservative) attitude.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| But we're moving towards sustainability. Whether it's fast
| enough is up to interpretation but the push for green tech,
| sustainable farming etc etc it's not like this is an
| unknown, it's just always been the case that it must be
| sufficiently cheap and easy for the average person to latch
| onto it. Unfortunately in a lot of areas we're getting
| there but not there yet.
| gbrown wrote:
| The near universal consensus of people who study natural
| systems is that we're way, way, way behind. Unfortunately
| the science is pretty bleak.
| exporectomy wrote:
| "way way behind" and "pretty bleak" are completely
| subjective and thus meaningless for trying to understand
| nature. If you can't quantify it, you're only able to
| think using feelings and feelings can't tell you
| important answers like what we should do. They can make
| you believe you know what we should do, but you'll be
| wrong because your feelings won't be accurately tuned to
| the reality.
| ehershey wrote:
| I found the "subjective" comment easier to understand
| than this one. Not every opinion or generalization
| requires citation. Your stance and reply are also
| subjective. I do prefer quantitative data and references,
| especially when the topic is at all scientific. It
| doesn't automatically make qualitative or broad
| statements pointless though. It especially doesn't mean
| they don't contribute to understanding.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Sure, but the internet is awash with similar activist
| opinions when it comes to climate change, biodiversity,
| and sustainability. They go in circles reinforcing each
| other without being grounded in reality. Their aim seems
| to be to mislead people with fear instead of sharing
| understanding. I think that underhandedness is what
| grates on me when I read them.
| gbrown wrote:
| Congratulations, you've discovered that I'm commenting on
| an internet forum rather than submitting something for
| publication. My assessment is based on my own reading,
| and on being involved in conservation efforts and trying
| to stay educated generally. Sorry I didn't prepare a set
| of bullet points for you, and instead went with an
| informal an easily intelligible lay summary.
|
| To the best of my knowledge, my language (while
| imprecise) is completely and totally uncontroversial in
| the scientific community.
| exporectomy wrote:
| It's not an easily intelligible lay summary because the
| meaning could be anything. It only conveys emotion, not
| knowledge about nature. I suppose you're being an
| activist trying to convert people to your religion of
| doom. In that case, you do need to convey emotions like
| fear to fool people into imagining things are unboundedly
| bad. Quantitative predictions put a cap on how bad it is
| so they're not as scary as the unknown.
| monkeydreams wrote:
| "I'm sorry Ms Smith but you have a tumour. The good news
| is that it is completely operable - at the moment. The
| bad news, well, until we can measure every conceivable
| metric relating to this tumour, and unless we can
| determine every conceivable path its progression might
| take, we are very reluctant to operate. We have chosen,
| instead, to wait until the outcome of this cancer is more
| certain and, having weighed these against the small but
| measurable risks of surgery, that we are comfortable that
| we are certain of the benefit surgery will provide."
|
| "And when will that be?"
|
| "Well, not to beat around the bush, but when the cancer
| has metastisized and is about to kill you, we will be
| certain enough of the benefit of surgery now. Yes, this
| will likely result in your death, but to move before we
| have solidified all of these variables to a five-sigma
| measure would be allowing too much emotion into our
| descision making."
| gbrown wrote:
| Are you seriously suggesting that every mention of a
| negative issue needs to be a self contained and cited
| polemic piece? Stop being absurd. If you want to talk
| specifics, make a specific objection, or at least narrow
| in on an issue you want to get into in more depth.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Sometimes it's better not to respond, gbrown.
| gbrown wrote:
| You're probably right.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization
| should be able to develop.._
|
| > _The near universal consensus of people who study
| natural systems is that we're way, way, way behind._
|
| What other advanced civilization is our benchmark for
| making such an assessment?
| gbrown wrote:
| In terms of the definition of "advanced", the question I
| was answering was a subjective one. I think it's
| appropriate to use the term "advanced" for societies that
| can plan for their long term futures and continue to
| exist in stable equilibria in a given environment.
|
| The second point isn't dependent on an external
| comparison.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Ok, then what is the baseline for comparison aka where we
| are vs where we should be?
|
| If the goal/definition is concrete, then we can plan
| better and understand what is "enough" once we're caught
| up.
| gbrown wrote:
| I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or if
| you're objecting to anything in particular, but being
| global carbon negative seems like a good start.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| If you're calling for action then we need to have clear
| metrics, goals, and standards that we can prioritize,
| plan for, evaluate decisions against, and measure the
| results against. Thank you for adding one.
|
| Alternatively, if you're simply putting out a Vision to
| inspire enthusiasm or incite fear, then "we're behind" is
| sufficient and doesn't require anything more because at
| best, it's the "race to the moon" and at worst, it's the
| "missile gap."
| gbrown wrote:
| > If you're calling for action
|
| I mean, I guess I am, but really I'm mostly relaying my
| understanding of the scientific consensus. I didn't make
| my comment in some sort of vacuum where readers are
| supposed to understand the last few decades of climate
| science just from my comment...
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I've been reading reports and analysis since the Kyoto
| Protocols. The most fascinating things since that time is
| that we (the US) were behind in those requirements but
| significantly ahead of everyone else. The Paris Agreement
| is roughly the same so far too.
|
| In a situation where "we're behind" and "we're ahead" are
| both accurate statements point to a significant problem
| in the approach.
|
| You choosing one of them exclusively means you're playing
| for "your team" instead of looking at reality of the
| situation which is neither useful nor honest.
| gbrown wrote:
| I was talking about humanity as a whole, that's the
| "team" I'm worried about.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Mind providing me some of that research? I've heard this
| a few times but when I go looking for it nothing really
| pops up, it's mostly things saying we need to act now but
| can avoid the biggest issues.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Not proper research but this is as visual as it gets:
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| Grimm1 wrote:
| And here's NASA and the general gov saying what I said in
| my last comment,
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-
| prevent-cl...
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/can-we-
| slow...
|
| Going to need something a little stronger than xkcd here.
| I'm not a climate scientist but a lot of the names
| attached to both links seem to be and they're saying if
| we act decisively in the next 29 years we can avoid the
| worst effects, which in that second link is defined as <
| 1.5C change _this century_
|
| Edit: I also want to make it clear just in case anyone
| misinterprets my skepticism over the depth of the effects
| as skepticism in climate change or the urgency of it in
| general. I agree we need to do what we can to make sure
| things like this don't come to pass because I happen to
| like our somewhat diverse ecosystem and that we continue
| to damage it isn't great.
| nostrebored wrote:
| As someone who has studied modeling, these situations are
| fundamentally unmodelable with the tools we have.
|
| Whenever you read a study saying that 'In complex system
| X, Y will happen in a decade' breathe easily -- we can't
| model what the stock market will look like in a day. We
| can't model what user demand for a sale will be in a
| week. We can't model most complex things in any large
| time frame, and believing any conclusions in the XX years
| for something as complex as climate is bizarre.
| jiofih wrote:
| The first link says we can learn to adapt to _the massive
| changes brought about by global warming_.
|
| The second link says _we are unlikely to keep global
| warming in this century below 2.7deg Fahrenheit (1.5deg
| Celsius)_ which has severe consequences for the
| environment.
|
| I think you're reading into their optimistic language a
| bit too much.
|
| Do you watch the news? Have you seen a completely ice-
| free North Pole earlier in January? The ice in Norway,
| Russia and Iceland melting completely, permanently
| damaging the permafrost and releasing huge amounts of
| methane? Might be hard to notice from your apartment but
| the weather is going absolutely nuts in most of the
| world. Insect populations down by up to 90%. These are
| not "feelings".
| Grimm1 wrote:
| "It's true that without dramatic action in the next
| couple of decades..."
|
| You missed the first part of their sentence.
|
| On the flipside perhaps you're a little too much into
| doomsday scenarios?
|
| We've quite literally transformed the entire planet and
| way of living inside of 30 years since personal
| computation technology took off. I really don't see it as
| particularly farfetched that we can correct for our
| negative consumptive habits inside of the same timeframe,
| considering our rate of advance and change only
| accelerated within that same timeframe.
|
| I'll live out just the end of this century if I'm lucky
| so I'll be able to eat my words just fine if I'm wrong,
| but I'll bet you I'm not.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Do you seriously think we actually do this "dramatic
| action" in the next couple of decades?
|
| If we manage to get it started, what if another Trump
| gets elected and sabotage it from the top?
| hanselot wrote:
| How many governments have commited to doing something
| about the irreversible damage being done to the ocean by
| overfishing? Everyone here is going crazy about climate
| change, when it is very well known information that
| eating fish is the greatest current contributor to
| climate change. (See Seaspiracy) So would you mind
| explaining what Orange man bad has done differently to
| any other puppet placed on the US throne? He withdrew
| from trash agreements that do nothing to actually improve
| climate change, yes. Based on your profile I would guess
| that you are the kind of person preaching to everyone
| about using plastic straws while eating your poisonous
| salmon nagiri.
| jiofih wrote:
| How about these lines then:
|
| > Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today,
| global warming would continue to happen for at least
| several more decades, if not centuries
|
| or
|
| > In the absence of major action to reduce emissions,
| global temperature is on track to rise by an average of 6
| degC
|
| There is not much major action going on (except for the
| electrification of vehicles which is being driven by
| commercial venture) so your hopes are just that, hope.
| Hope is not a strategy. It _is_ quite far fetched to
| expect a correction when literally _all_ data points are
| going the other way.
|
| Your view does not reflect the common scientific
| consensus. We're at a stage where changes are
| irreversible and all we can do is minimize and prepare
| for them, as seen in the article.
|
| This is not fatalism, much to the contrary: I'm saying
| corrective action is much, much more urgent than you seem
| to believe and has to be started immediately. We don't
| have another 30 years to sit on it.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| You keep picking half sentences that leave off the part
| saying we can do things to prevent catastrophe. At this
| point I can only believe you aren't coming from a place
| of intellectual honesty.
|
| You also keep saying scientific consensus and data points
| but considering I keep finding information to the
| contrary and you've provided nothing I really think you
| mean your own personal and emotion driven stance. Of
| which I don't buy.
|
| Yup climate change is a big issue, we'll probably solve
| it to a point humanity and the broader earth will be fine
| in a reasonable time. Just like every other crazy things
| we've pulled off during the same geological instant.
| jiofih wrote:
| I'm puzzled. The sentences I quote are straight from the
| article, and it doesn't go much further than that. It's
| five paragraphs long. It doesn't show any possibilities
| for reversal or offer an alternative scenario.
|
| All it offers is a meaningless "it's up to us what
| happens next". Where is the information to the contrary
| you see?
|
| Here is an extensive report, from the same source, on the
| effects of predicted global warming:
| https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-
| why-g...
|
| Read it carefully, and note that the 1.5C scenario is
| _extremely optimistic_ and assumes humanity will zero out
| emissions completely by 2050.
| rizzom5000 wrote:
| Maybe this isn't a big issue?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
| overboard2 wrote:
| While it's not good, it's not that bad. A lack of
| biodiversity may, if taken to extremes, limit the variety
| of things humans have access to. However, even in that
| case, we should be able to rely on our wind pollinated
| crops (possibly with more genetic modification, if
| required) to feed us while we research synthetic
| alternatives to anything we start to loose access to.
| gbrown wrote:
| Pick an area of science which intersects with human
| development and I'll find you something - the underlying
| truth is that we can't hope to disrupt such a huge
| percentage of our biosphere without nasty consequences,
| and we can't hope to have remediation efforts compete
| with the global engine of human development. We've
| essentially organized an entire global society around the
| injection of carbon into the atmosphere, while turning
| habitat into development at astonishing rates. To make
| things worse, humans are really good at adapting, so
| we're (by and large) comfortable while the world burns.
|
| Press releases and pop-science articles tend to try to
| strike a more hopeful tone, because it's extremely tiring
| and depressing just hearing "we're screwed" all day. I
| try to stay hopeful, but my faith that enough people will
| care soon enough is basically gone.
| exporectomy wrote:
| How bad are "nasty consequences" and "the world burns"?
| Maybe it doesn't matter if those things happen.
| franga2000 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Where do we start?
|
| Do you think running out of oil will go smoothly? We
| already can't stand still for 5 minutes without blowing
| someone up in a resource war and basically all of our
| resources are plentiful for now.
|
| Rising sea levels decreasing usable land. Rising
| temperatures destroying key organisms in the food chain.
| Mass deforestation is destroying the very things that
| allow us to breathe.
|
| How much climate change affects you is a function of your
| wealth and your country's wealth (cost of basic resources
| as well as required countermeasures are growing). Anyone
| who's been on the low side of one or both of those
| variables will tell you that it's already miserable.
| Imagine, if you even can, what being in a poor country
| will be like when all the oil is gone, food can't grow
| the usual way (you need either hydroponics or serious
| genetic modification), increasingly unstable weather
| destroys everything you build and everyone else is out to
| get you to squeeze out every last drop of resources you
| might have?
|
| What people with no such experience don't realize is that
| unlike our economic system, which funnels resources
| upwards, ecosystem collapse doesn't funnel them anywhere.
| It's just an endless pit and eventually, everyone is
| poor.
| why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
| One of the greatest features of mankind is the response
| to disasters. When situation gets really bad, we are
| capable of achieving incredible things that would
| normally be impossible.
|
| Example: Second world war. You might argue that it was
| not disaster comparable to climate change, but it did
| turn entire world upside down, disrupting everything
| aspect of life of vast majority of world's population.
| But it also led to incredible advancements in many areas,
| new discoveries in all sciences, new technologies,
| massive changes in societies as well.
|
| So I don't see the situation as gloomy, we will survive,
| because we always do.
| GustafR wrote:
| Oh ffs. Yes, "we" will survive, as in there will not be a
| human race extinction event, most likely. However, that's
| ignoring the hunger, suffering, and deaths that are
| coming our way. Many of "us" won't survive, and/or will
| have miserable lives, especially those of us who happen
| to be poor. As just one example of many, have a look at
| the potential of large regions reaching a wet-bulb-
| temperature above human tolerability:
| https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838
|
| Taking an approach that "we will sort it out" ignores
| that the disaster is already unrolling, just too slow for
| most of us to notice. The longer we linger, the worse the
| situation, and the higher the human toll.
| why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
| Sorry, I meant it differently. What I was trying to say
| was that we (mankind) respond best to disasters = sudden
| catastrophic events, but really bad to frog-boiling ones.
| It would be best to do nothing and let it all reach a
| critical point to trigger that survival instinct, because
| nothing short of that will be able to force us to do
| anything about it, other than some weak, irrelevant
| attempts.
| gbrown wrote:
| One of the worst features of humanity is that we've
| proven ourselves incapable of planning more than a few
| years ahead. The fact that it takes acute crises to get
| us to take dramatic action is the problem: climate change
| and biosphere collapse take a while to start affecting
| people (especially the global rich), and once things get
| bad enough for mass action it's probably too late to save
| our civilization.
|
| I look at the insanity in how the US responds to small
| movements of people now and despair at the thought of how
| we'll deal with simultaneous waves of millions of climate
| refugees alongside the predictable handful of domestic
| crises.
| eric_cc wrote:
| OP asked for you to provide research and yet you've
| entirely evaded doing so.
| gbrown wrote:
| I made a more specific offer which received no response,
| meanwhile others have posted a number of research
| articles in this very thread.
|
| Nothing I've said disagrees with the scientific
| consensus, so you could also just Google it rather than
| whining that someone on the internet isn't holding your
| hand.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Hi OP here way too many different talking points going on
| in the thread, your offer went right past me. I'd love to
| know more about our energy generation and how that is
| working against our climate change goals. I know that at
| the start of 2020 we produced 25% of our energy from
| renewable in the US and that we're moving more of that
| percentage yearly but understand we have more to do
| globally among other nations. I figure that's a perfectly
| specific topic that if you have all this damning research
| that we won't get there you can just quickly drop it on
| me.
| justatdotin wrote:
| some highly advanced extinction experiments include
| large-scale rainforest fragmentation, and the collapse of
| coral reefs, with accompanied dieback of mangroves and
| seagrass. These are highly significant because of their
| advanced progress and the anticipated downstream
| planetary impact.
| rlpb wrote:
| > But we're moving towards sustainability.
|
| I don't think we are. As long as we accept unbounded
| population growth, nothing is sustainable.
| dfilppi wrote:
| The solar system isnt sustainable.
| azernik wrote:
| Sustainability is orthogonal to the geographic patterns of
| development - it's always going to be more efficient (even
| in environmental impact!) to cluster around resources and
| transportation.
| FabiansMustDie wrote:
| I think deferring to reason is a nouveau fad among men of
| letters -- as if it's some truth machine; wherein one
| inputs one's observations and, by the grace of reason, out
| pops "what should be done." This ignores the very basest of
| truths that all men's* reason is self-centered, generating
| only courses of action that benefit him -- no matter how
| indirectly (ex. donating to a charity does help others, but
| it also helps the donator on some emotional (see:
| moral/spiritual/conditioned) level; otherwise, the donator
| wouldn't have done it).
|
| Every man* has his own temperament, value system, -- and so
| on -- that reason alone begets wildly different what-
| should-be-dones. That is, unless the achievement of a
| narrow aim would benefit the many---and therefore all those
| different reason machines come together to collectively
| strive towards some end---then we have all sorts of
| different, many times conflicting, what-should-be-dones
| (politics is a prime example here).
|
| Perhaps then an authority should be appointed?; someone or
| some group whose sole purpose is to reason all day and all
| night, until they come up with a what-should-be-done that
| benefits their constituency (of course, this assumes they
| didn't ascend by force, coercion, or some other
| deviousness).
|
| But now, we get into this dreadful stalemate: the more
| constituents there are, the more the means and the ends
| have to be tailored to them, and the more the whole venture
| becomes watered down, in order to suit some muddied
| "average." Or perhaps the authority decides to "draw a line
| in the ground," to create some abstract "core" of
| acceptable means and ends (as well as people to enlist),
| and shun out the rest---in order to maintain some semblance
| of identity and individualism.
|
| Yet, now we have two very inefficient differentiations. On
| one hand, we have the all-inclusive reasoning-body, that is
| so held back by trying to please all, that it pleases none.
| On the other hand, we have the some-exclusive reasoning-
| body, that -- fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on
| one's own reasoning -- shuts out the "others," and does
| nothing to support the advancement of their ends (many
| times, quite the opposite).
|
| I think it is self-evident that both are inefficient
| towards the coordination of all humanity. So are there any
| alternatives?
|
| Perhaps we could simply do away with collective
| coordination -- or atleast some less rigid approach?
|
| What about some type of individualism?; where each man*
| decides his own fate. Therein, each member is responsible
| for his own fate, and therefore---collectively---the fate
| of all man? Each soul going in his own direction, serving
| his interests foremost, and pushing the fate of humanity,
| in his own image, little by little -- like some plant,
| slowly rooting itself into the most impenetrable places,
| and overcoming the, otherwise apparent, impossible odds.
|
| On a local level, humanity is ever unsustainable, "booming-
| and-busting," but on the world level we have survived, and
| will continue until we lose our survival instincts
| (impossible, collectively). Each member of the human race
| will do what he must to survive and improve his own
| circumstances, even if it leaves others worse off; then,
| those worse-offs must now improve their circumstances
| further, and strive for a better life. In the end, each man
| guarantees the survival (but not thrival) of the human
| race, by the virtue of his selfishness.
|
| *Are we still doing the "man" is not synonymous with
| "human" fad? It's more of a stylistic choice, rather than
| an "only men can use reason." I.e, it flows better than
| "hu-man."
| exporectomy wrote:
| An answer to your problem is isolated countries with
| strong local cultures and nationalism. Each country's
| population has a shared set of beliefs about what-should-
| be-done so they can implement it locally and the winners
| can impose their superior culture on their less
| successful neighbors. Hopefully not exterminating all
| different cultures and optimizing for short term gain
| though. We've always been doing this and still are.
| Islamic culture has some commonly agreed upon ideas of
| what-should-be-done and those countries implement it
| without being watered down by individualism. So does
| western culture but we've already done it and take it for
| granted so it's hard to notice. For instance, you don't
| see western politicians fighting to deny women the right
| to vote because we do have a common what-should-be-done
| idea about that.
| gbrown wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at, but I don't
| think it really addresses my point. Much of what you've
| said could be read as just a descriptive reason why the
| human world is the way it is - no objection there, except
| to note that I'd hope for better from an "advanced
| civilization", regardless of what mechanisms were at
| play. Preferably, a super-majority would be aware of the
| issues and willing to coordinate extensively to mitigate
| them for the greater good, but I don't think anyone would
| argue that we're there yet.
|
| As a stylistic choice, I also have an aversion to
| dressing up human decision-making in such abstract and
| flowery terminology. We've invented lots of cool tools
| for thinking and doing, but we're still simply advanced
| primates with lots of baggage.
| brofallon wrote:
| In response to your final question: To my ear using "men"
| as a substitute for "all people" doesn't flow better, I
| found it rather jarring and antiquated and, yeah, a
| little insensitive. I'm also not convinced it's a purely
| stylistic decision, as you claim... There's a rather long
| history of using men as a substitute for everyone in,
| say, medicine, politics, finance, and many (most?)
| disciplines, with outcomes most of us agree were not so
| great. It can also muddy the interpretation of your
| arguments, as (asterisks aside) it's not perfectly clear
| when you say "men" if you're referring to everyone or
| just actually just males. It's an easy thing to change,
| and your rhetoric will be clearer, more persuasive, and
| less likely to be immediately dismissed by a fraction of
| your audience.
| FabiansMustDie wrote:
| I thank you for your take; yet I refuse to yield to your
| sensibilities.
|
| I think where we differ is in our approach to language. I
| see it as a medium of art -- like a song or a painting.
| "Man" is but a certain, evocative hue of brown that I
| believe fits best into the feelings I'm trying to elicit;
| and "human" is a lesser, albeit passable substitute.
|
| I think this scientificization, making it more rigorous
| and "comprehensible," has done the opposite. Words have
| connotations, denotations, and all sorts of deeper
| meanings behind them. "Human" is such a sterilized,
| unnevocative word; and I refuse to use it.
|
| However, certainly you've felt something from its usage
| -- even if that feeling was not the one I felt (compare
| it to: human -- which only the most scientifically-
| obsessed would have their hearts sing from its
| utterance).
| Seanambers wrote:
| An advanced civilization..
|
| Like where do you think we are?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
|
| Seems to me like you are expecting too much. Worst part is,
| if that kind of thinking - do not exploit nature wins out -
| we might not even get there. Exploitation is key for
| scientific advancement in capitalism.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > _Exploitation is key for scientific advancement in
| capitalism._
|
| In capitalism? You mean, compared to the sustainable and
| non-exploitive nature of communism, for example?
| gbrown wrote:
| > you are expecting too much.
|
| The universe doesn't grade on a curve.
|
| > Exploitation is key for scientific advancement in
| capitalism
|
| What a weird objection. It's our science that tells us we
| need to radically reform how we consume resources. I'm
| not worried we're going to waste all our resources in
| scientific endeavors, I'm concerned that we're destroying
| the environment on which we depend for frivolous short
| term gains.
| siculars wrote:
| I don't think it is possible for humans to be optimal vs,
| say, slime. Slime, presumably, does not have incentive
| structure that individual humans collude in at their benefit
| to the detriment of others. For example, why did the US build
| roads at the expense of rail? The incentive structure of the
| auto industry.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| And yet, would the rail corridors have looked drastically
| different, or stopped at different cities? Or would it
| still have run between the same major metro hubs we have
| now?
| FredPret wrote:
| I couldn't agree more regarding misanthropy.
|
| I would like to note though that if we start mining and
| settling space, our growth would in fact be essentially
| unbounded.
|
| Combined with the fact that some types of stars are expected
| to continue radiating energy for trillions of years...
| pfarrell wrote:
| This discussion reminds me of Isaac Asimov's favorite
| story, The Last Question
|
| https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
| falcor84 wrote:
| Sorry to nitpick, but is it your favorite story of
| Asimov's or has he actually said it was his own favorite?
| tomcam wrote:
| It was Asimov's favorite
| pfarrell wrote:
| I guess to be more precise, it was Asimov's favorite
| story among those that he had written.
|
| https://www.openculture.com/2015/06/isaac-asimovs-
| favorite-s...
| 7e wrote:
| A substantial amount of Earth's resources would need to be
| eviscerated to accomplish that goal, the the space colonies
| are extremely likely to fail anyway, in the end.
| nickik wrote:
| There are millions of tons of thorium on earth and on
| Mars. We can have sustainable energy (and thus basically
| everything else) with basically 60s technology.
| FredPret wrote:
| You're right, fuck it, let's just all die without trying
| instead
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Your sarcastic point is kind of valid, IMHO.
|
| Humans establishing self-sufficient communities beyond
| Earth would _prove_ that humans have the capability to
| thrive _sustainably_ on Earth. It would silence forever
| any technological objections to the possibility of human
| sustainability on Earth.
|
| And a firm idea that humans can never establish self-
| sustaining communities in space is not that far from the
| idea that we probably cannot do so on Earth, either.
|
| It really is not a huge step from pessimism about human
| future (ie in space) to nihilism about sustainability on
| Earth, and I do wish people would acknowledge this more:
| people enthusiastic about permanent settlements in space
| are, in fact, more certain about the possibility of
| sustainable thriving on Earth than the space-pessimists
| are.
| FredPret wrote:
| I don't think there's anything more important than being
| an outward-looking, striving species.
|
| Once we get depressed and nihilistic and give up, the
| universe will be forever deprived of the colour and drama
| human civilization can add to all those bare rocks up
| there.
|
| I never considered that the implication is we could live
| here sustainably, but you're right.
| ganafagol wrote:
| Striving for what though?
|
| These discussions tend to be heavy on Asimov-inspired
| scifi-think and weak on just taking a walk in a forest on
| a nice sunny day in late spring. All this talk about
| having to colonize space is just rubbish, compared to the
| wonders of nature that would be worth preserving.
|
| But the audience here is strongly biased. If most of your
| day is spent in front of a computer and reading scifi
| novels in the evening, then that's where the discussion
| moves.
| FredPret wrote:
| I'm talking about expanding the scope of human
| civilization, not abandoning this planet.
|
| Also, are you saying that forests are nature and space
| isn't? Or are you saying that there aren't any wonders of
| nature to experience out there?
|
| Setting up nice sunny walk-ready forests in space is
| something that'll take centuries, but if we don't do it
| we're doomed. Incidentally, so are the forests.
| [deleted]
| justatdotin wrote:
| I remain unable to comprehend the kind of brain damage
| that leads some to dismiss the challenge of living
| sustainably on a fit-for-purpose planet but embrace the
| challenge of abandoning it.
| navaati wrote:
| Decentralisation, basically.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Nah, we just need to bootstrap a cislunar economy.
| There's plenty of resources to use upwell, more than
| there ever were on Earth - but we need to seed the
| infrastructure for turning them into useful goods, and
| make it self-sustaining.
| wildmanx wrote:
| The sad part is that many of us have to constantly fight
| against those of "us" who are actively working against
| those improvements.
|
| It's easy to take an outside look and say "well, see,
| humankind fixed it", but the personal energy and misery
| that goes into fighting for those fixes is enormous. I
| wouldn't call it "misanthropy".
| abraae wrote:
| > I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look
| like for an "advanced" species besides optimal?
|
| An advanced species would recognize the uniqueness and
| importance of the natural world, and would fence off huge
| sections of it to protect it for future generations.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| There's a conservation goal that's going around.
|
| 30 by 30.
|
| Or, 30% of the planet's surface as protected areas by 2030.
|
| The Biden administration adopted it, but it'd be cool to
| see it as a global goal as well.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Wouldn't some weird interpretation of the Pareto
| Principle [0] mean that we should be using 20% of the
| available resources for 80% of our production goals?
| bscphil wrote:
| I agree, but your comment might be better served by giving
| reasons _why_. An advanced species that we can observe is,
| by definition, a successfully self-reproducing species.
| That is, a species that didn 't die out in an early stage
| of its (social and technological) evolution. This means you
| have to ask (1) what steps did they take to avoid
| extinction, and (2) what social values allowed them to
| achieve those moves.
|
| The biggest threat we face as a species in the foreseeable
| future is the exhaustion of our natural resources. Ergo, it
| makes sense to reserve as much as we can for future
| generations to decide what to do with. Some argue that we
| should use them as fast as possible in order to blow past
| some (claimed) barrier to entirely technological
| reproduction (producing a self-sustaining system on the
| Moon, for example), but this strikes me as hasty. The
| difficulties of achieving this might be _far_ more
| difficult than advocates imagine, and if so we 're likely
| to hit resource exhaustion.
|
| That's before you even deal with the values. We don't have
| a lot of choice over those, but it's worth pointing out
| that many of our personal scruples are more compatible with
| collaborative than combative approaches to growth. The real
| moral challenge is whether the new frontier of growth
| (wealth acquisition) hits any wall before it destroys the
| environment.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Would it? How do you know?
|
| You are just projecting what you think on this hypothetical
| advanced species. They might find, instead, that they don't
| need or care for any of that and just wipe it out faster.
| abraae wrote:
| Yep, that's my interpretation of "advanced".
|
| Yours could be one that retreats into hermetic shelters
| and plays Call of Duty between themselves all day long.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Mine isn't either of those, or any other variation. The
| point is that since you are not them, you can't know what
| they would do.
|
| Your "interpretation" is just making them after your self
| image, thinking that that is what it means to be
| "advanced".
| nate_meurer wrote:
| A more charitable interpretation is that an advanced
| civilization would be more likely to ensure it's own
| longevity and durability by engaging in serious,
| disciplined conservation of resources. Pretty simple
| observation, really.
| timeslip1523 wrote:
| Why conserve when there are so many resources to acquire?
| Better to efficiently spend the available resources as
| quickly as possible to expand to space and start on the
| exponential growth.
|
| Unless your scale of 'conserving resources' involves
| putting out the stars to save their hydrogen for later
| use, you're doing it wrong.
| princeb wrote:
| the classic scifi trope of an advanced extraterrestrial
| race is one that is able to not merely ensure its
| existence but also develop and advance itself rapidly
| through aggressive intergalactic colonization and
| resource extraction.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Their resources don't have to be the same ones you need.
| They might have technology to produce everything they
| need and disregard any other ecosystem, especially ours.
|
| You are again just projecting what you/we need on them,
| like the parent comment.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| America actually does it with our fantastic National
| Parks system.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| Are you saying humans aren't a part of the "natural world"?
| OrbitRock wrote:
| Yup, to me it's fascinating.
|
| We're another level of the fractal of life, replicating
| patterns seen in bacterial biofilms, slime molds, circulatory
| systems, nervous systems, leaves, all manner of multicellular
| architectures.
|
| It's certainly a bad thing that we are growing in a sort of
| zero-sum manner against many original ecosystems though.
|
| We need to learn to restrain our own growth (a tough one that
| we're in the process of trying to beat into all of our heads
| it seems), and also we need to learn how to maximize the
| potential for biodiversity to exist within the structure of
| human occupied areas as well. (A good book on this last
| subject is "Win-win Ecology").
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I think biodiversity within the structure of human occupied
| areas is very unrealistic and potentially
| counterproductive.
|
| I also think we shouldn't attempt to constrain growth but
| instead constrain _footprint_ upon the Earth.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| I disagree on the first note.
|
| The human footprint already covers nearly the entirety of
| the planet. Conservation of systems that are within or
| directly adjacent to that footprint is actually very
| important. Extraordinary amounts of biodiversity are
| contained in these areas and we need to study how to
| reconcile our land use with the needs of that
| biodiversity. We shouldn't ignore it out of a fear that
| people will get the wrong idea.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Almost all (80-90%?) of the human footprint is making
| food. To try to grow our food and ensure biodiversity on
| the SAME LAND is going to be less productive per acre and
| would mean even MORE of the Earth's surface is needed to
| feed humanity. That's a losing proposition as we're
| already near land usage limits in much of the world that
| uses less efficient production methods. The best way to
| ensure biodiversity is to INCREASE the intensity of
| farming, at the limit to just convert our staple food
| production to vat-based food production (think methane
| fermentation ala Calysta Feedkind, or maybe microalgae).
| Corn and wheat and meat gets highly processed anyway; you
| can hardly tell it WASNT made in a vat. Fresh fruit and
| veggies that retain their grown form are a relatively
| small part of our footprint.
|
| Grow food in vats, and the vast majority of the planet
| can just be like National Parks.
|
| But I do think we can think of smart ways to ensure
| biodiversity under, say, solar arrays. Solar arrays are
| (or can be made to be) biologically inert. If they are
| high enough, they can act as a sort of technological
| canopy over a biodiverse forest floor. And that would
| only be a small portion of the planet (the rest would be
| National Parks). We'd use solar electricity to produce
| food super efficiently from vats. About 2000-4000W
| nameplate solar per person (at least in the 30N to 30S
| latitude that most people live in) should be enough to
| provide the macronutrients for the average person. At
| high efficiency, that's about 10 square meters per person
| at noon. That's just 100,000 square kilometers to feed 10
| billion people, compared to over 50,000,000 square
| kilometers used for agriculture today (which is half of
| the habitable land surface of ~100 million km^2). It can
| be over the ocean, too. That's just 0.02% of the Earth's
| surface.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| I agree that we should ideally minimize our agricultural
| footprint and turn everything else into a nature reserve.
| But we've got to work from the realities of where we are
| today.
|
| Consider this image:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-
| use/img/2018...
|
| Notice that for the USA for example, not very much of the
| land is state or federal parks. The vast majority is used
| by humans in some way, and the reality is that they're
| not about to turn it all into parks.
|
| So, while pushing for the protection of as much land as
| possible, we should also study conservation on land
| that's not already a protected area.
|
| The book I mentioned has a number of examples where good
| conservation work has actually been done on such lands.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That "cow pasture/range" chunk is largely extremely low
| productivity scrub land owned by the federal government
| and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could
| convert all of it to national parks without much more
| than a blip in food calories produced in the US.
|
| As far as actually farmed land, productivity has
| increased by an order of magnitude, MUCH faster than
| population, so we actually farm less land than in the 40s
| in spite of having a much larger population that eats
| more. We burn that corn in our cars, for goodness sake.
| The land area use for ethanol corn in our country is more
| than enough area to convert the entire nation's electric
| production to solar.
|
| Corn yields: https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/newsletter
| s/pestandcrop/wp...
| telchar wrote:
| Some of that cow pasture/range land used to be better
| land, and has been degraded by bad farming techniques
| and/or overgrazing. The area around Pipe Springs, Utah
| for example, was significantly more lush 150 years ago,
| and now it's scrub land. It would be a mistake to think
| of land as static and only fit for a limited set of
| purposes, and to therefore exploit it without concern for
| what it is or could turn into (for better or worse).
|
| We're also causing top soil to erode and blow away in
| much of the corn belt [0]. That productivity has a cost
| and shouldn't be assumed.
|
| [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-
| nature/scientists-say...
|
| edit: I don't think we disagree, much. I'll leave the
| above for reference.
| OrbitRock wrote:
| > That "cow pasture/range" chunk is largely extremely low
| productivity scrub land owned by the federal government
| and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could
| convert all of it to national parks without much more
| than a blip in food calories produced in the US.
|
| Agreed!
|
| I would emphasize restoration and protection in almost
| every case.
|
| Just that there's also ways we can work towards
| conservation on land that is being utilized too.
|
| You talked about farms but there's also: managed forests,
| anywhere anything is grazing, private lands, fisheries,
| artificial reefs and kelp forests, any area we already
| use which we can also stack on an incidental conservation
| benefit ontop of (as you mentioned renewable energy
| infrastructure will be a big one, the book I mention is
| full of other surprising examples such as military
| bases), things like wildlife underpasses, suburban lawns,
| and so on. This adds up to a lot of land.
|
| I hope we protect half of the land and ocean like Edward
| O. Wilson and other major biologists recommend, but also
| I think it's smart to look at everything and not just
| protected areas.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yeah, military bases is definitely one area... I'm
| thinking of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center,
| which are both launchports AND nature reserves... and
| another one is nuclear power plants.
|
| I hate mowing the lawn. I actually prefer the typical
| "weeds" like clover and dandelion over the typical grass.
| Dumb that we basically mandate weird, chemical and labor-
| intensive grass monoculture.
|
| I actually think about 90% of the land ought to become
| basically national parks and/or protected wilderness.
| Maybe even more. We can live in dense cities in absolute
| luxury and abundance (with 10,000 square foot condos...
| why not? multiple stories make it possible) and then
| those of us who like to can go camping on the weekends.
| Traveling by electric motorgliders to our weekend
| campsite. Cars only underground (but everyone has one
| still).
| pantalaimon wrote:
| That would be great. My fear is that we are more like yeast
| in a bottle of juice.
| navaati wrote:
| I hope at least someone will drink the resulting booze...
| bestorworse wrote:
| Isn't this growth pattern a straightforward consequence of
| disorderly growth?
|
| When microorganisms divide, the children "appear" in the same
| location. Our species growth dynamics kind of has this same
| property in that it's easier to build something closer to the
| already established region than far away.
|
| So, in the end, looking from far away, the growth pattern is
| the same.
| bndw wrote:
| Joe Rogan talks about the idea in an old clip:
| I think human beings are just a very complicated form of
| bacteria.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyc12-neTjM
| misterkrabs wrote:
| Honestly can't stand the guy but I think of this soundbite
| constantly - he MUST have gotten it from someone else, right?
| lol
| devmunchies wrote:
| a lot of people get these types of thoughts when high. I
| originally thought of humans like mold growing on a loaf of
| bread in my early 20s.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Paraphrased from The Matrix maybe?
|
| > I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time
| here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species.
| I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal
| on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium
| with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not.
| You move to another area, and you multiply, and you
| multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The
| only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
| There is another organism on this planet that follows the
| same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings
| are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague,
| and we are the cure.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The earliest I remember in popular culture is from the
| first Matrix movie. And I'm sure they got it from somewhere
| else.
|
| Anyone studying mathematical biology has also probably come
| to the same conclusion.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| I've heard the idea expressed by many people in many
| different ways. Most versions compare our civilizations
| progress to a cancer or virus instead of just any old
| bacteria, because of the way we treat our environment. My
| favorite example is this[1] post about Factorio, which is a
| game in which you constantly add to a factory and expand to
| use more resources.
|
| [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/b6gsxp/spread
| ing_...
| ProAm wrote:
| Yes this has been around for a long time. Sometimes instead
| of bacteria it's viewed as a cancer because cancer is
| metabolic and will continue to grow until is destroys it's
| host.
| devmunchies wrote:
| >will continue to grow until is destroys it's host.
|
| i saw global warming and covid19 as part of the earth's
| immune system to curb human impact. however, with our
| technology we are too resilient.
| slver wrote:
| We do precisely what bacteria does, albeit at a much more
| complicated level. And I'd argue bacteria does what basic
| particles do, albeit at a much more complicated level. There
| are vast number of parallels in the behavior of systems from
| the microscopic to the macroscopic.
| mmaunder wrote:
| And,technically speaking, cities are an infestation of humans.
| seppin wrote:
| Pretty dirty ones, at that.
| rland wrote:
| Said best by Agent Smith in this classic scene:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgS1Lwr8gq8
| btbuildem wrote:
| The self-similarity (or, fractal nature if you like) of living
| things at various levels of scale.. it's really beautiful and
| fascinating.
| roody15 wrote:
| well said
| vbtemp wrote:
| What's so fascinating to me about our civilizations that look
| like fungal colonies on Petri dishes from a cosmic perspective,
| is that if you zoom in enough you see all sorts of individuals
| doing and creating all sorts of fascinating things. No one
| would ever suspect it if they didn't focus in to look. Billions
| of autonomous individuals, self-aware creating art, innovating
| technologies, and in general being a fascinating conduit
| through which the universe becomes aware of itself.
| drc500free wrote:
| Totally agree. The magic of life, and human life in
| particular, is the local defiance of the second law of
| thermodynamics.
|
| When you zoom out, the law is the law.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| "X reminds me of Y" often says more about the speaker than
| about X or Y.
| pmastela wrote:
| Here's a specific example of your slime mold hypothesis [1] in
| which a slime mold grew a network just like Tokyo's rail
| system.
|
| Slime mold doesn't have the same ring as "rail network planning
| AI", but it seems that's what it is.
|
| 1: https://outline.com/t8hxKh (original:
| https://www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-
| just-...)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| We conquer topography, yes, but it's economical to follow it.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I think of humans as a form of fire uniquely cursed with the
| ability to see the beauty in what it's burning, and to feel bad
| about it.
| drc500free wrote:
| I think the important distinction between life and non-life
| is that life creates local reductions in entropy.
|
| At a macro scale, both fire and life create net entropy. The
| difference is when you zoom in and see either created order
| or uniform destruction.
| Infernal wrote:
| I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate this idea -
| there is beauty in the layers of analogy.
| sen wrote:
| I truly think it's a minority who feel bad about it, or care
| about it at all.
| tus88 wrote:
| We did a lot more than merely spread though.
| pojzon wrote:
| We have one extremely important trait that makes us a lil bit
| different than regular bacteria.
|
| We are mostly lead by greed and not a need of growth. This is
| ofcourse not the case for all individuals but good enough
| portion.
| overboard2 wrote:
| Greed seems like a slightly more individualistic version of a
| need for growth. The only reason that we don't call the
| behavior of bacteria greedy is that they're not sentient.
| stared wrote:
| "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural
| equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do
| not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until
| every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can
| survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism
| on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what
| it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this
| planet. You're a plague and we are the cure." - Agent Smith,
| The Matrix
| bestorworse wrote:
| "And you exist only because of us" - Neo
|
| I think this pattern of exponential growth of human beings is
| a curse of their intelligence. All other animals end up being
| controlled by these large ecosystem dynamics because they
| can't adapt and/or do group work sufficiently. Species with
| this property are easily influenced/controlled by large scale
| dynamics.
|
| Maybe, a species with more intelligence than us wouldn't grow
| so fast and unorderly because they can see the future
| consequences of their own dynamics more easily. We just
| happen to not deal with large temporal scales very well.
| Zezima wrote:
| This was the first thing that came to my mind!!
| D-Coder wrote:
| Agent Smith is wrong. Every organism does this -- that's how
| life works. Population crashes are common among many species,
| rabbits to rats. Trees produce a million seeds. Grasses
| expand into areas that juuuust barely support them. The
| "natural equilibrium" is not at all steady.
|
| And let's remember that Agent Smith is itself attempting to
| take over the world.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| I don't think other organisms have the capacity to destroy
| the planet and make it uninhabitable. That attribute is
| uniquely human.
| joycian wrote:
| There's some evidence that around 2B years ago microbes
| decreased the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere so much
| by overpopulation that 99% of the biosphere died.
| memorysafety wrote:
| I guess you mean The Great Oxygen Extinction Event
| (2.4-2.0 Ga).
|
| In that case, it's presumed it was indeed a massive
| extinction (but no data to quantify any % over, due to no
| microbial fossils preserved).
|
| ... But for a different reason. It wasn't due to
| _decrease_ in oxygen levels; contrary to that. At that
| time, oxygen was being _first ever introduced_ into the
| atmosphere. This has left a unique geological trace we
| observe everywhere across the planet: the white
| sedimentary + red rust striped 2 Ga rocks.
|
| The "microbes" were the first photosynthesisers. The
| oxygen was a toxic byproduct. Resistance to it had to be
| learned by evolution, and that learning took ~1e8 years.
| Many of life didn't manage to and went extinct.
| joycian wrote:
| Yes, I think you're right, I should've written increased.
| Thanks for the correction :).
| tediousdemise wrote:
| This is why I think reproduction is unethical. We have the
| capacity to understand the implications of birthing new
| sentient lifeforms, knowing the harm it will cause to the
| planet and the other species we share it with.
|
| Yet people breed anyway, for a multitude of selfish reasons.
| _Everyone else is having babies so why shouldn 't I_, _it 's
| my right as a human to reproduce_, _I want to pass on my
| genes_ , _I want my life to be fulfilling_ , _I don 't want
| to die alone_, the list goes on. It is these lines of
| thinking that have caused our population to balloon to over 7
| billion people with no end in sight.
|
| No one is thinking of the planet.
| batch12 wrote:
| I teach my kids that reproduction is a good thing. I hope
| they pass it on.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Well I'm a celibate monk like my father, and grandfather
| before me.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Somewhere, some overlord in a galaxy far, far away is looking
| at us through a faster-than-light telescope and going
| "Yeppers. They are about to hit critical mass. Either a
| population crash is imminent or they start colonizing their
| solar system. Schedule a diplomatic mission for their corner
| of their galaxy to invite them to the intergalactic council
| should they survive this completely normal, though
| adolescently awkward, stage of development."
| nate_meurer wrote:
| The eternal optimist in me hopes their spies on Earth tell
| them that humans are entering a third industrial revolution
| which has a chance of making future growth sustainable, or
| at least much more so.
| [deleted]
| newsbinator wrote:
| Somewhere outside the ancestor simulation we're in our
| descendants are about to learn what life and decisions were
| like during the near-extinction event that nearly prevented
| their creation.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| That's some oddly specific characteristic to use to counter the
| value of being special, having conquered environments,
| technology and more.
|
| Why would the traditional mathematics of growth make all that
| _less_?
| kortilla wrote:
| Sure, we're the same if you ignore a bunch of important
| differences. Growing our own food, not reproducing rapidly
| during food excess, etc.
| globular-toast wrote:
| We don't grow our food. The chloroplast inside plants that we
| live around grow it. Fungi can do the same thing. See lichen,
| for example.
| scubbo wrote:
| Did you honestly believe that the person you are replying
| to was under the mistaken impression that humans
| photosynthesize, or were you instead choosing to willfully
| misinterpret their shorthand phrase standing in for
| "engaging in agriculture"?
| globular-toast wrote:
| Do you honestly believe I did?
| creddit wrote:
| Obviously the entire point of this thread is to disparage
| humanity and not come to meaningful conclusions. For your
| own sanity, just leave the anti-humanists to their own
| devices.
| bngybmgrglflps wrote:
| There are people who would blot out the sun, and take
| satisfaction in it.
|
| They don't bother me nearly as much as the taboo against
| speaking frankly about them.
| 127 wrote:
| Would be really nice if this "bacterial and fungal growth" also
| spread to Mars and Venus.
| divbzero wrote:
| I suppose we would still be in the exponential phase [1] and
| haven't yet reached the stationary phase or death phase.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_growth
| momirlan wrote:
| Agent Smith : "humans are just another virus"
| matthewcanty wrote:
| It'z funny that I often compare the way things are to
| spots|zits. Something I do quietly to myself, in my own mind
| :-)
|
| Too much/little X causes outbursts of Y.
|
| The question is, has Earth got a few spots lurking behind the
| earlobes. Or is there a feature-length episode of Dr Pimple
| Popper taking place?
| playingchanges wrote:
| I think what you are noticing is the 'fractal' nature of growth
| patterns which exists all throughout nature. It's a fascinating
| topic that I know almost nothing about. The Wikipedia mentions
| slime mold though :)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
| hota_mazi wrote:
| Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2adrUaiyI
| anonred wrote:
| Sounds similar to the micro story "Mold of the Earth" (1884)
| posted to HN a few weeks ago:
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mold_of_the_Earth
| jdkee wrote:
| I think the growth of humanity contains much more complexity
| than that of a slime mold to be honest. Uncountably so.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Right, obviously as scale goes up, much more complexity is
| needed to maintain the same level of behavior. A bit like how
| unicellular organisms can replicate simply, but humans need
| to go through a whole process to make an offspring.
|
| This Game of Life video shows what I mean perfectly:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8
|
| Yes, there's a ton of complexity in there, but when you zoom
| out enough, it looks and acts very similar to the lower
| level.
| amelius wrote:
| Very nice, but of course this was designed/engineered to
| act like this. It's basically a computer implemented in the
| game of life, which runs the game of life.
| fooker wrote:
| Wow this is awesome! Thanks.
| samstave wrote:
| Any sufficiently robust advanced species is indistinguishable
| from fungi.
| frereubu wrote:
| I've always been fond of Bill Hicks' description of humanity as
| "a virus with shoes."
| yesenadam wrote:
| I raise you HL Mencken's "since the first 'advanced' gorilla
| put on underwear, cultivated a frown and began his first
| lecture tour"! Here's the paragraph, from a much longer
| piece:
|
| Man's natural instinct, in fact, is never toward what is
| sound and true; it is toward what is specious and false. Let
| any great nation of modern times be confronted by two
| conflicting propositions, the one grounded upon the utmost
| probability and reasonableness and the other upon the most
| glaring error, and it will almost invariably embrace the
| latter. It is so in politics, which consists wholly of a
| succession of unintelligent crazes, many of them so idiotic
| that they exist only as battle-cries and shibboleths and are
| not reducible to logical statement at all. It is so in
| religion, which, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to
| deny the most obvious realities. It is so in nearly every
| field of thought. The ideas that conquer the race most
| rapidly and arouse the wildest enthusiasm and are held most
| tenaciously are precisely the ideas that are most insane.
| This has been true since the first "advanced" gorilla put on
| underwear, cultivated a frown and began his first lecture
| tour in the first chautauqua, and it will be so until the
| high gods, tired of the farce at last, obliterate the race
| with one great, final blast of fire, mustard gas and
| streptococci. ( _Meditation on Meditation_ , 1922)
|
| It's hard to believe the USA's top newspaper editor once
| wrote like that! Writing worth paying for. Here's some more:
|
| [The Declaration of Independence is] "a mere string of
| sonorous phrases, a piece of windy flapdoodle, a rhapsody
| almost empty of intelligible meaning, and probably composed
| under the influence of ethyl alcohol. And yet, as I say, it
| is more powerful than a million swords. It looms larger than
| the massive fact of Gettysburg. It is worth more than the
| whole Civil War. The man who loosed it upon posterity has
| left it a vaster heritage than the man who invented
| baseball." ( _Smart Set_ , 1914)
|
| He said of US politics:
|
| "It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that
| there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought
| that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and
| cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. ...
| In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this
| dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man
| of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually
| shouldered out of public life. He may slide into office once
| or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up,
| examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field
| to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes." ( _Baltimore
| Evening Sun_ , 1920)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wait until you discover Ambrose Bierce
| yesenadam wrote:
| The _Devil 's Dictionary_[0] has long been one of my
| favourites--did he write anything else as good?
|
| [0] e.g. "OCCIDENT: The part of the world lying west (or
| east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by
| Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose
| principal industries are murder and cheating, which they
| are pleased to call war and commerce. These, also, are
| the principal industries of the Orient."
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/972/972-h/972-h.htm
| baby wrote:
| I often think about that, and recently I thought about
| something else: zoom out enough and humans appear as a single
| individual /intelligence, the same way it you zoom out of our
| own cells the aggregate of it all seems to be acting as one
| intelligent individual (a human).
|
| Now can we extrapolate? If we zoom out more do we see the same
| happening? Does the interaction between all the galaxies create
| a thought? A slow one perhaps.
| xwolfi wrote:
| But we know about it and we can't exchange on how unspecial we
| are, you maybe in the US and me here in China.
|
| Potentially, one of us could even decide to stop being a
| parasite and scale down, move to the forest and live naked as a
| result.
|
| My personal theory is that we're nature way of extending beyond
| earth. Yes we're a funghi, but a clever enough one we can be
| the earth's tentacle to go spread beyond.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yes I like that! A little tentative fungi cell trying to get
| to Mars and from there, the galaxy.
| llcoolv wrote:
| If you see humans as vermin, why don't you stop being a
| hypocrite, follow your words and commit suicide?
|
| Virtue signalling and hypocrisy. It always amuses me how many
| people fall for it.
|
| Here is some little inspiration:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMCFoudyYxQ&ab_channel=ITSTa...
| dang wrote:
| Yikes. You can't be vicious like this here, and unfortunately
| you've been breaking the site guidelines elsewhere also. I've
| banned the account.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| life is fractal
| wonminute wrote:
| Why yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
| 7952 wrote:
| I guess what makes humans different is that culture can let us
| go beyond our phenotype. And whilst it may look simplistically
| deterministic it really isnt. For example in the UK a lot of
| development clusters around old WWII airfields. The pattern of
| development is a result of aircraft needing flat places for
| runways. Runways that were needed because of a complex
| geopolitical conflict. And then selected for development due to
| politics. Slime molds don't do that.
|
| To suggest we are somehow not different is another kind of
| arrogance. We absolutely are and that gives us a unique level
| of agency and control. That is brilliant and scary. We are able
| to turn down the thermostat of an entire planet (reduce co2).
| That kind of culturally motivated intervention is completely
| unprecedented and totally different to historic humans and
| other species.
| abraxas wrote:
| And just like mold this expansion will continue until we hit
| resource limits and then it's colony collapse.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Makes me think about this recent thread:
|
| "If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably
| Conscious" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9905847
|
| The bacteria within us certainly don't know anything about our
| consciousness. Yet somehow the sum total of their activity
| results in a conscious being. If we as humans look and act like
| bacteria when we zoom out, do we suffer the same myopia of our
| bacteria friends, unable to recognize the consciousness our
| collective activity creates? It's fun to think about.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > Yet somehow the sum total of their activity results in a
| conscious being
|
| That seems like a slightly peculiar idea of what a conscious
| being is.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Humans are essentially a collective of symbiotic organisms
| which have been working together for so very long that some
| are no longer distinguishable as separate. We know that we
| have DNA that came from external sources. We know that we
| carry around a host of bacteria that are vital to our life
| and health. Somehow all of this (Scientifically
| speaking)results in an entity with a sense of "I". If you
| aren't thinking about it religiously, how else would one
| think about it?
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Even mitochondria were external beings originally.
|
| In a real sense we are a joint venture.
| matthewcanty wrote:
| I think you could be right. At least, we know but choose or
| are too lazy to do anything about it.
|
| Recently I've found myself too stressed to even think about
| it. Too many stresses in life and I can do without the planet
| for now.
|
| Totally selfish I know, but I'll get back to it when other
| things have died down.
|
| I think what we need is something which helps us recognise
| the issues. Not only that but show us what we can do to help!
| We have to understand at a micro-level, how we can make an
| impact in aggregate.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Do they have a version of earth VR for oculus Quest 2 yet?
| samstave wrote:
| What does that mean? OoTL
| tillalive wrote:
| Really? 15 years? Google earth was released in 2005?
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