[HN Gopher] I Choose Optimism
___________________________________________________________________
I Choose Optimism
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-08-17 17:28 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (secularhumanism.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (secularhumanism.org)
| clouddrover wrote:
| Optimism is for children.
|
| The attitude you want to cultivate is meliorism. Start with
| realism and then progress to meliorism.
|
| Read Thomas Hardy's poetry. He'll help you understand.
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| I'm a bit ambivalent about optimism on the historical scale.
| History does have examples of things getting worse, it's hard to
| pinpoint the cases where it got worse for the majority of earth's
| population at once, since different regions sometimes prosper at
| the time others decline, but there are things like the Bronze Age
| collapse which are widespread enough to be likely candidates.
|
| That particular scenario of civilization collapse I think is
| unlikely, however it does create the question of whether history
| always gets better over the long term.
|
| And the long term scales of history are long, long enough to make
| it impossible to tell a definite trend from a possible one if you
| are looking for meaning behind history.
|
| But I am a religious man and I have hope things will stay on the
| uptrend in some way. I think a CB lot of faith in history is
| ultimately a matter of faith, one with arguments behind it but I
| don't think those arguments are bulletproof
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >It was optimism that made science take off.
|
| No, the title should be "optimism chose me". Articles like this
| are the _product_ of scientific progress. People don 't have
| ideas, ideas have people. Science took itself off once it got
| started. (in tandem with capital).
|
| It's funny that 'rational optimism', Enlightenment obsessed
| people stress science and secularism so much. They may not notice
| it but the framework they're in is fundamentally religious and
| idealistic, assuming they can move the world in directions they
| want by thinking the right thoughts.
|
| _" Appreciation and its close cousin, gratitude, are something
| we need a lot more of these days. But our gratitude is not for
| heaven-sent good fortune. It's for the innumerable positive
| changes and advancements forged by science,"_
|
| The author is even somewhat self aware of the fact that this
| sounds suspiciously like worship, but somehow not completely.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _American homes in 1950 averaged 983 square feet; by 2014, the
| size had nearly tripled to 2,657 square feet. Today, 91 percent
| of our homes are air-conditioned._
|
| This is not actually a good thing. This is actually a problem.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| Exactly. The author is living in a middle/upper class suburbian
| bubble. Bigger and bigger houses that consume more and more
| resources is a problem, not a sign of progress. It is a glaring
| sign of the consumerism and resource depletion that is fueling
| the crisis we're in.
|
| There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average
| homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a
| sustainable way of living.
| piokoch wrote:
| "There is no amount of renewable energy" - very true, but
| that only means that renewables are the wrong solution, if
| they are not able to provide progress and sustainability. If
| only we had a magic technology that from a small amount of
| matter can produce a lot of energy! But wait, we have that,
| for good 60 years, it is called nuclear energy power plant
| and works great, but, for some reason some people don't like
| it.
| tjmc wrote:
| My house is about that size with air conditioning and we
| consume less than half the solar energy we produce with a
| 6.6kW system on the roof - a pretty typical size for
| Australia. I'm lucky to live in one of the sunnier places in
| the world, but I don't agree that it's not possible.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| > There is no amount of renewable energy that will make
| "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air
| conditioning" a sustainable way of living.
|
| Why not? Do you think it's impossible for energy to become
| 'to cheap to meter'?
| andrepd wrote:
| We're not remotely close to being there yet, and there
| isn't even a clear path. So we should not act like a
| miraculous technological invention is gonna fall from the
| sky and save us.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Sure, I agree that we're nowhere close.
|
| The parent comment said that no amount of renewable
| energy would make larger houses sustainable. That makes
| me think he believes that the real issue is about land
| use, building materials for larger houses, or some other
| point aside from energy.
|
| I should've been more direct rather than focusing on the
| energy point, but I suppose I was hoping the commenter
| would reply about why energy isn't the problem.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| They are also missing the fact that new, large homes are
| much more efficient. My 3600 sq/ft new construction
| consumes less energy to heat and cool than the 900 sq/ft
| 1960s ranch I used to live in, due to more advanced
| construction techniques, HVAC technology improvements, and
| better materials science.
|
| The same applies to cars. Take something like a Rivian and
| it's easily more efficient than a Prius or a subcompact
| car, while being larger, faster, more performant, and more
| comfortable. Bigger and more comfortable does not
| necessarily mean worse for the planet.
| narcraft wrote:
| If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite
| renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative
| side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air
| conditioning? I sometimes get the impression that
| sustainability advocates/environmentalists are more anti-
| technolgy or anti-human than they are pro-nature and saying
| things like "there is no amount of renewable energy that will
| make [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of
| living" doesn't make environmental reforms seem very
| palatable to me. What number of humans can the Earth ideally
| sustain in your estimation? If it's substantially less than
| the current population, then the cure is worse than the
| disease.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| > If there hypothetically was a magical source of near
| infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without
| negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft
| homes and air conditioning?
|
| Yes. In a world with zero negative externalities for
| massive resource consumption, then by all means, give
| everyone a mansion and a yacht.
|
| > What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in
| your estimation? If it's substantially less than the
| current population, then the cure is worse than the
| disease.
|
| In our current industrialized, consumerist, global economy?
| Far less than 8 billion. You're painting me as a rabid
| anti-human eco-fascist though, so let me assure you I'm
| none of those things. I want humanity to succeed and I want
| all people to be happy and successful. But the current rate
| of resource extraction and ecological disturbance that
| we're directly responsible for will drive our species into
| a brick wall very soon. Along with millions of other
| species. We will come to a point where we simply cannot
| extract the energy we need to feed everyone, and where the
| biosphere has been so damaged that the necessary
| agriculture yields just won't be there. And also the other
| things, like the tropics becoming uninhabitable, ocean
| acidification killing marine life that the food chain
| depends on, etc.
|
| I'm not anti-human, I'm very much a humanist, and pro-
| nature. Humans are part of nature. Unfortunately, we seem
| incapable of limiting our consumption to sustainable levels
| when given the opportunity to overshoot. Or at least our
| current civilization does (past ones have done better, but
| they also didn't have to try to resist the temptation of
| internal combustion engines like we do now). I've lost hope
| for any political solutions given how lackluster all
| efforts have been thus far, so we don't really need to sit
| here and debate solutions, because no one's at the wheel
| and the brick wall is getting very close. Enjoy the surplus
| of energy while we can still extract it.
|
| TL;DR the famous book "Limits to Growth" was very prescient
| and it mostly hit the mark.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Before climate change was a thing, Malthus was making the
| same claims about society hitting a brick wall in the
| late 18th century. You then had scientists in the 19th
| century predicting the downfall of society because we
| would run out of places to store horse manure as more
| people could afford a horse. In the 20th century
| intellectuals predicted that the world would run out of
| food. When that didn't work, scientists predicted the
| world would end in nuclear war, with rediculous props
| like the clock counting down to midnight. That didn't
| happen, and there had to be a new boogeyman.
|
| Even if we could push a button and solve climate change,
| I'm sure there would always be a reason why we need to
| stop having babies, turn back time, and live a
| subsistence lifestyle (Which is also incredibly racist,
| since it's usually directed at people in developing
| economies, as their standard of living increases). And
| this is why I don't believe most of the arguments against
| big houses, cars, air conditioning, are honest or being
| made in good faith.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| I'm acutely aware that middle to upper class, mostly
| white, Americans are the worst offenders of
| overconsumption and that people who make overpopulation
| claims about the third world are being racist. Britain,
| and then America, led the charge of industrial
| imperialism that doomed us to this current timeline. And
| we colonized and brutalized people of color the world
| over to get there. I understand that, and I understand
| the hypocrisy of living a middle class American lifestyle
| while I type this. Though at least I live in a small-ish
| duplex without AC :)
|
| I'm also aware that people have been predicting the
| apocalypse for as long as there have been people. But
| this is not as simple as manure storage, and it's a bit
| disingenuous to draw that comparison. You simply cannot
| have 8 billion people living in huge houses with air
| conditioning. It will not work. If our definition of
| racial equality and harmony is to let everyone fuck up
| the environment equally, rather than restricting
| everyone's (including rich white people) ability to
| overconsume, then we are all equally toast.
|
| > And this is why I don't believe most of the arguments
| against big houses, cars, air conditioning, are honest or
| being made in good faith.
|
| Reminder: all the information and points I'm citing come
| from the world's leading climate and environmental
| scientists. If you think the IPCC is just being racist
| when they lay out the data about how bad climate change
| will be and say we need to reduce our emissions (i.e.
| consumption), then I don't know what to tell you.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > TL;DR the famous book "Limits to Growth" was very
| prescient and it mostly hit the mark.
|
| Didn't he get pretty much everything wrong? Like
| embarrassing wrong even messing up, or intentionally
| misunderstanding, basic economic theories?
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| You're probably referring to another book as this one's
| main author is a she.
|
| The book makes a point of how you can't predict the
| future. Instead it enumerates a bunch of shapes the
| future could take given various sets of assumptions. Some
| of the shapes look decent but require a lot of things to
| go right in the meantime.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Air conditioning wasn't really a need in most places
| historically. Vernacular architecture relied heavily on
| passive solar design as the default. This uses less energy
| and also provides superior human comfort.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It's true, but our life expectancy when air conditioning
| wasn't used was also a lot lower, and life was very
| difficult outside a small band of areas with good
| climates (usually cold climates because until the
| invention of air conditioning, it was much easier for
| humans to heat spaces than cool and dehumidify them.) And
| many people in very humid parts of the world had their
| lives immensely improved thanks to the aircon. Lee Kuan
| Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, credits [1] the
| aircon as a core reason for development to even exist in
| the tropics.
|
| American homes are built cheaply (and needlessly sprawly
| but that's another story) without any heed to ventilation
| because the US government has put every policy in place
| possible to make sure energy prices remain low which has
| removed any market incentive to decrease energy usage,
| partially because fossil fuel companies spend lots of
| money lobbying the government. But strategic use of AC in
| a properly ventilated home is absolutely life-changing.
|
| [1]: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-
| kuan-yew...
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Coming from Europe, where air conditioning is not really
| a thing (outside of places of business), yes, you are
| probably right. It is not a need. But neither is clothing
| in most parts of the world, or houses larger than a bed,
| or food that's not oatmeal and the random scavenged
| fruit. Creature comforts matter.
|
| I've been to Morocco lately, with dry 45-48 degrees
| celsius outside. I've experienced that "vernacular
| architecture". Every single one of those buildings I have
| been in (including stalls in the soukh, which is
| ridiculous because they are essentially missing a wall
| towards the street) had some form of air conditioning
| retrofitted.
|
| Of course, the tendency of Americans to set their air
| conditioning to below 20 degrees is ridiculous.
| eCa wrote:
| > "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make
| [enjoyable living standards] a sustainable way of living"
| doesn't make environmental reforms seem very palatable to
| me.
|
| Imagine that those environmentalists are correct. Doesn't
| advocating for change, palatable or not, make them at their
| core more pro-human than most? They are, after all, trying
| to make the human species survive.
|
| > If it's substantially less than the current population,
| then the cure is worse than the disease.
|
| If that is the case, then there ain't no cure that any
| elected politican can pursue.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > They are, after all, trying to make the human species
| survive.
|
| A perceived "good cause" does not make an argument - or
| an action - necessarily good. Remember that medieval
| witch hunts were doing the "humanitarian" thing when they
| set people aflame because they were trying to save the
| suspected witches' souls from eternal damnation.
|
| > If that is the case, then there ain't no cure that any
| elected politican can pursue.
|
| ... so have unelected politicians do the dirty work? Just
| like with every radicalism, radical environmentalism will
| eventually lead to a less-than-democratic system.
|
| I sympathise with the environmental movement, even if I
| think that there's a lot of doom porn happening there and
| some people's energies would be better invested looking
| for workable solutions instead of protesting. But we need
| to watch them. radicalised, they are likely to become
| dangerous.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| Build nuclear reactors.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I mean they objectively provide a better quality of life to
| people... Not to pick a side, but there's pros and cons to it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| To the privileged that can afford it. Meanwhile, global
| warming is fueling a real need for AC that didn't
| historically exist in most places and chronic homelessness
| has become a thing that didn't really exist in the past.
|
| We have set the minimum so high that some people simply
| cannot attain it. Such individuals end up being a net drain
| on society in many cases due to their lack of housing.
|
| Some hospitals have found that simply providing housing to
| some of their most expensive charity cases saves them money.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I think the root cause of homelessness is many things, but
| it's not the bare minimum cost of living. Not saying CoL
| isn't high right now, but it's not what's causing the vast
| majority of homelessness. Poverty? Sure. Homelessness? No.
| wizofaus wrote:
| If you mean we'd all benefit from houses built so that they
| were comfortable and spacious without requiring constant
| artificial heating & cooling, and such that we didn't live so
| far apart from each other that we relied entirely on unwieldy
| polluting (and dangerous) automobiles to get anywhere we needed
| to be, then sure. But the replies to your message suggest
| plenty of people interpret your message as a requirement to
| sacrifice living standards.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| If you just mean from a resource / climate change point of view
| then that's fine but it's a totally different point than
| personal happiness, optimism etc...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I've had a class on _Homelessness and Public Policy_ and
| studied housing issues. It 's a problem because a lack of
| small residential spaces in walkable neighborhoods is de
| facto tearing apart our social safety net.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| I've always been an optimistic person and consider myself to be
| very happy. People around me who are more pessimistic often seem
| unhappy.
|
| I see no value in beating myself down on things that I cannot
| control. The world around me is beautiful. I just have to make
| the best of it day by day.
|
| Facing hardships is a natural part of life.
| bergenty wrote:
| I'm optimistic too, not always though. Atleast I know the
| source on my unhappiness. I just dislike working in a team.
| I've taken a few years off between jobs and those have been the
| happiest years of my life. I have plenty of hobbies and don't
| really get bored anymore. Too bad that's the one thing in our
| society you can't not do.
| larsnystrom wrote:
| I believe many of us who worry about the sustainability of our
| current society is not really worried about facing hardship,
| but rather about causing hardship (for future generations). At
| least that's true for me. I want to leave this world in the
| best possible condition for my kids, and cause them as little
| hardship as possible.
|
| However, I'm also trying to not beat myself down over things I
| cannot control.
| nicoco wrote:
| I'm surprised not to find any mention of Chomsky here and his
| "new pascal wager".
|
| > Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because
| unless you believe that the future can be better, you are
| unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Pandemic, War and Famine Probably until 2019 in some places on
| earth, the author was absolute right. Let's wait until the
| Fall/Winter to see.
| pessimizer wrote:
| People who choose what they believe have an entirely different
| understanding of the concept of belief than I do. Belief is
| something that is inflicted upon me by my environment, not
| something I choose based on the lifestyle I want or the people I
| want to associate with. Consumer belief?
|
| If I could choose my beliefs, I would choose to believe in an
| almost completely different set of things. All of my beliefs
| would be self-serving, I'd be really happy about how everything
| was going every day.
|
| The reason I can't do this is because it would be really damaging
| to the people around me, and to society. I can't choose to ignore
| that.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "There is always too much information; the problem is knowing
| what to believe." - Quote from a spy novel I read a long time
| ago; I may have butchered the quote a bit.
|
| Anyway, the point is, there is data out there that leads to
| pessimism. Absolutely. There's plenty of it. There is grounds
| for pessimism.
|
| But there is also data that leads to optimism. There's plenty
| of it, too. So you choose your belief by choosing which set of
| data to pay more attention to. (Except it's not that simple.
| You're choosing which set of data you think is more credible,
| or more relevant, or more important, or reflects a more
| accurate picture of the situation. But there still is an
| element of choice - you choose which data set to pay more
| attention to, and that data set usually winds up being the one
| you consider more valid.)
| jason-phillips wrote:
| While I appreciate your perspective, the construct you
| described allows one to invalidate others' beliefs as being
| "wrong" because they don't adhere to the same reference point
| as yourself.
|
| > All of my beliefs would be self-serving
|
| This is not a true statement.
|
| Why cannot one choose what one feels to be the most appropriate
| construct after careful inspection and introspection?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _the construct you described allows one to invalidate others
| ' beliefs as being "wrong" because they don't adhere to the
| same reference point as yourself_
|
| Belief based in empirical evidence is at least bound to that
| evidence.
|
| Belief unmoored from empiricism --- blind faith or revelation
| --- suffers no such limits. Your criticism would apply all
| the more so to same, with the further failing that others'
| beliefs are "wrong" because they ... are simply revealed or
| adopted faiths. Which is frequently observed.
|
| If my evidence-based belief differs from your evidence-based
| belief, then _we can compare evidence_. Evidence does _not_
| have to be _directly_ experienced (though for various reasons
| of psychological evolution we tend often to more highly
| weight that which is); we can also rely on evidence presented
| by other trustworthy witnesses. There are numerous social
| institutions dedicated to precisely this (science, courts,
| journalism, politics, ...)
| bombcar wrote:
| Once you realize you know way _less_ about everything than
| you thought you did, and much of what is "known" is future
| conjectures with many parts, you realize you can select the
| optimistic view.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow. I agree with what GP wrote. Their
| second paragraph is written in the first person. It's not a
| claim that _everyone_ would do the self-serving thing. I
| would do the same as GP. I 'd choose a set of beliefs that
| help me sleep at night and that make me a hoot at dinner
| parties instead of a Debbie Downer. I can't simply choose to
| do that, because those beliefs come from my experience with
| and observations of the world along with my deeply-held
| values.
| [deleted]
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > I can't simply choose to do that, because...
|
| To delve a little deeper, this statement shows that it's
| still a _choice_, even though the choice is apparently a
| refutation of choice, which is interesting. Asserting that
| this construct simply _is_, where choice isn't there or
| doesn't exist, doesn't pass the smell test.
|
| The fact that one may choose to live a life only for
| oneself were one left to one's own devices is simply
| commentary about that individual. But again, one may choose
| not to do that.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > To delve a little deeper, this statement shows that
| it's still a _choice_, even though the choice is
| apparently a refutation of choice, which is interesting.
|
| Worldviews and beliefs are answers we come up with to the
| difficult questions that life asks. If you've done any
| work to come up with those answers, then your beliefs are
| built on top of a lot of observations, introspection, and
| analysis. For me to change my beliefs I would need to
| discover some kind of mistake I've made in my work or
| some important piece of information I was missing. How
| can you casually choose a different belief set unless
| your original beliefs were not built on anything
| substantial to start with?
| mrandish wrote:
| It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at
| objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational
| conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more
| people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty,
| infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't
| still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things
| aren't terrible for some people in some places at any given
| moment.
|
| Addressing those things for those people in those places should
| certainly be a top priority but we shouldn't let that blind us to
| the broader reality that by most standardized, objective measures
| things are mostly getting better for more people more of the
| time.
| worldshit wrote:
| it's only gotten better if you look at food access, but food
| access != happiness; depression is rampant because we are being
| forced to live against our nature. I assure you, I hate being
| alive in the current world, even if my stomach is full.
|
| Moreover even that is most likely only temporary, we are living
| inside a consumerist bubble that will soon burst (growing
| social unrest, ravaging pollution, probably a major war)
| leaving a horrible mess behind (we don't know how to endure
| physical discomfort anymore).
| wizofaus wrote:
| Not entirely true, e.g. deaths from natural disasters have
| been on a steady decline over many decades despite such
| disasters becoming more common and more destructive. In
| general our ability to continue improving human life
| expectancy has seemingly defied the odds - even in 2022
| despite covid and everything else, average life expectancy is
| expected to improve on 2021 in most countries (including the
| good ol' U S of A). It does feel a bit like quantity over
| quality though.
| jshen wrote:
| Decade+ time scales don't mean a whole lot. It's far too short
| a time.
| Comevius wrote:
| Things did get better globally, even if marginally for most,
| but at what price. If I take out a loan to live it up for a
| year, but then have no way of paying it back, because I haven't
| invested the money into anything substantial did things really
| got better for me? With the Industrial Revolution, and later
| the Green Revolution we began accumulating a debt. All the
| gains we made were borrowed against the future. This is not
| progress, this is ignorance.
| neilwilson wrote:
| "If I take out a loan to live it up for a year, but then have
| no way of paying it back, because I haven't invested the
| money into anything substantial did things really got better
| for me?"
|
| Yes. Because those you spent it with must have, or you
| wouldn't have been able to buy anything with it. Therefore
| you caused things to happen that wouldn't otherwise have
| happened.
|
| Debt is one of human's greatest inventions. It's what allows
| us to ensure that the underlying currency - human labour time
| - isn't wasted because there is no call to use it today.
|
| Instead we have a currency - "here's a pig, owe me one" that
| causes a surplus to arise. Some people won't be able to
| fulfil that promise in which case it will, in advanced
| societies, be cancelled. That's what bankruptcy is for. The
| assets you used to secure the loan are then transferred to
| others. However the use of labour time in others to create
| the capacity to generate a surplus remains somewhere down the
| induced transaction chain.
|
| _Debt is the magic by which money is created on demand_.
| That causes information to be transmitted down the supply
| chain that causes the capacity to make more to arise.
|
| Which is why those societies that use debt are more advanced
| than those that chose to outlaw its use. They ended up with
| fewer days wasted in aggregate and more capacity to produce.
|
| Most people fulfil their promises since it is inherent in
| human society to do right by others. And quite a lot of
| people like holding the assets that represent the debt as a
| status symbol of how well they have done - whether they can
| actually really call in those promises or not.
| xmprt wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow your argument. I agree that debt is
| important for society to function however taking on debt
| that you don't invest into yourself is literally ruinous
| and not in a hypothetical way - tons of people's lives have
| been destroyed by getting into too much debt that they
| weren't able to pay back.
|
| > Yes. Because those you spent it with must have, or you
| wouldn't have been able to buy anything with it
|
| This just means that the people that you paid have better
| lives but you haven't explained how things are better are
| better for yourself unless you have some way of paying that
| debt back.
| neilwilson wrote:
| You must have a way of paying the debt back, or you
| wouldn't have been able to obtain the resource you did on
| a promise.
|
| The people doing the deal with you accepted your promise
| to repay. They don't do that for the fun of it.
|
| Debt is just a way of spending things without selling
| them first. You can either borrow against your car to
| spend it, or you can sell the car to spend it.
|
| Either way if you consume rather than buying another car,
| then you end up with no car.
| davisoneee wrote:
| The financial crash would like to have a word with you.
|
| Many people gave 'resources' to people who couldn't
| afford the debt, because with many layers of obfuscation,
| and perverse incentives for mortgage providers, they made
| it look like many more people could afford it than
| actually could.
|
| Further...payday loans...loan sharks...people get money
| for things they can't afford, and can't realistically pay
| back, all the time.
| philipashlock wrote:
| Ecological and resource extractive debt is not magic, they
| have limits and externalities that most financial systems
| don't fully account for in their balance sheets.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| This is something I have to remind people of all the time
| - usually I just get blank stares.
|
| Forget the dollars and cents tokens on wealth, they can
| and are manipulated but intentionally and
| unintentionally. How much energy and resources that gets
| us do we have? That is the real currency we have to work
| with.
|
| All the debt in the world means nothing if we cannot
| produce the goods with the token we produced assuming the
| resources would be there.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > How much energy and resources that gets us do we have?
|
| Millions of years worth..... Like really of course you
| get blank stares it's not an issue that exists.
| _benedict wrote:
| Millions of years of what? We have maybe a few hundred
| years of helium if we're generous with our assumptions
| and we're literally squirting that into balloons and
| letting it float away into the atmosphere and _off into
| space_. It's literally an unrecoverable loss.
|
| This is just one of the many resource limits we're facing
| as a species, and this is how we address it today.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Has anyone actually seriously worked out how much party
| balloons contribute to the loss of helium from the
| atmosphere? And isn't helium an expected waste product
| from fusion reactors? Not saying it's not an issue but
| I'm not convinced it's worth getting too upset over just
| yet.
| _benedict wrote:
| https://www.helium-one.com/helium-market/
|
| Apparently 8%. But all of these industries waste it
| unnecessarily, due to our failing to price in or consider
| the future scarcity.
|
| Helium as a waste product of fusion reactors is such a
| pipe dream, and will produce such tiny volumes should
| that ever happen, that it is not a remotely realistic
| solution to the problem.
| ben_w wrote:
| Out of curiosity I put the numbers into Wolfram Alpha,
| and it suggests that even if 100% of our current power
| (all power not just electricity) needs came from fusing
| deuterium and tritium into helium, those reactors would
| make only about 5.3% of our current helium consumption.
| wizofaus wrote:
| That's all "lifting balloons" - I'd think the majority of
| which would be for weather balloons etc.? You're probably
| right about He from fusion reactors but if we have 100s
| of years to solve it who knows.
| _benedict wrote:
| Who knows is exactly the problem. Hand waving this away
| for future generations to deal with is exactly the
| problem. If we can't imagine how we'll solve it, we
| should probably strive not to create the mess.
| wizofaus wrote:
| But we _do_ know that plenty of other current human
| activities, primarily around extracting stuff from deep
| underground and pumping it into the atmosphere, are going
| to cause huge issues for even just our kid 's generation,
| with no realistic technology likely to be developed
| quickly enough to solve it(*). If we hypothetically
| needed to use up the earth's remaining helium to fix that
| I'd support doing so. Running out of helium isn't
| expected to introduce a risk of making the planet largely
| uninhabitable, as far as I'm aware.
|
| (*) I'm more or less convinced that such a miracle
| technology is the only hope we have of avoiding
| catastrophic change. I'm baffled why there's not
| massively more funding into researching potential
| geoengineering solutions, given the stakes. Even fossil
| fuel companies would benefit!
| alexvoda wrote:
| Since you brought helium into discussion, why do we fill
| party balloons with helium?
|
| Just how great is the risc of filling them with hidrogen?
| I know it's flamable and leaks through many materials.
| But in the context of party balloons just how great is
| that risc? The quantity is very small. And no ones life
| depends on it. And in the case of fire, that quantity
| would burn almost instantly. I doubt it would even have
| the time to ignite anything other than another flamable
| gas.
| mdemare wrote:
| While there is a vast amount of resources below us, the
| CO2 above us that's causing us so much trouble would form
| a layer of just 3.8mm (0.15 inch) of dry ice if it was
| all deposited on Earth's surface as a solid.
| ben_w wrote:
| What do you have in mind as a "millions of years" power
| source?
|
| At current rates, fossil fuels will last a few centuries,
| nuclear a few millennia.
|
| Although geothermal would last for geological timescales,
| the estimated maximum output only covers current
| electricity use (~2 TW, well short of the ~17 TW total
| power use, and ideally we'd increase the minimum power
| use per person to get closer to European or American
| levels rather than keeping our current distribution).
|
| The kinetic rotational energy of the earth would last us
| 400 million years.
|
| Sun will last a few billion, but then we're no longer
| talking about _extractive_ technologies.
| neilwilson wrote:
| If I have a debt of PS50 and you have the corresponding
| PS50 asset that you like to look at, then you don't need
| any material amount of energy to get to that state of
| happiness.
|
| I have to remind people all the time of a simple truth -
| there isn't a one to one relationship between money and
| stuff.
|
| And money isn't real. It's largely an illusion. At best a
| social relation.
| peteradio wrote:
| If I mortgage the singular life supporting planet we are
| aware of and don't pay back the debt...
| adrianN wrote:
| The economy gets better for more people in more places than
| ever before. Environmental destruction is also progressing
| faster than ever before. Many crucial ecosystems are on the
| brink of collapse (e.g. the rainforests) and we show no signs
| of intending to protect them.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Media doesn't report good things that happen in the
| environment. From 2013-2019, they hammered constantly on how
| the Great Barrier Reef was dying. But, not a peep when they
| found that it is healthiest its ever been in recent history:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-
| australia...
|
| No wonder the trust in media has fallen to the lowest.
| Reuters/AP are informative as a root source, but I have
| stopped trusting environmentalist doom-and-gloom stories from
| MSM.
|
| Environment is going to get far worse though. Germany is busy
| burning the shittiest form of coal as its primary fuel (35%):
| Lignite coal with 1/5th water content. It is the worse than
| burning literally anything:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
|
| Again, thanks to the utterly idiotic emotionally-driven
| environmentalists that are going to make the planet worse
| ironically. We need to stop giving them fodder and look to
| the tech/engineering community for solutions.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I'm active in my community advocating for greater transit
| and modeshare and our transit advocacy network is much
| better at trumpeting good news than the MSM and many
| Twitter doomers for a simple reason: nobody will give us
| more funding until we tell them how $X was spent on
| initiative Y which led to great outcome Z. It's our job to
| tell everyone how this little bike lane in this
| neighborhood decreased car trips and increased safety. The
| MSM faces no existential risk when it trumpets bad news all
| day, but we have to convince our neighbors that the money
| they're spending or the traffic blockage they're facing as
| new infrastructure is built is worthwhile.
| throwanapple wrote:
| Regarding the Great Barrier Reef, it's not as simple as
| you're saying: https://theconversation.com/record-coral-
| cover-doesnt-necess...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Maybe, why is this source trustworthy, I have no idea.
| There are probably many examples of improvement in the
| environment that goes unreported.
|
| I used to trust climate science. That trust is being
| eroded for me. Just the other day, someone reported that
| kids are gaining weight due to climate change. The
| reason? They can't go out and play when it's 2 deg C
| hotter. Come on.
|
| I despise climate catastrophization by the media.
| Joeri wrote:
| Media reporting on climate change is often dramatically
| wrong, whether it takes the slant of "everything is
| terrible" or "things are actually great".
|
| Go read how the IPCC reports are authored, you'll
| hopefully develop some faith about the accuracy of what
| is in them. Then go read the summaries for policy makers
| to get an idea of what they say. You'll see that most of
| what both sides are saying is in there is not what is in
| there.
| adrianN wrote:
| As far as I know the barrier reef is already dead because
| we emitted enough GHG to force sufficiently high water
| temperatures that the reef can't survive. It's only a
| matter of a couple of decades before the temperatures catch
| up with our emissions.
| mypastself wrote:
| Wouldn't environmentalists be opposed to coal as well? Or
| is it simply that they favor it over nuclear power? I'm not
| particularly well acquainted with German green parties'
| policies.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| They are. But when they've cornered themselves into
| freezing this winter, lignite coal it is.
| mypastself wrote:
| Not sure I follow, even if coal were used for heating in
| Germany. Would the country be in a better environmental
| situation overall without the activists? I don't doubt
| there's some level of energy hypocrisy currently going on
| in Europe, but I don't see how environmentalists have
| exacerbated the current crisis. Are you referring to
| their opposition to nuclear energy?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yea because if it weren't for these people, Germany would
| have invested in Nuclear or secure better natural gas
| than from Russia (Algeria?). Nord Stream 1 was hastily
| negotiated with the devil. Devil then invaded Crimea to
| secure the oil fields. Then 8 years later, they did it
| again with Nord Stream 2! The devil used it as a leverage
| to take big chunks of Ukraine. Trump warned them (as much
| as I loathe the guy, he was right, unsophisticatedly but
| eerily accurate):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O24rulfjA8U
|
| Environmentalists also invested in Solar energy in
| Germany. It has to be the dumbest idea ever, solar power
| in Germany is like 10% as efficient as Western USA. It is
| one of the worst places in Europe to stick solar panels.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany
|
| In general, Environmentalists do not understand the
| difference between gardening and farming. It's the Greta
| crowd that's going to lead this world towards mass
| starvation of humans. They have no solutions, only blind
| clueless activism.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > The devil used it as a leverage to take big chunks of
| Ukraine
|
| Tried, but then they got back-up in the form of European
| and US weapon shipments that are trouncing the Russian's
| poorly trained forces and equipment - or, that's what the
| diverse media in my neck of the wood is saying. Russia
| doesn't seem to be winning or gaining though.
|
| Trump is siding with the Russians and rejected military /
| financial aid to the Ukraine because they refused to find
| dirt on Biden or whatever it was about. https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal
| adrianN wrote:
| Homes are not heated with nuclear power or lignite, they
| are heated with gas.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Gas is at risk of cut off this winter. Electric heating
| will be the primary source if that happens.
|
| > In late June, after Russia reduced supplies by 60%,
| Berlin triggered the second stage of its national gas
| emergency plan -- one step away from gas rationing.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-
| chaos/2022/07/18/a...
| adrianN wrote:
| Electrical heating is impossible. There is neither
| sufficient generation, nor sufficient grid capacity, so
| matter how many of the nuclear plants we had we keep
| running. Even in a mostly-nuclear grid like France's you
| just don't have the spare capacity lying around to
| replace fossil fuels for heating in a year.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very
| long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above
| their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that
| looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done
| this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the
| form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in
| history but at the cost of environmental blow back and setting
| the paradigm for our living standards.
|
| Maybe we will rise to the challenge and go green on these, I'm
| not convinced yet but I am definitely not ruling it out.
|
| When it comes to optimism, it boils down to two distinct modes.
| Necessity is the mother of invention. Less energy, stuff and
| stimulation will be good for most people in wealthy countries.
|
| Fossil fuels will decline, we will make some cool new stuff
| that makes that decline easier, we will demand less stuff and
| use of energy. This doesn't sound so bad. Hopefully we will
| move into something akin to Solarpunk + cottage core. A
| declined future that is more fair. But the pessimist in me
| feels like that is but fantasy.
| goatlover wrote:
| Why would energy usage need to decline when there's a giant
| ball of fusion in our sky we barely make use of, and when
| we've just begun exploring space in the past century?
| s-lambert wrote:
| Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to
| turn solar energy into electrical energy (including
| batteries for storage) and they don't last forever.
|
| Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing
| an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to
| renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406
| goatlover wrote:
| This isn't the first time someone has predicted an end to
| economic growth soon because of peak raw resources having
| been attained. We can go all the way back to the numerous
| failed predictions of Elrich's Population Bomb book. The
| idea that we're close to the pinnacle of what technology
| and science can achieve is ridiculous given the immense
| cosmic time scales and resources available. We're nowhere
| near the limit of what's possible.
| adrianN wrote:
| Solar energy is the cheapest form of energy we have.
| Storage is a bit more expensive, but judging from the
| amount of metals the video proposes they want to go all-
| in on battery storage, whereas most experts I heard from
| propose to use hydrogen (or methane) as a storage medium,
| precisely because the amount of resources it needs are
| much smaller.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Hydrogen would also help with re-using all the ICE cars
| we have (and will continue to have) on the roads.
|
| Definitely not a panacaea, and super-inefficient, but
| that's OK if we're just using it for
| storage/transportation.
| goodpoint wrote:
| super-inefficient?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| as in it's only worth doing if you have nothing else to
| do with the energy (like when you have too much wind/sun
| etc)
| goodpoint wrote:
| That's just the concept of energy storage. And even if we
| lose a significant fraction it's often not an issue given
| how cheap solar is.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Sure, but it would be better if we had more efficient
| methods of doing it.
| chongli wrote:
| Wow, that was a bucket of water in my face the likes of
| which I've never felt before! We are 100% completely
| screwed! We simply cannot maintain our standard of living
| into the future. The picture this professor paints is so
| incredibly bleak that it puts the war in Ukraine and a
| potential war in Taiwan into perspective.
|
| Imagine if all the passengers on the Titanic had nuclear
| weapons. That's the situation we're in. And there are no
| lifeboats.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Except that all these problems are soluble.
|
| We can adapt to climate change. We can create new
| (clean!) energy sources.
|
| Solar is getting more efficient every year. There are new
| storage solutions appearing every year.
|
| As TFA says, despair is not the answer. We can (and will)
| overcome all these problems.
| throwanapple wrote:
| Can you expand more on those new storage solutions?
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| here let me google that for you... https://www.forbes.com
| /sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2022/...
| goodpoint wrote:
| > We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into
| the future.
|
| Don't make the mistake of confusing energy use with
| quality of life.
|
| People like to make such alarmist statement around
| standard of living but we should instead ask ourselves
| what makes for quality of life.
|
| A good example is planned obsolescence in technology: it
| greatly increases energy usage and pollution without
| making consumers happier (on the contrary they hate it)
| chongli wrote:
| Don't make the mistake of conflating carbon emissions
| with transportation. So much of our society is built on
| carbon and personal automobiles are only a part of it.
| Cement production, globalized shipping, fertilizers for
| growing food, natural gas for making steel and other
| heavy industry. No matter how you slice it, wind and
| solar can't replace any of that stuff.
| 8note wrote:
| Wind and solar might not, but that isn't to say that
| there arent replacements
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Or we just stop pretending that nuclear is bad and build the
| plants to keep an industrial base going past 2050.
|
| Hell at this point whoever does will just conquer whoever
| doesn't. Just like the industrial revolution let whoever burn
| coal take over the rest. I'm hoping to be in a country that
| isn't conquered, but the west seems to have entered a death
| spiral of self delusion.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Well in theory, yes. In practice, the Russians have
| captured a large nuclear reactor and may use it as a dirty
| bomb if things don't go their way. Can't turn a solar panel
| or windmill into a weapon like that. You could turn a
| hydroelectric dam in a weapon though, I believe that's the
| plot of a few films. And solar heat collectors are
| impractical death rays.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Yes, thank god Russia doesn't have the worlds largest
| nuclear stock pile of weapons to threaten the world with
| and has to steal others countries nuclear power plants to
| threaten them with a dirty bomb. On their border. Less
| than 100km away from the nearest Russian city.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > In practice, the Russians have captured a large nuclear
| reactor and may use it as a dirty bomb if things don't go
| their way
|
| This is still theory unless they actually use it for
| that.
|
| Also, Russia's own Kursk 2 isn't very far from the
| captured one. They could turn that into a dirty bomb too.
| Recency bias on a threat shouldn't overwhelm normal
| analysis.
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| No, it shouldn't overwhelm it, but it should inform it.
| There is no proliferation risk associated with wind,
| solar, geothermal, etc.
|
| Where I live is at risk of declining political stability
| in the near future. I don't worry about living next to a
| nuclear power plant because I'm worried about maintenance
| or operational safety or whatever, I worry about what
| happens when a thousand men with machetes and an
| apocalyptic ideology show up. And perhaps you look at the
| news in your country and wonder if you also may be
| heading towards declining political stability.
| Animats wrote:
| Encouraging trends:
|
| - Energy is getting fixed. Simply because wind and solar are
| cheap, and electric vehicles work well. There will be lots of
| kicking and screaming during the transition, but 20 years out, it
| won't be a problem.
|
| - We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders.
| Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is
| out. Putin remains a problem.
|
| - Vaccine technology has made huge strides in recent years.
| Omicron vaccine ships in October. Broad-spectrum vaccines for
| most of the flu/coronavirus family are in test. We have a
| monkeypox vaccine already. Cranking out a designed vaccine for a
| new threat is now routine. Even an AIDS vaccine, which is really
| hard, now looks possible.
|
| - The supply chain disruptions of the last few years have led to
| major investments in new manufacturing capacity all over the
| world. From wafer fabs to fertilizer factories, plants are going
| up. Having multiple sources is now important again. It takes a
| while for this to have an effect, after which prices go down.
|
| - The population bomb fizzled out. World population is leveling
| off. All the major developed countries are now below replacement
| rate.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| >- We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders.
| Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu
| is out. Putin remains a problem.
|
| Not to throw cold water over this too much but Johnson's likely
| successor is basically him again but without any of the
| charisma that sold many of the public on him in the first
| place. Liz Truss is an author of _Britannia Unchained_ which
| pretty much accuses the British public of being workshy good-
| for-nothings and bemoans the fact they won 't cheerfully
| volunteer for long hours and exploitative wages. The irony is
| by Dominic Cummings' account at least Truss is a bit of a
| chocolate teapot herself! It's said that history repeats itself
| first as tragedy then as farce, I think Margaret Thatcher might
| be about to get her farcical repetition in a month or so.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That's still progress. A crazy leader with charisma is much
| more dangerous than the same amount of crazy without
| charisma.
| Comevius wrote:
| Humans no longer seeing themselves as the pawns of nature is
| nothing to be proud of. We still depend on nature, nothing have
| changed, only this dependence is now obfuscated. There is a
| buffer between us and nature, which makes us utterly blind to the
| consequences of our actions. We are not living in the best of
| times, we are living the biggest lie ever. Our way of life is
| utterly unsustainable, and by our way of life I mean us the upper
| 10% that gets to reap 90% of the benefits.
|
| Robyn E. Blumner did not choose optimism, she choose ignorance,
| because she is among the priviledged few who can be freely
| ignorant. Optimism is not a choice in any case. We are
| biologically inclined to be optimistic, even when we are
| fatalistic, in which case we are optimistic about a negative
| outcome. This is a cognitive limitation, not something to be
| proud of.
| samsquire wrote:
| Society decided we wanted good things and we took action to get
| those things.
|
| I am against poverty and not having things such as electricity
| and clean tap water, abundant food, education, hospital care,
| sewage treatment and proper waste disposal. I like these
| things, they are good.
|
| You would be surprised at how sustainable things are by sheer
| hard work and will. In other words, we get what we cause.
|
| The alternative to these things is worse. To be sustainable (no
| or renewable electricity, sparse population, no cars, no
| factories, no meat, land used for growing food) you need to
| remove the things society wants by sheer will. And I don't
| think you'll sell anybody on that.
|
| In other words, telling people that they need to give up good
| things is not enough.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| That's a false dichotomy; we can have all these things
| without burning down rainforests at a furious pace and
| filling the oceans with plastic, etc. These things are done
| out of laziness and carelessness.
| samsquire wrote:
| I don't think it's false but it might be a dichotomy.
|
| The good things we enjoy are destructive and have
| externalities.
|
| To offer a solution, if the people who do bad things such
| as not dispose waste properly or want to cut down
| rainforests for profit, we need to solve the incentives
| behind those decisions. Such as universal basic income. Or
| lowering crime.
|
| Unfortunately poverty is the baseline. In other words you
| need to expend resources to get resources. I said in my
| comment things are sustainable by sheer will.
|
| To implement sustainability we need to invest profound
| amounts of resources and do extreme amounts of work by
| sheer will to solve the problem. We also need the right
| people working on these problems. The smartest people from
| my simple perspective are working on the wrong problems.
| What we have is an improper allocation of limited
| resources.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| No solution is worse than a flawed solution. There are many
| ways to make progress that aren't being tried, like using tax
| code to dissuade Americans from buying SUVs, but those are
| the only American made cars people buy so there is no action.
| rektide wrote:
| Very "when humans act like gids, the Earth & it's species
| suffer". Which has been shown again & again & again, no
| argument there.
|
| Still, I choose optimism too. We have collectively become the
| stewards of spaceship earth, and nature does have a more minor
| part from here on out (for a while); anthropocene era is here.
| It's just a fact. I forget the quote, please help someome, but
| 'we are all gods now and it's about time we start acting like
| it', or something to that effect.
| xgrcrugm wrote:
| That would be Stewart Brand. There's a movie that just came
| out with that quote as its title: https://weareasgods.film .
| barrysteve wrote:
| It's not just being free from being a pawn of nature is a silly
| idea, you don't go far enough. Anything that's not built on
| nature is temporary and is going to fall apart at some point.
| The people who blind themselves to that fact, are going to have
| a bad time. Whether you quote the bible or physics to support
| the fact, the outcome is the same.
| [deleted]
| throwaway232999 wrote:
| Optimism is treatable by revelation of the Keeling Curve.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's hard to be an optimist when it looks like the years we're
| living in right now are the same future historians will argue
| about when deciding whether WW3 "actually began" in 2022.
| brainzap wrote:
| future historians will argue about when deciding whether
| climate change "actually began" in 2022.
| int_19h wrote:
| First things first.
| maxbendick wrote:
| In analyzing political pieces (especially one so concerned with
| The Enlightenment), it's important to go deeper than content.
| What moved someone to put so much effort into _this_ thought
| specifically? Nietzsche, critic of enlightenment, would ask:
| "which kind of will-to-power is expressed here?"
|
| Steven Pinker is popular among accomplished people, and there's
| no conspiracy about this: rational optimism just gets that crowd
| going. Maybe it's because they don't have much better to worry
| about!
|
| Reading this kind of writing is like eating a bag of candy. I eat
| one saccharine piece of "{X} good thing has grown by {Y}%", and
| then I grasp for the next morsel before I've finished chewing the
| first.
| boxed wrote:
| This comment is a text book case of projection. Everything
| written above is 100% true of the comment itself. Critical but
| without substance. Looks down their nose but not realizing they
| are lying on their back and actually lookup UP.
|
| The original article and Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE
| problems to be solved. Theirs is not a philosophy of
| complacency, but of hard work. REAL hard work that can actually
| SUCCEED. Unlike complaining, and unlike just ignoring the
| problem, and unlike pretending everything is getting worse when
| we know it isn't.
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| > Pinker are quite clear: there are HUGE problems to be
| solved
|
| That's... not the impression I get from reading Pinker. On
| the contrary, he has an infuriating habit of presenting "x is
| getting better" shortly after _bashing_ a straw man version
| of the groups working hardest to make x better. Everyone from
| civil rights activists to software developers who worked on
| on the Millennium Bug were, in Pinker 's eyes, committing the
| cardinal sin of Availability Bias rather than focusing on all
| those nice comforting trend lines pointing in the right
| direction.
| boxed wrote:
| Source?
| notahacker wrote:
| Pinker (2018) _Enlightenment Now_
| boxed wrote:
| I was hoping for something more specific heh
| motohagiography wrote:
| Who is going to rebut optimism? But only the part that needs a
| fair counterweight to it. Consider the evidence that life of all
| kinds thrives everywhere. It is its very purpose to thrive above
| all else, or it just ceases. Existence then, necessarily favours
| a force or direction for life to thrive, even just
| probabilistically. I would argue that these favourable odds for
| life to exist and thrive are indistinguishable from an intent for
| life, for _you_ , to thrive. And this is the rational case for a
| divine intent. For you, as life, to thrive. Accepting this as an
| axiom of your existence is all anyone needs to experience the
| optimism described so well in the article. It's the funniest
| thing in the world to look back and be wrong about as well.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| The author comes across as the extremely echo-chambered,
| brainwashed, close-minded person she herself is afraid of. I
| couldn't invent a more on brand characterization of person with a
| heavily biased/politicized/skewed worldview if I tried.
| [deleted]
| archhn wrote:
| You choose homeostasis. Feeeling good about the future makes you
| feel good. This leads to immediate improvements in one's quality
| of life. People are attracted to those who have a "positive
| outlook." No one likes hanging around a doomsayer.
|
| This author clearly lives in a place where he can afford such
| optimism. It's not so easy in the slums of Tanzania.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I believe feeling good about the future with many specific
| reasons to feel good about the future is totally valid though.
|
| Ask yourself why people in the slums of Tanzania might not be
| "optimistic about the future". Is it because of their poor
| current living situation, or is it because they don't see as
| much of the political, scientific, and social progress being
| made over time globally? I'd argue it's more likely the latter.
| archhn wrote:
| I don't know what's going to happen in the future. No one
| does. I don't have all the facts. And even if I did, I would
| need a galaxy brain to integrate them all into an outlook.
| Not everything is publicized. There are many groups of people
| who work to further their own agendas. We aren't one globe,
| one humanity. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't reflect
| reality.
|
| I base my pessimism on the childishness I see flourishing in
| adults who have lost contact with reality because they've
| never endured serious hardship. These people can be easily
| manipulated because they have little fear. They have never
| made life or death decisions. So they don't understand the
| significance of forming an accurate model of the world. The
| result is a nation full of dreamers. Such people are ill
| adapted to the real world and will naturally be ineffective
| in all that they do.
|
| There are very strong incentives for forming an optimistic
| outlook. None of these are conditioned on data or serious
| consideration. I think people look for reasons to justify how
| they want to feel. In other words, optimism precedes the
| reasons one has for being optimistic.
|
| Voltaire lampooned optimism very well in Candide. His
| ultimate conclusion was: don't waste your time on idealistic
| notions of a world in which terrible things are always
| happening; instead, tend to your garden--do your best to
| improve what you can and no more. This is a wise suggestion.
| Optimism and pessimism are both traps. They are pathological
| extensions of present conditions.
|
| I wish I could heed this wisdom...
| blfr wrote:
| There are two issues with OP.
|
| First, is that this optimism is indefinite in words of Peter
| Thiel. It's gonna be fine but without any directions how to make
| that future actually happen. Can we just sit and wait?
|
| Second, it addresses factors that just aren't important.
|
| _Doesn't she know that Christian nationalism has largely taken
| over the Republican Party and that the Enlightenment values of
| freedom of inquiry, tolerance, and reason are being threatened
| from the political Right as well as--to a worrying extent--the
| political Left?_
|
| These are downright silly concerns in the world with collapsing
| birth rates on the verge of a world war with Russia and China
| trying to use their last gasp for empire building.
|
| Living five years longer in a larger house with AC is nothing to
| sneeze at but perhaps not quite the win in the world of record-
| breaking obesity and drug addiction. We're trading biological
| capital for material comforts. And not even at a good exchange
| rate.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| This article comes across as extremely tone-deaf, and the author
| seems unaware of the existential scale of the problems humanity
| is facing. The fact that the phrase "climate change" only appears
| once - at the beginning, as a throwaway line - really speaks
| volumes.
|
| If the only problems we face were war and rising Christian
| fascism, I would also be optimistic, because those things can and
| have been fought successfully in the past. However...
|
| The very real situation of climate change, described by leading
| scientists as "code red for humanity," cannot be waved away by
| comparing our current struggles to that of medieval peasants
| seeking freedom from monarchy. We're talking about a collapsing
| biosphere. We're talking about mass extinction. We're talking
| about large areas of the Earth becoming functionally
| uninhabitable.
|
| I would even be optimistic about that, too, if world leaders
| (economic and political) seemed to take any of it seriously. But
| they don't, so I'm not. And I think the author is conveniently
| ignoring this entire subject.
| atemerev wrote:
| Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of
| habitability of some places. Humans are resilient.
|
| And if they won't, life itself is even more resilient.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| > And if they won't, life itself is even more resilient.
|
| You realize that's hardly reassuring, right? You're right
| though - life is resilient. Life has survived worse.
|
| But our fragile global civilization, propped up by fossil
| fuels at a core level, is not resilient in the worst case
| outcomes of climate change. And keep in mind: in order to
| avoid the worst case scenarios, massive economic and
| political change needs to happen. No such changes are
| happening yet, though.
|
| So yeah, I agree that humans and life in general will
| probably survive, but not in any way that would be
| recognizable to us now.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Humans have still suffered far worse. At one point, around
| 70kya, there were only an estimated maximum of 10,000
| humans, and it is from that population that sprung forth 8
| billion today. I highly doubt with even all the damage
| climate change will cause that we will go back to such
| numbers.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| Your goalposts are still apocalyptic. Even going from 8
| billion to 4 billion would be catastrophic amounts of
| suffering. The raw number of humans that currently exist
| is not a good measure for quality of life in general.
| atemerev wrote:
| Hey, we are all going to die anyway, so that's a baseline.
| The bar is pretty low :)
|
| Now, I believe that human civilization is not there yet for
| coordinated global action. At the very least, it requires
| world peace, and we are on the brink of the next world war.
| Civilization can disappear even before we'll feel
| consequences from climate change. Nothing is permanent.
|
| Having said that, I think we should do everything to
| improve our prospects and our long-term quality of life,
| like building a lot of climate-safe nuclear power plants,
| stopping burning fossil fuels, and preparing for mass
| climate migration (which will not even be the first in
| humanity's history). I think we'll manage. But if not --
| I'm pretty sure that there are many other fine
| civilizations in the universe that will pass this
| particular test. We are not that important on the cosmic
| scale, and everything there is temporary anyway.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| "it's not the end of all life" isn't much of a consolation
| for those that will have to live through the shitshow
|
| Some people are used to such a good life that the concept of
| actual, intense, long-term suffering doesn't even register as
| something that can happen to them. And even when it is
| pointed out to them there's no gut feeling for how shit life
| can be
| scbrg wrote:
| This is a very, very annoying strawman. Nobody believes that
| life, or even humanity will be wiped off the face of the
| earth. It's the _tremendous_ amount suffering it 'll have to
| endure that we'd rather avoid.
| atemerev wrote:
| The tremendous amount of suffering will be there soon
| enough in the form of the next world war. Judging from
| observations in human history, mass suffering is normal,
| and the relatively peaceful environment of the "end of
| history" is quite an anomaly.
|
| I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything, converting our
| energy needs to nuclear and solar is the first priority.
| But yes, there's a significant probability that it won't
| happen soon enough, so we might want to think how to live
| when famines and mass climate migrations will happen.
| Linear progress is an exception, not a rule.
| goatlover wrote:
| Does the IPCC report anywhere claim that climate change is an
| existential threat? What does a "code red" actually entail for
| the next century? Where in the climate science does it actually
| say that large ares of Earth will become functionally
| uninhabitable and the biosphere will collapse? Outside of
| hothouse Earth scenarios, which are deemed unlikely at this
| point within the 2.5-3.7 degrees warming scenarios, I'm not
| aware of any such doomsday predictions by the actual mainstream
| climate science.
| taink wrote:
| IPCC AR6 (2022)'s summary for policymakers [1] makes such a
| claim.
|
| Here is the last paragraph:
|
| "The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate
| change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health.
| Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on
| adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly
| closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and
| sustainable future for all. ( _very high confidence_ )"
|
| You can find more information here:
| https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-
| working-g...
|
| [1]: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryF
| orPo...
| goatlover wrote:
| I don't see where in that sentence it says large parts of
| the planet will become functionally inhabitable or that
| climate change is an existential threat.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| "rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a
| liveable and sustainable future for all"
|
| It literally says "livable future." As in, a future that
| is as livable for humanity in general as the present
| currently is.
|
| There are numerous scientists that predict sea level rise
| coupled with lethal wet-bulb temperatures in the tropics
| will make living around the equator difficult if not
| impossible. Here is a direct quote if you need it:
|
| "SSP5-8.5 -- Imagine a world where humanity doesn't just
| do nothing about climate change but continues to make it
| worse... The net result would be 4.4degC of warming, with
| a range between 3.3degC and 5.7degC. As if large-scale
| coastal inundation and extremely destructive weather
| weren't enough, parts of the planet would become
| unlivable during the hottest times of the year."
|
| Source: https://www.vox.com/22620706/climate-change-ipcc-
| report-2021...
|
| That's a timeline in which we continue to increase
| emissions year over year and actively double down on
| business-as-usual. So far, that has been the case
| (emissions dipped in 2020 during lockdown, but we are now
| back to emitting more than ever before).
| deltasevennine wrote:
| The media is highly pessimistic. So yeah when you look at the
| world you are looking at the world through a biased lens of
| pessimism. Pessimsim draws attention and sells hence the media
| creates a sort of negative viewpoint of the world.
|
| But here's the weird part. Most individuals bias towards
| optimism. Most people are unable to see the hard truths of the
| world or even about themselves. The world is indeed cruel and
| hard and on the individual level people can't admit certain
| things about themselves. We see the world through rose colored
| lenses.
|
| When people look at the world or news, they think everything is
| going to shit. But on the individual level when they look at
| things locally or at themselves, things are actually a bit too
| positive. People lie to themselves.
|
| It's a strange dichotomy.
|
| You will note that no one on this thread talks about what goes in
| between pessimism and optimism. What is the middle ground? That's
| how deluded everyone is. They read her article and buy into her
| BS. To be pessimist is to be negatively biased. To be optimist is
| to be positively biased. Logically the middle ground will then be
| unbiased.
|
| Truth is what lies in between positive and negative biases. I
| choose to be unbiased. I choose to not be pessimistic or
| optimistic. I choose truth.
| tforcram wrote:
| I think pragmatism would be the middle ground, or 'dealing with
| reality as best you can'.
|
| I don't think it's possible to actually sit perfectly in the
| middle, won't you always end up thinking slightly positively or
| negatively about whatever situation comes up?
|
| In that case I think that 'Expect the best but prepare for the
| worst' is a good mindset to have.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| Consider a rock. Is it negative or positive? It is neither.
| The rock is proof that you can be neutral.
|
| Enlightenment is realizing that everything shares the same
| nature as a rock.
| 8note wrote:
| Now consider the rock that somebody threw at your face, and
| knocked out your tooth. Is it still neutral?
|
| The neutrality is gone as soon as people are involved
| joshthecynic wrote:
| pochekailov wrote:
| I am commenting in support of optimism and to counterweight
| pessimistic outlook.
|
| Humanity indeed faces a lot of problems. Each of them have many
| possible solutions (The only one unsolvable is a heat death of
| the universe).
|
| Thing is, the solutions usually may be divided into two
| categories: technical and societal.
|
| For example, for the horse manure problem in big cities there
| were two possible solutions: invent a car, or limit the number of
| horses in the city.
|
| The thing is: technical solutions are always cool. They open up
| new possibilities, the one which could not be foreseen. Technical
| solution also creates new problems, that require solutions of
| their own. Societal solutions always suck. Societal solution is
| to make people do less of the thing that causes trouble. The
| problem therefore kind of resolves, but the life become more
| boring and less free. Such solution does not bring new
| possibilities, does not advance life, but there is no risks of
| unforeseen new problems.
|
| Examples of the problems and possible solutions:
|
| Global worming: limit consumption and consumerism - or - perform
| climate engineering (spray high albedo particles in stratosphere,
| send controllable aluminum foil mirrors to the orbit, install
| more solar cells and wind turbines
|
| Cancer, Alzheimers, heart diseases, obesity, etc.: live "healthy
| life", eat boring non-tasty grass, die 5 times a week at the gym,
| don't eat most awesome sugar, don't dring amazing coke, don't
| smoke, don't enjoy, don't ... - OR - Concentrate on solving the
| cause of those illnesses, that is the ageing. Treat ageing as a
| disease and fund anti-ageing research.
|
| "Overpopulation": Make people believe that earth is dying and
| they shouldn't have children - OR - Build habitat (O'Neil
| cylinders) on the orbit thus opening virtually endless living
| space
|
| Nuclear war: Pacify a horrible dictator, leave him "ways to
| retreat" - OR - build habitats on the orbit; atomic explosions in
| space won't do much damage at all (there is a constant atomic
| explosion already there, called Sun).
|
| Hunger: Not a problem, earth agriculture is overproducing; the
| real problem is horrible dictators and the lack of new land that
| people can escape to from that dictator.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'm not sure if I agree on the dichotomy of technical vs.
| social solutions.
|
| Where would you place something like efforts to increase a
| population literacy rates? It's not a new technical advantage,
| but it doesn't suck or limit possibilities. If anything, it
| creates them, since a literate population is one you can teach
| to drive, where employers can assume literacy for training
| purposes, where governments can give information to their
| people in writing, where people can read their own religious
| texts without intermediaries, etc.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > For most of history, people thought: "The world is bad and,
| usually, it's getting worse." In other words, no longer did
| humans see themselves as mere pawns for the gods.
|
| What? Citation needed.
|
| A negative view of individual sin is certainly part of the
| Christian worldview, but gods are not, nor is an overall negative
| outlook. The whole point is that God loves his people enough to
| save them, the Church will expand, and Christ will return in
| glory.
|
| If the author is describing paganism ("pawns for the gods") I'm
| curious to know which of those had an overall negative view with
| such widespread influence that those religions could describe
| people generally. Certainly the Greeks and the Romans thought
| very highly of themselves and believed that the gods were with
| them, hence they flourished.
|
| This seems more like an atheist talking point than anything
| grounded in history.
| andrepd wrote:
| If there is a thing that marked the whole span of the Medieval
| age in the Christian world, from 500 to 1500, is the
| generalised, widespread belief that the world was about to end.
| That it was corrupted and degenerated and that the end of the
| world coming.
|
| No matter what you personally believe to be the message of
| Christianity, this was the thinking for a huge chunk of
| Christianity's existence so far.
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| Seems that since Euler developed exponential functions (circa
| the enlightenment), exponential growth of knowledge and
| economies and exponential improvement in the human condition
| have become the standard expectation for the enlightened world,
| replacing the previous standard expectation of alternating good
| times and bad times. The optimists and the winners over the
| recent centuries have been able to make a good case that this
| change in thinking has not been completely discredited by
| experience. Does that mean that the good times are here to
| stay?
|
| A reasonable attempt at an unbiased point of view on this issue
| would acknowledge some kind of selection effect -- one would
| expect that a few hundred years experience would appear
| particularly favorable to civilizations and cultures that you
| get after a few hundred years of that same experience, so maybe
| things are not objectively quite as good as they look to us.
|
| A simple statistical estimate of how long the current era might
| be sustained can be made by coming up with a number for how
| long it has already been here, and considering ourselves as
| occurring at a uniformly random point in its total lifetime.
| That procedure produces ~90% certainty that things will
| continue as is for at least 1/20th as long as the era has been
| here but not more than 20 times as long. For example, if you
| put the start of the era of technological progress around 1620,
| this kind of know-nothing (about specific current conditions)
| estimate would put us 90% sure that it will last at least
| another 20 years, but not more than 8000 years. YMMV.
| xupybd wrote:
| I agree however the problem is that you can probably find
| someone claiming to be Christian that lives as a "pawn for the
| gods". That kind of legalism slips into peoples lives.
| Especially the kind of people that are not fully convinced but
| go along for other reasons. Often these people become strong
| champions against Christianity, as it's a pretty horrible way
| to live. If you think that is the way Christianity is supposed
| to be it's no wonder you'd try to prevent others from living
| that way.
|
| Her statement: "They could bring logic and the scientific
| method to bear and actually fix things that were bad, wrong, or
| deadly. That is our inheritance, and a priceless one at that.
| We were given tools, not answers. But those tools, when
| properly deployed, transform human lives."
|
| Lines up with the Christian purpose for people: "God blessed
| them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number;
| fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and
| the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves
| on the ground."
|
| But we all misunderstand each other all the time. I'm sure I
| don't fully understand the authors beliefs. I'd love for her to
| meet some "Christian nationalists" to find out what they really
| want. I think we all have more common ground than most realize.
| It's a shame things have become so tribal.
| felipeerias wrote:
| Perhaps the author is thinking of the many creation myths about
| an original nearly-divine past.
|
| In practical terms, for most of history the large majority of
| people were farmers and simply thought that the world was just
| about the same as it had always been.
|
| Traditional belief systems were usually structured in terms of
| cycles, whether the yearly change of the seasons, the growth
| and decline of a human life, or the silent movements of
| celestial bodies.
|
| Leaving aside great wars or catastrophes, social and economic
| changes happened slowly and would have been hard to identify by
| an individual living through them.
| boxed wrote:
| > The whole point is that God loves his people enough to save
| them, the Church will expand, and Christ will return in glory.
|
| ish. It also promises that not even death is an escape, but
| that God will raise all the dead and judge an enormous majority
| to be literally thrown into a valley of fire.
|
| Reading the Bible I see more of a threat, than a promise.
| orang2tang wrote:
| But just as sin entered the world through one man, it was
| defeated through one man as well, Jesus Christ. There is no
| condemnation for anyone who believes in Jesus. So being saved
| from hell is quite simple, which is why it's called "the good
| news" or the gospel. And that's God's plan for humanity, and
| he's begging you to simply seek this man named Jesus.
|
| God's wisdom is made that much more powerful in what some
| might call foolishness, just as he prescribed circumcision to
| the Jews. Abraham was required to put off his pride and
| simply believe God, that circumcision was a commandment from
| God for the Jews, and this faith in God is what saves. You
| don't think Abraham received a lot of judgement for
| prescribing circumcision?
|
| Just as Christians receive judgement for prescribing the new
| circumcision, which is the circumcision of the heart to
| believe in Jesus Christ. It requires people to put off their
| pride, realize their very nature offends God (because he is
| perfect so anything less than perfect is an offense to him)
| and repent of their unbelief in the only begotten son of God,
| who knew our same struggles here on Earth and was killed
| without reason so that we could live. This belief covers our
| heads from wrath, because now when God looks at us he sees
| Christ.
|
| So it's called the good news because it is. We can defeat
| death and enter into an unimaginable state of perfection.
| What I find with people who don't believe is that they're
| blinded by what they think Christianity is. So for you I
| would say you're blinded by the problem of hell. But if God
| tells us it is real, that is true and you have no say in the
| matter. Your belief or unbelief doesn't change the truth of
| the word of God. God is above politics, above human wisdom,
| and also above the people that claim his name.
|
| I should note that I used to have the same opinion as you! No
| judgement!
| boxed wrote:
| Btw, if you are honestly trying to sell christianity, don't
| say stuff like "realize their very nature offends God
| (because he is perfect so anything less than perfect is an
| offense to him)" or "the circumcision of the heart" (lol!).
|
| > So for you I would say you're blinded by the problem of
| hell.
|
| I'm "blinded" by the threat of torture for the majority of
| humans? I don't think you can be "blinded" by such an
| atrocity that makes Hitler look like a total wimp. You are
| LITERALLY claiming that ALL jews that were killed by Hitler
| will be reincarnated by God and then tortured. And of
| course all other Jews, past and present. And all atheists,
| muslims, sheiks, hindus.
|
| And somehow you can't see the problem...
| orang2tang wrote:
| I'll only respond to your first part since solving the
| problem of hell differs from person to person.
|
| >don't say stuff like "the circumcision of the heart"
| (lol!).
|
| This is not a term I made, it's biblical. And as my post
| says I'm aware the entire gospel is foolish to
| unbelievers, and the Bible and God is aware of that.
| That's the basic hurdle of accepting the gospel.
|
| "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a
| stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto
| them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the
| power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the
| foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of
| God is stronger than men."
|
| 1 Corinthians 23-25
|
| "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to
| confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of
| the world to confound the things which are mighty;"
|
| 1 Corinthians 27
|
| "At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of
| heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things
| from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little
| children."
|
| Matthew 11:25
| boxed wrote:
| Admitting your stance is lunacy isn't a defense. You
| should instead ponder why you believe absurdities.
|
| "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you
| commit atrocities" - Voltaire (ish). This is the most
| important quote about how to live in the world. It
| explains Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, but also the mass rape
| done by the Catholic Church, 9/11, the current climate
| change crisis, and on and on. It's the Grand Unified
| Theory of atrocities.
| orang2tang wrote:
| if (the_world_is_evil && the_world_hates_the_word_of_god
| && the_world_hated_jesus_enough_to_kill_him_despite_him_d
| oing_nothing_wrong ){
|
| console.log("maybe it's something you should look into");
|
| }
|
| So if you care so much about evil you should ask
| yourself, who was the only person to walk the Earth who
| had no evil. That would be Jesus. And what did Jesus say?
| He said he was God, and quoted the old testament that
| correctly spoke of his coming.
|
| Shouldn't you look into it?
| 8note wrote:
| There's no lack of people to walk the earth who have no
| evil though. You have to contrive good people to be evil
| to make that the case.
| boxed wrote:
| There is no threat, unless you do exactly what I say.
|
| Yea, that's the threat.
|
| > I should note that I used to have the same opinion as
| you! No judgement!
|
| Common thing to hear. I have never believed anyone has ever
| gone from a strong atheist who reads the bible and can so
| obviously see the cruelty and madness, and then suddenly
| turn around and become a christian apologist? It's just as
| believable as the bible in the first place.
| orang2tang wrote:
| >There is no threat, unless you do exactly what I say.
|
| You do your taxes every year so you can avoid jail time.
| But you won't simply call out to Jesus Christ with a true
| heart and ask for salvation?
|
| Think about it! That's all it takes!
| CloseChoice wrote:
| I think it's hard to argue that we DON'T live in an age with the
| highest life expectancy and material wealth ever (at least for
| the western countries, but this probably holds around globe). But
| there are quite a few things we are not good at measuring like
| mental health, freedom and overall happiness. It the points we
| can measure are not correlated to the non-measurable points.
| Though I would deem the non-measurable points even more
| important.
|
| That said, I always choose optimism over so called realism and
| pessimism. This optimism doesn't mean that anything changes for
| the better by itself but that personal decisions can have an
| impact for the better.
| eddyparkinson wrote:
| The book learned optimism covers the value of both optimism and
| pessimism. He wrote the book to help people become more
| optimistic.
|
| The main thing I learned from the book, is knowing when it is
| good to be optimistic or pessimistic. There is a time and a place
| for each. But, on average, optimists tend to win, because they
| keep trying longer.
| darkteflon wrote:
| It's great to recognise what we've achieved as a species. And
| maybe the arc of history has historically bent towards justice.
|
| What's different about this moment in time versus any other in
| human history is that we face not one but two known existential
| risks.
|
| Climate change is the sort of knotty long-term vs short-term,
| private vs public, incentives problem that we as a species excel
| at fucking up.
|
| In addition to that, we have a new cold war and the proliferation
| of nuclear weapons to states that haven't previously had them and
| have different ideas about using them. If you've read any
| accounts of nuclear near-misses from the last Cold War, you'll
| know that "there was never any real danger" is the wrong
| conclusion to draw.
|
| Respectfully, I don't understand the case for optimism at all.
| The fact that the vast majority of people are good (and I believe
| that they are) has little bearing on it.
| 8note wrote:
| To which countries that have different idea about using them?
| So far there's only two camps - the US who has used them on
| civilians on purpose, and everyone else who have not used them.
|
| Most countries aiming for them want them to prevent
| American(and maybe Russian ones too now) invasions like what
| happened in Iraq.
| xupybd wrote:
| It was the same with the last cold war. They were convinced
| over population would destroy the earth and Russia and America
| would start throwing Nukes around.
| randcraw wrote:
| Unfortunately, the worst days of the cold war were
| appreciably less likely than we are now to immolate all of
| mankind. In 1963, the two nations capable of global
| annihilation were run by "company men" who acted with caution
| and tons of input from myriad experts who knew the real cost
| of global war all too well. Those bureaucrats understood that
| their rash act would end their "life at the top" in a
| heartbeat, even if they survived nuclear armageddon. But
| today's strongmen/ dictators who control nuclear weapons have
| shown far less cluefulness or concern than their forebears
| for the very plausible dangers of committing a single stupid
| blunder that could end life on Earth. Hard to be upbeat given
| that, regardless of appeals to rational technical optimism.
| xupybd wrote:
| There are more players now but I don't think the cold war
| Soviets were as stable as you're arguing here.
|
| We've had mad men with nuke since we've had nukes. The more
| time we spend in that situation the higher the chances
| someone uses them but I think we're far safer now than
| times such as the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviets had
| their nukes on a dead man switch. That was insane and could
| have killed billions accidentally.
| [deleted]
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| Realism is what we need, how can all of those "optimists" be so
| foolish?
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