Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

I can think of two major things which make me feel good about the future -

1) Medicine continues to do amazing things. I'm kinda amazed at how quickly everyone forgot about how awesome the mRNA vaccines are. Even if they didn't completely stop Covid, the tech is brimming with potential; now we just need to iterate on the social systems to strike the balance between speed and safety, and the incentives are pointing in the right direction. Even before the mRNA stuff, think of monoclonal antibodies, which are effectively treating all kinds of horrible diseases like autoimmunity. And for even one more example, the relatively recent discovery that stomach ulcers could be treat with antibiotics. We keep making huge strides in eliminating pretty useless suffering.

2) I see signs of self-correction in some of the social pathologies caused by the internet and social media, even if it's sometimes unintentional and even crass. For example, I think doomscrolling is a horrifying mental pathology, but now there's the pithy internet phrase "go outside and touch grass". While this is insulting in the usual blunt internet-ey way, it actually seems like good and appropriate advice :p

As a kind of corollary to this, I can't put my finger on it precisely, but I feel like there's a younger generation coming up which is strangely really wholesome and less crass and cynical than the last several cohorts. It makes me wonder if perhaps they're somehow inoculated against the worst of the generally negative internet attitude, having completely grown up with it. I could just be imagining it, of course.

I am optimistic about the future especially the US. We have finally abolished Roe and now states can end the barbaric, dehumanizing, and satanic practice of murdering our own children out of our own selfishness. In 50-100 years, people will look back on abortion the same way we look back at slavery. We will never know the inventions and discoveries that we have lost with the millions and millions of murdered babies over the past 50 years.

People are pushing back on academic and progressive sponsored child abuse coming from transgender propaganda and bullying.

On a more personal level. God is good, I have a loving wife, four beautiful children with more coming soon, God willing, a supportive family, a great parish, many wonderful friends, a great job, and many other things to be grateful for.

In what universe is being happy about the prospect of human extinction considered "perfectly healthy" ?

It would look a lot more like Rawandan genocide.

What makes me optimistic - There's time and space to get this right

This is the same answer I used in the other thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32101753

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As a civilization, we're like a trust fund kid, blowing through our inheritance in a wild spending spree. The wealth? A planetwide pool of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels.

We're so used to this wealth, we can't even contemplate what would happen if the balance ran down to zero. Our entire civilization is blind to the nature of our energy sources, and their use in making all of the things we use on a daily basis, including our food.

It's so entrenched, that I struggle to think of a metaphor to use that will get past the default stance here of "yeah, but your example is wrong because"

The amount of Energy Returned On Investment (EROI) used to be 100:1 prior to WWII in the US, we're now down to 15:1. The last civilization wide kicking of the can down the road has already happened

We're fracking the source rocks that would otherwise lead to conventional oil in millions of years. These wells decline at 40% per year. Once we stop drilling them, because the EROI gets too low, there's no new oil left.

We need to take advantage of this second chance, to wake up, and figure out better sources of energy and a way of making them work. The days of an always on grid with a constant fixed price of electricity, regardless of time of day, weather, etc.. are at an end.

We've got a generation to do this, I'd rather we make use of the wealth we have, rather than see it all burned up, and watching billions die in "The Great Simplification" that results as we no longer have the energy to burn to keep everyone not involved in farming fed.

If we gather a community of purpose, who all acknowledge the situation, and work to fix it, we can have an amazing future, instead of collapse.