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‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

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Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#111

Post by DennisP »

dorgo wrote: post #105
andrepd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause of all of this: an economic system predicated on the notion of growth . Unrestrained greed, sole focus on maximization of profit, and unlimited growth. It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did last year, no, you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. Doesn't matter if you're mining the earth bare, generating millions of tons of garbage, optimising for inferior products that break…

>"the only people who believe in infinite growth on a finite planet are madmen and economists" There are 10 more planets in the neighbourhood. And even more some lightyears away..

I used to base a lot of hope on things like asteroid mining and solar power satellites, but we frittered away the decades and now I'm worried it's too late for that stuff to save us.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#112

Post by dorgo »

kiliantics wrote: post #81
AJRF wrote: post #14

"I’ve been thinking about 12 Monkeys a lot lately. It seems, these days, as though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know it." This feels a little unsubstantiated. Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This pessimism is toxic and unrealistic.

> Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This feels a little unsubstantiated. Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today. Species extinction rates have never been higher than today. There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical about the future.

>Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today

Wealth increased to an extent that inequality little matters. If homeless beggars have smartphones with access to unlimited knowledge, enough to eat and access to medical treatment superior to everything before, how do they compare to the kings of the past?

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#113

Post by DennisP »

platz wrote: post #88
kiliantics wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between growing enough food to have enough to eat plus some reserves and buying a new smartphone every year, a new car every few years, new clothes every month, etc.

So are you going to stop accumulating wealth in your own life and just sustain at your current level based on your basic bodily needs?

I don't know about you but my current level covers a lot more than my basic bodily needs. I'd love to trade any future wealth increases for a healthy planet.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#114

Post by platz »

DennisP wrote: post #113
platz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you going to stop accumulating wealth in your own life and just sustain at your current level based on your basic bodily needs?

I don't know about you but my current level covers a lot more than my basic bodily needs. I'd love to trade any future wealth increases for a healthy planet.

So you're saying this is a tragedy of the commons, principal-agent scenario then?

You will continue to accumulate unless everyone else stops accumulating.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#115

Post by nonbel »

DennisP wrote: post #110
nonbel wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Do your own homework." Sorry, but both claims I followed to original research articles in this thread did not contain the supposed info. I gave you guys another chance to convince someone, even giving explicit instructions and an example of the format, and instead I walk away thinking the people concerned about this don't actually know what they are talking about. First, was that if things continue apace large are…

IPCC's business-as-usual scenario presents a range. You were correct that 4C is about the median but 6.4C is the upper end: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm... That's by the end of the century, not the highest it will ever go. And honestly, I hope you're not going to base your views on what links a couple jokers on HN have handy. Read books with real references or by actual scientists. We…

> "6.4C is the upper end"

Upper end is going to be defined arbitrarily, but either way its still less than the 7 degrees and 11-12 degrees considered in the primary source.

> "Read books with real references or by actual scientists"

Books are going to be secondary sources, no one really puts primary research into them and hasn't for about a century. The primary research is almost all available online.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#116

Post by dnautics »

taeric wrote: post #19
Thaxll wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing for that movie is he couldn't save humanity by going back in time.

I thought it was that he couldn't prevent the catastrophe. It is greatly implied that he found the cause and set the future scientists up to get a direct sample of what caused things, possibly reversing it in their time. What he couldn't do, was get what he wanted. He couldn't save his love, as she was of that time, and it was doomed.

Part of this is because he had proven that you could bring back a useful biological sample, by eating a spider in the early parts of the movie

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#117

Post by ta_egdhs »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #56
ta_egdhs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk why this is downvoted. the 90s is the period between the end of the cold war and the start of the war on terror. its the only time in living memory where there was no enemy. 9/11 absolutely changed the country. it was the start of militarized police, nationalistic displays, and 24/7 fear that have all been normalized today. Perhaps the terrorists didn't win (Bin Laden is dead and the house of Saud still stands) b…

Perhaps this is far too controversial a view for HN, and for many Americans, we'll see. The terrorists absolutely won. Least that's my perception as a non-American. Your first mistake was legitimising them as "the enemy" When the IRA were bombing Docklands, Manchester or Birmingham pubs we'd make a poor taste joke the next morning, walk past the wreckage and forget about it the day after that. When the Baader Meinhof…

I think you missed my point when I said "the terrorist didn't win but we certainly lost".

Everything you say about how we've lost our identity, optimism, and freedom is exactly what I meant by "we certainly lost". I agree with that 100%.

But none of these things were the goal of al quida. AQ doesn't win by virtue of what we've lost. AQ doesn't care that we turn ourselves into a police state. "They hate our freedoms" is a propaganda line we told ourselves. The goal of AQ was to end the rule of secular governments on the Arabian peninsula (namely the Saudi's) and they attacked the US precisely because we prop up the Saudi's. 17 years later we're still backing the Saudi's. Bin Laden is dead. An order of magnitude more death has been unleashed in the Muslim world than what was released on America on 9/11. 9/11 was ultimately massively counterproductive to the goals of AQ. The terrorists didn't win.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#118

Post by PhasmaFelis »

nonbel wrote: post #61
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All right! https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/india-climate-chang... https://qz.com/india/1049730/heatwaves-could-turn-parts-of-i... https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/africa/sudan-climate-change/i... I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided. Did you really think I was just making up lies, and…

> "All right!" It isnt exceptional to ask for a source, no need for sarcasm. > "I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided." There was nothing hostile about it, just facts. Making those posts without sources is worse than useless if your goal is really to convince people you are correct. > "Did you…

> There was nothing hostile about it, just facts.

You said I was just like a crazy person ranting on a street corner. If you didn't intend to sound hostile, you did a very poor job of communicating.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#119

Post by nonbel »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #118
nonbel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "All right!" It isnt exceptional to ask for a source, no need for sarcasm. > "I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided." There was nothing hostile about it, just facts. Making those posts without sources is worse than useless if your goal is really to convince people you are correct. > "Did you…

> There was nothing hostile about it, just facts. You said I was just like a crazy person ranting on a street corner. If you didn't intend to sound hostile, you did a very poor job of communicating.

People have told me similar about other topics and I learned from it. I interpreted it as a fact about how just claiming something is wrong appears to some people. The doomsday aspect definately accentuates it though.

Re: ‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

#120

Post by cf498 »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #94
cf498 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear holocaust would have been caused and was prevented by just a few people. It would have been an action with a direct result. We could and did also just stop with the nonsense. We dont have that option for climate change. We have a worsening situation and no realistic option to stop or even reverse things. Differently put, nuclear holocaust was a threat, climate change an active process.

We have a worsening situation and no realistic option to stop or even reverse things. I think this is where we probably disagree. I think things are going to get pretty bad, and many will needlessly suffer and die, but we'll switch to renewables and start doing large-scale geoengineering in the 2030s or 2040s to reverse some of the damaging effects of climate change and eventually stabilize things. Likely not before…

>It's also possible that sometime in the next decade, all the nations of the world join some kind of super Paris agreement, but I'm not hopeful.

It is to late for any meaningful change of heart to revert things. There is no option of everyone realizing it was a mistake and fixing it in ten or twenty years. We are currently at the possibility of mitigating the continuously worsening effects of climate change and we are not even able to not increase the degree of our negative impact every year. Instead we are still showing growth in the area.

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