My Semester with the Snowflakes • Hacker News Board

Re: My Semester with the Snowflakes

#51

Post by sneak » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

beachy wrote: post #30

sneak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what percentage of the United States, due to time commitments related to family and work, get to spend time/immersion in groups other than their facebook/instagram tribe and television/radio broadcasters. My hunch is that it’s pretty low.

If you are part of an enormous tribe comprising virtually half the country, made up of people who think like you and more or less share your views, why would you hang out with the other tribe?

I don’t think either of these tribes comprise “virtually half the country” or even an approximation thereof.

Re: My Semester with the Snowflakes

#52

Post by mirimir » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

sysbin wrote: post #49

gfodor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the massive amount of effort, comparatively, between the effort going on and the conversation around mitigating the risk of climate change, and the risk of the flamzboo event, which is destined to quickly destroy humanity in the next decade. I can't call it something other than the flamzboo event, since we don't know what it is. The clearest picture one can have of what this event potentially is is by consid…

I don't think I can agree. Sure, something like the plague or an asteroid impact has considerable unknowns and thus considered unfixable/dangerous/worrisome. My scepticism is from observing society, seeing tremendous problems never fixed and when people with authority are aware of it. I think greed, selfishness and people truly inconsiderate happens on a greater scale than what we imagine with factoring into as an is…

> I assume it will be too late, before people start being truly effected and to the point they act on something other than promoting public awareness.

That's all too likely. I've been following this for decades. Back in the 80s, what we're seeing now -- disappearing glaciers, far less ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, thawing permafrost, tropical diseases moving poleward, etc -- would have been perceived as catastrophic. But now it's largely ignored by the majority.

> I've been living a lifestyle where I always walk to work & back. I don't own a car ...

I was like that for decades. Now I don't care so much. Because it has basically accomplished nothing.

> ... and I somewhat imagine similar steps need to be taken on a larger scale.

For sure. And far more. But the US is screwed, after decades of suburbanization.

> I'm doubtful people will go from being knowledgable to acting.

Enough people will act enough only when it's truly too late. It's just human nature. We deal with emergencies well. But for slowly moving threats, not so much.

> I have less faith on corporations and laws changing so they must act if they even care about being fined.

Corporations exist to make money. If the climate goes to hell, they'll just make money dealing with that.

Re: My Semester with the Snowflakes

#53

Post by luord » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:31 AM UTC

> Later at some point during the day, a young student placed a glove with red paint on it on one of the flags as she wanted to demonstrate her displeasure with something…I’m not quite sure what.

> These hardworking kids are very kind and thoughtful. A far cry from the picture that is often painted of them.

I'm... Confused, to say the least. In fact, those two paragraphs encapsulate my confusion at the post in general.

Re: My Semester with the Snowflakes

#54

Post by gfodor » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 7:04 AM UTC

sysbin wrote: post #49

gfodor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the massive amount of effort, comparatively, between the effort going on and the conversation around mitigating the risk of climate change, and the risk of the flamzboo event, which is destined to quickly destroy humanity in the next decade. I can't call it something other than the flamzboo event, since we don't know what it is. The clearest picture one can have of what this event potentially is is by consid…

I don't think I can agree. Sure, something like the plague or an asteroid impact has considerable unknowns and thus considered unfixable/dangerous/worrisome. My scepticism is from observing society, seeing tremendous problems never fixed and when people with authority are aware of it. I think greed, selfishness and people truly inconsiderate happens on a greater scale than what we imagine with factoring into as an is…

Global warming will be fixed easily if/when people stop thinking the solution is to drag humanity backwards, instead of pushing humanity forwards.

To think that we've somehow reached the peak of our ability to safely consume energy and resources when we haven't even left our home planet is an extremely short sighted perspective. In 1000 years our ancestors will laugh at those who thought that somehow, after thousands of years of advancement, humanity had found its insurmountable wall to more growth and consumption of the universes' infinite resources in the humble year of 2019 due to a mis-calculation regarding the carbon emissions due to the parochial method used at the time for generating power. It's patently absurd if you take a longer perspective. If we don't survive 1000 years, it surely will not be due to our collective failure to solve this problem.

The more people continue to think that if we just convince people to give up their modern lifestyle we'll solve the problem, the longer the problem will persist.

Instead, we should be striving not to solve global warming as a first order concern, but develop technologies that will radically improve the lives of all people, and solve global warming as one of their side effects.

Re: My Semester with the Snowflakes

#55

Post by me_me_me » Fri, Jan 03, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #45

siquick wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no mention of the elephant in the room - climate change. It feels like we're already seeing it here in Sydney, Australia. We've had dangerously low air quality from bush fires for the last 1.5 months and we now have a serious water shortage. I've been accepting of climate change up until recently - now I'm genuinely worried about the future here.

Climate change is a known problem. Known problems will be solved, since they can be measured and people are (or in this case, will soon be) incentivized to solve them. Climate change is a huge challenge but not one I particularly worry about since it exists in humanity’s collective consciousness as an idea. It’s unknown problems you should worry about, that are unnamable because they are unpredictable and unknowable…

The problem with this thinking is the framing.

The climate change is like going out to desert. The further you go out the hotter and harsher environment and once its too dangerous for you its not enough to stop going forward, but you need to walk all the way back home before you are safe.

The CO2 and others are in the air already causing all weather changes, its not enough to go carbon neutral to stop it. To survive we need to go significantly negative to cut out greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

And that the biggest problem.