Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of the US and Brazil, I have been really impressed by the ability of people to come together and deal with a massive collective action problem. If anything, it has shown that people have the capacity to pull together when they need to.
> Outside of the US and Brazil Have you seen how things are looking in the UK, France, and Spain right now?
Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
51–60 of 315 posts
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#52I'm surprised none of the responses here are discussing climate change. Unlike other concerns, higher average global temps are baked in for centuries, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today (which, obviously, is not happening). I put in a "yes" vote for the hinge of history simple due to the fact that our inability to drastically restructure our economy today will severely negativity affect billions in…
> Keeping global warming below 2°C is a pipe dream I think/hope it's possible by a war-mobilization type of effort, where industries start working together for the goal. We not only have to stop all emissions to zero, but should probably start removing co2 from the atmosphere as well: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/carbon-dioxide-remov... https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/wanna-limit-global-w... But th…
Sulfur dioxide from a supervolcano eruption would ironically not be considered a disaster if it were to reflect sunlight for a few years.
Since we cannot arrange for a supervolcano yet, we could purposely emit sulfur from ships and existing smoke stacks. But wouldn't this cause acid rain eventually? Crops would receive less sun. Fictional remedy to fight solar-powered machines in "the Matrix" - global solar grids would have reduced input.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#53I'm surprised none of the responses here are discussing climate change. Unlike other concerns, higher average global temps are baked in for centuries, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today (which, obviously, is not happening). I put in a "yes" vote for the hinge of history simple due to the fact that our inability to drastically restructure our economy today will severely negativity affect billions in…
I'm not sure why the focus has been put onto greenhouse emissions and CO2 in general.
If there's any direct threat to the planet, it's insane amount of industrial waste entering the environment daily that gets downplayed in this ridiculous song and dance about CO2.
https://publicintegrity.org/environment/industrial-waste-pol...
https://www.buschsystems.com/resource-center/page/why-indust...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5699236/
Industrial waste poisons drinking water, destroys the oceans and their ecosystems, poisons the land and our food.
Everyone's busy worrying about how much CO2's being produced, very few people seem to be worried about what kind of mysterious proprietary petro derived chemicals are being pumped into rivers, lakes, the ocean. Few people seem to sorry that groundwater and resevoirs are contaminated by agricultural runoff, runoff from factories, manufacturing plants, chemical plants, oil refineries, fracking operations.
Every day, thousands of tons of carcinogenic, toxic, environmentally altering chemicals are relaeased into the environment doing damage we don't even understand yet.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#54Sure, in a timeline that includes energy becoming matter and biogenesis and complex life evolving, our era is going to turn out to be uniquely influential.
I don’t think the word hubris does justice to this line of thinking.
Edited to add: the “hinge” people think they can make out is likely just an illusion caused by the phenomena known as the present. Reminds me of Kevin Kelly’s essay “The singularity is always near”: https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/
I’m also amazed at how good Betteridge’s Law actually is in practice, considering it’s meant to be a joke and not a reliable tool for finding the truth.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO iPhone (or smartphones) are under valued. Yes, they do not give you more (like antibiotics give more life or nuclear more energy) but they absolutely help you to lose less time (e.g. navigation that helps you to avoid traffic jams and get lost in unknown place). That replicated in billions of people changes the world’s pace drastically.
To be clear, I’m not saying the iPhone isn’t useful or valuable. It just simply does not compare to the key technologies of the 20th century in terms of transforming the basic parameters of human life on earth. My favorite example is the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and producing synthetic fertilizer (invented 1910). Surely a far more “undervalued” technology than the iPhone! It enabled us to scale up glob…
>My favorite example is the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and producing synthetic fertilizer (invented 1910). Surely a far more “undervalued” technology than the iPhone! It enabled us to scale up global food production to feed at least an extra 3.5 billion people who otherwise would never have been born, or would have starved.
It also kept Germany going in WW1 far longer than otherwise, by compensating for blockades on saltpeter for explosives.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Keeping global warming below 2°C is a pipe dream I think/hope it's possible by a war-mobilization type of effort, where industries start working together for the goal. We not only have to stop all emissions to zero, but should probably start removing co2 from the atmosphere as well: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/carbon-dioxide-remov... https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/wanna-limit-global-w... But th…
Sulfur dioxide from a supervolcano eruption would ironically not be considered a disaster if it were to reflect sunlight for a few years. Since we cannot arrange for a supervolcano yet, we could purposely emit sulfur from ships and existing smoke stacks. But wouldn't this cause acid rain eventually? Crops would receive less sun. Fictional remedy to fight solar-powered machines in "the Matrix" - global solar grids wou…
This sounds like the final episode of Dinosaurs (the muppet show). Last line was 'we cant get extinct we have been around for a 150 million years..'.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#57I think 2015 was the peak of human civilization, and it's been going downhill ever since.
It seems like with climate change and loss of biodiversity the next 3 decades will see a steep decline in world wide stability.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#58I'd argue the cold war was closer to the 'hinge of history'. In fact on this very day 9/26 in 1983, a not very well known soviet lieutenant colonel prevented what would very likely have been all out atomic war. In the grand scheme of things, everything that happened this year is probably minor in comparison to Petrov's decision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
True. But very few people knew on September 26, 1986. There could be equally large catastrophes avoided today that we don’t know about
There are known hinges and unknown hinges?
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO iPhone (or smartphones) are under valued. Yes, they do not give you more (like antibiotics give more life or nuclear more energy) but they absolutely help you to lose less time (e.g. navigation that helps you to avoid traffic jams and get lost in unknown place). That replicated in billions of people changes the world’s pace drastically.
To be clear, I’m not saying the iPhone isn’t useful or valuable. It just simply does not compare to the key technologies of the 20th century in terms of transforming the basic parameters of human life on earth. My favorite example is the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and producing synthetic fertilizer (invented 1910). Surely a far more “undervalued” technology than the iPhone! It enabled us to scale up glob…
Lets also add vaccines to that. I also wish there were a process like Haber Bosch for phosporic fertilizer (of course it cant, since phospor is not in any quantity in the athmosphere)
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Outside of the US and Brazil Have you seen how things are looking in the UK, France, and Spain right now?
Or India. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/india-is-in-denia...
I forgot about India. Its lockdown was thought through very poorly and made the spread worse.