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Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

bbc.com

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Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#61

Post by drivebycomment »

scsilver wrote: post #42
flatline wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything I think the global pandemic has shown how unprepared we are to come together globally and utilize technology to solve hard problems. Maybe something good will come from all of this in that direction and we will learn from our mistakes.

Has Nature even been so forgiving?

No. Life is a constant struggle against the encroaching entropy and I suspect keeping civilization going will never get easier.

That said, coronavirus is not even close to being a threat to human civilization. Compare this to 1918 Spanish flu and the contrast can't be clearer. Despite enormous growth in human population and much higher connectivity, we are managing global death toll an order of magnitude lower. We absolutely can be much better but we can't ignore 100 years of progress either.

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#62

Post by libraryofbabel »

TMWNN wrote: post #55
libraryofbabel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh sure. Technology is neither good, nor bad, nor is it neutral.

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#63

Post by Epskampie »

peteretep wrote: post #20
dougmwne wrote: post #7

I think no. We are in a boring, prosperous, stable time with an overactive media. The virus is bad, but it will pass and medical science will save many millions. The plague of Justinian, this is not. Hope I'm not wrong about that, at any rate.

I worry that we’re at a point at which technology can permanently entrench power in the hands of the few, and that the world’s largest democracy is currently in thrall to people who would like to see that happen.

India is in thrall?

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#64

Post by Auracle »

grawprog wrote: post #53
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #18

I'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.g…

Sperm counts keep dropping, and it very well may be due to chemicals that mess with our hormones and genetics.

I don’t know why it isn’t talked about more. There has been a significant drop and at the current rate it won’t be too long until the average man is considered essentially infertile.

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#65

Post by radus »

drewcoo wrote: post #58
flexie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are also known unknown hinges.

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#66

Post by th-ai »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #49
daliusd wrote: post #32

Earlier 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…

Haber-Bosch may be disrupting billions year old nitrogen cycle, which would qualify as 'hinge' for earth history.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-29/nitrogen-crisi...

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#67

Post by mikewarot »

Yes, we have been since 1945, when the first persistent existential threat we created ourselves first arose... Nuclear Weapons. Now, we have the added threat of Genetic Engineering, the second existential threat we created ourselves.

All of our Institutions have an embedded growth obligation they haven't been able to meet since the 1960s, which lead to their being run by people willing to fudge the truth to keep the illusion of competence and power going.

We're on the edge of the abyss... and many people don't even realize it.

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#68

Post by drivebycomment »

ralusek wrote: post #9

I didn't read the article, but the answer is emphatically yes. We are rubbing up against the reality that most humans are less and less valuable to other humans such that they are basically valueless, and their market value diminishes accordingly, and that technological advances and market efficiencies are actually eliminating scarcity within certain arenas. We have to grapple with the fact that most humans offer alm…

> We are rubbing up against the reality that most humans are less and less valuable to other humans such that they are basically valueless,

By what standard are we "valuing humans less" ? This seems to fly against the facts.

Global death from almost all causes have gone down.

e.g. "Battle" related death - which is the most clear evidence of valuing human life less than political gains have dramatically fallen:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/battle-related-deaths-in-...

Global life expectancy is higher than ever in the history of human civilization and still rising:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy

Global poverty rate has been dropping dramatically and steadily:

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

Global education spending has been going up.

Air pollution has been going down, steadily and dramatically:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-deaths-indoor-pollu...

Tell me. In what way are we valuing human less ?

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#69

Post by Lammy »

What am I supposed to think BBC wants for me (from me?) when this already-ominously-worded page popped into view with three additional scary headlines pre-loaded in my eye-line so I've read them before I can even choose not to.

"You may also like: - Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? - The perils of short-termism: Civilisation’s greatest threat. - The greatest long-term threats facing humanity."

I know even discount supermarkets put their highest-converting items at eye-level on the shelves across, so I'm sure the same considerations go into news media and the placement isn't an accident. I remember Facebook's research project inserting more-positive or more-negative stories to a person's personalized News Feed yo successfully influence their mood in that direction. The ability for Facebook or anyone to do such a study makes me pretty confident BBC could detect three "negative" wordings if they hadn't directly paid somebody to write them this way, and they could avoid say I'll "like" them so a momentary positive hits first to maximize my emotional whiplash.

Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

#70

Post by peteretep »

Epskampie wrote: post #63
peteretep wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry that we’re at a point at which technology can permanently entrench power in the hands of the few, and that the world’s largest democracy is currently in thrall to people who would like to see that happen.

India is in thrall?

Isn’t it?
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