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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'?

#181

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #118
qubex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The millenary histories of the Egyptian and Chinese empires disagree. Yes, dynasties came and went, but those polities endured for thousands of years—indeed one could argue that the ongoing governance of China by the Communist Party is just the latest dynastic swing.

I'll have to read up on Egypt and pre-XX-century China. How oppressive were these dynasties typically? What did the life look like for a regular subject?

We'll probably never know, unfortunately. The literate classes in ancient societies rarely wrote about the lives of subsistence farmers, who were the vast majority of the population, so while some details can be reconstructed it's very hard to speculate about how oppressed a typical farmer would have felt.

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

#182

Post by bserge »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #171
bserge wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Unprecedented access to information; - Instant high fidelity communication and work/business; - Private and ever-cheaper space flight; - True automation (it's only the beginning of the 21st, I bet on automation hitting hard mid century); - AR/VR (which will likely become the escape of choice for much of the world later this century); - Renewable energy that most can afford (it's already realistic for everyone to be…

> - Renewable energy that most can afford (it's already realistic for everyone to be self-sufficient); I agree with your comment except this one. I don’t see anything that has come close to the benefits of fossil fuels, and I don’t see the political will to tax fossil fuels sufficiently to curb consumption sufficiently to curb climate change. Any reduction of fossil fuel use in developed countries with the luxury of…

I was talking more about solar and wind installations, as well as battery tech and the low power consumption of modern tools.

20-30 years ago, if you wanted a stable ~3KW supply, you needed a generator and diesel/petrol. Lights, computers, power tools consumed an immense amount of power compared to today.

Now you can have one turbine and several solar panels coupled with a battery bank and you have the same supply of electricity without burning anything. It can power your whole house and everything you own for decades.

I'm a fan of decentralized energy production, though.

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

#183

Post by newsbinator »

ogre_magi wrote: post #152
127 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change that can't be reversed, is not a hinge of history, it's the end of history.

This is such a small take. Climate change can absolutely be reversed by sufficiently determined technological and industrial civilization. The reason most climate activists don’t acknowledge that is because they don’t want it to be true. They prefer being noble doomsayers before the “ignorant sheep.” There are (expensive) geoengineering projects that would give humans direct control over global temperature.

What it would take to move the Earth slightly further away from the sun, to offset that 4º ~ 8º spike?

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

#184

Post by umvi »

cblconfederate wrote: post #93

I wonder what percentage of people want to see huge historical changes at this point. I certainly feel that the past decades were too stable, then stagnant, and it feels like covid is accelerating the moves considerably. If anything, i want more of it

So in other words, you are tired of "move slow and preserve things" and want more "move fast and break things"

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

#185

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

127 wrote: post #126
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…

Climate change that can't be reversed, is not a hinge of history, it's the end of history.

I'd like to understand this perspective. The predictions I've seen, even for a worse case scenario, would result in huge levels of sea rise inundating coastal areas, large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable for humans, massive ocean die offs, climate-change induced wars, etc.

This would quite obviously result in death and misery for billions (again, this is the worst case scenario), but I haven't seen any evidence that the Earth will become fundamentally uninhabitable a la Venus.

So it would be a disaster in any sense of the word, but I don't see how it would become a humanity-ending event. I'd like to understand why people think otherwise.

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

#186

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

revax wrote: post #173
Udik wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality that science shows is far worse than what has permeated mainstream culture I'm really curious where did you get this information from. I suppose it must not be popular or mainstream media, because of course msm telling you that science shows a worse reality than msm is a contradiction. So does which primary literature does it come from?

Mainly from the IPCC reports.

Maybe it's a different experience for you, but the IPCC reports are much better than what's permeated mainstream culture around me. I consistently see people saying that we've gotta stop having children, that the Earth can't support modern industrial civilization, that in 100 years we won't be able to grow enough food and half the planet will starve. The IPCC reports don't suggest anything nearly this bad.

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

#187

Post by leetcrew »

KineticLensman wrote: post #180
lrem wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid democracies are inherently unstable. Athenian lasted 200 years and got swallowed up by Macedonian autocracy. Roman lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the army. Polish lasted 350 years and the parliament voted to allow neighbouring empires to divide the country. The US is at 250 years and people are seriously worried about it devolving into either Gilead or Cyberpunk any moment now.

> Roman lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the army Byzantium (and the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire) disagrees [0]. They lasted until 1453 - incidentally only 50 years before Columbus sailed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire

in context, I think they are referring to the republic.

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

#188

Post by [deleted] »

Udik wrote: post #144
tsimionescu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle you are right, but this is one case where you have it backwards. The reality that science shows is far worse than what has permeated mainstream culture, on the web or otherwise. The size of the climate disaster, and the urgent need for radical changes in the global economy, simply can't be overstated right now. Unfortunately, the amount of status quo propaganda, especially in the US, is also staggering.…

> The reality that science shows is far worse than what has permeated mainstream culture I'm really curious where did you get this information from. I suppose it must not be popular or mainstream media, because of course msm telling you that science shows a worse reality than msm is a contradiction. So does which primary literature does it come from?

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #180
lrem wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid democracies are inherently unstable. Athenian lasted 200 years and got swallowed up by Macedonian autocracy. Roman lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the army. Polish lasted 350 years and the parliament voted to allow neighbouring empires to divide the country. The US is at 250 years and people are seriously worried about it devolving into either Gilead or Cyberpunk any moment now.

> Roman lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the army Byzantium (and the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire) disagrees [0]. They lasted until 1453 - incidentally only 50 years before Columbus sailed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire

The parent is talking about the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire and its continuation the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire were not democracies.

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

#190

Post by username90 »

Thought experiment: Lets say you live the life of a random human throughout all time, both past and future. That is one data point, but one data point can tell us quite a lot still. So lets say you start your life, and you notice that the human population had just expanded exponentially to 100 times what it usually was, what would you assume will happen in the future?

If the future will hold millions of years with humanity prospering on earth with roughly current population number then picking a human born today is very small, it is like winning the lottery.

If humanity expands quadratically to other solar systems then the chance of being born today is basically none.

The most likely scenario would be that human population is currently at its peak and the population will within not that many generations dwindle down to almost nothing and probably go extinct.

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