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Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

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

#211

Post by username90 »

fractaled wrote: post #202
username90 wrote: post #190

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 hu…

I don't think this logic applies to the demographics of today. The total number of humans to have ever lived is calculated to be ~105 billion. So assuming you're applying that logic to today, you're one of the most recent ~7%, which doesn't seem that remarkable -- at least not to the point of assuming fatalistic scenarios.

If humanity continues like this with no new discoveries then in ten million years we would have 200 million per year * 10 million years = 2 quadrillion people. Getting a human who lived at the start of that peak is very improbable.

But you are right, civilization lasting another few thousand years isn't that improbable. Just that it is strange that it would last a thousand years but not a million, seems like humanity should have figured out how to stabilize things if civlization lasts that long.

Edit: Or maybe our ultimate downfall will just be lack of evolutionary pressure so at some point nobody can sustain civlization. That wouldn't happen in a thousand years but a million years is definitely enough.

Edit2: Or we solve our lifespan issue very soon and people no longer die, so people also no longer can procreate or they would exhaust available resources.

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

#212

Post by mistermann »

chippy wrote: post #91

For those who would like to delve a bit deeper into the Hinge of History, this is the link from the article and is well worth the read. It was submitted here 2 days ago and got zero points! https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XXLf6FmWujkxna3E6/... Its often a human mistake to think that right now is the most important time ever because it is literally the moment we are in. With the perspective of history and wi…

> Its often a human mistake to think that right now is the most important time ever because it is literally the moment we are in. With the perspective of history and with the imagination for the future you can start to see how what we think is the most urgent things maybe not so, and you can see how small changes elsewhere might be the best thing for the future.

I agree. Another form of cognition error is our tendency to conceptualize things in Boolean terms, such as whether:

- now is the "most important time ever" (and therefore we should seriously consider doing something about it), or it isn't (and therefore no action is required)

or

- now is plausibly an extremely important time (and therefore we should should seriously consider doing something about it)

On its face, this distinction may seem excessively pedantic and trivial, and it very well may be, but it also very well may not be.

I believe that if one can manage to practice this sort of thinking skilfully, that it can help inoculate one from confusing heuristic predictions about reality, with objective reality itself (which seems to be an extremely common behavior regardless of internet forum).

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

#213

Post by BurningFrog »

tsimionescu wrote: post #106
BurningFrog wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the things you need to be careful about on the net, predictions of climate doom are definitely one! Know that doom predictions, being very emotionally appealing, travel around the world before science can get its shoes on.

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...

Just saying that means nothing without a reference to this alleged science.

Nothing!

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

#214

Post by multiplegeorges »

dwiel wrote: post #191
lotsofpulp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reform that would make any difference is one that would cause lower consumption of fossil fuels, i.e. a large tax on fossil fuels. It would especially negatively impact “middle America”, as it would cause prices for everything to rise, and hence they would be forced to consume less (which is the goal), and hence it wouldn’t be palatable. Anything short of forcing people to consume less now is pie in the sky…

Not necessarily. Tax carbon heavily and then redistribute the tax equally among all citizens. Anyone using above average carbon net pays into the system, anyone using below average gets a net payout. Then markets, our most advanced coordination/optimization method can be utilized to figure out how to reduce our carbon emissions.

Exactly right, almost all carbon tax proposals include a divident that is redistributed to people to offset the new charges.

The majority of people end up getting more back than they are taxed.

The problem is the perception problem at the gas pump or heating bill.

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

#215

Post by drivebycomment »

drivebycomment wrote: post #68
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:…

Let me put more concrete, recent evidences that we value human life more, not less.

Black lives matter.

By any standard, it's clear racial discrimination has gotten better over the years (it's still nowhere near good enough, but better than in the past, even only by small relative amount), as there's no doubt police brutality has been worse in the past. But why are we outraging now ? Each single death now matters more now, because each injustice has much higher chance of getting broadcast and shared widely. What would have been ignored and silently covered up are now seeing the eyes of the world, and the direct consequence of that is the enormous movement.

New Tsunami Sea Wall in Japan.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/mar/09/after-... https://www.wired.com/story/photo-gallery-japan-seawalls/

Whether you agree that's a good idea or not, you can't deny the fact that now Japan is spending tremendous amount of money to protect the lives of relatively small number of people, and it had a popular support in Japan, meaning Japanese were more than happy to spend tons of money to protect their fellow citizens.

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

#216

Post by BurningFrog »

WalterBright wrote: post #117
BurningFrog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WW1 is a very good candidate. It created the Soviet Union and Hitler and pretty much all of history since. It's also extra interesting, because if Gavrilo Princip hadn't randomly ran into the Archduke's car, history might have turned out very differently.

There would have just been another spark for WW1.

Maybe. It is truly unknowable.

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

#217

Post by ByteJockey »

Fricken wrote: post #163
ogre_magi wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe climate change could be by a sufficiently determined technological and industrial civilization, if there was some such thing. Climate change could also be solved by a magical flying rabbit, if there was some such thing.

They aren't talking about sufficiently advanced technology (magic). They're talking about things we can already do, but have serious trade offs.

The most common suggestion is to add particles to the atmosphere that reflect sunlight. I think sulfur was first proposed, but I think study of calcium carbonate has been ongoing to avoid the ocean acidification issues that sulfur presents.

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

#218

Post by thepangolino »

fn1 wrote: post #25
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…

> 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…

I’m pretty sure there’s studies showing we could drop global temperatures by about 2°C right now with cloud seeding at a cost of a couple billion USD a year.

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

#219

Post by lotsofpulp »

dwiel wrote: post #191
lotsofpulp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reform that would make any difference is one that would cause lower consumption of fossil fuels, i.e. a large tax on fossil fuels. It would especially negatively impact “middle America”, as it would cause prices for everything to rise, and hence they would be forced to consume less (which is the goal), and hence it wouldn’t be palatable. Anything short of forcing people to consume less now is pie in the sky…

Not necessarily. Tax carbon heavily and then redistribute the tax equally among all citizens. Anyone using above average carbon net pays into the system, anyone using below average gets a net payout. Then markets, our most advanced coordination/optimization method can be utilized to figure out how to reduce our carbon emissions.

The goal is to reduce total use of carbon based fuel sources, not just redistribute wealth.

While I agree that redistributing wealth should also be a goal, any solution that doesn’t lower total consumption is useless, so the pain of less consumption would be felt by anyone consumer more than average (which is probably everyone in the developed world).

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

#220

Post by ookookookook »

renewiltord wrote: post #85
fn1 wrote: post #25

Earlier 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…

You will never do this easily. If I run a developing nation there is absolutely no way I accept that you, a developed nation with a century of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, will merely accept a reduction of your annual emissions. I will pump as much CO2 as necessary to raise my population into prosperity and until you have taken out enough GHG to match my historic emissions you're going to have to either take me w…

Guns and bombs it is, then.
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