BBC, don't believe anything this pedophile institute says!
Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
251–260 of 315 posts
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The reality that science shows... Just saying that means nothing without a reference to this alleged science. Nothing!
I see where you're coming from but one doesn't need references to say that water is wet. This is a similar case. "Science" (people like you and me that looked into the matter, did experiments, asked critical questions, and presented their work) finding that we are causing the climate to change into something that is less favorable to humans than our current climate is abundantly clear to anyone who will either read t…
There is a huge difference between what I was responding to...
> The size of the climate disaster, and the urgent need for radical changes in the global economy, simply can't be overstated right now.
...and your take, which I fully agree with:
> "Science" (...) finding that we are causing the climate to change into something that is less favorable to humans than our current climate is abundantly clear to anyone
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 evid…
The current thought patterns that seem to be the dominant ones for the majority of ordinary people seem to assume that there are no feedback loops or tipping points. While the evidence from other planets directly contradicts this. Also with end of history, I didn't mean the end of the human race. Just the end of the current civilization and possibly written history. Another dark age, so to speak.
I wonder about this. As carbon we are now emitting must have been at one point in atmosphere? And at that point there was some sort of equilibrium. So could we really push it all to atmosphere again? And would that really lead to loop-back?
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#254I'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.
It's not very difficult to offer apocalyptic pronouncements like this; it's nice though if they can be accompanied by some hard evidence which has preferably not been cherry picked to fit an agenda.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#255Probably only true if we allow the “hinge” to be a process that spans several centuries, perhaps starting around 1800 with the beginnings of industrialization and gathering pace in the 20th century. If we look at the 21st century so far, it just hasn’t been... that interesting! Indeed some scholars of technological change (to take just one metric) actually think the pace of change has slowed. The 20th century gave us…
- 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…
I agree; life is easy and a little bit boring for more and more people in the 21st century, unless they specifically choose to do risky things. I think that is a very good thing. I also agree that the media tends to report on bad things and downplays progress. However, I think what is underreported is not the 21st century inventions you mention, which get media coverage, but rather deep long-term global health improvements that began in the 20th century and have been continuing since then: metrics like infant mortality, food security, life expectancy, the eradication of polio. A great source for this is: https://ourworldindata.org/
As for specific 21st century technologies, let’s take those you mention one by one:
> Unprecedented access to information;
Yes. Although this was the growth of the internet and the web, both late-20th century technologies.
> - Instant high fidelity communication and work/business;
Same as the first point.
> - Private and ever-cheaper space flight;
To do basically 20th-century things like putting satellites into orbit... but cheaper! I hope we do something genuinely new this century like going to Mars - but that’s some way off.
> - True automation (it's only the beginning of the 21st, I bet on automation hitting hard mid century);
You’ll need to be more specific but sounds like this isn’t here yet? I agree automation has been improving but again, it’s a long-term trend.
> - AR/VR (which will likely become the escape of choice for much of the world later this century);
Sure, although sounds like this is more about future promise than what we have now, which is a fun but niche entertainment.
> - Renewable energy that most can afford (it's already realistic for everyone to be self-sufficient);
This is good but... again 20th-century tech becoming better and cheaper.
> - Viable artificial/grown organs (for use in medicine and food production);
Promising research but still a way off from becoming a routine medical treatment.
So... I think all of these things are great but, as I mentioned in another reply, they just don’t have the world-historical impact of key 20th century tech like the Haber-Bosch Process, or antibiotics, or powered flight, or effective birth control. I think we are in a phase where we’re mostly improving what we already have (which is great!). Maybe a novel 21st-century technology will come along with that kind of impact, but I don’t think it’s here yet.
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Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#256I 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.
Why specifically 2015 and not, say, 2000?
Brexit / Trump marked a turning point for me.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The thing is that brazil is mostly cutting forests down for slash and burn farming. If they modernized farming practices, the rate of deforestation would drop significantly. The solution there as with most of these questions of climate fairness is for first world countries to invest in technological development of poorer regions. If brazil’s farmers could practice farming in the same way as european farmers, they wou…
> If they modernized farming practices, the rate of deforestation would drop significantly.
Ha, that's funny. Europeans have to subsidize their agriculture to compete with Brazil, but Brazilian practices aren't modern?
If Brazilian farmers practiced farming in the same way as Europeans do, the country would ban bankrupt.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#258Earlier 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.
> 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. The Roman Republic learned from Athens’ democracy. Even late Republicans like Sulla and Cicero and Caesar recognised the Republic’s overuse of checks and balances, as well as its lack of a state army. Caesar almost uniquely recognised Rome’s broken votin…
> Our Constitutional amendment process is sclerotic, but there is nothing to suggest our Republic is inherently flawed in the way Athens or Rome were.
Analyses abound about [what's wrong with American democracy](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Problems_with_the_curren...). The nail in the coffin though, will be the first part of your sentence. The American Constitution is notoriously hard to amend, which means that it is just too easy to maintain as it is by those who benefit from the status quo. We can already see this by how the will of the majority is routinely ignored through unequal representation. My opinion is that this is not sustainable and will have to be resolved through unlawful means, exactly because of the unflexibility of the law.
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#259I'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...
Maybe we should call it Petrov Day?
Yes, some do, and lesswrong.com started running an interesting social experiment every year: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XfHXQPPKNY8BXkn72/honoring-p...
Re: Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
#260Earlier 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…
Different kind of improvement. A smartphone (not the bloody iPhone) has fundamentally changed everyone's life directly . For the vast majority of people, food production is something that just "happens" out there. They don't grow anything, they just get it from a store. I've seen people on the Internet who can't afford a simple boiler or an indoors toilet (but they have a phone/computer)... and that's sad, but also a…
I agree, they are different kinds of impact. That’s why I like to emphasize the Haber-Bosch process, because it is largely invisible. Mostly people have never heard of it.
Because the impact is different it’s very hard to compare. One interesting thought experiment that can help is to imagine the technology disappearing and think about what the consequences would be. Thinking that through for smartphones and the Haber-Bosch process is left as an exercise for the reader.