Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by mrec » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

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

> They lasted until 1453 - incidentally only 50 years before Columbus sailed

Sidenote: incidentally not coincidentally. The closure of the Silk Road and other important East-West land routes as a result of the Ottoman conquest was one of the important spurs that kicked off the Age of Discovery, as everyone scrambled to find new routes.

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

#272

Post by rtkwe » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

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…

It's theoretically possible but the change is so drastic and required in so many countries I really don't see it happening. For instance in the US, even if the Democrats get full control, eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, and decide to pass something more extreme than the Green New Deal style legislation that's floating around at best that'll stick for 4 maybe 8 years at the outside.

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

#273

Post by collyw » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #44

bparsons wrote: post #43

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?

Lots of cases here in Spain but hospitals are generally coping fine (with Madrid being a bit of an exception at present in that hospital numbers are rising as well, but are currently manageable).

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

#274

Post by rtkwe » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #257

Joeri wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have to subsidize because labor and land are more expensive the Europe than Brazil, it has very little to do with how efficient the farming techniques are.

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

#275

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #216

WalterBright wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would have just been another spark for WW1.

Maybe. It is truly unknowable.

That's right, but the nascent combatants were spoiling for a fight and just needed an excuse.

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

#276

Post by collyw » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #64

grawprog wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe it will be self correcting in the end, if sperm counts drop enough to make a dent in population numbers, which is where a lot of the problem ultimately lies.

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

#277

Post by eitland » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

qubex wrote: post #112

simonh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Cold War, and even WW2 are part of the current period when it comes to the ‘hinge of history’ argument. They’re not saying this year is the most influential, or even this decade. I think it comes down to the explosive industrial growth and technological advances over the last few hundred years, and next hundred years or so. It’s a unique confluence of incredible capability with little understanding of the…

> Nobody 100 years ago had the slightest clue that the industrialization at the time could cause global warming, for example. This is incorrect. The first measurements and effects were calculated at the end of the 19th Century (quoted as 1896). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...

Had to look that up, and this was the closest I could get in a few minutes, which is still impressive, thanks for the link!

> Arrhenius saw that this human emission of carbon would eventually lead to warming. However, because of the relatively low rate of CO 2 production in 1896, Arrhenius thought the warming would take thousands of years, and he expected it would be beneficial to humanity.

It still seems that scientists at that point looked at it more from an interesting terraforming perspective and less like a looming catastrophy perspective.

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

#278

Post by collyw » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

cik2e wrote: post #143

Auracle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember becoming very concerned by the idea that microplastics are behind decreasing sperm counts. But by Occam’s razor, I think it’s much more reasonable to assume that lack of exercise, poor diet, not enough sleep and sunlight, and high levels of stress are the bigger culprits.

Do you think that pumping farm animals full of hormones is another factor?

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

#279

Post by jeffnappi » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

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…

The hopeful side of this might be that the economies of scale in renewable energy such as wind and solar have been funded by the wealthy countries. Thus the developing nations are in a far better spot where it may even be cheaper to use renewable sources than GHG producing sources.

If you consider that coal plants also come with negative health effects on a population (elevated cancer rates, etc) - it makes even more sense.

Compare this to how the U.S. invested in developing fiber optic technology - it was INSANELY expensive to build out fiber networks in the 80s/90s, and now it's nearly free.

The small countries who waited until ~2005 or after were able to build out their internet infrastructure for a fraction of the cost.

Perhaps a similar effect is taking place with energy, but I may be overly optimistic.

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

#280

Post by gooseus » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

michaelbrave wrote: post #39

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.

Covid isn't necessarily the primary concern but one crisis among many. Arguably most civilization collapses happened in times when there were too many crises at once, that individually could be handled but all at once or in close succession become overwhelming. A current example of this would be that with climate change we face increase in temperatures causing wildfires on the west coast, deadly heatwaves in the sout…

Tack on the radical shift in how we consume information and how corporate/state actors try to manipulate this new information system to actively promote misinformation and discord with regards to all of the items you listed.