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The Case for Optimism

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Re: The Case for Optimism

#61

Post by jjgreen »

charbonneau wrote: post #53
kaycebasques wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that we're not supposed to talk about the voting on comments [1] but I request that we make an exception here and pay attention to something interesting that is happening in this discussion. baron_harkonnen (fitting name for this comment, BTW) explicitly says "People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believ…

> C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui tombe d’un immeuble de 50 étages. Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute, il se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer : « Jusqu’ici tout va bien... Jusqu’ici tout va bien... Jusqu’ici tout va bien. » Mais l’important, c’est pas la chute. C’est l’atterrissage. > This is a story of a man who is falling from a 50 story building. He, gradually during his fall, continuously reassures himself…

The opening lines of La Haine, if you haven't seen it, you should.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#62

Post by letitbeirie »

tuatoru wrote: post #55
JackFr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to climate change, there is a complete disconnect between the predictions of doom and the proposed solutions. Electric cars ain’t gonna do it. Massive disruption and reordering if the economic order and a real reduction in global well-being are the price to be paid if we’re really serious. I just don’t see intellectual honesty among people who claim that climate change is an existential threat.

I think they are honest - they really believe that their proposals are solutions - but also that they are hopelessly innumerate, and ignorant of the time and effort involved in scaling anything up to global scale. For myself, existential is going way too far. It will transform civilization, yes. One way or another, that's coming. Extinguish every human? No. Not unless we get weeks-long global thermonuclear war - 3700…

It would take an absolutely apocalyptic event (or more likely, series of events) to make the human race go extinct but it wouldn't take much more than a prolonged, widespread power failure to push civil society to collapse.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#63

Post by ABCLAW »

toss1 wrote: post #2

I love optimism, and have often been accused of adhering to it myself. To some extent, it is a requirement for civilization and even life, the basis of hope. But I've observed from decades ago that when we look at progress in science and technology, the future looks unimaginably bright, but when we look at politics and governance, it is incredibly dark. This contrast became massively magnified since 2015. Yet, even w…

>But I've observed from decades ago that when we look at progress in science and technology, the future looks unimaginably bright, but when we look at politics and governance, it is incredibly dark.

I don't really see these as particularly different things. Our era has seen value financialized at almost every level of society by the deployment of transnational technology and institutions, resulting in the inability of national governments to hamper the global flow of anti-social or otherwise criminal resources and money. Some social ills and some policy adjustments simply aren't possible for governments to deal with, either as a result of the ambit of their power, the need for transnational alignment, or the time-sensitive nature for precise solutions to complex problems.

Governments are in an arms race against increasing complexity in social problems. The development of additional command and control technologies, the deployment of extensive surveillance, and the weaponization of that surveillance against populations is directly tied to the intersection between power and technology.

Technology enables power. We can design some technology to specifically disrupt current power structures, but overall technological development creates larger and larger capabilities on the part of those with power; better weapons, better intelligence, more resources, etc.

So we have technology working at both ends, pulling at both sides. It isn't enough that technology allows us to do more; it's the balance between whether or not research tips the scale between the haves and have nots.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#64

Post by goatlover »

letitbeirie wrote: post #62
tuatoru wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are honest - they really believe that their proposals are solutions - but also that they are hopelessly innumerate, and ignorant of the time and effort involved in scaling anything up to global scale. For myself, existential is going way too far. It will transform civilization, yes. One way or another, that's coming. Extinguish every human? No. Not unless we get weeks-long global thermonuclear war - 3700…

It would take an absolutely apocalyptic event (or more likely, series of events) to make the human race go extinct but it wouldn't take much more than a prolonged, widespread power failure to push civil society to collapse.

Dies the Fire is a first of a series of novels about a global power failure due to an alteration in physics by an unknown cause. Most humans starve to death, but some in the right locations resort to farming by hand, hunting and fishing. Others set up feudal kingdoms.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#65

Post by martinmakesgame »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #8

I'm a long term optimist. Humanity always gets better, eventually. The problem is we have short lifespans so small setbacks in humanity's history are significant to those of us alive at that point in time. I don't think things will be too bad though. Governments are becoming authoritarian but there's already enough resistance and protest, at least in some places. The future is looking bright. We'll figure out the glo…

I feel this way too.

> Humanity always gets better, eventually.

I feel that it is inevitable that we, us, and the state of the world will get better.

We as humans are rational and that is our power. We can choose our thoughts and our feelings. When we choose thoughts of love, compassion and altruism these lead us to actions of love, compassion and altruism.

The Dalai Lama talks about secular mind training. When metacognition and how to choose thoughts and feelings is taught in schools then there is an opportunity to move more people towards a more helpful world. More helpful for our own personal lives and also helpful to others.

Until this happens, I do what I can, which is talk with my friends and family about this. We remind each other that we always have a choice about how we can respond to anything in the external world and we do what we can.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#66

Post by goatlover »

TchoBeer wrote: post #52
joelbluminator wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should you just quit everything and do heroin all day? You would feel really happy. No he wouldn't. He would become addicted very fast and eventually live on the streets, Heroin addicts are as miserable as can be. If there was an actual happy pill that worked I don't see why we shouldn't take it, there isn't one.

>If there was an actual happy pill that worked I don't see why we shouldn't take it Like the Soma from Brave New World. When I reread that book last year I realized how useful and good that drug would be.

Soma wasn't meant by Huxley to be a positive thing. It's a way of controlling the population. Brave New World is dystopian.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#67

Post by f00zz »

kaycebasques wrote: post #24
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #16

Optimism is essentially the religion of Capitalism. This is because Capitalism is perpetually in debt to tomorrow. Every start up being discussed on HN, every fund people pump their 401k into, every new oil well being dug up, all of these require believing in the future. The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology th…

I know that we're not supposed to talk about the voting on comments [1] but I request that we make an exception here and pay attention to something interesting that is happening in this discussion. baron_harkonnen (fitting name for this comment, BTW) explicitly says "People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believ…

I guess it depends on the audience. Pretty sure that if the parent post were a Twitter thread it would get 32,000 RTs, as everyone seems to be a doomer on that site. Glad to know that HN is mostly in the optimist camp. As argued in the article, building things requires optimism.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#68

Post by heavyset_go »

richspuller wrote: post #37
DangitBobby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for writing all of this. I think undying optimism was okay when you really couldn't do that much harm with your terrible decisions based on false optimism. That's no longer the case. I also think, practically speaking, unfounded optimism will be the reason we fail to address Climate Change. It's time for realism now.

Optimism and realism should go hand in hand. Proper optimism is not about dismissing the fact that real problems do exist, and are very serious, but in the realization that we are equipped and able to find solutions and implement them. Climate change for example, there is so much going on in the Green Tech sector, innovations and companies emerging everywhere to take steps toward solving this. Sadly, mainstream media…

> https://www.warpnews.org/green-tech/

This site is mostly press releases for products. Purchasing even more new things isn't going to stop climate change or its consequences. We need broad regulation to make an impact.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#69

Post by Barrin92 »

gonehome wrote: post #26
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #23

I used to take Kelly seriously. Back in the 90s he was boosting a glorious connected utopia of free education, explosive creativity and endless opportunity. What we got was personal surveillance by huge monopolies, a toxic culture of disinformation and social media driven by "engagement", and the fathomless banality of an IT economy devoted largely to ad tech. And none of the real problems - climate change, wealth di…

All we got was the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets, functionally for free. I don’t like ad tech and I’m not dismissing that modern software has problems, but I think there’s a lot to be optimistic about. On most metrics (infant mortality, poverty, violence) - things are massively better than they were thirty years ago.

>All we got was the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets, functionally for free.

No. What you got was a subset of knowledge, that which can be articulated and is transmissible via audio, video or text. The overwhelming amount of human knowledge is tacit, that is to say it is embedded in practices, cultures, crafts, traditions, institutions, and so on. Which is why there are still billions of people living in poverty despite the fact that you have wikipedia on your phone.

>On most metrics (infant mortality, poverty, violence) - things are massively better than they were thirty years ago.

There are countless of points in time at which things are better than before, this is virtually a truism. Things in the 1920s were perceived to be better than in the 1890s, yet in the 1930s, they were not. This strange belief in some sort of fatalistic progress is just bad Whig history.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#70

Post by TchoBeer »

goatlover wrote: post #66
TchoBeer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If there was an actual happy pill that worked I don't see why we shouldn't take it Like the Soma from Brave New World. When I reread that book last year I realized how useful and good that drug would be.

Soma wasn't meant by Huxley to be a positive thing. It's a way of controlling the population. Brave New World is dystopian.

I understand that, but I don't know, maybe I'm just too different from Huxley to feel it? Like, everyone in the Society is happy, and the few people who aren't happy are sent to live somewhere they can be happy.
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