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Oh, 2022

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Re: Oh, 2022

#451

Post by jacquesm »

ruined wrote: post #436
jacquesm wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is pretty simple, though you may not like it: lots of people will die.

death is never simple. it turns out to be highly motivating, and motivated people tend to do all kinds of complicated things.

Yes, motivated people will try all kinds of things, but that's not guarantee for success. And usually we're talking about problems at a completely different scale, how we deal with one like this we do not know but if the pandemic is any indication then you have a nice sample of what a response could look like and how effective it will be.

The big mistake is that we try to solve global problems with local control.

Re: Oh, 2022

#452

Post by Der_Einzige »

makerofthings wrote: post #442

50 years from now everything will be renewables, all the heavy industry will be on the moon and we’ll be using fleets of self-driving EVs. It’s going to be close, you can expect some turbulence, some coastal areas are going to get flooded, there might be the odd border skirmish, but 100 years from now nobody will talk about Climate change outside of history books. This is my optimistic hope for the future.

Yeah, quick mass adoption of EVs combined with rapid tech logical development in a few other sectors has led me to get far more optimistic about our future.

Climate adaptation technologies will bridge whatever gaps are left by the destruction we have on the environment that happened before we decarbonize the economy.

Re: Oh, 2022

#453

Post by KineticLensman »

Psychlist wrote: post #416
Apocryphon wrote: post #198

YMMV, but feels to me that cstross's Cassandra pessimism has increased rapidly each year, with good reason, but some of these pieces are overly-sensationalist. I still remember his whole bit in 2017 about how Hurricane Harvey was going to destroy Houston - how'd that turn out? http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/08/houston-... But I will say his 2015 piece, "A different cluetrain", still holds up with gr…

He has had personal issues, loved ones dying and so on. Plus he had to basically bin a year's work when the US elected Trump and suddenly his "satire" seemed tame and boring by comparison. Near future fiction is prone to that, but Stross got smacked hard. So a bit of pessimism is kind of understandable.

> Plus he had to basically bin a year's work when the US elected Trump and suddenly his "satire" seemed tame and boring by comparison

A near-future series (Halting State) was also cut short when the Scottish independence referendum (and the subsequent Brexit vote) rendered that future impossible.

That said, his Empire Games trilogy is set in a near future where the internal multiverse concept successfully allows for explicit discrepancies from our timeline.

Re: Oh, 2022

#454

Post by Der_Einzige »

ncmncm wrote: post #171
xmprt wrote: post #159

I think just as his previous article might have been overly optimistic, this one is overly pessimistic. As the pendulum is in the process of swinging to the other extreme, I think we will see a lot of negative events slowing down now that people are seeing the negative consequences of their actions and try to revert course. For example, even though the world is tending towards a worst place in terms of things like cl…

Considering how US food policy continues pushing sugar consumption, driving mortality from secondary effects of liver disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, circulatory disease, cancer metastasis, obesity, gout) and tertiary effects of those, that makes COVID-19 look like, well, flu, he is not pessimistic enough. On the other hand, eliminating sugar (actually, just fructose, and then only with not enough accompanyin…

Fructose in fruit, as are other sugars , are still terrible for you even if you eat fiber. Fruit is not benign in large quantities. It's only saving grace is that fruit generally has far lower sugar and higher useful neutrients than confections

Re: Oh, 2022

#455

Post by Der_Einzige »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #202

> But this is all predictable. (Except for COVID19 which was wide-screen WTFery, like the second world war—September 1st 1939 was not in fact predictable from September 1st 1929, for example: all that was predictable was that another European war would sooner or later see France and Germany at loggerheads.) I can't understand what this is saying. Not sure what 'wide-screen WTFery' is, but lots of people were predicti…

Was about to say this. The "explained" episode on the next pandemic from vox was downright conspiracy inducing given that it was released on Netflix like, what, 2 months before covid 19 hit?

Bill gates in the interviews talking about disease X still haunts me. As does the faux optimism espoused in that vox explained episode.

My point is that if bill gates predicts it, it was predicted.

Re: Oh, 2022

#456

Post by sulam »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #425
elihu wrote: post #123

> "Looking further afield: it seems likely that the end of internal combustion engines will be in sight. Some countries are already scheduling a ban on IC engines to come in after 2030—electric cars are now a maturing technology with clear advantages in every respect except recharge time. Once those IC cars are no longer manufactured, we can expect a very rapid ramp-down of extraction and distribution industries for…

Recharge time needs to be under 10 minutes or you have a pipe dream. 5-7 minutes would be better. Too many renters, condo owners, and small businesses with fleets don't have time to deal charging.

The only time charging is a hassle is long road trips. And honestly the really fast chargers make that only marginally painful.

Re: Oh, 2022

#457

Post by baud147258 »

InvaderFizz wrote: post #211
baud147258 wrote: post #112

> leading to a complete phase-out [of ICE] possibly as early as 2040 I have a hard time believing this, if it's something that's supposed to happen globally, including for all good transportation, which is a category where I don't remember seeing much electric vehicles. And as for it happening globally, that'd mean everywhere on the globe, there'd be enough electricity to supply all the needs for transportation and a…

If you read it in a more realistic fashion, and see the implementations that are happening today, it makes much more sense. Governments are rolling out policies that vehicles manufactured after 2030/2035/2040, etc will not be eligible for vehicle registration. This makes much more sense than banning existing fleets, as the vast majority of any car fleet will be replaced over the period of a decade. (Average US car li…

so you really think that all motor vehicle in Africa will be electric? All in Middle-East, like Afghanistan or Pakistan? I'm not really talking about Western countries, where I can see it happen, but the rest of the world

Re: Oh, 2022

#458

Post by sulam »

ridgeguy wrote: post #281
runarberg wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back). I honestly don’t…

Our experience differs from your view. We recently moved from the Bay Area to the Sierra Foothills, near Sonora. There is plenty of land with homes already in place, as well as land suitable for new construction. Land is available in sizes from 10,000 sq. ft. lots to 1,200 acres and everywhere in between. Electricity, propane, and water are commonly available. As a rule of thumb, prices are ~0.25xthe Bay Area. Althou…

Hey neighbor, we moved into town so Comcast is available. Other options will be great, though!

Re: Oh, 2022

#459

Post by ncmncm »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #454
ncmncm wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how US food policy continues pushing sugar consumption, driving mortality from secondary effects of liver disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, circulatory disease, cancer metastasis, obesity, gout) and tertiary effects of those, that makes COVID-19 look like, well, flu, he is not pessimistic enough. On the other hand, eliminating sugar (actually, just fructose, and then only with not enough accompanyin…

Fructose in fruit, as are other sugars , are still terrible for you even if you eat fiber. Fruit is not benign in large quantities. It's only saving grace is that fruit generally has far lower sugar and higher useful neutrients than confections

Point is that with sufficient fiber, your gut bacteria get most of it, and are harmed not at all, instead of your liver, which is.

And, the other sugars are not harmful to your liver in any amount, although sharp spikes of them may not be great for the rest of you. Again, enough fiber mutes those.

Re: Oh, 2022

#460

Post by xtiansimon »

shagie wrote: post #183
doctoboggan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read glass house and just started accelerando, great work!

If I may suggest dabbling in the BLIT short stories that the Langford fractal mentioned in the fifth decade of the century of wonders. https://ansible.uk/writing/t3_002.html http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm https://www.nature.com/articles/44964 https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-of-darkness/ And following up from Glasshouse with Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams where the exp…

What do you think about memes a la. Dawkins, Dennett, Blackmore, et al?
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