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Programming in the Apocalypse

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Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#51

Post by jpindar »

warning26 wrote: post #11
black_puppydog wrote: post #9

So... anyone else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic things going on around the world people will keep their appetite for mindless distraction and will still be able/willing to one-click buy random stuff on a whim? When they might have to expect waiting weeks for the delivery, and/or pay humongous transport fees? Asking because that seems to be what much of modern IT is angling for and why there's so much mo…

> else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic things going on around the world people will keep their appetite for mindless distraction and will still be able/willing to one-click buy random stuff on a whim Wouldn't people in the described apocalyptic scenario want mindless distraction? Anything to keep their minds off the, well, apocalyptic things going on.

Both movies and cheap novels have historicaly been popular during wartime.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#52

Post by Filligree »

mcculley wrote: post #44
skyfaller wrote: post #16

I agree that we need to plan for climate adaptation (preparing for predictable problems) and resilience (preparing for unpredictable problems), but I have a few kneejerk responses: - Although it's looking increasingly unlikely that we can avert climate disaster, we can never give up. For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming, and could mean the difference between human extinction…

> human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization How do you imagine human extinction being an outcome? It seems to me that the worst case scenario is large loss of population which would decrease greenhouse gas output. There would still be some increase in temperature even once we stop emitting, but wouldn't people in colder climates still survive?

True human extinction doesn't seem plausible, but in a worst-case scenario we can imagine a > 99% drop in population, roughly to what is sustainable without technology, in a dramatically harsher world.

("Without"? Well, nobody today knows how to build a cast-iron plough.)

I don't believe this scenario is likely. For one thing we're not headed for 8C of heating; for another, technological change seems to be coming just in time to head off the very worst outcomes, assuming we struggle hard enough.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#53

Post by mmcgaha »

formvoltron wrote: post #17

At some point, we'll have to put a fine dust in the upper atmosphere. We seem to have most of the building blocks already for renewable energy. Just need to focus on it and assemble them together... and decide it's worth giving up fossil fuel related things that are still functional.

Dust in the upper atmosphere? That is a solved problem; we can just burn more coal. Of course the world will be dirty and it will get cold everywhere, but hey at least we will be back to where we were in the early 20th century. I have a better idea how about we consume less and not spew crap into our environment.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#54

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

legutierr wrote: post #23
sinenomine wrote: post #2

Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it entered mainstream just recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of geoengineering silenced for decades behin…

By geoengineering, you mean blocking out the light of the sun? Won't that significantly reduce the photosynthetic potential of Earth, and significantly reduce the carrying capacity of the Earth for life? There are plenty of planets and moons that are cooler because they receive less sunlight. None of them host any life that we can detect. Isn't there a real risk that geoengineering would just end up turning the Earth…

It's not an exact measurement of incoming solar energy, but the Earth has supported abundant life through a much wider range of climate variation than anything we're facing today. I don't know of any evidence that we're in a climate "sweet spot" where we'd need to worry about something like that. (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...)

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#55

Post by moffkalast »

nynx wrote: post #45

It’s nice to submit to call of civilizational collapse every once in a while, but it’s not a realistic view. Yes, climate change is going to affect billions of people, but from what I can tell, things are moving in the right direction and we’re on track to avoid the worst even with barely any political action. If it was suddenly 2050 and none of our technology had improved, we’d be fucked. But it’s not a useful persp…

> "Based on this I felt like some of the big winners in 2050 will be Rust, Clojure and Go."

I mean the guy may be delusional, but he's right on the climate part.

Even if our tech improves and we cut carbon to zero in a fairytaleish fashion we're still up for a 3 deg temp increase till 2100 which will be rather catastrophic. Of course the developed world will be hit the least due to its location, so we'll likely be fine for the most part but it will be troubling time regardless. It all depends on cascading issues that we can't really predict, like warming causing some fish to go extinct that ate eggs of some insect that will now breed uncontrollably and push out useful pollinators from the ecosystem, leading to crop failure and such.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#56

Post by throwaway4aday »

k0k0r0 wrote: post #39
warning26 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic things going on around the world people will keep their appetite for mindless distraction and will still be able/willing to one-click buy random stuff on a whim Wouldn't people in the described apocalyptic scenario want mindless distraction? Anything to keep their minds off the, well, apocalyptic things going on.

That's true until people are suddenly hungry odr thirsty. Hunger or thrist will force them to act. And not necesserily nicely.

Exactly, mindless distraction is only an option when you are comfortable. Try not eating for a day + turning off your heating/cooling and see how interesting Twitter is then.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#57

Post by skybrian »

skyfaller wrote: post #16

I agree that we need to plan for climate adaptation (preparing for predictable problems) and resilience (preparing for unpredictable problems), but I have a few kneejerk responses: - Although it's looking increasingly unlikely that we can avert climate disaster, we can never give up. For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming, and could mean the difference between human extinction…

I expect that people will still write software because it needed and pays well. However, the jobs that people get paid to do could become rather different.

Consider what happens in a war. The people working on drones aren't just hobbyists, they're part of the war effort. Wars are not good for the environment, either.

So my guess is that, if it gets really bad, these jobs will focus more on short-term needs. Are people who are really focused on preparing for heat waves and drought and flooding going to give a hoot about being carbon neutral? An overloaded hospital is going to focus on the patients, not global environmental issues.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#58

Post by paulbaumgart »

kossTKR wrote: post #8
sinenomine wrote: post #2

Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it entered mainstream just recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of geoengineering silenced for decades behin…

There's no profit incentive to geoengineer or clean up anything so nothing will get fixed - at least not if the future will be a continuation of how capitalism, industry and geopolitics have worked literally forever - probably also biological and even physical systems if we extrapolate. It's always boom then bust, everywhere in space and time. That said i still hope we'll manage in some obscure way because we have no…

This is probably true at the level of corporations, but not clearly the case at the level of countries. An interesting paper on the economics of geoengineering, if you’re curious: https://www.nber.org/papers/w18622

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#59

Post by poulpy123 »

luxuryballs wrote: post #21

“we have to accept immense hits to the global economy and the resulting poverty, suffering and impact. The scope of the change required is staggering. We've never done something like this” This is an insanely extreme claim with very little evidence to back it up, if we watch this unfold at the hands of global leadership please know that it didn’t have to be this way and somebody is taking advantage of all of us for p…

How is it insanely extreme ? Except if we are lucky and there is a Deus ex machina that saves us (which by definition is unpredictable), this is the current trajectory

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#60

Post by satokausi »

kossTKR wrote: post #22
paulsutter wrote: post #15

There are two better explanations than the Great Filter: - Dark Forest theory is popular in China, that civilizations should conceal their existence to prevent being destroyed by a more advanced civilization - Our own high power TV and Radio transmitters will be shutdown soon in favor of fiber optics. Even better communication mechanisms should be no surprise

Interesting! I've always had an intuitive feeling that theories like The Great Filter theory was a pretty arrogant simplification of "actual reality" beyond our narrow biological lenses and even narrower western definition of "life" or even spatial dimensions and time. Just because some western scientist with only 350+ years of somewhat advanced tools, math and imagination can't see "something" doesn't mean something…

Agreed. The Great Filter theory has weak assumptions that a) all ”living” systems evolve in a similar way as the biological systems on earth, and b) that this evolution ”advances” somehow towards space expansion.

Our biological lenses make it seem like the complex system we call ”life” is the only similarly complex system that is possible in the entire universe.

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