Programming in the Apocalypse • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#211

Post by svnt » Tue, May 31, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #183

svnt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t. It’s an extrapolation based on the limited insights of a PhD who by any reasonable definition spends too much time with simulations. If you want to think of a way it could be possible, though, think of those areas that would be habitable, realize that they would be highly contested, are mostly presently permafrost, and consider your own ability to both protect and survive on melted tundra and reproduce th…

> If you want to think of a way it could be possible, though, think of those areas that would be habitable, realize that they would be highly contested, are mostly presently permafrost, and consider your own ability to both protect and survive on melted tundra and reproduce there, given you will starve in a single season without food. I actually did consider that first - that maybe at +8c humans will kill each other,…

I think it is incredibly unlikely personally. We have evolved nearly beyond environmental dependence, certainly beyond local environmental problems, and it is difficult to imagine our extinction as long as there are some plants and insects that survive. Possibly we could even persist on algae farming.

But if you add the fact that antibiotics will be in short supply, novel zoonotic diseases will ramp up, and most knowledge of how to survive in the wild has been lost and probably can’t be reconstituted in a couple of violent generations, I can see how it could come about.

There is also the social and psychological impacts of that scale of loss, and there are some other sort of scary indicators you could lean on (Calhoun rat experiments) to indicate that there are limits to what animal populations will reproduce through.

I’m not worried about it — we seem like a pretty robust system from my perspective. But it is interesting to think about abstractly.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#212

Post by qgin » Tue, May 31, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

peterweyand0 wrote: post #115

Raise your hand if you would be willing to lower your standard of living, voluntarily, in order to stave off global warming. Sell your car. Stop buying anything made with plastic. Stop using electricity. I don't see many hands.

We could be producing 100% of today's electricity consumption at near-zero carbon emissions.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#213

Post by coryrc » Tue, May 31, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #193

coryrc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like 5 million people die every year, should we be in permanent mourning?

> Something like 5 million people die every year, Then why do we mount anything at all, death count of all terrorist attacks and shooting combined is insignificant

Why have we spent $2 trillion so far on Iraq (even if you believed it was linked to 9/11 and 3000 deaths) when Alzheimer's disease costs $200B annually and costing about 5 million a few decades of life? (I'm approximating lost QALY as ~5 million/year, or about 20x 9/11s every year)

We should be investing in high ROI life-saving actions, not emotional impulses. Let's put serious money behind defeating aging, which currently has a 100% fatality rate and was highly comorbid with COVID-19.

https://www.alzheimers.net/research-spending-vs-annual-care-...

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#214

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, May 31, 2022, 1:46 AM UTC

_dain_ wrote: post #210

titzer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're trolling, but I'll respond. Part of growing up and moving from just a mere legally-licensed adult is being able to hold heavy things. They never stop getting heavier. They just keep unfolding, and if you are willing to grow just a little deeper--not bigger, but deeper, like the roots of you being able to feel things, then maybe all that learning to deal with loss, tragedies, loved ones dying, aging, you…

you "grown ups" locked me indoors for months and didn't let me see my family. spare me your sanctimony.

The world contains more people than just you and your family.

I was bummed to not see mine as well, but I (and they) also understood that a shared sacrifice was necessary to make.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#215

Post by qgin » Tue, May 31, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #173

koshergweilo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dire predictions have been coming for decades (remember Al Gore)? And nothing. And I suppose you think that's it's just a coincidence that we're breaking all-time-high temperature records year over year isn't it?

So we are told. If anything, the temperature seems cooler to me. But do you recollect the climategate scandal? Where historical temperature records were altered?

So because of the way temperatures seem to you subjectively, you're going to say there is a worldwide conspiracy of everyone who works on historical climate research to fudge the numbers?

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#216

Post by jprd » Tue, May 31, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #197

titzer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're trolling, but I'll respond. Part of growing up and moving from just a mere legally-licensed adult is being able to hold heavy things. They never stop getting heavier. They just keep unfolding, and if you are willing to grow just a little deeper--not bigger, but deeper, like the roots of you being able to feel things, then maybe all that learning to deal with loss, tragedies, loved ones dying, aging, you…

> what the hell if we can't reflect on such a grievous time You made the assumption the rest of us aren't. You've written a number of emotionally-laden statements about the lack of virtue amongst the rest of us, but I'm "trolling" when I point out you ignore greater loss of life happening yearly.

Unfortunately you are still trolling, and I hope you are aware enough to see it.

I'm not going to do all the work for you, because I'm tired and certainly tired of teaching critical thinking to adults, but take a look at _excess_ deaths since the COVID-era started[1].

That is key, just like all the fears of a devastating food shortage on the horizon because Putin needed to get his gun off.

Outside of math class, you can't play "Direct cause of death from COVID" vs. "people starved to death by their own government" or .

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#217

Post by bigDinosaur » Tue, May 31, 2022, 2:03 AM UTC

peterweyand0 wrote: post #115

Raise your hand if you would be willing to lower your standard of living, voluntarily, in order to stave off global warming. Sell your car. Stop buying anything made with plastic. Stop using electricity. I don't see many hands.

100% willing to never use a car again if the place I live is designed properly. Happy to dramatically reduce plastic use to only what must be plastic. Electricity use reduction is definitely the hardest sell to me since electricity is by far the most impactful modern convenience and I actually can't think of a use I have for it that doesn't come down to some kind of necessity (food preservation, cooling, and powering the tools I use to literally earn my entire income).

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#218

Post by therealdrag0 » Tue, May 31, 2022, 2:08 AM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #191

madrox wrote: post #97

The pandemic taught me a lot about apocalypse. While people are a lot slower to buy into collective action and changing their way of life than I thought, society is far more robust than I expected. Covid looked nothing like a pandemic film, thank god. With that in mind, I have some ideas on what programming will look like in 30 years: 1. New frameworks and abstractions for making apps even more disposable while maint…

> Programmer pay will decrease compared to other industries. It is supply and demand for smart people. So far, demand for smart people increased throughout times. If earth will make more smart people or if they will be replaced/augmented with A(G)I, then pay will subside.

I don’t think the constraint is smart people existing, it’s smart people choosing this career path. If we culturally produced more engineers (like some other countries do) then that could depress pay.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#219

Post by bo1024 » Tue, May 31, 2022, 2:08 AM UTC

Struck me as strange the discussion jumped straight to how things will be done, but not what things will be done. Surely the tools and workflows will depend on the tasks we are trying to accomplish at that time?

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#220

Post by PheonixPharts » Tue, May 31, 2022, 2:12 AM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #101

mcculley wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There's some fairly absurd doomerism going on in the "climate catastrophe tomorrow" camp where climate change will (somehow) turn earth into a barren rock and we're inches away from triggering a self-reinforcing climate resonance cascade of unforeseen consequences. It's of course a very urgent issue, but I think exaggerating it until it becomes a threat to "all life on earth" levels is a) dishonest b) does nothing to…

> where climate change will (somehow) turn earth into a barren rock and we're inches away from triggering a self-reinforcing climate resonance cascade of unforeseen consequences.

The "barren rock" is a bit of a strawman. Very few if any people believe that the elimination of all life on Earth is in the cards. Human life, on the other hand, is certainly possible.

For the vast majority of major extinction events in history it looks like rapid climate change was the major trigger, and at some point small changes lead to a "self-reinforcing climate resonance cascade of unforeseen consequences", and we currently don't know exactly what the limits are.

This is the focus of a huge amount of the work of Peter Ward and he has written plenty both for scientific and a popular audiences.

Now he may, of course, be wrong. But his work is credible enough that you have to at least take into account that the real risk of extinction is possible.