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Programming in the Apocalypse

matduggan.com

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Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#231

Post by goatlover »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #200
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the OP is making is that wiping out all life on earth is an impossible and silly benchmark. No-one sane thinks 'oh, but we don't have to do anything about climate change because some worms will survive around the thermal vents on the ocean floor' To 'wipe out' life on earth, you have to crash the moon into it or do something similarly ridiculous - remember that a giant asteroid wasn't enough. Wiping out all…

If we lost all the insects in a ~100 year period, the result would be close enough to losing "all life on earth" for anyone who doesn't have a microscope (or, more likely, a telescope). This is not an exaggeration in any sense of the word.

We won't lose all insects. They didn't all die off when a massive rock took out the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and that was far more catastrophic (worse than any human nuclear winter scenario).

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#232

Post by goatlover »

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…

Yeah, I'm not accepting any such thing. Cure is worse than the disease, and the implication is the developing world will have to stop developing, while the developed world lives with economic depression. I'm sure that will be politically viable /s.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#233

Post by krastanov »

FargaColora wrote: post #154
ivm wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanity probably will not be wiped out, but the current global civilization will collapse like it happened to many other civilizations before because they reached the ecological overshoot. I also thought that something "could be done" on a large scale, but after studying the problem in depth (starting with the IPCC report), I began to prepare on the community level for the impact in the next 10-20 years. That's the…

"I began to prepare on the community level for the impact in the next 10-20 years" Sorry, I don't think rational debate is possible here. Your beliefs are not based on science or rationality.

Your reaction surprises me. What is so strange about "preparing on the community level", which would mean things like making sure your township is not expanding into areas that would be destroyed by newly severe forest fires or hurricanes or floods. Or that your city forbids certain types of lawns or agriculture because droughts are getting more severe. Or just having a more independent electricity/water/sewage in your house because the municipal systems do not have the backups they will start needing.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#234

Post by goatlover »

yanderekko wrote: post #146
boppo1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this narrative is troubling. I’ve read stuff from IPCC contributors who compare climate change to Covid, especially in the case of people living in the first world. Things will get harder and the shape of our lives will change, but “civilizational collapse” is a term from people gleefully imagining the end of the world like they would a zombie apocalypse.

I don't think they're gleeful, they just deeply believe that we need to reject capitalism and/or embrace some sort of global technocratic governance, and see the threat of climate catastrophe as the most-plausible mechanism that such a change would come about.

I'm deeply suspicious of any environmental cause that starts with having to reject capitalism. Particularly when it advocates for totalitarian government as a solution. I tend to think the environmental cause is being used to justify belief in some other system.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#235

Post by goatlover »

dixego wrote: post #74
grej wrote: post #66

>>> “On the bright side, the Asheville branch is just a five-minute drive from the beach now, so the all-hands meeting should be a lot more fun this year.” As an aside, seeing things like this in climate change articles always bothers me. FYI Asheville being minutes from the beach would imply a 650m+ (2000+ft) sea rise in the next 25 years. This kind of hyperbole makes it easy for people who deny climate change in to…

Fiction is a tool used by humans to elicit, experience and process feelings under (mostly) safe circumstances. The details (such as how much the sea level would have to rise for this to be accurate) are not quite relevant; the point is to make the reader think about how they would feel if this sort of concern was just a commonplace consideration in their daily life. Is it not shocking? Uncomfortable? Sorta nihilism-i…

It makes me want to question climate activism. I'd want to act to prevent or mitigate realistic scenarios (depending on the tradeoffs), not apocalyptic fictions.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#236

Post by leke »

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…

2. I can't see it getting any lower in Finland. Our job already pays (through the collective agreement) a woman's salary.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#237

Post by asdff »

dvh wrote: post #90
nostrademons wrote: post #27

For me, the big story is going to be supply-chain breakup and de-globalization. The author touches on this a bit, but completely misses the implication. The programming languages that will best survive the apocalypse are the ones that can run on chips that best survive the apocalypse! I think that there're be a big turn toward highly-efficient compiled languages: Rust and Go are well-positioned for this, C will still…

One should first ask what is the actually useful task for computers. Right now it is often things like powering ad networks, tracking engagements, running tax code for millions, calculating sha 256 hashes. Would any of this be useful in apocalypse? If not what would be?

Modelling environmental phenomenon certainly if you want to viably farm and feed appreciable amounts of people. you'd also use these rigs for biological analysis to identify targets for genetic modification that would improve yields in a rapidly changing environment with limited nutrient availability. i imagine one day crops are genetically modified to be most optimal for specific hillsides or valleys or individual farm parcels, essentially going back to the benefits of land races but with the flexibility to introduce known changes in a single season.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#238

Post by potemkin_buster »

k0k0r0 wrote: post #35
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.

As someone else put it nicely: People seem to rather fight the sun than capitalism.

The main problem is that shit is to cheap

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#239

Post by tasuki »

madrox wrote: post #125
tasuki wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pandemic taught me a lot about apocalypse. I don't think it has taught you much. All things considered, despite all the suffering by unlucky individuals, when you consider humanity as a whole, covid is an insignificant blip. If it's significant at all, it's only because of our response to it. > Covid looked nothing like a pandemic film, thank god. Covid was not 1% as bad as any pandemic featured in a film. Huma…

I'd argue the opposite. If it's insignificant at all, it's only because of our response to it. Lots of people worked very, very hard for us to sit here typing "it wasn't that bad" unless you believe that our global covid response did very little to change the outcome. If you do believe that, though, there's probably little point in continuing this thread.

Yes, lots of people worked very hard to make the outcome better. I'm grateful to them for helping protect my aged relations. They did make a difference.

With that out, the Covid-19 pandemic, even without any measures at all, was still incredibly mild. Wikipedia says 0.1-0.3% global population lost [0]. It would have been I don't know, perhaps 0.5% without measures? Compare to the other pandemics on that list, you routinely see ones that wipe out 20-50% of the regional population - now that is significantly bad.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#240

Post by bryanrasmussen »

leke wrote: post #236
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…

2. I can't see it getting any lower in Finland. Our job already pays (through the collective agreement) a woman's salary.

What is a woman's salary in Finland?

At any rate looking at it http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=73&locty...

http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=73&locty...

it looks like you're right, the median salary for programmers in Finland (4,830 EUR) is just a bit more than the median salary for everyone (4,320 EUR)

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