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Programming in the Apocalypse

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Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#281

Post by agapon »

edgedetector wrote: post #134
openknot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"- This post, as dire as its predictions are, may underestimate the difficulty of computing in 2050, given current trends. If you are/were living in Ukraine recently, programming is not most people's top priority, they have other problems. Famines, extreme weather events, and resource wars will affect programmers who live in comfortable locations today." It's true that programming was not a top priority outside of s…

I recall being stuck in a closet for hours during tornado warnings multiple times throughout my life. It gets boring. Programming is a good way to pass the time.

I don't know, maybe a war is a bit different. For the first two weeks of it I could not really focus on anything work-related. Worrying whether your city gets captured by the enemy or heavily shelled, being constantly interrupted by air raid sirens, worrying how to replenish supplies, worrying about safety of your family, etc.

Even after I evacuated my family further from the action, we still had missile strikes and air raid warnings. Being away from home, learning about horrible things happening in your country, those things do not help with being productive.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#282

Post by boringg »

tasuki wrote: post #241
boringg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our response was actually what made it a much more insignificant blip (thanks public health + vaccines), and technically we aren't through it yet.

Wikipedia says 0.1-0.3% global population lost [0]. It would have been perhaps 0.5% without any response whatsoever. That's still insignificant compared to all the other pandemics, which seem to often kill 20-50% of the regional population. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

Well I think that's using an assumption that if we had greater exposure (ie less public health measures/vaccines) for the virus it wouldn't mutate and cause more damage than it did in its current form and causing a step change in in impact.

Also wikipedia in and of itself is not a high quality source.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#283

Post by Clubber »

worik wrote: post #203
coolspot wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are programmers really smarter? Smarter than animal trainers? Smarter than massage therapists? Smarter than lawyers, artists, plumbers??? If we took a vote here, well we might be biased!

The individuals may or may not be smarter, meaning they are a lot of smart people in professions that don't require it, but the computer related professions have a higher floor for intelligence to be successful, mainly abstract thinking.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#284

Post by doctorhandshake »

mav88 wrote: post #278
doctorhandshake wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not according to NASA https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-no-i...

NASA has been tampering with its figures for a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Rc301T-hY

Uhhh ... who is Tony Heller

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#285

Post by kaba0 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #272
kaba0 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more deadlier a virus, the rest likely it is to spread. Let’s take ebola as an example which was very feared due to it being quite deadly, yet a flu-like virus managed to infect many orders of magnitude more people.

A counterexample: HIV is pretty deadly, but slow to progress, so it infected a lot of people. In countries with insufficient healthcare infrastructure (Subsaharan Africa), it actually killed a significant percentage of the population, precisely because it was so successful in spreading. Without modern medicine, it could have wiped out entire cultures, especially those that were more sex-positive. (An interesting ques…

Indeed as you and another commenter pointed out correctly, it is not the whole picture, and given an intelligent, evil design one could possibly create a disease that spreads fast and kills only much later (by let’s say, causing cancer). But fortunately we are not inside Plague Inc.

But if I am not mistaken, from a strictly evolutionary perspective there is no pressure towards such a disease — a genetic variation that is more deadly won’t dominate over its less deadly variant and thus deadliness could be a variable that only changes randomly from the initial level (and decreasing if it is actively detrimental to spreading, where I would say that in case of a human population deadliness does correspond with fear).

But IANAE, nor a mathematician.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#286

Post by luxcem »

goatlover wrote: post #230
PheonixPharts wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 his…

It's hard to imagine how climate change would lead to human extinction, since humans have inhabited such a wide range of environments across the globe for thousands of years, have technology to help cope with extreme climates, and are vary adaptable. What would make every single environment unlivable for humans? I don't believe there is a single climate model that does that. And how many climate scientists actually b…

> It's hard to imagine how climate change would lead to human extinction, since humans have inhabited such a wide range of environments across the globe for thousands of years, have technology to help cope with extreme climates, and are vary adaptable. What would make every single environment unlivable for humans? I don't believe there is a single climate model that does that.

Human life today is mostly maintain with infrastructure (water, food, security, health, etc). A cascade of failure due to climate change can destroy all but very local and small infrastructures. With society eventually returning to a pre-industrial conditions. It is not the end of humanity but the pre-industrial world economy can't support food, water safety and health care for 9 billion people. In pre-industrial era world population were less than 1 billion, we might return to these numbers. That means death of the large majority of human. Not extinction but the biggest threat in human history.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#287

Post by imwillofficial »

soco wrote: post #269
Vecr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive sea level rise is a meme, no way it's going over a few feet until Obama is long dead.

A few feet meme rise is gonna drown a lot of things, many Pacific island states, New Orleans or half the Netherlands, to name a few.

Not happening

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#288

Post by coldtea »

dijit wrote: post #280
coldtea wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a name for the fallacy you commited here - assuming it must have been a big deal, which was necessarily minimized by the effort? It's a case of: -- Why do you spend all these millions putting these plastic scarecrows all across Nebraska? -- They keep sharks away. -- But Nebraska doesn't have sharks! -- Exactly! See how effective it is?

It would seem to be a kind of variant on the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy — if one thing follows another the second must have been caused by the first. Only in this case you are looking at denials where “propter hoc” actually holds — the second thing really was caused by the first. There really should be a catchy name for this, since it permeates a lot of political reaso…

>People see that timely action averted a problem, but somehow take that as evidence that there wasn’t a problem in the first place.

Depending on the situation, 2 cases are possible (and have happened):

(a) A thing was indeed about to become a grave problem and timely action prevented it.

(b) A thing was never to become a big issue, and all the action spent preventing it didn't have any significance.

In both cases the outcome is "thing didn't become a big problem".

But in (a) action is what helped with this, and in (b) action was irrelevant and wasted.

Now some people see the outcome (no issue) and think that action was wasted. That's accurate in (a) and wrong in (b).

My point is that whether "timely action averted a problem" or "the problem was oversold to begin with" is something to be argued and proved, not taken for granted.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#289

Post by coryfklein »

worik wrote: post #203
coolspot wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are programmers really smarter? Smarter than animal trainers? Smarter than massage therapists? Smarter than lawyers, artists, plumbers??? If we took a vote here, well we might be biased!

Agreed, a vote would hardly bring much extra information here.

I'd love to see data behind this question, but yes I believe that there is significant variation in the required intelligence to perform the highly various professions that the human race engages in. And I would claim – in all the humility I can muster speaking as a programmer myself – that the average programming job does inherently have a higher bar for intelligence than the average other profession.

It would be very wrong indeed to extrapolate from this information that one should TREAT individuals differently based on their choice of profession! Even if we knew for certain that the Brick Laying profession only consisted of the 1% most intelligent individuals and Data Entry Specialists the lowest 1%, treating individuals with these professions differently from a policy or cultural perspective would, in my opinion, be a great injustice.

Re: Programming in the Apocalypse

#290

Post by FargaColora »

krastanov wrote: post #233
FargaColora wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 yo…

All the things you describe are good and beneficial for society. The problem was that you are preparing for an "impact" in 10 years that is not being predicted by anyone, except doomers and propagandists. You believe that the BBC is "neoliberal propaganda". That is your right, but you will alienate the vast majority of people with such extremist rhetoric.
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