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Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

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Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#161

Post by uberman »

burntoutfire wrote: post #31
uberman wrote: post #4

I'm not going to sugar coat it. From my perspective lots of stuff looks grim and increasingly people seem just resigned to it. Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. The threat that companies will sell your period tracking information. Health providers "sharing" data with Google. Amazon products mapping and doing image recognition on the items in your home or providing video police without a…

> Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. I'm sorry, but the fact that this is the first thing you list under "grim" is just comical to me. This isn't even a 1st world problem, this is a 0.1-world problem.

And I'm sorry you missed the forrest for the trees.

Paying a subscription charge for heated seats is just the tip of the iceberg example from today's headlines.

It is an exemplar of the rot in our society that increasingly demonstrates the items you purchase you don't own nor can you repair them and that no meaningful privacy exists.

Perhaps this less "first world" example that follows from the same rot will appease you.

Once upon a time, farmers owned the equipment and seeds they purchased and harvested. Now, they own nothing.

Try reselling or harvesting and re-planing seeds from your crop this year and Monsanto will see you in court even if those crops grew from seeds carried onto your property by the wind. Those seeds and all future generations belong to them not the farmer.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#162

Post by throwaway27727 »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #152
jamal-kumar wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I kind of like the idea of being killed by a lion over dying from a nuclear holocaust. Like a real man. I've been telling people this for like over a decade and they don't think I'm joking, there is a hint of seriousness to this though. I mean these are all things that killed a relatively lower amount of people, stuff we could bounce back from and adapt to basically - it wasn't like the prospect of any of th…

how is being killed by a lion manly?

The idea is that you had the courage to get near enough to a lion to die by it, but you're just a speck of dust to a plane flying a nuclear warhead.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#163

Post by arroz »

ozim wrote: post #127

Just reverse the question, what makes you believe all these negatives are true? You have some secret documents on R&D labs that you can say tech advancement stagnated? You probably don't understand how big world really is, you probably don't understand how many different companies are there working on making stuff more efficient. All mobile phones looking the same for last 5 years is not "tech advancement stagnated".…

You didn’t mention Taiwan / China, which is the biggest issue in my view

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#164

Post by p1mrx »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #28

Cheap green energy. We've just had a stark lesson on how important the price of energy is to our economy. In the future, the opposite is going to happen. The price of solar power has been dropping about 80% per decade for the last 50 years or so, and it looks like that is going to continue for the rest of this decade at least. It hasn't had a significant impact yet because solar has been more expensive than alternati…

I'm worried that having cheap energy most of the time will lead to more disasters like Texas in Feb 2021.

We should focus more on how to avoid long-tail blackouts than how to profit from periods of abundance, particularly as electricity becomes critical for transportation and heating, which have traditionally relied on fuels that are easy to store.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#165

Post by solardev »

cal85 wrote: post #136
solardev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not a hugely popular philosophy with the pro-human crowd, lol. But really, what do you expect of a species barely differentiated from chimps? Genocide and in-group obsession is in our blood; we are cursed by our genes. It would be cool if something like super-smart ants took over for a while. Or flying dolphins.

Yeah it would be cool to not exist, and it’s really cool to just give up on the future of our species, and to go around declaring this worldview at any opportunity, especially when some sucker specifically asks what makes you optimistic - that’s the coolest time to spring your teenage anti-humanism on them.

Touchy much? It does make me optimistic. There's a whole lot more to this planet than the humans. You don't have to agree, but sorry, that doesn't invalidate MY optimism. To each their own :)

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#166

Post by solardev »

klipt wrote: post #29
solardev wrote: post #7

> Given all the above, what makes you optimistic about the future? Why do you believe that the world of tomorrow will be better than the world of today? What do you look forward to in the world of the future? Many species, and viruses too, have population-level boom-bust cycles. Maybe humans will self-destruct enough to wipe out a fair number of us and our impacts will dwindle for a few millennia. It'd be cool if oth…

More likely, one subset of humans (e.g. the ones who use birth control) will be replaced by another subset (e.g. the ones who don't use birth control, perhaps for religious reasons). Since evolution favors those who don't use birth control for obvious reasons.

We're no longer limited to simple genetic reproduction, though... our units of cultural/technological/etc. output are also part of our legacies, whether as individuals or collectives. I think that's super cool, way more so than the old religious idea of "souls" and whatnot.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#167

Post by mpwoz »

I discovered Isaac Arthur's Youtube channel in another comment thread, and I've been watching his videos for several weeks now. They've almost entirely replaced news about the war in Ukraine and economic doomsdaying, and I've noticed my own mental health and future outlook improving immensely in that time.

I'd highly recommend this playlist about near-future technologies that could revolutionize life as we know it, without being too high sci-fi about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChTJHEdf6yM&list=PLIIOUpOge0...

Something about his approach really resonates with me - I think it's because he really believes a lot of the things he is researching are possible in our future - and his optimism is infectious. It really puts things in perspective, at least it did for me.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#168

Post by ano88888 »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #112
kradeelav wrote: post #19

- We have the accumulated knowledge of the entire human history at our fingertips and can avoid a large chunk (not all, obviously) of the pitfalls that befell our ancestors. maladies that basic sanitation eradicates, old deadly diseases like leprosy, polio, being eaten by lions, mass starvation ... those are things that are not a Thing in developed countries, and a lot more developing countries than before. The amoun…

Honestly I kind of like the idea of being killed by a lion over dying from a nuclear holocaust. Like a real man. I've been telling people this for like over a decade and they don't think I'm joking, there is a hint of seriousness to this though. I mean these are all things that killed a relatively lower amount of people, stuff we could bounce back from and adapt to basically - it wasn't like the prospect of any of th…

Eaten by a lion can be a slow and painful death. It will be worse if they decide to play with you a bit before eating you alive. You will get bitten bite by bite with blood flowing out slowly. It is incredibly cruel process and can take hours if you're unlucky. It is hard to regard it as 'manly'. I will pick nuclear blast any day as I will be gone in less than a second.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#170

Post by gnicholas »

burntoutfire wrote: post #31
uberman wrote: post #4

I'm not going to sugar coat it. From my perspective lots of stuff looks grim and increasingly people seem just resigned to it. Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. The threat that companies will sell your period tracking information. Health providers "sharing" data with Google. Amazon products mapping and doing image recognition on the items in your home or providing video police without a…

> Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. I'm sorry, but the fact that this is the first thing you list under "grim" is just comical to me. This isn't even a 1st world problem, this is a 0.1-world problem.

I understand the frustration with this system, which I would hate to deal with as a customer. But when I read about it, I learned that you can decide to purchase the heating outright for a bit under $500, which I think is not an uncommon price for heated seats in many luxury vehicles (this was BMW). If a salesman framed it as "you can buy it outright if you want, or you can just buy it during the winter and save money", then I wouldn't feel so bad.

But if they deactivate the prepaid extras when you sell the car, that would be pure evil.

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