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I Choose Optimism

secularhumanism.org

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Re: I Choose Optimism

#51

Post by pochekailov »

I am commenting in support of optimism and to counterweight pessimistic outlook.

Humanity indeed faces a lot of problems. Each of them have many possible solutions (The only one unsolvable is a heat death of the universe).

Thing is, the solutions usually may be divided into two categories: technical and societal.

For example, for the horse manure problem in big cities there were two possible solutions: invent a car, or limit the number of horses in the city.

The thing is: technical solutions are always cool. They open up new possibilities, the one which could not be foreseen. Technical solution also creates new problems, that require solutions of their own. Societal solutions always suck. Societal solution is to make people do less of the thing that causes trouble. The problem therefore kind of resolves, but the life become more boring and less free. Such solution does not bring new possibilities, does not advance life, but there is no risks of unforeseen new problems.

Examples of the problems and possible solutions:

Global worming: limit consumption and consumerism - or - perform climate engineering (spray high albedo particles in stratosphere, send controllable aluminum foil mirrors to the orbit, install more solar cells and wind turbines

Cancer, Alzheimers, heart diseases, obesity, etc.: live "healthy life", eat boring non-tasty grass, die 5 times a week at the gym, don't eat most awesome sugar, don't dring amazing coke, don't smoke, don't enjoy, don't ... - OR - Concentrate on solving the cause of those illnesses, that is the ageing. Treat ageing as a disease and fund anti-ageing research.

"Overpopulation": Make people believe that earth is dying and they shouldn't have children - OR - Build habitat (O'Neil cylinders) on the orbit thus opening virtually endless living space

Nuclear war: Pacify a horrible dictator, leave him "ways to retreat" - OR - build habitats on the orbit; atomic explosions in space won't do much damage at all (there is a constant atomic explosion already there, called Sun).

Hunger: Not a problem, earth agriculture is overproducing; the real problem is horrible dictators and the lack of new land that people can escape to from that dictator.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#52

Post by shepherdjerred »

salt-thrower wrote: post #16
DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

American homes in 1950 averaged 983 square feet; by 2014, the size had nearly tripled to 2,657 square feet. Today, 91 percent of our homes are air-conditioned. This is not actually a good thing. This is actually a problem.

Exactly. The author is living in a middle/upper class suburbian bubble. Bigger and bigger houses that consume more and more resources is a problem, not a sign of progress. It is a glaring sign of the consumerism and resource depletion that is fueling the crisis we're in. There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living.

> There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living.

Why not? Do you think it's impossible for energy to become 'to cheap to meter'?

Re: I Choose Optimism

#53

Post by larsnystrom »

davidkuennen wrote: post #29

I've always been an optimistic person and consider myself to be very happy. People around me who are more pessimistic often seem unhappy. I see no value in beating myself down on things that I cannot control. The world around me is beautiful. I just have to make the best of it day by day. Facing hardships is a natural part of life.

I believe many of us who worry about the sustainability of our current society is not really worried about facing hardship, but rather about causing hardship (for future generations). At least that’s true for me. I want to leave this world in the best possible condition for my kids, and cause them as little hardship as possible.

However, I’m also trying to not beat myself down over things I cannot control.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#54

Post by systemvoltage »

adrianN wrote: post #20
mrandish wrote: post #4

It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty, infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for some people in som…

The economy gets better for more people in more places than ever before. Environmental destruction is also progressing faster than ever before. Many crucial ecosystems are on the brink of collapse (e.g. the rainforests) and we show no signs of intending to protect them.

Media doesn't report good things that happen in the environment. From 2013-2019, they hammered constantly on how the Great Barrier Reef was dying. But, not a peep when they found that it is healthiest its ever been in recent history: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/parts-australia...

No wonder the trust in media has fallen to the lowest. Reuters/AP are informative as a root source, but I have stopped trusting environmentalist doom-and-gloom stories from MSM.

Environment is going to get far worse though. Germany is busy burning the shittiest form of coal as its primary fuel (35%): Lignite coal with 1/5th water content. It is the worse than burning literally anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

Again, thanks to the utterly idiotic emotionally-driven environmentalists that are going to make the planet worse ironically. We need to stop giving them fodder and look to the tech/engineering community for solutions.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#55

Post by M3L0NM4N »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #46
M3L0NM4N wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean they objectively provide a better quality of life to people... Not to pick a side, but there's pros and cons to it.

To the privileged that can afford it. Meanwhile, global warming is fueling a real need for AC that didn't historically exist in most places and chronic homelessness has become a thing that didn't really exist in the past. We have set the minimum so high that some people simply cannot attain it. Such individuals end up being a net drain on society in many cases due to their lack of housing. Some hospitals have found t…

I think the root cause of homelessness is many things, but it's not the bare minimum cost of living. Not saying CoL isn't high right now, but it's not what's causing the vast majority of homelessness. Poverty? Sure. Homelessness? No.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#56

Post by lucas_membrane »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #33

> For most of history, people thought: “The world is bad and, usually, it’s getting worse.” In other words, no longer did humans see themselves as mere pawns for the gods. What? Citation needed. A negative view of individual sin is certainly part of the Christian worldview, but gods are not, nor is an overall negative outlook. The whole point is that God loves his people enough to save them, the Church will expand, a…

Seems that since Euler developed exponential functions (circa the enlightenment), exponential growth of knowledge and economies and exponential improvement in the human condition have become the standard expectation for the enlightened world, replacing the previous standard expectation of alternating good times and bad times. The optimists and the winners over the recent centuries have been able to make a good case that this change in thinking has not been completely discredited by experience. Does that mean that the good times are here to stay?

A reasonable attempt at an unbiased point of view on this issue would acknowledge some kind of selection effect -- one would expect that a few hundred years experience would appear particularly favorable to civilizations and cultures that you get after a few hundred years of that same experience, so maybe things are not objectively quite as good as they look to us.

A simple statistical estimate of how long the current era might be sustained can be made by coming up with a number for how long it has already been here, and considering ourselves as occurring at a uniformly random point in its total lifetime. That procedure produces ~90% certainty that things will continue as is for at least 1/20th as long as the era has been here but not more than 20 times as long. For example, if you put the start of the era of technological progress around 1620, this kind of know-nothing (about specific current conditions) estimate would put us 90% sure that it will last at least another 20 years, but not more than 8000 years. YMMV.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#57

Post by bergenty »

davidkuennen wrote: post #29

I've always been an optimistic person and consider myself to be very happy. People around me who are more pessimistic often seem unhappy. I see no value in beating myself down on things that I cannot control. The world around me is beautiful. I just have to make the best of it day by day. Facing hardships is a natural part of life.

I’m optimistic too, not always though. Atleast I know the source on my unhappiness. I just dislike working in a team. I’ve taken a few years off between jobs and those have been the happiest years of my life. I have plenty of hobbies and don’t really get bored anymore. Too bad that’s the one thing in our society you can’t not do.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#58

Post by s-lambert »

goatlover wrote: post #47
NovaVeles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in history but at the cost of environmental blow back a…

Why would energy usage need to decline when there's a giant ball of fusion in our sky we barely make use of, and when we've just begun exploring space in the past century?

Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to turn solar energy into electrical energy (including batteries for storage) and they don't last forever.

Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406

Re: I Choose Optimism

#59

Post by nicoco »

I'm surprised not to find any mention of Chomsky here and his "new pascal wager".

> Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#60

Post by oceanplexian »

salt-thrower wrote: post #28
narcraft wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? I sometimes get the impression that sustainability advocates/environmentalists are more anti-technolgy or anti-human than they are pro-nature and saying things like "there is no amount of renewable energy that will make [enjoy…

> If there hypothetically was a magical source of near infinite renewable energy that could be harnessed without negative side effects, would you be ok with 2600+ sqft homes and air conditioning? Yes. In a world with zero negative externalities for massive resource consumption, then by all means, give everyone a mansion and a yacht. > What number of humans can the Earth ideally sustain in your estimation? If it's sub…

Before climate change was a thing, Malthus was making the same claims about society hitting a brick wall in the late 18th century. You then had scientists in the 19th century predicting the downfall of society because we would run out of places to store horse manure as more people could afford a horse. In the 20th century intellectuals predicted that the world would run out of food. When that didn’t work, scientists predicted the world would end in nuclear war, with rediculous props like the clock counting down to midnight. That didn’t happen, and there had to be a new boogeyman.

Even if we could push a button and solve climate change, I’m sure there would always be a reason why we need to stop having babies, turn back time, and live a subsistence lifestyle (Which is also incredibly racist, since it’s usually directed at people in developing economies, as their standard of living increases). And this is why I don’t believe most of the arguments against big houses, cars, air conditioning, are honest or being made in good faith.

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