Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

write.as

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 176 posts

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#141

Post by mistermann »

exolymph wrote: post #40
orhmeh09 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have sources supporting your statements? They may sound common sense to you, but there is considerable ongoing scientific inquiry into people’s attitudes today, their sense of responsibility, and their sense of agency. Maybe you’re right, but I would go to the effort of reviewing the research and giving links before making assertions.

This is a casual discussion website, comments often relate personal opinions.

True, but is the distinction between fact and opinion plausibly important, even if the conversation is casual?

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#142

Post by lazyasciiart »

nemo44x wrote: post #128
lazyasciiart wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're at the point where you envy Taliban soldiers for having a purpose in life, it might be good for the people you cherish to have you go figure some stuff out.

When did I say I envy them? Or that those that may envy their purposeful lives would agree with their politics and beliefs they fight for. Only that I could imagine a person with feelings of no purpose could look at them and envy that particular attribute.

Where you responded to someone who said "if you feel this way do it" not with "I wasn't talking about myself!!" but with "I can't"

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#143

Post by lazyasciiart »

equality_1138 wrote: post #137
lazyasciiart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it could be that they say "climate change isn't real" in exactly those words.

Another problem is when so many people take a politician's words at face value. It simply doesn't work like that.

First, this isn't limited to politicians. Second, calling it a logical fallacy to believe what others say about themselves is utterly ridiculous and doesn't move goal posts so much as it pretends there are invisible goal posts swooping around the field at will and only you can know if the ball goes in.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#144

Post by JPKab »

nosianu wrote: post #45
Telemakhos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some data from Chicago: https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/1_PDFsam_D... Murder in particular is way up.

That is one city with its own very specific problems in a large country. Are we picking only the data that fit our narrative now? What about all the other big cities? Starting point for an example: "Reported violent crime rate in the United States from 1990 to 2019" -- https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/homicide-rise-us-report/in...

"The number of homicides in 2020 compared to 2019 rose by 25%, according to an FBI preliminary report. That represents the largest jump since the agency started releasing annual homicide figures in the 1960s."

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#145

Post by eggsmediumrare »

goatlover wrote: post #133
i_haz_rabies wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that collapse _is actually inevitable_ if we don't solve climate change, and if you don't think humanity is capable of the coordination and sacrifice necessary to solve it, you are left with one conclusion.

Where in the IPCC report does it say that collapse is inevitable? Why would that be the only conclusion? One can imagine global civilization adapting and doing what it can to mitigate the effects of climate change. Soldiering on might be one way to put it. If modern civilization and the biosphere overall are more resilient than some assume, then adaptation is a possibility. One can also imagine cleaner technologies a…

Clean tech and carbon capture is solving climate change. I think the post above meant collapse is inevitable if we continue to do nothing. The IPCC doesn't exist to model human responses to climate change, so would have nothing to say on the subject of collapse. Perhaps inevitable is not entirely accurate... But "very likely" seems prudent.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#146

Post by myWindoonn »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #126
CalRobert wrote: post #10

If you find the collapse of human civilisation interesting, you might enjoy: It Could Happen Here - podcast by Robert Evans exploring a US decaying in to warring states and dissolving https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-307... Dark Mountain, a twice-yearly collection of short stories and poetry on themes of collapse and ecocide. https://dark-mountain.net/

I've listened to a few of them and don't recommend the new daily episodes. They're unscripted and not as polished as the old series. And don't forget Evan's State Department/intelligence ties: Bellingcat plus being embedded in US military units in Iraq. We don't know to what extent COINTELPRO-like programs ever ended. Evans fearmongers and overinflates groups like the Proud Boys which are really just marginal organiz…

As a PNW native antifascist, this reads like FUD. Evans isn't perfect, but you'd have to be completely out to lunch to miss what the Proud Boys are doing in the Portland/Vancouver area.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#147

Post by elihu »

FooHentai wrote: post #131
wilburTheDog wrote: post #100

I think, no matter how hard you try, you can't produce something like this without it being biased toward your own opinions on the topic. And those of us with different opinions would phrase things differently. I suppose I would fit in his Pessimist/Defeatist category, though I wouldn't call it that. (And I guess deniers wouldn't call themselves deniers either.) I would probably refer to my own take on collapse as de…

All good points. Another clear lesson from the pandemic: Achieving optimum outcomes is severely bounded by practical political realities - Consider if every single country had hard locked down, everywhere, for 6+ weeks. Perhaps complete elimination could have been achieved. But politically, impossible. That equally applies to climate change as a similar tragedy of the commons played out on a longer timescale. So ther…

Honestly, I'm surprised we had as much mask/social distancing compliance in the early parts of the pandemic as we did. It's encouraging how much people will put up as long as they understand why. But that seems to only work for a limited time, and we haven't been doing so well on vaccinations.

As for the future being boring... I suppose if 2020 is a representative sample of what the future has to offer, it won't be. But I agree that a lot of things may just gradually get worse, if we don't figure out how to deal with them. And in terms of climate, the best possible outcome isn't great.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#148

Post by JPKab »

cratermoon wrote: post #54
nosianu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one city with its own very specific problems in a large country. Are we picking only the data that fit our narrative now? What about all the other big cities? Starting point for an example: "Reported violent crime rate in the United States from 1990 to 2019" -- https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

If you really want to compare the so-called violent crime crisis with historical data, look back to the 70s and 80s, when crime was really bad. There's a ton of stuff out there looking back only two or three decades, which is like looking at global temperatures since the 90s and saying global warming is fake.

"The ideological movement that I favor triggered a rise in crime, so I'm going to minimize that rise in crime by comparing it to overall crime levels several decades ago, after I first denied the rise was occurring in the first place"

https://www.denverpost.com/denver-homicides/ (Murders increased sharply in 2020) https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/07/27/violent-crime-surge... https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/mnjis/Documen... https://www.news10.com/news/ny-news/nypd-shootings-up-166-fu... (shootings up 166%, totally not a big deal according to you)

Like I always tell climate deniers, it's not the temperature, it's the rate of change that's the problem. The Earth was far hotter in the time of the dinosaurs, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem that it's getting hotter now. You sound like them, but with crime instead of climate.

And 2019-2020 saw the sharpest increase in murders since the FBI began collecting stats in the 60s according to this article from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/homicide-rise-us-report/in...

Since the article doesn't support your thesis, feel free to denounce it as right wing propaganda, like you've done elsewhere in this thread. That's totally what CNN and the AP are known for, right?

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#149

Post by equality_1138 »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #143
equality_1138 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another problem is when so many people take a politician's words at face value. It simply doesn't work like that.

First, this isn't limited to politicians. Second, calling it a logical fallacy to believe what others say about themselves is utterly ridiculous and doesn't move goal posts so much as it pretends there are invisible goal posts swooping around the field at will and only you can know if the ball goes in.

Actually it is a logical fallacy to interpret one's rejection of a proposed solution to be a rejection of the problem. I'm not arguing any specific case for it, but it does seem to be quite common and problematic in civil discourse.

And the "another problem" is to misunderstand the way that money influences PR statements from powerful entities (politicians or otherwise). This part isn't illogical but just ignorant/mis-educated about wealth and power.

Re: A Compass for the Politics of Collapse

#150

Post by elihu »

seandoe wrote: post #53
Hokusai wrote: post #36

It's interesting but not insightful. Anyway, I would find more conducive to stop talking nonsense about collapses and focus on the many technologies that are being developed. We got a million times better at creating vaccines. AIDS vaccine is on the way. Clean technologies are growing exponentially and a future of clean-air cities is approaching fast. Working from home thru video conferences, I saw that in sci-fi whe…

Yes, I'm with you. The focus and obsession with doom and collapse needs to end. It's like porn. We're biologically programmed to direct our attention to it. While the various media fuel this neverending stream of negativity, we have to realize that our primal selves yearn for it. Regardless of how likely any of these scenarios are, obsessing over them does not help our situation. How can we break this cycle of addict…

I agree that the idea of collapse is something we're inclined to fixate on whether it's about to happen or not. But on the other hand, democracies can fail, ecosystems can collapse, economies can fall apart, and so on. These are real risks that I think should be taken seriously. (Especially climate change.)

The important thing though is not how much we're focused on the problems, but what we're doing about it. Individually we don't have much influence, but we can participate in elections, we can donate to worthy organizations, we can (to some small degree) minimize our climate impact, we can constructively influence discussions about these problems.

Regarding the tendency of people in general to want to believe in the end of the world, I once had an idea for a new randomly-moving holiday called "arbitrary apocalypse day", where you roll 3 D-10s to pick a number of days until the next arbitrary apocalypse day, and roll another die to decide what's going to destroy civilization this time (nuclear war, nanobots, a big meteor, etc..). You treat that day like the end of the world. If everything goes on as normal, then you roll the dice again the next day and select the next arbitrary apocalypse day.

Post reply on HN