161–170 of 280 posts
As I've gotten older and seen predicted doomsdays come and go, I've started to think that expecting armageddon is an innate part of human psychology. I'm not aware of any era or place where many people have not expected the world to meet disaster soon. It's a part of all major religions.
As I've gotten older and seen predicted doomsdays come and go, I've started to think that expecting armageddon is an innate part of human psychology. I'm not aware of any era or place where many people have not expected the world to meet disaster soon. It's a part of all major religions.
As I grow older and start raising a child, I realize why the anger and will for change, the passion and hysteria you show when you're young are never followed by those who ve seen a bit more. This all doesn't matter, and living a regular monotonous life, making your little monkey turn into a human, is all most people end up caring about.
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Climate change definitely is the next one. It is most surely happening, and probably faster than we want or expect, but if you listen to scientific consensus (eg. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report), it is pretty clear that, while serious and troublesome issue, it most definitely is not an existential threat.
Probably not directly. It will cause mass migration and refugee crises as coastal cities and low lying areas slowly flood. That seems inevitable at this point. That could maybe lead to wars, and nuclear war is still an existential threat. If the changes somehow disrupt the ability to support cereal crops in the northern hemisphere (which actually is also the biggest risk from nuclear winter), that could lead to wides…
You can roll up agonizing in fear, or you can prepare yourself for a bit of struggle. We can help lower the impact, but there's no reason to panic.
Most likely the impact on humanity will be minimal, if not the impact on life itself will be medium, and the Earth will spin a few more cycles with or without us.
This doesn't really matter, and we should just take it calmly, and talk to each other. No need for end of the world nuclear war hysteria.
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Developed countries produce, not a little bit, but multiples of calories than is consumed because people choose to pay extra for tastier but less efficient calories through livestock, and tolerate food waste for convenient packaging and higher quality selection. I don't see any sign of a downwards trend in this ratio.
Oh yes; you can slaughter millions of extra cows and pigs in the US to realize a huge number of available calories, while redirecting the grain back to humans, all with no more ethical worries than you've already accepted in producing & consuming meat. A number of other inefficiencies can also go away under emergency conditions -- people will get less picky about their fruits and vegetables in a hurry, and it won't s…
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Climate change ? I don't doubt it's happening but the doom scenarios seem in line with all those predictions
Any prediction being right doesn't really have much to do with all the wrong predictions IMO.
Now take in account the ecosystems destroyed and the picture is very different. We must leave behind the humans-only perspective.
We should always value humans over other species, and if you disagree you're an enemy of our species.
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All of Malthus’ predictions have come true. They just did so in his past, not future. Malthusian model is the standard one to describe evolution of human populations up until 17th century or so. If you are familiar with scientific literature, with economic history, with population genetics etc, the Malthusian model is pretty much the consensus view these days. See, for example Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms” or Sh…
Thank you, I think that's very useful historical context. Yes Malthus had useful and valuable insights, but also yes we have since discovered mechanisms and processes that can largely mitigate these risks which he could not have foreseen.
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Sure and I agree with that but that doesn't mean that armageddon isn't coming either. For example Climate Change and the Covid19 pandemic, both are examples of very real problems with the potential to severally harm/kill large numbers but both are dismissed with that attitude. I'm not sayin that the sky is falling in either case, though with Climate Change I can't imagine not thinking that, but if we continue to igno…
There have been doomsday Climate predictions as long you can go back. Historically, look at the flood stories and you can see climate worry in biblical times. More recently Miami Beach is always going to be underwater 5 years from the prediction date. It's a serious problem, but there has always been a cult like following to climate change. Personally, I think it's best to ignore the hysterical predictions and focus…
As I've gotten older and seen predicted doomsdays come and go, I've started to think that expecting armageddon is an innate part of human psychology. I'm not aware of any era or place where many people have not expected the world to meet disaster soon. It's a part of all major religions.
> I've started to think that expecting armageddon is an innate part of human psychology. Sci-fi novel plot starter: it's a quality that has been selected for by interstellar progenitors who seeded life on Earth, so that we would be wary of the need to mitigate real planet-scale disasters.