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The world has probably passed peak pollution

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Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#181

Post by rustcleaner »

skissane wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #2

That's encouraging. - Peak pollution - check. - Peak coal - not yet. - Peak oil - maybe 2019, but aftermath of COVID affects numbers.[1] - Peak baby - 2013. [2] [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-19/the-status-of-... [2] https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2022/11/12/the-stats-guy...

> - Peak baby - 2013. [2] I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question. To just use the US as an example: mainstream Americans have a declining fertility rate, and we have no reason to think that is going to reverse in the foreseeable future. Immigrants have higher fertility, but they tend to converge to the mainstream after a generation or two. So,…

Just a friendly reminder to modern Progressives that (on average) you will not be in the future described by parent because you were tricked into an anti-natalist posture and will fail to reproduce adequately. It's a problem which kills itself in time so long as the problem doesn't ideologically metastasize into competiting populations.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#182

Post by spacebanana7 »

fallingsquirrel wrote: post #33
monero-xmr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t reproduce then your genes are not passed on. You have self-selected not to be part of the human race any longer. My hunch is that the people who still decide to reproduce, despite all the reasons people who advocate for not having children talk about, likely have some sort of genetic predisposition for reproduction - a strong innate need. After all the non-breeders die off, the future belongs to the repr…

What a wild take. This is like claiming gay people will "die off" in 2 generations because they don't reproduce. 1000 years ago some subset of people chose not to have children, and humanity did just fine, and that same group of so-called "non-breeders" still exists today. Therefore we can conclude it's not purely a matter of genetics. There are a huge number of reasons people make that choice. People even change the…

>This is like claiming gay people will "die off" in 2 generations because they don't reproduce.

It's a serious and interesting question as to why evolution tolerated/encouraged homosexuality in a small but significant proportion of the population. If you have the time, this article gives a good overview of the discussion [1].

Depending on your answer to that question - along with your views about how evolution affects modern humans another - it's natural to think about homosexuality will occur in future humans.

Could we have more, less or about the same of it? Will everybody be bisexual? How might medical fertility treatments affect the outcomes? It's an open field of ideas.

[1] https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-evolutionary...

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#183

Post by rustcleaner »

skissane wrote: post #133
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting aside the considerable statistical skepticism, the natural next question we all have at noticing these trends is - is there any way for secular society to get some of the "special sauce" these ultra-religious groups have, before the aggregate supply of everything starts to fall? Secular pronatalism doesn't seem like it has a lot of staying power with most people as an ideology. But I've been on board for a lo…

I’m sceptical about how successful secular pronatalism can be. Large families, generation after generation, can come at a substantial personal cost, and it is a difficult sell for individuals if it is just a matter of principle, as opposed to something backed by promises and threats of post mortem reward and punishment. Furthermore, many religious pronatal groups reduce defections by socially ostracising and demonisi…

Religion doesn't mean Ahura Mazda flapping about under the sun, getting all melty-winged.

Everybody who gets up in the morning and behaves in the ways they honestly believe are right has religion, including the non-spiritual.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#185

Post by rustcleaner »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #140
skissane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sceptical about how successful secular pronatalism can be. Large families, generation after generation, can come at a substantial personal cost, and it is a difficult sell for individuals if it is just a matter of principle, as opposed to something backed by promises and threats of post mortem reward and punishment. Furthermore, many religious pronatal groups reduce defections by socially ostracising and demonisi…

To be successful, I think we need to bring back the "it takes a village to raise a child" mentality. We need to take some of the burden off of the parents.

Not going to happen to a large capacity under multicultural societies; no matter how hard you indoctrinate children, humans will retain their racial-tribal differences and will tend to segregate if not forced together by economics and state violence.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#186

Post by pests »

hanniabu wrote: post #114
yen223 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't allowed to celebrate any victories anymore?

Not when they give a false sense of security

Live a little. People need to reach achievable goals and actually see the results of their hard work.

Don't do it unless it's perfect right?

good luck with that.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#187

Post by rustcleaner »

nonameiguess wrote: post #171
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting aside the considerable statistical skepticism, the natural next question we all have at noticing these trends is - is there any way for secular society to get some of the "special sauce" these ultra-religious groups have, before the aggregate supply of everything starts to fall? Secular pronatalism doesn't seem like it has a lot of staying power with most people as an ideology. But I've been on board for a lo…

Are you and your friends men? Unfortunately, the people who truly produce the next generation are largely absent from places like Hacker News, and history seems to show that, once they have any other options, spending 15-30 of their prime years doing the energetic equivalent of 40 consecutive Tour de Frances 9 months out of every 18, while being entirely dependent on a physically larger, stronger person who may or ma…

>Unfortunately, the people who truly produce the next generation are largely absent from places like Hacker News, and history seems to show that, once they have any other options, spending 15-30 of their prime years doing the energetic equivalent of 40 consecutive Tour de Frances 9 months out of every 18, while being entirely dependent on a physically larger, stronger person who may or may not have legal and/or social sanction to beat you, is less appealing than living the way you and I live, as we please.

Whoa that reads almost as loaded as my reply:

I suspect collapse of nativity is why Feminism(tm) kills civilizations throughout antiquity.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#188

Post by benreesman »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #164
benreesman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that the best and brightest (of which HN’s readership is a plausible sample) dislikes this observation: a great many people who rarely use anything but hard rationality still believe that not only will they be the one to join the tiny elite (can’t be all of them, most are wrong by construction), but that this is acceptable. Of secondary importance is what a depressing commentary this is on the…

We've faced a similar version of this problem before, in the 1910s and 1920s. What happened in that case was a global depression, followed by reforms (in some places) and communist/fascist takeovers in others. Then we had a world war.

Hopefully this disproportionately influential community would like to see more of the reform side of things and less of the war side of things?

People are always talking about a “post-scarcity” world, but isn’t that in some sense globally true while locally false today? The US (which I appreciate is not the whole world but a signal example of having just passed the knee in the hockey-stick on Gini) burns something like 30-40% of key agricultural outputs as ethanol representing a net disaster on emissions.

At what point do we acknowledge that we actively choose a governing/managing/ruling class that has no upper bound on conspicuous consumption? Yachts don’t cut it anymore, now you’re not a player until you’ve got a fucking private space program.

I did very well in my career once and might again, and I remember feeling outright guilty when I had a house with “his and hers” sinks in the bathroom, that felt really opulent (because it is).

Bezos has “his and hers” custom private jets that fly more often than many people drive or train (this is public record), a huge airplane carrying one passenger sometimes daily.

I hear a lot of hot air about universal basic income and stuff, but what’s stopping our leaders? Corporate profits shatter record after record, rank and file workers are choosing between basic necessity A or necessity B, you could have lower margins and pay people Universal Basic Income in the form of a living wage. Then it’s not even big government or “welfare” or some other boogeyman.

They’re just dark triad liars, it’s just nonsense, the elite are not trying to change the world for the better: they’re trying to dig deeper moats and build higher walls around consumption that’s gone from conspicuous to fucking genocidal.

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#189

Post by rustcleaner »

randomdata wrote: post #38
developerDan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is to say children today will have children of their own tomorrow? People who are choosing not to have kids “leaving the gene pool” (you say it as if they are some filth to be done away with) doesn’t change anything.

The people of typical child rearing age today grew up in the "16 and pregnant" era, where having children was demonized. They were told that to have children was a failing, and that they should focus on their career instead – that was the key to a successful, happy life. Social pressure is a hell of a drug. Is that fashion going to remain, though? Everything goes out of style eventually. I think we are already seeing…

>The people of typical child rearing age today grew up in the "16 and pregnant" era, where having children was demonized. They were told that to have children was a failing, and that they should focus on their career instead – that was the key to a successful, happy life. Social pressure is a hell of a drug.

You could almost call that a genocide... if the originator of that messaging authored it to cause a birth collapse. Throw in every public policy decision made to economically destroy single-earner households and it really almost starts looking like genocide (or democide?)...

Re: The world has probably passed peak pollution

#190

Post by Lord-Jobo »

cs702 wrote: post #175
Animats wrote: post #2

That's encouraging. - Peak pollution - check. - Peak coal - not yet. - Peak oil - maybe 2019, but aftermath of COVID affects numbers.[1] - Peak baby - 2013. [2] [1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-04-19/the-status-of-... [2] https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2022/11/12/the-stats-guy...

I'm not sure "peak baby" is a good thing, but agree with you that the other three peaks are encouraging. Arguments by smart people like Sabine Hossenfelder have led me to question the conventional wisdom on population growth. For example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI1AaZ9OkH8 .

I think peak baby is less about good or bad and more about a turning point for growth demand.
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