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Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

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Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#221

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[flagged]

Just by the tone of this response I can infer that you did not People with healthy levels of arrogance and self-confidence don't talk in such a poised manner pivoting against other demographics when questioned about how they fare at the micro level.

Would you please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN? You've already been doing it a ton with this new account. That's not cool—it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, and we ban accounts that do it. If you want to have inflammatory arguments about sensational and divisive topics, please do that somewhere else. We want curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#222
post #140

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Growth can't continue indefinitely. In fact a lot of growth today is actually fudging the numbers to make them look good.

> Growth can't continue indefinitely. no it can't continue indefinitely, but there's still a tonne of room left for humans to grow. I dont believe we are near the limit yet. And that's only this planet. There's at least a few more in the solar system, and hopefully, propulsion tech will improve at some point to allow other star systems to be taken over by humans.

>I dont believe we are near the limit yet.

On what basis? We are already objectively destroying this planet with absolutely no meaningful action being taken to change, much less reverse course. At this point we will be incredibly lucky if we even manage to sustain a technological civilization long enough to settle other planets.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#223

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That quote demonstrates enumeration fallacy (using examples to argue that the US ranks lower without any context about the countries against which the US is ranked). Moreover: > [The US's classification as a high-trust society] might have been true 10 years ago, but now (just from the wiki examples): ... This seems to unambiguously argue that the US is not a high-trust society. With the additional context of your quo…

Well. In all honesty, I should have written "definetly not yet" instead of "probably not yet". But I see it from my own perspective as someone who grew up in Bulgaria and spent his adult life in the Czech Republic. Neither country is considered an example for the world (understandably lol), but in both, current US state of affairs would be considered extremely worrying. For example in both countries we have a multi-p…

Fair enough. This clarification earned you an upvote. :)

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#224

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Assuming a democratically elected government, isn't "less government" a way to take away power from voters to make decisions and manage commonly held resources? Why is that a good thing? Who gets the power when voters lose it? Who gets to say what happens, when we can't all decide together?

You can think of the U.S. Bill of Rights as taking "power from voters to make decisions and manage commonly held resources". You might think of the above claim as simplistic, but it's no less so than is "yay democracy".

Who said "yay democracy", please?

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#225
post #203

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Not really - but I think its a message that bears repeating. Most people have been through the governmental education process and have been taught that the government is the only fair/legal/possible answer to all our ills. That 10+ formative years of propaganda to counter. Even more if you go to university and licensed to do your job - you are now vested in an exploitative system, that initiates harm against others.…

You're making an excellent argument why centralised power is bad. You're not addressing how those same power dynamics won't be recreated with "smaller government" if large businesses are already so powerful they can influence governments. It sounds like you're arguing the problem isn't the amount of power being centralised but who gets to control it and your solution is to replace any semblance of equal democratic co…

One thing at a time! I don't even think that most people are even on board with the idea that big government might not be the answer to all of our problems - most people like the way government is acting!

Things that I think should be mandatory is a lot more freedom of information. I'm absolutely not a fan of gatekeepers of information (eg the media) nor of any policies to manage 'misinformation'. At the present we don't even know what we don't know..

Given government is purportedly working for us, surely it should be the case that the info that is collected and gathered should be freely available to all of us, that would be great start. Eg with the covid info, why is this not available in real time to us all? What information does the government use to base their decisions on?

I think it is a small and simple step to take (provide information immediately) so we can see wtf is even going on. Let's also stop this 'misinformation' mud slinging, but level ourselves up to try to make sense of whatever info there is.

Re the point about private property. I love the way indigenous American tribes did not even have that concept. But, if we were to implement that, all that would happen is that no one would care. I'm totally fine with people owning property that they use.

I would approach this problem differently. If I were king (and obv. I'm not!) I would make all ownership fully traceable back to the specific individuals. Because, in fact, individuals are all that matters! Corporations/Trusts/Offshore arrangement/etc are just bits of legal paper, concepts. If we knew who owned what, I suspect that this would illuminating. Again, this would be just an information gathering exercise. I'm sure there would be lots of issues with that! but again, in the first place, all I'd want to do is have the information.

In general, I'm most interested in a calculated rollback away from monolithic institutions towards the individual. The general direction of travel is entirely the opposite though - and accelerating!

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#226
post #180

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The thing is it’s not a choice between living on lentils and fancier food, it’s a choice between having a stable food source and having a food source that is dependent on huge amounts of your own manual labor which will still sometimes fail to feed you through no fault of your own, leaving you or your partner or children to go hungry and possibly starve to death. Ergo: nightmare.

there are boom years and bust years like anything else. you "make hay while the sun shines", and store up for the lean years. and you form bonds with your neighbors. but there isnt a public safety net, other than the one you create for yourself. its most certainly riskier, but it is also a freer way to live. it is very empowering to be self-sufficient. everything has its costs and benefits.

What if there are too many bust seasons in a given period and you and all your neighbors’ stocks are depleted? These are the real problems with subsistence farming and they’re the primary reason nobody wants to do it given a choice. There’s ultimately very little freedom in the sort of precarity that subsistence farming entails: all aspects of your life are dominated by the success of your harvest, which requires constant attention.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#227
post #220

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[flagged]

You crossed repeatedly into personal attack and name-calling in this thread. That's not allowed, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of how wrong or annoying another commenter is or you feel they are. Would you please review the site guidelines and use HN as intended? We'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Note also the one about not using HN for political or ideological battle. T…

I’m sorry dang! I’m such a sucker for when someone says something upsetting. My apologies. It just slowly escalated and I always take the bait. I feel bad.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#228
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are boom years and bust years like anything else. you "make hay while the sun shines", and store up for the lean years. and you form bonds with your neighbors. but there isnt a public safety net, other than the one you create for yourself. its most certainly riskier, but it is also a freer way to live. it is very empowering to be self-sufficient. everything has its costs and benefits.

What if there are too many bust seasons in a given period and you and all your neighbors’ stocks are depleted? These are the real problems with subsistence farming and they’re the primary reason nobody wants to do it given a choice. There’s ultimately very little freedom in the sort of precarity that subsistence farming entails: all aspects of your life are dominated by the success of your harvest, which requires con…

you assume the only life worth valuing is one that you know. fetishsizing risk is not what subsistence farmers do.

look at the amish.

when i am in the field, it is as if there is nothing going wrong in the world. headlines dont pierce the stillness.

something ineffable has been lost.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#229

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> Because that's where the progress was. They simply couldn't make progress on batteries at the time. That's a descent into circular arguments and post-facto analysis. The early twentieth century was a golden age of chemistry. We had the technology to do fractional distillation of petrochemicals and synthesise complex organics. To suppose that we could not have punched gigantic breakthroughs in ionic electro-chemistr…

Gasoline has an energy density of about 34.6 MJ/liter... the lithium-ion battery pack in a Chevy Volt has an energy density of about 0.4 MJ/liter. One of those technologies is easier to develop than the other. Science doesn't need to be deterministic for some fruit to hang lower than others.

Zinc-air batteries were known for a long time, with double energy density of today's lithium batteries, and without expensive materials. But no one seriously tried to commercialize them for use in vehicles, they ended up in niche - hearing aids.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#230

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We don't have "safe spaces in colleges". I graduated from college recently and never witnessed any such thing. How long has it been since you've set foot on a college campus? This is a fabrication by fox news to promote contempt for young people, who are dealing with real problems like sky high costs of education, health care, and housing, and who don't deserve this kind of disrespect. Young people are survivors. The…

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