[HN Gopher] Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
___________________________________________________________________
Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
Author : Thevet
Score : 126 points
Date : 2020-09-27 03:44 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| dalbasal wrote:
| I haven't read the book, podcast, etc... But at a glance, i don't
| think I buy the "hingeyness" concept.
|
| Stretching the analogy... A hinge matters because the door it
| hangs is flat. It "only" moves at the hinge. History is anything
| but flat. It can bend at any point and in any direction.
|
| The 18th century gave us most of the political and economic
| institutions we have: nation states, republics, liberal
| democracy, maritime law, modern philosophy, limited liability
| companies and stock markets.
|
| I don't think this means the 19th and 20th century were
| determined by those. The US/USSR standoff could have been
| something else entirely if the nuclear cold war had preceded WWII
| instead of succeeding it.
|
| The "lever" is technology, and this just gets increasingly
| powerful as we go along.
|
| The only way that, in retrospect, any century is a "hinge" is if
| in the following century, we have less powerful technology and
| ability to impact the world.
|
| So, in a sense, hingeyness simply means "collapse." A century is
| a hinge inasmuch as it is enough of a collapse to destroy
| technology.
|
| In any case, I think we are currently underestimating the threat
| of nuclear war. The threat has not really receded much, if at
| all, since it was at athe top of everyone's list of fears.
|
| We're still likely to have mass death and ecodestruction appear
| out of a clear blue sky.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I have a hunch every society in the past thought that.
| brianberns wrote:
| And it was probably true for most of them. The stakes for
| humanity keep rising, so "now" is usually the most important
| time in history.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I mean stakes have been pretty high when Mongolians were
| invading Europe and China, when Hitler was invading
| everywhere, etc etc.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Being knocked down didn't sting as much when nobody had
| electricity, indoor plumbing, or technological aids. Modern
| society has much more to lose from a dire economic
| collapse.
| dbtc wrote:
| Or when the Spanish vini vidi vicied the Americas.
|
| But you could argue too that post nuclear has been
| continually the highest stakes by far.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| If the stakes keep on rising, how high would they be 50 years
| from now? And in 200? 2000?
|
| How high were the stakes 300 years ago? Should we think
| people living in 1720 didn't have it that bad compared to
| now? Will people in the future look at now and think the
| same?
| edanm wrote:
| That's actually probably not true. I'm not a historian, but one
| interesting thing I've learned from reading lots of history is
| the different attitudes different societies had about the
| past/future.
|
| As far as I know, it's only really since the
| enlightenment/industrial revolution, that people feel like the
| future is going to be better. The idea that the past was the
| golden age, where Humans were much more advanced, knew more,
| Had better technology, etc, seems to be the common position in
| history.
|
| Im not sure about the feeling that society was"hungry" ala the
| article, but I suspect that feeling is connected.
| chubot wrote:
| Subjectively it feels sorta true for a 40 year old, but I bet it
| pales in comparison to WW2. Large portions of many nations
| perished, and their kin had to rebuild society. Nuclear weapons
| were deployed for the first time.
|
| The fact that we even recovered from it is amazing (although some
| didn't, certainly).
|
| I live in the US because my grandparents' generation lost the
| war. And the US has a generation named after the effects of the
| war (baby boomers).
|
| I remember reading the phrase "post war" dozens or hundreds of
| times as a child, but it took awhile for the reality of it to
| sink in.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Agreed. Maybe biggest since WWII, certainly not biggest ever.
| Climate change is terrible but because it's smooth (even if
| superlinear) it's hard to ascribe hinginess to a specific
| moment.
|
| C.f. altitude vs geographic prominence.
|
| Also, I think the fear of A.I. has distorted the fact the
| outward rate of change has declined massively from say the
| "special century" of 1870-1970, even if it has picked back up a
| bit in recent years.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Agreed. Every great power today was profoundly molded by it.
| America & Soviet Union became the sole superpowers. It
| basically decided the communist government of China. It
| eventually set free the other next great powers, such as India
| and Nigeria, from colonial rule. The impact on technology was
| equally profound. The computer, radar, the jet, the turbo
| pumped liquid rocket, the drone, the atomic bomb...
|
| I mean, an entirely new source of energy was first harnessed
| (really the first since the invention of fire) and the first
| human made object was sent (briefly) into space...
| XorNot wrote:
| This is all an argument that there were perceptually worse
| times before, so how could it be bad now?
|
| WW2 setup an era defined by one very unusual property: the
| absolute dominance of the United States and it's economy as the
| global hegemon.
|
| But the US is not adapted to the notion that what it achieved
| from that era was a set of historically unique advantages that
| are not a property of "American exceptionalusm" but rather what
| you get when you're one of the few nations on the planet which
| didn't have its cities bombed.
| Lammy wrote:
| What am I supposed to think BBC wants for me (from me?) when this
| already-ominously-worded page popped into view with three
| additional scary headlines pre-loaded in my eye-line so I've read
| them before I can even choose not to.
|
| "You may also like: - Are we on the road to civilisation
| collapse? - The perils of short-termism: Civilisation's greatest
| threat. - The greatest long-term threats facing humanity."
|
| I know even discount supermarkets put their highest-converting
| items at eye-level on the shelves across, so I'm sure the same
| considerations go into news media and the placement isn't an
| accident. I remember Facebook's research project inserting more-
| positive or more-negative stories to a person's personalized News
| Feed yo successfully influence their mood in that direction. The
| ability for Facebook or anyone to do such a study makes me pretty
| confident BBC could detect three "negative" wordings if they
| _hadn 't_ directly paid somebody to write them this way, and they
| could avoid say I'll "like" them so a momentary positive hits
| first to maximize my emotional whiplash.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think what you are "supposed" to think is less important than
| _what you (and everyone) do think_ , as well as what the
| downstream consequences are due to your consumption of _this
| type of article_ , a type which we've likely all read several
| several instances of every day for years on end.
| known wrote:
| Humans are 'infinitely' diverse
| (physically/emotionally/morally/genetically) They'll
| adapt/prevail to adverse conditions/environment;
| anovikov wrote:
| We're not, time between start of WWII and till the Arab Oil
| embargo when the technical revolution ended, was quite a bit more
| influential. And yes sure people had an even better way to
| destroy biosphere then too, as well as lots of ways to make
| things better, and it's fair to say our grandfathers used this
| resource in general, in a very constructive way.
|
| We neither that that much potential to either break or fix
| things, nor we make a wiser use of what we have. Yes we got Elon
| Musk sure, but apart from him, all that the humankind is doing is
| finding progressively sneakier ways to make people click on ads,
| which is hardly a great achievement. Everything else from art to
| politics is just a tool to this end.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think no. We are in a boring, prosperous, stable time with an
| overactive media. The virus is bad, but it will pass and medical
| science will save many millions. The plague of Justinian, this is
| not. Hope I'm not wrong about that, at any rate.
| abraxas wrote:
| Nobody serious sees the Coronavirus as an existential threat to
| humanity unless it mutates in a way that really enables it to
| wipe out most humans.
|
| Climate change and the collapse of global ecosystems can
| absolutely manage that and according to every serious scientist
| we are pretty much on the worst case scenario path according to
| any peer reviewed model.
|
| The rise in nationalism and authoritarianism around the world
| is another phenomenon that could unleash forces of global
| conflict which might lead to cataclysms like a nuclear war or
| another world war at least.
|
| Of course pivotal moments in history can only be declared as
| such in hindsight. But the forces leading up to them usually
| gather steam decades before. It looks as we have no shortage of
| those in our time.
| defterGoose wrote:
| "Not with a bang, but with a whimper."
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _rise in nationalism and authoritarianism_
|
| And we ("hackers") give them both the open society they can
| hate against and the tools to potentiate their propaganda for
| free.
| krapp wrote:
| It seemed like a good idea at the time.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Climate change and the collapse of global ecosystems can
| absolutely manage that and according to every serious
| scientist we are pretty much on the worst case scenario path
| according to any peer reviewed model.
|
| Except that most models are piss-poor at predicting anything
| and that they only cherry pick the ones that happen to make
| it with new data.
|
| On top of that, climate change is a slow moving disaster, and
| we are typically good at mitigating long term changes (at
| least way better than urgent crises). Scientists calling for
| the end of the world at every opportunity will look
| ridiculous 100 years from now.
| PoachedSausage wrote:
| >On top of that, climate change is a slow moving disaster,
| and we are typically good at mitigating long term changes
| (at least way better than urgent crises).
|
| That statement is laughably incorrect, in fact the complete
| opposite of what is pointed to by the evidence. Humans are
| much better at dealing with urgent crises than long term
| threats due to our evolutionary history. We even have three
| branches of emergency services and the military that are
| trained to deal with urgent crises.
| defterGoose wrote:
| You know what the science doesn't show? That we're
| "typically good at mitigating long term changes". The
| history of the earth is a story of alternating periods of
| relative stability and momentous upheaval. Even though
| we've gotten "smart enough" to become a thorn in nature's
| side, nature has a nasty habit of rearing its head suddenly
| and biting back with overwhelming force.
|
| Don't make the mistake of thinking this is something you
| can safely ignore. If you do, your children _will_ pay the
| price.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Please don't spread false information like this. With any
| model you choose, we are way over the line where we could
| mitigate long term changes.
|
| The science is absolutely certain on this one: the only way
| to prevent disastrous climate changes, including massive
| rises in sea levels, extreme temperatures and drought in
| many highly populated areas of the world etc. is to stop
| emitting CO2 TODAY, literally. Or, well, to be more
| accurate, a few years ago, more likely.
|
| Either way, urgent overhaul of our whole global economy is
| the only option, but it remains of course an absurdity in
| the current political climate.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| > stop emitting CO2 TODAY, literally.
|
| Given that there's no chance at all of this happening,
| what's Plan B?
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Plan B is active removal of CO2 from the atmosphere,
| converting it to CaCO3 and sinking it into the ocean.
|
| It will require the deployment of direct air capture tech
| at a total-war level of industrial mobilization.
|
| An adequately priced carbon tax could make it profitable?
| dvdkhlng wrote:
| > On top of that, climate change is a slow moving disaster,
| and we are typically good at mitigating long term changes
| (at least way better than urgent crises). Scientists
| calling for the end of the world at every opportunity will
| look ridiculous 100 years from now.
|
| I wish I could share your optimism. Climate change may be a
| slow moving disaster, however it is more a "high latency"
| moving disaster. In the sense that once the symptoms start
| hurting us, it will not be possible to administer any
| control inputs that will effect the course of climate
| change within an acceptable period of time.
|
| And while we may be good at mitigating long term changes, I
| think "existential crisis" kind of long term changes may
| not have any modes of mitigation that would be acceptable
| to the current generation of humans (like accepting that
| 90% of world population just won't have a chance of long-
| term surivival).
| cmehdy wrote:
| There's a possibility that the third sentence you wrote is
| tightly coupled with the second one.
|
| On a personal level I mainly agree with you (we're on track
| for much worse than the RCP2.5 that everyone is barely even
| attempting to make goals for), but the complexity of the
| system seems to bring people to vastly disagree about this
| somehow.
|
| I think what really has become a turning point of our
| civilization in the last few decades is that specialization
| and the complexity of the world are absolutely entirely
| outside of the reach of any single person. The expansion of
| diversity and knowledge in the last few hundred years is much
| like the expansion of the universe, in that we can't seem to
| be able to beat it at all in terms of speed no matter what we
| do.
|
| Any sci-fi device that could perhaps offset that eventually
| (e.g. a future neuralink-thing being able to "upload"
| knowledge into you) is not the kind of thing I would bet my
| savings on in terms of time constants when compared to much
| more immediate events like climate change wrecking our modern
| civilization.
| mistermann wrote:
| > There's a possibility that the third sentence you wrote
| is tightly coupled with the second one. On a personal level
| I mainly agree with you (we're on track for much worse than
| the RCP2.5 that everyone is barely even attempting to make
| goals for), but the complexity of the system seems to bring
| people to vastly disagree about this somehow.
|
| By my way of thinking about such things I think this is the
| best comment in the thread so far, in that:
|
| - it recognizes that there are even more risks
| (disagreement over climate change --> political changes -->
| war) from climate change than the obvious first order ones
|
| - it recognizes that the world is a system, and that it
| contains complexity
|
| - it recognizes that complexity can cause vast disagreement
|
| - it does not speculate about the causation of an
| observation ("to vastly disagree about this _somehow_ ")
| but rather, _correctly_ notes that the causation is
| _unknown_
|
| > I think what really has become a turning point of our
| civilization in the last few decades is that specialization
| and _the complexity of the world are absolutely entirely
| outside of the reach of any single person_.
|
| I agree, and I estimate that most other people here would
| as well, _but only when thinking about this concept
| abstractly_. But if one is to closely(!) observe how people
| talk about our (infinitely complex) world, you may notice
| this phenomenon where it _seems as if_ people are literally
| not aware of the complexity of the world. Now, if one is to
| respond to such a comment pointing such a shortcoming out,
| typically (in "smart" communities) the person can then(!)
| skilfully recognize whatever aspect of overlooked
| complexity you noted...but at the time they made the
| initial comment, was this complexity ~"included in the
| cognitive context of their mind" when pondering the
| problem, or was their mind working with a vastly simplified
| model of the world (because that is efficient, and the mind
| seems to often err on the side of efficiency rather than
| correctness)? If one is to ask that question, the person
| will typically assure you with supreme confidence that of
| course they were aware of it, but that they were "speaking
| loosely/generally" or something along these lines - which
| of course may be true, _but is it actually true_? I would
| say the fact of the matter is unknown, because we do not
| seem to have that level of insight into the workings of the
| mind. (And if you then respond with this theoretical
| question, extremely interesting things often transpire, but
| that 's a whole other ball of wax that I'll skip for now.)
|
| I believe if you treat this very general and speculative
| philosophical idea as a kind of lens through which to view
| the activities of human beings from an abstract, curious
| alien entity perspective (no prior _or presumed_ knowledge
| of "how it is" with Earth and Humanity, but infinite
| curiosity about the highly paradoxical nature of our
| species), you may start to notice a set of repetitive
| patterns everywhere you look, in all sorts of different
| levels of dimensional abstraction and aggregation. And if
| you notice that and then speculate about what
| unseen/undetected Force in the Universe could be causing
| all this, maybe some interesting new theories might start
| to emerge about why things are the way they are.
| Camas wrote:
| >according to every serious scientist we are pretty much on
| the worst case scenario path according to any peer reviewed
| model.
|
| Obviously not true.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-
| emis...
| dvdkhlng wrote:
| >> according to every serious scientist we are pretty much
| on the worst case scenario path according to any peer
| reviewed model.
|
| > Obviously not true.
|
| I think GP was referring to predictions of climate
| sensibility to changes in CO2 concentration appearing to
| track the predicted worst-case [1]. He was not referring to
| the predictions of CO2 concentration per se.
|
| And the predictions about CO2 rise you refer to are not
| very comforting anyway. If the 2 degree line is crossed, as
| predicted by these data, then a cascade of tipping points
| [2] will likely put the earth into a permanently "hot"
| climate state.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/13/cli
| mate-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_cli
| mate_...
| SpiritRising84 wrote:
| >The rise in nationalism and authoritarianism around the
| world is another phenomenon that could unleash forces of
| global conflict
|
| It seems inevitable to me, as the forces catalysing this
| movement are only radicalising and accelerating. Another
| $500bn to blacks announced yesterday, by a man the media
| would have us believe is a White supremacist? An organisation
| which has been practically invisible for half a century
| declared a terrorist organisation for its hypothetical
| position of supporting its own people, while armed hordes of
| the more melanin variety wreak havoc across the country
| demanding total capitulation by all power structures - and
| getting it.
|
| We are all supposed to ignore the devastating effects of
| multiracialism, critical theory (regarding race, gender,
| sexuality, and so forth) while our cities burn, our monuments
| are torn down, and our people are vilified in every
| advertisement, movie, employment opportunity, or even
| violently assaulted in the street?
|
| It simply cannot stand. A people will only take so much.
| Unfortunatelyy, I'm quite sure those in politics and media
| who seem hellbent on ensuring this fate understand this very
| well.
|
| As a proudly White man in 2020 with a beautiful White family,
| what do I have to fear from war that is not assured by the
| trajectory of the status quo? At least war offers me hope.
| theplague42 wrote:
| The irony...
| peteretep wrote:
| I worry that we're at a point at which technology can
| permanently entrench power in the hands of the few, and that
| the world's largest democracy is currently in thrall to people
| who would like to see that happen.
| Epskampie wrote:
| India is in thrall?
| peteretep wrote:
| Isn't it?
| adventured wrote:
| India's independent democracy is messy, however it is
| young and India is a giant nation. A democracy of 1.4
| billion people that even partially functions is a
| remarkable feat. What they're attempting is obviously no
| small task. Europe for example has several poorly
| functioning democracies, to go with two dictatorships.
| Among ~195 nations, there are not more than three dozen
| well operating democracies among them, along with another
| two dozen that kinda-sorta function democratically.
| [deleted]
| raz32dust wrote:
| Boring? I certainly disagree with that. Stable is also
| questionable. Prosperity - one should not take for granted. The
| world is much more connected today, and most of our prosperity
| and stability comes from people with varying interests finding
| ways to work together and trust each other. Sparks in one part
| of the system can bring down the whole system much more easily.
|
| The pandemic, when combined with widespread misinformation and
| mistrust, increasing inequality and climate change makes for a
| potent combination and people are right to be worried.
| michaelbrave wrote:
| Covid isn't necessarily the primary concern but one crisis
| among many. Arguably most civilization collapses happened in
| times when there were too many crises at once, that
| individually could be handled but all at once or in close
| succession become overwhelming. A current example of this would
| be that with climate change we face increase in temperatures
| causing wildfires on the west coast, deadly heatwaves in the
| southwest and hurricanes along the Atlantic. Due to Covid
| hospitals are already overwhelmed so injuries from hurricanes
| are harder to deal with, making not massive events worse than
| the sum of their parts. Combine this with governments unwilling
| to take action and who actively dismantle the preparations
| already in place and it is worth being concerned.
|
| Calling this a prosperous time is also flawed, for who? The
| middle class is nearly gone, freedoms are being eroded, racial
| tensions are still high, the world order is destabilizing as
| many governments lean into more dictator-like structures. I
| genuinely want to understand what you see to give you hope
| because right now I'm failing to find much to grab onto.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _Calling this a prosperous time is also flawed, for who?
| The middle class is nearly gone, freedoms are being eroded,
| racial tensions are still high, the world order is
| destabilizing as many governments lean into more dictator-
| like structures._
|
| - It is a prosperous time for far more than ever before.
| Within the last thirty years, a new world power has risen and
| raised 400 million people out of poverty in an unprecedented
| act of economic engineering with no military conquest to
| enable it. Never before has this been done. Its neighbour
| during this time has simultaneously raised 180 million people
| out of poverty. During this time neither nation has fought
| its neighbour. Before this massive reduction of human
| unhappiness, the loss of the median American's third car
| pales.
|
| - Absolute measures of human standards of living have
| continuously increased. They are not going down. The major
| world economies have all improved continuously. You will need
| to define the middle class and why that measurement is
| meaningful to you. If Bezos gets Mars and I get a piece of
| American land the size of San Francisco, our relative
| inequality will have increased, but I will take that trade
| every day.
|
| - Racial tensions were way higher in the past. Black people
| were segregated! In South Africa, they had apartheid. And a
| little farther back and Japanese-Americans were in
| concentration camps. In California, the fourteen thousand
| Army National Guard troops suppressed race riots.
|
| - The world order is being destabilized as America withdraws
| the shield that preserved Pax Americana. This is true. But
| that was a subsidy to (or perhaps an investment in) the
| world, a tide that raised all ships, and America's more than
| anyone else's. America prospered with world trade. By these
| actions, America weakens herself. But that's geopolitics. The
| sands shift with the wind. We shall see what happens. Other
| generations faced greater threats.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| How is the middle class nearly gone?
|
| Inequality has increased, and I think this is bad, but I
| don't get the point of an over-the-top statement like this.
| Median household income in the US is over $60,000 (source:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N). How is
| that gone?
| shadowprofile77 wrote:
| More people than ever before in human history live above the
| line of absolute poverty, today, right now, and this has been
| a continouos trend for many years so far. The middle class is
| only eroding insofar as you define things in some wacky ways.
| In terms of basic acquisitive power, quality of life, access
| to goods and services and general well-bieng, more people
| than ever and a larger percentage of the population than ever
| before live what in fairly recent history would be considered
| very much middle class or even upper middle class lives. I
| know it's fashionable to deride the modern world as fucked
| with poverty and misery (and ironically this is a thing most
| often done by comfortably middle class, educated people with
| plenty of access to good standards of living) but none of the
| basic data on how well our world's 8 billion people live
| right now actually supports this notion. Shifting goal posts
| endlessly also can slip into dishonesty.
| mxcrossb wrote:
| It's going to be funny when 50 years from now I see my grand
| kid's history textbook, and Brexit, Trump, and the Coronavirus
| are all together in one paragraph describing people's anxiety
| about globalism in the post Cold War world
| refurb wrote:
| That's the interesting thing. It probably won't even be a
| paragraph. Or even a sentence.
|
| Look at the Spanish flu, it gets a cursory mention in this
| history of the early 20th century. WW1 and the Great
| Depression dominate that narrative.
| hyko wrote:
| Sure, in a timeline that includes _energy becoming matter_ and
| _biogenesis_ and _complex life evolving_ , our era is going to
| turn out to be uniquely influential.
|
| I don't think the word _hubris_ does justice to this line of
| thinking.
|
| Edited to add: the "hinge" people think they can make out is
| likely just an illusion caused by the phenomena known as the
| present. Reminds me of Kevin Kelly's essay "The singularity is
| always near": https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/
|
| I'm also amazed at how good Betteridge's Law actually is in
| practice, considering it's meant to be a joke and not a reliable
| tool for finding the truth.
| sushshshsh wrote:
| I was educated at my university that the hinge of history was
| actually World War I.
|
| Hundreds of millions died in horrific new waus, the world
| centralized around a pole of power, and basically the world has
| only been getting better since.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I was left with this impression when I listened to Blueprint
| for Armageddon, by Dan Carlin. It's excellent. I thought I knew
| the history of that era but I was very wrong. The early parts
| are a little boring compared to what it turns into, but I can't
| see how that could be avoided given the topic.
|
| https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu...
| Lammy wrote:
| > basically the world has only been getting better since
|
| You made me really curious how we measure this! Sorry this
| turned into a massive wall of text but considering how
| depressing every news cycle has been for the past few years I
| hoped it would feel grounding to be able to put some numbers to
| things, even if they aren't happy numbers :)
|
| Worldwide average human is what I want an idea of, but the
| closest and largest "good" or "bad" measurement I see in the
| news on a regular basis is USA economic health as a graph of
| GDP-per-capita of the entire economy, no divisions based on any
| geographic boundaries since the economy is borderless, with
| 'health' seemingly the result of Worthington's Law on the
| entire-economy scope.
|
| U.S. Economy health data doesn't seem to provide a path to any
| physical human scope at all, since . I hate the idea of
| defining "good life" in monetary terms at all, but it seems
| impossible with only the whole-USA data due to income
| inequality within a region like the Bay Area, huge disparities
| in other regions compared to the coasts, people who don't
| "participate" in the economy directly or at all, etc. The graph
| of USA GDP growth over time did show a general upward curve,
| never under 0%, in a way that felt like things getting
| "generally better" as we hope. Looking at headlines made the
| data more confusing though, like Bloomberg's from a 2019
| report:
|
| > "U.S. GDP Grew a Disappointing 1.2% in Second Quarter --
| Economic growth was well below expectations; cautious business
| investment offset robust consumer spending"
|
| I had assumed "Good Health" (or at least "Okay" health) was
| growth over 0.0%, but I guess not if growing by 1.2% was
| disappointing. The headline is unclear if that's some sort of
| official expectation percentage or just theirs, but since it
| doesn't say what the expected rate was I dunno.
|
| I gave up on the officially-published data being usable here,
| but I remembered a bunch of press in 2018 about California
| having the 5th largest economy in the world, larger than the
| UK's. No "world" or even "USA" average would come from CA-only
| data, but at least it might be personally fulfilling for me.
| Unfortunately all the news websites ultimately just link back
| to this tweet as the original source
| https://twitter.com/psaffo/status/992530974515781633
|
| I'm aware of the World Happiness Index, but it asks people to
| describe their own happiness in their own words based on their
| own area which is useless here. I guess I will have to trust
| that US GDP growth has the possibility to be an okay
| representation on the country-wide scale, as long as any growth
| is separated-equally per capita :)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| WW1 is a very good candidate. It created the Soviet Union and
| Hitler and pretty much all of history since.
|
| It's also extra interesting, because if Gavrilo Princip hadn't
| randomly ran into the Archduke's car, history _might_ have
| turned out very differently.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There would have just been another spark for WW1.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Maybe. It is truly unknowable.
| ralusek wrote:
| I didn't read the article, but the answer is emphatically yes. We
| are rubbing up against the reality that most humans are less and
| less valuable to other humans such that they are basically
| valueless, and their market value diminishes accordingly, and
| that technological advances and market efficiencies are actually
| eliminating scarcity within certain arenas. We have to grapple
| with the fact that most humans offer almost nothing of value,
| while we actually have the capability, within certain domains, to
| actually allow them to be entitled to certain things.
|
| Pair this with neural interfaces, AI, asteroid and celestial body
| mining, cheap space travel, and economics are going to start
| looking weird. I say this as an avid fan of capitalism. It isn't
| going to fail because of corruption, it's going to fail because
| markets are optimized and technology is increasingly pushing your
| average bloke out of the game.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSYpYFEwr4o&t=15
|
| > "Are people becoming obsolete?" (1946)
| drivebycomment wrote:
| > We are rubbing up against the reality that most humans are
| less and less valuable to other humans such that they are
| basically valueless,
|
| By what standard are we "valuing humans less" ? This seems to
| fly against the facts.
|
| Global death from almost all causes have gone down.
|
| e.g. "Battle" related death - which is the most clear evidence
| of valuing human life less than political gains have
| dramatically fallen:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/battle-related-deaths-in-...
|
| Global life expectancy is higher than ever in the history of
| human civilization and still rising:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
|
| Global poverty rate has been dropping dramatically and
| steadily:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
|
| Global education spending has been going up.
|
| Air pollution has been going down, steadily and dramatically:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-deaths-indoor-pollu...
|
| Tell me. In what way are we valuing human less ?
| drivebycomment wrote:
| Let me put more concrete, recent evidences that we value
| human life more, not less.
|
| Black lives matter.
|
| By any standard, it's clear racial discrimination has gotten
| better over the years (it's still nowhere near good enough,
| but better than in the past, even only by small relative
| amount), as there's no doubt police brutality has been worse
| in the past. But why are we outraging _now_ ? Each single
| death now matters _more_ now, because each injustice has much
| higher chance of getting broadcast and shared widely. What
| would have been ignored and silently covered up are now
| seeing the eyes of the world, and the direct consequence of
| that is the enormous movement.
|
| New Tsunami Sea Wall in Japan.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/mar/09/after-.
| .. https://www.wired.com/story/photo-gallery-japan-seawalls/
|
| Whether you agree that's a good idea or not, you can't deny
| the fact that now Japan is spending tremendous amount of
| money to protect the lives of relatively small number of
| people, and it had a popular support in Japan, meaning
| Japanese were more than happy to spend tons of money to
| protect their fellow citizens.
| aeternum wrote:
| I'd argue the cold war was closer to the 'hinge of history'. In
| fact on this very day 9/26 in 1983, a not very well known soviet
| lieutenant colonel prevented what would very likely have been all
| out atomic war.
|
| In the grand scheme of things, everything that happened this year
| is probably minor in comparison to Petrov's decision.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
| disown wrote:
| It's amazing how well propaganda works. The idea that he
| prevented an atomic war is absurd. Firstly, he was a lieutenant
| colonel. Had no power to start anything let alone nuclear war.
| Secondly, even if he had accepted the false alarms, people up
| the chain of command would have figured out it was a false
| alarm. In what scenario would the US only launch 5 nukes? The
| story is obvious nonsense or propaganda and yet it gets posted
| over and over on social media. Why?
|
| > Petrov's decision.
|
| Petrov's decision is one of the most overhyped propaganda on
| social media. It's a non-story turned into a story for some
| reason.
|
| If people just took the time to think about the content rather
| than mindlessly consuming content maybe we'd get less nonsense.
| biolurker1 wrote:
| The documentary is wonderful called "the man who saved the
| world"
| Fricken wrote:
| The threat of global thermonuclear warfare hasn't diminished.
| The nukes are still with us.
| simonh wrote:
| I think the Cold War, and even WW2 are part of the current
| period when it comes to the 'hinge of history' argument.
| They're not saying this year is the most influential, or even
| this decade. I think it comes down to the explosive industrial
| growth and technological advances over the last few hundred
| years, and next hundred years or so.
|
| It's a unique confluence of incredible capability with little
| understanding of the consequences of using it. Nobody 100 years
| ago had the slightest clue that the industrialisation at the
| time could cause global warming, for example.
|
| As for examples of pivotal moments, WW2 is a good example. We
| came very close to the world being completely dominated by
| Orwell style authoritarian one party states. A boot stamping on
| a human face, forever. It might even still happen. With social
| engineering and modern surveillance technology as used in
| China, we could end up in a super-stable oppressive regime with
| no way out.
|
| Nuclear annihilation is another example. We came scarily close
| several times as you pointed out.
|
| Global warming is a huge issue, it may even be too late to stop
| massive changes in our environment that will last thousands of
| years and shape human history and global biology permanently.
|
| Genetic engineering could change who and what we are as a
| species in ways that might be hard or impossible to undo. It's
| not any one of these that create the hinge either though, it's
| all of them happening together.
| dontcarethrow2 wrote:
| These jabs we throw at oppressive regimes only signal that we
| are not ready to deal with our own oppressive regime. We have
| been the boot for a while now, rosy shaded boot, with lights
| on the side and WiFi. Having to read such well thought out
| statements while throwing shade at others only feeds my
| pessimism in foreign policy/domestic media control. Good luck
| dealing with the never ending boogeyman.
| njharman wrote:
| Almost any multicentury period has dramatically changed human
| society.
|
| Also people knew about and have already experienced pollution
| and other effects of industrilization. Read about London big
| stink.
|
| Social aspects too, ludites, social disruption, leading to
| labor as a political / social force. Urbanizatiin. Communism.
| Labor laws. Etc.
|
| Since ancient times "birth of civilization" we have
| deforested, over fished/hunted/farmed.
|
| We have continously, dramatically changed our environment and
| ourselves. We've already genetically engineered ourselves
| (modern man and medical man are quite different) and numerous
| other species.
|
| Everybody in every time period believes their time is
| different. Is frantic changes. Is etc.
|
| Its only because they know more about recent events. Recent
| events are in memory.
|
| The more you study human history, the more you realize it has
| always been a dramatic.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| > We came very close to the world being completely dominated
| by Orwell style authoritarian one party states.
|
| It seems like not only we came close, but it is the very
| reality we currently live in, we just don't like admitting
| it. Although instead of one party, we have one class.
| lrem wrote:
| I'm afraid democracies are inherently unstable. Athenian
| lasted 200 years and got swallowed up by Macedonian
| autocracy. Roman lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the
| army. Polish lasted 350 years and the parliament voted to
| allow neighbouring empires to divide the country. The US is
| at 250 years and people are seriously worried about it
| devolving into either Gilead or Cyberpunk any moment now.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Roman lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the army
|
| Byzantium (and the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire)
| disagrees [0]. They lasted until 1453 - incidentally only
| 50 years before Columbus sailed.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire
| ByteJockey wrote:
| Look, I love the Roman Empire just as much as anyone (and
| get more than a little miffed whenever someone denies
| that the Eastern Roman empire was legitimately Roman),
| but it was in no way a democracy.
| leetcrew wrote:
| in context, I think they are referring to the republic.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The parent is talking about the Roman Republic, not the
| Roman Empire. The Roman Empire and its continuation the
| Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire were not democracies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _democracies are inherently unstable. Athenian lasted 200
| years and got swallowed up by Macedonian autocracy. Roman
| lasted 500 years and got overthrown by the army._
|
| The Roman Republic learned from Athens' democracy. Even
| late Republicans like Sulla and Cicero and Caesar
| recognised the Republic's overuse of checks and balances,
| as well as its lack of a state army. Caesar almost uniquely
| recognised Rome's broken voting system. Unfortunately, they
| were too late.
|
| America's founders were not. The lessons of the Republic
| gave us our strong executive and state-funded armed forces.
| Our Constitutional amendment process is sclerotic, but
| there is nothing to suggest our Republic is inherently
| flawed in the way Athens or Rome were.
| simonh wrote:
| That's quite plausible. It may be that the only super-
| stable form of government is a high tech invasive AI
| powered surveillance state that knows everything about
| everybody and brooks no dissent. China is very hard at work
| building exactly that right now. In which case, in the long
| term were probably in trouble.
|
| The AIs might not need to take over, we might actively hand
| ourselves over to them.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's not just democracies. I can't think of a system of
| governance that's stable over centuries. Oppressive regimes
| tend to implode once amassed suffering reaches a peak of
| rebellion, or evolve into something more benign (and
| potentially get conquered then). Even Rome, the long-
| lasting empire, wasn't ruled the same way throughout its
| history.
|
| I think that's what GP meant when they wrote that "we could
| end up in a _super-stable_ oppressive regime ". Because the
| oppressive regimes so far weren't oppressive for long.
| qubex wrote:
| The millenary histories of the Egyptian and Chinese
| empires disagree. Yes, dynasties came and went, but those
| polities endured for thousands of years--indeed one could
| argue that the ongoing governance of China by the
| Communist Party is just the latest dynastic swing.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I think we're talking about forms of government and not
| geographical countries. China definitely doesn't fit here
| since it's governing bodies have shifted so drastically
| in the last few hundred years. I don't know much about
| the specifics of ancient Egyptian government but I
| imagine it would vary with the dynasty if not with the
| individual ruler. Traditional monarchies are based on the
| whims of a ruling elite, family, and individual after
| all. They have no constitution to provide continuity and
| all law, secular and religious, is superseded by royal
| decree.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'll have to read up on Egypt and pre-XX-century China.
| How oppressive were these dynasties typically? What did
| the life look like for a regular subject?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The Vatican has almost a couple of millennia of
| continuance, but I'm not sure I'd want to say continual
| stability _per se_.
| jlg23 wrote:
| Yes, for any "couple of" smaller two. And more than once
| it was not clear whether the Vatican was still relevant
| at all.
| ianai wrote:
| The Vatican is also not the same size and breadth as the
| US or China.
| ben_w wrote:
| The Vatican as a country, I would agree. The Vatican as
| the Catholic Church, does seem to be on-par with those,
| at least in terms of head count.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| We'll probably never know, unfortunately. The literate
| classes in ancient societies rarely wrote about the lives
| of subsistence farmers, who were the vast majority of the
| population, so while some details can be reconstructed
| it's very hard to speculate about how oppressed a typical
| farmer would have felt.
| coldtea wrote:
| Compared to today's bureaucracy, taxes, etc, they were
| free as birds...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Lasting 250 years is remarkable stability.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Not if compared to 3000 years of Egypt.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Most things have finite lifespans. The benchmark for a form
| of government is certainly not that it should be eternal
| and continuous.
|
| Look at some cities in Europe. Many have waxed and waned,
| some even many times. They have been parts of different
| countries and empires. Many have influenced the world
| greatly for the better.
| [deleted]
| qubex wrote:
| > _Nobody 100 years ago had the slightest clue that the
| industrialization at the time could cause global warming, for
| example._
|
| This is incorrect. The first measurements and effects were
| calculated at the end of the 19th Century (quoted as 1896).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie.
| ..
| simonh wrote:
| Interesting, thanks I had no idea. It doesn't change my
| basic premise that the decisions made to do thing such as
| industrialise weren't really informed ones when it comes to
| the long term consequences.
| neuronic wrote:
| This, again, proves that as an educated society we need to
| decisively counter the for-profit lies of influential
| corporations. There is a fundamental problem that may cost
| us severely in the not too distant future.
|
| Fossil fuel companies have paid large sums to lie about the
| effects of their products on climate change, just like
| tobacco companies have directly killed innumerous people by
| lying about the negative health impact of cigarettes for
| decades. Nowadays, the evidence that these companies
| collaborated on misleading the public is openly accessible
| but back in the 70s or 80s YOU were the enemy for trying to
| warn about health dangers. Climate is the same now,
| propaganda has done its work for a long time.
|
| And again, the same cancerous people jump on the bandwagon
| of an increasingly aware public and try to profit off the
| new movement by ways of green-washing and other pseudo-
| helpful bullshit.
|
| These are significant problems where short-term profit
| motivation is more influential than long-term
| sustainability and "positive" development of society. Our
| only hope is the few people in human society who are
| motivated enough to study, learn, read and act for the
| greater good.
|
| That's kind of hingey if you ask me.
| joycian wrote:
| Indeed, Arrhenius definitely had a 'slight clue' in 1896.
| It is probably comfortable to think that we really could
| not have known, but I think the reality is that it is often
| so much easier to kick the can down the road than to be
| careful in the present moment.
| eru wrote:
| > As for examples of pivotal moments, WW2 is a good example.
| We came very close to the world being completely dominated by
| Orwell style authoritarian one party states.
|
| I doubt that would have lasted for long. Fortunately enough
| for humanity, free human are more productive than slaves.
|
| Compare also https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fasc
| istButIneffi... and
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DystopiaIsHard
| Retric wrote:
| Total subjugation is surprisingly stable, you end up with a
| poor society but starving peasants don't revolt nearly as
| much as you might think. Looking at say English history you
| find various factions fighting each other, but it's the
| upper crust instigating things. Similarly, Tsarist russia
| became less stable after industrialization and a rising
| standard of living.
|
| In the end war is expensive because fighters aren't
| producing food etc.
| darkerside wrote:
| It reminds me of getting on a stand-up paddle board. As you
| find your balance, there is a wobbling. If you haven't done
| it in a while, it feels almost certain you will fall. But
| (usually for me), you find your balance, and suddenly you are
| floating in the water, like Jesus Christ himself.
|
| With all the new elements in society, I think we're all
| "finding our balance". And once we have, we'll be able to
| explore the future much more safely and effectively.
|
| I guess that's the "hinge-y" argument. The negative argument
| might be that we're a house of cards, destined for greater
| instability not less, and we're experiencing what it is to
| fall apart.
| flexie wrote:
| True. But very few people knew on September 26, 1986. There
| could be equally large catastrophes avoided today that we don't
| know about
| drewcoo wrote:
| There are known hinges and unknown hinges?
| radus wrote:
| There are also known unknown hinges.
| klysm wrote:
| Semi-known unknown hinges
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Claims of Petrov preventing an "atomic war" are debatable.
| There were probably other checks built into the Soviet protocol
| and chain of command that would have easily detected the false
| positive.
|
| https://www.quora.com/How-close-did-we-come-to-a-nuclear-war...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There were a great many other close calls. Rarely did it boil
| down to one person, but all sorts of things brought us
| dangerously close. And those are only the ones we know about.
| Who knows what mistakes have never been made public.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200807-the-nuclear-mist...
|
| >>As it happens, on this occasion there was no imposter - at
| least, not a human one. The figure skulking around the fence is
| thought to have been a large black bear. It was all a mistake.
| But back at Volk Field, the squadron was still unaware of this
| fact. They had been told there would be no practice runs, and
| as they boarded their planes, they were entirely convinced that
| this was it -World War Three had begun.
| peterhartree wrote:
| Wikipedia has a good list of nuclear close calls:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
| sharken wrote:
| Avoiding the atomic war in 1983 is a much larger historic event
| without a doubt.
|
| If anything the current time marks the point where politicians
| were given too much control of otherwise free countries.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Oh, it's today (er, yesterday in my TZ). I completely forgot.
|
| So a little late, but: happy Stanislav Petrov day!
| MauranKilom wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/2052/
| thansz wrote:
| The cold war was very bad, but in my opinion the risk is still
| high and growing. The Petrov incident was just one of many
| close calls that have been publicly disclosed during the short
| time nuclear weapons have existed.
|
| - Vasily Arkhipov was a Soviet submarine flotilla commander in
| charge of a submersed fleet that was being bombarded by depth
| charges from US navel ships. A captain on one of the subs
| thought war had broken out and wanted to launch a nuclear
| torpedo. Vasily thought the bombardment was a signal for the
| submarines to surface. He was right, a ceasefire had been
| announced and the warships were dropping practice depth charges
| to try and signal the submarines should surface and
| communicate. link -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)...
|
| - Boris Yeltsin sat in front of an activated nuclear briefcase
| because Soviet radar detected an inbound US nuclear missile.
| The launch location and trajectory matched a war game scenerio
| of the US detonating a nuclear missile in the atmosphere,
| causing an EMP to wipe out Soviet electronics. His military
| officers wanted him to launch a counter attack and he only had
| minutes to decide. Turned out to be a missile launched to study
| atmospheric conditions. The Soviets were notified, as were
| other nations, but the message didn't get to all forces due to
| the internal strife and collapse the USSR was undergoing. Link
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
|
| - A computer simulation of an incoming Soviet nuclear attack
| was accidentally fed into NORADs network. Everyone thought it
| was real. The National Security Advisor was awakened by a call
| and almost called the President, but was luckily able to
| determine it wasn't real. Link - https://gizmodo.com/the-
| computer-simulation-that-almost-star...
|
| There is a whole list of other incidents. Yes, many of them
| occurred during the cold war. They seem to have slowed down as
| time goes on, maybe nations are just better at covering things
| up. You still have incidents like in Hawaii, where residents
| were notified of an incoming ballistic missile from North Korea
| and that it WAS NOT a drill.
|
| Turned out to be a drill...(or was it)?
|
| The number of nuclear weapons worldwide has decreased, but
| proliferation has increased. Think of each nuclear capable
| nation as a node in a weighted graph. Each node is connected to
| every other node. The weight is the probability of conflict
| between the two nodes. Each time a node is added, risk goes up
| (proliferation). You can have dramatic changes in foreign and
| domestic policy, risk goes up (US politics anyone?). You can
| have long standing animosity between countries
| (India/Pakistan), risk goes up. You can have new animosities
| (India/China), risk goes up. There can be just plain system
| bugs or miscommunication as illustrated in the examples listed
| above.
|
| Now throw in the ramifications of climate change like political
| instability, infrastructure strain, resource scarcity, and
| refugee migrations into the mix. Or a truly mad guy with a
| nuke. We haven't had large scale war for a long time, but as
| countries deal with internal pressures and external competition
| for resources and global standing, the risk is never off the
| table.
|
| I would says the risks are still high today and are rising.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Maybe we should call it Petrov Day?
| sebmellen wrote:
| Are we not always in the "hinge of history"? What we do
| determines what the future is like, and the future is dependent
| on how we act now. If everybody aims towards the highest good,
| society will probably look better than if we aim towards the
| worst future possible.
|
| I think something like this can only be determined in retrospect.
| The importance of a specific event usually makes little impact at
| the time it occurs, and reverberates through the future. It's
| only upon looking back that we can see how important it was.
|
| Was Nietzsche world-renowned when he was actively writing, or
| Einstein when he made his discoveries?
| nullsense wrote:
| I think 2015 was the peak of human civilization, and it's been
| going downhill ever since.
|
| It seems like with climate change and loss of biodiversity the
| next 3 decades will see a steep decline in world wide stability.
| tasuki wrote:
| The peak of what aspect of human civilization? And why 2015?
|
| [Edit: I find it highly unlikely the peak of human
| civilization, whatever it means, should happen during my
| lifetime. Surely the Romans in 100BC might have thought the
| same as you do? Why do you think there won't be people in 2222
| who think the same?]
| realityking wrote:
| Why specifically 2015 and not, say, 2000?
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| Probably only true if we allow the "hinge" to be a process that
| spans several centuries, perhaps starting around 1800 with the
| beginnings of industrialization and gathering pace in the 20th
| century.
|
| If we look at the 21st century so far, it just hasn't been...
| that interesting! Indeed some scholars of technological change
| (to take just one metric) actually think the pace of change has
| slowed. The 20th century gave us flight, the Haber-Bosch process,
| nuclear weapons, antibiotics, space flight, computers, the Pill,
| the Internet. The 21st? The iPhone? Meh.
|
| Think long term. Expect a humdrum next decade and an interesting
| next century.
| bpizzi wrote:
| > The 21st? The iPhone? Meh.
|
| Only 20 years in (or is it 'already 20y in'?), and there's
| already reusable rockets, CRISPR, 3D printing and the combo
| deep learning + astonishingly both powerful and affordable
| CPU/GPU/TPU.
|
| I would say this is already an interesting century, invention-
| wise.
|
| Also, one could argue that the 21's internet is not the same as
| the 20's, in which case modern, cheap and massively deployed
| internet can be classified as a 21st great invention.
|
| But we're splitting hairs. Centuries are an artificial
| construct. Measuring pace of change by such a crude method
| makes no sens to me.
| bserge wrote:
| - Unprecedented access to information;
|
| - Instant high fidelity communication and work/business;
|
| - Private and ever-cheaper space flight;
|
| - True automation (it's only the beginning of the 21st, I bet
| on automation hitting hard mid century);
|
| - AR/VR (which will likely become the escape of choice for much
| of the world later this century);
|
| - Renewable energy that most can afford (it's already realistic
| for everyone to be self-sufficient);
|
| - Viable artificial/grown organs (for use in medicine and food
| production);
|
| And more. It's already been a hell of a century. If your life
| is boring, it's most likely because it's easy. There's no lack
| of choice when it comes to excitement, but we're risk averse at
| the core. The media is full of over-exaggerated bad stuff
| because it's exciting to watch (and again, risk-free). I hope
| we don't fuck it up.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > - Renewable energy that most can afford (it's already
| realistic for everyone to be self-sufficient);
|
| I agree with your comment except this one. I don't see
| anything that has come close to the benefits of fossil fuels,
| and I don't see the political will to tax fossil fuels
| sufficiently to curb consumption sufficiently to curb climate
| change. Any reduction of fossil fuel use in developed
| countries with the luxury of being able to spend more on less
| polluting sources of energy will be made up in increased
| consumption in developing countries.
| bserge wrote:
| I was talking more about solar and wind installations, as
| well as battery tech and the low power consumption of
| modern tools.
|
| 20-30 years ago, if you wanted a stable ~3KW supply, you
| needed a generator and diesel/petrol. Lights, computers,
| power tools consumed an immense amount of power compared to
| today.
|
| Now you can have one turbine and several solar panels
| coupled with a battery bank and you have the same supply of
| electricity without burning anything. It can power your
| whole house and everything you own for decades.
|
| I'm a fan of decentralized energy production, though.
| daliusd wrote:
| IMHO iPhone (or smartphones) are under valued. Yes, they do not
| give you more (like antibiotics give more life or nuclear more
| energy) but they absolutely help you to lose less time (e.g.
| navigation that helps you to avoid traffic jams and get lost in
| unknown place). That replicated in billions of people changes
| the world's pace drastically.
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not saying the iPhone isn't useful or
| valuable. It just simply does not compare to the key
| technologies of the 20th century in terms of transforming the
| basic parameters of human life on earth.
|
| My favorite example is the Haber-Bosch process for fixing
| nitrogen and producing synthetic fertilizer (invented 1910).
| Surely a far more "undervalued" technology than the iPhone!
| It enabled us to scale up global food production to feed at
| least an extra 3.5 billion people who otherwise would never
| have been born, or would have starved.[1] Antibiotics are
| another great example. Several hundred million lives saved.
|
| With respect, I think this is in a different league from
| saving some people a little time waiting in traffic.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-
| synthetic-fe...
| TMWNN wrote:
| >My favorite example is the Haber-Bosch process for fixing
| nitrogen and producing synthetic fertilizer (invented
| 1910). Surely a far more "undervalued" technology than the
| iPhone! It enabled us to scale up global food production to
| feed at least an extra 3.5 billion people who otherwise
| would never have been born, or would have starved.
|
| It also kept Germany going in WW1 far longer than
| otherwise, by compensating for blockades on saltpeter for
| explosives.
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| Oh sure. Technology is neither good, nor bad, nor is it
| neutral.
| bserge wrote:
| Different kind of improvement. A smartphone (not the bloody
| iPhone) has fundamentally changed everyone's life
| _directly_.
|
| For the vast majority of people, food production is
| something that just "happens" out there. They don't grow
| anything, they just get it from a store.
|
| I've seen people on the Internet who can't afford a simple
| boiler or an indoors toilet (but they have a
| phone/computer)... and that's sad, but also amazing.
| andi999 wrote:
| Lets also add vaccines to that. I also wish there were a
| process like Haber Bosch for phosporic fertilizer (of
| course it cant, since phospor is not in any quantity in the
| athmosphere)
| th-ai wrote:
| Haber-Bosch may be disrupting billions year old nitrogen
| cycle, which would qualify as 'hinge' for earth history.
|
| https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-29/nitrogen-
| crisi...
| retromario wrote:
| My 99 year old grandma says that the greatest invention in
| her lifetime was the washing machine, freeing up an
| incredible number of labor and hours wasted every week in
| every household (and usually by women) for more productive
| tasks.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I find it very concerning that all your (excellent) examples of
| progress are not just 20th century inventions, but entirely
| before 1970. I do believe progress has slowed down.
|
| We can debate its cause... I'd go for financial incentives
| drawing smart people to banking and advertising instead of more
| socially beneficial pursuits.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm surprised none of the responses here are discussing climate
| change. Unlike other concerns, higher average global temps are
| baked in for centuries, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas
| emissions today (which, obviously, is not happening).
|
| I put in a "yes" vote for the hinge of history simple due to the
| fact that our inability to drastically restructure our economy
| today will severely negativity affect billions in the future.
| Keeping global warming below 2degC is a pipe dream IMO, and the
| big question remains to be seen of whether we see big positive
| feedback loops that result in greatly increased warming (8degC or
| so). If that happens, WWII will look inconsequential by
| comparison.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Of all the things you need to be careful about on the net,
| predictions of climate doom are definitely one!
|
| Know that doom predictions, being very emotionally appealing,
| travel around the world before science can get its shoes on.
| porb121 wrote:
| > Know that doom predictions, being very emotionally
| appealing, travel around the world before science can get its
| shoes on.
|
| Read the first few paragraphs of any paper in climate or
| environmental science; their outlook is usually much bleaker
| than anything you find in the general public.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In principle you are right, but this is one case where you
| have it backwards. The reality that science shows is far
| worse than what has permeated mainstream culture, on the web
| or otherwise.
|
| The size of the climate disaster, and the urgent need for
| radical changes in the global economy, simply can't be
| overstated right now.
|
| Unfortunately, the amount of status quo propaganda,
| especially in the US, is also staggering. You can't open a
| media site and not read false information like 'we still have
| time', 'scientists aren't really sure', 'new technology will
| help address this', 'if people did this one easy thing, the
| problem would go away', 'track your personal carbon emissions
| and the world will be saved' - all dangerously misleading and
| outright false information. But cleverly disguised as of we
| can keep the status quo and things will just improve.
| Udik wrote:
| > The reality that science shows is far worse than what has
| permeated mainstream culture
|
| I'm really curious where did you get this information from.
| I suppose it must not be popular or mainstream media,
| because of course msm telling you that science shows a
| worse reality than msm is a contradiction.
|
| So does which primary literature does it come from?
| revax wrote:
| Mainly from the IPCC reports.
| Udik wrote:
| Which parts exactly? Because usually it is claimed (in
| popular and mainstream media) that ipcc reports are toned
| down for consensus and political support.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Maybe it's a different experience for you, but the IPCC
| reports are much _better_ than what 's permeated
| mainstream culture around me. I consistently see people
| saying that we've gotta stop having children, that the
| Earth can't support modern industrial civilization, that
| in 100 years we won't be able to grow enough food and
| half the planet will starve. The IPCC reports don't
| suggest anything nearly this bad.
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _The reality that science shows..._
|
| Just saying that means nothing without a reference to this
| alleged science.
|
| Nothing!
| kingkawn wrote:
| the climate doom predictions I've read so far seem to have
| underestimated the impact and speed with which it would
| arrive
| grawprog wrote:
| I'm not sure why the focus has been put onto greenhouse
| emissions and CO2 in general.
|
| If there's any direct threat to the planet, it's insane amount
| of industrial waste entering the environment daily that gets
| downplayed in this ridiculous song and dance about CO2.
|
| https://publicintegrity.org/environment/industrial-waste-pol...
|
| https://www.buschsystems.com/resource-center/page/why-indust...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5699236/
|
| Industrial waste poisons drinking water, destroys the oceans
| and their ecosystems, poisons the land and our food.
|
| Everyone's busy worrying about how much CO2's being produced,
| very few people seem to be worried about what kind of
| mysterious proprietary petro derived chemicals are being pumped
| into rivers, lakes, the ocean. Few people seem to sorry that
| groundwater and resevoirs are contaminated by agricultural
| runoff, runoff from factories, manufacturing plants, chemical
| plants, oil refineries, fracking operations.
|
| Every day, thousands of tons of carcinogenic, toxic,
| environmentally altering chemicals are relaeased into the
| environment doing damage we don't even understand yet.
| gspr wrote:
| Would it not be best to make your (good) point about
| industrial waste without referring to the conversation about
| CO2 as a ridiculous song and dance? It's not as if gigantic
| problems can be expected to line up in a neat and orderly
| queue for us to deal with one by one.
| captainbland wrote:
| Totally agreed. Plus it's not like these are even really
| separate problems. These petrochemicals exist entirely
| because they're effectively by-products of fossil fuel
| refinement, the use of which is the major contributing
| factor to CO2 emissions.
| evgen wrote:
| I think the reason people are concerned about CO2 and
| greenhouse gasses is that we know they will end up hurting
| us, while industrial waste is not something to be concerned
| about at the moment beyond local effects. The fact that this
| is 'damage we don't even understand yet' points to this
| simple fact that this is not a significant problem and can
| safely be ignored while we work on the problem that we know
| will have serious long-term consequences.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Sperm counts keep dropping, and it very well may be due to
| chemicals that mess with our hormones and genetics.
|
| I don't know why it isn't talked about more. There has been a
| significant drop and at the current rate it won't be too long
| until the average man is considered essentially infertile.
| cik2e wrote:
| I remember becoming very concerned by the idea that
| microplastics are behind decreasing sperm counts. But by
| Occam's razor, I think it's much more reasonable to assume
| that lack of exercise, poor diet, not enough sleep and
| sunlight, and high levels of stress are the bigger
| culprits.
| 127 wrote:
| Climate change that can't be reversed, is not a hinge of
| history, it's the end of history.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'd like to understand this perspective. The predictions I've
| seen, even for a worse case scenario, would result in huge
| levels of sea rise inundating coastal areas, large parts of
| the Earth becoming uninhabitable for humans, massive ocean
| die offs, climate-change induced wars, etc.
|
| This would quite obviously result in death and misery for
| billions (again, this is the worst case scenario), but I
| haven't seen any evidence that the Earth will become
| fundamentally uninhabitable a la Venus.
|
| So it would be a disaster in any sense of the word, but I
| don't see how it would become a humanity-ending event. I'd
| like to understand why people think otherwise.
| 127 wrote:
| The current thought patterns that seem to be the dominant
| ones for the majority of ordinary people seem to assume
| that there are no feedback loops or tipping points. While
| the evidence from other planets directly contradicts this.
|
| Also with end of history, I didn't mean the end of the
| human race. Just the end of the current civilization and
| possibly written history. Another dark age, so to speak.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Is it scientifically possible that present conditions on
| Venus were caused by a civilization that triggered a
| runaway greenhouse effect artificially?
| adrianN wrote:
| It's unlikely that humans will die out even assuming worst
| case scenarios. So I guess it depends on your definition of
| "history" whether climate can cause it or not.
| ogre_magi wrote:
| This is such a small take.
|
| Climate change can absolutely be reversed by sufficiently
| determined technological and industrial civilization.
|
| The reason most climate activists don't acknowledge that is
| because they don't want it to be true. They prefer being
| noble doomsayers before the "ignorant sheep."
|
| There are (expensive) geoengineering projects that would give
| humans direct control over global temperature.
| newsbinator wrote:
| What it would take to move the Earth slightly further away
| from the sun, to offset that 4o ~ 8o spike?
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It's also crystal clear geoengineering will ultimately be
| how the problem is addressed. Everything else is a
| distraction given the reality of how people and societies
| work.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > they don't want it to be true. They prefer being noble
| doomsayers before the "ignorant sheep."
|
| This is obviously false. Please take this nonense
| elsewhere.
|
| I agree with the rest of your comment more than with the
| person you replied to, like, of course we can have a major
| effect on the climate if we see the need to (if we indeed
| see 8degC warming and traditional food supplies failing,
| suddenly the powers of this world will see ways to do
| something about it that they aren't doing today) and it
| doesn't automatically mean an imminent end to history like
| GP claimed. I just don't get why you had to add the cited
| part. We're all on the same team.
| 127 wrote:
| We can't simply do many order of magnitudes easier task now
| (reduce carbon emissions). How exactly do you suggest we do
| this task you suggest later?
| Fricken wrote:
| Maybe climate change could be by a sufficiently determined
| technological and industrial civilization, if there was
| some such thing. Climate change could also be solved by a
| magical flying rabbit, if there was some such thing.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| They aren't talking about sufficiently advanced
| technology (magic). They're talking about things we can
| already do, but have serious trade offs.
|
| The most common suggestion is to add particles to the
| atmosphere that reflect sunlight. I think sulfur was
| first proposed, but I think study of calcium carbonate
| has been ongoing to avoid the ocean acidification issues
| that sulfur presents.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _the end of history._
|
| Climate change killing us, while planning on "going to Mars",
| is one of the funniest modern narratives.
|
| Unabetted climate change will be "devastating" in many ways,
| but it likely won't wipe us off the face of the earth in a
| generation. We are incredibly resourceful.
| cel1ne wrote:
| > Keeping global warming below 2degC is a pipe dream
|
| I think/hope it's possible by a war-mobilization type of
| effort, where industries start working together for the goal.
|
| We not only have to stop all emissions to zero, but should
| probably start removing co2 from the atmosphere as well:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/carbon-dioxide-remov...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/wanna-limit-global-w...
|
| But there are a lot of social issues going along with this: Up
| to 8% of greenhouse-gas emissions come from concrete, so
| building things.
|
| I cannot imagine a world without construction, there are so
| many business processes and jobs involved with that.
| moneytide wrote:
| Sulfur dioxide from a supervolcano eruption would ironically
| not be considered a disaster if it were to reflect sunlight
| for a few years.
|
| Since we cannot arrange for a supervolcano yet, we could
| purposely emit sulfur from ships and existing smoke stacks.
| But wouldn't this cause acid rain eventually? Crops would
| receive less sun. Fictional remedy to fight solar-powered
| machines in "the Matrix" - global solar grids would have
| reduced input.
| andi999 wrote:
| This sounds like the final episode of Dinosaurs (the muppet
| show). Last line was 'we cant get extinct we have been
| around for a 150 million years..'.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You will never do this easily. If I run a developing nation
| there is absolutely no way I accept that you, a developed
| nation with a century of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere,
| will merely accept a reduction of your annual emissions. I
| will pump as much CO2 as necessary to raise my population
| into prosperity and until you have taken out enough GHG to
| match my historic emissions you're going to have to either
| take me with guns and bombs or you're going to have to pay
| me.
|
| You don't want to do the first because future millions of
| people are not worth the lives of present millions. And
| you're not going to do the latter because you can't afford
| it. You burnt too much to get here.
|
| So guess what? You're fucked. I'm not going to help you for
| free.
|
| It's like Europe giving Brazil shit over the Amazon. Buddy,
| you guys clear cut your forests. Your absolute forest cover
| doesn't matter. You've killed so many of your forests. Brazil
| has 60% forest cover. Germany has 30%. You cut your trees to
| build cities. And I can't? No, raze your cities or pay me for
| 400 years of treelessness.
| COVardsStayHome wrote:
| Guess what, maybe we should civilize these savages with a
| barrage of nuclear weapons?
|
| You want to cut 50% of the Amazon? We nuke you back to the
| stone age. So guess what? You are fucked.
| Joeri wrote:
| The thing is that brazil is mostly cutting forests down for
| slash and burn farming. If they modernized farming
| practices, the rate of deforestation would drop
| significantly. The solution there as with most of these
| questions of climate fairness is for first world countries
| to invest in technological development of poorer regions.
| If brazil's farmers could practice farming in the same way
| as european farmers, they wouldn't need to cut forests
| down.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's absolutely true, but put this way, it lends an
| argument towards force-subjugating the entire planet under
| one government just to end the bickering about fairness.
| Global warming isn't fair.
|
| What I'd honestly want to see happening instead is
| developed nations doubling down on greentech, and donating
| all of that (+ expertise and IP) to developing nations, so
| that the latter can leapfrog the CO2-intensive energy
| generation methods. After all, the developing nations
| aren't into greenhouse emissions for the sake of greenhouse
| emissions - they just want to have the same level of
| prosperity for their people as the West enjoys. So I say we
| should just give them the means to achieve that without
| burning fossil fuels, for free - and screw intellectual
| property and some perceived "fairness". This is a global
| problem, we're all in this together.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is no "greentech" that mitigates the environmental
| damage of the luxury everyone wants, which is space. And
| no one with kids is going to voluntarily accept living in
| cramped apartments while other countries have individual
| houses on lots.
|
| Increased space per person => increased fossil fuel usage
| => increased emissions.
|
| Maybe the greatest "greentech" would be dissuading having
| kids, either culturally or economically.
| asymmetric wrote:
| I'm not sure everyone considers space the top luxury.
| Just look at most Asian/European metropolises: people are
| happy to sacrifice space for other luxuries.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Wouldn't read that much from it. They're likely
| sacrificing space because they have little other choice
| (Japan, HK?), or because cities are where the good jobs
| are.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's a fair point I haven't considered. But I was under
| impression that the developing world has plenty of space?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Space means more miles driven, more ground paved with
| cement/concrete/asphalt, more distance
| water/electricity/gas/sewage/trash has to be pushed.
|
| The amount of (developed) land a person uses is a rough
| proxy for quality of life in the developed world, and it
| is afforded by ignoring the long term externalities of
| fossil fuels.
|
| Obviously everyone wants a detached single family house
| with a garage and a couple cars and a backyard for their
| kids and a few flights every year for the family, but if
| the environment is buckling with such a small portion of
| the population enjoying these benefits, there is no
| chance everyone can.
|
| Overall consumption needs to go down, which means lower
| consumption per person, and/or fewer persons.
| ookookookook wrote:
| Fewer persons with high luxury sounds a lot better than
| more persons with low QOL.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > And no one with kids is going to voluntarily accept
| living in cramped apartments while other countries have
| individual houses on lots.
|
| Families with children all over the world have been
| accepting that. The urbanization of the developing world
| is mainly people moving from villages where they had
| their own home (or at least a family compound) to cities
| where they live in modern blocks at best, shantytowns at
| worst. Once the first generation gets installed in that
| modern block, successive generations simply accept living
| in a block as normal - yes, some might dream of their own
| home on their own land, but that is regarded as something
| available only to a select few, not a mainstream thing.
| defterGoose wrote:
| That's why the countries with the most resources and
| technology have to graciously give those things to
| developing nations. Lead by example, but make sure that any
| nation can also have nuclear power, electric vehicles, etc.
| It's simple really, you stop letting any one person or
| family hoard massive pipes of resources. Yes this is
| something like socialism, but with everyone finally
| realizing that acting in their own self interest is
| identical to fixing the climate problem. No one can escape
| that. I assure you Elon doesn't want to go live on Mars by
| himself.
| ookookookook wrote:
| Guns and bombs it is, then.
| flatline wrote:
| If anything I think the global pandemic has shown how
| unprepared we are to come together globally and utilize
| technology to solve hard problems. Maybe something good will
| come from all of this in that direction and we will learn
| from our mistakes.
| ricksunny wrote:
| >how unprepared we are to come together globally . . . to
| solve hard problems.
|
| Ain't that the truth.
| scsilver wrote:
| Has Nature even been so forgiving?
| drivebycomment wrote:
| No. Life is a constant struggle against the encroaching
| entropy and I suspect keeping civilization going will
| never get easier.
|
| That said, coronavirus is not even close to being a
| threat to human civilization. Compare this to 1918
| Spanish flu and the contrast can't be clearer. Despite
| enormous growth in human population and much higher
| connectivity, we are managing global death toll an order
| of magnitude lower. We absolutely can be much better but
| we can't ignore 100 years of progress either.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yes, but we're stretching our global economies thin in
| the process. At this point in our civilizational
| development, it's the systems that are important. If this
| or a future pandemic pushes most economies past breaking
| point, the death toll will very quickly skyrocket from a
| mere million to a bit larger _billions_ dying in wars and
| starvation.
| defterGoose wrote:
| That's a weird way to see it though. Historically some
| humans have struggled to acquire the basics of survival,
| but actually the planet we live on is a bastion of low
| entropy in a sea of chaos precisely because of "life".
| Better to go a little hungry and keto than be constantly
| choking on noxious fumes and fishing nothing but old
| boots and cans out of the ocean.
| bparsons wrote:
| Outside of the US and Brazil, I have been really impressed
| by the ability of people to come together and deal with a
| massive collective action problem.
|
| If anything, it has shown that people have the capacity to
| pull together when they need to.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Outside of the US and Brazil
|
| Have you seen how things are looking in the UK, France,
| and Spain right now?
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Or India.
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/india-is-in-
| denia...
| dehrmann wrote:
| I forgot about India. Its lockdown was thought through
| very poorly and made the spread worse.
| mercer wrote:
| To be fair, it's much more difficult to have an effective
| lockdown a country that has people tightly packed
| together and that isn't a WEIRD individualistic society.
| Aperocky wrote:
| We can talk about scrubbing Carbon from the atmosphere once
| we have hydrogen fusion (read: infinite energy).
|
| Before that, it's just not feasible or possible in a human
| society.
| gspr wrote:
| Would you like to share your numbers that made you reach
| that conclusion?
| adrianN wrote:
| There is a huge fusion reactor in the sky that we can use.
| It provides energy much cheaper than any fusion plants we
| can hope to build in the next fifty years.
| [deleted]
| Aperocky wrote:
| Space mirror is also a solution.
| dgellow wrote:
| Don't we already have close to infinite energy with nuclear
| fission? With almost zero impact on the atmosphere's CO2.
| Aperocky wrote:
| We don't have infinite Uranium.
| gertlex wrote:
| My covid takeaway is to be more certain than before that:
|
| > [a war-mobilization type of effort, where industries start
| working together for the goal] is a pipe dream.
|
| I'd love to be convinced otherwise. While technically
| possible, I'm wary of the social/economic/political aspects
| not being surmountable.
|
| (Edit: Your comment was edited while I pondered mine, and now
| includes mention of the social, etc. aspect :) )
| marcusverus wrote:
| What we need are bite-sized reforms that are palatable to
| people across the country. You're not going to sell middle
| America on a comprehensive multi-trillion dollar
| environmental package any time soon, but you could sell
| them a handful of "separate" $500B 'Manhattan Projects' to
| tackle some things now while you bring them around on the
| rest.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The only reform that would make any difference is one
| that would cause lower consumption of fossil fuels, i.e.
| a large tax on fossil fuels. It would especially
| negatively impact "middle America", as it would cause
| prices for everything to rise, and hence they would be
| forced to consume less (which is the goal), and hence it
| wouldn't be palatable.
|
| Anything short of forcing people to consume less now is
| pie in the sky thinking.
| dwiel wrote:
| Not necessarily. Tax carbon heavily and then redistribute
| the tax equally among all citizens. Anyone using above
| average carbon net pays into the system, anyone using
| below average gets a net payout.
|
| Then markets, our most advanced coordination/optimization
| method can be utilized to figure out how to reduce our
| carbon emissions.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Exactly right, almost all carbon tax proposals include a
| divident that is redistributed to people to offset the
| new charges.
|
| The majority of people end up getting more back than they
| are taxed.
|
| The problem is the perception problem at the gas pump or
| heating bill.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The goal is to reduce total use of carbon based fuel
| sources, not just redistribute wealth.
|
| While I agree that redistributing wealth should also be a
| goal, any solution that doesn't lower total consumption
| is useless, so the pain of less consumption would be felt
| by anyone consumer more than average (which is probably
| everyone in the developed world).
| thepangolino wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there's studies showing we could drop global
| temperatures by about 2degC right now with cloud seeding at a
| cost of a couple billion USD a year.
| jpz wrote:
| The front of any exponential curve will always feel like the time
| of most significance.
|
| More generally, everything else is grist for the mill - now is
| all that counts. We are always at the "hinge of history", surely.
| hiharryhere wrote:
| Hingey times are defined in retrospect. I do think covid provides
| an easy event for future historians to point to as the narrative
| of this time is written.
|
| As people living through it we know the reality is far more
| complicated - there are wars, rising popularism, the rise of
| China, a hyperactive media and a million other factors. COVID
| will be the convenient way to explain the big changes to the
| world order that are already underway, just as we were taught the
| assassination of Franz Ferdinand kicked off World War I.
| OrderlyTiamat wrote:
| Regardless of what you think about the concept of hinginess, I'm
| thoroughly unconvinced by the arguments presented against it in
| this article.
|
| The first one for example, seems like an adapted doomsday
| argument: given that we continue to exist for x years at a
| certain societal level, and given the certainty of a hinge, our
| prior for the hinge being this century would be very low.
|
| But this is begging the question. The entire point of a hinge is
| that we don't know if we're going to continue to exist at a
| certain level of development, thus our assumptions required to
| develop the prior are dependent on our conclusion that this isn't
| the period of the hinge.
|
| The other arguments boil down to accusations of bias. These are a
| little more substantial in that we do actually know these biases
| exist, and we should account for them. But that doesn't mean
| necessary that we're not living in a hingey period. It's not
| necessarily an argument against moreso than a stern warning that
| more research is needed and the conclusion isn't warranted _yet_.
|
| I'd think there should be stronger arguments against the premise,
| and some comments in this post have given far better arguments
| already.
| kokey wrote:
| That's also what stood out to me. It's almost like the article
| was painting the hypothesis as something a lot of people who
| 'feel' the same way (as the author) is trying to prove it to be
| true without going into why do they feel that way and how much
| bias is in that.
|
| Sure, technology is developing fast, but its been quite fast
| since just before the start of the industrial revolution or
| when humans started walking or farming etc. I would speculate
| during those times of rapid development of some of the
| historical civilisations there was probably just as much of a
| feeling of it being at a hinge as now.
|
| It's just that right now we like to attract people's attention
| and creating suspense and that sense of hingeyness is good at
| attracting attention and there's now a lot of money to be made
| from attracting attention. Not just money, but you can drive
| political action if you give people this kind of sense of do or
| die urgency. This could turn the hypothesis into a self
| fulfilling prophecy. That's why we need better arguments
| against it.
| username90 wrote:
| Thought experiment: Lets say you live the life of a random human
| throughout all time, both past and future. That is one data
| point, but one data point can tell us quite a lot still. So lets
| say you start your life, and you notice that the human population
| had just expanded exponentially to 100 times what it usually was,
| what would you assume will happen in the future?
|
| If the future will hold millions of years with humanity
| prospering on earth with roughly current population number then
| picking a human born today is very small, it is like winning the
| lottery.
|
| If humanity expands quadratically to other solar systems then the
| chance of being born today is basically none.
|
| The most likely scenario would be that human population is
| currently at its peak and the population will within not that
| many generations dwindle down to almost nothing and probably go
| extinct.
| fractaled wrote:
| I don't think this logic applies to the demographics of today.
| The total number of humans to have ever lived is calculated to
| be ~105 billion. So assuming you're applying that logic to
| today, you're one of the most recent ~7%, which doesn't seem
| that remarkable -- at least not to the point of assuming
| fatalistic scenarios.
| username90 wrote:
| If humanity continues like this with no new discoveries then
| in ten million years we would have 200 million per year * 10
| million years = 2 quadrillion people. Getting a human who
| lived at the start of that peak is very improbable.
|
| But you are right, civilization lasting another few thousand
| years isn't that improbable. Just that it is strange that it
| would last a thousand years but not a million, seems like
| humanity should have figured out how to stabilize things if
| civlization lasts that long.
|
| Edit: Or maybe our ultimate downfall will just be lack of
| evolutionary pressure so at some point nobody can sustain
| civlization. That wouldn't happen in a thousand years but a
| million years is definitely enough.
|
| Edit2: Or we solve our lifespan issue very soon and people no
| longer die, so people also no longer can procreate or they
| would exhaust available resources.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Silly concept; the present is perpetually the most important time
| in history because it is the only time we can do anything. The
| past is cemented by what happened, and the future is not here.
| There always is re-writing history, but then again that is
| achieved in the present. The present is the only time that can
| matter, because it's the only time we have agency.
| drallison wrote:
| I think yes. There are numerous Anthropocene existential threats
| which are likely to lead extinction. <Edited to deleted
| enumeration of threats and snarky comments about nothing being
| done about it.> Decisions we make now will have a major impact on
| whether humans survive or not.
| cryptMackay wrote:
| Would agree!
| mikewarot wrote:
| Yes, we have been since 1945, when the first persistent
| existential threat we created ourselves first arose... Nuclear
| Weapons. Now, we have the added threat of Genetic Engineering,
| the second existential threat we created ourselves.
|
| All of our Institutions have an embedded growth obligation they
| haven't been able to meet since the 1960s, which lead to their
| being run by people willing to fudge the truth to keep the
| illusion of competence and power going.
|
| We're on the edge of the abyss... and many people don't even
| realize it.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Yeah, well I don't think life has ever been very certain ?
| guram11 wrote:
| Yes, if a pandemic that spread over the world in such short
| period of time has not rewrite our historical standards and
| understandings, our own existence will already hinge on
| destruction
|
| this virus will remain with us for years to come like influenza
| etc, we can only hope after this "wake up call" we're actually
| ready for the next time when a real "bio-terror" is unleash upon
| the world again
|
| and then also there's fake news, a harder problem than the virus
| itself, which we also learned are more disruptive and needs to be
| contained just as well
|
| Remember WHO told us wearing mask is useless? Remember WHO told
| us this will not become a pandemic? Remember WHO told us all that
| shit in WUHAN is under control? all this propaganda fake news is
| a slap in our face that no one can do anything about
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The historian Yuval Noah Harari says that we are transitioning
| from an era dominated by human emotion, into an era dominated by
| data-driven manipulation of those emotions.
|
| By gathering data from each individual, it is possible to build a
| profile that can be used to predict how that person would react
| to different stimuli. And at scale, it can be used to trigger
| people's emotions like playing a piano, manipulating them at
| will.
|
| Today we can already see that by emphasizing divisive topics
| like: "abortion", "gun control", "immigration"... it is possible
| to make people upset towards each other with a high success rate.
| What if the reason these topics are emphasized is not morality
| but really about how people will emotionally react to them?
| ggm wrote:
| I wonder how ordinary people felt in 1848, or 1871, or 1789 or
| ....
| bit_logic wrote:
| The next few decades can be claimed as the hinge of history due
| to two reasons, climate change and genetic engineering. There
| have been many wars and changes in the past, but now is the first
| time that our technology has basically reached worldwide
| geoengineering scale. We are fundamentally changing the climate
| of the entire world, that has never happened before in human
| history.
|
| Throughout all of human history, the human has not changed. If
| you somehow time traveled a human baby from 10k BC to present
| day, they would grow up and fit in with no issues. Now the very
| nature of what is human could change due to genetic engineering.
| Again, this has never happened before in human history.
| chippy wrote:
| For those who would like to delve a bit deeper into the Hinge of
| History, this is the link from the article and is well worth the
| read. It was submitted here 2 days ago and got zero points!
|
| https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XXLf6FmWujkxna3E6/...
|
| Its often a human mistake to think that _right now_ is the most
| important time ever because it is literally the moment we are in.
| With the perspective of history and with the imagination for the
| future you can start to see how what we think is the most urgent
| things maybe not so, and you can see how small changes elsewhere
| might be the best thing for the future.
|
| It can inoculate you against being manipulated by urgency-based
| calls for action.
| watwut wrote:
| > It can inoculate you against being manipulated by urgency-
| based calls for action.
|
| Perspective of history however does not show that being passive
| is universally what is needed more that if we wait, it gonna be
| alright. Now that current need is not urgent.
|
| I mean, not being the most important historical moment does not
| imply it is not important for us and those right after us.
| Generally we should seek to avoid those super important moments
| by working on issues before they get so bad.
| chippy wrote:
| Agreed! It's one thing to be aware of rhetorical tricks of
| urgency and its another not to do anything.
|
| I think it's very telling that the post that started this
| whole thing off was on an Effective Altruism forum.
| m-i-l wrote:
| _> Its often a human mistake to think that right now is the
| most important time ever because it is literally the moment we
| are in._
|
| Whenever I ask my youngest child what their favourite toy is,
| more often than not it is the one they have just played with,
| or what their favourite book is, and it is the one they have
| most recently read. I suspect that our view of history is
| similar. Now is always the most important moment in time,
| whichever time now is.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Its often a human mistake to think that right now is the most
| important time ever because it is literally the moment we are
| in. With the perspective of history and with the imagination
| for the future you can start to see how what we think is the
| most urgent things maybe not so, and you can see how small
| changes elsewhere might be the best thing for the future.
|
| I agree. Another form of cognition error is our tendency to
| conceptualize things in Boolean terms, such as whether:
|
| - now is the " _most important_ time ever " (and therefore we
| should seriously consider doing something about it), or it
| isn't (and therefore no action is required)
|
| or
|
| - now is plausibly an extremely important time (and therefore
| we should should seriously consider doing something about it)
|
| On its face, this distinction may seem excessively pedantic and
| trivial, _and it very well may be_ , but it also very well may
| not be.
|
| I believe that if one can manage to practice this sort of
| thinking skilfully, that it can help inoculate one from
| confusing heuristic predictions _about reality_ , with
| objective reality itself (which seems to be an extremely common
| behavior regardless of internet forum).
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Twenty years ago or so it was "the end of history." Now it's a
| hinge? It sounds like historians keep finding solutions that are
| in need of problem. Or perhaps, a book or two needs to be sold?
|
| Meanwhile, we're struggling to get past history properly re-
| paradigmed.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of people _want_ to see huge historical
| changes at this point. I certainly feel that the past decades
| were too stable, then stagnant, and it feels like covid is
| accelerating the moves considerably. If anything, i want more of
| it
| umvi wrote:
| So in other words, you are tired of "move slow and preserve
| things" and want more "move fast and break things"
| 0xBA5ED wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for. Rapid large-scale change is
| exciting perhaps, but not controllable. It is a recipe for sub-
| populations to slip through the cracks, increasing human
| suffering.
| fsckboy wrote:
| THE hinge of history? THE hinge of history was the Roman Empire
| (which spread a lot of the Greek ideas that the Romans admired).
|
| There may be A hinge in the future that we are close to, sure.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Maybe for Europe; China and India were doing just fine
| dfilppi wrote:
| No, we aren't.
| TLightful wrote:
| No, it's technically and scientifically known as the h'arse of
| history.
| jl6 wrote:
| For those who didn't read the article, the conclusion is:
| "probably not".
|
| This is an example of how an idea is granted false legitimacy by
| having a catchy alliterative name.
| personlurking wrote:
| as well as this law:
|
| Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any
| headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the
| word no."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'll read the article in the morning. Apologies for pre-
| commenting.
|
| I do not believe the world hinges on 2020. It is certain more
| than one nation is going through defining moments, but the world
| will survive it - as it will the coronavirus.
|
| I do believe that the United States is at a tipping point unlike
| any moment in the past 50 years. Whether anyone likes it or not,
| we are the world's leading consumer and second leading producer
| (GDP). We have massive influence on foreign affairs, soft power,
| and the global environment.
|
| Domestically, four more years of the current administration and
| its lack of rule of law will drive more people toward resistance.
| It will enable those who envy our president's unchecked power to
| emulate it at any level - the shamelessness, the gaslighting, and
| the bullying - so that our politics makes the 20th century look
| downright polite.
|
| The decision to, or not to, participate in global efforts to
| reduce human impact on the environment could be a defining moment
| for the next few hundred years of human existence. So yeah, I
| think this is a huge moment for the US, and the world.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Just starting in on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage...
| and while much of what VIL[1] says could be written a century
| later, my initial skim of "VIII. PARASITISM AND DECAY OF
| CAPITALISM" reveals that he's assumed that an imperial power
| will also be a creditor.
|
| [1] compare
| http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Pag...
|
| > "In the geniuses Lenin and Trotzky, the Bolshevik movement
| found its leadership. Lenin had no use for democracy as it was
| known in America. To him it was a sham, a front for the great
| capitalist trusts, which--even though the capitalists
| themselves might not know it--were doomed to get bigger on a
| shrinking market, until international capitalist war,
| bankruptcy, and working-class revolution was the result. Lenin
| was as sure that this would happen as he was that the sun would
| rise the next morning. The only dispute was the matter of
| timing; a few Bolshevik pessimists thought that the capitalist
| world might last into the 1920's."
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