[HN Gopher] Programming in the Apocalypse ___________________________________________________________________ Programming in the Apocalypse Author : drewbug01 Score : 216 points Date : 2022-05-30 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (matduggan.com) (TXT) w3m dump (matduggan.com) | mav88 wrote: | Lol. We're heading for a mini Ice Age which will peak around | 2035. Get a wood stove if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. | doctorhandshake wrote: | Not according to NASA https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa- | climate/2953/there-is-no-i... | kristjank wrote: | 'Bit sad innit, but what can I do about it except globally | irrelevant feel-goods that we're conditioned into doing on the | individual basis? Cheap, clean energy solves a lot of the | problems described, and until we get people to understand that | the only energy that can be produced on a low budget, with little | impact to the environment is either hydro or atomic, we are going | to be a long way from a long-term solution or even remediation. | Wind and solar are also extremely promising, but the load put on | network balancing, storage and conversion makes me sceptical of | their performance under unreliable conditions. | peterweyand0 wrote: | Raise your hand if you would be willing to lower your standard of | living, voluntarily, in order to stave off global warming. Sell | your car. Stop buying anything made with plastic. Stop using | electricity. | | I don't see many hands. | keiferski wrote: | I think a lot of people would actually be willing to do some of | this if, and only if, it came with a basic income. | vikinghckr wrote: | Never. I'm not changing any part of my lifestyle to prevent any | climate disaster. I'm all for technological solution to climate | change. In case that's not enough, I'm happy to face the | consequences. But I'm still not changing my lifestyle. | mtinkerhess wrote: | I would be more than happy to give up almost everything if it | would stop climate change, but unfortunately even if I make all | those changes, everybody else will continue driving cars, so it | seems my personal choices have nothing to do with whether | global warming happens or not. The way around this is | collective (government) action to guarantee everyone will | participate, but for a variety of reasons we don't have the | political will to make that happen. Besides, I'm not convinced | individuals' actions are to blame for the majority of climate | change -- I'm not an expert but I'm under the impression that | corporate / industrial energy usage is the majority of the | problem. | jodrellblank wrote: | Lots of people have tried to promote biking, urban zoning | reform, denser cities, mixed living and working areas, | reduction of urban cars and the overall need for cars, | increased availability of public transport, remote working, | less work to more time off ratio, reduction in use of plastic, | companies have switched from oil based plastics to alternative | plastics, people have switched to solar or wind generated | electricity, triple-glazed their houses to save on heating | bills, paid for a more efficient washing machine or lower power | TV or fridge. | | I see tons of hands and lots of companies lobbying against them | because it wouldn't be as profitable if things changed and | people bought less. | imwillofficial wrote: | This was a meandering rant that went on so long I never even got | to the point of the article before bailing. | [deleted] | derbOac wrote: | I think the basic idea is to cross energy use of a language with | ubiquity of existing deployments. | | So take energy use benchmarks from things like this | | https://haslab.github.io/SAFER/scp21.pdf | https://github.com/kostya/benchmarks | | and cross it with popularity? | | https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages/ | reggieband wrote: | I have fear that the cathartic pessimism we sometimes enjoy | ironically is turning into a chronic fatalism. It's like a habit | that has become an addiction. I think the author was in a | discussion that started as a fun catharsis for all involved and | then devolved into an addictive argument that the author felt | they needed to win. | | There is a cliche which goes: "Expect the best. Prepare for the | worst". Articles like this only seem to get the second half of | that while clearly violating the first half. A well balanced | response to crisis is benefited by both. | | I think the author is not actively aware of the importance of | expecting the best, both of the world and of their colleagues. I | feel their arguments are weak due to this imbalance. | KerrAvon wrote: | You want to provide a reason based in reality for that level of | optimism at the present time? It seems like pessimism is | currently warranted absent major upheavals that would change | the political situation worldwide, which would bring their own | issues. | krona wrote: | 2.5%[0] of the world GDP just doesn't sound very apocalyptic | to most people. Especially when you factor in GDP growth | projections over the next century. | | [0] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ | thoms_a wrote: | Life on Earth has survived much, much worse than the burning | of fossil fuels. For example, the K-Pg extinction event. | | It's all a matter of perspective. But humans are irrationally | social creatures susceptible to memetics, so no amount of | empirical evidence will alter socially beneficial memeplexes. | paganel wrote: | sodality2 wrote: | Have you done any research about the impacts of climate change? | Complaining about the urgency of warnings only works if you're | _certain_ the urgency is unwarranted. | motohagiography wrote: | Personally, I'm not against the planet or humanity, I'm | against disingenously poor quality arguments designed as a | chaff countermeasure to befog public discourse and facilitate | a worlwide distration theft via technocratic policies and | economic centralization. | madrox wrote: | The pandemic taught me a lot about apocalypse. While people are a | lot slower to buy into collective action and changing their way | of life than I thought, society is far more robust than I | expected. Covid looked nothing like a pandemic film, thank god. | | With that in mind, I have some ideas on what programming will | look like in 30 years: | | 1. New frameworks and abstractions for making apps even more | disposable while maintaining privacy will come along. New | languages will happen. Corporations that just finished moving to | the cloud will now be moving to even greater abstractions like | Airtable or whatever comes next. | | 2. Programmer pay will decrease compared to other industries. | This is a hunch and I'm only 60% confident of it happening. | | 3. Satellite internet will be more of a norm for no better reason | than it's the most efficient way to manage infrastructure. More | rural communities will need it, and remote trends will continue. | The cost of launches are going down and there's a lot of land. | | 4. Everything will get more energy efficient, and most intense | activity will be pushed to compute farms. | | 5. VR will once again come around as the next big revolution in | computing, but will be ultimately disappointing and won't see | mass adoption. | | Beyond these ideas, I think too much plays into our personal | optimism or pessimism. I think things will change, but we're a | scrappy species that will fight to preserve its way of life. It | will look a lot like our global pandemic response...warts and | all. There's a lot there to be disappointed about, but it's | actually incredible it wasn't worse. | | When these predictions hit I'll be 70. I hope I'll live to see | it. | cassepipe wrote: | I feel the same about 5. Do 3d movies still exist by the way ? | Or IMax movies ? | madrox wrote: | Probably in the same way that VR does...it comes in waves. 3D | has been around for a while, and every now and then it | resurges. It has more to do with marketing forces to excite | people about going to the theater than anything. | | And yes, I suspect theaters will still be a thing unless | teenagers find a new excuse to be unsupervised in the dark | for a few hours. | tasuki wrote: | > The pandemic taught me a lot about apocalypse. | | I don't think it has taught you much. All things considered, | despite all the suffering by unlucky individuals, when you | consider humanity as a whole, covid is an insignificant blip. | If it's significant at all, it's only because of our response | to it. | | > Covid looked nothing like a pandemic film, thank god. | | Covid was not 1% as bad as any pandemic featured in a film. | Humanity has seen way worse, and we could still see way worse | in the future. | madrox wrote: | I'd argue the opposite. If it's insignificant at all, it's | only because of our response to it. Lots of people worked | very, very hard for us to sit here typing "it wasn't that | bad" unless you believe that our global covid response did | very little to change the outcome. If you do believe that, | though, there's probably little point in continuing this | thread. | boringg wrote: | Our response was actually what made it a much more | insignificant blip (thanks public health + vaccines), and | technically we aren't through it yet. | pc86 wrote: | I'd argue that we are through it in the public health, | government mandate, change how you live day-to-day sense of | things. Everyone who is willing to get vaccinated is | probably vaccinated at this point. There is very little | support for more government intervention even as cases rise | in various areas, regardless of political persuasion (at | least in the US, maybe it's different in the UK and EU?) | | The fact that COVID is still out there, infecting and | mutating, is irrelevant to most people. | KerrAvon wrote: | https://also.kottke.org/22/04/the-mass-delusion-of-the- | pande... | dijit wrote: | We have a widely deployed vaccine. | | COVID will live with us forever now, a pandemic has a few | characteristics which make it so, one of which is capacity | to overwhelm healthcare. | | As soon as covid couldn't overwhelm our healthcare systems | it was over. | | Now people will die every year with it, just like the flu. | | Sad reality, but reality nonetheless, the fact we couldn't | handle a lock-down cemented that we would be living with it | for the rest of human existence. | whatshisface wrote: | The vaccine only lasts six months. I am not sure how | "widely deployed" it is anymore. | krona wrote: | Children today, and their children, will gain immunity | over an entire lifetime through repeated exposure. | | So it is with all other coronaviruses, which have been | around for millions of years and don't routinely kill | older/vulnerable people. | titzer wrote: | What COVID taught me is that the human ability to not give a | fuck is apparently infinite. I have trouble processing the | fact that a million people died (in the USA) and there is no | mourning, no shared sense of tragedy or loss, no looking more | kindly on other people, just a madder, faster dash on cash | and even more finger-pointing. | | > Covid was not 1% as bad as any pandemic featured in a film. | | I'll be generous and not dwell on this stunning example of | this age's inability to get bothered by anything unless it | hits harder than film. Look on the bright side I guess, | despite how soulless, empty, and glib we have to be do so! | [deleted] | coryrc wrote: | Something like 5 million people die every year, should we | be in permanent mourning? | titzer wrote: | I know you're trolling, but I'll respond. Part of growing | up and moving from just a mere legally-licensed adult is | being able to hold heavy things. They never stop getting | heavier. They just keep unfolding, and if you are willing | to grow just a little deeper--not bigger, but deeper, | like the roots of you being able to _feel_ things, then | maybe all that learning to deal with loss, tragedies, | loved ones dying, aging, your parents and uncles and | cousins and friends dying--and yet not letting it destroy | you, might be worth something. Though, for a moment, you | can be devastated on the inside and hold yourself up | without breaking. You don 't need to cry your eyes out | every day, but man, what the hell if we can't reflect on | such a grievous time that has befallen us--all of us-- | over the past two years, without clawing someone else's | face off or storming off in a huff. But if you need to | feel not bothered at all, go ahead, you aren't the | subject of this one. | madrox wrote: | Lately, I've been thinking about the role of nihilism as | a natural force in society and its use as a tool of | renewal. At its best, it's a power to take only that | which strengthens so that we don't take on the collective | emotional debt of past generations. It's why we're | finding new ways to do old things all the time and why we | aren't living in guilt over the deeds of past | generations. | | At its worst, nihilism throws the baby out with the bath | water and you get holocaust deniers. This has been the | hardest part of aging for me, because seeing this evolve | in real time has left me in despair for our world at | times. I have to remind myself that this force has been | at work for centuries, and when I was young I didn't | think it was all that bad. We'll probably be ok. | jotm wrote: | 1. Well, d'uh. | | Also, everything will require a network connection (which is | where ubiquitous Internet via cable or satellite comes in). No | Internet? Pfft, what, do you live without electricity, too? | | 2. Pay for these kinds of professions (ever increasing | complexity, whether necessary or self-made + decently mentally | taxing) will only go up. Not everyone can be a programmer, or a | lawyer, doctor, video/audio editor, electrician, etc. Barring | some catastrophic event or the creation of good enough | AI/robots. | | 4+5. in 30 years, if current development rates continue, VR | will be the next revolution. Super compact and efficient | devices + a world where you can do almost anything you want | will be very popular with the masses facing ever increasing | costs, climate problems, joblessness, lack of housing, etc. | | Why even put up with all the bs when you can do the bare | minimum and use technological opium the rest of your time? I | wonder if VR could be banned in the same manner as drugs, | actually. | madrox wrote: | The reason I'm low confidence on pay is because I think there | will be even more disparity among programmer salaries and the | median will be far lower. Will it be possible to make a | million a year as an engineer in 30 years (forget inflation | for a moment)? Sure. However, I think there will be a lot | more engineers making five figures. We're lowering the bar to | do simple work all the time. Much like the other professions | you mentioned, some make millions...others are far more | middle-class. | | As for the rest...they were in direct response to this | article's predictions. My VR prediction is tongue-in-cheek | because it's been "just around the corner" for the last | thirty years. It's not far-fetched to think it'll still be | "just around the corner" in another 30. | coldtea wrote: | > _Covid looked nothing like a pandemic film, thank god._ | | That's probably because it was not that great impact wise. If | it was more like the Spanish Flu, with a huge death toll across | all ages (as opposed to 1/10th the death toll, and mostly | focused on older people and co-morbidities) it would have | absolutely have looked like "a pandemic film". | madrox wrote: | I think there's a fallacy here in that "because covid's | impact wasn't great, covid wasn't that bad." Any time we have | to mobilize a lot of effort to head off the worst outcome, | there's a tendency to say "well nothing really bad happened, | so why did we go through all that effort?" Let's not | trivialize the global effort necessary to bring us to 1/10th | the death toll. It absolutely could've been worse. | | It's our response to covid, not covid itself, that taught me | a lot of what we're capable of in global crisis. We've come a | long way since Spanish Flu. | kinleyd wrote: | Well said. I think if the vaccines hadn't come out at all, | it could well have been as bad as the Spanish Flu. | coryrc wrote: | > there's a tendency to say "well nothing really bad | happened, so why did we go through all that effort? | | Basically a third of our country didn't go through that | effort and the country is mostly still chugging along. Were | it much deadlier, things would not have turned out okay. | Grim-444 wrote: | This is a weird argument to make. The rational thing is | to make different decisions in different scenarios. The | choices I would make for how/whether to participate in | society, whether to take a vaccine, etc., would vary | greatly depending on whether a given disease has a 1 in | 50,000 chance of killing me vs if it's like something out | of the movie Contagion that would have a 1 in 10 chance | of killing me. | | If covid had a 1 in 10 chance of killing me I would have | made very different decisions over the course of the | pandemic. You're saying that people would still behave | the same as they did during covid no matter how deadly a | given disease is, which seems pretty ridiculous. | dijit wrote: | Reminds me of the millennium bug. | | Everyone worked really hard to make the impact minimal, now | people assume that it wasn't that big a deal. | warvair wrote: | Maybe it's time to start putting the "Cloud" in orbit. | paulsutter wrote: | There are two better explanations than the Great Filter: | | - Dark Forest theory is popular in China, that civilizations | should conceal their existence to prevent being destroyed by a | more advanced civilization | | - Our own high power TV and Radio transmitters will be shutdown | soon in favor of fiber optics. Even better communication | mechanisms should be no surprise | giantrobot wrote: | The glossed over Great Filter is space is fucking huge and | physics is mean. | | It takes a great effort to get a coherent radio signal to hit a | system many light years away. Leaked radio emissions just don't | reach very far. Even high powered radar is extremely narrow | beams coming from a spinning planet orbiting a star that itself | is flying through space. The odds that beam crosses some system | specifically listening for it is extremely low and the odds of | a reoccurrence is ridiculously low. | | The dark forest just doesn't make sense. A sufficiently large | telescope can get spectra from terrestrial planets. If you have | some killer space fleet you'll send it off to any planet where | you find short-lived industrial emissions (CFCs etc). There's | no need to wait for radio emissions from a planet with | biomarkers. It also presumes its practical to send a space | fleet to go destroy anyone. | | It's far more likely the odds of any two technological | civilizations existing at the same "time" at detectable ranges | is extremely low. Species also don't tend to take over galaxies | because it requires unattainable amounts of power and resources | much better used to live happily in their own little corner. | ouid wrote: | the density of intelligent life cannot be bounded from below | with only the one point of data that we have. | Gunax wrote: | When dealing with _unknown unknowns_ any theory can be logical. | | Maybe extra-terrestrials are more like lumberjacks chopping | down trees. Except these lumber jacks avoid *any tree with a | bird's nest in it*. Then, we should be as visible as possible. | | So should we be quiet (ala Dark Forest), or loud? Depends on | how you model extra-terrestrials. | ocdtrekkie wrote: | Isn't some sort of game theory going to suggest we be quiet | then? Because if they exterminate birds nests, we want to be | quiet, and if they intentionally avoid bird's nests, they | probably will look for them closer before chopping us down. | Gunax wrote: | Hmm, so I am not sure I see why that would be more likely. | It sounds like you're saying that exterminators are less | effective at detection than lumberjacks--whether by effort | or some other reason. | | I think you could just as logically conclude the opposite: | maybe lumberjacks don't need to exterminate to survive, so | they do not put as much effort in, since they are just | avoiding us altruistically. | | But more generally, this is the sort of problem I have with | speculation on unknown unknowns: It's fun to do, but I dont | recommend changing any of our decisions based on it because | we simply _do not know_. | Zababa wrote: | I don't think any explanation is "better" or "worse" than the | great filter, as we only have our example. There's nothing | suggesting that we are alone in the universe, but also nothing | suggesting that we aren't alone. We can formulate whatever | hypothesis we want but it won't change reality. Either there's | something out there or there isn't. Lots of people thinking the | great filter or Drake's equation is real won't affect what is | or isn't out there. We just don't know, and it's mostly a waste | of time to think about it. | kossTKR wrote: | Interesting! | | I've always had an intuitive feeling that theories like The | Great Filter theory was a pretty arrogant simplification of | "actual reality" beyond our narrow biological lenses and even | narrower western definition of "life" or even spatial | dimensions and time. | | Just because some western scientist with only 350+ years of | somewhat advanced tools, math and imagination can't see | "something" doesn't mean something isn't there - we don't even | know what "there" is, or who "we" are. | | Math and science is an awesome "thing", but the ridiculous | existential pop-science extrapolations from simple equations is | laughable if not sinister, especially in light of the | paradigmatic shifts in science and worldview over just the last | couple of centuries. | satokausi wrote: | Agreed. The Great Filter theory has weak assumptions that a) | all "living" systems evolve in a similar way as the | biological systems on earth, and b) that this evolution | "advances" somehow towards space expansion. | | Our biological lenses make it seem like the complex system we | call "life" is the only similarly complex system that is | possible in the _entire universe_. | throwaway4aday wrote: | I tend to agree, I don't think we have a good grasp on what | life will be like in 50 years let alone 1000 or 10,000. My | personal guesses are that we will continue to make | improvements in efficiency and so will produce very little | leakage of communications or even heat making us nearly | invisible over vast distances. Sociologically, I think we'll | be very different; population growth may approach 0 while | lifespan increases dramatically so we'll continue to explore | the universe but will do so remotely since we just won't have | the numbers to physically colonize other star systems. Even | the timescale on which we live may change drastically, | perception of time isn't even fixed when it comes to biology | there are other species that have much faster or slower | perception of time and once we being to modify our biology | and augment it by integrating with digital systems we'll be | able to control that sense. Who can predict what other | technological advances are on the horizon, for all we know | alien probes or other technology could be as small as | bacteria and might just be distributed through space as vast | networks of dust clouds that harvest ambient chemical and | solar energy and have transmission ranges measured in | micrometers. How would we even detect such technology without | physically going there and examining it up close? | snikeris wrote: | The Drake equation handles that case: | | fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology | that releases detectable signs of their existence into space | poulpy123 wrote: | The drake equation handle nothing, because all parameters | are pure speculation | yesbabyyes wrote: | Right; the parameter that would be of interest is rather | _L_ = the length of time for which such civilizations | release detectable signals into space. | | Quoting Wikipedia: "Inserting the above minimum numbers | into the equation gives a minimum N of 20. Inserting the | maximum numbers gives a maximum of 50,000,000. Drake states | that given the uncertainties, the original meeting | concluded that N [?] L, and there were probably between | 1000 and 100,000,000 planets with civilizations in the | Milky Way Galaxy." | | As I understand it, at the time it was estimated that a | civilization would broadcast during its existence, from the | time radio communications started until the fall of | civilization (thus the Great Filter). | | Now, from our sample size of one, it looks like L would | rather be on the order of 100 years (in our case, not | because we are trying to hide in the Dark Forest, but | because we don't want to waste energy beaming Dallas reruns | into space for no good reason). | throwaway4aday wrote: | I feel like the second is the most likely. Combine that with | challenging the proposition that intelligent life would ever | choose to colonize the galaxy to the extent that it would be | blatantly obvious and I think you have a pretty solid position | from which to argue that it won't be easy to detect other | civilizations. | skyfaller wrote: | I agree that we need to plan for climate adaptation (preparing | for predictable problems) and resilience (preparing for | unpredictable problems), but I have a few kneejerk responses: | | - Although it's looking increasingly unlikely that we can avert | climate disaster, we can never give up. For example, 8 degrees of | warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming, and could | mean the difference between human extinction and the mere | collapse of our civilization. The lives of billions hang in the | balance, and even if some will inevitably suffer and die, we | can't just throw up our hands and let everyone die. Climate | change mitigation, cutting emissions as quickly and thoroughly as | we can, must remain a priority for the rest of our lives, even if | we can no longer reach the best/safest scenarios. Every little | bit of avoided global heating matters. | | - This post, as dire as its predictions are, may underestimate | the difficulty of computing in 2050, given current trends. If you | are/were living in Ukraine recently, programming is not most | people's top priority, they have other problems. Famines, extreme | weather events, and resource wars will affect programmers who | live in comfortable locations today. It's not just your | users/audience who might be computing from a shitty mobile phone | in a refugee camp, it could be you. Don't forget that we're not | only dealing with climate change, but with the reaction of other | people to climate change: they might want to kill you for your | water. And heatwaves are predictable in India/Pakistan, but look | at the freak heatwaves in Canada recently, nowhere on Earth is | safe, the climate crisis is a global problem. | | - Why are we programming what we're programming? Shouldn't our | activities and their purposes change given the dramatic change in | circumstances? Isn't there something wrong with the system that | produced this result, the impending destruction of the biosphere | that supports us? Fighting valiantly to preserve the | functionality that is killing the world may not be a wise or | ethical use of your time. (And if you're programming something | for a fossil fuel company, now is a good time to reconsider.) | lelanthran wrote: | > For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 | degrees of warming, and could mean the difference between human | extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization. | | I'm assuming celsius, not farenheit. | | I'm curious why a mere 8 degrees increase leads to human | extinction. | | Is that "8 degrees evenly over the globe"? If so, that most | certainly would leave the majority of land arable and | comfortably livable. | | Is that "8 degrees average with such a high deviation that no | land is left with a year-round range of 0 degrees to 30 | degrees"? If that is the case, where can I read/view/see the | model that produces such an extreme outcome? | wiredearp wrote: | This guy Mark Lynas studied the models and wrote a book about | it, but then he wrote it again based on newer models, so make | sure to find the latest one called "Our Final Warning: Six | Degrees of Climate Emergency" for a grizzly drilldown into | the centigrades towards extinction. Few models deal with | warming beyond three degress, in itself a point of some | consideration, but the references are all there and here's | the synopsis for the book. | | > At one degree - the world we are already living in - vast | wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster | hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the | Arctic ice cap melts away and coral reefs disappear from the | tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, | threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of | the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire | nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, | the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six | degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps | the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on | Earth. | lelanthran wrote: | Actually I was kinda hoping for just a model or some peer | reviewed conclusions. | | I'm just not in the mood to devote a lot of time to what | sounds (to me) like hyperbole: If the earth stabilised at | +8 degrees celcius I find it hard to understand why the | entire earth becomes _literally_ uninhabitable. | svnt wrote: | It doesn't. It's an extrapolation based on the limited | insights of a PhD who by any reasonable definition spends | too much time with simulations. | | If you want to think of a way it could be possible, | though, think of those areas that would be habitable, | realize that they would be highly contested, are mostly | presently permafrost, and consider your own ability to | both protect and survive on melted tundra and reproduce | there, given you will starve in a single season without | food. | skybrian wrote: | I expect that people will still write software because it | needed and pays well. However, the jobs that people get paid to | do could become rather different. | | Consider what happens in a war. The people working on drones | aren't just hobbyists, they're part of the war effort. Wars are | not good for the environment, either. | | So my guess is that, if it gets really bad, these jobs will | focus more on short-term needs. Are people who are really | focused on preparing for heat waves and drought and flooding | going to give a hoot about being carbon neutral? An overloaded | hospital is going to focus on the patients, not global | environmental issues. | coldtea wrote: | > _I expect that people will still write software because it | needed and pays well._ | | Both "it's needed" and "pays well" are the case now - not | necessarily the case at that point. So they can't be used as | arguments that people "will still write software" (it would | be taking for granted what must be proven). | polishdude20 wrote: | Then again, demand for fossil fuels is also part of the | equation. You get a remote programming job, demand to travel by | car potentially goes down. So there's potentially a net | reduction in emissions. | mcculley wrote: | > human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization | | How do you imagine human extinction being an outcome? It seems | to me that the worst case scenario is large loss of population | which would decrease greenhouse gas output. There would still | be some increase in temperature even once we stop emitting, but | wouldn't people in colder climates still survive? | kpmah wrote: | Even if it doesn't directly cause extinction, it could do | things like destabilise nuclear powers. | skyfaller wrote: | There are a large number of things that could kill everyone, | but I think the top threat will always be ourselves. It's | very easy to imagine some resource war degenerating into a | nuclear war. A few self-induced crises like that on top of | the climate crisis would be enough to finish the survivors | (who might have made it if the only danger were the | environment). | | Think of the world population's size and global distribution | as hedges against disaster: the fewer people who live, in | fewer habitable places, the more likely it is that some | disaster will affect everyone remaining and leave no one | unaffected. We have fewer rolls of the dice, and there may | come a day where they're all snake eyes. | | This why many are excited about the idea of "making humanity | an interplanetary species", as I once was until I realized | how hard it would be to make a working biosphere anywhere | else, given how bad we are at maintaining one that already | works. If we don't figure out how to save this biosphere, we | won't have enough time to make more. | formerly_proven wrote: | There's some fairly absurd doomerism going on in the "climate | catastrophe tomorrow" camp where climate change will | (somehow) turn earth into a barren rock and we're inches away | from triggering a self-reinforcing climate resonance cascade | of unforeseen consequences. | | It's of course a very urgent issue, but I think exaggerating | it until it becomes a threat to "all life on earth" levels is | a) dishonest b) does nothing to convince sceptics that it's a | real issue, quite the opposite c) is not really all that | actionable (at least not in a good way). | thoms_a wrote: | I'm amazed that this level of skepticism is still possible | on HN. Bravo to you for asking these basic questions. | | For those who are convinced that life on earth will be | radically altered due to climate change in this century, | which conveniently means that we must totally sacrifice all | of our individual freedoms to the whims of unelected global | elites, do you make sure to constantly test your empirical | models? | | For example, the K-Pg extinction event which [1] wiped out | the vast majority of life on earth still didn't result in a | positive feedback loop that scorched the atmosphere, and | thus failed to render the Earth uninhabitable. Yet, we are | told that the burning of fossil fuels will have an impact | far more catastrophic than this recorded geological | doomsday event. | | I've just read too much history to fall for fear porn | promulgated by powerful entities seeking control over the | masses. It's the oldest trick in the book, and it'll keep | working as long as people keep falling for it. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleoge | ne_e... | coldtea wrote: | > _will (somehow) turn earth into a barren rock_ | | Well, hundreds of millios displaced and/or dead would be | enough. Doesn't have to "turn earth into a barren rock". | | And as for "suddenly", many systems tend to have a breaking | point, especially systems, like the environment, which have | feedback loops that can easily feed into each other and | make things worse fast. Collapse is seldom linear or a nice | gradual curve. | lelanthran wrote: | > Well, hundreds of millios displaced and/or dead would | be enough. Doesn't have to "turn earth into a barren | rock". | | Actually, yes it does. The OP specified "human | extinction". We're arguing that single point. The fact | that thousands/millions/billions might displaced isn't | being contended. | seibelj wrote: | The temperature and co2 levels have been much higher in the | past. The earth has been much more tropical as well as an | ice world. Humans can adapt to change quite effectively - | we did invent air conditioning, as well as the land of The | Netherlands which is reclaimed and existing beneath sea | level. | | What is the greatest tragedy is how much worry and anxiety | climate change causes. The earth is not a thinking thing - | "Mother Nature" is not a being. The planet will exist and | doesn't care about humans. A century after the last human | lives nature will swallow up almost everything we built. | Earth exists for humans because we live here and make it | so. We will adapt to whatever climate exists. | thisismyusrname wrote: | Positive feedback loops causing runaway warming is one way | Filligree wrote: | True human extinction doesn't seem plausible, but in a worst- | case scenario we can imagine a > 99% drop in population, | roughly to what is sustainable without technology, in a | dramatically harsher world. | | ("Without"? Well, nobody today knows how to build a cast-iron | plough.) | | I don't believe this scenario is likely. For one thing we're | not headed for 8C of heating; for another, technological | change seems to be coming just in time to head off the _very_ | worst outcomes, assuming we struggle hard enough. | vkou wrote: | > assuming we struggle hard enough. | | We aren't struggling at all, though. We just eased off the | accelerator a little. (Assuming that our accounting is | correct, and that methane leakage isn't worse than we | think. [1]) | | [1] It's worse than we think. | skyfaller wrote: | We _probably_ aren 't headed for 8 degrees of heating, | _based on what we know today_. There are a lot of "out | there" scenarios that don't make it into sober, | conservative scientific reports from the IPCC, because they | recognize how important it is that people take their | warnings seriously, and they don't want to mention anything | they don't have very clear evidence for already. | | One of my "favorites" is the "world without clouds" | scenario, which for the record, I consider unlikely, but is | horrifying to imagine: | https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could- | add-8-degree... | | What we're dealing with are "unknown unknowns": what | tipping points might exist that we don't know about, that | might result in more warming faster than expected based on | today's science? We shouldn't take those kind of | existential risks. | openknot wrote: | >"- This post, as dire as its predictions are, may | underestimate the difficulty of computing in 2050, given | current trends. If you are/were living in Ukraine recently, | programming is not most people's top priority, they have other | problems. Famines, extreme weather events, and resource wars | will affect programmers who live in comfortable locations | today." | | It's true that programming was not a top priority outside of | survival, though to many programmers in Ukraine, it was still a | major one. | | This report (source: | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/ukrainians-are-built- | differe...) from CNBC in March documents this: "Those | developers, along with other Ukrainian civilians in the | country, are now being forced to defend their homes and cities | while sheltering from Russian bombs. But many are still | continuing to remotely work for their employers, supporting the | local defense effort by day while sending in their deliverables | by night. | | "Yes our teams are sending deliverables from a f--ing parking | garage in Kharkiv under heavy shelling and gunfire in the area. | Amazing humans," Logan Bender, chief financial officer at a San | Francisco-based software licensing company, said in a story | posted to Instagram on Tuesday by venture capital meme account | PrayingforExits. " | | I would personally prioritize survival over work at that point, | and avoid praising sending deliverables in a warzone as a moral | good (over ensuring the safety of your family), but it's | evidence that even in extreme conditions, people still want to | program as part of their work. As for why there would be a want | to program in extreme conditions, some discussions on Reddit | and Slashdot in response to the article suggested that | programming was a way for these workers to get their minds off | their current situation. | edgedetector wrote: | I recall being stuck in a closet for hours during tornado | warnings multiple times throughout my life. It gets boring. | Programming is a good way to pass the time. | FargaColora wrote: | "the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse | of our civilization" | | Literally nobody is predicting any of those things, except | propagandists and doomers. I would urge you to broaden your | media intake to more mainstream sources, because it is not | mentally healthy to be living a life under such falsehoods. | krastanov wrote: | You misread their statement. They said "8 degrees". With 8 C | increase in temperature, what they described could very much | happen. We expect 4 C worst case, which is why we do not need | to worry about extinction. I think they are saying that we do | not need to worry about more than 4 C increase exactly | because people in the past fought for the cause, and if they | stopped fighting the same way today some people feel | resignation and want to stop fighting, even 4 C would have | been too optimistic. The fact that people in the past did not | resign themselves to the status quo is why we do not need to | worry about an 8 C increase. | ivm wrote: | This is not true, for example, "Humans Are Doomed to Go | Extinct" was published in Scientific American last year: | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are- | doomed... | FargaColora wrote: | That's... one man's opinion and at the absolute extreme end | of accepted science. You will find a person willing to have | a view on anything if you look hard enough. | | If you read mainstream publications, then you will | gradually form an opinion, which is that there is a climate | emergency, but not that humanity will be destroyed. | | Climate doomerism has been a catasrophe, because it means | many people have "given up", when things can actually be | done. The doomer propaganda jumped off the deep end, and | the mainstream media should have called them our on their | absurd nonsense years ago. | | I notice the BBC is starting to fight back: | | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-61495035 | ivm wrote: | Humanity probably will not be wiped out, but the current | global civilization will collapse like it happened to | many other civilizations before because they reached the | ecological overshoot. I also thought that something | "could be done" on a large scale, but after studying the | problem in depth (starting with the IPCC report), I began | to prepare on the community level for the impact in the | next 10-20 years. That's the only area where something | _can_ be done. | | By the way, BBC is not a reliable source, like other | neoliberal propaganda they bet on continuing "business as | usual" while coming up with some innovative solutions | (so-called "techno-hopium"). | FargaColora wrote: | "I began to prepare on the community level for the impact | in the next 10-20 years" | | Sorry, I don't think rational debate is possible here. | Your beliefs are not based on science or rationality. | ivm wrote: | ...said the person who conveniently ignored the | mainstream scientific forecasts. Well, with time you'll | see. | bordercases wrote: | formvoltron wrote: | At some point, we'll have to put a fine dust in the upper | atmosphere. | | We seem to have most of the building blocks already for renewable | energy. Just need to focus on it and assemble them together... | and decide it's worth giving up fossil fuel related things that | are still functional. | k0k0r0 wrote: | As someone else put it nicely: | | People seem to rather fight the sun than capitalism. | mellavora wrote: | "But we do know it was us that scorched the sky." | digitalsushi wrote: | We need some sort of a dust to touch up the oceans a bit, too. | Maybe one that can tidy up the plastic and the acid. | mmcgaha wrote: | Dust in the upper atmosphere? That is a solved problem; we can | just burn more coal. Of course the world will be dirty and it | will get cold everywhere, but hey at least we will be back to | where we were in the early 20th century. I have a better idea | how about we consume less and not spew crap into our | environment. | photochemsyn wrote: | I don't really agree with 'collapse of human civilization; | apocalyptic predictions due to fossil-fueled global warming, more | like a rapid degradation in living standards for the vast | majority of people on the planet, do to the known list of | climate-related issues: decreases in agricultural production | largely related to heat waves and drought, and infrastructure | damage due to flooding and fires and extreme weather. | | This is likely to reduce the amount of arable land, and the | intersection of that and continued human population growth is | likely going to put pressure on populations to migrate to more | livable zones, and that will create the kinds of tensions like to | lead to widespread warfare and possibly even genocidal actions. | | Now, can some of this be technologically mitigated? Absolutely. | It's entirely possible to run the global economy without fossil | fuels. The major sources of replacement energy would be | wind/solar/storage, and nuclear in some regions (massive | expansion of nuclear is just not feasible, sorry enthusiasts, but | that's the reality - there's not that much high-grade uranium ore | around, breeder concepts are implausible, fusion is nowhere in | sight, and the cost equation favors solar and wind in the vast | majority of regions, from the equator descending polewards). | | However, that would upend the economic status quo in a remarkable | way. All the petrostates that live off oil exports and oil | production would have serious readjustments (and this is non- | ideological, it's true for the USA, for Saudi Arabia, for | Venezuela, for Russia, for Iran, etc.). | | Imagine if we got serious about eliminating fossil fuel use | globally. Well, one obvious first step would be a ban on the | international trade in fossil fuels, right? Who would agree to | that? All the fossil fuel corporations I know of are planning on | maintaining current levels of output for the next 30 years, as | well. | | Regardless, we could very plausibly reduce fossil fuel production | in the USA by 3% per year if we also increased solar/wind/storage | by 3% per year, while maintaining most of the current nuclear | fleet. Then, in 30 years, the USA would produce zero fossil | fuels. It's entirely doable with existing technlogy, but would | require as much investment as say, the military-industrial | complex currently gets. | | As far as computer tech and programming, I really don't see that | being fundamentally impacted; if there's an energy / material | crunch then it will just become more expensive to buy a computer | or run a datacenter, and it'll be more restricted to key uses | (managing energy grids, running factories, etc.). However, | running a chip production line off solar power is entirely | feasible. | agentultra wrote: | Consider also the support systems in place for agrarian | production that enable programmers to do what we do. | | We're in the midst of a mass extinction event. If we lose the eco | systems that support us we'll go into decline as surely as every | other species as high on the food chain as we are. | | I'm not sure if civilization will collapse but it does seem like | something that is probable. Do we have enough people with the | expertise to maintain or build computing devices with limited | access to fabrication? Can we still cobble together useful stuff | from the piles of e-waste? | | One easy thing we can do is push for policies that make it easier | to access public infrastructure. Low-cost access to the poles, | towers, etc. | | Interesting times ahead. | giamma wrote: | "Based on this I felt like some of the big winners in 2050 will | be Rust, Clojure and Go. They mostly nail these criteria and are | well-designed for not relying on containers or other similar | technology for basic testing and feature implementation. They are | also (reasonably) tolerant of spotty internet presuming the | environment has been set up ahead of time." | | Why is Clojure better then Java when it's a JVM language as well? | It uses Java artefacts (Maven) so how is it more tolerant than | Java of a spotty internet? Scala, Clojure, Java, Groovy should | all rate pretty much the same or am I missing something? | dixego wrote: | > Just wanted to follow up on my note from a few days ago in case | it got buried under all of those e-mails about the flood. I'm | concerned about how the Eastern Seaboard being swallowed by the | Atlantic Ocean is going to affect our Q4 numbers, so I'd like to | get your eyes on the latest earnings figures ASAP. On the bright | side, the Asheville branch is just a five-minute drive from the | beach now, so the all-hands meeting should be a lot more fun this | year. Silver linings! | | I... I don't think I'm psychologically prepared for tolerating | the fauxptimism of corpospeak under the Slow Motion Apocalypse. | notpachet wrote: | UW;DR | | Underwater; didn't read | gred wrote: | > Due to heat and power issues, it is likely that disruptions to | home and office internet will be a much more common occurrence. | As flooding and sea level rise disrupts commuting, working | asynchronously is going to be the new norm. | | Nah. I expect simple UI fashion transitions (e.g. round corners | to square corners back to round corners) are likely to claim more | of our time and attention over the next 30 years than the | "serious" predictions in the article. | kingcharles wrote: | This article doesn't take into account any of the myriad advances | in AI, which appears to be starting up an exponential curve of | improvement. | | IMO, it is likely the Singularity will arrive before 2050 and | make practically everything in this article completely moot. | waynecochran wrote: | Based on this I felt like some of the big winners in 2050 will be | Rust, Clojure and Go. | | These will be less than we think of Cobol today. The paradigms | will be completely different by then. Declarative languages have | the best shot at surviving since they are the least tied to | today's paradigms. We have to figure a may to program for fine | and coarse grain parallel machines -- and not von Neumann fetch- | decode-execute style machines. | rectang wrote: | "Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?" -- | John Backus, 1978 | | 44 years later, it hasn't happened. I'm skeptical that it will | happen in the next 28. | [deleted] | waynecochran wrote: | Probably not a complete break. But there needs to be | paradigms that can allow for exacale computing. Instead of | 20000 independent threads (e.g., SIMD / CUDA style) we will | have trillions of threads that work in interleaved harmony. | The von Neumann model break downs at that level. | edgedetector wrote: | We've made a ton of progress. They didn't have decentralized | computing at all in 1978. Now most things run on remote | machines. Also, there has been a move away from the | imperative style that makes parallelism so difficult. | wolfgang42 wrote: | This isn't nearly so clear-cut as you make it out to be-- | compilers today often treat "imperative" languages as | declarative, and CPUs are a lot more sophisticated than "fetch- | decode-execute" implies. (Yesterday I was looking at some code | where GCC took a fairly complicated for-loop and turned it into | about four assembly instructions, all with incomprehensible | acronyms.) | | COBOL's fall from grace was due in no small part to the syntax | rather than the semantics, and I expect that trend to continue: | I wouldn't be surprised if the languages of 2050 are similar to | the languages of today, just with more expressivity, better | communication between compiler and programmer, and an even | larger range of optimizations under the hood. | luxuryballs wrote: | "we have to accept immense hits to the global economy and the | resulting poverty, suffering and impact. The scope of the change | required is staggering. We've never done something like this" | | This is an insanely extreme claim with very little evidence to | back it up, if we watch this unfold at the hands of global | leadership please know that it didn't have to be this way and | somebody is taking advantage of all of us for power and control. | boppo1 wrote: | Yeah this narrative is troubling. I've read stuff from IPCC | contributors who compare climate change to Covid, especially in | the case of people living in the first world. Things will get | harder and the shape of our lives will change, but | "civilizational collapse" is a term from people gleefully | imagining the end of the world like they would a zombie | apocalypse. | balaji1 wrote: | this article has bought into a lot of narratives of | doomsaying and the "real" causes of it. It complains about | coal consumption in India and China, conveniently linked to a | reuters article. | | > With China and India not even starting the process of coal | draw-down yet... | | It is fine to assume the Global South is trending towards | further coal usage. Maybe the developed world can help them | transition to something sustainable like nuclear power. | | There has to be an element of truth in Michael Moore's | extreme Planet of the Humans. | | At least Amazon's Eating our way to Extinction [1] makes a | convincing argument against deforestation and meat | consumption trends. But the West is continuing to sell the | global south a lifestyle (foreign to them) of extreme meat | eating, among other unsustainable consumption lifestyle. | | [1] https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Our-Extinction-Kate- | Winslet/dp... | yanderekko wrote: | I don't think they're gleeful, they just deeply believe that | we need to reject capitalism and/or embrace some sort of | global technocratic governance, and see the threat of climate | catastrophe as the most-plausible mechanism that such a | change would come about. | boppo1 wrote: | That's an interesting take I hadn't thought of. At first I | read it dismissively, but it's surprisingly plausible given | the role software engineers have taken over the last 15 | years. | imwillofficial wrote: | Notice those who have the most information, policy makers and | the rich in control have not changed their jet set lifestyle by | one iota. | | Still polluting the skies on their way to Davos | soco wrote: | Because they don't need to care about consequences. No matter | how high the sea level rises, enough money gets you a higher | place to stay. | imwillofficial wrote: | No, it shows they don't believe it. | | Obama's recently purchased beachfront property is a | testament to this. | poulpy123 wrote: | How is it insanely extreme ? Except if we are lucky and there | is a Deus ex machina that saves us (which by definition is | unpredictable), this is the current trajectory | kzzzznot wrote: | Can you provide something to back up your apocalyptic claim? | ivm wrote: | The newest IPCC report (Aug 2021) is rather apocalyptic | even in the best-case scenarios that are not happening | currently. And their worst-case scenarios do not include | possible feedback loops. | avgcorrection wrote: | Slowing down the global economy wouldn't benefit the elites. | Still though they might have their liferafts planned that none | of us are going to be welcome onto. | npc12345 wrote: | You will own nothing and be happy. | | Bill Gates tells us to not eat meat and owns a gigaton of | farmland. | | He rells us to ride bikes and has the largest fleet of private | jets in the world. | sinenomine wrote: | Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits | | Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it | entered mainstream just recently: | | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... | | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... | | https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... | | By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of | geoengineering silenced for decades behind sneers and activism | and bad press, when we could implement it half a century ago and | avert much of the climate change? | realo wrote: | Well... IMHO trying to solve our climate change issues with | geoengineering seems similar to the USA trying solve their gun | issues by putting even more guns in circulation. | | Does not fix the root causes and I don't see how it can work | long-term. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | And that's an entirely reasonable stance that as far as I can | tell is the consensus among climate researchers. But it | logically implies that the narrative of climate apocalypse is | not true - that nature is capable of self-balancing within | the parameters industrial civilization throws at it, and that | our current climate trajectory is mild enough that it's not | worth pursuing some potential solutions if their side effects | look too serious. | bee_rider wrote: | This person is assuming the problem will occur, and thinking | about what their type of work will look like under those | conditions. So, it is less interesting of an article if you | want to hear about attempts to innovate around the whole | problem. | poulpy123 wrote: | Anthropic global warming is by definition geoengineering. We | are not controlling it, what makes you think that we can | control other geoengineerings techniques ? | jcoq wrote: | Climate change has turned into a sort of quasi-religious moral | issue that blends with other issues of our day. | | The thinking goes that, if only we could become pure and stop | partaking in the evils of consumer capitalism, we might appease | a hidden power and be saved from a myriad of bogeyman such as | climate change. | | This mindset fails to reasonably consider the certainty and | enormity of the threat. Organized civilization is likely to | end. Billions will die and we might very well become extinct. | | The problem must be attacked with the full force of human | intellect. It's so damn obvious that "wait for everyone to | become super duper conscientious" is a fool's plan. | skyfaller wrote: | I think this is a decent and brief response to why | geoengineering is a bad idea: | https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/reasons-to-oppose/ | | The most convincing argument to me is that we're already facing | a vast problem that would require a great deal of | geoengineering to counter. If polluters realized they could | geoengineer the problem away, they would stop trying to reduce | emissions, and the geoengineering problem would become even | larger and more unmanageable. | | Due to how entropy works, it's always more efficient to simply | not spill milk on the floor than to mop it up. Deciding that | you should just have a milk bottle fight because you have a mop | in the house is... strange? It will never be more efficient to | scrub greenhouse gases from the air than to avoid emitting them | in the first place. | poulpy123 wrote: | I agree that geoengineering is a bad idea but they use the | "white men" bogeyman, that's really stupid. And also they | don't really talk about to price to pay for degrowth | paulbaumgart wrote: | For a more balanced view, I highly recommend this talk from | one of the leading minds in the field: | https://hmnh.harvard.edu/file/1039929 | jcoq wrote: | That argument is totally unconvincing... like saying not to | treat some lung cancer because the patient will just smoke | more. | CM30 wrote: | Agreed. It also makes me feel like some people want there | to be no 'easy' solutions to problems, because they despise | how society is going and wish it would be forced to change. | I suspect they'd still be unhappy even if there was a magic | wand you could wave that would instantly fix climate change | (or make it impossible to occur). | warning26 wrote: | OP sort of addresses this in the end: | | _> a startup isn 't going to fix everything and capture all | the carbon_ | legutierr wrote: | By geoengineering, you mean blocking out the light of the sun? | | Won't that significantly reduce the photosynthetic potential of | Earth, and significantly reduce the carrying capacity of the | Earth for life? | | There are plenty of planets and moons that are cooler because | they receive less sunlight. None of them host any life that we | can detect. | | Isn't there a real risk that geoengineering would just end up | turning the Earth into something resembling Mars, irreversibly? | | The Earth has supported abundant life with an atmosphere with a | higher concentration of C02 than it has now. Has it ever | supported abundant life with the solar energy being reduced to | the extent required to reduce climate change? | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | It's not an exact measurement of incoming solar energy, but | the Earth has supported abundant life through a much wider | range of climate variation than anything we're facing today. | I don't know of any evidence that we're in a climate "sweet | spot" where we'd need to worry about something like that. | (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats- | hotte...) | slavboj wrote: | marcosdumay wrote: | Because "solar geoengineering" is a joke. | | Why _wait_ all the time until global warming destabilizes every | ecosystem on Earth? You can have it today, just by spraying the | upper atmosphere! | | People do take geoengineering quite seriously. People do talk | seriously about carbon capture, about ecosystem husbandry, | about forced forestation, even about ocean seeding (there have | been enough research about this one to conclude we are not | desperate enough yet). It's only global shading that isn't | serious. | [deleted] | dividedbyzero wrote: | I think the general consensus is that we've proven to be | complete and absolute rubbish when it comes to predicting how | vast complex real-world systems that we can't read worth a damn | behave when we put them under major stresses, and the vast | majority of attempts to hack ecosystems have been disasters, | meaning that we're just as likely to make things even worse if | we try to apply our crude means and models to make planet-scale | modifications to climate and biosphere. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I think that was the basis for _Snowpiercer_. | cyber_kinetist wrote: | We _are_ already putting major stress to the environment, so | we might need to experiment a bit with different methods to | better understand and control climate. The problem is that | changing the earth's climate can only be done at a global | scale, so this is a project where every country needs to | cooperate and requires incredible amounts of trust on each | other... (which I don't think will happen soon enough) | jcoq wrote: | Nearly all of the disastrous things we've done to the planet | were understood to have negative environmental consequences | and yet we did them anyhow. Meanwhile, a great deal of our | environmental interventions have been incredibly successful. | | So I'm totally unconvinced by this often recited and rarely | supported mantra. | dividedbyzero wrote: | _Some_ people may have understood, or rather suspected. | They weren 't in the majority though, or lots of misguided | geoengineering wouldn't have been done the way it was. | | Clearing forests has been progress thing until relatively | recently, draining swamps was a totally great thing until | even more recently, straightening rivers into concrete beds | has been considered progress up into my lifetime. All of | these things have had lots of bad downstream consequences | to the point that lots of places now spend huge sums to | undo at least some of these developments. And come to think | of it, wildfire management is another geoengineering effort | that lots of very dry places totally screwed up (e.g. | California, as discussed frequently on this very site) out | of the very best intentions, but working with broken | models. | | Plenty of times species have been introduced overseas to | control other species, and it's always been a disaster, to | the great surprise of everyone involved, time and again. | Dams for hydro power are still considered ultra low | ecological footprint power generation by lots of people, | even though they form barriers that can completely disrupt | river ecosystems to the point of leaving desolate | wastelands in the riverbed downstream, disrupt riverside | ecosystems downstream that depend on regular floods, allow | for excessive water extraction and so on. Hunting predators | to extinction is still widely popular, even though | ecosystems without predators can't and don't function. I've | had conversations with local people who're hellbent on | exterminating the few remaining local beavers because they | damage trees; but beavers are a keystone species, tons of | species depend on beaver-created clearings. | | The list doesn't end: Dumping toxic waste into rivers has | been considered harmless until toxins accumulated to levels | extreme enough to severely hurt people, by which point some | of the worst-polluted rivers had been pretty m much | sterilized (e.g. the lower Rhine). It's hard do believe | this today, but people did honestly think nature would take | care of the gunk, filter it out or dilute it or whatever. | We pumped lead into the environment by means of leaded | gasoline, one of the craziest "accidental" geoengineering | adventures to date, until whole forests started dying, and | of course _some_ people saw that one coming, but then | _some_ people saw the world end when the LHC went online, | and good thing we didn 't listen to _those_ people. When I | grew up, climate change was widely considered a crazy myth; | some saw it coming early on, the majority had a good | chuckle; yet that 's the biggest geohacking fuck-up in all | our history, and it took us that long to realize the fact | that climate change is _real_. | | Generally speaking, with experiments like this, the true | consequences tend to not become visible until way down the | line, at which point cleanup may be impossible (e.g. | climate change, the current mass extinction) so we need to | anticipate such things and get it right the first try. Yet | we've historically both failed to build non-rubbish models | and then to heed those few warnings we did get. Convenience | and progress and growth seem to always trump the naysayers, | and often that's just fine - the world didn't end when the | LHC went online and we learned a lot about the fundamentals | of physics. Good thing we didn't listen to _them_. | | But all this history leaves me personally highly | pessimistic when it comes to more planet-scale climate | hacking, given that we don't even understand the downstream | consequences of our past and current climate hacking and | given that our track record of getting this sort of thing | right on the first (or any) try is so grotesquely bad. | | We're great at problem-solving short-term, everyday issues | with near-immediate feedback loops, like by mass-producing | crazy good tools; we're bad when things get big, abstract, | long-term, with long-ish feedback cycles e.g. when building | nuclear reactors that don't malfunction in major ways, | because we start making bad compromises and take shortcuts | even though we should and do know better, because we | socially can't help doing this; and we're sad failures at | anything extremely large-scale, extremely long-term, | extremely long feedback cycle-ish, like climate change or - | planet-scale climate engineering. | | Since we are bound to get pretty desperate and since | climate hacking does offer an enticingly quick way out, I'm | confident we'll try it at some point. When we do, I very | much hope I'll find my pessimism proven wrong. | | Edit: fixed formatting | kossTKR wrote: | There's no profit incentive to geoengineer or clean up anything | so nothing will get fixed - at least not if the future will be | a continuation of how capitalism, industry and geopolitics have | worked literally forever - probably also biological and even | physical systems if we extrapolate. | | It's always boom then bust, everywhere in space and time. | | That said i still hope we'll manage in some obscure way because | we have no other choice! | paulbaumgart wrote: | This is probably true at the level of corporations, but not | clearly the case at the level of countries. An interesting | paper on the economics of geoengineering, if you're curious: | https://www.nber.org/papers/w18622 | nynx wrote: | It's nice to submit to call of civilizational collapse every once | in a while, but it's not a realistic view. Yes, climate change is | going to affect billions of people, but from what I can tell, | things are moving in the right direction and we're on track to | avoid the worst even with barely any political action. | | If it was suddenly 2050 and none of our technology had improved, | we'd be fucked. But it's not a useful perspective to assume that | technological progression will stop. Solar panels have dropped in | price by literal orders of magnitude. It seems like nuclear is | coming back into vogue. Space-based power seems like it might be | economically viable in a few decades, even. | moffkalast wrote: | > "Based on this I felt like some of the big winners in 2050 | will be Rust, Clojure and Go." | | I mean the guy may be delusional, but he's right on the climate | part. | | Even if our tech improves and we cut carbon to zero in a | fairytaleish fashion we're still up for a 3 deg temp increase | till 2100 which will be rather catastrophic. Of course the | developed world will be hit the least due to its location, so | we'll likely be fine for the most part but it will be troubling | time regardless. It all depends on cascading issues that we | can't really predict, like warming causing some fish to go | extinct that ate eggs of some insect that will now breed | uncontrollably and push out useful pollinators from the | ecosystem, leading to crop failure and such. | nynx wrote: | From the literature I've read, that doesn't seem right. If we | cut all emissions to zero by 2050, total temperature rise | would be more like 2C afaik. | moffkalast wrote: | I mean that's in the ballpark, few people agree on the | exact numbers given that it depends on so many unknown | factors. There's the oceans outgassing the CO2 they've | absorbed so far, ice melting resulting in permanent greater | sunlight absorption, clathrate gun, etc. | | The rule of thumb (iirc) is that 1C would be business as | usual, 4C a Mad Max hell scape, and we'll likely end up | somewhere in between. The closer to which side we'll be | depends on how well we implement countermeasures... and how | much luck we have. | paulbaumgart wrote: | Yep. For anyone curious to learn more, here's a good summary of | this energy technology transition: | https://www.tsungxu.com/clean-energy-transition-guide/ | krona wrote: | The article seems to be using an _inaccurate_ visualisation of a | model (RCP8.5) which is now 'no longer plausible'[0]. | | RCP8.5 was considered the 'worst-case' scenario and projected 3.3 | to 5.7 in 2100, not 2050 as the graphic shows. | | [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51281986 | nixlim wrote: | Assuming all of the assumptions in that article come to pass, why | ignore Elixir/Erlang as a viable option for language & | infrastructure? | joshgev wrote: | I don't understand. In this article we are imaging widespread and | frequent failure of critical infrastructure and we are supposed | to further imagine that we're still interested in working on our | relatively unimportant software? I suppose there are critical | software systems out there, but they're already written so we | don't really need to think about what languages they'll be work | on with. | verisimi wrote: | If there is an apocalypse, it looks entirely contrived to me. | | Spending untold billions to shut down the economy for most of 2 | years is something I saw with my own eyes. | | Sea level rises, and whatever else, not at all. The dire | predictions have been coming for decades (remember Al Gore)? And | nothing.. I suspect its just a trick that means we hand over | greater control and money to the worst of us (government). And if | it were real, I have zero trust in any governance structure to do | the right thing as opposed to serving itself and its | 'stakeholders' (aka corporations). | koshergweilo wrote: | > dire predictions have been coming for decades (remember Al | Gore)? And nothing. | | And I suppose you think that's it's just a coincidence that | we're breaking all-time-high temperature records year over year | isn't it? | verisimi wrote: | So we are told. If anything, the temperature seems cooler to | me. | | But do you recollect the climategate scandal? Where | historical temperature records were altered? | nostrademons wrote: | For me, the big story is going to be supply-chain breakup and de- | globalization. The author touches on this a bit, but completely | misses the implication. | | The programming languages that will best survive the apocalypse | are the ones that can run on chips that best survive the | apocalypse! I think that there're be a big turn toward highly- | efficient compiled languages: Rust and Go are well-positioned for | this, C will still be around, but languages like PHP and Ruby are | very poorly suited for this. Anything that can be adapted to run | on a microcontroller that you can scavenge from old cars that no | longer can get gas will be in high demand. | | I also think we'll see a turn toward more local production of | semiconductors, which may require moving back in process nodes | toward older technology where the supply chain and manufacturing | process isn't as complex. | | I don't think backwards-compatibility is as important as the | author thinks it is. Enough other things are going to break in | the economy that people will be willing to make due with software | that gives them basic communication & computation abilities even | if it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of modern software, | particularly if modern software becomes completely unavailable | due to infrastructure failures like cable lines coming down and | there not being enough power to run datacenters. | | Final thoughts: I think distributed technologies like mesh | networks, data synchronization algorithms, networking, (proof-of- | stake/storage) blockchains, etc. will become significantly more | important. I wouldn't count on the cloud surviving: it has a lot | of physical infrastructure dependencies, and physical | infrastructure is already crumbling. Software that you can run | locally on a device and communicate over unreliable networks will | become very important. | alcover wrote: | I fully agree with you. The writing's on the wall for wasteful | computing, not just for the obvious SUVs, suburbia or mass- | tourism. | | Energy cost rules everything. The current deluge of web media | and JS-obese apps will one day turn to a careful trickle. | nyanpasu64 wrote: | I could not imagine running rustc on a Rust program, let alone | building a 200-crate dependency graph or all of rustc, on a | 2000s car entertainment system microcontroller. | m3talsmith wrote: | Exactly. Rust is actually a loser in this due to the lack of | a fleshed out stdlib. | capableweb wrote: | What you are programming would change, just like what you're | programming with would change. The projects who use | 200-something crates are building desktop applications or | something like that. | | What we'd program if we only have microcontrollers available, | would be much smaller in scope, maybe a lot of focus on | controlling physical infrastructure for agriculture and such. | dvh wrote: | One should first ask what is the actually useful task for | computers. Right now it is often things like powering ad | networks, tracking engagements, running tax code for millions, | calculating sha 256 hashes. Would any of this be useful in | apocalypse? If not what would be? | nostrademons wrote: | There's tons of stuff that would be useful in an apocalypse. | Things like: | | 1.) Communications. Being able to send over plans for a | useful tool, or instructions for repair, or a meeting place | for the defense of a village becomes critical. | | 2.) Entertainment/education. _Threads_ shows the post- | apocalyptic children watching a VHS video of animals & | grammar. If you can preserve even just the PBS Kids catalog | on local disk and have a working computer, you'll be in huge | demand as the town's babysitter, and it's far easier to do | this at scale with video than individually keep dozens of | kids occupied. | | 3.) Local records. It's critical to catch freeriders for any | communal endeavors, because if you don't, community breaks | down and everybody just worries about their own family. Same | goes for financial records: if you can restore some semblance | of banking & credit you can operate much more efficient trade | than if everything is spot barter. | | 4.) Knowledge repository. The community where _everybody_ | knows how to garden is going to be way better off than the | one where two people know how to garden and everybody steals | their food. Same with a variety of other skills - repairs, | local resources, weapon manufacture, etc. | | 5.) Industrial control. If communities can get an electricity | source back online, it opens up a wide variety of options for | local manufacturing and automation. Labor is likely to be in | very short supply after an apocalypse, so anything you can do | to automate control will be a big help. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | _> with all of us agreeing that C, C#, PHP were likely to survive | in 2050_ | | I agree, but I'll bet some folks' left eyes started twitching, | when they read that... | | https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/6/68/Charl... | sb057 wrote: | Relevant: the history of Warajevo, a ZX Spectrum emulator | developed amidst the Siege of Sarajevo: | | https://worldofspectrum.net/warajevo/Story.html | grej wrote: | >>> "On the bright side, the Asheville branch is just a five- | minute drive from the beach now, so the all-hands meeting should | be a lot more fun this year." <<< | | As an aside, seeing things like this in climate change articles | always bothers me. FYI Asheville being minutes from the beach | would imply a 650m+ (2000+ft) sea rise in the next 25 years. | | This kind of hyperbole makes it easy for people who deny climate | change in totality to say it is based on absurd scenarios which | will never happen. The real projections implications are | significant enough. Why do people feel the need to resort to pure | fiction? | dixego wrote: | Fiction is a tool used by humans to elicit, experience and | process feelings under (mostly) safe circumstances. The details | (such as how much the sea level would have to rise for this to | be accurate) are not quite relevant; the point is to make the | reader think about how they would feel if this sort of concern | _was_ just a commonplace consideration in their daily life. Is | it not shocking? Uncomfortable? Sorta nihilism-inducing? | | In summary: doesn't it make you want to _act_ towards | preventing this from ever being close to happening? | cmdli wrote: | It only makes you want to act in the short term. In the long | term, it either promotes denial (from those who think that | its all hyperbole) or doomerism (from those who think that | none of it is hyperbole). Hyperbole does not promote hope, | which is the primary motivating factor to solving problems | like this. | switchbak wrote: | I agree with the person above, too much hyperbole makes it | easy to dismiss an argument. | | We're already struggling against a mountain of industry | funded FUD, the last thing we need is people stretching the | truth in well meaning yet counterproductive ways. | 5d8767c68926 wrote: | NeutralForest wrote: | I feel like this is impossible to mention the end of times(tm) | without reading a bit about {100 | rabbits}(https://100r.co/site/home.html) and their journey on a | boat with small ecological impact in mind. A closely related read | is of course {CollapseOS}(http://collapseos.org/), the OS written | in Forth. | ajuc wrote: | I doubt global warming will negatively affect amount of time | spent on open source/programming language design. | | Currently we're wasting a lot of time on social media, Netflix, | games, etc. There's lots of fat to cut. Also historically bad | conditions were when people wrote books and focused on studies. | If OS is important - it will develop. | | On the other hand x as a service and cloud based stuff will | likely die off. Good riddance. | poulpy123 wrote: | Economical collapse will affect how much free time people can | donate to open source. Paying open source (like Linux kernel) | will not be more impacted that closed source but the rest yes | LoveGracePeace wrote: | The word Apocalypse only appears once on that page, in the title. | The page is pointless either way since the Apocolypse isn't here | yet. People will know when it's here and there will still be a | subset of people who will deny it. Like that cartoon of the dog | casually sitting at the table while the house burns down around | him, saying "This is fine.". | black_puppydog wrote: | So... anyone else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic | things going on around the world people will keep their appetite | for mindless distraction _and_ will still be able /willing to | one-click buy random stuff on a whim? When they might have to | expect waiting weeks for the delivery, and/or pay humongous | transport fees? | | Asking because that seems to be what much of modern IT is angling | for and why there's so much money in it. | warning26 wrote: | _> else having doubts that with all the apocalyptic things | going on around the world people will keep their appetite for | mindless distraction and will still be able /willing to one- | click buy random stuff on a whim_ | | Wouldn't people in the described apocalyptic scenario _want_ | mindless distraction? Anything to keep their minds off the, | well, apocalyptic things going on. | k0k0r0 wrote: | That's true until people are suddenly hungry odr thirsty. | Hunger or thrist will force them to act. And not necesserily | nicely. | throwaway4aday wrote: | Exactly, mindless distraction is only an option when you | are comfortable. Try not eating for a day + turning off | your heating/cooling and see how interesting Twitter is | then. | m3talsmith wrote: | Mindless distraction is exactly what you turn to when | your efforts to better your life become too monumental to | bear: lifespans shorten because destitution drives people | to apathy or an open desire for suicide. | throwaway4aday wrote: | Sounds like we're talking about two different things. | avgcorrection wrote: | I can't even go and browse message boards as a distraction | any more, sigh. | jpindar wrote: | Both movies and cheap novels have historicaly been popular | during wartime. | [deleted] | maxerickson wrote: | Energy is on track to stay the same price or get cheaper as it | gets cleaner. | | The big question isn't really whether we clean it up, it's the | timetable. | | Cost and availability of energy is a great proxy for transport | cost. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-30 23:00 UTC)