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The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent". Violence among humans is only one of many metrics to gauge the state of the world. Othe

The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent". Violence among humans is only one of many metrics to gauge the state of the world. Other metrics show trends that are not as rosy. Let's not forget, for example, that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event, exhibiting a rate of species extinction 10x greater than during any other extinction event. If we especially ignore our anthropocentric biases one can make a convincing case that the world is falling apart.

smtucker 11y ago
Even that view is Biocentric. Furthermore, the language of "the world is falling apart" is quite Geocentric, I mean c'mon, what year is it 2015 or 1515?
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
This is certainly not a popular view, and I might be wrong, but I don't think the current state of technology allows you to increase democracy, standard of living as we define it now, without the climate tradeoff, and I think that's ok. Industrialization and the internal combustion engine has been one of the greatest drivers of prosperity in human history, and largely to drive subsistence farmers into less manual work and into cities. These shifts improve access to health services, networks etc... for all involved and has been the biggest driver of for example Chinese productivity growth and PPP improvement in the past 20 years. The downside is increasing carbon emissions. The biggest impacts of these emissions, in the climate sense, dis-proportionally affects groups like pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries. Very few people look at this issue in terms of what we gain from industrial processes that cannot be cheaply implemented to reduce carbon emissions, and the gains in quality of life for the groups implementing them. It's definitely preferable for emerging countries to generate power, do water processing, transportation etc... in a clean way, but right now the cheapest way to do that is through burning fossil fuels. If the alternative is to slow progress in these nations to prevent a few million pacific islanders from having to move, I think it would be more efficient for nations to assist those who are impacted from the climate externalities.
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  That would be fine if the problems caused by climate change are limited to "a few million pacific islanders", the reality is likely to be much worse.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    are limited to "a few million pacific islanders" Well I did say..."pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries", but for brevity left all that out of the last part. Of course in current discourse, you have to lay everything out each time to excruciating detail otherwise people nitpick. the reality is likely to be much worse. My previous post was not intended to be exhaustive, but if you read the IPCC information [1] the bulk of the conclusions are that marginalized and poor regions are the ones who have the impact - and largely as a compounding factor for political, societal, governmental problems, not the only factor. So if we bring 200M people out of poverty in China and closer to health and democracy, I think that is worth drought and famine for 10M people. [1]http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_sp...
    - EGreg 11y ago
      We are decimating ecosystems around the globe, overfishing, turning the all the arable land into giant farms and monoculture. Why do you think this won't have unforseen effects like collapse of ecosystems and balances (of oxygen, say) in the world? Or maybe we won't be able to grow enough vegetables for everyone? Don't you think that the population explosion poses a huge danger just like with any other species? Or are you willing to bet humans will fix everything all the time?
      - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
        I never said it wouldn't but if that does happen, the demand and incentive exists to solve it - for example exactly the type of situation that led to GMO crops, nitrogen fixing etc... So while I won't say we will fix everything all the time, history seems to indicate that these things get solved.
Shivetya 11y ago
we are also having more people climb out of poverty, health care is more prevalent in the third world, and some major diseases are on their way to being history. So there are just as many other metrics to show improvement, not to suggest there aren't other areas we can improve. As for the mass extinction event, while some claim it they eventually call out numbers showing the previous five so swamped what is happening now that we are just simply better are recording events and it may not be as dire. It would take over two centuries at current and project rates to equal any previous mass extinction event and that is only if the dire projections are correct.
vox_mollis 11y ago
The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent" Moreover, I've seen some convincing analyses that suggest the world actually IS becoming (slghtly) more violent, but that advances in trauma medicine are minimizing the fact by reducing the death toll. I will round up citations when I can.
schizoidboy 11y ago
Out of curiosity, what's the evidence for 10x extinction rate?

smtucker 11y ago

Even that view is Biocentric. Furthermore, the language of "the world is falling apart" is quite Geocentric, I mean c'mon, what year is it 2015 or 1515?

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

This is certainly not a popular view, and I might be wrong, but I don't think the current state of technology allows you to increase democracy, standard of living as we define it now, without the climate tradeoff, and I think that's ok. Industrialization and the internal combustion engine has been one of the greatest drivers of prosperity in human history, and largely to drive subsistence farmers into less manual work and into cities. These shifts improve access to health services, networks etc... for all involved and has been the biggest driver of for example Chinese productivity growth and PPP improvement in the past 20 years. The downside is increasing carbon emissions. The biggest impacts of these emissions, in the climate sense, dis-proportionally affects groups like pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries. Very few people look at this issue in terms of what we gain from industrial processes that cannot be cheaply implemented to reduce carbon emissions, and the gains in quality of life for the groups implementing them. It's definitely preferable for emerging countries to generate power, do water processing, transportation etc... in a clean way, but right now the cheapest way to do that is through burning fossil fuels. If the alternative is to slow progress in these nations to prevent a few million pacific islanders from having to move, I think it would be more efficient for nations to assist those who are impacted from the climate externalities.

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
That would be fine if the problems caused by climate change are limited to "a few million pacific islanders", the reality is likely to be much worse.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  are limited to "a few million pacific islanders" Well I did say..."pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries", but for brevity left all that out of the last part. Of course in current discourse, you have to lay everything out each time to excruciating detail otherwise people nitpick. the reality is likely to be much worse. My previous post was not intended to be exhaustive, but if you read the IPCC information [1] the bulk of the conclusions are that marginalized and poor regions are the ones who have the impact - and largely as a compounding factor for political, societal, governmental problems, not the only factor. So if we bring 200M people out of poverty in China and closer to health and democracy, I think that is worth drought and famine for 10M people. [1]http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_sp...
  - EGreg 11y ago
    We are decimating ecosystems around the globe, overfishing, turning the all the arable land into giant farms and monoculture. Why do you think this won't have unforseen effects like collapse of ecosystems and balances (of oxygen, say) in the world? Or maybe we won't be able to grow enough vegetables for everyone? Don't you think that the population explosion poses a huge danger just like with any other species? Or are you willing to bet humans will fix everything all the time?
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      I never said it wouldn't but if that does happen, the demand and incentive exists to solve it - for example exactly the type of situation that led to GMO crops, nitrogen fixing etc... So while I won't say we will fix everything all the time, history seems to indicate that these things get solved.

Shivetya 11y ago

we are also having more people climb out of poverty, health care is more prevalent in the third world, and some major diseases are on their way to being history. So there are just as many other metrics to show improvement, not to suggest there aren't other areas we can improve. As for the mass extinction event, while some claim it they eventually call out numbers showing the previous five so swamped what is happening now that we are just simply better are recording events and it may not be as dire. It would take over two centuries at current and project rates to equal any previous mass extinction event and that is only if the dire projections are correct.

vox_mollis 11y ago

The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent" Moreover, I've seen some convincing analyses that suggest the world actually IS becoming (slghtly) more violent, but that advances in trauma medicine are minimizing the fact by reducing the death toll. I will round up citations when I can.

schizoidboy 11y ago

Out of curiosity, what's the evidence for 10x extinction rate?