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Wouldn't that mean, then, that most all "doom and gloom" we get today is as irrelevant as those of old?
by d0100 9y ago
Wouldn't that mean, then, that most all "doom and gloom" we get today is as irrelevant as those of old?
- chillwaves 9y agoThey didn't have nukes or climate change back then. Human nature + escalating technology is the scary formula we are exploring today.
- ekianjo 9y agoThe plague killed way more people than nukes ever did, and there was no way to stop it until people understood what spread it. Of course technology has bright sides as well. Without medicine and many other discoveries we would not be where we are today.
- mcherm 9y ago> The plague killed way more people than nukes ever did No one is worried about the number of people who have ALREADY been killed by nukes, they are worried about the number of people who might be in the future. But I suppose I fundamentally agree with you. I think we may have more to fear from scientifically engineered diseases than we do from nuclear weapons.
- thinkingemote 9y agoExactly. Every people in their own time considers their time as the most important, crucial and urgent. they consider past times as less important. If you observe this then you can see that in the future people will look back at now and think the same. history tells us the same thing. it's human nature to think that doom and gloom now is much worse than before, simply because we are in this moment and without perspective.
- croon 9y agoBut that's not what GP was saying. We, today, have the ability to dictate what others tomorrow over- or under-appreciate as doom and gloom. Whether there is a cognitive dissonance is irrelevant, but what actually happens is very much only avoidable going forward, not looking back.
- amrrs 9y agoIn the same context, The debate between Malcolm Gladwell and Matt Riddley is an interesting one http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/progress http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/progress
- honestoHeminway 9y agoThe problem would be even higher by a seemingly dormant disease agent, which first infects nearly all of humanity and then wents time delayed into action. Nobody suspects the flue.
- pizza 9y agoThe variance of the fat-tailed distribution of casualties of nuclear warfare post-M.A.D. is much higher than during WW2, and is may be more prone to inadvertent unintended catastrophe than an epidemic now that we can research them, but that's also unforeseeably variable.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thinkfurther 9y ago> The plague killed way more people than nukes ever did Yeah, but without bacteria we wouldn't be where we are today. Whatever that means. I would not identify rather specific technologies accelerating the reach of the dysfunctional into "technology in general", just like I wouldn't lump together the bacteria that caused the plague and those that live in my stomach.
- dredmorbius 9y agoYesterday's risks were exogenous. Few were existential. Today's are engogenous. Several are existential.
- dredmorbius 9y agoErm, endogenous. Edit window expired.
- ajuc 9y agoThey had climate change, and it was one of the main reasons "barbarians" migrated, and Rome had fallen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Ancient_Rome#Environmental_issues_and_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Ancient_Rome#Enviro...
- noam87 9y agoWere they irrelevant? -- I see plenty doom and gloom in my history books and, hell, twitter feed. It was just a few decades ago that 80 million people died in a single war.
- ekianjo 9y agoyet the world did not end. Countless prophecies aboutvthe absolute apocalypse have gone and passed. So yeah it is by large irrelevant.
- oddgoo 9y agoTheir world did end for those 80 million people. If most of society dies in pain and hunger to climate change, would the survivors say "bah, just more fear mongering"? For me, humanity is the sum of human experiences, not the mere presence of the species. The end of the world being relative and analog.
- wruza 9y agoThis sum is already negative, btw. And it is hard to tell whether it is still negative or just negative. Few happy areas may put you into "it's everywhere like that" dream. But it's not, most species are simply present to supply to someone.
- bobbybobbybob 9y ago9 million already due of hunger every year, what is the world doing about that presently?
- ameister14 9y agoA lot. Billions of dollars are spent to combat it and research on food and agriculture to solve hunger has been going for years. >The vast majority of hungry people live in developing regions, which saw a 42 percent reduction in the prevalence of undernourished people between 1990–92 and 2012–14. http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/ http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-fac...
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI think if anything, the talk about moral decline can be ignored completely. It seems people have been complaining about moral decline since earliest written records.
- icebraining 9y agoAlternatively, it does decline and raise, in cycles, and the complaining may be what helps it raise. I don't think so, but a regular decline isn't impossible.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoDidn't consider that, thanks. Yeah, it works as a possible explanation, though I don't buy into it either.
- honestoHeminway 9y agoEven the talk on moral decline has declined. I remember in my youth we where mor meta..