5 ms·

Is the World Falling Apart? Not at All

52 points by chollida1 9y ago

kizer 9y ago
OK, I might have to fight past the nausea VR headsets give me and pick one up, along with some more dramamine (22 years old and still can't fly without it). That was a well-produced video!
adekok 9y ago
While a good chunk of things are getting better, it's hard to say that eating most of the planet is a good idea. There are many, many, fewer animals now than even 50 years ago: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161027113306.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161027113306.h... 58% of species are in decline https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_... Many fewer insects than 50 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland After his voyage in 1497, John Cabot's crew reported that "the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets".[3] and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals "so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them."[4] While individual human life has gotten better, it has largely been at the expense of every other organism on the planet. For a logical conclusion (mostly) to this process, see "The Godwhale" by TJ Bass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godwhale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godwhale In it, people are the only animals left on the planet, as they've eaten everything else.
- kizer 9y ago
  That first sentence made my tongue tingle... and made me feel a slight sense of disgust. Goes to show how some sensory rhetoric can help drive a point home. I agree, by the way.
- graeme 9y ago
  Indeed. People frequently point to reduced poverty numbers as a sign that we are on the right track. And those numbers are impressive, and very important for the people who moved into the "not poor" category instead of the "poor" one. But....I suspect it has only been possible by a rapid use of carbon energy, and by expansion into the biosphere. I doubt it is sustainable, to use the more literal sense of the word.
- Daishiman 9y ago
  Yes. It's amazing how most people can handwave away the health of the biosphere that supports our existence. The simple fact of the matter is that we are making the planet uninhabitable at a rate that is too low for the average person to understand, while being too fast for species' evolutionary adaptations to kick in. In a couple of generations we've polluted most bodies of water with some form of pollution, be it microplastics, fertilizer runoff, or a myriad other things whose effects are not understood. We've altered the Earth's atmosphere to a point where it is, for all intents and purposes, irreversible. We have no mechanisms to restore fertility and biodiversity to the levels where they used to be before our population explosion. No one would care anyway.
  - okreallywtf 9y ago
    I agree and I'm very concerned about the same things, although the recovery of habitats after human habitation is gone does make me more optimistic a) because that means we could likely rehabilitate wildlife populations ourselves as long as they are not extinct and b) because we'll more likely kill ourselves off and the world will recover.
- zo1 9y ago
  Well, what do we expect? We've got a giant human-making machine called the government. If you remove all the fluff and noble-intentions around it, it's core effect is the creation of more people at the expense of the top-producers that are already-existing. Net result being what we see happening to our planet. And the answer is apparently, as usual, is to have "more government". Not more government to reduce population or to make us more efficient in usage, but to punish the heavy-users and heavy-producers. It's all fine and dandy to help people, and to move the destitute and suffering out of poverty and struggle, but we've gone way beyond that. I'd argue that we've gone way too-far and we're now actively breeding more people than we should-be. Eventually, it'll get to a point where we either destroy the environment permanently and X% of the world dies off as a result, we discover some sort of tech-utopian-advancements that negate all the bad effects and we live happily ever after, or we start saying no to more humans and go forward as a society in a sustainable way where tech and conservation technology follows-pace with our population growth. Uncomfortable questions await us in the future.
S_A_P 9y ago
I do feel that a great point is made. Dont put your head in the sand, but dont let yourself get caught up anyway the wind blows. There is plenty we can do with the help of philanthropy and governments to solve todays problems even if they are cyclical in nature or seemingly too numerous to process. Looking at what the trend of things(disease, etc) we can see what is actually getting better or worse, since the news is always looking for the next big story that brings ratings and ad revenue...
sluggg 9y ago
the irony: let me show you how our reality is better than before with virtual reality! lol I agree with and support the message, but I was just hoping we could address the irony here.
mudil 9y ago
Thank you for linking to it. Good for Gates! I am amazed at the proclivity of people to enjoy and dwell on doom and gloom. Even here on HN, where people are smart and tech savvy, doom and gloom prevails. I believe that the tendency to think negatively is very intrinsic to our brains, and prevents most people from achieving their full potential and, I think, this tendency is the major negative force in our ability to achieve faster progress and more just society. PS Check out my recent discussion on HN, to see how my optimistic, most innocuous comments get criticized and down voted by doom and gloom crowd... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15100050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15100050 PPS There you have it: the comments to this thread are already piling up with doom and gloom.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Do you have a counterargument to the doom and gloom? I mean, if an asteroid is headed to Earth it's not uncalled for to be doom and gloomy. It really does suck. The same goes for possibly eliminating most of the life on the planet and with it the ability for human civilization to persist.
  - mamcx 9y ago
    That asteroid is climate change. Is just less fast.
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      That was precisely my point
- mturmon 9y ago
  I was one of the commenters near the thread you link to; the story was about pervasive melting of Alaska's permafrost. Again in that thread, you complained about "doom and gloom", and remarked "It's not the end of world, people." Here's the problem with this kind of comment. There is a specific issue under discussion, and instead of discussing the issue (e.g., technical fixes or mitigations), you complain in very general terms about the attitude of the people who are trying to discuss it. Here, you have further offered (without evidence) a just-so story about "thinking negatively" as an adaptation that is no longer serving those negative people out there. This kind of objection is especially galling in the case of climate. There are powerful forces that are blocking mere understanding and measurement of climate trends - much less mitigation. It's not "doom and gloom" to recognize the possible impact and to measure and understand. It's solid technical problem-solving. It's the reason things are getting better.
alexanderstears 9y ago
> Is the world falling apart? > No. > Here's a video. Watch it with a VR headset or browser that supports 360 degree video > Watch me on facebook later this week Somehow, I think this could have been more persuasive.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  "Is the world falling apart? Not for the wealthy and privileged"
sekou 9y ago
The "How not to be ignorant about the world" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg) TED talk by Hans (Rest In Peace) and Ola Rosling covers this topic well. Objectively the world is improving for humanity, however in the West and in "developed" nations it's harder to feel like things are going well.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  Of course the world is improving on metrics like "deaths by natural disasters". That's just a consequence of technologies and infrastructures improving over time, and charitable funding to developing nations that aren't corrupt to the point that the money just ends up with their politicians. "Sure we're all getting better, just look at global food and safety" is as inanely pointless an argument as "of course nothing is getting better, just look at poverty and corruption" - both lie on opposite ends of the most obvious basic spectrum of human behavior. If all you're worried about is "will I be alive and breathing" then yes, by all means, you have an "optimistic" future. The political and economic trends of major countries might seem insignificant in comparison, but the world takes its cues from first-world countries. The state and progress of things in first world countries are a pointer to where things are going to go in those nations once the lowest levels of Maslow's hierarchy are covered.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

52 points by chollida1 9y ago

OK, I might have to fight past the nausea VR headsets give me and pick one up, along with some more dramamine (22 years old and still can't fly without it). That was a well-produced video!

adekok 9y ago

While a good chunk of things are getting better, it's hard to say that eating most of the planet is a good idea. There are many, many, fewer animals now than even 50 years ago: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161027113306.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161027113306.h... 58% of species are in decline https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_... Many fewer insects than 50 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland After his voyage in 1497, John Cabot's crew reported that "the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets".[3] and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals "so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them."[4] While individual human life has gotten better, it has largely been at the expense of every other organism on the planet. For a logical conclusion (mostly) to this process, see "The Godwhale" by TJ Bass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godwhale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godwhale In it, people are the only animals left on the planet, as they've eaten everything else.

kizer 9y ago
That first sentence made my tongue tingle... and made me feel a slight sense of disgust. Goes to show how some sensory rhetoric can help drive a point home. I agree, by the way.
graeme 9y ago
Indeed. People frequently point to reduced poverty numbers as a sign that we are on the right track. And those numbers are impressive, and very important for the people who moved into the "not poor" category instead of the "poor" one. But....I suspect it has only been possible by a rapid use of carbon energy, and by expansion into the biosphere. I doubt it is sustainable, to use the more literal sense of the word.
Daishiman 9y ago
Yes. It's amazing how most people can handwave away the health of the biosphere that supports our existence. The simple fact of the matter is that we are making the planet uninhabitable at a rate that is too low for the average person to understand, while being too fast for species' evolutionary adaptations to kick in. In a couple of generations we've polluted most bodies of water with some form of pollution, be it microplastics, fertilizer runoff, or a myriad other things whose effects are not understood. We've altered the Earth's atmosphere to a point where it is, for all intents and purposes, irreversible. We have no mechanisms to restore fertility and biodiversity to the levels where they used to be before our population explosion. No one would care anyway.
- okreallywtf 9y ago
  I agree and I'm very concerned about the same things, although the recovery of habitats after human habitation is gone does make me more optimistic a) because that means we could likely rehabilitate wildlife populations ourselves as long as they are not extinct and b) because we'll more likely kill ourselves off and the world will recover.
zo1 9y ago
Well, what do we expect? We've got a giant human-making machine called the government. If you remove all the fluff and noble-intentions around it, it's core effect is the creation of more people at the expense of the top-producers that are already-existing. Net result being what we see happening to our planet. And the answer is apparently, as usual, is to have "more government". Not more government to reduce population or to make us more efficient in usage, but to punish the heavy-users and heavy-producers. It's all fine and dandy to help people, and to move the destitute and suffering out of poverty and struggle, but we've gone way beyond that. I'd argue that we've gone way too-far and we're now actively breeding more people than we should-be. Eventually, it'll get to a point where we either destroy the environment permanently and X% of the world dies off as a result, we discover some sort of tech-utopian-advancements that negate all the bad effects and we live happily ever after, or we start saying no to more humans and go forward as a society in a sustainable way where tech and conservation technology follows-pace with our population growth. Uncomfortable questions await us in the future.

S_A_P 9y ago

I do feel that a great point is made. Dont put your head in the sand, but dont let yourself get caught up anyway the wind blows. There is plenty we can do with the help of philanthropy and governments to solve todays problems even if they are cyclical in nature or seemingly too numerous to process. Looking at what the trend of things(disease, etc) we can see what is actually getting better or worse, since the news is always looking for the next big story that brings ratings and ad revenue...

sluggg 9y ago

the irony: let me show you how our reality is better than before with virtual reality! lol I agree with and support the message, but I was just hoping we could address the irony here.

mudil 9y ago

Thank you for linking to it. Good for Gates! I am amazed at the proclivity of people to enjoy and dwell on doom and gloom. Even here on HN, where people are smart and tech savvy, doom and gloom prevails. I believe that the tendency to think negatively is very intrinsic to our brains, and prevents most people from achieving their full potential and, I think, this tendency is the major negative force in our ability to achieve faster progress and more just society. PS Check out my recent discussion on HN, to see how my optimistic, most innocuous comments get criticized and down voted by doom and gloom crowd... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15100050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15100050 PPS There you have it: the comments to this thread are already piling up with doom and gloom.

CalRobert 9y ago
Do you have a counterargument to the doom and gloom? I mean, if an asteroid is headed to Earth it's not uncalled for to be doom and gloomy. It really does suck. The same goes for possibly eliminating most of the life on the planet and with it the ability for human civilization to persist.
- mamcx 9y ago
  That asteroid is climate change. Is just less fast.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    That was precisely my point
mturmon 9y ago
I was one of the commenters near the thread you link to; the story was about pervasive melting of Alaska's permafrost. Again in that thread, you complained about "doom and gloom", and remarked "It's not the end of world, people." Here's the problem with this kind of comment. There is a specific issue under discussion, and instead of discussing the issue (e.g., technical fixes or mitigations), you complain in very general terms about the attitude of the people who are trying to discuss it. Here, you have further offered (without evidence) a just-so story about "thinking negatively" as an adaptation that is no longer serving those negative people out there. This kind of objection is especially galling in the case of climate. There are powerful forces that are blocking mere understanding and measurement of climate trends - much less mitigation. It's not "doom and gloom" to recognize the possible impact and to measure and understand. It's solid technical problem-solving. It's the reason things are getting better.

alexanderstears 9y ago

> Is the world falling apart? > No. > Here's a video. Watch it with a VR headset or browser that supports 360 degree video > Watch me on facebook later this week Somehow, I think this could have been more persuasive.

nebabyte 9y ago
"Is the world falling apart? Not for the wealthy and privileged"

sekou 9y ago

The "How not to be ignorant about the world" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg) TED talk by Hans (Rest In Peace) and Ola Rosling covers this topic well. Objectively the world is improving for humanity, however in the West and in "developed" nations it's harder to feel like things are going well.

nebabyte 9y ago
Of course the world is improving on metrics like "deaths by natural disasters". That's just a consequence of technologies and infrastructures improving over time, and charitable funding to developing nations that aren't corrupt to the point that the money just ends up with their politicians. "Sure we're all getting better, just look at global food and safety" is as inanely pointless an argument as "of course nothing is getting better, just look at poverty and corruption" - both lie on opposite ends of the most obvious basic spectrum of human behavior. If all you're worried about is "will I be alive and breathing" then yes, by all means, you have an "optimistic" future. The political and economic trends of major countries might seem insignificant in comparison, but the world takes its cues from first-world countries. The state and progress of things in first world countries are a pointer to where things are going to go in those nations once the lowest levels of Maslow's hierarchy are covered.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]