10 ms·

I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up. The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to p

I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up. The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. We're all collectively marching towards the edge of the cliff to jump off together. More people than ever have anxiety because we subconsciously (or consciously) know this. We're unsustainable with how we pollute and how we treat the environment. How we overfish the oceans. Income inequality rising. Political and cultural polarization widening. It's all so unsustainable.

samirm 8y ago
What's the theory? So far you just stated a premise...
- probably_wrong 8y ago
  > The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. That's the theory, or at least that's how I read it.
- bob_doggo 8y ago
  when someone on the internet says "theory", they usually mean it in the "everyday speak"-way, not in the "scientific definition of a theory"-way. But somehow I guess that you already know that?
  - samirm 8y ago
    regardless of what "definition" of theory I used, the post is still without conclusion. It started off somewhere and then never made a point.
C14L 8y ago
The "Club of Rome" report[1] was published in the early 1970s. We've known for a long time. Still, most people probably still don't know, because they are too busy shopping for the latest shoes or cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
- wazoox 8y ago
  Gaël Giraud (Chief economist of the French Agency for Development) said something along these lines: In economy, usually when someone builds a model that predicts the future for 18 months they later get the Nobel. The World III model from the Meadows Report almost exactly described the world for more than 45 years. If we may think that it's still modelling our world exactly enough, complete civilisational collapse will probably come in the next couple of decades.
  - kingkawn 8y ago
    Might be transformation rather than collapse, not a done deal
  - RobertoG 8y ago
    >"If we may think that it's still modelling our world exactly enough [..]" Some people think that it has been pretty accurate: "[..] The dotted line shows the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario out to 2100. Up to 2010, the data is strikingly similar to the book’s forecasts." From: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits...
  - Loughla 8y ago
    Do you have links to any decent analysis of that model? Because the only things I've been able to digest are the criticisms (the majority of what I've found is that the model does not accurately reflect the world we live in). I'm not trying to confirmation bias myself here, but I would like to see what the proponents have to say.
    - wazoox 8y ago
      Here is a pretty good one IMO (loooong read): https://jancovici.com/en/readings/societies/the-limits-to-growth-donella-meadows-dennis-meadows-jorgen-randers-and-behrens-william-w-iii-1972/ https://jancovici.com/en/readings/societies/the-limits-to-gr... Another article that explains well what the model does, that economists do as if matter and laws of physics didn't exist (unless they're of the rare breed of Georgescu-Roegen's disciples): https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/could-the-economy-shrink/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/... Another article from another source: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/09/discovering-limits-to-growth/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/09/discovering-limits-to-gro...
dustinmr 8y ago
Humans are good at being anxious due to the precariousness of life. Especially for things we don’t fully understand. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet#1910 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet#1910 Why is the environment any different?
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Because the rate of change is too slow to perceive it as something that is critical. When looked at on a geological time-scale this is all happening in an eye blink. When looked at on a human timescale it is spread out over many years and so there is time enough to get accustomed to the new baseline as the change is happening. The only thing different between an explosion and wind is the rate of change.
- otikik 8y ago
  > we don’t fully understand. That's a language trap. It's true that we do not understand the environment fully, in the sense that we don't know how every single living creature on it will die. But we understand it well enough: we can see the big trends. We don't know exactly how times we will hit the cliff as we fall, but we can see clearly that we're falling.
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  I agree that humans are, in a sense, evolved to stress out, but this is a horrible example. Like so Michu astronomy, Flammarion's theory was merely conjecture with no experimental evidence. Further, many other scientists correctly contested his hypothesis at the time. Compare that with overfishing, where we have strong evidence that tuna populations have drastically declined in the past 50 years [1]. These declines are very likely due to overfishing, particularly of immature fish that have not had a chance to reproduce. Without a change of trajectory, many tuna species will almost certainly go extinct. Yes, we should be skeptical and not give into hysteria. But that doesn't instead mean we should just stick our heads in the sand. Don't you think oceans without fish are going to cause a lot of problems? 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/
kingkawn 8y ago
I have a related theory, that rather than our rise in anxiety being because of an analytic understanding of doom, we are more anxious because the environment is becoming unfamiliar, and we as animals still are not comfortable with such a fundamental shift in the world around us.
- swombat 8y ago
  Since we’re trading theories, I’ll jump in! My theory is that we are destroying the environment because of our anxiety. It leads us to want to control things and accumulate safety in tangible, physical and dollar form. And the more we do that, the more we destroy the environment. And of course, that also leads to further anxiety as you’ve all pointed out. So, therapy for everyone - heal people’s desperate fears and the world will heal itself.
  - kingkawn 8y ago
    I agree! I think that the solution to the current environmental catastrophe is going to be an unexpected leap forward in our understanding of the mind and emotional life.
  - squish78 8y ago
    I'm optimistic about the research being done in psychedelic therapy for this reason. Take a capsule, lose your ego, understand your place in nature, and put your mind back together - all in an afternoon session.
    - artur_makly 8y ago
      Sadly, 1 capsule won't be enough. We all need 2 ayahuasca shots...and some will need up to 4. and there is only one other key requirement, it will all need to be done together simultaneously, otherwise you will end up with a sort of 'race condition'.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
I also have a theory. Anxiety is increasing because anxiety sells. The right leaning sites raise anxiety about immigrants. Left leaning sites raise anxiety that Trump is on his way to becoming a dictator. Environmental sites raise anxiety about species going extinct. Business sites raise anxiety about increase regulation and taxes. Meanwhile, humans are the best off we have ever been. This is one of the most peaceful times in history. We have more opportunity and less inequality than before. For the first time in history, half our population is not subject to endless pregnancies and high maternal mortality. Women are valued not primarily for the child-bearing or child-rearing but for their ability to contribute to the full spectrum of society. In addition, we are more capable of dealing with the vagaries of nature. Take for example Ebola. We came up with treatments and then a vaccine. We also know how to control our environments. Air conditioning allows humans to live comfortably in some of the hottest climates on earth. We also know how to efficiently produce food, and more importantly to transport food from one area of the world to another. For energy, we are not dependent on cutting down trees for firewood. We can know harvest sunlight, wind, and atoms to create unthinkable amounts of energy. We are just on the cusp of having the capability to colonize another celestial body! Yet, it is not the good news that sells in our attention economy. It is bad news and fear and outrage.
- ada1981 8y ago
  What you are saying is true. However never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I don't know that this is true. Do previous ice ages not count? Or how about the plague? It seems that we've been near extinction at least a few times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck I'd also add that until the 1990s the threat of total nuclear annihilation of the human race (and probably other stuff) was very real. That was anxiety inducing.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
rjf72 8y ago
There was an absolutely phenomenal piece written recently: "How the news took over reality" [1] It goes into some degree of depth about why it is exactly that ever more people are increasingly feeling every pulse of every issue. And why it's not necessarily a great thing. Consider something. Today, by most metrics, is by far the most stable and safe time that we've ever lived in during humanity's existence. This seems contradictory to how many feel. But consider that it wasn't that long ago that literal imminent nuclear annihilation was just a regular part of life. As a child we had fire drills. Go back just a couple of decades prior and school children were having nuclear explosion drills. And there was absolutely no end in sight. The Cold War started around 1946 and ended around 1990. Imagine 44 years of fear of nuclear annihilation. You had a generation of people that grew up knowing nothing except this reality and for it to last long enough for them to reproduce and yet another generation to live through this, onto adulthood, as well. It's difficult to even imagine this. And it's not like that was some extreme example. Right before the Cold War we had a couple of very not cold wars. In World War 2, some 3% of the entire world's population was directly killed in 6 years. It's impossible to understand that scale of loss directly. So let's measure it in terms of 9/11 attacks, where 2,966 were killed. Given today's population a 3% global loss would be the equivalent of 77,882 consecutive 9/11 attacks. That's 213 years of a 9/11 attack happening every single day. If you have a child at age 25 that means you're great great great great great great grand children would get to live their life with a 9/11 attack happening every single day. And now take all that misery and despair, and compress it into 6 years. And of course we weren't fighting over the petrodollar. We were facing an opponent who had every open intent of enslaving and/or engaging in genocide against the losers. And for some time it looked like he may very well win. Now let's consider climate change. In the worst case scenario we're looking at extreme weather conditions and having to deal with coastal regions (where most people tend to live) becoming less habitable and uninhabitable in some instances. And this is assuming we completely fail at transitioning away from carbon producing systems and also completely fail to develop mitigating technological measures - many of which already exist (such as amine based scrubbing), but are too expensive to deploy. Climate change is of course very relevant, but when you frame it in comparison to issues people of previous generations have had to face... Suffice to say I'd happily take climate change over imminent nuclear annihilation and genocide. Not exactly a high bar I'm setting, but that low bar is exactly the sort of circumstance that defines what we've had to live through for centuries. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/03/how-the-news-took-over-reality https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/03/how-the-news-to...
Balgair 8y ago
Read the late Dr. Hans Rosling's Factfullness. By many measures, the world is getting much much better. Try testing yourself to see what you know, are you smarter than a chimp?: http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018 http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018
- albemuth 8y ago
  Maybe it's the feeling that we feel a plateau coming?
  - Balgair 8y ago
    If anything, I think we all feel that there is a cliff coming. Though not like a Kurzweilian Singularity, we all see a climate change cliff out there in (most of) our lifetimes. We all know that the future is not going to resemble the present, and that's anxiety producing. I'd argue that from Dr. Rosling's data, it will be a much better world. But even his stats and monte-carlo show us that it'll be different. Pax Americana is ending, clearly, but what comes next with all those missles we have chained up in those silos, that's reasonably terrifying. The world has never been more 'up for grabs'. It's exciting to me, but it can reasonably be very anxious to others whose livlihoods depend on stability.
- unicornporn 8y ago
  Better and better? A comment on Hans Rosling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIcsj9ysvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIcsj9ysvs
  - Balgair 8y ago
    Great rebuttal! Thanks for that!
- uxcolumbo 8y ago
  "World" - does this include measurements for the natural world as well (which our world is built on top)? Or just things that have improved human life without looking at the environmental destruction that occurred over the past few decades.
CM30 8y ago
Maybe, though I suspect the income inequality/political instability side is causing more anxiety than the environmental one. The latter is certainly more of a focus now than it was before, but the money side probably plays more on people's minds. A lot of old life advice isn't working any more, people are finding their kids may have a worse quality of life than they did and governments are doing nothing to fix it. And of course, then there's the constant media hysteria driven by an obsession with social media stats and clicks too. Things are bad in many ways, but if you went by how the press spins it, you'd think the apocalypse was about to hit next week. That'd surely increase a lot of people's anxiety, even more so if their sources are particularly slanted in a certain political direction.
- dogcomplex 8y ago
  Same thing. Money = flexibility and control. People may feel the environmental anxiety, but feel powerless to do anything about it because they have to spend all their time working (if they can) to make ends meet. Social media stats/clicks are a similar race to the bottom to make money. Overall there's a sense that every part of our lives, environment, social sphere, and future is being over-leveraged, over-risked, and is hanging from a high wire above oblivion.
  - TOGoS 8y ago
    The way I like to spin it is: the paperclip maximizer that AI futurists worry about is already here, in the form of capitalism, and we're all part of it. It doesn't care about life; just numbers in bank accounts.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
My dad grew up in the Great Depression. He fought in both WW2 in his teens and in Vietnam in his 40s. The world was on the verge of ending during WW2 and for many years after during the Cold War because of nuclear weapons. There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it! -- Men in Black https://www.quotes.net/mquote/61255 https://www.quotes.net/mquote/61255 People pay too much attention to the negative parts of the news and not enough attention to the positive parts. When Iraq left Kuwait and lit oil wells on fire on its way out, it was predicted that it would burn for years and be a global climate catastrophe. When crack teams converged on the country, invented new methods on the spot and wrapped things up in a mere six months, it was not given the same level of media celebration that the hand wringing about the end of the world got. It was a footnote in more dramatic stories. People get anxious when they feel they have no control. There are things individuals can do, but most people feel it doesn't really make a difference and that's partly because they aren't likely to get pats on the head from anyone for quietly doing the right thing. Some things that help: Walk more, especially as a form of transportation. Use more daylighting and passive solar. This can be as simple as opening the window instead of cranking the AC. Eat less meat. I've lived under sentence of death for a long time. I"m still here. I've largely stopped listening to the whining of people who didn't actually care when it was just me facing a horrible, gruesome death but now they are all scared about their future, wah. If you don't want this future, then do something about it. Among other things, I gave up my car more than a decade ago. People can make such choices. Most people just don't actually want to be personally inconvenienced by the coming apocalypse. They seem to want everyone else to behave better so as to preserve their right to do whatever the fuck they want.
wonderwonder 8y ago
I would argue that the increase in anxiety is due to the growing wealth gap. Compounding that is the fact that those in control are actively working on maintaining that gap and will allow nothing to stand in the way, including the environment. The gap is growing worse and will continue to do so and that relentless pursuit of wealth at the top and the hopelessness of those in the middle is making the environment worse. If I am barely surviving and I feed my kids with wages from a polluting industry, with no other option I will vote for those that allow my wages to continue, and damn the torpedoes, even though deep down I know I am making the world worse (further compounding my anxiety and despair). See the coal industry. So many of us exist in quiet desperation. People struggling to survive are focused on their next meal or rent payment and while not destroying the world tomorrow sounds good, they are more concerned with what they have to deal with today. The environment is a side effect of civilizations profit at all costs mentality. Unfortunately this outlook will continue to do as it has always done, reward the few at the top and punish everyone else.
- iheartpotatoes 8y ago
  I have $2MM in my 401k I can't touch until I'm 59-1/2. I'm in my 40's and I'm worried of being broke when I'm 60. Insane? Probably. It's like no matter how much you have there's always fear. I keep thinking, "Yeah, it's all in funds and could just go poof if the DOW corrects back down to 7,000 because it took 20 years to get to where it is now..." Does the anxiety never end?
  - Calib3r 8y ago
    >>I can't touch Yes you can. If you're actually going to go broke when you're 60, I'd HIGHLY recommend touching at least a bit of that cash at the cost of federal income tax. Edit: Am not financial advisor
    - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
      OH, right, yes. I can pay the 30% penalty. I was pointing out how irrational my brain is and the anxiety I feel when 70% of the population is nowhere near where I'm at.
smolder 8y ago
This is the case for me. I just can't be apathetic to what seems like impending suffering at a scale never seen. N=1, though.
ramblerman 8y ago
I think you have reversed the cause and effect. People before us lived far closer to the brink of destruction, and endured actual hardships, which I think made them less anxious. Our current anxious, no-risk state makes us much more prone to fatalism, and nihilism, making the environment the perfect end of days thing to feed that anxiety.

samirm 8y ago

What's the theory? So far you just stated a premise...

probably_wrong 8y ago
> The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. That's the theory, or at least that's how I read it.
bob_doggo 8y ago
when someone on the internet says "theory", they usually mean it in the "everyday speak"-way, not in the "scientific definition of a theory"-way. But somehow I guess that you already know that?
- samirm 8y ago
  regardless of what "definition" of theory I used, the post is still without conclusion. It started off somewhere and then never made a point.

C14L 8y ago

The "Club of Rome" report[1] was published in the early 1970s. We've known for a long time. Still, most people probably still don't know, because they are too busy shopping for the latest shoes or cars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

wazoox 8y ago
Gaël Giraud (Chief economist of the French Agency for Development) said something along these lines: In economy, usually when someone builds a model that predicts the future for 18 months they later get the Nobel. The World III model from the Meadows Report almost exactly described the world for more than 45 years. If we may think that it's still modelling our world exactly enough, complete civilisational collapse will probably come in the next couple of decades.
- kingkawn 8y ago
  Might be transformation rather than collapse, not a done deal
- RobertoG 8y ago
  >"If we may think that it's still modelling our world exactly enough [..]" Some people think that it has been pretty accurate: "[..] The dotted line shows the Limits to Growth “business-as-usual” scenario out to 2100. Up to 2010, the data is strikingly similar to the book’s forecasts." From: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits...
- Loughla 8y ago
  Do you have links to any decent analysis of that model? Because the only things I've been able to digest are the criticisms (the majority of what I've found is that the model does not accurately reflect the world we live in). I'm not trying to confirmation bias myself here, but I would like to see what the proponents have to say.
  - wazoox 8y ago
    Here is a pretty good one IMO (loooong read): https://jancovici.com/en/readings/societies/the-limits-to-growth-donella-meadows-dennis-meadows-jorgen-randers-and-behrens-william-w-iii-1972/ https://jancovici.com/en/readings/societies/the-limits-to-gr... Another article that explains well what the model does, that economists do as if matter and laws of physics didn't exist (unless they're of the rare breed of Georgescu-Roegen's disciples): https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/could-the-economy-shrink/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/... Another article from another source: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/09/discovering-limits-to-growth/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/09/discovering-limits-to-gro...

dustinmr 8y ago

Humans are good at being anxious due to the precariousness of life. Especially for things we don’t fully understand. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet#1910 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet#1910 Why is the environment any different?

jacquesm 8y ago
Because the rate of change is too slow to perceive it as something that is critical. When looked at on a geological time-scale this is all happening in an eye blink. When looked at on a human timescale it is spread out over many years and so there is time enough to get accustomed to the new baseline as the change is happening. The only thing different between an explosion and wind is the rate of change.
otikik 8y ago
> we don’t fully understand. That's a language trap. It's true that we do not understand the environment fully, in the sense that we don't know how every single living creature on it will die. But we understand it well enough: we can see the big trends. We don't know exactly how times we will hit the cliff as we fall, but we can see clearly that we're falling.
jaredklewis 8y ago
I agree that humans are, in a sense, evolved to stress out, but this is a horrible example. Like so Michu astronomy, Flammarion's theory was merely conjecture with no experimental evidence. Further, many other scientists correctly contested his hypothesis at the time. Compare that with overfishing, where we have strong evidence that tuna populations have drastically declined in the past 50 years [1]. These declines are very likely due to overfishing, particularly of immature fish that have not had a chance to reproduce. Without a change of trajectory, many tuna species will almost certainly go extinct. Yes, we should be skeptical and not give into hysteria. But that doesn't instead mean we should just stick our heads in the sand. Don't you think oceans without fish are going to cause a lot of problems? 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/

kingkawn 8y ago

I have a related theory, that rather than our rise in anxiety being because of an analytic understanding of doom, we are more anxious because the environment is becoming unfamiliar, and we as animals still are not comfortable with such a fundamental shift in the world around us.

swombat 8y ago
Since we’re trading theories, I’ll jump in! My theory is that we are destroying the environment because of our anxiety. It leads us to want to control things and accumulate safety in tangible, physical and dollar form. And the more we do that, the more we destroy the environment. And of course, that also leads to further anxiety as you’ve all pointed out. So, therapy for everyone - heal people’s desperate fears and the world will heal itself.
- kingkawn 8y ago
  I agree! I think that the solution to the current environmental catastrophe is going to be an unexpected leap forward in our understanding of the mind and emotional life.
- squish78 8y ago
  I'm optimistic about the research being done in psychedelic therapy for this reason. Take a capsule, lose your ego, understand your place in nature, and put your mind back together - all in an afternoon session.
  - artur_makly 8y ago
    Sadly, 1 capsule won't be enough. We all need 2 ayahuasca shots...and some will need up to 4. and there is only one other key requirement, it will all need to be done together simultaneously, otherwise you will end up with a sort of 'race condition'.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

I also have a theory. Anxiety is increasing because anxiety sells. The right leaning sites raise anxiety about immigrants. Left leaning sites raise anxiety that Trump is on his way to becoming a dictator. Environmental sites raise anxiety about species going extinct. Business sites raise anxiety about increase regulation and taxes. Meanwhile, humans are the best off we have ever been. This is one of the most peaceful times in history. We have more opportunity and less inequality than before. For the first time in history, half our population is not subject to endless pregnancies and high maternal mortality. Women are valued not primarily for the child-bearing or child-rearing but for their ability to contribute to the full spectrum of society. In addition, we are more capable of dealing with the vagaries of nature. Take for example Ebola. We came up with treatments and then a vaccine. We also know how to control our environments. Air conditioning allows humans to live comfortably in some of the hottest climates on earth. We also know how to efficiently produce food, and more importantly to transport food from one area of the world to another. For energy, we are not dependent on cutting down trees for firewood. We can know harvest sunlight, wind, and atoms to create unthinkable amounts of energy. We are just on the cusp of having the capability to colonize another celestial body! Yet, it is not the good news that sells in our attention economy. It is bad news and fear and outrage.

ada1981 8y ago
What you are saying is true. However never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I don't know that this is true. Do previous ice ages not count? Or how about the plague? It seems that we've been near extinction at least a few times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck I'd also add that until the 1990s the threat of total nuclear annihilation of the human race (and probably other stuff) was very real. That was anxiety inducing.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

rjf72 8y ago

There was an absolutely phenomenal piece written recently: "How the news took over reality" [1] It goes into some degree of depth about why it is exactly that ever more people are increasingly feeling every pulse of every issue. And why it's not necessarily a great thing. Consider something. Today, by most metrics, is by far the most stable and safe time that we've ever lived in during humanity's existence. This seems contradictory to how many feel. But consider that it wasn't that long ago that literal imminent nuclear annihilation was just a regular part of life. As a child we had fire drills. Go back just a couple of decades prior and school children were having nuclear explosion drills. And there was absolutely no end in sight. The Cold War started around 1946 and ended around 1990. Imagine 44 years of fear of nuclear annihilation. You had a generation of people that grew up knowing nothing except this reality and for it to last long enough for them to reproduce and yet another generation to live through this, onto adulthood, as well. It's difficult to even imagine this. And it's not like that was some extreme example. Right before the Cold War we had a couple of very not cold wars. In World War 2, some 3% of the entire world's population was directly killed in 6 years. It's impossible to understand that scale of loss directly. So let's measure it in terms of 9/11 attacks, where 2,966 were killed. Given today's population a 3% global loss would be the equivalent of 77,882 consecutive 9/11 attacks. That's 213 years of a 9/11 attack happening every single day. If you have a child at age 25 that means you're great great great great great great grand children would get to live their life with a 9/11 attack happening every single day. And now take all that misery and despair, and compress it into 6 years. And of course we weren't fighting over the petrodollar. We were facing an opponent who had every open intent of enslaving and/or engaging in genocide against the losers. And for some time it looked like he may very well win. Now let's consider climate change. In the worst case scenario we're looking at extreme weather conditions and having to deal with coastal regions (where most people tend to live) becoming less habitable and uninhabitable in some instances. And this is assuming we completely fail at transitioning away from carbon producing systems and also completely fail to develop mitigating technological measures - many of which already exist (such as amine based scrubbing), but are too expensive to deploy. Climate change is of course very relevant, but when you frame it in comparison to issues people of previous generations have had to face... Suffice to say I'd happily take climate change over imminent nuclear annihilation and genocide. Not exactly a high bar I'm setting, but that low bar is exactly the sort of circumstance that defines what we've had to live through for centuries. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/03/how-the-news-took-over-reality https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/03/how-the-news-to...

Balgair 8y ago

Read the late Dr. Hans Rosling's Factfullness. By many measures, the world is getting much much better. Try testing yourself to see what you know, are you smarter than a chimp?: http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018 http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018

albemuth 8y ago
Maybe it's the feeling that we feel a plateau coming?
- Balgair 8y ago
  If anything, I think we all feel that there is a cliff coming. Though not like a Kurzweilian Singularity, we all see a climate change cliff out there in (most of) our lifetimes. We all know that the future is not going to resemble the present, and that's anxiety producing. I'd argue that from Dr. Rosling's data, it will be a much better world. But even his stats and monte-carlo show us that it'll be different. Pax Americana is ending, clearly, but what comes next with all those missles we have chained up in those silos, that's reasonably terrifying. The world has never been more 'up for grabs'. It's exciting to me, but it can reasonably be very anxious to others whose livlihoods depend on stability.
unicornporn 8y ago
Better and better? A comment on Hans Rosling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIcsj9ysvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIcsj9ysvs
- Balgair 8y ago
  Great rebuttal! Thanks for that!
uxcolumbo 8y ago
"World" - does this include measurements for the natural world as well (which our world is built on top)? Or just things that have improved human life without looking at the environmental destruction that occurred over the past few decades.

CM30 8y ago

Maybe, though I suspect the income inequality/political instability side is causing more anxiety than the environmental one. The latter is certainly more of a focus now than it was before, but the money side probably plays more on people's minds. A lot of old life advice isn't working any more, people are finding their kids may have a worse quality of life than they did and governments are doing nothing to fix it. And of course, then there's the constant media hysteria driven by an obsession with social media stats and clicks too. Things are bad in many ways, but if you went by how the press spins it, you'd think the apocalypse was about to hit next week. That'd surely increase a lot of people's anxiety, even more so if their sources are particularly slanted in a certain political direction.

dogcomplex 8y ago
Same thing. Money = flexibility and control. People may feel the environmental anxiety, but feel powerless to do anything about it because they have to spend all their time working (if they can) to make ends meet. Social media stats/clicks are a similar race to the bottom to make money. Overall there's a sense that every part of our lives, environment, social sphere, and future is being over-leveraged, over-risked, and is hanging from a high wire above oblivion.
- TOGoS 8y ago
  The way I like to spin it is: the paperclip maximizer that AI futurists worry about is already here, in the form of capitalism, and we're all part of it. It doesn't care about life; just numbers in bank accounts.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

My dad grew up in the Great Depression. He fought in both WW2 in his teens and in Vietnam in his 40s. The world was on the verge of ending during WW2 and for many years after during the Cold War because of nuclear weapons. There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it! -- Men in Black https://www.quotes.net/mquote/61255 https://www.quotes.net/mquote/61255 People pay too much attention to the negative parts of the news and not enough attention to the positive parts. When Iraq left Kuwait and lit oil wells on fire on its way out, it was predicted that it would burn for years and be a global climate catastrophe. When crack teams converged on the country, invented new methods on the spot and wrapped things up in a mere six months, it was not given the same level of media celebration that the hand wringing about the end of the world got. It was a footnote in more dramatic stories. People get anxious when they feel they have no control. There are things individuals can do, but most people feel it doesn't really make a difference and that's partly because they aren't likely to get pats on the head from anyone for quietly doing the right thing. Some things that help: Walk more, especially as a form of transportation. Use more daylighting and passive solar. This can be as simple as opening the window instead of cranking the AC. Eat less meat. I've lived under sentence of death for a long time. I"m still here. I've largely stopped listening to the whining of people who didn't actually care when it was just me facing a horrible, gruesome death but now they are all scared about their future, wah. If you don't want this future, then do something about it. Among other things, I gave up my car more than a decade ago. People can make such choices. Most people just don't actually want to be personally inconvenienced by the coming apocalypse. They seem to want everyone else to behave better so as to preserve their right to do whatever the fuck they want.

wonderwonder 8y ago

I would argue that the increase in anxiety is due to the growing wealth gap. Compounding that is the fact that those in control are actively working on maintaining that gap and will allow nothing to stand in the way, including the environment. The gap is growing worse and will continue to do so and that relentless pursuit of wealth at the top and the hopelessness of those in the middle is making the environment worse. If I am barely surviving and I feed my kids with wages from a polluting industry, with no other option I will vote for those that allow my wages to continue, and damn the torpedoes, even though deep down I know I am making the world worse (further compounding my anxiety and despair). See the coal industry. So many of us exist in quiet desperation. People struggling to survive are focused on their next meal or rent payment and while not destroying the world tomorrow sounds good, they are more concerned with what they have to deal with today. The environment is a side effect of civilizations profit at all costs mentality. Unfortunately this outlook will continue to do as it has always done, reward the few at the top and punish everyone else.

iheartpotatoes 8y ago
I have $2MM in my 401k I can't touch until I'm 59-1/2. I'm in my 40's and I'm worried of being broke when I'm 60. Insane? Probably. It's like no matter how much you have there's always fear. I keep thinking, "Yeah, it's all in funds and could just go poof if the DOW corrects back down to 7,000 because it took 20 years to get to where it is now..." Does the anxiety never end?
- Calib3r 8y ago
  >>I can't touch Yes you can. If you're actually going to go broke when you're 60, I'd HIGHLY recommend touching at least a bit of that cash at the cost of federal income tax. Edit: Am not financial advisor
  - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
    OH, right, yes. I can pay the 30% penalty. I was pointing out how irrational my brain is and the anxiety I feel when 70% of the population is nowhere near where I'm at.

smolder 8y ago

This is the case for me. I just can't be apathetic to what seems like impending suffering at a scale never seen. N=1, though.

ramblerman 8y ago

I think you have reversed the cause and effect. People before us lived far closer to the brink of destruction, and endured actual hardships, which I think made them less anxious. Our current anxious, no-risk state makes us much more prone to fatalism, and nihilism, making the environment the perfect end of days thing to feed that anxiety.