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Basically I think our civilization is default dead. As Paul Graham put it in another context: "Why do so few founders know whether they're default alive or de

by graeme 7y ago

Basically I think our civilization is default dead. As Paul Graham put it in another context: "Why do so few founders know whether they're default alive or default dead? Mainly, I think, because they're not used to asking that." People aren't used to thinking of civilization in these terms. We make retirement plans etc divorced from the projections of change to come. If we rationally considered priorities, you'd see much more popular support for actions designed to address the problem, such as increasing carbon taxes, cutting other taxes, and making an international framework to get other countries to do the same. There's a scene in 12 Monkeys where the protagonist is in a mental hospital in the past, before a virus takes out the civilization. The psychologist asks if he came back to "help" them. The protagonist looks confused and says "how can I help you? You're all dead". We have such a flurry of concern and activity aimed at the present. I can't help but have a similar feeling when I observe people making plans and not accounting for the predicted future, even if they claim to "believe" in climate change. If people truly believed in it, you'd see much different political priorities. Right now effective action tends to be unpopular. Income taxes (taxing a good thing) have much more political support than carbon taxes (taxing a bad thing). I find the situation baffling. More from Paul Graham's article: "There is another reason founders don't ask themselves whether they're default alive or default dead: they assume it will be easy to raise more money. But that assumption is often false, and worse still, the more you depend on it, the falser it becomes." We assume it will be easy to solve problems in the future, with future technology. Or that we will have surplus resources in the future, when worsening conditions cut crop yields, cut water, increase civil strife, and when the global population is larger and total emissions are higher. http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html

orcdork 7y ago
Yes, the absolutely correct group to take ideas from as far as our semi-long term survival goes is VCs (and the surrounding ecosystem), the same group that made "move fast and break things" the mantra for a decade. Nothing bad ever came out of that!
- thatcat 7y ago
  The ideal things to be broken are the structures that currently prevent collective long term survival. While not all VC's focus on this, I think PG does. After all, what is the alternative?
- afterburner 7y ago
  I believe the chemical engineering field developed that mantra at least 100 years ago! Although it was more like "this magic chemical will fix everything!"
- graeme 7y ago
  This is pure ad hominem. Do you have nothing to contribute? You're saying: 1. I don't like vc's, because a startup founder said "move fast and break things" 2. Paul Graham didn't fund that founder, but he was a vc 3. Ergo, every idea paul graham has is bad 4. Ergo, this specific essay is bad 5. So, anything that mentions this essay's ideas is wrong 6. Your post is wrong Do you disagree with the concept of default dead? Are you arguing that it's impossible to be in such a state as a civilization? If you have an actual critique I'd be interested to hear it.
war1025 7y ago
> If people truly believed in it, you'd see much different political priorities. A common critique I've also heard in religious contexts. I think both Jordan Peterson and Nassim Taleb have made comments on it. What people "believe" and what they believe can be very different. Belief is hard.
kodz4 7y ago
You are connecting the wrong dots my friend. Just because you haven't wrapped your head around complexity or how good outcomes are produced, doesn't mean only bad things can happen. The internet does a great job of keeping people feed with problems way above their pay grade for no good reason. If Paul Graham had taken a course in Education or Pedagogy, his article would have an elaborate note on who should really be reading them. The conclusions you reach are very different once you have experience and done the prereqs. It's like dropping off your second grader, in a tenth grade classroom for a month. What conclusions about the world is the second grader going to draw at the end of it?
- graeme 7y ago
  I didn't say no good things will happen. I said we're default dead, if no good things happen. Ideally, we'd shift incentives so that companies have more of an economic reward to producing the good things. Currently we actually subsidize fossil fuels in many countries. If you have a critique that isn't ad hominem I'd be interested to hear it.
  - kodz4 7y ago
    Healthier to keep focus/learn/talk about on how good things happen.
Creationer 7y ago
India is not our Civilization. I'm presuming you're either in America or Europe, or heavily influenced by their culture. India's chief problem is overpopulation. There are simply too many people to provide water to. The country needs an urgent population program encouraging poorer families to have one or zero children. The same things are working in Bangladesh.
- manigandham 7y ago
  The world is a very big place and there's more than enough space and resources for everyone. Overpopulation is not and never has been a serious problem. The only issues are in engineering and government to ensure citizens are actually provided what they need, which in this case is limited by decades of corruption and poor decision making. India is more than capable of handling the issue, it just needs better leadership to cast off some of the anchors it has been carrying for far too long.
  - exergy 7y ago
    Overpopulation is 100% a big problem and then some. The overcrowded cesspits that we whimsically call 'cities' in India are founts for all kinds of shit like the water table drying up, widespread water-borne and air-pollution diseases, anti-microbial resistance, shitty healthcare in overworked hospitals in general etc. These things are ALL made orders of magnitude worse to deal with just because our population is through the roof. Not to mention the "smaller" quality of life factors. Enjoyable walk in nature? Hah! It's impossible to walk for even two minutes in Delhi and not see another person. Never-do-wells loiter the streets all day. No possibility of orderly queuing, just this huge, irritating, wearisome crowd wherever you look and wherever you turn. The metro. The park. The roads. The neighbourhood. Even the fucking hill stations that you seek to escape to. No solitude. In an ideal world, these thing may manageable while still fostering a large population. But an ideal world this isn't. > "...more than enough space and resources for everyone" That's going to be a hell-to-the-no from me dawg. I hate the fact that we fucking breed like Rabbits.
    - manigandham 7y ago
makerofspoons 7y ago
Some millennials are considering the collapse of civilization as a factor in their retirement plans: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-get-young-people-to-save-for-the-future-when-they-think-the-planet-is-doomed-2019-05-23 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-get-young-people-to... I understand the pessimism. I think that course of action can be justified. I am still saving for retirement but I can't really justify it beyond some very early markers that we are going to decarbonize and save what we can.
marcosdumay 7y ago
The only viable policy we have available is to wait for better future tech to solve the problem. That's not a call for doing nothing, anything that improves the specific tech that can solve the problem is worth doing, but anything that detracts from it should be avoided. So, carbon tax is great. Subsidizing renewables is iffy (has to be done right). Any proposition that slow things down is actively harmful. Saving energy is neutral.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- graeme 7y ago
  Yup, I think carbon taxes are the one thing we can actively do. This will create a market incentive to find and use other power sources. It might not work, but we should at least try.
snowwrestler 7y ago
My main problem with applying the "default dead" concept is that in the long run, absolutely everything is default dead. I think PG's concept is really about defining horizons, risks, and resources, and making sure the math adds up. That concept makes sense to me in a startup, but I find it hard to fit something as big as human civilization into that particular framework. Human activity is essentially extractive, and even if we solve global warming, I think we're ticking the clock on how long Earth can support this kind of society.

by graeme 7y ago

orcdork 7y ago

Yes, the absolutely correct group to take ideas from as far as our semi-long term survival goes is VCs (and the surrounding ecosystem), the same group that made "move fast and break things" the mantra for a decade. Nothing bad ever came out of that!

thatcat 7y ago
The ideal things to be broken are the structures that currently prevent collective long term survival. While not all VC's focus on this, I think PG does. After all, what is the alternative?
afterburner 7y ago
I believe the chemical engineering field developed that mantra at least 100 years ago! Although it was more like "this magic chemical will fix everything!"
graeme 7y ago
This is pure ad hominem. Do you have nothing to contribute? You're saying: 1. I don't like vc's, because a startup founder said "move fast and break things" 2. Paul Graham didn't fund that founder, but he was a vc 3. Ergo, every idea paul graham has is bad 4. Ergo, this specific essay is bad 5. So, anything that mentions this essay's ideas is wrong 6. Your post is wrong Do you disagree with the concept of default dead? Are you arguing that it's impossible to be in such a state as a civilization? If you have an actual critique I'd be interested to hear it.

war1025 7y ago

> If people truly believed in it, you'd see much different political priorities. A common critique I've also heard in religious contexts. I think both Jordan Peterson and Nassim Taleb have made comments on it. What people "believe" and what they believe can be very different. Belief is hard.

kodz4 7y ago

You are connecting the wrong dots my friend. Just because you haven't wrapped your head around complexity or how good outcomes are produced, doesn't mean only bad things can happen. The internet does a great job of keeping people feed with problems way above their pay grade for no good reason. If Paul Graham had taken a course in Education or Pedagogy, his article would have an elaborate note on who should really be reading them. The conclusions you reach are very different once you have experience and done the prereqs. It's like dropping off your second grader, in a tenth grade classroom for a month. What conclusions about the world is the second grader going to draw at the end of it?

graeme 7y ago
I didn't say no good things will happen. I said we're default dead, if no good things happen. Ideally, we'd shift incentives so that companies have more of an economic reward to producing the good things. Currently we actually subsidize fossil fuels in many countries. If you have a critique that isn't ad hominem I'd be interested to hear it.
- kodz4 7y ago
  Healthier to keep focus/learn/talk about on how good things happen.

Creationer 7y ago

India is not our Civilization. I'm presuming you're either in America or Europe, or heavily influenced by their culture. India's chief problem is overpopulation. There are simply too many people to provide water to. The country needs an urgent population program encouraging poorer families to have one or zero children. The same things are working in Bangladesh.

manigandham 7y ago
The world is a very big place and there's more than enough space and resources for everyone. Overpopulation is not and never has been a serious problem. The only issues are in engineering and government to ensure citizens are actually provided what they need, which in this case is limited by decades of corruption and poor decision making. India is more than capable of handling the issue, it just needs better leadership to cast off some of the anchors it has been carrying for far too long.
- exergy 7y ago
  Overpopulation is 100% a big problem and then some. The overcrowded cesspits that we whimsically call 'cities' in India are founts for all kinds of shit like the water table drying up, widespread water-borne and air-pollution diseases, anti-microbial resistance, shitty healthcare in overworked hospitals in general etc. These things are ALL made orders of magnitude worse to deal with just because our population is through the roof. Not to mention the "smaller" quality of life factors. Enjoyable walk in nature? Hah! It's impossible to walk for even two minutes in Delhi and not see another person. Never-do-wells loiter the streets all day. No possibility of orderly queuing, just this huge, irritating, wearisome crowd wherever you look and wherever you turn. The metro. The park. The roads. The neighbourhood. Even the fucking hill stations that you seek to escape to. No solitude. In an ideal world, these thing may manageable while still fostering a large population. But an ideal world this isn't. > "...more than enough space and resources for everyone" That's going to be a hell-to-the-no from me dawg. I hate the fact that we fucking breed like Rabbits.
  - manigandham 7y ago

makerofspoons 7y ago

Some millennials are considering the collapse of civilization as a factor in their retirement plans: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-get-young-people-to-save-for-the-future-when-they-think-the-planet-is-doomed-2019-05-23 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-get-young-people-to... I understand the pessimism. I think that course of action can be justified. I am still saving for retirement but I can't really justify it beyond some very early markers that we are going to decarbonize and save what we can.

marcosdumay 7y ago

The only viable policy we have available is to wait for better future tech to solve the problem. That's not a call for doing nothing, anything that improves the specific tech that can solve the problem is worth doing, but anything that detracts from it should be avoided. So, carbon tax is great. Subsidizing renewables is iffy (has to be done right). Any proposition that slow things down is actively harmful. Saving energy is neutral.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
graeme 7y ago
Yup, I think carbon taxes are the one thing we can actively do. This will create a market incentive to find and use other power sources. It might not work, but we should at least try.

snowwrestler 7y ago

My main problem with applying the "default dead" concept is that in the long run, absolutely everything is default dead. I think PG's concept is really about defining horizons, risks, and resources, and making sure the math adds up. That concept makes sense to me in a startup, but I find it hard to fit something as big as human civilization into that particular framework. Human activity is essentially extractive, and even if we solve global warming, I think we're ticking the clock on how long Earth can support this kind of society.