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You sound angry. I'd suggest defanging that by considering eventual collapse as always having been our civilisation's trajectory. Any creature that manages to

You sound angry. I'd suggest defanging that by considering eventual collapse as always having been our civilisation's trajectory. Any creature that manages to escape, for a period, limits on its reproduction is going to overrun its environment. That's just elementary ecology. It should only be surprising to the religiously-minded who never truly believed humans to be part of the physical world. This includes many atheists raised on a superstitious belief in inevitable 'progress'. If you think about it, the notion that the assemblage of cognitive, conative and affective faculties that evolution installed on a primate for the purposes of hunting and small group coordination were somehow magically going to be up to the job of managing a whole planet was always pretty fanciful.

titzer 7y ago
> You sound angry. I am. I've been around and around this thing for decades, a misanthrope since my teenage years. A lot of us who delved deep into tech and scifi absorbed myths about the future of humans as a space-faring, enlightened and truly advanced race. After the internet and the great advancements in computing, it seemed maybe we were reaching into truths of the universe and would join God in his great datacenter in the sky, cranking pure mathematical harmony and joy in our ever-expanding understanding of scientific knowledge. But we weren't climbing into heaven, or building a space elevator up there. We weren't even making ivory towers or steel skyscrapers. It's still been our base primate instincts at work. Greed. All of that striving after science and mathematics and technology has never been any different than digging up the hills for gold or slashing down the forests to plant our wheat. We're dwarves; we're diggers, miners, destroyers, conquerors, killers, pyschopaths. And that guilt triggers in me because I see the delicate things, the beautiful things, that we have destroyed to get here. And the future just looks like one big highway littered with McDonald's with powerlines strewn across, dusty and dilapidated. We fucked Earth. You bet I am angry.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Then (forgive me if I'm mistaken here) it seems like you are probably clinging to the Enlightenment myths of human supremacy and inevitable 'progress'. To be angry that humans aren't transcending physical and ecological reality implies that you think it was possible to have done so. A bit like a lapsed Catholic still feeling guilty in the face of accusations from a God that they claim to no longer believe in.
  - titzer 7y ago
    Haha, there is some truth to what you say. I was indeed raised Catholic, but I'm an atheist now. No, I think that there is a case to be made that wanton destruction is morally bad and I think my values stem from that. We wouldn't be in such a bad pickle if our population wasn't nearing 8 billion. How much of that is really necessary to support one of the giant spires of our technological thrust? A million? A hundred million? I don't think even a billion humans would be necessary for all of the tech behind the computer industry.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      I hear you. Coming from one of the rogue nationx when it comes to climate change, I have my moments too. Still, on reflection, I'm pretty sure our current trajectory was inevitable the moment humans developed agriculture. We're the wildly pullulating caterpillar devouring our tree, and always were going to be just what we are. Just another species. Just another dead end in evolution's exploration of ecological state space.
      - titzer 7y ago
        Yeah, I pretty much agree with you about agriculture, especially after reading "Sapiens" by Hariri. > We're the wildly pullulating caterpillar devouring our tree, and always were going to be just what we are. It's really mind-blowing to think of us as a planetary-scale caterpillar. Thanks for the analogy! Cheers.

titzer 7y ago

> You sound angry. I am. I've been around and around this thing for decades, a misanthrope since my teenage years. A lot of us who delved deep into tech and scifi absorbed myths about the future of humans as a space-faring, enlightened and truly advanced race. After the internet and the great advancements in computing, it seemed maybe we were reaching into truths of the universe and would join God in his great datacenter in the sky, cranking pure mathematical harmony and joy in our ever-expanding understanding of scientific knowledge. But we weren't climbing into heaven, or building a space elevator up there. We weren't even making ivory towers or steel skyscrapers. It's still been our base primate instincts at work. Greed. All of that striving after science and mathematics and technology has never been any different than digging up the hills for gold or slashing down the forests to plant our wheat. We're dwarves; we're diggers, miners, destroyers, conquerors, killers, pyschopaths. And that guilt triggers in me because I see the delicate things, the beautiful things, that we have destroyed to get here. And the future just looks like one big highway littered with McDonald's with powerlines strewn across, dusty and dilapidated. We fucked Earth. You bet I am angry.

crispinb 7y ago
Then (forgive me if I'm mistaken here) it seems like you are probably clinging to the Enlightenment myths of human supremacy and inevitable 'progress'. To be angry that humans aren't transcending physical and ecological reality implies that you think it was possible to have done so. A bit like a lapsed Catholic still feeling guilty in the face of accusations from a God that they claim to no longer believe in.
- titzer 7y ago
  Haha, there is some truth to what you say. I was indeed raised Catholic, but I'm an atheist now. No, I think that there is a case to be made that wanton destruction is morally bad and I think my values stem from that. We wouldn't be in such a bad pickle if our population wasn't nearing 8 billion. How much of that is really necessary to support one of the giant spires of our technological thrust? A million? A hundred million? I don't think even a billion humans would be necessary for all of the tech behind the computer industry.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    I hear you. Coming from one of the rogue nationx when it comes to climate change, I have my moments too. Still, on reflection, I'm pretty sure our current trajectory was inevitable the moment humans developed agriculture. We're the wildly pullulating caterpillar devouring our tree, and always were going to be just what we are. Just another species. Just another dead end in evolution's exploration of ecological state space.
    - titzer 7y ago
      Yeah, I pretty much agree with you about agriculture, especially after reading "Sapiens" by Hariri. > We're the wildly pullulating caterpillar devouring our tree, and always were going to be just what we are. It's really mind-blowing to think of us as a planetary-scale caterpillar. Thanks for the analogy! Cheers.