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Denial is the only way to cope with how impossible it feels to make any meaningful progress. I mean, the alternative is to sit white-knuckled until I die in a f

Denial is the only way to cope with how impossible it feels to make any meaningful progress. I mean, the alternative is to sit white-knuckled until I die in a food riot. I am well aware of the changes that are coming, and it's one of many reasons why I'm not having kids: I don't believe progress will continue like it has (which was always unsustainable, even without deleterious effects on the climate), and I think the future earth will be much harder for humans in the short term. Sure, humanity will probably adapt, but millions of people might die in the process.

erikerikson 6y ago
> Denial is the only way to cope I disagree. We can accept that we have a feeling of impossibility and still continue engaging in behaviors we predict to have a more positive outcome than any others. After all, have you ever been wrong? I have. Occasionally the bulk of our actions create emergent shifts. It seems we will have to make adjustments and there may well be horrid consequences but the severity of those remains under our adjustment. I'm surprised to read this on Hacker News, one of the homes of "impossible" successes.
core-questions 6y ago
> Denial is the only way to cope > I'm not having kids You are a defeatist, aren't you? This entire thing has literally scared you into not fulfilling the genetic imperative, ending your own genetic line because you think that perhaps you may have an easier, simpler life and death this way. No need to expose yourself to the suffering of others you love, no need to invest yourself in tomorrow - just watch it all go, knowing that when you inevitably shuffle off the coil nobody is going to mind a bit. Sad. Sorry to hear it. It's always a shame when an intelligent person chooses to ignore the sacrifice every one of their ancestors made to bring them to this point, just so that they don't have to risk the potential of having any hardship themselves. I do sincerely hope that you accomplish something great in your life that makes it otherwise worthwhile for them; to know that generations of people eked by just for you to play video games all day would be a truly disappointing conclusion.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  If you knew their life would be misery and toil, would you have kids? I'm terrified for mine.
  - bambataa 6y ago
    This is something I think about a lot. The most important is to keep things going. Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side. The only reason we’ve had all this wealth and ease to squander is because of those who went before us.
    - petercooper 6y ago
      I am hugely optimistic about humanity and technology and believe we will get through this just fine. I say this to qualify my question here: Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side. Would it be worth it? There is likely no net loss for the universe if we or even the entire Earth disappeared overnight and that might be better than thousands of generations suffering painfully over thousands of years.
      - bambataa 6y ago
        Are you happy to be alive, knowing that untold ancestors lived comparatively short and brutish lives
        aesclepius 6y ago
        In the immortal words of the GOP, "Fuck you, got mine."* *But no not necessarily, but at the same time I had a lack of autonomy in regards to those decision made.
        petercooper 6y ago
        I have sorrow and compassion for all humans who have had a hard life, but I don't feel any obligations either to or from my ancestors. I was questioning your assertion that centuries of "terrible lives" (which, to me, seems a regression for most) would be an acceptable price to pay for "better times" later on. Compared to the past 1000 years where life has, in the main, improved gradually generation after generation, I feel this assertion at least deserves to be questioned.
scythe 6y ago
>I mean, the alternative is to sit white-knuckled until I die in a food riot. You could try participating in politics! It's not exactly fun, but it's a lot better than dying.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  No mainstream politician has a realistic plan for addressing climate change.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    I would make a stronger claim (and no, I haven't done the research to back it up, just a hunch): > Nobody has a realistic plan for addressing climate change.
    - kazagistar 6y ago
      There are plenty. They are only unrealistic when people belive them to be unrealistic.
      - NateEag 6y ago
        The best ones I've seen so far involve massive engineering projects in orbit to let us control the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. Those are technologically feasible, theoretically workable, and at least somewhat reversible. However, they don't really take human nature into account. Megasatellites for solar gain control would be an intensely scarce, valuable resource, and a de facto superweapon - "agree to our terms or you'll never have good crop growing sunlight again." Nobody would be willing to cede or share control of such a system to someone else. Wars would break out quickly, and no deployed system would go undestroyed for long. The other plans I've seen seem problematic to me either morally ("first world gets to keep its tech but you guys who are bootstrapping with carbon can go DIAF"), technologically ("We think there will turn out to be some way to capture carbon super-efficiently that we haven't found yet"), or reversibility ("whoops, we put too much dust in the atmosphere - guess we're starving three billion people for the next year or four, folks"). I'm not saying there is no possible solution - just that I haven't seen a realistic one myself.
hluska 6y ago
You know friend, I understand how you feel. When I look out at the world, I see so much garbage that I can’t even believe it. Then I hang out with my four year old. She doesn’t understand racism, politics or climate. But she knows that she really likes everyone, respects others pronouns and likes sharing what she has. There’s hope. As cynical as I am, there is hope. And the fact that you feel so strongly fills me with as much hope as watching my little one learn about the fucked up planet she’s inheriting.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  What happens to grow up to suck so hard? Why can't we just look at each other and imagine the child that person once was, then maybe we'd care more about others like your 4 year old does.
  - hluska 6y ago
    This is beautiful writing and it deserves a reply, but for now I’m just going to read your words and wonder along with you. I’ll edit this comment at some point but for now, thank you friend. This is beautiful and poignant. :) Edit - I notice you edited your reply but I’m happy I got to read the original. You’re a beautiful writer.
  - redvenom 6y ago
    We are taught in Western and most other societies of today to numb pain. The problem is that we have knowledge of the problems of this world. I think if we allow ourselves to feel the pain of our knowledge and understand our existence through it, we can return to a childlike state and realize the pain is not something wrong with us, but our natural inclination and love for the world telling us that we are doing something wrong. We may not be able to solve the problems created by our species, but if we learn to live with respect for the planet then we can at least know we are doing as much as we can with our own existence.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    Thank you, this is beautiful and deep. I think I will try to imagine people as children and imagine them growing up more. Much easier to project loving-kindness that way.
kanox 6y ago
> sit white-knuckled until I die in a food riot. This is nonsense, food production on a per-capita basis is increasing and population is leveling off.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  And this year's Thanksgiving turkey is reporting it continues to be fed more and more each day! The future is bright!
  - i_love_music 6y ago
    This gave me a chuckle. Thanks for that
- NortySpock 6y ago
  How does food production deal with crop destruction by droughts, freak storms, or flooding rains driven by climate change? How do the world's poorest deal with rising food prices caused by crop failure? That's what we're worried about, not "the current steady state trend is currently going up, it's all fine!"
  - kanox 6y ago
    > crop destruction by droughts, freak storms, or flooding rains Aggregate data is much more relevant than anecdotes.
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      It's at least worth keeping in mind that this discussion thread is happening on a link to an article describing an occurrence -- the Laptev Sea not freezing by late October -- that aggregate data up through a couple of decades ago would not have predicted. Global warming itself is arguably a radical break from what aggregate data tells us about climate trends, and the (originally good faith) argument against it for decades was, essentially, that the "alarmists" were mistaking statistically insignificant temperature drifts for new statistically significant trends. The theory that global warming is going to lead to food shortages in the relatively near future is not an out-of-the-blue flight of fancy on the part of random HN commenters; a UN panel in 2019 warned of this possibility, as did a 2020 IPCC report (pre-pandemic, no less), as did a 2016 study in the Lancet; this is just from a cursory examination of the Google results for "food shortage predictions global warming".
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
Well, "everyone is in denial" is too strongly worded. A lot of us are aware that there are all sorts of self-reinforcing feedback loops that we have not found yet, and those will definitely influence the events. But models cannot account for hypotheticals.

erikerikson 6y ago

> Denial is the only way to cope I disagree. We can accept that we have a feeling of impossibility and still continue engaging in behaviors we predict to have a more positive outcome than any others. After all, have you ever been wrong? I have. Occasionally the bulk of our actions create emergent shifts. It seems we will have to make adjustments and there may well be horrid consequences but the severity of those remains under our adjustment. I'm surprised to read this on Hacker News, one of the homes of "impossible" successes.

core-questions 6y ago

> Denial is the only way to cope > I'm not having kids You are a defeatist, aren't you? This entire thing has literally scared you into not fulfilling the genetic imperative, ending your own genetic line because you think that perhaps you may have an easier, simpler life and death this way. No need to expose yourself to the suffering of others you love, no need to invest yourself in tomorrow - just watch it all go, knowing that when you inevitably shuffle off the coil nobody is going to mind a bit. Sad. Sorry to hear it. It's always a shame when an intelligent person chooses to ignore the sacrifice every one of their ancestors made to bring them to this point, just so that they don't have to risk the potential of having any hardship themselves. I do sincerely hope that you accomplish something great in your life that makes it otherwise worthwhile for them; to know that generations of people eked by just for you to play video games all day would be a truly disappointing conclusion.

CalRobert 6y ago
If you knew their life would be misery and toil, would you have kids? I'm terrified for mine.
- bambataa 6y ago
  This is something I think about a lot. The most important is to keep things going. Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side. The only reason we’ve had all this wealth and ease to squander is because of those who went before us.
  - petercooper 6y ago
    I am hugely optimistic about humanity and technology and believe we will get through this just fine. I say this to qualify my question here: Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side. Would it be worth it? There is likely no net loss for the universe if we or even the entire Earth disappeared overnight and that might be better than thousands of generations suffering painfully over thousands of years.
    - bambataa 6y ago
      Are you happy to be alive, knowing that untold ancestors lived comparatively short and brutish lives
      - aesclepius 6y ago
        In the immortal words of the GOP, "Fuck you, got mine."* *But no not necessarily, but at the same time I had a lack of autonomy in regards to those decision made.
      - petercooper 6y ago
        I have sorrow and compassion for all humans who have had a hard life, but I don't feel any obligations either to or from my ancestors. I was questioning your assertion that centuries of "terrible lives" (which, to me, seems a regression for most) would be an acceptable price to pay for "better times" later on. Compared to the past 1000 years where life has, in the main, improved gradually generation after generation, I feel this assertion at least deserves to be questioned.

scythe 6y ago

>I mean, the alternative is to sit white-knuckled until I die in a food riot. You could try participating in politics! It's not exactly fun, but it's a lot better than dying.

umanwizard 6y ago
No mainstream politician has a realistic plan for addressing climate change.
- NateEag 6y ago
  I would make a stronger claim (and no, I haven't done the research to back it up, just a hunch): > Nobody has a realistic plan for addressing climate change.
  - kazagistar 6y ago
    There are plenty. They are only unrealistic when people belive them to be unrealistic.
    - NateEag 6y ago
      The best ones I've seen so far involve massive engineering projects in orbit to let us control the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. Those are technologically feasible, theoretically workable, and at least somewhat reversible. However, they don't really take human nature into account. Megasatellites for solar gain control would be an intensely scarce, valuable resource, and a de facto superweapon - "agree to our terms or you'll never have good crop growing sunlight again." Nobody would be willing to cede or share control of such a system to someone else. Wars would break out quickly, and no deployed system would go undestroyed for long. The other plans I've seen seem problematic to me either morally ("first world gets to keep its tech but you guys who are bootstrapping with carbon can go DIAF"), technologically ("We think there will turn out to be some way to capture carbon super-efficiently that we haven't found yet"), or reversibility ("whoops, we put too much dust in the atmosphere - guess we're starving three billion people for the next year or four, folks"). I'm not saying there is no possible solution - just that I haven't seen a realistic one myself.

hluska 6y ago

You know friend, I understand how you feel. When I look out at the world, I see so much garbage that I can’t even believe it. Then I hang out with my four year old. She doesn’t understand racism, politics or climate. But she knows that she really likes everyone, respects others pronouns and likes sharing what she has. There’s hope. As cynical as I am, there is hope. And the fact that you feel so strongly fills me with as much hope as watching my little one learn about the fucked up planet she’s inheriting.

bamboozled 6y ago
What happens to grow up to suck so hard? Why can't we just look at each other and imagine the child that person once was, then maybe we'd care more about others like your 4 year old does.
- hluska 6y ago
  This is beautiful writing and it deserves a reply, but for now I’m just going to read your words and wonder along with you. I’ll edit this comment at some point but for now, thank you friend. This is beautiful and poignant. :) Edit - I notice you edited your reply but I’m happy I got to read the original. You’re a beautiful writer.
- redvenom 6y ago
  We are taught in Western and most other societies of today to numb pain. The problem is that we have knowledge of the problems of this world. I think if we allow ourselves to feel the pain of our knowledge and understand our existence through it, we can return to a childlike state and realize the pain is not something wrong with us, but our natural inclination and love for the world telling us that we are doing something wrong. We may not be able to solve the problems created by our species, but if we learn to live with respect for the planet then we can at least know we are doing as much as we can with our own existence.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Thank you, this is beautiful and deep. I think I will try to imagine people as children and imagine them growing up more. Much easier to project loving-kindness that way.

kanox 6y ago

> sit white-knuckled until I die in a food riot. This is nonsense, food production on a per-capita basis is increasing and population is leveling off.

ahelwer 6y ago
And this year's Thanksgiving turkey is reporting it continues to be fed more and more each day! The future is bright!
- i_love_music 6y ago
  This gave me a chuckle. Thanks for that
NortySpock 6y ago
How does food production deal with crop destruction by droughts, freak storms, or flooding rains driven by climate change? How do the world's poorest deal with rising food prices caused by crop failure? That's what we're worried about, not "the current steady state trend is currently going up, it's all fine!"
- kanox 6y ago
  > crop destruction by droughts, freak storms, or flooding rains Aggregate data is much more relevant than anecdotes.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    It's at least worth keeping in mind that this discussion thread is happening on a link to an article describing an occurrence -- the Laptev Sea not freezing by late October -- that aggregate data up through a couple of decades ago would not have predicted. Global warming itself is arguably a radical break from what aggregate data tells us about climate trends, and the (originally good faith) argument against it for decades was, essentially, that the "alarmists" were mistaking statistically insignificant temperature drifts for new statistically significant trends. The theory that global warming is going to lead to food shortages in the relatively near future is not an out-of-the-blue flight of fancy on the part of random HN commenters; a UN panel in 2019 warned of this possibility, as did a 2020 IPCC report (pre-pandemic, no less), as did a 2016 study in the Lancet; this is just from a cursory examination of the Google results for "food shortage predictions global warming".

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

Well, "everyone is in denial" is too strongly worded. A lot of us are aware that there are all sorts of self-reinforcing feedback loops that we have not found yet, and those will definitely influence the events. But models cannot account for hypotheticals.