5 ms·

Someone once said: If you are a teen and you aren't a lefty, you have no heart. And if you are in your 30'S and you are still a lefty, you have no brain. Many t

by notjes 5y ago

Someone once said: If you are a teen and you aren't a lefty, you have no heart. And if you are in your 30'S and you are still a lefty, you have no brain. Many travel along those lines. And in analogy to this, I am very optimistic about the future, because the resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite. There is no peak oil. There is no peak food. There is no peak climate. There is no water. It's all bullshit doomer porn.

kibblesalad 5y ago
If you're in your 30s and are still thinking in political binaries of "right" and "left" or believe in infinite growth theory you are indeed doing something rather silly
cortesoft 5y ago
Human ingenuity might be infinite, but we also do really bad shit all the time that causes horrible suffering and death. We had a world war less than a century ago that killed around 80 million people. Did it end the world? No, but it ended the world for 80 million people. So yes, you might be right that the world won't end from any of these scenarios.... but a lot of people might die horrible deaths, and I don't want me or my loved ones to be among them.
foxylad 5y ago
> resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite Human ingenuity is impressive, but not infinite. I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's a long read, but every single society he examines thought they were doing great but ended up eating each other (literally) within a couple of generations once some vital resource dried up. Human ingenuity failed all of them. I'll give you peak oil: our ingenuity is already finding viable alternative energy solutions. But climate change is going to destabilise so much more - food, water, land, security - that I'm pessimistic that our civilisation will last more than a few generations. So far we've only discovered more positive feedback (e.g. methane from melting Siberia), when we desperately need strong negative feedback. A bit like Covid, where everyone assumed the ingenious new vaccines would get us back to normal in a couple of months, but mutations, politics and social dynamics mean we're still very much on the back foot. But hey, I'm 60 and still a lefty so obviously no brain and just a bullshit doomer :) But do grab a copy of Collapse, there are a lot of "whoa!" insights and it's a fascinating read.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  I never accepted the premise of that book as being universally true. Societies have collapsed for reasons other then resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other then resource scarcity. I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. My guess? The professional political/priestly/mid-level manager class gaining self serving control and cannibalizing productive (and competitive) capacity is a very common cause of collapse. We see it on a smaller scale in companies real time.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    > I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. Is this true? I thought it was drought and deforestation and over-farming that sped up the Mayan decline and that soil erosion and exhaustion and agricultural decline aided in the fall of Rome. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/0...
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      Rome got much (most?) of their grain from Egypt (which renews fertility due to annual flooding) and the cause of the Mayan collapse is unknown but I highly doubt it was primarily scarcity driven. Societies collapse from social factors, not just resource scarcity and social factors are in my opinion a more common cause. War, internal conflict, and political instability. And my favorite theory, the rise of parasitic and short sighted bureaucracies which snuff out the creative and competitive impulse of a culture.
      - bmitc 5y ago
        That link appears to disagree with you regarding the Mayans and even points out that ecological issues can fuel and exacerbate social, political, and cultural problems. Of course these things are multifaceted but it seems obvious that a multidimensional domino effect can occur when kick started by ecological issues. Look at what happened with COVID. Gun and ammunition purchases were off the charts, increases of homicidal crime, civil unrest, unemployment, etc. Such a "simple" thing as a virus destabilized society in multiple ways. Just imagine if it was food and resource scarcity.
triceratops 5y ago
The world doesn't have to end for climate change to be bad. It could simply immerse hundreds of millions in absolute misery, for reasons they had no control over. For example, by causing large-scale sea-level rises in Bangladesh or widespread drought in the Indian subcontinent. The follow-on effects of the resulting refugee crisis are hard to predict, but likely won't be pretty.
pharmakom 5y ago
as people have children they become less interested in political theory (and theater) and more self-interested. These days voting preferences are almost entirely along generational lines in many countries.
bmy78 5y ago
No.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
This is what a lack of comprehension of exponential growth does to a person.

by notjes 5y ago

kibblesalad 5y ago

If you're in your 30s and are still thinking in political binaries of "right" and "left" or believe in infinite growth theory you are indeed doing something rather silly

cortesoft 5y ago

Human ingenuity might be infinite, but we also do really bad shit all the time that causes horrible suffering and death. We had a world war less than a century ago that killed around 80 million people. Did it end the world? No, but it ended the world for 80 million people. So yes, you might be right that the world won't end from any of these scenarios.... but a lot of people might die horrible deaths, and I don't want me or my loved ones to be among them.

foxylad 5y ago

> resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite Human ingenuity is impressive, but not infinite. I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's a long read, but every single society he examines thought they were doing great but ended up eating each other (literally) within a couple of generations once some vital resource dried up. Human ingenuity failed all of them. I'll give you peak oil: our ingenuity is already finding viable alternative energy solutions. But climate change is going to destabilise so much more - food, water, land, security - that I'm pessimistic that our civilisation will last more than a few generations. So far we've only discovered more positive feedback (e.g. methane from melting Siberia), when we desperately need strong negative feedback. A bit like Covid, where everyone assumed the ingenious new vaccines would get us back to normal in a couple of months, but mutations, politics and social dynamics mean we're still very much on the back foot. But hey, I'm 60 and still a lefty so obviously no brain and just a bullshit doomer :) But do grab a copy of Collapse, there are a lot of "whoa!" insights and it's a fascinating read.

mythrwy 5y ago
I never accepted the premise of that book as being universally true. Societies have collapsed for reasons other then resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other then resource scarcity. I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. My guess? The professional political/priestly/mid-level manager class gaining self serving control and cannibalizing productive (and competitive) capacity is a very common cause of collapse. We see it on a smaller scale in companies real time.
- bmitc 5y ago
  > I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. Is this true? I thought it was drought and deforestation and over-farming that sped up the Mayan decline and that soil erosion and exhaustion and agricultural decline aided in the fall of Rome. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/0...
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Rome got much (most?) of their grain from Egypt (which renews fertility due to annual flooding) and the cause of the Mayan collapse is unknown but I highly doubt it was primarily scarcity driven. Societies collapse from social factors, not just resource scarcity and social factors are in my opinion a more common cause. War, internal conflict, and political instability. And my favorite theory, the rise of parasitic and short sighted bureaucracies which snuff out the creative and competitive impulse of a culture.
    - bmitc 5y ago
      That link appears to disagree with you regarding the Mayans and even points out that ecological issues can fuel and exacerbate social, political, and cultural problems. Of course these things are multifaceted but it seems obvious that a multidimensional domino effect can occur when kick started by ecological issues. Look at what happened with COVID. Gun and ammunition purchases were off the charts, increases of homicidal crime, civil unrest, unemployment, etc. Such a "simple" thing as a virus destabilized society in multiple ways. Just imagine if it was food and resource scarcity.

triceratops 5y ago

The world doesn't have to end for climate change to be bad. It could simply immerse hundreds of millions in absolute misery, for reasons they had no control over. For example, by causing large-scale sea-level rises in Bangladesh or widespread drought in the Indian subcontinent. The follow-on effects of the resulting refugee crisis are hard to predict, but likely won't be pretty.

pharmakom 5y ago

as people have children they become less interested in political theory (and theater) and more self-interested. These days voting preferences are almost entirely along generational lines in many countries.

bmy78 5y ago

No.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

This is what a lack of comprehension of exponential growth does to a person.