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It's interesting but not insightful. Anyway, I would find more conducive to stop talking nonsense about collapses and focus on the many technologies that are be

It's interesting but not insightful. Anyway, I would find more conducive to stop talking nonsense about collapses and focus on the many technologies that are being developed. We got a million times better at creating vaccines. AIDS vaccine is on the way. Clean technologies are growing exponentially and a future of clean-air cities is approaching fast. Working from home thru video conferences, I saw that in sci-fi when I was a kid, is a day to day reality. We should be building a better future instead of focusing on extremist views of the world. It was fun to read, it would make no sense to give it too much weight.

seandoe 5y ago
Yes, I'm with you. The focus and obsession with doom and collapse needs to end. It's like porn. We're biologically programmed to direct our attention to it. While the various media fuel this neverending stream of negativity, we have to realize that our primal selves yearn for it. Regardless of how likely any of these scenarios are, obsessing over them does not help our situation. How can we break this cycle of addiction? I guess the first step is recognition.
- elihu 5y ago
  I agree that the idea of collapse is something we're inclined to fixate on whether it's about to happen or not. But on the other hand, democracies can fail, ecosystems can collapse, economies can fall apart, and so on. These are real risks that I think should be taken seriously. (Especially climate change.) The important thing though is not how much we're focused on the problems, but what we're doing about it. Individually we don't have much influence, but we can participate in elections, we can donate to worthy organizations, we can (to some small degree) minimize our climate impact, we can constructively influence discussions about these problems. Regarding the tendency of people in general to want to believe in the end of the world, I once had an idea for a new randomly-moving holiday called "arbitrary apocalypse day", where you roll 3 D-10s to pick a number of days until the next arbitrary apocalypse day, and roll another die to decide what's going to destroy civilization this time (nuclear war, nanobots, a big meteor, etc..). You treat that day like the end of the world. If everything goes on as normal, then you roll the dice again the next day and select the next arbitrary apocalypse day.
titzer 5y ago
The irony is that the people who see collapse the most clearly are not actually the ones who spend all day inside looking at computer screens. Spend some time down at your local waterway, pick up some garbage, and behold just a small sliver of the millions of tons, perhaps billions of tons, of shit that this economy has produced and just dumped or discarded right into the ecosystem. The little squares that you gaze into are just one massive distortion field. If you see whizbang video conferencing and techno hopium, then that's your lens. If you want to build a better future, please take a stark look at what's actually going down on this planet, and it's not just better Zoom calls.

seandoe 5y ago

Yes, I'm with you. The focus and obsession with doom and collapse needs to end. It's like porn. We're biologically programmed to direct our attention to it. While the various media fuel this neverending stream of negativity, we have to realize that our primal selves yearn for it. Regardless of how likely any of these scenarios are, obsessing over them does not help our situation. How can we break this cycle of addiction? I guess the first step is recognition.

elihu 5y ago
I agree that the idea of collapse is something we're inclined to fixate on whether it's about to happen or not. But on the other hand, democracies can fail, ecosystems can collapse, economies can fall apart, and so on. These are real risks that I think should be taken seriously. (Especially climate change.) The important thing though is not how much we're focused on the problems, but what we're doing about it. Individually we don't have much influence, but we can participate in elections, we can donate to worthy organizations, we can (to some small degree) minimize our climate impact, we can constructively influence discussions about these problems. Regarding the tendency of people in general to want to believe in the end of the world, I once had an idea for a new randomly-moving holiday called "arbitrary apocalypse day", where you roll 3 D-10s to pick a number of days until the next arbitrary apocalypse day, and roll another die to decide what's going to destroy civilization this time (nuclear war, nanobots, a big meteor, etc..). You treat that day like the end of the world. If everything goes on as normal, then you roll the dice again the next day and select the next arbitrary apocalypse day.

titzer 5y ago

The irony is that the people who see collapse the most clearly are not actually the ones who spend all day inside looking at computer screens. Spend some time down at your local waterway, pick up some garbage, and behold just a small sliver of the millions of tons, perhaps billions of tons, of shit that this economy has produced and just dumped or discarded right into the ecosystem. The little squares that you gaze into are just one massive distortion field. If you see whizbang video conferencing and techno hopium, then that's your lens. If you want to build a better future, please take a stark look at what's actually going down on this planet, and it's not just better Zoom calls.