4 ms·

Stanford Scientists Warn That Civilization as We Know It Is Ending

25 points by jdkee 4y ago

goldenchrome 4y ago
Paul Ehrlich is on a mission against humanity. This is nothing new from him.
belmont_sup 4y ago
No glimpse of hype from these folks. Wouldn’t it be better to always include a call to action in some form?
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I suppose if you’re convinced it’s too late and humanity doesn’t have the capacity to make necessary changes, a call to action would seem entirely pointless. It might not even cross your mind anymore.
  - belmont_sup 4y ago
    That is a sad but possibly true take. Thanks for disregarding my typo.
pyuser583 4y ago
Calling Ehrlich an “icon” is a big cringey.
p-e-w 4y ago
I used to worry about climate change and the environment, but eventually I realized that technological change is far more scary. The tech that will emerge in the next few decades is going to reduce 99.9% of humanity to less than slaves. The gap between the powerful few and everyone else will be so unimaginably large that I doubt life will be worth living for most people, even if Earth were somehow transformed back into an environmental paradise. And unlike with climate change, there is no conceivable plan to prevent any of this.
- nunez 4y ago
  Greg Daniel's "Upload" is a more modern take on Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" I think they did an excellent job of depicting this dystopia
- dasil003 4y ago
  Why will this not lead to revolution?
  - gremlinsinc 4y ago
    revolution matters very little when you have pitchforks and bow/arrows vs terminators, robo cops, and drones.
    - dasil003 4y ago
      Who's building these robo armies and maintaining the supply chain? All automated you say? Sorry, I think that's the pipe dream of privilege software engineers and armchair dystopians. In practice, there are too many opportunities for sabotage. Sure, post-singularity some Skynet scenario is possible, but to say that will happen in "a few decades" is a big bet I'll happily take the other side of.
  - goldenchrome 4y ago
    Did you just see what happened with Covid? The government, the same one who liberals thought was horribly oppressive for decades, restricted people’s ability to move, work, and regulate their own bodies and the people cheered. In some highly “advanced” countries like Australia they arrested you for leaving a small zone around your house, arrested you for leaving your home after certain hours, and arrested people who dissented in online comments. This was all applauded by the masses. All you have to do is use the media to invent something more scary than you, and then present yourself as the solution as long as the people do what you say. If this was a parent everyone would say they’re abusive, but as a government they’re leaders of science. It’s likely a reflection of the state of our collective parenting. This is the result of a decades long campaign by vested forces to demoralize the public by reducing the value of the family, and reducing the value of national identity until no one feels any allegiance to anyone but the state. Today, people will rat out their family to the state immediately. This is not how a strong society operates. The state should be afraid of the people, not vice versa.
SamPatt 4y ago
>Ehrlich, it's worth noting, is somewhat of an overpopulation and mass extinction icon. He published "The Population Bomb," one of the first modern books on the dangers of excess human development and population growth, back in 1968, and was considered an alarmist for the controversial predictions he made at the time. Although not all of his contentious forecasts came true, two big ones — that greenhouse gases would melt polar ice, and that humanity would overwhelm the wild — have undoubtedly since materialized. Polar ice isn't the highest recorded, but there's no shortage: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-ice-cover https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-ice-... "Humanity overwhelming the wild" is a subjective claim, but it looks like wealthier countries are actually getting greener and gaining in wild areas, so it's not about overpopulation but about reducing poverty, which humanity has made great strides in doing in recent generations. Ehrlich has been as wrong as anyone can be yet he still gets coverage at 90 years old.
westcort 4y ago
Unfortunately, whether we are on the business as usual path (with double the expected natural resources believed to be available in the 1970s) or the comprehensive technology scenario (it is too early to tell), we are in for some interesting times between now and 2050. The original simulation of the Club of Rome is remarkably close to observed ground truth (https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Earth4All_Deep_Dive_Herrington.pdf https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Earth4...). The full paper, by Gaya Herrington at KPMG, is here: https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yale-publication-1.pdf https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yale-pu... Collapse is one thing, but human extinction is another. We survived the ice age. Though we are unlikely to survive as long as rodents or crabs or sharks, the Copernican Principle says we have at least a few thousand years more to go as a species.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Survived two or three ice ages at least ... although the gene pool got pretty small at one point. On the plus side, all the easy fossil fuels won't be around any more. Life finds a way with DNA, so there might be more competition.
nunez 4y ago
I knew Erlich was involved in the first two sentences of this article He's a hack If Books Could Kill did a proper job roasting The Population Bomb
mannerheim 4y ago
Paul Ehrlich has predicted ten of the last zero apocalypses.

25 points by jdkee 4y ago

goldenchrome 4y ago

Paul Ehrlich is on a mission against humanity. This is nothing new from him.

belmont_sup 4y ago

No glimpse of hype from these folks. Wouldn’t it be better to always include a call to action in some form?

steve_adams_86 4y ago
I suppose if you’re convinced it’s too late and humanity doesn’t have the capacity to make necessary changes, a call to action would seem entirely pointless. It might not even cross your mind anymore.
- belmont_sup 4y ago
  That is a sad but possibly true take. Thanks for disregarding my typo.

pyuser583 4y ago

Calling Ehrlich an “icon” is a big cringey.

p-e-w 4y ago

I used to worry about climate change and the environment, but eventually I realized that technological change is far more scary. The tech that will emerge in the next few decades is going to reduce 99.9% of humanity to less than slaves. The gap between the powerful few and everyone else will be so unimaginably large that I doubt life will be worth living for most people, even if Earth were somehow transformed back into an environmental paradise. And unlike with climate change, there is no conceivable plan to prevent any of this.

nunez 4y ago
Greg Daniel's "Upload" is a more modern take on Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" I think they did an excellent job of depicting this dystopia
dasil003 4y ago
Why will this not lead to revolution?
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  revolution matters very little when you have pitchforks and bow/arrows vs terminators, robo cops, and drones.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Who's building these robo armies and maintaining the supply chain? All automated you say? Sorry, I think that's the pipe dream of privilege software engineers and armchair dystopians. In practice, there are too many opportunities for sabotage. Sure, post-singularity some Skynet scenario is possible, but to say that will happen in "a few decades" is a big bet I'll happily take the other side of.
- goldenchrome 4y ago
  Did you just see what happened with Covid? The government, the same one who liberals thought was horribly oppressive for decades, restricted people’s ability to move, work, and regulate their own bodies and the people cheered. In some highly “advanced” countries like Australia they arrested you for leaving a small zone around your house, arrested you for leaving your home after certain hours, and arrested people who dissented in online comments. This was all applauded by the masses. All you have to do is use the media to invent something more scary than you, and then present yourself as the solution as long as the people do what you say. If this was a parent everyone would say they’re abusive, but as a government they’re leaders of science. It’s likely a reflection of the state of our collective parenting. This is the result of a decades long campaign by vested forces to demoralize the public by reducing the value of the family, and reducing the value of national identity until no one feels any allegiance to anyone but the state. Today, people will rat out their family to the state immediately. This is not how a strong society operates. The state should be afraid of the people, not vice versa.

SamPatt 4y ago

>Ehrlich, it's worth noting, is somewhat of an overpopulation and mass extinction icon. He published "The Population Bomb," one of the first modern books on the dangers of excess human development and population growth, back in 1968, and was considered an alarmist for the controversial predictions he made at the time. Although not all of his contentious forecasts came true, two big ones — that greenhouse gases would melt polar ice, and that humanity would overwhelm the wild — have undoubtedly since materialized. Polar ice isn't the highest recorded, but there's no shortage: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-ice-cover https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-ice-... "Humanity overwhelming the wild" is a subjective claim, but it looks like wealthier countries are actually getting greener and gaining in wild areas, so it's not about overpopulation but about reducing poverty, which humanity has made great strides in doing in recent generations. Ehrlich has been as wrong as anyone can be yet he still gets coverage at 90 years old.

westcort 4y ago

Unfortunately, whether we are on the business as usual path (with double the expected natural resources believed to be available in the 1970s) or the comprehensive technology scenario (it is too early to tell), we are in for some interesting times between now and 2050. The original simulation of the Club of Rome is remarkably close to observed ground truth (https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Earth4All_Deep_Dive_Herrington.pdf https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Earth4...). The full paper, by Gaya Herrington at KPMG, is here: https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yale-publication-1.pdf https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yale-pu... Collapse is one thing, but human extinction is another. We survived the ice age. Though we are unlikely to survive as long as rodents or crabs or sharks, the Copernican Principle says we have at least a few thousand years more to go as a species.

8bitsrule 4y ago
Survived two or three ice ages at least ... although the gene pool got pretty small at one point. On the plus side, all the easy fossil fuels won't be around any more. Life finds a way with DNA, so there might be more competition.

nunez 4y ago

I knew Erlich was involved in the first two sentences of this article He's a hack If Books Could Kill did a proper job roasting The Population Bomb

mannerheim 4y ago

Paul Ehrlich has predicted ten of the last zero apocalypses.