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And still others because they've started looking at the pieces of how our global society functions as a system and realized that it's very possible we have push

And still others because they've started looking at the pieces of how our global society functions as a system and realized that it's very possible we have pushed our environment beyond it's ability to support us. Leading ultimately to overshoot which leads to collapse.

jjoonathan 3y ago
Maybe, but they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. Doomerism has planet-sized infomercial hands. There is a long and embarassing trail of false apocalypses predicted from extrapolations + assumptions of helplessness, often made by otherwise intelligent and scientifically inclined people. We were all going to starve, but then Haber figured out how to chemically fix Nitrogen. Nuclear war was going to end the world, but then MAD actually worked. The ozone hole was going to cook the plant life, but then we cleaned up our refrigerants. We were going to run out of oil by 2010, but then we found more. Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move. You don't have a choice in the matter, and it's easy to fixate on this and imagine yourself trapped, but you are "trapped" with one hell of a fighting chance so the truth is you just don't know.
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
  > they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on these topics are quite well aware. The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and overcome" has been based on two major things: - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability - More recent: abundant fossil fuels Malthus was wrong because he failed to predict the Haber process. But currently the Haber process relies heavily on fossil fuels. We didn't produce astoundingly more food per acre then ever before in history because we are incredibly smart, but because we had ready access to hydrocarbons. The same logic follows for nearly all great inventions of recent eras > Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move. I see this comment all the time but it's a very odd one. As far as species go humans are very, very young and survived very little, just about 300,000 years. Additionally, like I said, we've only existed as a species during one of the most stable climates in the history of the planet. One final point on the "people always think the world is ending!" rhetoric. We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years. Let's say, for argument, that humans were wiped out in the next 100 years. Alien scientists visiting would see people thinking about the end times in the last 1/300,000 of the species' existence to be fairly prescient, even if they were off by several of their own species lifetimes. On top of that the writing on this topic is not without merit historically. Revelations was written during the Siege of Jerusalem, when things were collapsing for the world of the author. Most medieval apocalyptic literature was written or based on the black death which wiped out between 30-50 percent of Europe. Hardly irrational beliefs that the world is ending based solely on existential anxiety. There's also an obvious logical fallacy in all this thinking. Most of the time when people look up webMD they think they have cancer, and they don't most of the time. But it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer no matter how strong the evidence.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    My thesis was: > the truth is you just don't know You disproved: > it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer Good job, you really pwned that straw man. Also, I want to preserve this one for posterity, because I'm pretty sure it's hilariously wrong but I have better things to do than dig through the literature right now: > We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years.
  - munificent 3y ago
    > - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability Homo sapiens survived the transition from the last ice age to today's climate.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      I may be misremembering my ancient history here but didn’t Homo Sapiens arguably almost go extinct during the last ice age? As a related digression I think what people just keep forgetting about here isn’t like, we’ll survive. It’s we have all this nice stuff like avocados, grapes, heart surgery, and MacBook Pros, elephants, winter sports, houses, etc. and it sure would be nice to not lose that stuff for no good reason only to say “we’ll see we didn’t go extinct it wasn’t that bad”. The apparently abrupt changes the unnecessary lives lost, and what could be damaged or lost forever are what’s of concern. Less so just survivability.
      - munificent 3y ago
        I agree 100% that we should do everything in our power to save as many people and as much technology as we can as we go through climate change. My point was just that claims that the entire species is going to go extinct are unlikely and, worse, counter-productive. The last thing we need is fatalism and people giving up hope.
        ericmay 3y ago
        I agree with you - I’m sorry I didn’t gleam your original intent from the previous post. Fatalism and nihilism are mind viruses.
- nforgerit 3y ago
  Hm, I do get why people trying to be optimistic always bring up examples from the past to extrapolate that "humanity will always find solutions". What I don't get is that the same people simply overlook that we're not talking about single symptoms with a simple cause but about a root cause (emitting co2) which is deeply integrated into all our actions and economies and humanity is struggling dealing with that for at least a couple of decades. We're talking about bringing half a dozen to multiple dozens of networks out of balance that we only halfway understand.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Consuming food wasn't deeply integrated into all our actions and economies? Oil? > extrapolate that "humanity will always find solutions" Good thing I didn't do that! Doomers, however, do extrapolate failure. They walk far out on a branch and forget they are carrying the burden of proof. That's my entire point.
    - nforgerit 3y ago
      Well climate scientists have collected more proof than ever in the last 2 decades to back the models and predictions. What we see is _measured_, not just opinion. And if you happen to read a bit about how biological systems, the weather systems, our economical systems, food supply et al. work together while keeping in mind that IPCC reports are _conservative_ about their predictions (meaning they rather underestimate than overestimate), you should really deeply be worried about the near-future outcome of the ongoings. Just because we successfully hacked our nutrition system a 100ys ago does not mean that we'll be able to cope with how consumerism and agricultural intensification afterwards affects us with dozens of new problems. At some point it just gets too expensive and/or too complex for humans to solve.
- smolder 3y ago
  You can't reason how the end of humanity is going to happen based on priors, because it's never happened. Whenever it happens, (and it will definitely happen,) it will be unprecedented. It also won't matter how many times the (doomer) boy has cried wolf and been wrong.

jjoonathan 3y ago

Maybe, but they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. Doomerism has planet-sized infomercial hands. There is a long and embarassing trail of false apocalypses predicted from extrapolations + assumptions of helplessness, often made by otherwise intelligent and scientifically inclined people. We were all going to starve, but then Haber figured out how to chemically fix Nitrogen. Nuclear war was going to end the world, but then MAD actually worked. The ozone hole was going to cook the plant life, but then we cleaned up our refrigerants. We were going to run out of oil by 2010, but then we found more. Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move. You don't have a choice in the matter, and it's easy to fixate on this and imagine yourself trapped, but you are "trapped" with one hell of a fighting chance so the truth is you just don't know.

PheonixPharts 3y ago
> they never seem to weigh any of the challenges against humanity's staggering ability to adapt and overcome. I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on these topics are quite well aware. The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and overcome" has been based on two major things: - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability - More recent: abundant fossil fuels Malthus was wrong because he failed to predict the Haber process. But currently the Haber process relies heavily on fossil fuels. We didn't produce astoundingly more food per acre then ever before in history because we are incredibly smart, but because we had ready access to hydrocarbons. The same logic follows for nearly all great inventions of recent eras > Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move. I see this comment all the time but it's a very odd one. As far as species go humans are very, very young and survived very little, just about 300,000 years. Additionally, like I said, we've only existed as a species during one of the most stable climates in the history of the planet. One final point on the "people always think the world is ending!" rhetoric. We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years. Let's say, for argument, that humans were wiped out in the next 100 years. Alien scientists visiting would see people thinking about the end times in the last 1/300,000 of the species' existence to be fairly prescient, even if they were off by several of their own species lifetimes. On top of that the writing on this topic is not without merit historically. Revelations was written during the Siege of Jerusalem, when things were collapsing for the world of the author. Most medieval apocalyptic literature was written or based on the black death which wiped out between 30-50 percent of Europe. Hardly irrational beliefs that the world is ending based solely on existential anxiety. There's also an obvious logical fallacy in all this thinking. Most of the time when people look up webMD they think they have cancer, and they don't most of the time. But it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer no matter how strong the evidence.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  My thesis was: > the truth is you just don't know You disproved: > it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer Good job, you really pwned that straw man. Also, I want to preserve this one for posterity, because I'm pretty sure it's hilariously wrong but I have better things to do than dig through the literature right now: > We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years.
- munificent 3y ago
  > - Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability Homo sapiens survived the transition from the last ice age to today's climate.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    I may be misremembering my ancient history here but didn’t Homo Sapiens arguably almost go extinct during the last ice age? As a related digression I think what people just keep forgetting about here isn’t like, we’ll survive. It’s we have all this nice stuff like avocados, grapes, heart surgery, and MacBook Pros, elephants, winter sports, houses, etc. and it sure would be nice to not lose that stuff for no good reason only to say “we’ll see we didn’t go extinct it wasn’t that bad”. The apparently abrupt changes the unnecessary lives lost, and what could be damaged or lost forever are what’s of concern. Less so just survivability.
    - munificent 3y ago
      I agree 100% that we should do everything in our power to save as many people and as much technology as we can as we go through climate change. My point was just that claims that the entire species is going to go extinct are unlikely and, worse, counter-productive. The last thing we need is fatalism and people giving up hope.
      - ericmay 3y ago
        I agree with you - I’m sorry I didn’t gleam your original intent from the previous post. Fatalism and nihilism are mind viruses.
nforgerit 3y ago
Hm, I do get why people trying to be optimistic always bring up examples from the past to extrapolate that "humanity will always find solutions". What I don't get is that the same people simply overlook that we're not talking about single symptoms with a simple cause but about a root cause (emitting co2) which is deeply integrated into all our actions and economies and humanity is struggling dealing with that for at least a couple of decades. We're talking about bringing half a dozen to multiple dozens of networks out of balance that we only halfway understand.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Consuming food wasn't deeply integrated into all our actions and economies? Oil? > extrapolate that "humanity will always find solutions" Good thing I didn't do that! Doomers, however, do extrapolate failure. They walk far out on a branch and forget they are carrying the burden of proof. That's my entire point.
  - nforgerit 3y ago
    Well climate scientists have collected more proof than ever in the last 2 decades to back the models and predictions. What we see is _measured_, not just opinion. And if you happen to read a bit about how biological systems, the weather systems, our economical systems, food supply et al. work together while keeping in mind that IPCC reports are _conservative_ about their predictions (meaning they rather underestimate than overestimate), you should really deeply be worried about the near-future outcome of the ongoings. Just because we successfully hacked our nutrition system a 100ys ago does not mean that we'll be able to cope with how consumerism and agricultural intensification afterwards affects us with dozens of new problems. At some point it just gets too expensive and/or too complex for humans to solve.
smolder 3y ago
You can't reason how the end of humanity is going to happen based on priors, because it's never happened. Whenever it happens, (and it will definitely happen,) it will be unprecedented. It also won't matter how many times the (doomer) boy has cried wolf and been wrong.