3 ms·

I find the tone of your comment quite harsh in its choice of words. Just as you call the author a "doctrinaire doomer" for not showing huge optimism about the f

by sustn 3y ago

I find the tone of your comment quite harsh in its choice of words. Just as you call the author a "doctrinaire doomer" for not showing huge optimism about the future of our way of life and civilization, you could be labeled an "infantile dreamer" and "deluded denialist" of the very real and concerning findings about the climate change and planetary limits we will be faced with, and already are. But is such pointed labeling really justified? And more importantly, what good does that kind of barbed language do in a conversation. The blog post author seems to be concerned about the time and attention spent on something that is not likely (i.e. as his post states is off by several orders of magnitude at least) to realistically help with alleviating the urgent problems of planetary climate change and resource exhaustion. I agree with that concern. Faced with finite resources and a time limit, prioritization is essential to ensure the best chance of success. Technologies like fusion detract from finding and implementing more realistic approaches that could help with long-term civilizational sustainability.

api 3y ago
Might have been too harsh, but I've come to see doom and gloom or even just lots of pessimism as the other side of the climate change denial coin. It discourages us from actually trying to do anything, since it promotes the idea that the whole thing is just impossible and we should just live it up before we hit the Malthusian die-off. This point of view is extremely common in scientific and technical circles and it doesn't need to be promoted any more. I also really dislike back-to-hunter-gatherer primitivism. It's an ideology of extremely privileged people who have never actually lived "close to nature" a.k.a. poor. It's a reactionary fantasy of a lost golden age that never existed and belongs in the same category as American right-wingers glorifying the 1950s or neo-medievalists glorifying the 1500s. It's a brutally tough problem and it's likely that we already have dialed in a certain amount of climate change we will have to deal with, but it's not futile unless of course we just give up.
- acqq 3y ago
  > since it promotes the idea that the whole thing is just impossible and we should just live it up before we hit the Malthusian die-off. I haven't seen the author you criticize ever promoted either that or that he suggests that humanity as the whole should revert to "hunter-gatherer primitivism." I see now you are summarizing his writing just as "just lots of pessimism". But the numbers don't lie. Unless you directly depend some specific miracle (and you should state which that is supposed to be) the numbers, if extrapolated assuming continuous growth, result in resource exhaustion. Continuous growth is provably impossible without some miracle involved. And I guess the above observation you translate to "the whole thing is just impossible"? Would you define your "whole thing" as the "infinite growth and scientists will give us a miracle allowing that"? If not, what are you talking about then? In the words of Tom Murphy, from the article: "The physical reality is that we are living in an ecologically, evolutionarily untested paradigm that is very recent (on relevant timescales) and powered by patently unsustainable practices and resource use. The cost is rapid ecological degradation and global disruption to the biosphere. It seems quite clear that the track we are on does not lead to the stars, but to ignominious self-termination of this whacky mode called modernity."
  - acqq 3y ago
    Book (PDF) Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet 2021 Murphy, Thomas W, Jr https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m https://doi.org/10.21221/S2978-0-578-86717-5 https://doi.org/10.21221/S2978-0-578-86717-5

by sustn 3y ago

api 3y ago

Might have been too harsh, but I've come to see doom and gloom or even just lots of pessimism as the other side of the climate change denial coin. It discourages us from actually trying to do anything, since it promotes the idea that the whole thing is just impossible and we should just live it up before we hit the Malthusian die-off. This point of view is extremely common in scientific and technical circles and it doesn't need to be promoted any more. I also really dislike back-to-hunter-gatherer primitivism. It's an ideology of extremely privileged people who have never actually lived "close to nature" a.k.a. poor. It's a reactionary fantasy of a lost golden age that never existed and belongs in the same category as American right-wingers glorifying the 1950s or neo-medievalists glorifying the 1500s. It's a brutally tough problem and it's likely that we already have dialed in a certain amount of climate change we will have to deal with, but it's not futile unless of course we just give up.

acqq 3y ago
> since it promotes the idea that the whole thing is just impossible and we should just live it up before we hit the Malthusian die-off. I haven't seen the author you criticize ever promoted either that or that he suggests that humanity as the whole should revert to "hunter-gatherer primitivism." I see now you are summarizing his writing just as "just lots of pessimism". But the numbers don't lie. Unless you directly depend some specific miracle (and you should state which that is supposed to be) the numbers, if extrapolated assuming continuous growth, result in resource exhaustion. Continuous growth is provably impossible without some miracle involved. And I guess the above observation you translate to "the whole thing is just impossible"? Would you define your "whole thing" as the "infinite growth and scientists will give us a miracle allowing that"? If not, what are you talking about then? In the words of Tom Murphy, from the article: "The physical reality is that we are living in an ecologically, evolutionarily untested paradigm that is very recent (on relevant timescales) and powered by patently unsustainable practices and resource use. The cost is rapid ecological degradation and global disruption to the biosphere. It seems quite clear that the track we are on does not lead to the stars, but to ignominious self-termination of this whacky mode called modernity."
- acqq 3y ago
  Book (PDF) Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet 2021 Murphy, Thomas W, Jr https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m https://doi.org/10.21221/S2978-0-578-86717-5 https://doi.org/10.21221/S2978-0-578-86717-5