4 ms·

There's many reasons to believe that the future is going to be as unrecognizably (mostly) better to us as someone who was born in the 1940s to today. In the 19

There's many reasons to believe that the future is going to be as unrecognizably (mostly) better to us as someone who was born in the 1940s to today. In the 1940s - cities smelled like sh!t, were so polluted you almost never wanted to go outside, healthcare was still largely snake oil, the average person was still working 10 hours a day 6 days week, human rights outside of straight white christian men were questionable, AND we were in our second world war in 20 years - at the advent of the nuclear bomb. Look at where we are now. If you don't see progress, and if you can't see how people back then thought the world was surely coming to an end, and you think it's worse now, I'm honestly amazed. At no point in time, was progress a up and to the right with no impediments. Every advance we've had, people have worked HARD for. So thank your lucky stars so many people get up every day and keep working for it. Because it isn't easy. But it's what we do. Always have. Always will. Eventually, we will reach the physical limits of how good technology can get. But we are laughably far away from that point in so many major aspects of life, that we've got a long way to go before the 10 & 20 year future might not be better.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago
That's all well and good, but even if progress continues as you say, you have to worry about powerful people directing that progress ineptly. As we get more advanced, room for mistakes shrinks and we get closer to a great filter situation.
jchonphoenix 3y ago
SF still smells
- geodel 3y ago
  You can't really compare past nasty smell with premium high tech NextGen® smelly shit of today.
tarsinge 3y ago
The catch is it’s not really progress if it’s not sustainable. It’s like living on debt, it ends up in bankruptcy. Are we really correctly investing the ecological debt for a sustainable better future, or are we just burning through it for short term "progress" and leaving a ruined earth after? > But it's what we do. Always have. Always will. You can’t extrapolate from the past because never before in history we had the capacity to have impacts at that scale (e.g. atomic bomb). We are in uncharted territories.
- geodel 3y ago
  Exactly right. Even that verified improvement is limited to very small part of the world
- hcurtiss 3y ago
  But depending on how you define it, our species has never been "sustainable." The very first house clobbered the meadow and mice beneath it, and that one meadow was forever "lost." Yet, we keep finding resources, and alternatives to those resources, and more efficient means of using both. We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Ehrlich famously lost his bet, and dramatically so! On every objective measure, we live in the very best moment in the history of humanity, and while there will be ups and downs, there is every reason to believe that will be just as true ten years from now and a hundred years from now. I'm always amused by the doomsaying Malthusians. They're always so confidently wrong.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    The difference here is that for the first time ever we are causing ecological damage on a _global_, rather than local scale. If you cut down a few trees to build a house then 50 years later the forest will reclaim the land. If you instead cut down the entire forest then that can't happen. >We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Multiple civilisations in the past have collapsed at least in part due to resource shortages. Again though, because none of these civilisations were _global_ the collapse was local and could be recovered from using outside resources.
    - hcurtiss 3y ago
      And, barring an eco-religious return to the dark ages, we will soon be an interplanetary species. That sounds fantastic now, but so also did AI fifty years ago. And the moon fifty years before that.
      - 3y ago
geodel 3y ago
Most of it is true. But Always have. Always will. seems naive to me. This improvement from 40's is very specific phenomenon in rich western countries. A lot of places I lived in my 3rd world country have become even more hellish shit-hole then they were like 30 years back. More and more technological solution I see nowadays are the solution to problems technology created in first place.
- hcurtiss 3y ago
  What on earth are you talking about? More people have been pulled out of poverty in the last thirty years than ever in the history of humanity! https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end-of-poverty https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end...
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> Look at where we are now. In the middle of an environmental crisis? Are we not going to factor that outcome into our measure of progress?
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  For at least the past 3500 years we've always been in the middle of an environmental crisis. Some of them have decimated populations. Climate change is forecasted to kill 0.1% of the population per year. In a population of 8 billion that's a massive number, but compared relatively to some previous environmental crises that's tiny.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    0.1% of the population on average, but concentrated in particular areas that percentage can go much higher. It's not as if those deaths will be spread out nicely across the world.
AlbertCory 3y ago
Arguments like "look how much progress we've made in other areas!" are just Survivor Bias. You have to prove the analogy, not just state it.
jvm___ 3y ago
Half the houses in the USA in 1940 didn't have indoor plumbing. They didn't ask in previous censuses, probably because it wasn't a relevant question which means 50% in 1940 was a climbing number and everything below that was less than 50. "Plumbing Facilities In 1990, only 1 percent of our homes lacked complete plumbing facilities. But, things were much different in 1940, when nearly half lacked complete plumbing. Then, about ten States had rates approaching or exceeding 70 percent. In succeeding decades, the proportion of homes lacking complete plumbing dropped dramatically, falling to about one-third in 1950 and one- sixth in 1960. It is interesting to note the States with the lowest percent- age of such homes in 1940 were higher than Alaska, which topped the 1990 list."

ifyoubuildit 3y ago

That's all well and good, but even if progress continues as you say, you have to worry about powerful people directing that progress ineptly. As we get more advanced, room for mistakes shrinks and we get closer to a great filter situation.

jchonphoenix 3y ago

SF still smells

geodel 3y ago
You can't really compare past nasty smell with premium high tech NextGen® smelly shit of today.

tarsinge 3y ago

The catch is it’s not really progress if it’s not sustainable. It’s like living on debt, it ends up in bankruptcy. Are we really correctly investing the ecological debt for a sustainable better future, or are we just burning through it for short term "progress" and leaving a ruined earth after? > But it's what we do. Always have. Always will. You can’t extrapolate from the past because never before in history we had the capacity to have impacts at that scale (e.g. atomic bomb). We are in uncharted territories.

geodel 3y ago
Exactly right. Even that verified improvement is limited to very small part of the world
hcurtiss 3y ago
But depending on how you define it, our species has never been "sustainable." The very first house clobbered the meadow and mice beneath it, and that one meadow was forever "lost." Yet, we keep finding resources, and alternatives to those resources, and more efficient means of using both. We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Ehrlich famously lost his bet, and dramatically so! On every objective measure, we live in the very best moment in the history of humanity, and while there will be ups and downs, there is every reason to believe that will be just as true ten years from now and a hundred years from now. I'm always amused by the doomsaying Malthusians. They're always so confidently wrong.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  The difference here is that for the first time ever we are causing ecological damage on a _global_, rather than local scale. If you cut down a few trees to build a house then 50 years later the forest will reclaim the land. If you instead cut down the entire forest then that can't happen. >We have been using nonrenewable resources for hundreds (tens of thousands?) of years, and yet we keep finding more. Multiple civilisations in the past have collapsed at least in part due to resource shortages. Again though, because none of these civilisations were _global_ the collapse was local and could be recovered from using outside resources.
  - hcurtiss 3y ago
    And, barring an eco-religious return to the dark ages, we will soon be an interplanetary species. That sounds fantastic now, but so also did AI fifty years ago. And the moon fifty years before that.
    - 3y ago

geodel 3y ago

Most of it is true. But Always have. Always will. seems naive to me. This improvement from 40's is very specific phenomenon in rich western countries. A lot of places I lived in my 3rd world country have become even more hellish shit-hole then they were like 30 years back. More and more technological solution I see nowadays are the solution to problems technology created in first place.

hcurtiss 3y ago
What on earth are you talking about? More people have been pulled out of poverty in the last thirty years than ever in the history of humanity! https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end-of-poverty https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end...

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> Look at where we are now. In the middle of an environmental crisis? Are we not going to factor that outcome into our measure of progress?

bryanlarsen 3y ago
For at least the past 3500 years we've always been in the middle of an environmental crisis. Some of them have decimated populations. Climate change is forecasted to kill 0.1% of the population per year. In a population of 8 billion that's a massive number, but compared relatively to some previous environmental crises that's tiny.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  0.1% of the population on average, but concentrated in particular areas that percentage can go much higher. It's not as if those deaths will be spread out nicely across the world.

AlbertCory 3y ago

Arguments like "look how much progress we've made in other areas!" are just Survivor Bias. You have to prove the analogy, not just state it.

jvm___ 3y ago

Half the houses in the USA in 1940 didn't have indoor plumbing. They didn't ask in previous censuses, probably because it wasn't a relevant question which means 50% in 1940 was a climbing number and everything below that was less than 50. "Plumbing Facilities In 1990, only 1 percent of our homes lacked complete plumbing facilities. But, things were much different in 1940, when nearly half lacked complete plumbing. Then, about ten States had rates approaching or exceeding 70 percent. In succeeding decades, the proportion of homes lacking complete plumbing dropped dramatically, falling to about one-third in 1950 and one- sixth in 1960. It is interesting to note the States with the lowest percent- age of such homes in 1940 were higher than Alaska, which topped the 1990 list."