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Should we tell people it's too late to save civilization?
- juujian 3y agoI see this idea sometimes in the context of climate change. It's fundamentally flawed. Collapse is not binary, it's not collapse or no collapse. If we miss one climate goal, then the next goal comes up. If we cannot limit warming to 2°C (and it doesn't look like we will)... Well, 2.5°C is more than a magnitude worse than that. Those who survive 2°C warming would be glad that it's not 2.5°C. It's not like a test where you can say "screw this, I'm gonna fail anyways."
- yreg 3y agoSurely at some point it is binary.
- dougmwne 3y agoTotal human extinction. That’s how you break it down to a binary outcome. There are so many levels of survival and civilization above that.
- yreg 3y agoNot sure why I'm downvoted. Who the hell disagrees that even a total extinction isn't a 'civilization collapse'.
- ethbr1 3y agoAt the point that energy and food production break down, in their ability to carry world population. You can't produce energy without energy. And you can't produce food without energy and soil.
- orf 3y agoBy this logic a car crash isn’t binary either, because the car could have always set on fire, or exploded, or fallen into a spontaneous black hole etc. It’s still a car crash regardless of the magnitude, and a collapse is still a collapse if it’s a small or a large one.
- joefourier 3y agoWell… a car crash is absolutely not binary. There’s a huge spectrum between a fender bender at low speed and a deadly multi-vehicle pile up on the motorway. And there’s a huge spectrum of injuries from whiplash, fractures, loss of limbs, and death. You absolutely can’t treat all car crashes as equal, same way you can’t treat all collapse as equal. The Soviet Union collapsed for instance, and the 90s were absolutely a struggle, but it didn’t mean all Russians regressed to subsistence agriculture and there was eventually a recovery. Its member states are still around, with some doing better than others (the Baltic states for instance).
- ajross 3y ago> By this logic a car crash isn’t binary either Uh... yes? Would you rather take a 50mph head on collision driving a 2023 Outback or a 1930 Model A? The point is that car crashes are indeed dangerous, and we've spent a century of engineering making them significantly (vastly, really) less so. And that's a good thing to be celebrated, and not rejected just because we don't want to get into crashes in the first place. Climate change mitigation follows the same ethical principles.
- orf 3y agoNo idea, I don't drive. But both of those are a crash, regardless of the speed or model.
- ajross 3y agoThen let me be clearer: one is a routine, eminently survivable collisoin that happens dozens of times every day, the other is a certain death sentence. They are different, and they are different because smart people cared to fix a problem they saw instead of just throwing up their hands in despair. To wit: if you genuinely care about this stuff, get off your ass and help instead of whining on the internet.
- yreg 3y agoBoth of the situations are car crashes. What are you even claiming?
- vitehozonage 3y agoIt is possible that some sort of runaway effect can happen after a tipping point is reached. Many scenarios lead to that. e.g. - AI could have a singularity. - Ice reflects heat, so there can be a vicious circle as ice melts. - Ocean currents could suddenly shift into a different pattern. - Any sort of stressor, like global food shortage, can lead to instability and thus nuclear world war over resources - A contagious disease could cause infertility/death globally. Or, say, if the covid vaccine or microplastics had an unexpected delayed effect after a few years We tempt all these risks more and more as we continue living unsustainably
- recursivedoubts 3y agothings are never as good as people say they are but things are also never as bad as people say they are
- fzeroracer 3y agoA very weird piece of writing that's trying to rehabilitate 'climate doomers' a bit, which ignores a bit of a key fact that a lot of climate doomers actually tend to be the rich and wealthy individuals that are causing the problems in the first place. Because they can afford to deal with the consequences of their actions, so they go full speed on doing whatever they can. Both doomers and denialists tend to run the show, so to speak. I don't personally buy it because there's always going to be someone claiming the collapse of civilization is nigh. During the shortages of food during COVID I saw channels I normally respected swerve a bit into prepperism or attempts to grow natural food in case of food chain collapse. I do believe our climate situation is incredibly dire and we will need to use increasingly extreme measures to stop it. Executives need to start being punished properly for their extreme maleficence and disregard of public health, companies will need to face reckonings for hiding their crimes and everyone involved at the time charged. And we will also need to accept that infinite growth and the way we're growing isn't sustainable. But I think it's a problem that can be solved.
- FredPret 3y agoWhy do companies need to be punished? They simply respond to what the public demands. When the public demands clean tech, or the clean option becomes the cheaper one, you’ll see lightning-quick change.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spacecadet 3y agoBusinesses, execs, and the wealthy at large, all need to be punished heavily. There is still way too much glad handing and brown nosing happening... and Im sorry but all of the "longevity" and "mars" talk is for the wealthy too. Im pretty sure everyone "at the top" thinks two things: 1. It wont happen in our time. 2. Some rich ass hole will solve the problem for us (the rich). But, as history shows, yeah right! incoming barbarians at the enclave gates...
- jonnycomputer 3y agocould be written by a llm. gave me that vibe.
- dsq 3y agoIt seems the logic is that if people think all is lost, they won't try to stop it. This seemd to me a rational decision. If all is indeed lost (a binary yesno) then why should people take on hardship, give up dignity and live in poverty?
- dwighttk 3y agoProbably too late but people in power gotta stop lying to people "for their own good."
- shadowgovt 3y agoYep. This is why climate denialism and climate doomerism go hand in glove. If it's all doomed, might as well grab as much as you can while it's here. They are both philosophies that say nothing can change for the better.
- dsq 3y agoWell, they are both extreme views, and so end up on the same place, much like extreme left and right philosophies. The sane answer, of course, is that the situation is not binary. Sanity is a quuckly depleting resource.
- jonnycomputer 3y agothis is indeed the logic.
- dsq 3y agoLogic is not sanity, of course, and the situation is not binary.
- jonnycomputer 3y agonicely said
- spicyusername 3y agoThe content you would expect from a domain called "collapse musings". Life, and civilization, will continue to go on, whether people like it or not.
- smolder 3y ago> Life, and civilization, will continue to go on, This is less realistic than a lot of doomerism. I'm not really scared of every last human dying off, I'm worried about a world where nearly everyone would rather be dead because of war and starvation and disease. Life on earth is likely to exist for a very long time, even if we do our worst, but there are known risks and unknown risks that might make life on earth hell, even within the lifetimes of people alive today.
- bee_rider 3y agoI don’t think “civilization will go on” should be interpreted as a message that everything will be fine and the future is necessarily bright. I mean if you are worried about war, then you aren’t worried about civilization totally collapsing, because some level of civilization is necessary to execute wars, right?
- smolder 3y agoWar is both a product of civilization and capable of bringing about the end of civilization.
- m0llusk 3y agoAll civilizations collapse. It's a feature, not a bug.
- hulitu 3y ago> Should We Tell People It's Too Late to Save Civilization? What civilization ? They are all savages. /s
- ianai 3y agoI thought you were going to point out that the world isn’t one singular civilization. Each country has its own unique civilization unto itself (both better and worse). The international stuff somewhat makes this feel redundant, but the differences are clearly there and best off when mutually respected. Suggesting civilization collapse is mistaking complexity for impossibility. Edit-this feels like the kids on voice chat chanting “turtle! Turtle!!” When a player is having a hard game and the bullies want that player to quit. Except humanity is far too big and far too disparate and far too resourceful to decide on collapse.
- asystole 3y agoThe "collapse of civilization" has been predicted many times over and we're still here.
- reqo 3y agoIt is the first time, to my knowledge, that there is strong evidence that indicates it could actually happen! (The evidence being the rapidly changing climate and our inability to adapt quickly enough)
- JackFr 3y agoThe Plague of Justinian killed between 40-60% of the eastern Roman Empire in a decade. Pretty sure that disrupted some supply chains and yet humanity and civilization persevered. TFA is simply a laundry list of early 21st century faddish conceits to describe the eternal brokenness of man. I liked it better when it was called it original sin. “Micro plastics”, “forever chemicals”, etc. aren’t evidence or argument, they’re an incantation repeated as part of a cultural rite.
- cynicalsecurity 3y agoPanic and hysteria can cause even more serious damage.
- asystole 3y agoIt's different this time, you swear!
- mrcwinn 3y agoThis is not a well-reasoned essay. If we had 400 years to solve a waste heat issue, could we? I’ll continue to place bets on humanity.
- ajuc 3y agoIt assumes 2.3% yearly exponential growth of energy consumption for 400 years while we know our population already passed peak growth and peak children number and will start to decrease in this century. It's just dumb.
- AeiumNE 3y agoEconomic value isn't the sum of energy spent. If increasing efficiency can increase the value of a set amount of energy, it can also increase the value of a decreasing amount of energy.
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- NotSuspicious 3y agoFrom what I've seen, hundreds of millions of deaths are priced in. But that's nowhere close to 8 billion. Humanity will survive. It's just going to be unpleasant.
- drivingmenuts 3y agoSure - when you have something specific to tell them. Otherwise, it's causing needless worry. And you will lessen the impact of the message.
- RGamma 3y agoGPT6 please save us.
- Narciss 3y agoI read this as GTA6...
- Sunhold 3y agoThis guy seems to think every problem means civilization is going to collapse. Microplastics cause cancer, therefore civilization is doomed. Meanwhile back in reality, cancer mortality has been decreasing for decades, and the rate of decrease is speeding up.[1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/topics/cancer-deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/topics/cancer-deaths.htm
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoThe concern about microplastics is that they are literally everywhere and we're not really sure what their effect will be, but so far, they seem to disrupt living organisms. It's best to not think of societal collapse just in terms of things that directly affect humans, but also all the biological systems (e.g. agriculture) that we rely on.
- asadotzler 3y agoAnd we've had these microplastics in the system in the 1950s. If there was some civilization threatening content in microplastics, we'd know having several generations born and raised in that environment.
- fsloth 3y agoThis is quite bonkers. Civilization may or may not collapse but stating such a thing as necessary future scenario puts this into the ’crank’ category. Especially the end ” enjoy the time we have left.” - ending of civilization does not mean end of individual human life. This makes it sound like everyone would die. Yes, the environment needs to be cherished and repaired. Sophist alarmism and doomerism indeed is not the way to go IMO.
- mypastself 3y agoIs anyone else recently getting the idea that these doomers are wishing for a collapse, same as preppers, only on the other side of the political spectrum? I’m not qualified to speculate on the psychological underpinnings of such behavior, but I do feel there is a sense of yearning in these kinds of “if not climate change, then pollution, or A.I., etc.” articles.
- jl6 3y agoThey have invested so much of their time and personality into doomism that they’re willing to work for doom just so they can say they were right.
- losteric 3y ago"wish" in what sense? Like wishing to get in to Hogwarts? Or like how some cancer patients wish for their end?
- wizerdrobe 3y agoThey want to smugly prove their others that I’m right. Seems a commonality among any kind of end-of-times cultists, they’ll try to befriend you and woo you into being on their side. That their bunker was a sane investment, that you should sell all your assets and invest in silver or sheep or small arms. That their calculations are a bit off, that it’ll actually be next Fall not this Spring. But, above all else, that I’m right and you can be too if you just believe like I do. Except I don’t believe, I know. Oh, you won’t know like I know? You’re just another sheep, another one of them.
- formlessentity 3y agoThe bunker may not pay out like call options but still a reasonable investment, especially if it has a bowling alley. Yes they’re probably trying to sell you gold bars for a 20% cut. But they’re no less guilty than the realtor trying to sell you a high rise condo with a cold bath.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
- bee_rider 3y agoFor such a confident article, you’d think they’d make some concrete connections between the processes they describe and the actual outcome of collapsing civilization. Instead they are just gesturing vaguely at bad things and claiming that will collapse civilization. I guess this is written for people who already are convinced civilization will collapse, so they don’t need to be convinced. But then, why spend the first 75% of the article or so listing these processes? Just to pick one at random: > Secondly, even if we found an infinite source of clean energy, endless growth would still be impossible. If energy usage were to keep growing at 2.3% per year — as it has for many decades — in 400 years, the oceans would be boiling just from the waste heat. The laws of physics are a bitch. This is some really weak stuff. Why must energy usage keep growing by 2.3% per year. Will civilization collapse if it doesn’t, is that the link? My conclusion here is that we need to change our growth model to not always need more energy, although this is something I already believed, and putting the problem out at 400 years seems to make it, if anything, less urgent (I think, though, it is still quite urgent). Let’s go back a bit, maybe the killer problem actually comes from the “first” to this “second,” and this paragraph was just added as frosting on the cake or something (although if that is the case, seems like poor editing). . > First of all, there is no such thing as a green economy. To create renewables and electric vehicles, we have to destroy ecosystems so we can mine rare-earth metals. And to produce the plastic, steel, cement, and other components that go into solar panels and wind turbines, we need oil. There’s nothing green about any of this. Nope, guess not. The only claim here is that some ecosystems will have to be destroyed. This is of course bad, and I hope we mitigate it to the fullest extent possible! But we’ve already destroyed lots of ecosystems, we will destroy more. Maybe the green economy has some imperfect parts, but local devastation doesn’t threaten civilization. I don’t think it is worth it to dissect the article paragraph fully at this point. I think this person is just looking for reasons to be hopeless.
- formlessentity 3y agoSeems to me waste heat won’t be as big of a problem as waste cooling. The sun is almost pure heat for us right now. By capturing more of that energy with photovoltaics and converting it to, say, plastic, we are cooling the planet. Neither one is a problem IMO because the earth isn’t a fragile place, it operates at temperature swings of over a hundred degrees F, at least 30 degrees in a nice temperature zone where various plant species thrive.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoCivilization isn't definitely going to collapse in the near future. And no, we shouldn't tell people it is, even if it were highly probable, for the simple reason that it would likely make the remaining time people have immeasurably worse. And calling your entire blog 'collapse musings' suggests 100% crankdom. Frankly, this is dumb.
- yownie 3y agoglad someone else got here before me to say the same.
- wozniacki 3y agoAre you going to just issue a proclamation without so much as corroborate it with 1/20th the amount of legitimate facts that article supports its case with? And we should take you at your word because youre more pedigreed? or enjoy more clout in the HN-sphere? Is that it? Is that what this site has come down to? Ha!
- Vektorceraptor 3y agoI think that people should have the right to express themselves subjectively about something without having to submit a paper. Facts aren't the only thing people talk about, and the feeling that the article might suggest cannot be forced or denied by them.
- malux85 3y agoThey should have the right to express themselves freely but people need to understand that the bar to do so is so much lower than “submitting a paper” as you say. Therefore any uninformed, emotional crackpot can submit a rant with no proof, no evidence, no citations, with no credentials so it’s not even an appeal to authority, at best it’s an appeal to emotion and or intellectual laziness. I grant you the freedom to express yourself freely, and in return you grant me the freedom to call your low-effort rant garbage. Its a two way street.
- bell-cot 3y agoFWIW, the comparison with the doctor telling a patient of their fatal condition is disingenuous. For all but a tiny fraction of cancers, oncologists have a very large n, to speak with the near-certainty of experience. Vs. our n is zero for the collapse of global technological civilizations. I do agree that the climate-pessimism side of the Culture Wars seems pretty d*mn oblivious to basic psychology and sociology. Almost as if they're far more interested in scoring juvenile "I'm Right!" points than they are in preventing catastrophe... (Anybody else notice that the article's "ruins of abandoned & overgrown city" artwork shows all the glass windows intact?)
- Vektorceraptor 3y agoI agree on the sentiment - We live beyond our means and that doesn't even make sense. But I find the prediction that we would perish in the near future neither well founded nor sensible. The motivation behind it is also bizarre: so that we can make our peace. To put it polemically: When will we go down so that I can tell my mom? And if we're certain to perish, then why bother with suffering and morality? If death is so certain, who would want to suffer again before it? Is it a true belief that those who have made peace with life suddenly become 'moral'? I'm saying this, because I think some people need the apocalypse to feel unity and belonging. They seem to have such a strong desire for community and unity that they would summon hell and devils just to bring people together.
- ajuc 3y agoIt will be hard, for many places on Earth it will be catastrophic. Civilization won't end tho. Some of these estimates are absurd, which only makes the case for fighting climate change harder to make - same as overblown estimates of the COVID epidemic and of the effectiveness of the vaccine made it harder to handle future pandemics effectively. The most important wrong estimate is the growth of population and associated growth of consumption of everything. Population will start to decline globally if it already hasn't started to go down. This is inconsistent with increasing consumption.
- pr337h4m 3y ago>So obviously, infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible, yet most people deny this basic fact. The idea of modern civilization coming to an end is so unthinkable that they simply refuse to believe it. Not gonna read the whole thing, but why would you think 'modern civilization' would be limited to one planet?
- lolc 3y ago> why would you think 'modern civilization' would be limited to one planet? Because we're nowhere near ready to live outside earth! Approximately no human lives in a desert, on a glacier, or below the ocean surface, even though that's easy compared to living anywhere else in the solar system. Humans are not made for space. My prediction: By the time we have sufficiently advanced tech to keep humans alive in space, the humans won't be necessary anymore. Why ship delicate bags of water between planets? It's sheer hubris to think humans will play a role in space. It'll be machines that don't suffocate or freeze at the slightest inconvenience.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoWell, we haven't begun to populate any other planet yet and time does appear to be running out in terms of us seeing the effects of such a huge mass of humans. Getting a population started on another planet is going to require a LOT of investment of both money and natural resources and also it'll involve a mind-boggling amount of energy to get enough equipment out of our gravity well.
- andrewdubinsky 3y agoKeeping this sort of secret knowledge to yourself is so isolating, but sharing it only makes it worse. Pretty soon, the only people who find your company enjoyable are malthusians, christian apocalyptics, and emos. I mean the smiths are great, but have you heard....
- agent327 3y agoNo, we shouldn't, because it isn't true. Civilization will muddle on, as it always has, with periodic ups and downs. The oceans aren't going to boil. The economy will stop growing, almost an inevitability as our populations continue to shrink, and we will find ways to accommodate that. Doom prophets existed in all ages, telling us the end was nigh. It never was, and it isn't now. Trying to convince people that everything is hopeless and that despair is all that remains to us is not only incorrect, it's downright evil.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoTypically, the periodic "downs" are usually referred to as that particular civilisation collapsing (e.g. fall of Rome). Our current civilisation is far more brittle than previous ones due to its unusual size and reliance on technologies. Previous civilisations could revert to simpler agrarian based ones without involving the death of a significant percentage of the world's population, but I'm having difficulty seeing how we would manage a simple failure such as pollinators dying out (e.g. by toxic microparticles).
- agent327 3y agoPeriodic downs are mostly minor things, and even during major things like the fall of Rome, there weren't gangs in chariots roaming the country side looking for the last barrel of gasoline, like some demented pre-industrial Mad Maximus. And I don't buy the "but NOW it's all different" excuse. People haven't suddenly lost the ability to come up with solutions to problems. We aren't far more brittle either; if anything, our ability to ship in goods from other continents makes us far more resilient for anything less than a sudden planetary-scale event. And no, a rise in global temperatures of 0.01 degrees does not qualify as such. This desperate desire for civilization to end is the logical consequence of all the horrifying propaganda that has been blasted into our heads over the last decades. People like the author of this article lost the will to live, and just wish for it to be over. And not just by taking the easy way out either; they feel betrayed by civilization in general and want to take it out with them. We have been brought to a very dark and dangerous place, and it is going to kill a lot of people that are no longer able to tell truth from fiction. But civilization? That will be fine; it will continue, and the children of those who weren't demoralized will thrive. Oh, and the problem with honeybees is that we have too many now. Look it up. There was a problem, people jumped to solve it, and did too well, so now we have too many of the critters...
- formlessentity 3y agoThe sun is a virtually infinite supply of energy. Solar power is self sustaining at this point, very much so at $0.25/watt. Those panels should be cheaper to manufacture in zero-G (or lunar-G) and capable of providing 24 hours of output at a much higher level. Nitrogen fertilizer can be obtained from the air, using this cheap electricity. We have an ancient method of fixating it called the Berkeland Eyde process, but there is room for this to be greatly improved, there just isn’t any incentive to do it. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see it make a comeback in the near future. (In fact, this is a big opportunity.) Plastics… ah yes. Plastics. I don’t know what the solution to that looks like. They’re useful, no doubt, but I don’t think we need to use so much of them. It’s a useful byproduct of oil that is cheap and plentiful, and perhaps equilibrium is wildly offset by that at the moment. Those cheap synthetic fabrics may be expensive as silk someday. In summary, I see the path forward and it doesn’t look all that bad to me.
- motohagiography 3y agoYou are going to die and cease to cohere information forward in time. This will happen in a random instant. Imagine suddenly discovering this, how would you choose to live accordingly? This revelation actually happened to me once, and personally, I now avoid people who affect concern for it as a way to take my stuff.
- cs702 3y agoThe OP is infected with what I call the "doom-and-gloom mind-virus." Like all mind-viruses, this one too prevents those infected from seeing reality as it truly is, as complex as it is. I routinely come across people who believe "there is nothing we can do at this point," even in those cases when there is evidence suggesting otherwise. Yes, greater civilizational complexity is correlated with greater energy flows.[a] But our planet is only a tiny little speck of dust in relation to the size of our galaxy, which has between 100 and 400 billion stars, most significantly larger than our sun.[b] And our galaxy is only a speck of dust in relation to the size of the known universe, which is estimated to have 100 to 200 billion galaxies.[c] We're far from running out of expansion possibilities. Moreover, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to predict in advance how human ingenuity (and eventually, perhaps, AI ingenuity) might be able to address some of the challenges ahead of us. Let us not be doomers. Instead, let us be dreamers, problem-solvers, doers. --- [a] https://bhp-public.oerproject.com/ https://bhp-public.oerproject.com/ [b] https://www.space.com/25959-how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way.html https://www.space.com/25959-how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-... [c] https://www.space.com/25303-how-many-galaxies-are-in-the-universe.html https://www.space.com/25303-how-many-galaxies-are-in-the-uni...
- karaterobot 3y agoI'm unclear about what he means by the word "collapse". If by collapse he means a The Road or Waterworld style nuclear- or eco-apocalypse is inevitable, then there is literally nothing I would change about the world today, except that I'd recommend using our resources faster, on the theory that you should smoke 'em if you got 'em. I wouldn't tell anyone to bother learning how blacksmithing or how to grow a three sisters garden in that scenario. If he means a slow apocalypse, a Long Tomorrow style return to a world without electricity, that's a very different conversation. This article feels like a rant to me.
- erkt 3y agoThis extreme pessimism is held with almost religious fervor. It’s terrifying what an unstable person on who holds these beliefs could rationalize in the name of saving the world.
- vivekd 3y agoI think even the worst climate change is something we can survive. And there's no question we can survive without fossil fuels - there are more expensive alternatives. Running out of stuff like copper or sand I don't think we can survive. But like with fossil fuels no serious researcher thinks we are even close to running out of that stuff.
- jaybrendansmith 3y agoI think this article is, as is often the case, a complete failure of imagination. You would think that by now zero-sum thinking had been forever proven false, if anything the collapse of the Soviet Union should have put this myth to rest forever. But no, the author seem intent always on looking at the world as it currently is, as if it is a snapshot in time, and not instead as a constantly shifting mass of endless feedback loops, self-sustaining and amplifying. Life itself is like that; if one were to look at a body, one might predict imminent death by viewing its obvious maladies. Life is like a gyroscope or atom, staying in balance through its spinning. The world will survive, so will the ecosystem, and so will civilization. What will happen is a reduction in the number of humans the world can support, but even that is in question. There will be winners and losers. Because technology and economics are the innovations that lower resource cost and raise efficiency, we can science our way out of this if our political systems can regain their coherence. The last thing we want to do is to remove hope from the patient. The prognosis is not bleak, the patient requires a care plan and treatment is necessary. Leeches are not advised at this time.
- welcome_dragon 3y agoI was going to reply to op but you said everything so well that I don't need to!
- apapapa 3y ago[flagged]
- kerp322 3y agoAdmittedly the article is poorly written and presents things in an extreme voice which is alienating to an outside audience. These are easy things to point out and have been used in this thread to dismantle the message of the article. However, I ask anyone with a dissenting opinion to provide an argument against the premise that: "Civilization is facing numerous grave threats with few solutions on the horizon nor substantive international cooperation working towards serious solutions. Furthermore, the graveness of these issues should be communicated to the general public as a call to action.", which is what I believe the article is really about.