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I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on

by baxtr 2y ago

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

dataflow 2y ago
"Fine"? Did the history professor consider anything other than history or politics? The way global warming and our general destruction of nature is going (not just species or climate but also e.g. depletion of groundwater in a lot of heavily populated areas), I'm not sure democracy will be our biggest concern in 200 years' time.
- baxtr 2y ago
  No, he did not consider things that have never happened before. He can only extrapolate from events that already happened. Human made global warming is a first time, so difficult to say what will happen from a historical perspective.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    > Human made global warming is a first time Human-made global warming appears to go back to the advent of agriculture, though, so for all intents and purposes it has been a constant throughout the history of which we speak.
    - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
      Ted was so right.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- badpun 2y ago
  Given predicted decline i global population size, some of these effect will be partially offset by less pressure from the population.
eMPee584 2y ago
Oh, coincidentally, that is just the time window of the technological singularity.. where we either ascend to a peace- & powerful interplanetary civilization - or accidentally eradicate ourselves out of a collective lack of wisdom and sense of connectedness. Let's play..
- facile3232 2y ago
  I think the "technological singularity" is just the rapture for people who listen to sam harris
  - jddj 2y ago
    Not to take anything away from this witty comment, but I think Harris is more on the doomer side? Maybe that's what you meant after all.
    - facile3232 2y ago
      You're quite right; I think the "rationalists" tend to be a little more cynical (or realistic, as most would probably put it).
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    Millenarianism is evergreen.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
CalRobert 2y ago
“democracy will continue to increase its footprint” What was this based on?
- baxtr 2y ago
  Extrapolation from what he knows about history. Things looked very bleak right after the French revolution for example. We see our history as a dot, because we live in it. But people in the future will take a more long-term view and might say: oh this was a difficult phase in history.
  - rongrobert 2y ago
    I just don't agree with any of this. This is a difficult time compared to what? The black plague? WW1? This is the easiest time ever to be alive. I would say on a 200 year time line though, the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church, the internet has broke democracy. The idea democracy is ascendant is pretty delusional IMO. This professor is still living in the unipolar moment that has passed.
    - graemep 2y ago
      > the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church I think it is more accurate to say it broke the power of the aristocracy by causing a labour shortage. The black death happened in the 14th century, the reformation in the 16th
    - grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
      The great news is we can break the internet if needed. It will be torn down and chopped up into moderated walled gardens, it's inevitable. Algorithmic rage bait and echo chambers are incompatible with a functioning society.
      - econ 2y ago
        I'm optimistic, if you release enough bots into that ecosystem it is unlikely to survive. It is one of those things where effort is rewarded but also a condition for the game to function. YouTube is already full of videos that seem to have a single line prompt. Those can't generate enough rage to sustain the formula.
sofixa 2y ago
> It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. What could that be based on? Ask the people in Venezuela, South Africa for instance, things can definitely get much worse even for decently developed countries with democracy and a solid economic foundation. Combine with the growth of religiosness in young people across multiple growing countries, and broad (sometimes related, sometimes not) anti-democracy trends, I really wouldn't be that optimistic. What would make one think that e.g. the Coup Belt in Subsaharan Africa will some day get more democratic? The fundamentals aren't there - the populace is generally poor and poorly educated. Strongman rule over years/decades can erode the little civic society that existed, and then it's very very hard to get an effective democracy functioning.
- watwut 2y ago
  To be fair, he was making wild guesses. He is professor of history, not a professor of omens. He can't read future, no more then anyone else.
  - baxtr 2y ago
    Yeah exactly. People read way too much into this
nozzlegear 2y ago
I have no comment on what your professor said, but reading the replies here just confirms to me that cynicism, pessimism and doomerism are certainly the mood of the current zeitgeist. Optimistic outlooks are too often met with a kind of reflexive dismissal or despair in a "I feel like things are really bad right now, have never been this bad before, and thus can never improve" diatribe. There's a pervasive sense in online discussions these days that if it's cynical, dark or depressing, it has to be the truth. It's like Occam's razor for today's modern doomer: the bleakest explanation must be the correct one. And I'm not saying that things are easy or that democracy is guaranteed, but I am saying that pessimism isn't inherently more realistic than optimism. Cynicism sells in the 21st century.
- harimau777 2y ago
  Part of the problem is the whole "In the long run, we're all dead" thing. If things are going to be bad for the next 30 years, that's most of the rest of my useful life. If my life leading up to this point was miserable and the rest of my life is going to be as bad or worse, then I'm not sure I care how things will be in 200 years.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Meh. It's not really cynicism. It's just that people today only care about the next 20 or 30 years. They don't really care if, over the course of the next 200 years, two nations can rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I'm at the age where 30 years may well be the rest of my life (even assuming a fairly normal old-age sort of death) and 50 almost certainly is, so while I do care about what happens after for my kids, they'll also be quite old by then, so "the whole rest of your life during which you're still significantly active, plus all of your kids' lives up to as late as late-middle-age, by which time they're firmly set on their life courses and family planning and such, will suck" is... pretty bad.
  - 2y ago
MPSFounder 2y ago
There is a problem with this though. It is the price paid in exchange for democracy. Take Syria for example. It took huge human loss to free itself from Assad, Iran and Russian influence. Is the price justified? Of course in the long run autocracies fail. The lifespan of the ruler is one duration we can associate (Putin is on the verge of death). But the damage can often be very significant and take generation to undo. Just to be clear, I was very much in favor of removing those murderers. I just wonder if there were ways to mitigate this (here, EU and US should have stepped in, which they failed to do. However, they are doing it in Ukraine, which is great)
- rdm_blackhole 2y ago
  > Take Syria for example. It took huge human loss to free itself from Assad, Iran and Russian influence. And then it fell in the hands of radical islamists. Is this the outcome that everyone was hoping for?
  - MPSFounder 2y ago
    I disagree with that assessment. It is currently led by someone widely popular in Syria. Ultimately, the people are free to elect whoever they choose. The point is it is unequivocal most of them rejected Iranian and Russian influence and a barbarous Assad regime. Of course rebuilding will take time, and there might be some extreme factions (religious or leftovers from the Assad regime). But freedom prevailed. Your response is that of a coward that would rather live as a slave under a foreign occupation, instead of rebelling at the cost of their own lives.
    - rdm_blackhole 2y ago
      > I disagree with that assessment. This is not an assessment. It's the truth. Jolani is a former al-Qaeda member whose organization is still considered a terrorist organization. The US even had a prize on his head. > Your response is that of a coward that would rather live as a slave under a foreign occupation, instead of rebelling at the cost of their own lives. You response to an opinion that is different than yours is to insult someone who is willing to engage with you. If you are not interested in debating, no point in commenting.

by baxtr 2y ago

dataflow 2y ago

"Fine"? Did the history professor consider anything other than history or politics? The way global warming and our general destruction of nature is going (not just species or climate but also e.g. depletion of groundwater in a lot of heavily populated areas), I'm not sure democracy will be our biggest concern in 200 years' time.

baxtr 2y ago
No, he did not consider things that have never happened before. He can only extrapolate from events that already happened. Human made global warming is a first time, so difficult to say what will happen from a historical perspective.
- 9rx 2y ago
  > Human made global warming is a first time Human-made global warming appears to go back to the advent of agriculture, though, so for all intents and purposes it has been a constant throughout the history of which we speak.
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    Ted was so right.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
badpun 2y ago
Given predicted decline i global population size, some of these effect will be partially offset by less pressure from the population.

eMPee584 2y ago

Oh, coincidentally, that is just the time window of the technological singularity.. where we either ascend to a peace- & powerful interplanetary civilization - or accidentally eradicate ourselves out of a collective lack of wisdom and sense of connectedness. Let's play..

facile3232 2y ago
I think the "technological singularity" is just the rapture for people who listen to sam harris
- jddj 2y ago
  Not to take anything away from this witty comment, but I think Harris is more on the doomer side? Maybe that's what you meant after all.
  - facile3232 2y ago
    You're quite right; I think the "rationalists" tend to be a little more cynical (or realistic, as most would probably put it).
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Millenarianism is evergreen.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

CalRobert 2y ago

“democracy will continue to increase its footprint” What was this based on?

baxtr 2y ago
Extrapolation from what he knows about history. Things looked very bleak right after the French revolution for example. We see our history as a dot, because we live in it. But people in the future will take a more long-term view and might say: oh this was a difficult phase in history.
- rongrobert 2y ago
  I just don't agree with any of this. This is a difficult time compared to what? The black plague? WW1? This is the easiest time ever to be alive. I would say on a 200 year time line though, the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church, the internet has broke democracy. The idea democracy is ascendant is pretty delusional IMO. This professor is still living in the unipolar moment that has passed.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > the way the black plague broke the power of the Catholic Church I think it is more accurate to say it broke the power of the aristocracy by causing a labour shortage. The black death happened in the 14th century, the reformation in the 16th
  - grumpy-de-sre 2y ago
    The great news is we can break the internet if needed. It will be torn down and chopped up into moderated walled gardens, it's inevitable. Algorithmic rage bait and echo chambers are incompatible with a functioning society.
    - econ 2y ago
      I'm optimistic, if you release enough bots into that ecosystem it is unlikely to survive. It is one of those things where effort is rewarded but also a condition for the game to function. YouTube is already full of videos that seem to have a single line prompt. Those can't generate enough rage to sustain the formula.

sofixa 2y ago

> It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. What could that be based on? Ask the people in Venezuela, South Africa for instance, things can definitely get much worse even for decently developed countries with democracy and a solid economic foundation. Combine with the growth of religiosness in young people across multiple growing countries, and broad (sometimes related, sometimes not) anti-democracy trends, I really wouldn't be that optimistic. What would make one think that e.g. the Coup Belt in Subsaharan Africa will some day get more democratic? The fundamentals aren't there - the populace is generally poor and poorly educated. Strongman rule over years/decades can erode the little civic society that existed, and then it's very very hard to get an effective democracy functioning.

watwut 2y ago
To be fair, he was making wild guesses. He is professor of history, not a professor of omens. He can't read future, no more then anyone else.
- baxtr 2y ago
  Yeah exactly. People read way too much into this

nozzlegear 2y ago

I have no comment on what your professor said, but reading the replies here just confirms to me that cynicism, pessimism and doomerism are certainly the mood of the current zeitgeist. Optimistic outlooks are too often met with a kind of reflexive dismissal or despair in a "I feel like things are really bad right now, have never been this bad before, and thus can never improve" diatribe. There's a pervasive sense in online discussions these days that if it's cynical, dark or depressing, it has to be the truth. It's like Occam's razor for today's modern doomer: the bleakest explanation must be the correct one. And I'm not saying that things are easy or that democracy is guaranteed, but I am saying that pessimism isn't inherently more realistic than optimism. Cynicism sells in the 21st century.

harimau777 2y ago
Part of the problem is the whole "In the long run, we're all dead" thing. If things are going to be bad for the next 30 years, that's most of the rest of my useful life. If my life leading up to this point was miserable and the rest of my life is going to be as bad or worse, then I'm not sure I care how things will be in 200 years.
bilbo0s 2y ago
Meh. It's not really cynicism. It's just that people today only care about the next 20 or 30 years. They don't really care if, over the course of the next 200 years, two nations can rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  I'm at the age where 30 years may well be the rest of my life (even assuming a fairly normal old-age sort of death) and 50 almost certainly is, so while I do care about what happens after for my kids, they'll also be quite old by then, so "the whole rest of your life during which you're still significantly active, plus all of your kids' lives up to as late as late-middle-age, by which time they're firmly set on their life courses and family planning and such, will suck" is... pretty bad.
- 2y ago

MPSFounder 2y ago

There is a problem with this though. It is the price paid in exchange for democracy. Take Syria for example. It took huge human loss to free itself from Assad, Iran and Russian influence. Is the price justified? Of course in the long run autocracies fail. The lifespan of the ruler is one duration we can associate (Putin is on the verge of death). But the damage can often be very significant and take generation to undo. Just to be clear, I was very much in favor of removing those murderers. I just wonder if there were ways to mitigate this (here, EU and US should have stepped in, which they failed to do. However, they are doing it in Ukraine, which is great)

rdm_blackhole 2y ago
> Take Syria for example. It took huge human loss to free itself from Assad, Iran and Russian influence. And then it fell in the hands of radical islamists. Is this the outcome that everyone was hoping for?
- MPSFounder 2y ago
  I disagree with that assessment. It is currently led by someone widely popular in Syria. Ultimately, the people are free to elect whoever they choose. The point is it is unequivocal most of them rejected Iranian and Russian influence and a barbarous Assad regime. Of course rebuilding will take time, and there might be some extreme factions (religious or leftovers from the Assad regime). But freedom prevailed. Your response is that of a coward that would rather live as a slave under a foreign occupation, instead of rebelling at the cost of their own lives.
  - rdm_blackhole 2y ago
    > I disagree with that assessment. This is not an assessment. It's the truth. Jolani is a former al-Qaeda member whose organization is still considered a terrorist organization. The US even had a prize on his head. > Your response is that of a coward that would rather live as a slave under a foreign occupation, instead of rebelling at the cost of their own lives. You response to an opinion that is different than yours is to insult someone who is willing to engage with you. If you are not interested in debating, no point in commenting.