8 ms·

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are goi

I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise. (I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)

abbadadda 1y ago
“No one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off.” - Tenet Preventing “bombs” from going off is not rewarded. And indeed the Line Must Go Up Crowd is reliant upon someone else fixing the problem while they get theirs. But when the majority think that way we’re f**ed.
- antithesizer 1y ago
  The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow, so perhaps we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back just yet.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    It’s a good comparison especially in the context of mutually assured destruction, whether administered directly or indirectly, the same grim pragmatic political truth of wedge issues remains: why solve today what can be put off til tomorrow?
  - xenadu02 1y ago
    > The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow Yeah but humans on the whole are terrible at handling long-term consequences even when they are reasonably certain those consequences a) exist and b) are terrible for them personally. Ironic is it not? Vaccination campaigns have been so successful anti-vax idiots who have never had to watch their child die of a preventable disease think vaccines are a scam. Ever build something? You will get an earful about code and how stupid the regulations are. Nevermind that half the buildings in a city may survive an earthquake because of those rules. People often just don't connect the dots and they sure don't want to pay extra to make the building stronger. Why are so many roofs in Texas ruined by hail? We have the technology to make a roof hail-proof for all but the absolute worst storms. But we don't. Too expensive. I'm still surprised Florida actually improved construction standards after Andrew which - shocking - has helped in the recent storms. Or why isn't it required to make homes in fire-prone areas defensible and fire-resistant in California? Local control, too expensive, haven't had a massive fire until this year except ... oops Oakland Hills fires in 1991 that gave us a preview of the LA fires! Did we prepare? LOL. And hey - what do you know. The USA's whole "pandemic preparedness" program was torn down because we haven't had one since 1917 and what a waste of money. Just in time for COVID.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
I agree. I reflect on this from time to time when I consider that my mom, having died a few years back, would not be enjoying much of anything going on in the world right now. (Further, that she was born at the close of WWII in the U.S., she may have been lucky enough to have lived in the best part of recent history here.)
tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
My theory: The forces of Line Must Go Up are going to keep winning. Mitigating the impact of climate change will be part of Line Goes Up. Whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than avoiding it in the first place will remain to be seen (but won't really matter in the end), but we will be facing whatever impacts we will be facing, and we will face them, and we will deal with them. If you have any doubt, look at how the Netherlands dealt with storm surge.
- elktown 1y ago
  - “Yes, the patient might die, but we’re confident that given enough resources, we’ll bring him back to life.” Well, to be fair, it’s basically what’s happening with LLMs atm. So, maybe feathering up Mammon and aiming for the sun will be the tech industry’s most lasting legacy.
- arp242 1y ago
  Entire companies have been wrecked by "line must go up" thinking. I see no reason why it should preserve the planet when it can't even preserve its own livelihood. Never underestimate the complete destructive nihilism some are willing to engage just to earn some status and/or dollars. The feedback mechanism from climate change is far too slow. This kind of "ah it'll be grand like" attitude is completely naïve.
- ropable 1y ago
  Relying on market forces to mitigate/address the impact of climate change will require us to collectively impose actual market pressure (i.e. regulation, constraints) to do so. Not seeing much sign of that among the major contributors of emissions right at the moment.
  - GoatInGrey 1y ago
    That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. For most, climate change exists as an abstract idea and not an immediate, physical problem. It doesn't help that claims like those made by Al Gore about the polar ice caps being gone by 2016 turned out to be untrue. I wouldn't expect society to transform itself if told that an asteroid may impact Earth in eighty years, for similar reasons.
jcgrillo 1y ago
If we keep at it like we have been maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel for Earth, ecologically. In say 100k or 1M years, after we're long gone and things have started to repair themselves.
- marssaxman 1y ago
  This is where I find hope: ten million years from now we'll all be gone, and the earth will be a beautiful, thriving place once again. The short term doesn't look so good, but at least I will only have to watch a few more decades of it.
  - verisimi 1y ago
    This is a very macabre position! Your life and other people's lives are a joyous blessing.
  - xenadu02 1y ago
    Was it part of beautiful nature when an asteroid strike killed most life on earth? What does it matter if a bunch of non-sentient animals keep on trucking here on earth? Some disaster will eventually kill most of them just like it has repeatedly over the eons. Then the sun will die and all life on earth with it permanently. In fact the sun's red giant phase will erase even the traces that life ever existed here. Is there some value in that abstract notion of everything being melted into slag and disappearing? It is entirely possible we are the last chance life on earth has of becoming inter-planetary. Of surviving in the long term. As for the heat death of the universe who knows. That's far enough into the future some future generation can deal with that problem. We don't know enough to say if that's what will happen or if there is any way to avoid it (like escaping into another universe). Not that I think a planet full of non-sentient life is worth very much. It is no different than a huge factory of machines left on automatic. A bunch of biological machines fussing around accomplishing nothing and having no purpose. The concept of beauty only exists while there is an intelligence around to enjoy or contemplate it.
    - newAccount2025 1y ago
cryptonector 1y ago
The human population is set to crash quite hard in the next 100 years. It's backed into the cake.
- slaw 1y ago
  Not all human population is going to crash. Africa population in 1950 was 228.7 million, in 2025 is 1549 million. Fertility rate in 2025 is 4.05. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/africa/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/afr...
  - riffraff 1y ago
    Africa's fertility rate is dropping fast: 40 years it was above 6, 20 years ago it was above 5, and it dropped by 0.6 in the last ten years. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/africa/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/afr... most projections expect Africa's population to peak around 2070, which is less than the timeframe GP considered.
    - slaw 1y ago
      Could you share these projections that say Africa's population is going to peak around 2070. I cannot find any.
      - riffraff 1y ago
        actually I may have mis-remembered this, sorry. Possibly I was thinking of population change peaking, but I can't say for sure. https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=903&type=Probabilistic%20Projections&category=Population&subcategory=Population%20Change https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=903&type=Probabilis...
ethersteeds 1y ago
I interpreted his "optimism that we will fix this" as the continuation of his lifelong practice of science communication in service of ecosystem preservation. I believe he grasps that people are far more motivated by having a positive vision to run towards than by a negative one to flee. In that, I think he's being incredibly strategic with his voice in what he knows are his final years. He could leave us saying "everything is fucked, you absolute idiots", but what is there for us to do then besides lie down in the mud? Instead he's signing off with "We have come so far, I wish I could witness the spectacular recovery you're all about to usher into being!" Gentle parenting the apocalypse. What a legend.
01100011 1y ago
"Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine; the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, The planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat?" -George Carlin
- Jyaif 1y ago
  If we wanted to, we could set back biodiversity 50 million years, in the sense that it would take 50 million years to get back animals as diverse as there are today. Knowing that earth has 200 million good years left, yes we are pretty damn big threat.
  - b3lvedere 1y ago
    A large enough object coming close enough to our planet could also do that. Humans have and will continue to destroy lots of living and non-living material. Unless some huge global awareness or higher sentience will reduce that immensly very quickly, humanity as we know it, will end on this planet. With the rising CO2 levels i doubt our intelligence will get any better. And the planet will quietly do its dance around its star..
- xenadu02 1y ago
  It's glib and funny but also hilariously wrong. In 1800 the US population was 5.3 million (give or take). Non-industrialized. In 2025 it was 340 million (give or take a bit more). Fully industrialized. In 1800 even if you put every able bodied potential logger to work logging you couldn't make that much of a dent in the forests in the short term. Crews had to cut the trees by hand, move them via river or animal power, etc. In 2025 a single person in a machine can exceed the output of entire crews from 1800. A parcel of land that would take a year to log in 1800 can be clear-cut in three days in 2025. 340 million people need far more lumber per year and fully industrialized are capable of cutting down far more trees. In 2025 if we wanted to do it we could cut down every single tree in the entire USA within a handful of years. That was not even remotely possible in 1800. Scale matters. Will life survive? Sure. Will geologic events eventually clean up the land? Yes. But I don't think saying we can only be as bad as one of the great extinction events is the zinger George Carlin thinks it is. And just to be clear: I think reasoned acceptance of some extinction may be necessary to make humanity a multi-planetary and eventually multi-solar system species. In the long long run every single species on earth is a dead end. The sun will die and all life with it. As the only intelligent life with the capability I consider it our moral duty to make life resilient to such things, taking as many species with us as we can. But what are doing now is basically lighting our inheritance on fire to fuel executive bonuses and nothing more. That's just stupid.

abbadadda 1y ago

“No one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off.” - Tenet Preventing “bombs” from going off is not rewarded. And indeed the Line Must Go Up Crowd is reliant upon someone else fixing the problem while they get theirs. But when the majority think that way we’re f**ed.

antithesizer 1y ago
The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow, so perhaps we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back just yet.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  It’s a good comparison especially in the context of mutually assured destruction, whether administered directly or indirectly, the same grim pragmatic political truth of wedge issues remains: why solve today what can be put off til tomorrow?
- xenadu02 1y ago
  > The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow Yeah but humans on the whole are terrible at handling long-term consequences even when they are reasonably certain those consequences a) exist and b) are terrible for them personally. Ironic is it not? Vaccination campaigns have been so successful anti-vax idiots who have never had to watch their child die of a preventable disease think vaccines are a scam. Ever build something? You will get an earful about code and how stupid the regulations are. Nevermind that half the buildings in a city may survive an earthquake because of those rules. People often just don't connect the dots and they sure don't want to pay extra to make the building stronger. Why are so many roofs in Texas ruined by hail? We have the technology to make a roof hail-proof for all but the absolute worst storms. But we don't. Too expensive. I'm still surprised Florida actually improved construction standards after Andrew which - shocking - has helped in the recent storms. Or why isn't it required to make homes in fire-prone areas defensible and fire-resistant in California? Local control, too expensive, haven't had a massive fire until this year except ... oops Oakland Hills fires in 1991 that gave us a preview of the LA fires! Did we prepare? LOL. And hey - what do you know. The USA's whole "pandemic preparedness" program was torn down because we haven't had one since 1917 and what a waste of money. Just in time for COVID.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

I agree. I reflect on this from time to time when I consider that my mom, having died a few years back, would not be enjoying much of anything going on in the world right now. (Further, that she was born at the close of WWII in the U.S., she may have been lucky enough to have lived in the best part of recent history here.)

tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago

My theory: The forces of Line Must Go Up are going to keep winning. Mitigating the impact of climate change will be part of Line Goes Up. Whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than avoiding it in the first place will remain to be seen (but won't really matter in the end), but we will be facing whatever impacts we will be facing, and we will face them, and we will deal with them. If you have any doubt, look at how the Netherlands dealt with storm surge.

elktown 1y ago
- “Yes, the patient might die, but we’re confident that given enough resources, we’ll bring him back to life.” Well, to be fair, it’s basically what’s happening with LLMs atm. So, maybe feathering up Mammon and aiming for the sun will be the tech industry’s most lasting legacy.
arp242 1y ago
Entire companies have been wrecked by "line must go up" thinking. I see no reason why it should preserve the planet when it can't even preserve its own livelihood. Never underestimate the complete destructive nihilism some are willing to engage just to earn some status and/or dollars. The feedback mechanism from climate change is far too slow. This kind of "ah it'll be grand like" attitude is completely naïve.
ropable 1y ago
Relying on market forces to mitigate/address the impact of climate change will require us to collectively impose actual market pressure (i.e. regulation, constraints) to do so. Not seeing much sign of that among the major contributors of emissions right at the moment.
- GoatInGrey 1y ago
  That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. For most, climate change exists as an abstract idea and not an immediate, physical problem. It doesn't help that claims like those made by Al Gore about the polar ice caps being gone by 2016 turned out to be untrue. I wouldn't expect society to transform itself if told that an asteroid may impact Earth in eighty years, for similar reasons.

jcgrillo 1y ago

If we keep at it like we have been maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel for Earth, ecologically. In say 100k or 1M years, after we're long gone and things have started to repair themselves.

marssaxman 1y ago
This is where I find hope: ten million years from now we'll all be gone, and the earth will be a beautiful, thriving place once again. The short term doesn't look so good, but at least I will only have to watch a few more decades of it.
- verisimi 1y ago
  This is a very macabre position! Your life and other people's lives are a joyous blessing.
- xenadu02 1y ago
  Was it part of beautiful nature when an asteroid strike killed most life on earth? What does it matter if a bunch of non-sentient animals keep on trucking here on earth? Some disaster will eventually kill most of them just like it has repeatedly over the eons. Then the sun will die and all life on earth with it permanently. In fact the sun's red giant phase will erase even the traces that life ever existed here. Is there some value in that abstract notion of everything being melted into slag and disappearing? It is entirely possible we are the last chance life on earth has of becoming inter-planetary. Of surviving in the long term. As for the heat death of the universe who knows. That's far enough into the future some future generation can deal with that problem. We don't know enough to say if that's what will happen or if there is any way to avoid it (like escaping into another universe). Not that I think a planet full of non-sentient life is worth very much. It is no different than a huge factory of machines left on automatic. A bunch of biological machines fussing around accomplishing nothing and having no purpose. The concept of beauty only exists while there is an intelligence around to enjoy or contemplate it.
  - newAccount2025 1y ago

cryptonector 1y ago

The human population is set to crash quite hard in the next 100 years. It's backed into the cake.

slaw 1y ago
Not all human population is going to crash. Africa population in 1950 was 228.7 million, in 2025 is 1549 million. Fertility rate in 2025 is 4.05. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/africa/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/afr...
- riffraff 1y ago
  Africa's fertility rate is dropping fast: 40 years it was above 6, 20 years ago it was above 5, and it dropped by 0.6 in the last ten years. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/africa/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/afr... most projections expect Africa's population to peak around 2070, which is less than the timeframe GP considered.
  - slaw 1y ago
    Could you share these projections that say Africa's population is going to peak around 2070. I cannot find any.
    - riffraff 1y ago
      actually I may have mis-remembered this, sorry. Possibly I was thinking of population change peaking, but I can't say for sure. https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=903&type=Probabilistic%20Projections&category=Population&subcategory=Population%20Change https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=903&type=Probabilis...

ethersteeds 1y ago

I interpreted his "optimism that we will fix this" as the continuation of his lifelong practice of science communication in service of ecosystem preservation. I believe he grasps that people are far more motivated by having a positive vision to run towards than by a negative one to flee. In that, I think he's being incredibly strategic with his voice in what he knows are his final years. He could leave us saying "everything is fucked, you absolute idiots", but what is there for us to do then besides lie down in the mud? Instead he's signing off with "We have come so far, I wish I could witness the spectacular recovery you're all about to usher into being!" Gentle parenting the apocalypse. What a legend.

01100011 1y ago

"Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine; the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, The planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat?" -George Carlin

Jyaif 1y ago
If we wanted to, we could set back biodiversity 50 million years, in the sense that it would take 50 million years to get back animals as diverse as there are today. Knowing that earth has 200 million good years left, yes we are pretty damn big threat.
- b3lvedere 1y ago
  A large enough object coming close enough to our planet could also do that. Humans have and will continue to destroy lots of living and non-living material. Unless some huge global awareness or higher sentience will reduce that immensly very quickly, humanity as we know it, will end on this planet. With the rising CO2 levels i doubt our intelligence will get any better. And the planet will quietly do its dance around its star..
xenadu02 1y ago
It's glib and funny but also hilariously wrong. In 1800 the US population was 5.3 million (give or take). Non-industrialized. In 2025 it was 340 million (give or take a bit more). Fully industrialized. In 1800 even if you put every able bodied potential logger to work logging you couldn't make that much of a dent in the forests in the short term. Crews had to cut the trees by hand, move them via river or animal power, etc. In 2025 a single person in a machine can exceed the output of entire crews from 1800. A parcel of land that would take a year to log in 1800 can be clear-cut in three days in 2025. 340 million people need far more lumber per year and fully industrialized are capable of cutting down far more trees. In 2025 if we wanted to do it we could cut down every single tree in the entire USA within a handful of years. That was not even remotely possible in 1800. Scale matters. Will life survive? Sure. Will geologic events eventually clean up the land? Yes. But I don't think saying we can only be as bad as one of the great extinction events is the zinger George Carlin thinks it is. And just to be clear: I think reasoned acceptance of some extinction may be necessary to make humanity a multi-planetary and eventually multi-solar system species. In the long long run every single species on earth is a dead end. The sun will die and all life with it. As the only intelligent life with the capability I consider it our moral duty to make life resilient to such things, taking as many species with us as we can. But what are doing now is basically lighting our inheritance on fire to fuel executive bonuses and nothing more. That's just stupid.