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Look at some of the big picture statistics for worldwide poverty, health, lifespans, violence, freedom, corruption, etc. Nearly all of them are moving in a posi
by harryh 14y ago
Look at some of the big picture statistics for worldwide poverty, health, lifespans, violence, freedom, corruption, etc. Nearly all of them are moving in a positive direction, in some cases dramatically so.
To me the only really worrying long term trend is environmental impact. We might be consuming our planets resources at an unsustainable rate.
- genwin 14y agoMight be? How much more evidence would be needed? The planet can probably sustain less than a billion people long term at a first-world standard of living.
- harryh 14y ago'eh, maybe. Though who knows what future technologies will bring? Maybe in a 100 years will have a 20 billion people but most of them will be uploaded to the singularity. Maybe nuclear & solar will save us all. Maybe we learn to mitigate the effects of global warming by some sort of large scale teraforming projects. Predictions are hard, especially about the future. There's a big part of me that thinks that the "we're all doomed because of how we're ruining the environment" comes from the same place as "Americans used to have principles, but now we're just a bunch of self centered assholes" which comes from the same place as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_a.... Everyone has their own way of thinking that things used to be perfect but then we turned to sinners and fucked it all up.