My suggestion doesn't matter, because it won't happen. As Carl Sagan mentioned in the video of him testifying before Congress on climate change in the 80s that's currently on the front page, even if the US and Russia agreed to stop burning fossil fuels today, China isn't planning to stop anytime soon, and neither is India or any of the other less rich countries.
So, my prediction is that this will be a self-limiting problem. Unfortunately, the mechanism will be that behind the old saying "The world is only nine missed meals away from revolution." And, at that point, it's going to be so (literally) hot, bloody, and violent that nobody will escape, and the ones who will survive will be the ones who are willing to use the most violence.
I would be surprised if we have 25 years before we hit that point. My 95% confidence interval for when I expect global civilization to collapse into something like what you'd see in a post-apocalyptic movie is currently from 2035-2070.
> The world is only nine missed meals away from revolution.
If true, why didn't civilization collapse into Mad Max during the great depression?
I do think democracy, the way it currently works, has a problem. It doesn't seem to be able to actually solve problems anymore. This appears to be a relatively recent problem, as it's certainly solved problems before. I'm not sure exactly what it is or when it happened, I've seen it suggested the fall of the Berlin wall and the loss of credible competition from the east bloc is the cause. Could be, but it seems obvious something has broken.
So far it's been able to rest on its laurels and coast on the good name of democracy, but I'm concerned that if it stays dysfunctional and is seen visibly floundering amidst growing problems, then what faith is left in the institution may come to evaporate. I don't know if revolution is the logical conclusion, seems more likely to just sort of fall apart. What gives the state authority is that people believe it has authority. If enough people stop believing that, so the state goes away.
> > The world is only nine missed meals away from revolution.
> If true, why didn't civilization collapse into Mad Max during the great depression?
I mean, that's when the international (and not entirely nonviolent) revolution in which the modern mixed economy generally replaced classic capitalism in the developed world happened, but WWII and, even more, the subsequent Cold War in which state capitalist “Communists” squared off against mixed economy “Capitalists” really made recongition of that both difficult and politically inconvenient.
> I do think democracy, the way it currently works, has a problem. It doesn't seem to be able to actually solve problems anymore.
I agree with you and this is because democracy is terminally on the defensive. Which is alas, a losing strategy.
Technological advances (accelerated by capitalism) have brought ever increasing power to the individual and private organizations that the state has to run like a red queen introducing more and more legislation, regulation and increasingly byzantine bureaucracy backed up with the sorcery of propaganda and fiscal–monetary policies to fortify its paranoid self against the imaginary, and very soon to be real horde. “A dying society accumulates laws like a dying man accumulates remedies” because you can’t be under siege forever. “The bomber always gets through”.
> If true, why didn't civilization collapse into Mad Max during the great depression?
Perhaps you've seen those old photos of lines of people standing outside soup kitchens? Might I remind you that there was no global ecosystem or global climate collapse in the 1930s? Such things have happened on a local scale in the past, before there was such a thing as "global civilization," resulting in the collapse of individual civilizations, but this time really is different.
Sure random HN contributor - I'll believe you over the IPCC, which predicts even in the worst-case scenario nothing anywhere close to "global civilization collapse" in 2100.
Stop with the doomerism - it just gives people an excuse to do nothing.
> The solution is to burn it all down and start over.
I get the sentiment behind this, but during the collapse of everything between the "burning down" and the "starting over" phases we won't be able to do anything at all about climate change.
I still have a naive faith that even politicians and CEOs will remember they can make a difference and effect change once things get bad enough (for some version of "bad enough") if they can fit it in between the political backstabbing and the 3 martini lunches :)
Climate change will kill it linearly, and in a multi-modal process; as zones that become too hot will force population migration, which will come with a certain amount of loss of life for one reason or another. Younger generations are having fewer kids, not getting their drivers license at anywhere near the same rate as older generations. They're pulling away from other fossil fuel intense organized activities like sports, where it's resource intense to haul people and gear for bread and circus night.
All of that will change human agency patterns around the globe and come with some level of population loss that might otherwise been prevented if it had never been necessary.
The cause and effect of leveraging past statistical models to predict the future. What the elders keep doing wrong is simply using their recent prior experience to be some kind of immutable truism about reality.
We let technology fetishism take hold of a quirk of biology religion stumbled upon.
Adam Smith is claimed to have wrote along the lines of the division of labor taken to its extreme would lead to a kind of human that is less intelligent than the dumbest creature on the planet. I assume he means infantile, coddled.
I am growing more and more fond of my rural/farm land upbringing lately. Growing food, hunting, fixing tractors to help the community as Reagan looted their pensions to fund GenX, whose kids are now the bag holders, provides an interesting perspective; I later earned an MSc in math so I get "both sides" contributions to economy first hand. All sides act like cognitive authorities, and it's fucking exhausting having to remind people I feel no immutable obligation to them specifically. To me we're lucky to be alive, whatever level of material existence they have is not on me to preserve. I've seen too many get screwed for reasons we could prevent, so I really don't care if either side gets its ass handed to it.
I said it before, but I bet we will see a major city collapse (1,000,000 people or more) in the next 10 years due to climate change. Something like 1/4 - 1/3 of the population will not return after an extreme weather event. Wildfire like what happened in Hawaii will count as weather events.
I'd look to the indian subcontinent for that kind of climate suffering first. As far as cities falling to climate, Bangladesh might see it first, but they only have 3 cities of that magnitude (although Dhaka is almost a country upon itself at 21M)
I'd say there's a high probability (~75%) based on the intense heat difference between city centers and suburbs. I observe an instant 5 degree drop in temperature as soon as I drive outside mostly paved areas into the suburbs, even in the evening and at night.
Pavement and concrete don't even have time to properly cool off at night, so if temperature increases due to global warming, city centers will slowly become uninhabitable.
23 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 61.2 ms ] threadWhat's your suggestion?
So, my prediction is that this will be a self-limiting problem. Unfortunately, the mechanism will be that behind the old saying "The world is only nine missed meals away from revolution." And, at that point, it's going to be so (literally) hot, bloody, and violent that nobody will escape, and the ones who will survive will be the ones who are willing to use the most violence.
I would be surprised if we have 25 years before we hit that point. My 95% confidence interval for when I expect global civilization to collapse into something like what you'd see in a post-apocalyptic movie is currently from 2035-2070.
You heard it here first, folks.
There it is. You heard it here first.
If true, why didn't civilization collapse into Mad Max during the great depression?
I do think democracy, the way it currently works, has a problem. It doesn't seem to be able to actually solve problems anymore. This appears to be a relatively recent problem, as it's certainly solved problems before. I'm not sure exactly what it is or when it happened, I've seen it suggested the fall of the Berlin wall and the loss of credible competition from the east bloc is the cause. Could be, but it seems obvious something has broken.
So far it's been able to rest on its laurels and coast on the good name of democracy, but I'm concerned that if it stays dysfunctional and is seen visibly floundering amidst growing problems, then what faith is left in the institution may come to evaporate. I don't know if revolution is the logical conclusion, seems more likely to just sort of fall apart. What gives the state authority is that people believe it has authority. If enough people stop believing that, so the state goes away.
> If true, why didn't civilization collapse into Mad Max during the great depression?
I mean, that's when the international (and not entirely nonviolent) revolution in which the modern mixed economy generally replaced classic capitalism in the developed world happened, but WWII and, even more, the subsequent Cold War in which state capitalist “Communists” squared off against mixed economy “Capitalists” really made recongition of that both difficult and politically inconvenient.
I agree with you and this is because democracy is terminally on the defensive. Which is alas, a losing strategy.
Technological advances (accelerated by capitalism) have brought ever increasing power to the individual and private organizations that the state has to run like a red queen introducing more and more legislation, regulation and increasingly byzantine bureaucracy backed up with the sorcery of propaganda and fiscal–monetary policies to fortify its paranoid self against the imaginary, and very soon to be real horde. “A dying society accumulates laws like a dying man accumulates remedies” because you can’t be under siege forever. “The bomber always gets through”.
Perhaps you've seen those old photos of lines of people standing outside soup kitchens? Might I remind you that there was no global ecosystem or global climate collapse in the 1930s? Such things have happened on a local scale in the past, before there was such a thing as "global civilization," resulting in the collapse of individual civilizations, but this time really is different.
Are you actually giving yourself credit for being the first unhinged doomsayer out there? Lol
Stop with the doomerism - it just gives people an excuse to do nothing.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/ipcc-scenarios?facet=no...
I think in a documentary a guy named Thanos tried this before /jk
I get the sentiment behind this, but during the collapse of everything between the "burning down" and the "starting over" phases we won't be able to do anything at all about climate change.
I still have a naive faith that even politicians and CEOs will remember they can make a difference and effect change once things get bad enough (for some version of "bad enough") if they can fit it in between the political backstabbing and the 3 martini lunches :)
I don't think it's doomed. How do you think it's doomed?
Modern civilization, industry, and knowledge is too distributed. We literally can't kill it through non-extreme, non-violent measures.
Edit: I am NOT advocating we burn it down, to make that clear.
Climate change will kill it linearly, and in a multi-modal process; as zones that become too hot will force population migration, which will come with a certain amount of loss of life for one reason or another. Younger generations are having fewer kids, not getting their drivers license at anywhere near the same rate as older generations. They're pulling away from other fossil fuel intense organized activities like sports, where it's resource intense to haul people and gear for bread and circus night.
All of that will change human agency patterns around the globe and come with some level of population loss that might otherwise been prevented if it had never been necessary.
The cause and effect of leveraging past statistical models to predict the future. What the elders keep doing wrong is simply using their recent prior experience to be some kind of immutable truism about reality.
We let technology fetishism take hold of a quirk of biology religion stumbled upon.
Adam Smith is claimed to have wrote along the lines of the division of labor taken to its extreme would lead to a kind of human that is less intelligent than the dumbest creature on the planet. I assume he means infantile, coddled.
I am growing more and more fond of my rural/farm land upbringing lately. Growing food, hunting, fixing tractors to help the community as Reagan looted their pensions to fund GenX, whose kids are now the bag holders, provides an interesting perspective; I later earned an MSc in math so I get "both sides" contributions to economy first hand. All sides act like cognitive authorities, and it's fucking exhausting having to remind people I feel no immutable obligation to them specifically. To me we're lucky to be alive, whatever level of material existence they have is not on me to preserve. I've seen too many get screwed for reasons we could prevent, so I really don't care if either side gets its ass handed to it.
Front row seats to the apocalypse. Geronimo.
Pavement and concrete don't even have time to properly cool off at night, so if temperature increases due to global warming, city centers will slowly become uninhabitable.