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Optimism may be largely unfounded but that's not really the point of it, the point of it is to provide a filter through which you can screen your experiences to make things seem less bad than they are and allow you to keep trying as if you expect to make progress. It is what allows you to keep going even if a more objective view of reality would really suggest that you shouldn't bother. In that respect, optimism is useful even if it isn't rational, because if everyone was realistic then they would probably give up, and then things definitely would get worse.
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Jul 6, 2018 16:19
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War is a bit of a weird one given that until fairly recently we fought some of the most destructive wars ever and the world was under constant threat of total nuclear annihilation. Feels a bit like "well we've been building the tower progressively higher and balancing even more weight on top of it but it hasn't fallen over yet so we're safer than we've ever been!" The graph is that way too, "if you start counting from just before world war 1 and ignore the two really loving big spikes, we're more peaceful than we've ever been!" A bunch of those, to be honest, start basically at the peak and only show the downward trend, like leaded petrol, you know when use of leaded petrol was really loving low? Before the invention of the loving car. You know when nobody had HIV? Before it became a worldwide loving epidemic. You know when nuclear weapons were least prolific? Before they were loving invented. It takes some major myopia to look at the emergence of really serious recent problems and say "yes but we're getting better at them so they're not killing as many people as when we first caused them." Even the ostensible good ones like lowered fatality rates come with serious caveats about the ability to provide sustainably for the increased population with things like the massive fossil fuel use leading to likely ecological disaster in the future. Sure they might not be dying now but there is little to suggest that a shitload of people won't die fairly soon due to a massive uptick in famines and disasters. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jul 6, 2018 |
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Jul 6, 2018 20:03
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My point, is that looking at existing problems as if they just happened out of thin air, and then were solved, ignores the possibility towards a trend of increasing number and and scale of problems as a result of human activity. War, for example, yes if you ignore everything before and after the 20th century, we have solved war. If you look at it rather more accurately however, we have steadily escalated our capacity to destroy each other to the point that we now have the ability to end all human civilization as we know it but nobody has used that capability within the past 60 years. It's end of history nonsense.
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Jul 6, 2018 20:46
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Probably the one before the nuclear war or climate change induced worldwide crop failure or both.
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Jul 6, 2018 21:29
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Nurge posted:Climate change won't be able to destroy us, just reduce our living area a lot. Nuclear warfare is a real issue, but it won't be forever. I mean, this is technically true, climate change will destroy a lot of us, and nuclear war indeed cannot happen more than once in rapid succession. But I don't know if I would describe either of those positions as optimistic.
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Jul 12, 2018 16:42
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I'm not sure that "may not kill literally everyone immediately" is cause for optimism about the future either...
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Jul 12, 2018 17:11
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Assuming you aren't dead.
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Jul 12, 2018 17:45
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I mean, no, a lot of the problems with the climate are primarily a problem of population because a shitload of people need the things we destroy the climate to create and transitioning to alternate methods of providing them is quite technically challenging and politically very difficult to get support for. If we had fewer people the climate would be much easier to manage, and voluntarily not having children is an excellent way to contribute to that. The issue is when people start constructing elaborate fantasies about who needs to die and how expediently they need to be wiped out.
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Jul 13, 2018 22:59
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I suppose you can argue that population control in ways other than "turn into a rich western country and have your population decline itself" is probably a complete nonstarter because the other ways introduce a shitload of direct problems and/or are just genocide. But on an individual level I certainly think it is an objective good to just... not have kids, for shitloads of reasons but undeniably you are removing at least one whole human's worth of consumption from a future where consumption might actually be quite difficult to guarantee for a lot of people, and you're doing it without hurting anyone, so it's quite hard to object to. It is certainly possible that the planet could host a lot more people but whether it can do so in the long term given the problems that human resource consumption is already causing... I genuinely don't know. So I would be hesitant to suggest that the planet can sustain as many people as we can put on it when human action can create delayed and potentially very serious problems for its habitability. It's not really a good outcome if the population level grows and then climate change causes famines and displacement and kills a shitload of them, that's senseless. If you're very callous I suppose you might see that as a self regulating environment and thus argue that it is impossible for humans to truly "overpopulate" but I'd still call it loving terrible. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jul 14, 2018 |
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Jul 14, 2018 00:14
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Actually, if you're the entirety of my wife's/my family, you're literally murdering that kid who could have grown up to be someone. Alright, difficult for people who aren't completely loving insane, insane people can argue a lot of things.
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Jul 14, 2018 00:21
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Well, used up as in "mined out and piled all over the surface of the planet in the form of consumer products" so those aren't going away. Fuel sources could be tricky yes, but those are sort of self reinforcing our dependence on them, oil was plentiful so we developed liquid fuel propulsion, we were refining a lot of oil so we started using oil products everywhere, oil products were cheap and plentiful and effective and drove increased reliance on oil to fuel the economies built around their production and consumption etc. There's not a great deal that they do that you absolutely can't do other ways and indeed, that we didn't do other ways before their widespread adoption, paper, glass, and ceramic packaging instead of plastics etc. We just don't use them any more because plastic is cheap and available. You take fossil fuel availability out of the mix and what you probably get is actually just a different path of development. Industrialization is kicked off by the invention of the steam engine which has its founding principles in ancient greek aeopile and utilizes still-common elements of metalworking, water, and a fuel source, and which you could conceivably run on charcoal or biofuels or, even, basic atomic power, and there would be large supplies of refined nuclear fuels left over after a nuclear war that much is absolutely certain, and a Curian understanding of radioactivity would probably develop a lot faster as well owing to the necessity of living around fallout, and there is so much metallurgy in our modern lives that any budding engineer would have a wide variety of sources to study, a lot harder to lose the secret of damascus steel when half the ruined world is built out of it. If a nuclear war didn't render the planet absolutely uninhabitable and just destroyed a lot of knowledge and killed a lot of people then it's not unreasonable to think humans could develop again given the resources we have and which could be reacquired from the remains, but it's bad because it'd still kill a shitload of people. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jul 14, 2018 |
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Jul 14, 2018 01:29
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I'm trying to figure out in what world the telephone was invented before the steam engine.
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Sep 7, 2018 09:02
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Though you're wagering that against the alternative which is sustained suffering for much longer.
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Sep 7, 2018 20:51
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, I'd rather have electricity and medicine than no electricity and no medicine but don't you think at some future point in history there might be some advanced guy sitting at an advanced computer looking back at our time period and talking about how we had not even invented squeedlysqonk yet and thus were miserable. People in 12AD didn't know they didn't have electricity, they had the normal amount of electricity everyone they knew had, it would be a weird conversation to try to convince them they were miserable for not having it if their life was otherwise going as well as anyone else. You don't really know what you don't have that would improve your life. But it'd be weird to declare everyone ever to live to be suffering until the last invention was made and we could objectively list who can be actually happy. It's quite possible that people suffer all the time without entirely realizing it. There's no reason why that shouldn't be the case.
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Sep 8, 2018 06:46
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The idea no one in history has been happy or okay yet is edgy teen nonsense. I mean it doesn't really have much to do with history. Have you considered that the primary effect, or manifestation, of optimism is to minimize past suffering, thereby impairing the ability to form accurate assessments of one's life experience? This is, of course, very useful and motivating for a person, it gets them out of bed every morning and gets them to work. But does that persistent hope produce happiness? How long can a committed optimist persist without payoff? I'd be inclined to suggest their entire lives in many cases.
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Sep 8, 2018 07:00
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Well, no the end absolutely did happen for a shitload of people, arguably almost everyone, throughout history.
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Sep 8, 2018 16:03
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Unlike the belief that everything's going to get better over time rather than the possibility that the future might just be a steadily increasing engine of human misery, perpetuated not out of preference towards a happy life but out of fear of the alternative. Definitely not something believed because it's a nice idea.
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Sep 8, 2018 16:14
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Perhaps a more accurate reading would be that history is a succession of ends-of-the-world with the primary change being the size of the world in question, and that currently the world is quite possibly the entire planet.
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Sep 8, 2018 17:26
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Yes suggesting that the colonization of the Americas might have been a cataclysmic event which irreparably destroyed many lives and much knowledge is demeaning. And it's certainly foolish to suggest that humanity has, for all of its history, destroyed itself to the extent of its capacity to do so without any regard for what it is destroying, and that perhaps its present capacity for destruction might represent an existential threat, in light of that. Me, the galaxy brain, "well the holocaust wasn't the end of Judaism because you see, Germany's imperial ambitions trod on the toes of the other imperial powers, and so they invaded them, and that coincidentally stopped it before it could finish, so actually the world is good!" OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 18:28
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I'd suggest that blind optimism is not necessarily more enlightened than apathetic pessimism. Especially given that it often manifests as end of history silliness whereby things just get better forever automatically.
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Sep 8, 2018 21:05
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I would tend to take the position that the outlook is fairly bleak, on balance, but that doesn't preclude trying.
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Sep 8, 2018 21:20
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A big flaming stink posted:What is blindly optimistic about "a better tomorrow has to be dragged there kicking and screaming"? The world has been getting better by the blood sweat and tears of people tirelessly working towards it. As I said, thinking there is little hope doesn't have to be an obstacle to trying. But there can be plenty of dragging and kicking and screaming and you still get nowhere. But optimism is equally what gets you idiocy like the belief that the free market can solve problems, because doesn't the world naturally trend towards progress? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:00
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I don't know that I would call Martin Luther King an optimist, I think he was very realistic, it's what makes a lot of what he wrote as compelling as it is. He gives the distinct impression of a man who really understands the world he lives in. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:07
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I wouldn't suggest he succeeded, either... When I read things he wrote I get the impression of someone who doesn't allow their hopes to obfuscate their actual concrete observation of reality. When he describes the conditions he sees he does so with great clarity and frankness, as he does when he describes his obstacles as well. Not behaviour I've come to expect from optimists. There's certainly a kind of duality there because obviously he was Christian and that clearly informs a lot of his views but at the same time there is obviously a man writing without any sort of rose tinted glasses about human nature or the state of the world. Someone who doesn't need to hide from what's in front of him, and obviously couldn't even if he wanted to. It's the realism by far that I find most compelling. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 22:21
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Again, it's really obvious you can praise his "clarity" only because it's years later and you know what succeeded. I'm fairly sure I've never told anybody that.
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Sep 8, 2018 22:31
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If you confine "the world as it is" to "within the last century except for the really big blips" and make a studious point of ignoring the looming massive problems on the horizon. Which kind of narrows the statement to more like "I'm fine right now ergo the world is great"
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Sep 8, 2018 23:12
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Squalid posted:Unless you are blessed with the gift of prophesy you shouldn't allow your world view to be controlled by unquantifiable risks of future harm. You could walk out your front door the next day, and be killed by a drunk driver. Or Trump could start a nuclear war. Alternatively neither thing may happen. Up to a certain point we have just accept that we live with many swords hanging over our heads. But hey you never know, maybe the strings will hold, or if they do fall they'll miss, and eventually we may even be able to take a few down. There is a difference between suggesting that it may be helpful to the individual to avoid dwelling on things they cannot control, and suggesting that because that is unpleasant to contemplate that it actually doesn't exist and there is no probability of it being relevant in the future. "The world is good because I don't want to think about the possibility that it isn't" is not a good argument. It's precisely what I'm arguing against, optimism that colours your ability to observe the world is not a welcome thing.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:11
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The death of the notion of automatic progress, that bad things generally won't happen, that it'll all come right in the end, that there's any justice but what people make for themselves. The desire to think the world is generally good is what leads to just world stupidity and all its associated damage to society. Similarly the persistent desire to believe your own life is OK, that it's not so bad on the whole even if right now it sucks, that serves excellently to keep people plodding on doing things they hate rather than being driven to change. Optimism inspires people to make do with what they have rather than demanding what they're owed, because god forbid people be rightly unhappy with their lot. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 00:19
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Mulva posted:Who gives a gently caress about society when the actual damage to the world is a bunch of narcissists...how to put this...ah yes There's a difference between what you're owed and what you can take at whim. The FYGM crowd don't demand, they take, or already have, by virtue of their individual power or fortune.
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Sep 9, 2018 00:48
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Mulva posted:Nothing you've said delineates that or provides the tool to measure it, but it's absolutely the viewpoint of people that don't care about the distinction in the first place. I didn't say that abandoning blind optimism alone would solve the world's problems, I said it is contrary to a number of detrimental cognitive positions, you require an alternative framework to replace the ones that pessimism/realism/materialism forces you to abandon. Or conversely, that adopting what I would call a good framework for looking at the world, necessitates abandoning optimism to a great degree.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:02
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Kerning appears to subscribe to some variety of knowledge being its own reward which I don't. I just think it's an important tool, but there is a commonality between our positions, which is that self and societal deception is not a good idea.
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Sep 9, 2018 01:30
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