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Byzantine posted:The only reason war stopped is we built weapons powerful and all-consuming enough to trip enough people’s self-preservation instincts. Sounds like if the amount of war and death went up, down or stayed the same you'd equally say that was proof that humans were violent sin cursed beasts. As it stands, subtracting this future war you know about and promise will come that we can't get any stats about, it seems pretty clear human violence of all kinds has declined dramatically and steadily as human population has grown. Across a bunch of different cultures.
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May 15, 2021 23:40
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Sounds like if the amount of war and death went up, down or stayed the same you'd equally say that was proof that humans were violent sin cursed beasts. The ice sheets are melting mate. The idea that there is infinite growth available on a finite planet is not exactly a sustainable system now is it? I think trying to build a better world for other people is important, and more power to those that are so hopeful to that they have kids. But on a purely personal level I don't want to risk it. That and I also have brain problems that I wouldn't want to inflict the likelyhood of on a child.
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May 16, 2021 00:00
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Josef bugman posted:The ice sheets are melting mate. The idea that there is infinite growth available on a finite planet is not exactly a sustainable system now is it? I mean, I am sure that final battle on the plains of megiddo is going to happen any minute now, just like always. But until that happens the actual data we have currently does not seem to show a world where more people means more war and violence, people seem to be more empathetic and kind as there is more people. Or at least the two things are uncoupled and unrelated and there being vastly more people does not apparently show any amount of more violence as it scales up.
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May 16, 2021 01:13
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Kids are terrible so yes. But in the actual thought of logically, big yes if you don't actually have the situation or stability for it, why make your own life even more strapped but bring a kid into a poo poo situation as well, it's always felt like a lose/lose idea to me.
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May 16, 2021 01:40
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, I am sure that final battle on the plains of megiddo is going to happen any minute now, just like always. But until that happens the actual data we have currently does not seem to show a world where more people means more war and violence, people seem to be more empathetic and kind as there is more people. Or at least the two things are uncoupled and unrelated and there being vastly more people does not apparently show any amount of more violence as it scales up. The idea that "tomorrow will be better than today" is not one that I am willing to bet on, personally. War has gone down, in part because war has become ever more expensive for the aggressor. But it also doesn't mean that violence has diminished necessarily. Part of the problem is that there is an awful lot of internalised violence where the state brutalises either it's own citizens or those seeking to become citizens. It also doesn't really undercut the idea that we are, quite possibly, super hosed in the longer term. Externalised violence may well have gone down a bit now. But I don't think that past results are future results.
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May 16, 2021 09:04
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Josef bugman posted:The idea that "tomorrow will be better than today" is not one that I am willing to bet on, personally. War has gone down, in part because war has become ever more expensive for the aggressor. But it also doesn't mean that violence has diminished necessarily. Part of the problem is that there is an awful lot of internalised violence where the state brutalises either it's own citizens or those seeking to become citizens. Can you give objective evidence for this? Because OOCC provided some for forms of violence that are not war (specifically that homicide is vastly, vastly less frequent than it was in the past.) I'm not saying that violence on the part of the state against its citizens doesn't happen (of course it does), but I've never seen anything that would indicate it's more frequent now than it was in the past. More visible, maybe. (now that it can be easily and routinely recorded by citizens). Capital punishment has gone from commonplace to exceptionally rare across the world. Standards of justice have improved. It's difficult to buy the argument that we've gotten so much worse than periods where criminals were tarred and feathered, or put in stocks in the village square. enki42 fucked around with this message at 12:42 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 12:39
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DrSunshine posted:What is "civilization"? Are hunter-gatherers not civilized? Are the seasonal settlements of slash-and-burn agriculturalists not civilized? Is the production of tools not a civilized behavior? The coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest were such abundant places, fed by the great upwelling of deep ocean nutrients surged up from the depths by the westerly flow of the wind, that they allowed gatherers to produce complex hierarchical societies despite not having agriculture. We have evidence for this in the massive shell-mounds that they left behind. Are they civilized or uncivilized? Lol no, it's not agriculture that's the root problem, it's language. Language is the first and most terrible of all technologies, and what makes us human, and yes it should obviously be eradicated because it's not viable. Consciousness grants a degree of competitiveness that is incompatible with ecosystems perpetuating themselves. Humanity - the state of being self-elevated above a base animal - is a dead end biologically.
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May 16, 2021 13:27
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We aren't the only species with language, try again.
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May 16, 2021 13:34
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Nah I'll stick with it thanks, one more for the big list of things that should not be but are anyways
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May 16, 2021 13:36
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Car Hater posted:Nah I'll stick with it thanks, one more for the big list of things that should not be but are anyways Who made that list?
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May 16, 2021 13:40
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Car Hater posted:Nah I'll stick with it thanks, one more for the big list of things that should not be but are anyways I mean I can't take your failure and ignorance from you, so instead I'll hope you enjoy whatever comfort they bring.
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May 16, 2021 13:43
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Who made that list? The concept of lists itself did - it is the form that is the problem you see, and the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe Mulva posted:I mean I can't take your failure and ignorance from you, so instead I'll hope you enjoy whatever comfort they bring. Sounds exactly like every other human's experience, love you too!
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May 16, 2021 14:00
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enki42 posted:Can you give objective evidence for this? Because OOCC provided some for forms of violence that are not war (specifically that homicide is vastly, vastly less frequent than it was in the past.) You mean like an increase in internal oppression, the cost of war, the idea that tomorrow must be better than today? Which bit did you want to hear more about? Even if just talking from a "european nations outward" you've seen the various different refugee camps and the various abuses heaped upon people within them. Yarls Wood, is the most apropos for me to bring up as it happens in the UK. But you've got the various ethnic cleansings and war crimes that continue to go on besides these of course. Homicide is, but we didn't even measure for a lot of different interpersonal violence until recently. I wouldn't argue that murder has gone up, that'd be silly. But violence? Denial of food, shelter etc? I'd say that's gone up. At least where I am. Heck we are seeing the first ever drop in life expectancy since WW2 at the moment. I don't think we've gotten worse. But I do think that the idea we've gotten "better" is a scam. Every time period is some measure of dystopia. Some more so than others, true, but it's not going to stop any time soon.
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May 16, 2021 14:45
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Josef bugman posted:The ice sheets are melting mate. The idea that there is infinite growth available on a finite planet is not exactly a sustainable system now is it? Car Hater posted:Lol no, it's not agriculture that's the root problem, it's language. Language is the first and most terrible of all technologies, and what makes us human, and yes it should obviously be eradicated because it's not viable. Consciousness grants a degree of competitiveness that is incompatible with ecosystems perpetuating themselves. Humanity - the state of being self-elevated above a base animal - is a dead end biologically. Oh my god.  Why does every stance or argument on this site have to be framed in absolute, extreme binary opposites? Capitalism is insane, destructive, and oppressive, and we are living through a period of mass extinction at our own hands -- that doesn't mean we need to run the opposite way and declare consciousness itself to be the culprit and wish for something absurd, like the extinction of all mammalian life. Seriously. What the gently caress?? What is wrong with you people?? There's choices besides either "Rah rah number go up!!!" and "return to monke". Someone can deplore the broken capitalist systems that result in state violence against the 99% and the conversion of the world into a hothouse climate not seen since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum --and not also gigabrain themselves into advocating for omnicide and a return to the sublime rule of rocks, photons and gas particles. quote:Consciousness grants a degree of competitiveness that is incompatible with ecosystems perpetuating themselves. Humanity - the state of being self-elevated above a base animal - is a dead end biologically. Do you think the ecosystem is some kind of perfectly balanced utopia where every species finds its perfect niche and coexists? Because I have an unfortunate bit of news - evolution is just a random mess, and whatever works or helps a species reproduce will be selected for. Sometimes this can have huge ecological consequences! For example, something happened about two billion years ago that granted certain species a degree of competitiveness that was incompatible with the ecosystem at the time perpetuating itself. That was the development of photosynthesis. This one adaptation gave certain types of cyanobacteria the ability to eat the CO2, which was just floating around, simply by sitting and absorbing sunlight! What an incredibly broken hack! Now cyanobacteria were able to run completely amok. They excreted Oxygen as a waste product, a chemical that was so incredibly reactive and oxidizing that it would rip electrons from any nearby atom, breaking up compounds and reducing them to unreactive dead oxides. This caused an extinction event so massive and so wide-spread that it left a layer of rust that we can see in the rock layers to this day. The random evolution of photosynthesis was a massive, profoundly disruptive event that caused one type of creature to tilt the balance of nature to such a degree that it caused a mass extinction. Was that a "bad" thing by nature of it disturbing the balance?
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May 16, 2021 15:17
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Oh sorry, should have clarified. I am just objecting to mass extinction/die off that is going to occur. I don't know what Car Hater is talking about in all honesty.
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May 16, 2021 15:33
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DrSunshine posted:Oh my god. Because we're already extinct and it's fun to tilt at windmills about why. :P I'm aware of all the points you raised, and don't ascribe any sort of mystical woo woo balance to nature, take a chill pill. I take roughly the same stance, hard to moralize the oxygen crisis. But to the things living at the time, it was a total disaster. A quirk of evolution drove the annihilation of its source organism and the vast majority of the rest of life at the time. Such is consciousness now. E; see, I'm not wishing for mammalian gigadeath, it's just here already. Small poo poo might make it through this millennium but nothing over like, medium dog size. Naked mole rats probably have the best odds. Car Hater fucked around with this message at 16:22 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 16:19
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Car Hater posted:Because we're already extinct and it's fun to tilt at windmills about why. :P That does not sound like.... what current science says is happening.
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May 16, 2021 16:30
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Lol at framing this argument as one of ethics and science and then reducing it to individual perceptions of progress and success. Goon confirmation bias is a heady brew.
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May 16, 2021 17:09
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Also a lot of doomposters act like "Climate change" is a thing that will jump out of a dark alley and knife people. What, exactly, do you imagine is going to cause wealthy and powerful nations to collapse, rather than billions of poorer folks in weaker nations getting the dick while richer ones adapt?
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May 16, 2021 17:13
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Mulva posted:Also a lot of doomposters act like "Climate change" is a thing that will jump out of a dark alley and knife people. What, exactly, do you imagine is going to cause wealthy and powerful nations to collapse Disease.
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May 16, 2021 17:29
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Mulva posted:Also a lot of doomposters act like "Climate change" is a thing that will jump out of a dark alley and knife people. I mean it already is doing that, it's just that the knife is steadily getting bigger and sharper.
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May 16, 2021 17:39
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Byzantine posted:Disease. We stand in the wreckage of the greatest pandemic of the last century. The United States hosed it up so badly it is boggling to consider we nominally have a government at all. The death toll is probably close to a million for us, without all the hiding bodies and 'Well they really died from this and not COVID' we have going on. It's a tragedy that could very well define a generation. It changed literally nothing about how this nation operates. And frankly in 4 years it'll probably be a loving anecdote for everyone that didn't lose a loved one to it. Disease is not going to stop the horrific ghoul of America from continuing to devour the weak and oppressed. We'll keep on keeping on right on through it. Probably not going to stop any other nation that considers itself wealthy and powerful either. Consider this a taste of things to come. A lot of people will die, especially those most vulnerable, but nobody will care and society will march on. That's the future. Yardbomb posted:I mean it already is doing that, it's just that the knife is steadily getting bigger and sharper. No, it's not. It's really, really loving not. It's not that kind of threat and it's never going to be, but it'd have to be that kind of threat to justify the level of sadbrains posting over it. The type of thing where you blink and 4,000,000 people died in a second, out of nowhere, for no real cause we can predict. It's never going to be that, all the causes of death and distress will be seen from a thousand miles and decades in time away. We will not be surprised about any of it, nor will we be caught flat footed about what to do about any of it. We may not actually do any of the things we have to until the last possible second, but that's still more than enough time to push the majority of the suffering away from first world nations and onto the backs of nations without the wealth and technology to take the steps we can. Like I said, a lot of people will die, especially those most vulnerable, but nobody will care and society will march on. Mulva fucked around with this message at 17:45 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 17:40
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the thing this thread definitely needed was edgelord malthusian weirdoes jerking themselves off over human extinction
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May 16, 2021 17:44
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Mulva posted:All the causes of death and distress will be seen from a thousand miles and decades in time away. Decades might be giving it too much leeway with how poo poo things are going and getting worse in regards to it. It's not happening tomorrow, but idiots are still getting worse about wrecking the planet ASAP. Like lol now we have extra stupid garbage like NFTs too on top of all the usual bullshit and whatever else may come.
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May 16, 2021 17:51
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Mulva posted:Also a lot of doomposters act like "Climate change" is a thing that will jump out of a dark alley and knife people. What, exactly, do you imagine is going to cause wealthy and powerful nations to collapse, rather than billions of poorer folks in weaker nations getting the dick while richer ones adapt? Are... are you serious? I mean you've got increasing difficulties growing crops and (worse) pollinating crops, you've got mass flooding of low laying areas, huge numbers of refugees from everywhere else on the planet. You've got the death of vast numbers and the collapse of the various different supply chains that keep the world in which we currently all exist turning. Your attitude is one of "shut up you sad fucks, your wrong". It's based not on looking at data but a determination to be right about how everyone else is stupid. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 18:04 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 17:55
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Mulva posted:The type of thing where you blink and 4,000,000 people died in a second, out of nowhere, for no real cause we can predict. It's never going to be that, all the causes of death and distress will be seen from a thousand miles and decades in time away. Covid came out of nowhere, swept over the whole world and is currently at 3.4 million dead.
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May 16, 2021 17:57
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Josef bugman posted:Are... are you serious? I mean you've got increasing difficulties growing crops and (worse) pollinating crops There will never be a point in the entirety of the most extreme climate change scenario where we lose the ability to artificially generate fertile soil and grow crops. Ever. Ever ever ever. We could lose the ozone layer and the seas could boil away, and we could still grow crops. It's a solved process. The only question is how many could potentially die as things get harder, which is a number that is never going to reach 100%. quote:you've got mass flooding of low laying areas Move inland, build massive walls, loving die. All good solutions. quote:huge numbers of refugees from everywhere else on the planet. Kill them. It's not hard. It's horrific and immoral, but it's super easy and morality isn't actually real. We put children in loving changes for the grand crime of.....ah yes, 'being foreign', and all most people have managed about that one is a stern 'tut tut'. quote:You've got the death of vast numbers and the collapse of the various different supply chains that keep the world in which we currently all exist turning. Then the world as it exists will die. quote:Your attitude is one of "shut up you sad fucks, your wrong". You are wrong. That's the point, the world doesn't care. And there is no-one calling us to task for our sins. We can rape the planet, lead to the death of billions, and go "Welp, that happened" and just mosey onward like it never happened. Nobody can call us to task over it. Extinction is a mechanical issue, not a moral one, and there's nothing coming down the pipe that we have no idea how to deal with. None of it is novel, none of it is unexpected. The species will adapt. Civilization at large will adapt. What form it takes is both in flux and irrelevant. The fundamental assumption in the depression is that things will get bad and we'll all care. We won't all care, we've never all cared. So why do you act like everyone in this future will act like a depressive rather than like a sociopath? Byzantine posted:Covid came out of nowhere, swept over the whole world and is currently at 3.4 million dead. It's been a year and a half to do those numbers and in another year we aren't going to have 6.8 million dead. Well I mean we probably will, much like how 3.4 is a bullshit number, but the official number won't have doubled in double the time. And what we learned from mRNA vaccination will leave us that much better equipped for the next virus that we ignore before it kills millions. COVID is already transitioning to the 'managed' stage. We could have a hundred more COVIDs and the population of the world might just about reach Spanish flu levels of panic. How often do you, personally, find yourself thinking of the Spanish flu?
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May 16, 2021 18:17
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lol
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May 16, 2021 18:20
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Okay it's obvious that even if you are not serious you are a terrible person.
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May 16, 2021 18:28
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Humanity is invincible.
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May 16, 2021 18:42
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Mulva posted:smart words We wish climate change would be abrupt or threatening enough to upset the status quo, and that the lower class could force structural change to undo it. In reality, the ruling class have already made plans to insulate themselves from it and business has already planned to make money from it. From policy makers, climate change won't be significantly opposed, let alone solved. As being somewhat predictable (if with a huge margin of error), it is already priced into the economy. The best we can expect is bottle recycling and paper straw measures. Real estate companies buy the high ground expecting and needing the low ground to flood to make the profit. An international migrant crises is an excellent opportunity to admit desperate people, as indentured workers. High food prices will only affect the poor, and they'll be even more afraid to lose their jobs. TVs are scarce? Speculators already knew they would be and are making a killing. Ice gone? Free shipping! Any volatility or crisis that seems bad to a poor is a wonderful opportunity for the rich. The poor can only push back with violence, but this also gets more difficult as power structures get taller and more entrenched. You can't go to your owner's house and burn it anymore. You have 1,000 owners all over the world and they are protected by police, and the police are increasingly software systems and robots. Climate change will happen. Any action to slow it will be merely to prevent total societal collapse and extract maximum value. It's reassuring that at least the system won't try to completely destroy the planet. Preen Dog fucked around with this message at 18:50 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 18:44
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Josef bugman posted:Okay it's obvious that even if you are not serious you are a terrible person. Seems like a non-sequitur, but let's say he is a "terrible person" how does that invalidate any of his claims? Nonsense posted:Humanity is invincible. There has never been an extinction of a tool-using agricultural species.
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