Apocalyptic Ideation
see also: the book of revelations
There will always be people fixated on The End, some because they think we all deserve it, others because they can't seperate their own existential crisis from potential global crises
see also: the book of revelations
There will always be people fixated on The End, some because they think we all deserve it, others because they can't seperate their own existential crisis from potential global crises
There is a long and embarassing trail of false apocalypses predicted from extrapolations + assumptions of helplessness, often made by otherwise intelligent and scientifically inclined people. We were all going to starve, but then Haber figured out how to chemically fix Nitrogen. Nuclear war was going to end the world, but then MAD actually worked. The ozone hole was going to cook the plant life, but then we cleaned up our refrigerants. We were going to run out of oil by 2010, but then we found more.
Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move. You don't have a choice in the matter, and it's easy to fixate on this and imagine yourself trapped, but you are "trapped" with one hell of a fighting chance so the truth is you just don't know.
I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but the fast majority of authors/researchers I've read on these topics are quite well aware.
The problem is the vast majority of this "adapt and overcome" has been based on two major things:
- Historically: a geologically remarkable period of climate stability
- More recent: abundant fossil fuels
Malthus was wrong because he failed to predict the Haber process. But currently the Haber process relies heavily on fossil fuels. We didn't produce astoundingly more food per acre then ever before in history because we are incredibly smart, but because we had ready access to hydrocarbons. The same logic follows for nearly all great inventions of recent eras
> Betting against humanity isn't a historically wise move.
I see this comment all the time but it's a very odd one. As far as species go humans are very, very young and survived very little, just about 300,000 years. Additionally, like I said, we've only existed as a species during one of the most stable climates in the history of the planet.
One final point on the "people always think the world is ending!" rhetoric. We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years. Let's say, for argument, that humans were wiped out in the next 100 years. Alien scientists visiting would see people thinking about the end times in the last 1/300,000 of the species' existence to be fairly prescient, even if they were off by several of their own species lifetimes.
On top of that the writing on this topic is not without merit historically. Revelations was written during the Siege of Jerusalem, when things were collapsing for the world of the author. Most medieval apocalyptic literature was written or based on the black death which wiped out between 30-50 percent of Europe. Hardly irrational beliefs that the world is ending based solely on existential anxiety.
There's also an obvious logical fallacy in all this thinking. Most of the time when people look up webMD they think they have cancer, and they don't most of the time. But it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer no matter how strong the evidence.
> the truth is you just don't know
You disproved:
> it doesn't logically follow that they can't have cancer
Good job, you really pwned that straw man.
Also, I want to preserve this one for posterity, because I'm pretty sure it's hilariously wrong but I have better things to do than dig through the literature right now:
> We've only really started seeing strong apocalyptic thinking in the last several hundred years.
Homo sapiens survived the transition from the last ice age to today's climate.
As a related digression I think what people just keep forgetting about here isn’t like, we’ll survive. It’s we have all this nice stuff like avocados, grapes, heart surgery, and MacBook Pros, elephants, winter sports, houses, etc. and it sure would be nice to not lose that stuff for no good reason only to say “we’ll see we didn’t go extinct it wasn’t that bad”.
The apparently abrupt changes the unnecessary lives lost, and what could be damaged or lost forever are what’s of concern. Less so just survivability.
My point was just that claims that the entire species is going to go extinct are unlikely and, worse, counter-productive. The last thing we need is fatalism and people giving up hope.
Agreed completely on fatalism and nihilism being mind viruses.
I can put a pot of water on my stove, but my hand in, warm the pot by 1°C, and I'll be fine. I can't do the same with an increase by 100°C.
For the current climate change, we've been calling +2°C catastrophic.
It is catastrophic: millions will die, species will go extinct, trillions will be spent updating infrastructure and rebuilding. But I believe that it's survivable.
Over what time period? 10°C in 10 million years is fine. In 10 years it would kill almost all life. The amount of change is inconsequential as long as the rate of change is small enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period#/media/Fil...
There was a roughly 5°C change in about the last 2,000 years.
I wish I could share your optimism.
Humans have been contemplating the end of the world and the promise of a subsequent paradise or judgement for thousands of years, evidenced by ancient religious and cultural texts. The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, Zoroastrian eschatology, etc.
We're talking about bringing half a dozen to multiple dozens of networks out of balance that we only halfway understand.
> extrapolate that "humanity will always find solutions"
Good thing I didn't do that! Doomers, however, do extrapolate failure. They walk far out on a branch and forget they are carrying the burden of proof. That's my entire point.
And if you happen to read a bit about how biological systems, the weather systems, our economical systems, food supply et al. work together while keeping in mind that IPCC reports are _conservative_ about their predictions (meaning they rather underestimate than overestimate), you should really deeply be worried about the near-future outcome of the ongoings.
Just because we successfully hacked our nutrition system a 100ys ago does not mean that we'll be able to cope with how consumerism and agricultural intensification afterwards affects us with dozens of new problems. At some point it just gets too expensive and/or too complex for humans to solve.