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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

// Honestly I'll ride it out but I do feel bad for people with kids.

When I came to the US in the 90s, one of my teachers was freaking out about peak oil and about how people shouldn't have kids because that would exacerbate the problem and those kids would have a bad life.

Joke's on him I guess. I suspect that at every single point of human history, someone was dismal about something and using it as a reason to not have kids.

If I had to bet, people having kids now are not going to regret it ever.

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As a 90s kid a remember peak oil. It was taught every where except in one class - economics. The teacher was adamant we would never run out of oil because as the supply dwindled the cost would go up and new oil or other forms of energy would be found. Makes perfect sense now but at the time this was not the norm. Economics ended up being my favorite class. Slightly related he also predicted the internet bubble collapse as I was explaining how I as a teenager was making money on the internet doing nothing in 99 - and his response was that will end because you don’t get money for nothing forever.

"Someone will do something" isn't especially good economics. It's just wishful thinking.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. It's a bad idea to plan on it.

In this case it was predicted in a specific context though, and he was correct. Do you wish that he was thinking wishfully perhaps?

He didn't predict the specifics, like fracking. If he knew that it would become economical, good on him for knowing more. But that's a matter of geology and petroleum science; it couldn't be predicted purely from the economics.

I point it out only to say "somebody will do something to fix climate change, so don't worry about it" is not a sound position either. The economics predict there will be reactions, but they include a lot of suffering. Dealing with it sooner rather than later will reduce the suffering, and we've already lost a lot of time.

> I point it out only to say "somebody will do something to fix climate change, so don't worry about it" is not a sound position either.

That wasn't his position though. His comment had specific context, your critique did not.

Otherwise I absolutely agree with you, my thinking is that humans should try precision in communications (more popularly known as "pedantry", except when scientists do it) about these wicked problems because what we're doing now seems to cause more harm than help, and as you say time is of the essence.

Yes peak oil is a good example of predictions being wrong, it does not mean anything for other predictions of doom.

Dire warnings about things going on in Europe in the 1930s proved to be very true and incredibly costly and horrible for most everyone and from talking to people that had to deal with the aftermath.

What if we are wrong?! we made the world better for nothing!

I hopped on the comment on peak oil because it was something that I had not heard in long time and I remember the discussion being so out of left field that an alternative idea was never brought up - and it was done under a capitalistic economic model based on supply and demand. I’m not saying we should look at all predictions as potentially wrong. I personally believe in reducing consumption especially along the food chain like a reduction in meat and other animal products as well as ensuring seafood is done sustainably.

So based on a single datapoint you have concluded that an event can never happen? “It didn’t rain today, so it never will”.

No, I am saying that history is full of people saying "it's raining today, better not have kids so they don't die in the flood" and that has never been the right answer in retrospect.

There are multiple times that would have been the correct decision.

If your ancestors had made that "correct" decision, you'd be dead as in not existing.

So it sounds like they all made the right decision to procreate despite "reasons" not to.

Of course, it is obviously inevitable that at some point the doomsayers will be correct (and, to note, there are also many times they've been right in the past - I wouldn't have wanted to be born in Europe just before the Black Death, or in Rome just before it fell, or in 510 or so just to be in prime age during what is often called "the worst year in history" in 536, ...)

Yup however you wouldn't be here today if someone.in your ancestry didn't live through that - assuming your family is from that part of the world

I’m sure it was deeply unpleasant for my ancestors and I’m currently thinking the world may be up being way more unpleasant for my descendants than it was for me.

The point this sub thread is that people always had reason to suspect this and at all previous time it was an error.

There were lots of doomsayers in history that weren’t wrong I’d the point, yes those of us talking have ancestors that got through terrible times (some of them predicted some not), that wiped out large swaths of people and survived but there are lots of other terrible outcomes that are terrible and unwelcome.

My grandfather lived through ww2 m, which was a HEAVILY predicted event filled with doomsaying right after WW1, and it was a point of debate.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, lots of people didn’t make it and entire communities were destroyed, for them it was the end.

... the adjective "Pollyannaish" and the noun "Pollyannaism" became popular terms for a personality type characterised by irrepressible optimism evident in the face of even the most adverse or discouraging of circumstances. It is sometimes used pejoratively, referring to someone whose optimism is excessive to the point of naïveté or refusing to accept the facts of an unfortunate situation.

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