It's interesting to me

[6744b59936cc3Kolya]

I have a Go game board. Got it because of all these great descriptions of the game. Then played a few times and... I don't know if the rulebook we had was too vague or faulty. But we both quickly found out that once you have someone cornered there is absolutely nothing the other person can do to win anymore. The game is over very early on, and yet there are dozens of stones to lay still. It was a very underwhelming experience altogether. Nothing like chess or even simpler games where a disadvantaged player can still gain the upper hand at any point.

[6744b59936e97fox]

I don't know very much about the game but I would think that with that many possible moves, your experience heavily depends on the players themselves.

[6744b59936fceKolya]

Yeah, I should try it again.

[6744b5993720fKolya]

I read about "Deep Adaption". It's the idea that societal collapse is imminent due to climate change and how to prepare for that change, culturally and psychologically. It's based on a 2018 paper by sustainability professor Jem Bendell. Despite this origin it is not exactly a scientific paper, but rather doomist and part kitchen sink psychology (imo). Nevertheless I think it's an interesting perspective: What if catastrophic climate change is already inevitable and happening within our lifetime? What can we save, what will we have to let go?

In reality it's hard to tell what the consequences will be, but Bendell is clearly interested in the worst case: War, mass migration, hunger, disease, the end of humanity - an immanentized eschaton. And that's where he is either dead-on or peddling disaster porn, depending on what you want to believe.

In any case the paper has spawned a host of online communities who have assumed "Inevitable Near Term Human Extinction" (INTHE) as their dogma. So far so predictable. It is still an interesting paper and a not completely unlikely perspective that is generally avoided - for obvious reasons.

[6744b599373a8voodoo47]

yes, very sure the next big shitty thing™ is happening during our lifetimes - the Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times cycle is undeniably nearing its end. I have my popcorn ready.

[6744b59937981Marvin]

Is there any evidence which points in a different direction`? There is no indication that the climate crisis would solve itself in any way, and no technology exists to combat it. With political changes being unlikely, what other scenario could there be? The timeline is not set in stone and predictions are improving in accuracy, but I'd argue that it should actually be much worse in the end given there are several irreversible hard transition points we've not yet reached (Greenland ice cap collapsing, ocean CO2 sequestration collapsing, permafrost methane storages released into atmosphere, ...).

The idea that humans could die on an extinction-like scale is SciFi though.

[6744b59937acaKolya]

Well there's a wide margin between being cautiously pessimistic due to the reasons you mentioned and Bendell predicting a methane apocalypse followed by a series of nuclear power plant meltdowns within the next 20 years (now 18).
Frankly I didn't get what one had to do with the other.

@voodoo47  Sounds like philosophy from an early 80s action flick.

[6744b59937bdbfox]

Not sure how much is due to the pandemic starting to leave its psychological mark and me simply needing a vacation but I can't deny that it feels a lot like shit hitting the fan for real now in multiple respects. Trying not to let it bring me down too much though.

[6744b59937da7Nameless Voice]

I can't help but see the worst-case scenario as being inevitable, given human nature.

Look how people reacted to the relatively small changes required to fight the pandemic, with huge swathes of the world's population either pretending nothing was happening or actively working to spread the disease or attack anyone trying to prevent it.

Considering the massive societal changes we'd need to actually prevent climate change, I can't see much hope there.
We've known about this for over 60 years and haven't just done nothing, but have actively worked against changes.  What little progress we've made has been undone by others finding new and better ways to pollute.

[6744b59937f60Kolya]

Most of the pollution isn't created on an individual level though, but on industrial scale. That could be changed within the political framework.

The idea that caring for the environment was mainly a personal responsibility was created by giants like Shell through ad campaigns in the late 1980s. It's been a huge success for corporations ever since.

To this day people believe that their use of plastic bags, drinking straws, personal water usage etc was turning the tides of climate change. And changing this personal behaviour was a point to feel snobbish about and chastise others over. This mindset has conveniently obscured industrial pollution as a political issue.

In that way it's nothing like the pandemic measures which actually solely rest on personal commitment.

[6744b59938140Nameless Voice]

I don't see it as likely that we'll change that.
The corporations who do all the pollution are so incredibly good at lobbying, so there's no political will, and there won't be because no one cares enough to remove those people.

Also, it's not entirely that simplistic.  The biggest cause overall is of course the system of capitalism and its goal of infinite growth, but even within that system, individual actions control the market.  One of the biggest rises in pollution in recent years - counteracting all of the other gains made in reducing the emissions of transport - is the incredible rise in popularity of SUVs, and buying those is entirely a consumer choice.  The companies wouldn't make them if people didn't buy them.

We live in a consumer culture where everyone is expected to work hard to afford to buy status symbols and useless items that they will then throw away, and where the measure of a person's worth is based on what they own.  Without changing that culture, I don't think we have any chance at stopping climate disaster.

[6744b599382fdicemann]

As far as I'm concerned the governments won't do enough in time and we're all doomed in a few decades time. So just enjoying what times left before everything goes to shit. Does make ya wonder if that's the case on whether it's worthwhile having kids. Then combine that with the pandemic, lockdowns etc and it's all just meh.

[6744b59938444voodoo47]

I think the best thing I have here is something one of my relatives (born very early 1900s in the Austro-Hungarian empire, lived to be almost 100 years old to see the world change after 9/11, spent his entire life in central parts of Europe and went through all the awful things that have happened during the 20th century first hand) said a few years before passing away - "if you can fix something with your own two hands and make the world less miserable, do it. also, don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you."

I certainly am not the people loving type, but the older I get, the more I think he was right.

[6744b5993851fNameless Voice]

If everyone lived by that motto, the world would be a much better place.

[6744b599386adicemann]

Man what a century that would have been to have seen it all. Compare that length of time to say 2000 - 2020 and sure we've had tech advances, but not on the same leap levels. So far anyway.

My nana / grandmother from my dad's side, lived through the great depression. That would have been something. Told me stories about how common horse and carriages used to be. To even see things from that to now. Dayam.

[6744b599387bavoodoo47]

you have no idea. I don't think any of us do - 2 world wars, people dying left and right, half a dozen oppressive regimes trying to get you, losing everything you have a couple of times, being hungry/eating garbage, getting bombed, AND irradiated.

madness.

[6744b599388c4fox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7X-1V9nOs

[6744b59938a16voodoo47]

yeah, this is nothing new. basically, human beings need to have a certain amount of problems in their life to stay sane, and have to go through a certain amount of negative experiences to not be stupid later - for example, the teenage/student period where you need to work and study at the same time and usually still end up having to survive on foods of questionable nutritional value is VERY important, and those who do not go through it have a much higher tendency to end up as lets say, less than ideal members of the society.

but again, this is inevitable. keep the popcorn at hand.

[6744b59938b4bfox]

Speaking of inevitable...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCxPOqwCr1I

Rather than popcorn, I advise to always keep a towel at hand.

[6744b59938cf5Kolya]

I would have liked to see where the model goes after the population has gone way down. My guess is it stays down for a really long time.

I think that population control is the only tool that could make a difference on a global scale. A one-child policy for just 80 years would halve the planet's population. If we really cared for our children we would try to achieve this, because those children would live in a much better world.
Of course we don't have any humane way to control global population so we let nature sort it out in the worst possible way.

[6744b59938e03Nameless Voice]

How would that actually solve the problem, when you just pointed out a moment ago that the vast majority of all pollution is not caused by general population, but by a few ultra-polluting companies and people?

[6744b59938f46voodoo47]

the western world has many problems, but too many babies is not one of them. one-child policy has been tried in china, it didn't go too well - the party had to walk back on it, which is something a government of no mistakes doesn't do unless the situation is really, really bad (remember, this is the guys who fix reactor leaks by bumping up the number on the official safe dose, nothing to see here, party reactor good reactor, this is a safe leak).

so maybe lets not do that.

[6744b599392f4Kolya]

How would that actually solve the problem, when you just pointed out a moment ago that the vast majority of all pollution is not caused by general population, but by a few ultra-polluting companies and people?

You're mixing up individual pollution (like littering, personal water usage, etc) and industrial pollution on behalf of an increasing population. The industry doesn't exist separately from the number of people it creates products for. More people = more products being sold = more industry = more industrial pollution with production methods staying the same. Limiting both factors (population size and polluting production methods) would really help the environment.

The ancient Romans already polluted the environment with measurable impact. But there were only 200 Million people worldwide (of which about 5 millions were Romans). We're now at nearly 8 billion people.

Even if we cared a lot more for the climate and environment than the Romans did (they didn't give a shit) our impact will always be much larger simply due to our sheer number. So obviously population size does play a role in this.

Whether we can or want to limit ourselves in that regard is another question. Like I said nature will eventually limit us in the cruelest way possible. If it is foreseeable now that millions will die due to a fucked up climate and mass species extinction, is it really more humane to let that happen than to prevent them from being born?
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[6744b599396e5RocketMan]

Despite how intelligent a single person is, humanity as a collective is dumb, short-sighted, complacent and reactionary.  We are essentially going through an extremely sluggish adolescence that is unfortunately being outpaced by the damage we are doing to each other and the environment.  Only when the negative repercussions reach such obviously dire and widespread proportions that the 2% can't seek refuge from it, will there be meaningful pressure on governments to do something equally dire to band-aid the problems and by that time it'll be too little too late.  Rather than take a nihilistic attitude towards this apparent inevitability, I'm kind of curious to see how we're going to deal with things when they really get bad.  I don't believe that a perfect world would be a good world to live in so I'm hoping to see some creative genius, some ingenuity, hopefully some international cooperation come from the chaos and spur the next phase of civilization.