End Times ?

  On 1/9/2018 at 7:02 PM, patternoverlap said:

 

  On 1/9/2018 at 6:26 PM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 1/9/2018 at 6:09 PM, patternoverlap said:

The world itself will end probably billions of years from now. It's just civilization that is in decline. Impending ice age and depletion of resources will reduce our population quite a bit and we'll go back to being stragglers for a bit while the climate and the environment recover and get back to a more equalized state. If these cycles run roughly a quarter of a million years each, we probably have 6-12,000 or so more cycles of this until the Earth finally calls it quits; if that puts things in perspective for you.

It'll be kinda dope for the new society that gets rebuilt cos they'll have our history and artifacts but with a wiser, detached perspective where it's not just the political and sociological baggage that we haven't been able to ditch for centuries.

 

 

Sometimes late at night I think that maybe this cycle has been happening for longer than we think but each time we have to start from scratch. Think about how much would be lost from the past 20 years simply by unplugging the internet and not being able to get it back online again. Future civs would just be digging up piles and piles of weird plastic shapes and looking at these large gridded husks that we liked to build and scratching their heads. Obviously these are just errant thoughts and chances are at least some bits of info would survive cataclysm and hopefully be useful.

 

it's interesting to think about, for sure.

some kind of correction to bring us back to our senses is certainly impending and also imo sorely needed for our own good. if we can minimise the amount of suffering that goes along with it that'd be nice but it's not looking like we're capable, either materially or rationally, of doing so.

What species will take over from us? We'll probably have long eaten/shagged all the other primates into extinction by the time we snuff it, and prob the elephants and dolphins too. So my money's on one of the corvids - they're devilishly savvy, quite numerous and already well-adapted to the concrete Anthropocene wasteland

^ the Houbara Bustard, solely on tha strengf of its name.

  On 1/10/2018 at 3:22 AM, Tricone RC said:

my money's on one of the corvids - they're devilishly savvy, quite numerous and already well-adapted to the concrete Anthropocene wasteland

  On 1/10/2018 at 3:50 PM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 1/10/2018 at 3:22 AM, Tricone RC said:

my money's on one of the corvids - they're devilishly savvy, quite numerous and already well-adapted to the concrete Anthropocene wasteland

Agree, plus they can fucking FLY which humans have envied forever. Maybe we subconsciously knew all along that they'd be our successors.

 

Interesting discussion.

Cockroaches will continue on 4EVA and they are intelligent enough to know when to take their shit underground and hunker down for while.  They don't need to evolve; ultimate beast right there.

+1 for Ravens / Crows.  Especially when they evolve a 3rd eye and can see into the past / future.

  On 1/9/2018 at 7:50 PM, beerwolf said:

drink up, skin up, put some tunes and forget about it

this !

  On 1/10/2018 at 4:23 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

i've actually thought about this before :p 

 

based on the fact that we are dominant due to intelligence, i would have to assume the next most intelligent animal takes over. which means chimps. which means humans again???

 

probs more likely is some other species catches up in intelligence...a species that we wouldn't expect...ok people be suspicious of all other fauna we can't risk our legacy for these assholes.

 

scifi twist: the species that survives and evolves to become dominant does so because of the mess we made. like it feeds off of pollution or it eats hard-drives and becomes super digital and bionic. 

i always wondered with sci fi movies where humans fight robots , what will actually happen if the robots win and they dont have an enemy anymore, will they expand for ever or get an existential crisis and destroy themselves  ?

add my vote for the corvids as well. they have my utmost respect.

na man, tardigrades gonna own this earth.. they already do!

like a micro manatee crossed with a pillow

ardcore

  On 1/10/2018 at 5:00 PM, cwmbrancity said:

like a micro manatee crossed with a pillow

 

ardcore

they're actually ants in sumo suits 

  On 1/10/2018 at 4:38 PM, Kavinsky said:

 

  On 1/9/2018 at 7:50 PM, beerwolf said:

drink up, skin up, put some tunes and forget about it

this !

 

  On 1/9/2018 at 7:50 PM, beerwolf said:

drink up, skin up, put some tunes and forget about it

you're a smart guy

better than straying tangentially on youlube via Cern, D-Wave, AI, demonology & wasting the last 15mins of my life

  On 1/13/2018 at 1:08 AM, cwmbrancity said:

better than straying tangentially on youlube via Cern, D-Wave, AI, demonology & wasting the last 15mins of my life

Spending some time in a YouTube or Wikipedia vortex has its merits. Just like in the olden days when we flipped through a magazine can be relaxing and even informative

  On 1/10/2018 at 11:13 PM, Ifeelspace said:

 

  On 1/9/2018 at 7:50 PM, beerwolf said:

drink up, skin up, put some tunes and forget about it

you're a smart guy

 

best to be wrecked when the apocalypse comes mate, definitely not an event I wish to experience while being sober (and seeing as I will be wrecked I'll put some tunes on)

  On 1/23/2018 at 2:49 PM, caze said:

nice one! and succinct

i'm afraid it won't convert the cynics though. with their confirmation bias and all that...

I can think of a few issues with what he’s saying, beyond the gross generalisations of “progressives” and “progress”.

Since I’m on mobile, I’ll just speak to two, and not in depth.

Spread of democratization: SE Asian countries are largely backsliding to autocratic regimes or hollow farces of democracies. This is also true in much of Africa and at least one country in South America.

Average life expectancy: a little disingenuous as what we’ve actually done is lowered the infant mortality rate. Certainly a good accomplishment but different than saying humans are living much longer.

I like Pinker usually, but this is clickbait TED talk bullshit.

Academic nitpicking. Democratization is about the big picture. Sure countries can regress all the time. Eg. Russia and Turkey. Doesn't mean the general development over and extended period is a positive one. Climate change isn't a hoax because the average global temperatures don't rise consistently.

Not sure why the point of life expectancy is a little disingenuous. Life expectancy might be a nuanced concept. But as long as the numbers are presented truthfully, I don't get why this was a little disingenuous.

My only objection was that his talk didn't actually present an answer to its title. As for starters I'm still wondering on who these progressives hating on progress are. It's a bit of a strawman he uses to sell his new book.

Not academic nitpicking at all, that shit has real consequences on the people living in those countries. And it’s not just individual countries. Whole blocs like SE Asia. China is not a democracy so that’s ~15% of the worlds population right there not living in a democracy. Arab spring had little impact on democratization in the region beyond Tunisia. Sub-Saharan Africa is by and large full of autocracies. If you want an academic nitpick, we could argue whether or not Japan is truly a democracy ;)

The life expectancy thing is disingenuous because he’s presenting it as “people are living longer” but that’s not actually what’s really happening. The upper bound (life span) has increased somewhat, but not dramatically in the 20th-21st century.

It’s interesting you bring up climate change, because he uses the US emissions as proof you can have economic growth without corresponding pollution (I believe this is possible, but not with current energy production schemes). But if you look at global trends, CO2 emissions continue to increase, as did greenhouse gas emissions in general. The US simply exported their production. Global trends are important because pollution doesn’t respect national borders.

I expect better from Pinker, his work on the decrease of violence is very good. This is just generalist bullshit to sell his book (as you pointed out).

  On 1/24/2018 at 2:07 AM, chenGOD said:

I like Pinker usually, but this is clickbait TED talk bullshit.

No it's not, he's just condensed some info from this:

...which is a real doorstop of a book, and goes in deep on these topics. Not gotten around to it yet, but it's in my pile.

  On 1/24/2018 at 8:35 AM, goDel said:

My only objection was that his talk didn't actually present an answer to its title. As for starters I'm still wondering on who these progressives hating on progress are.

He's referring to the 'late stage capitalism' morons, people who incoherently bleat on about 'neoliberalism', socialists, etc. Paranoid delusionals who think the world is getting worse in every way, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Pinker isn't even a neoliberal/classical liberal/whatever either, he's a Scandinavian style social democrat.

...also humans are living longer, sure the majority of the increase in average lifespan in the last century is down to decreased infant mortality (obviously not a bad thing!), but people are dying later as well. There's been a worldwide decrease in deaths from heart attacks for example (and many other diseases), more people dying later from cancer and other age related problems instead.

He’s actually condensed his newest book “Enlightenment Now” for this clickbait. I liked “Better Angels of Our Nature”, and as I mentioned, his points on violence are generally well researched. Obviously haven’t read his newest as it’s not out yet, but it seems to me like he’s espousing humanism and reason as ways to deal with “wicked problems”.

This is all well and good, and in general I agree, most of the things he discusses are better now than they were 100 years ago (even 50 years ago). Some of the things he mentions (such as democratization) are in danger of slipping backward in more extreme ways than his work suggests (there’s a reason he chose the cutoff date that he did), while others are entirely not as good as he suggests (pollution).

The problem with using humanism and reason is that it attempts to quantify the human experience, and spirituality, emotion, and humanity itself are not things that are easily quantified. So to ignore those aspects (such as dismissing relative poverty in favour of the absolute poverty measure) is to ignore a fundamental part of the human experience, and thus society.

P.S. I mentioned the upper bound of the life span has increased, but it’s not as dramatic as the picture he paints, which is why I said it’s disingenuous.

This discussion of end times upsets my delicate constitution, so can we just go to medieval times instead?

  On 1/25/2018 at 3:39 AM, chenGOD said:

He’s actually condensed his newest book “Enlightenment Now” for this clickbait. I liked “Better Angels of Our Nature”, and as I mentioned, his points on violence are generally well researched. Obviously haven’t read his newest as it’s not out yet, but it seems to me like he’s espousing humanism and reason as ways to deal with “wicked problems”.

No, the video wasn't just based on his new book, some of it references Better Angels... which wasn't just about violence, he covers democracy (the graph at 1:10 is on page 336), poverty, trade, too. Looks like this new book is just continuing the theme in other areas.

  Quote

This is all well and good, and in general I agree, most of the things he discusses are better now than they were 100 years ago (even 50 years ago). Some of the things he mentions (such as democratization) are in danger of slipping backward in more extreme ways than his work suggests (there’s a reason he chose the cutoff date that he did), while others are entirely not as good as he suggests (pollution).

Well that's the point surely? If there was no dangers to continued progress, there'd be little reason to write the book in the first place. This doesn't strike me as naive optimism, just pointing out what has worked well up til now and why it might be a good idea to continue doing what works, it's just not naive pessimism either. I'm not sure why you think the pollution situation isn't as good as he suggests either, seeing as he didn't really suggest much in that video, just pointed out it wasn't all terrible, which it's not (e.g. recent evidence suggests the worst case climate change scenarios aren't plausible any more: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-future-climate-revealed-current-variations.html).

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The problem with using humanism and reason is that it attempts to quantify the human experience, and spirituality, emotion, and humanity itself are not things that are easily quantified. So to ignore those aspects (such as dismissing relative poverty in favour of the absolute poverty measure) is to ignore a fundamental part of the human experience, and thus society.

It's not ignoring those aspects of the human experience, just pointing out that they're frequently very dumb, and we would do better to look at the big picture.

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P.S. I mentioned the upper bound of the life span has increased, but it’s not as dramatic as the picture he paints, which is why I said it’s disingenuous.

It's only disingenuous if you disregard childhood mortality rates, but why would you do that?