That is not at all what I said, since I specifically addressed concepts instead of using the words "you" and "your" to preface my replies.

But it doesn't matter. Best of luck to you in the future, Prez.

Not to belabor the point but you said I was putting blind faith in science, ignoring reality and evidence, and have survivorship bias, among other things. That's okay if you think that, I don't get offended. But I see the folly in debating with someone who believes such things of me. I would prefer to just no longer continue and possibly breed contempt.

Prez wrote on Jun 14, 2024, 10:24:
You keep accusing me of being a victim of some irrational bias. I keep denying it and giving you an alternate explanation. That is an impasse. As such, I'm going to only talk videogames with you henceforth.

Please provide citations of these accusations toward you personally. As I said previously, I address your points not you personally.

You keep accusing me of being a victim of some irrational bias. I keep denying it and giving you an alternate explanation. That is an impasse. As such, I'm going to only talk videogames with you henceforth.

RedEye9 wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 14:29:
Next week when a fushion powered flying car soars over BoP’s airstream we’ll find him shaking a fist at the sky while polishing his truck that sets on blocks because gasoline is no longer available. 😂😂😂

Ha! Gasoline will still be around long, long after I am dead. Besides, with 15hp and enough gearing, you can make anything move with something as simple as steam.

/---\

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 14:33:
I didn't mean to offend. But things getting worse just means that it is going to be harder and harder to ignore, meaning eventually people will have to take notice. It is the human condition that until things become seriously bad, nothing of real significance is going to happen. It is required that things get worse. It's how you eventually convince a critical mass of people to finally act. It's amazing to me that a man of your intelligence hasn't noticed that pattern after all this time. How much will be irrevocably lost before that happens? You got me. But something else about the human condition that I am acutely aware of and have firsthand experience with is that we humans are adaptable to what would have seemed impossible conditions under which to live before if forced to. People have gotten way too soft in their cushy existence to be honest, but humanity can and will learn how to rough it again. It's not like it hasn't been done like a billion times in history.

This is based on survivorship bias. Things have, indeed, gotten bad enough many times in humanity's past for a select group of people to take action to ensure their own survival. Funnily enough, they were also called whatever the then current version of "negative doomsayers" was. You literally only exist because your ancestors, like mine, took actions that ran contrary to what everyone else around them was doing. "Emigrating to an uncharted continent? That's crazy talk! What's wrong with <whatever country name>?!", "Leaving the city and abandoning much of what you own because you've noticed a steady and continuing uptick in disease? That's crazy! The priests will just pray harder and everything will work out.", and "You're going to abandon the teachings of the Church in favor of reason and logic? That's heretical and you're going to burn in Hell" are just a few examples of events that have changed the course of human history by running counter to what everyone else thought should be the maintained status quo. Things changed because those people adapted and survived while the rest of humanity did not. Usually those that did not died in terrible, horrible ways while being broke and starving.

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 14:33:
All that aside, if betting on history repeating itself for like the billionth time and the belief that mankind is capable of truly miraculous, mystifying things when necessity dictates makes me a goofy clueless idiot than so be it. I've been called way worse. I have reams upon reams of evidence proving my point as well. I could probably get offended by some of your pretty insulting assertions as well, but I choose not to. As far as I am concerned, we're good.

Humanity, as whole, doesn't do anything. It reacts like a mass of single celled organisms. A select group of people become proactive. That's true all the way back to our distant origins when the smart hunter-gatherers noticed that snow wasn't melting and migrated to warmer climes or developed means for themselves to survive in situ. They had zero problems letting everyone else who didn't either migrate with them or join the tribe in situ die. Your evidence would support that assertion because it comes from the same source mine do, those who survived wrote the history.

I'm not calling you anything because that would be disrespectful. I addressed your points, not you personally. We're fine. I like you no less than I did previous to this exchange.

/---\

cappy wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 19:42:
Even then they will typically succeed in delaying (often by decades) or watering down change. Historically, they've had considerable success in doing that. Inevitably, the steamroller of progress eventually rolls over them and they retrench for the next battle to also inevitably lose (after considerable delay).

That is only true on small scale situations when we expand the scope of the scale to also include events that affect humanity as a whole on a global scale. I think, honestly, that is part of the problem. Most people have difficulties wrapping their brains around events that affect their own states/districts/whatever a country calls their land partitions. They absolutely cannot fathom a problem that encompasses the whole globe and near 7 billion people. So they do their best to either reduce or abstract the problem to something they can grasp (which then loses some of, or entirely eliminates, the granular details necessary for dealing with the problem) or shift the responsibility for dealing with a problem that large on to another entity (be that a government, group, or someone else).

In all the annals of human history, we have only faced four major threats to our existence and we, as a species as a whole, bungled them all. The only reason we continue to exist as a species is because some of us survived on a planet that was able to right itself. We did not actively contribute to those problems that threatened our species as we are currently doing now to the one that faces us. In my mind, that is a major shift in how the survivors are going to have to handle this new threat. Because it is no longer about Man vs Nature. It is now Man vs Nature vs Other Man. The Other Man are going to be the groups you identified but those groups have more wealth and power than at any time in human history. It's going to get really, really ugly and entail a level of internecine fighting we have never before witnessed in human history. Simply out of necessity and, sadly, greed. Someone is going to kill everyone else in as wide a circle as possible for clean water, arable land, and whatever resources they think they need or want. We humans have done it to an extent before for a whole lot less.

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 14:33:
I didn't mean to offend. But things getting worse just means that it is going to be harder and harder to ignore, meaning eventually people will have to take notice. It is the human condition that until things become seriously bad, nothing of real significance is going to happen. It is required that things get worse. It's how you eventually convince a critical mass of people to finally act. It's amazing to me that a man of your intelligence hasn't noticed that pattern after all this time. How much will be irrevocably lost before that happens? You got me. But something else about the human condition that I am acutely aware of and have firsthand experience with is that we humans are adaptable to what would have seemed impossible conditions under which to live before if forced to. People have gotten way too soft in their cushy existence to be honest, but humanity can and will learn how to rough it again. It's not like it hasn't been done like a billion times in history.

All that aside, if betting on history repeating itself for like the billionth time and the belief that mankind is capable of truly miraculous, mystifying things when necessity dictates makes me a goofy clueless idiot than so be it. I've been called way worse. I have reams upon reams of evidence proving my point as well. I could probably get offended by some of your pretty insulting assertions as well, but I choose not to. As far as I am concerned, we're good.

I think most people - even realists or cynics - would agree that there is some point when things get bad enough that there is an ability to act that was previously stymied by an array of shortsighted, selfish and self-interested, disinterested, obdurate, deliberately ignorant, and outright stupid people (hopefully I've covered most or all of the bases). It's quite a formidable coalition, when you think about it.

I agree with BoP that the array of aforementioned people will absolutely block virtually any kind of change - even when it is to their own betterment - to the best of their abilities. So prevention is rarely if ever implemented and instead we see grudging and extremely reluctant reaction.

Even then they will typically succeed in delaying (often by decades) or watering down change. Historically, they've had considerable success in doing that. Inevitably, the steamroller of progress eventually rolls over them and they retrench for the next battle to also inevitably lose (after considerable delay).

Reason, facts, empathy or compassion, efficiencies, lower costs, higher rewards, incentives, and so on have absolutely no ability to persuade this kind of coalition. Even boiling slowly like a frog will not sway them - since as you note humans are very adaptive and humans can adapt to all kinds of new lows of being miserable. If it were 130 degrees year-round in every part of the southern United States with extreme water rationing due to groundwater and surface water depletion, that might be enough to reduce enough of the obstruction against taking any steps to change (which would then nevertheless be watered down and delayed a bit more).

Neal Stephenson wrote a book about the owner of Buc-ees launching rockets containing a chemical that would produce a significant global cool-down. Enough money in the right pockets to get the US Gubbmint to look the other way (Congress critters are so cheap! You can even get Supreme Court justices for the cost of a motorhome!) and some tight escapes from Indian Special Forces assassins and you can do it too!

I didn't mean to offend. But things getting worse just means that it is going to be harder and harder to ignore, meaning eventually people will have to take notice. It is the human condition that until things become seriously bad, nothing of real significance is going to happen. It is required that things get worse. It's how you eventually convince a critical mass of people to finally act. It's amazing to me that a man of your intelligence hasn't noticed that pattern after all this time. How much will be irrevocably lost before that happens? You got me. But something else about the human condition that I am acutely aware of and have firsthand experience with is that we humans are adaptable to what would have seemed impossible conditions under which to live before if forced to. People have gotten way too soft in their cushy existence to be honest, but humanity can and will learn how to rough it again. It's not like it hasn't been done like a billion times in history.

All that aside, if betting on history repeating itself for like the billionth time and the belief that mankind is capable of truly miraculous, mystifying things when necessity dictates makes me a goofy clueless idiot than so be it. I've been called way worse. I have reams upon reams of evidence proving my point as well. I could probably get offended by some of your pretty insulting assertions as well, but I choose not to. As far as I am concerned, we're good.

Next week when a fushion powered flying car soars over BoP’s airstream we’ll find him shaking a fist at the sky while polishing his truck that sets on blocks because gasoline is no longer available. 😂😂😂

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 12:42:
And I also would have been disappointed if you and Tact hadn't made some snide comment about me mentioning fusion.

Snide? I don't think I was being snide. Yes, fusion is not teleportation. Fusion will come someday. I don't know if it will be 40, 100, or 500 years but it will come. Will it arrive "before it is too late" might be a better question. I'm not quite as negative about the future as BoP. I have some hope the human race will figure it out. But they won't figure it out while I am alive.

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 12:42:
I said "like" magic. I think I know the difference between the supernatural and something that seems so incredible because of technical advancement that if I didn't know better it would be indiscernible from magic. And you can be negative all you want; it's not like I expected anyone to have an epiphany and say, "oh wow! I'm completely changed now!"

No offense, but from what you have said here you are well beyond just being grumpy about climate change and peoples' indifference towards it. You are resigned to irrevocable cataclysm within, oh I don't know - any day now I'm sure. And I also would have been disappointed if you and Tact hadn't made some snide comment about me mentioning fusion. Once again, in everyone's rush to shit on anything that may be exciting (because what is being done right now is fucking incredible), you completely miss the point. It's all right though; I still love you guys. Just pat me on the head, give me a sucker, and tell me to go back to my room and play. I'm used to it, and that's where I want to be anyway. 😁

I do take offense at your blatant mischaracterization of my position, if I am honest. It's not "any day now". It's "Absolutely well within my lifetime as backed up by reams of real, actual scientific data and climate scientists blatant saying so." You blindly believing that science is going to automagic the human race out of this crisis (despite literally millions of pages of studies and data clearly and unequivocally stating the opposite) is fundamentally no different than the "fairy tales" accusation you leveled at another poster just a few days ago. You have no definitive proof that science is going to fix this by itself. You just believe it will and that is fundamentally no different than the belief that an invisible sky wizard will wave their hand and make it all go away.

Being realistic is not being negative, no matter how hard you try and wish it were. When something, anything, has been worked on for the better part of a century with no tangible outcome, it is logical and reasonable to say "Yeah, that isn't happening any time soon, no matter how much the faithful want to preach about it". That's not shitting on anything. That's simply being a rational human being who isn't closing their eyes and wishing really, really hard that something were true...despite the fact that it very clearly isn't.

I did not miss your point. I simply do not share your view. I am not excited about things that are still pipe dreams after decades of being a non-event. Long experience has taught me that the potential of a thing is meaningless if the availability and application of it is not feasible and sound. History is littered with the corpses of things that had "potential" but had no real, applicable use. You can ignore that fact to blindly believe in whatever you wish but then it becomes religion and theology and not science.

cappy wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 10:11:
“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
― Stephen King , The Stand

Another quote from a Stephen King movie I've always liked (the quote that is, the movie was terrible):

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion? - The Mist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfTU6x_nXso

I said "like" magic. I think I know the difference between the supernatural and something that seems so incredible because of technical advancement that if I didn't know better it would be indiscernible from magic. And you can be negative all you want; it's not like I expected anyone to have an epiphany and say, "oh wow! I'm completely changed now!"

No offense, but from what you have said here you are well beyond just being grumpy about climate change and peoples' indifference towards it. You are resigned to irrevocable cataclysm within, oh I don't know - any day now I'm sure. And I also would have been disappointed if you and Tact hadn't made some snide comment about me mentioning fusion. Once again, in everyone's rush to shit on anything that may be exciting (because what is being done right now is fucking incredible), you completely miss the point. It's all right though; I still love you guys. Just pat me on the head, give me a sucker, and tell me to go back to my room and play. I'm used to it, and that's where I want to be anyway. 😁

Oh the fusion problem is even bigger than you make it out to be. Yes, we have been on the cusp for 70+ years, always being 30-40 years away from cheap/free energy. Even if it got figured out tomorrow, does anyone think we'd get plentiful cheap (let alone free) energy out of it? There is no way the corporate giants won't lock up that technology behind patents or other legal maneuvering. When/if fusion actually becomes a viable technology, it will be another 50-100 years (if not more) before you actually see there being an over abundance of available power.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 00:04:

I am one of those "negative doomsayers" not because I lack trust in science but because I have zero trust or hope in humanity as a whole.

This.

Also this:

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
― Stephen King , The Stand

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 01:20:
You know that you don't need 100% acceptance of a thing for that thing to become a reality, right? I'm not even sure it needs to be a majority. It's estimated that the American revolution had the support of roughly 40-45% of the common citizens I think. I imagine that you being a student of sorts of American history this might be well-known to you, so apologies if this comes across as condescending, but sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees so to speak. Yes, I find you to be extraordinarily negative and gloomy (I know that you consider it pragmatism so no need to debate it again), but I understand how easy it is to get that way. I'm a pretty cynical bastard myself, but predictions of horrible things happening have a pretty terrible track record. I've been through the cold war; World War 3 was just around the corner for about 30 years when I was growing up. Our parents lived through Sputnik and the Cuban missile crisis. Chernobyl was going to be the death of humanity on the planet. A Trump presidency would mean the dissolution of our union. We're supposed to be only going outside in moon suits because the sun's radiation was supposed to be lethal by now if you remember. 😉

You need a significant amount of buy-in from the entirety of the human race to effectively address climate change. It will require extreme changes in almost every aspect of human life, globally, to begin to make a dent in it. We, as a species, have never successfully tackled a species level crisis event in a preventative sense. We simply endure it and whomever is left alive after the event pick up the pieces. Our most recent attempt, COVID-19, turned out rather dismally. You couldn't get people to wear a mask and stay home. You couldn't get a then-sitting President to take it seriously even when the data and scientists were there figuratively punching him the face with the reality of it . What was a pandemic quickly became endemic with millions dead, millions more in casualties (Long COVID, the after effects of even a short COVID infection which has life long medical consequences, and so on). That's not being alarmist, those are pure, cold, hard facts. So if we can't handle a minor disruption in our lives to keep people from quite literally dying by literally doing nothing for a while and putting a mask on, the odds of us making the massive, systemic changes necessary to tackle climate change just isn't going to happen. Especially in light of the fact that we are a reactive species, not a proactive species.

What works in a relatively small scale (the American Revolution in your example) is exponentially easier than anything on a large scale. I describe what I do, professionally, as "herding cats" because it really is and that is a limited number of people that I need to finesse, cajole, finagle, bully, or otherwise move people toward a common goal. No more than about fifty people in total that I need to address directly. But it grows logarithmically from there as those fifty people need to interact with other people and get those people headed in the same direction. That can take, in some cases, years to implement and that's something as small as "We need to replace X program with Y program so we can implement Z policy". Getting even half of our 7 billion population to make necessary changes would be a Herculean labor if we even pulled it off and, right now, it seems a lot more like a Sisyphean task given the observable actions of industry, governments, and media.

The difference between your examples and climate change is that climate change is actually happening in real time. I can't go outside without climate change punching me in the face. I've had to engineer wholly new solutions to continue doing some of the things my family has been doing for generations like having a simple plot for growing vegetables. Russian warheads never rained down on my head, climate change is actively fucking up the lives of everyone around me. Big difference in my view.

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 01:20:
I've heard "but this is different because..." my whole life but the reality stays the same. It doesn't really matter too much to me in the end; no one is getting out of here alive anyway. But it might help if everyone just lightened up a smidge. Running around screaming that the end is nigh or becoming a morose joyless bastard who sees no hope in anything has never fixed a single problem in the history of humanity.

Burying one's head in the sand and hoping has never fixed a single thing in the history of humanity. Literally never. Getting grumpy and pissed off about something has. Major difference there. Anger and self-interest are the two greatest motivators for effecting change. History is positively overburdened with examples of that being true.

Personally, I don't give a single fuck if I live or die at this point with one notable exception. I refuse to die if it abrogates my responsibilities to my family. So I am not worried about "getting out alive" as I did not ask to be born in the first place. However, since I was (and according to my mother, I was born a grumpy, pissed-off old man) I have to think about the future of the family. Take my nephew. He's a rad little kid. I love him as if he were my own son. Do you think I want him to die on a slowly immolating rock hurtling through space? Or, Hell, the girlfriend and I had a serious conversation over the weekend about the fact that she wants kids. If I do end up being a father (and dog help us all if I do become one), I don't want my band of rabid little crotchgoblins to die on a slowly immolating rock hurtling through space, either. So what are my realistic options in the face of human behavior and a real, credible, provable threat? Getting grumpier and angry and building them a goddamned lifeboat so they have the breathing room to pick up where I leave off and carry the torch forward. I know life is going to suck for them. My job is to make it suck less as much as is possible.

Prez wrote on Jun 13, 2024, 01:20:
We are are holding in our pockets devices that have more computing power than what was used by the whole of NASA to put men on the moon. I can type a few words into my phone and in seconds it gets relayed through a satellite in outer space and gets sent to a guy in Bangladesh 12 thousand miles away. We are on the cusp of achieving nuclear fusion for the masses, a technology that was considered as likely as time travel or teleportation when I was a nuke operator. We are starting to develop real plans to put a colony on the moon, and one day Mars. Science has achieved all of that and much, much more regardless of how many flat earthers and climate deniers there are. Science is getting close to magic. If you weren't such a sourpuss all the time you might even appreciate it. 😁

Sorry, I am not wowed by technological progress. Been in it for far too long. I am not amazed by the fact that the rack sitting to the right of my desk has more computing power than every space program had up through the 1990s combined. I expect it. Ah, yes, nuclear fusion. We've been "on the cusp for the masses" for about 70 years and counting. It'll happen any day now. Any. Day. Just like my flying car! Oh, can we talk about how LISP machines were going to revolutionize everything back in the 70s and make HAL-9000 a reality? Man, those sure worked out great, didn't they? I'd ask my fully sentient robot butler about that but it doesn't exist. The Moon Colony! Man, that'd be cool. Too bad it's only been on the drawing board for 60 years and counting plus the billions that have already been spent on it with nothing to show for it. We'll get right on that right after nuclear fusion for the masses happens I'm sure. Any day now. Yep. Any day.

Science has never been magic. Not today, not yesterday, and not tomorrow. Science is the outcome of many people exerting a monumental amount of time, energy, and effort to achieve a goal along with the usual "Huh...that's funny...why did it do that" moments. It's straight up labor and toil. I appreciate and respect that tremendously, even if I am a grumpy old man.

"Don't Look Up" was biting comedic satire (quite excellent and cleverly topical to be sure), not a documentary.

Don't look up.

You know that you don't need 100% acceptance of a thing for that thing to become a reality, right? I'm not even sure it needs to be a majority. It's estimated that the American revolution had the support of roughly 40-45% of the common citizens I think. I imagine that you being a student of sorts of American history this might be well-known to you, so apologies if this comes across as condescending, but sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees so to speak. Yes, I find you to be extraordinarily negative and gloomy (I know that you consider it pragmatism so no need to debate it again), but I understand how easy it is to get that way. I'm a pretty cynical bastard myself, but predictions of horrible things happening have a pretty terrible track record. I've been through the cold war; World War 3 was just around the corner for about 30 years when I was growing up. Our parents lived through Sputnik and the Cuban missile crisis. Chernobyl was going to be the death of humanity on the planet. A Trump presidency would mean the dissolution of our union. We're supposed to be only going outside in moon suits because the sun's radiation was supposed to be lethal by now if you remember. 😉

I've heard "but this is different because..." my whole life but the reality stays the same. It doesn't really matter too much to me in the end; no one is getting out of here alive anyway. But it might help if everyone just lightened up a smidge. Running around screaming that the end is nigh or becoming a morose joyless bastard who sees no hope in anything has never fixed a single problem in the history of humanity.

We are are holding in our pockets devices that have more computing power than what was used by the whole of NASA to put men on the moon. I can type a few words into my phone and in seconds it gets relayed through a satellite in outer space and gets sent to a guy in Bangladesh 12 thousand miles away. We are on the cusp of achieving nuclear fusion for the masses, a technology that was considered as likely as time travel or teleportation when I was a nuke operator. We are starting to develop real plans to put a colony on the moon, and one day Mars. Science has achieved all of that and much, much more regardless of how many flat earthers and climate deniers there are. Science is getting close to magic. If you weren't such a sourpuss all the time you might even appreciate it. 😁

This comment was edited on Jun 13, 2024, 02:36.

Prez wrote on Jun 12, 2024, 21:25:
So when I say that it is ludicrous to me that all of you very intelligent but hopelessly, preposterously negative people don't see science as an inevitable eventual fix to this...

Science works by consensus. You know this. It took almost 50 years for a critical mass of consensus to finally get some, but not all, people onboard with the idea that climate change was real and directly impacting humankind. Year after year, we continue to break global records for "hottest year on record". The plural of anecdote is not data but we had about two whole weeks of Spring here. With the heat index, we've been cracking over 100 degrees since last month. We have record snow, tornadoes, and hurricanes, year after year. Oh, and record breaking hail, too. Yet still there are people who jam their heads waaaaaay up their ass and claim climate change isn't real or that mankind has absolutely nothing to do with it. These science illiterati are the millstone around the neck of progress and, brother, it is goddamned heavy millstone. Especially since some of those mouthbreathers are in positions of political power. Moreover, they're often happily bribed "lobbied" by corporate interests who do not give a single fuck about five years from now and only care about this quarter's bottom line, no matter how reckless, endangering, or catastrophic their actions provably are.

I am one of those "negative doomsayers" not because I lack trust in science but because I have zero trust or hope in humanity as a whole. Not when a significant amount of them think climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese for...reasons. So my carved out niche of a safety net isn't anti-science, it's a bulwark against either the direct, malevolent actions or willfully ignorant stupidity of humanity. If anything, my little homestead is the very epitome of using science to solve the problems that are facing my family. I can list all the scientific disciplines that went in to planning it, are being used to construct it, and will be used to operate it.

But the reality is that science cannot automagically fix all of humanity's problems when humanity will not stop creating those problems. It's like picking at an open wound. It isn't ever going to heal unless you do something radically different and beneficial to heal it.