5d ago

me_irl

163 comments

It's really sad that many young people are so pessimistic about the future. Despite some setbacks the last years, in many ways the world is still in a better place than it has ever been in human history.
Child mortality is still lower than ever, (extreme) poverty is still on a declining trend, we're actually on track to stop the worst climate change (thanks to massive Chinese investments), AI could vastly improve our lives in the future...
That said we do live in uncertain times, fascism is on the rise again, a nuclear war could still kill us all, fighting climate change is not done,l and AI could ruine all our lives; but pessimism is not the right mindset.
- we’re actually on track to stop the worst climate change (thanks to massive Chinese investments)
  No, we damn well aren't.
  AI could vastly improve our lives in the future
  It could also make it vastly worse in the future, which is the more likely scenario.
  
  No, we damn well aren’t.
  It's not a clear cut case, but if you look at the development of solar, battery and other renewable technology we definitely are on the right track to stop the worst. We might even be able to reverse some of it by the end of the century.
  It could also make it vastly worse in the future, which is the more likely scenario.
  Yes, I wrote that in the next paragraph...
  Some times this place is really worse than Reddit, wallowing in self pity and downvoting anything positive. In many aspects this is still the best time to be alive no matter where you live in the world and the future is potentially very, very bright.
- Extreme poverty may be declining but that doesn’t mean more people in the west are not being pushed into food scarcity due to stagnated wages and corporate greed.
  
  It remains sad that in the world with enough artificial nitrate fertiliser to produce enough food for everyone in abundance and enough food in abundance to feed everyone in the west companies are still putting perfectly edible food into dumpsters and then covering them in motor oil to prevent freegans and dumpster divers while elsewere, famine still happens.
  
  In the West too life is generally better than ever, also for people under 40
- We have climbed so high as a species in such a short time that we genuinely can't remember where the ground was when we started.
  Climate change will be devastating. But for most of human life, the fear of the future was much closer. It wasn't about the next five or ten years, it wasn't about the world we were leaving for our children - it was about the food we were feeding our children today. It was about making it through the next winter. It was about survival.
  We didn't have refrigeration, penicillin, HVAC, germ theory... people weren't worried about undervaccination because there was no such thing as vaccination.
  Even in recent history. In the 1920s, we had a war so huge and devastating and terrifying that they called it the war to end all wars.
  Then they almost immediately did it again, but bigger.
  Every adult in the early 20th century lived through the greatest horror in mankind's history so far. The first heavy machine guns, the first aerial bombers, the first atom bomb. Then the massive, unstable world powers spent decades building up an arsenal of global annihilation, and very nearly triggered that annihilation at least twice.
  All of human existence - from the daily survival of pre-industry, to The Jungle of industrialization, the still-ongoing plague of tuberculosis ("consumption"), the brutal violence of the 20th century - all of it - has been a struggle to survive.
  Human existence has always been, on some level, terrifying. Disease, famine, war - these apocalyptic horsemen weren't on the horizon, they were constant companions to historical humans. And that's not even getting into all of the historical oppression and bigotry that always has been.
  But people weren't constantly scared by default. They made art, wrote books, told stories. Started families, had children, almost half of their children died as children, had more children anyway.
  Humans just lived. This isn't the first time we've faced self destruction. This isn't the first time we've faced oppression, tyranny, poverty, and yes, even climate disasters. A drought could devastate nations. A harsh winter could leave no survivors. Entire settlements just... failed.
  Humans are still thriving compared to one or two lifetimes ago. It feels like we plateau'd and then began to decline - because in a sense we did. We were taking massive leaps toward the future with every passing decade, and now we just feel like we're making incremental improvements in meaningless gadgets, while social progress stalls - or worse- actively regresses.
  But we live in the future. That's why we plateau'd. We made it. Humans have effectively gained the power to make life on Earth as it is in Heaven, and we just choose not to. We choose other things, mainly because a small handful of humans have the power to make those choices for the rest of us.
  That doesn't mean we should lose faith. Humans can still make a golden age of the future, climate change or not.
  We just need to fight for it. We live in unprecedented times, and we are capable of unprecedented things. We absolutely have the capability to make the future better than the past.
- I do joke a lol, but things in many areas are so much better than 30-50 years ago and considering Brits in WW II had to turn out all their lights to hinder German bombings - most of us are being peddled fear by the media and it's not THAT bad.
  Where did you get the climate hope bit? last articles I glazed over were 'we missed 1.5 deg target and instead put the foot on the pedal to make it faster' and 'climate migrations coming and mass famine'.
  Sounder doomerism to me but I don't really have a good source to be optimistic at all.
  
  Your daily life not being an actual warzone is an extremely low bar to set for things not being bad.
  Also the climate claim they made was pure fantasy.
  
  Not to mention each message to chatGPT burns the equivalent of a water bottle worth of water.
  
  And does not provide a bottles worth of water value in return
  
  In short, solar prices are declining exponentially and deployment is growing exponentially. There are even companies claiming to be able to make efuels from air using solar cheaper than fossil fuels by the end of the decade.
  Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie is a good book if you want to read something optimistic.
  
  Thanks for this. I haven't been letting it get me down in the past, but having two kids can certainty start making me question what the heck their future will look like

163 comments