Comment by gepi79 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gepi79 | Hacker News Reader

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IMO main the problems are poverty and old traditions (e.g. animal products) and general confusion of priorities.

The bad media sells the latest news or problem as the most important news or problem.

People elect or at least accept the politicians. People pay for or at least accept the bad greedy business practices of small and big companies in the name of holy competition and individual struggle for life.

Too many people have faith that god (notably in the USA) and the traditional conservative political parties do what should be done.

There is a lack of motivation and desire for life changing real science and technology as national priority to end poverty, to bring wealth to all, to prolong life (anti-aging) and to protect nature including coral reefs. Science and technology would allow people to eat all they want and do no sports and still look like models and be perfectly healthy.

Cutting and austerity is not a strategy and not a replacement of urgent progress of science and technology.

Cutting and austerity is an unfortunate tactic because of lack of science and technology.

But you're dreaming of technology that may never happen. There is no way at the moment that we can sustain our current lifestyles without fossil fuels. In addition, if we remain unsustainable then we'll just grow to fill the next level unsustainability if a new technology did come along.

> But you're dreaming of technology that may never happen.

IMO automation, genetic engineering, implants and replacement of natural body parts by artificial body parts will start social, economic and medical revolutions within the next decade.

One of the worst misbeliefs is that the end of poverty (at least world hunger) and the end of large-scale wars (e.g. Middle East) is just futurist idiocy while it is actually achievable within a year with existing technology. But political priorities prevent it.

Anyway, my point is that effort is required to advance science and technology. To call it a dream and to do nothing to realize it is the wrong way. It only wastes time because the efforts and investments must be made anyway (by future generations).

> There is no way at the moment that we can sustain our current lifestyles without fossil fuels.

True. But again: There was and is not enough effort to create the technological alternatives. Besides, a lot of energy (and burned forests) could be saved by simply not eating animal products any more.

> In addition, if we remain unsustainable then we'll just grow to fill the next level unsustainability if a new technology did come along.

Humanity is always at the frontier of sustainability or possibilities for one reason or another. Science and technology lead to creation of resources (e.g. use of steel, use of fossil fuel, use of Uranium, use of solar power) and more efficient use of resources like e.g. man power (e.g. by better program languages, better programs, better computers, better cars, better houses) and less religious societies and less wars and lower birth rates.

> IMO automation, genetic engineering, implants and replacement of natural body parts by artificial body parts will start social, economic and medical revolutions within the next decade.

That's not an opinion, it's a belief.

In any case, we're both talking about people cutting their lifestyles which is the correct thing to do. It is an extreme error to simply hope for technology to save us. Most people, especially those that decided to breed, have their heads in the sand and are implicitly hoping technology will make their children's lives OK.

"Science and technology lead to creation of resources..."

No, they lead to finding and digging up of resources.

"and more efficient use of resources"

Efficiency doesn't make anything better, it just increases the amount of the resources that we create--oops---use.

"and less religious societies and less wars"

Okay, it's clear you have a story in your mind that ultimately leads to jetpacks among the stars.

"and lower birth rates." This doesn't mean much. We went from 3.5 to 7.5 billion in 45 years. We had plenty of science and technology during that time, all doing their thing with the uranium and the fossil fuel and the steel.

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