‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today | Hacker News Reader

‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today

vulture.com

163 pointscolinprince126 comments

"I’ve been thinking about 12 Monkeys a lot lately. It seems, these days, as though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know it."

This feels a little unsubstantiated.

Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This pessimism is toxic and unrealistic.

Historically speaking, the best time to own Bitcoin was back in January. Things always look great at the top of a bubble.

CO2 is higher than in the past several million years and we're still adding more at our usual pace. We've killed 60% of wild vertebrate life since 1970, wiped out a large percentage of the insect population, and we're continuing the practices that caused that as well. None of this can go on forever.

Almost everybody misses the main finding of the Club of Rome study: if you model a simple assumption that resources get more expensive to extract over time and environmental destruction gets more expensive to deal with, you don't get a gradual decline. You get continued improvement up to a peak, and then it suddenly crashes down.

What's really toxic: enjoying that run up to the peak and assuming everything's fine, instead of buckling down and fixing the problems before it's too late.

The root cause of all of this: an economic system predicated on the notion of growth. Unrestrained greed, sole focus on maximization of profit, and unlimited growth. It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did last year, no, you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. Doesn't matter if you're mining the earth bare, generating millions of tons of garbage, optimising for inferior products that break sooner, treating workers like slaves in a race to the bottom... in other words making the world objectively worse. All social considerations, moral, ecological, of welfare, of justice, all those considerations don't enter the calculations. All that matters is the quarterly shareholder report.

Like some guy said, "the only people who believe in infinite growth on a finite planet are madmen and economists".

I don't think seeking growth is the root cause. We all want things to be better tomorrow than today, and a large part of the way we experience "better" is captured in economic notions of value. And as Jesse Ausubel points out [1], use of many resources has been decoupled from economic growth. Take video games as an example. It's a $100bn/year industry. At worst its resource usage is modest. But I suspect it's net negative: every hour people are driving in-game vehicles is an hour they aren't driving ones that burn fossil fuels; virtual purchases replace goods that get shipped or bought in stores.

I think you're more on target with the shortsightedness that relates purposefully wrong accounting and unchecked drives for dominance and greed. But I don't think ending that is incompatible with creating a system where we keep improving the amount of value we create for each other.

[1] http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/jan/13/nature-rebounding-l...

""" It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did last year, no, you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. """

But if the next gen of phones use 30% less resources, it's still possible to grow without increasing the rate of resource consumption. GDP growth has been driven much more by innovation than added resource consumption for years.

However with Jevon's Paradox, we get the opposite consequence and people consume even more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I think you're missing his point.

I love the animations of Steve Cutts that demonstrate some of this quite well, like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTTr7RGH37c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8bNDw6Ftc

http://www.stevecutts.com/

>"the only people who believe in infinite growth on a finite planet are madmen and economists"

There are 10 more planets in the neighbourhood. And even more some lightyears away..

I used to base a lot of hope on things like asteroid mining and solar power satellites, but we frittered away the decades and now I'm worried it's too late for that stuff to save us.

If you don't produce more than you consume (i.e. grow), how do you sustain yourself?

Sustenance is not the same thing as unrestrained growth.

There's a difference between growing enough food to have enough to eat plus some reserves and buying a new smartphone every year, a new car every few years, new clothes every month, etc.

So are you going to stop accumulating wealth in your own life and just sustain at your current level based on your basic bodily needs?

I don't know about you but my current level covers a lot more than my basic bodily needs. I'd love to trade any future wealth increases for a healthy planet.

So you're saying this is a tragedy of the commons, principal-agent scenario then?

You will continue to accumulate unless everyone else stops accumulating.

I think that's overly simplistic. There are systemic forces beyond our individual control that pretty much force us to consume at irresponsibly unsustainable rates. Planned obsolescence is an obvious one when it comes to technology products. Fast fashion is another.

There are also many ways in which artificial scarcity forces us to consume more than we otherwise would. If things like handtools were "common" property, then not everyone would have to buy a hammer or drill for each house which they then only use once or twice a year. There are many ways this could be different but they are just not profitable so our current system won't allow it. In the past, for instance, even things like ovens were common property, fired up once a week for everyone in the community to bake their loaves in.

Absolutely it's a tragedy of the commons. That's why it's such a hard problem to solve.

But one way we often solve these problems is with taxes. We pay for all sorts of public goods with taxes and it works pretty well. So I completely support a high tax on carbon, even if it significantly impacts my personal wealth.

Well put.

The ironic thing about all numbers-oriented folks in extractive enterprises (regardless of whether they're extracting natural resources, capital, or labor), is their blind spot to the fact that ALL resources are finite. There's no "free-refill" when the big-gulp runs out.

I can only speak to the minerals extraction industry (oil & gas, specifically), but they (we) are well aware that hydrocarbons are a finite resource. The industry as a whole is arguably short sighted, but it’s not because they think the supply of oil is endless.

Really a bigger issue is that huge amounts of hydrocarbons still exist to be tapped. Which then get turned into atmospheric CO2.

Coal is particularly problematic. Oil may peak soon... Australia alone has like 400 years worth of coal in known reserves alone. We won't run out of it anytime soon - we absolutely should not dig it all up and burn it though.

> ALL resources are finite

Not in a world where matter/energy is conserved over time.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics would like a word with you...

> if you model a simple assumption that resources get more expensive to extract over time

Why would you make this assumption? Resources get cheaper to extract over time as technology improves...

Technology improves but resources get more scarce. Oil is getting more expensive to extract, for example. The same is true of many mineral resources, as we're forced to move to lower-grade ores.

But your point is a good one. I basically see us as being in a race between technological improvement and environmental catastrophe. I'm not at all sure which side will win. It'd be nice if policy makers would help weight the race in our favor.

I don't think the pessimism is unrealistic. Unless there is a scientific miracle, we are headed toward significant increases in global temperature over the next 50-100 years. The temperature rise itself probably won't kill us, or at least most of us. But the temperature rise itself is not what we have to worry about. Think about the events that triggered WWI and WWII--they will pale in comparison to the consequences of climate change. How is climate change going to affect China and India (two nuclear powers) and their neighbors?

Climate change and the resulting water shortages aren't going to leave the West unscathed either, even leaving aside the political issues elsewhere. At the rate the Ogallala aquifer is being depleted, farm production in the Midwest of the U.S. will peak in 2040. Farmers in Kansas will have to drop their groundwater pumping by 80% in order to preserve the aquifer indefinitely. There is a real possibility that water shortages will get very ugly. Then of course you have major west coast cities that depend on the Colorado river for drinking water, and are already fighting over a resource that's at capacity. I don't think it would be out of the question to see civil unrest or outright military action between U.S. states within a century if some scientific advance doesn't change the course of the water situation in the U.S.

These scenarios are not unrealistic or unduly speculative. Major environmental stressors will happen this century absent some unforeseen technological interventions.

Humans will always find something to fight over. If it's not the water supply it's the religion. If it's not religion it's something else. Envirentment won't kill us. We will.

A whole lot of factors are better now than they've ever been, and that's genuinely wonderful and cause for optimism.

It's naive to therefore ignore all other factors. The great strides we're making in access to food and clean water and medical care won't stop unchecked global warming from devastating human civilization. It's not just a matter of rising sea levels; if things continue apace, large parts of the equator will be too hot for humans to survive by the end of this century, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees will be seeking sanctuary somewhere, anywhere.

Acknowledge our successes and keep fighting.

>"The great strides we're making in access to food and clean water and medical care won't stop unchecked global warming from devastating human civilization. It's not just a matter of rising sea levels; if things continue apace, large parts of the equator will be too hot for humans to survive by the end of this century, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees will be seeking sanctuary somewhere, anywhere."

Do you realize you are just like one of the crazy dudes yelling about doomsday on the corner? Just because you are online doesn't make it any more convincing, actually it makes it less convincing.

I assume you are repeating similar stuff over and over, so you should at least have some sources for each claim you include in these posts.

EDIT:

And I don't mean this in a non-constructive way. There are a few topics where I have found myself making the same arguments over and over online (measles, gene "editing", NHST) and so have saved a list of citations and quotes from them that resulted from my research into the topic. It can all be done quite informally and is not at all a hassle.

It's not hard to find sources. For example:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-countries-tha...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-...

A great book on the effects of climate change is Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, one chapter per degree, with extensive references.

One reason we know what to expect is that the Earth has gone through warming cycles before and we can see what happened in the geological evidence. A good presentation of that evidence is in Hansen's Storms of My Grandchildren.

I mean something like this. It seems like just one person needs to do it, then it could be boilerplate since I see similar posts all over the place:

> "The great strides we're making in access to food and clean water and medical care"

-- What evidence is there for great strides being made?

-- Regarding medical "care", there is an implication that care is a good thing. How well is this "care" translating to health, rather than putting people on more pills and causing an obesity crisis?

> "[Improved access to food, clean water, and medical care] won't stop unchecked global warming from devastating human civilization.

-- Why couldn't it? I have often heard the argument that improved standard of living leads to lower birthrates.

> "It's not just a matter of rising sea levels"

-- What evidence is there for rising sea levels? I have heard they were rising before humans started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

> "if things continue apace,

-- Why should we expect climate change to continue apace? Looking at the vostok ice core data it looks like there is some negative feedback that leads to a glacial period once it gets too hot. In fact it looks like we are due for one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core#/media/File:Vostok_Pe...

-- There is also the grand solar minimum we may be due for as well...

> "large parts of the equator will be too hot for humans to survive"

-- Needs source: If humans can find ways to survive in antarctica, submarines, and outer space I doubt this true.

> "By the end of this century, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees will be seeking sanctuary somewhere, anywhere."

-- Why, exactly? Are they incapable of planning ahead or building air conditioned structures? Does this assume some sort of energy crisis?

> What evidence is there for rising sea levels?

Google "evidence for rising sea levels". Do your own homework. It's reasonable to ask for sources for new or little-known claims; if you've somehow missed decades of well-established science, that's on you.

> Needs source: If humans can find ways to survive in antarctica, submarines, and outer space I doubt this true.

So it's no big deal to just build air-conditioned arcologies to house two billion-plus people? In some of the poorest places on Earth?

You're not being serious; this is knee-jerk contrarianism. Let us know if you want to discuss this in good faith.

> "Do your own homework."

Sorry, but both claims I followed to original research articles in this thread did not contain the supposed info. I gave you guys another chance to convince someone, even giving explicit instructions and an example of the format, and instead I walk away thinking the people concerned about this don't actually know what they are talking about.

First, was that if things continue apace large areas will be unlivable

-- The primary source said if temperatures rose an additional 7 degrees C, which is twice the rise expected by the IPCC, something like that may happen.

Second, was that 99.99% of scientists say that we're screwed.

-- Instead it was the percent of papers with global warming in the title/abstract that didnt include a claim like "global warming is BS" in the title/abstract, or something. Either way it had to do with the existence of warming, not the consequences.

That's why I have the rule. To prevent from wasting each others time it is best to quote the exact line or figure you think is relevant. And if you look through my post history you can see I do indeed treat others how I would like to be treated when it comes to these types of topics.

IPCC's business-as-usual scenario presents a range. You were correct that 4C is about the median but 6.4C is the upper end: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm...

That's by the end of the century, not the highest it will ever go.

And honestly, I hope you're not going to base your views on what links a couple jokers on HN have handy. Read books with real references or by actual scientists. We can't provide a couple web articles that will be sufficient to convince you, if that's not what convinced us.

> "6.4C is the upper end"

Upper end is going to be defined arbitrarily, but either way its still less than the 7 degrees and 11-12 degrees considered in the primary source.

> "Read books with real references or by actual scientists"

Books are going to be secondary sources, no one really puts primary research into them and hasn't for about a century. The primary research is almost all available online.

Yes but books sum up a large amount of research and give you references to it. That's a way better start than cherrypicking a few studies online.

Why would there be any cherry picking? There are a number of people in this thread (and also many downvoters) who apparently believe very strongly about this stuff.

Why can't they point me to the exact evidence that convinced them? And while you are one of the better ones "the references are somewhere in this one book" is not very helpful. People are busy, you need to make it as easy as possible for them if you actually care about convincing them.

I can’t help but notice you ignored the content of the parent post entirely and answered the grandfather post instead.

The first link doesnt even contain a proper link/reference to their primary source (unless I missed it).

The second (at least the annotated version) does contain some good links, eg to the IPCC AR5 homepage. The AR5 is a thousand pages long document... and this page itself is also quite long (nothing wrong with that, but you should quote the section of interest).

But lets look at the second source a bit closer. Their first cited claim is:

"Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century."

If you hover over that they say the IPCC says a median (median meaning ~ 50-50 odds higher or lower) warming of ~4 C by the end of the century, yet that paper talks about at least 7 C of warming. So this first claim is simply not supported by the citations and I didnt bother going on.

It wasn't me who made the claim. It's what I found with a 30-second google. Here's another with links to two primary sources. https://www.cyi.ac.cy/index.php/in-focus/climate-exodus-expe...

There's plenty more. To really dive in, go with Six Degrees.

Sorry, it is even clear which claim you are referring to at this point. Also, if you believe something so strongly why do you not have a go-to source for the information that lead to that belief? Why, exactly do I believe this is an important question to ask yourself (about everything)? It is just something unimaginable to me to not really know why I thought civilization is going to collapse and resort to 30 second googlings.

I guess in the end it is that book 6 degrees for you. If so, ok. I will check it out.

That book, Hansen's, and a stack of others. I resort to googlings because most people online appreciate something they can read immediately.

But I don't think civilization is going to collapse. I think it is at high risk of collapsing if we don't take strong preventive measures.

All right!

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/india-climate-chang...

https://qz.com/india/1049730/heatwaves-could-turn-parts-of-i...

https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/africa/sudan-climate-change/i...

I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided. Did you really think I was just making up lies, and would slink away in defeat when challenged?

The facts are a keystroke away, plain as day, shouted for years upon deaf ears. People who ask you to Google for them these answers aren't arguing in good faith. There's nothing left to debate, the details were figured out a long time ago.

At this point, I'm convinced that there are zero climate skeptics who really want to find answers; it's all willful ignorance or malice. It's comically stupid how the obvious truth is met with so much resistance. The desire to preserve the status quo is the strongest force in civilization.

On one side you have 99.9% of scientists saying that we're screwed. On the other side you have 0.1% of scientists paid by oil megacorp lobbyists saying it's fine. Hmm... what should one conclude?

On one hand you have politicians and the ultrarich saying everything is okay. on the other hand, the same politicians and rich people are quietly buying safe houses and building seawalls and preparing for doomsday. Oh and the military is training for and developing technologies to deal with the new scenarios. Hmm... what could it mean?

We're boiling alive fast enough that we can't handle it, but slow enough that we won't do anything about it. The last two people on earth are going to die arguing about why it's so hot.

It isn't about facts or "truth" or "99.9% of scientists saying" we are screwed. That isn't how science/engineering works, its how politics works. Perhaps that is why there is difficulty communicating across the gap.

Do you have a source for that last one by the way (99.9 % of scientists saying we are screwed)?

Info: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/027046761770707...

And the paper itself: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j0roqfsrx4tz4nd/Powell-2015.pdf?dl...

Can you quote the part of the paper where you think it claims "99.9% of scientists [are] saying that we're screwed."

I just looked and didn't see it.

> "All right!"

It isnt exceptional to ask for a source, no need for sarcasm.

> "I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided."

There was nothing hostile about it, just facts. Making those posts without sources is worse than useless if your goal is really to convince people you are correct.

> "Did you really think I was just making up lies, and would slink away in defeat when challenged?"

No, I wanted to see where you were getting these ideas. Now I know...

I can tell right away that none of those sources are going to contain enough info to really tell how those conclusions were drawn but nevertheless, can you extract the most relevant quotes from each and attach to your claims? I mean if you really want to convince people, don't give them secondary sources and make them dig into the primary sources. Go get the direct quotes from the research literature or researchers involved yourself. BTW, I have never had the experience of journalists being able to accurately describe anything I am an expert about.

It isnt exceptional to ask for a source, no need for sarcasm.

It is exceptional to expect or require sources for well-known ideas to be attached to every comment that alludes to or evokes them. None of us needed sources to understand the point that the OP was making.

can you extract the most relevant quotes from each and attach to your claims?

The trend here is that it will not be good enough for you. You asked for sources and got them. Now you are expanding your request. What's next in your list of demands after he extracts the most relevant quotes from each?

I'm baffled that you have made it this guy's job to hunt down and feed you primary sources because he wrote a comment that assumes some baseline knowledge.

>"The trend here is that it will not be good enough for you. You asked for sources and got them. Now you are expanding your request. What's next in your list of demands after he extracts the most relevant quotes from each?"

I said, "at least" have sources. That is like the bare minimum. Here is a post I made earlier today that meets my standards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18522479

You can find many posts in my history that have a similar format.

> There was nothing hostile about it, just facts.

You said I was just like a crazy person ranting on a street corner. If you didn't intend to sound hostile, you did a very poor job of communicating.

People have told me similar about other topics and I learned from it. I interpreted it as a fact about how just claiming something is wrong appears to some people. The doomsday aspect definately accentuates it though.

> Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive.

This feels a little unsubstantiated.

Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today. Species extinction rates have never been higher than today. There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical about the future.

> Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today

Honest question: is that true?

I mean practical weather (in)equality, not just comparing how many billion of dollars some few billionaires have vs the poorest people on Earth.

In the past there were Kings and peasants, Masters and slaves, people who had everything by birth right and other people who had nothing and never could have it, not even the right to education. I'm not saying nowadays there are not instances of that in still too many contexts (not only in far away countries), but claiming that wealth inequality was never so big as today sounds quite odd to me.

>Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today

Wealth increased to an extent that inequality little matters. If homeless beggars have smartphones with access to unlimited knowledge, enough to eat and access to medical treatment superior to everything before, how do they compare to the kings of the past?

Beggars may have smart phones but they still don't have a sanitary place to defecate or stable access to food.

When the beggars have indoor plumbing, refrigerators, and food we can discuss whether having a smartphone means inequality is not a problem.

> Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This pessimism is toxic and unrealistic.

Perhaps you haven't been following the news about the rise of authoritarianism [1][2] and the revitalization of ethnic nationalism? Historically speaking, those have led to enormous suffering.

[1] If you like video, John Oliver had a great summary in his last show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ximgPmJ9A5s

[2] Or if you prefer numbers, we are in a "global democratic recession": https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/01/31/democrac...

If you have not seen it, highly recommend the original film this was based on, La Jette as mentioned in the article. It is a (shortish) masterpiece of French SciFi, all in black and white, shot almost entirely in still scenes, and fully narrated.

And i would argue it does follow fairly closely in terms of script and meaning to the remake than the article suggests. It is much more subtle and nuanced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jet%C3%A9e

La Jette reminds me of another under appreciated french movie Le Dernier Combat. Double first for Luc Besson and Jean Reno.

A very disturbing PA movie, an amazing portrayal of the desolation and loneliness in that situation.

La Jetée

Also peep 'La Puppe', a fun parody of Marker's film:
https://youtu.be/Ln2bt-PRnSY

Thank you for this. It is on youtube and absolutely amazing.

While I loved 12 Monkeys story & most of TG's body of work, I must posit "Brazil" is more relevant in our non-fiction world than anything else he has done. I hesitate to note the multitude of similarities to our current state of information retrieval & bureaucracies. Zero Theorem seemed to touch the needle but sorta fizzled out mid-way(IMO).
Yes, I did not RTFA.

Do you at least have a 27B/6?

I have to admit I still haven’t seen Brazil but it’s been on the to-Watch list for a long time.
Zero Theorem just managed to depress the hell out of me for a week or so.

Oh you should. It's a great movie. Absolutely weird and surreal but great. Some of the themes you'll pick up from it are pervasive across tons of other movies and genres all condensed into one wild ride.

The thing you have to know about Brazil is, it's perfectly okay not to like Brazil at all. I can't call a movie most people have never seen "overrated," but people can get really weird about Brazil...

Agreed. I like 12 monkeys better as a movie ( just my style of movie ) but brazil is a far more realistic dyspotian reality. Dystopia by the mundane and the bureaucratic rather than a mad genocidal scientist.

So, perhaps the author is correct about the film's ending, but that's not the way I interpreted it when I first saw it. Rather, it seemed to me that the scientist from the future was there to insure that the disease did, in fact, spread, even if Bruce Willis' character stopped the original source from getting on the plane. She was either a carrier (a Typhoid Mary of sorts), or else had her own vial. I thought it suggested that some of the scientists in the future were in favor of the status quo, and wanted to sabotage the plans of the majority of the scientists to alter the past.
But, perhaps my interpretation was overly cynical.

I'm glad I read this article because I never understood the ending that way. I'm probably kind of dumb, but for me, the scientist at the end, on the plane, was just there as part of the normal timeline. I never imagined that she travelled from the future, I thought it was just her character before the epidemic :)

This is so interesting as I'd always interpreted "insurance" as her being there to stop the plague. I never considered either of your views nor the one in the article. Now that I see there are so many possible interpretations it really gives some fuel for thought.

She can't stop the plague. They can't change that. It's well established. She can't help the plague. It doesn't need help. This is also well established. However, the whole point of sending Cole back was to find out where they could get a clean version of the specimen. The earliest version of it. He succeeded. She's the "insurance" on this whole thing. She can get a sample of the virus so they can create a cure.

I think this is the most plausible meaning yes. My reading was pretty naive. As for the "I work in insurance" part, I always thought it was her job before the plague, and maybe it meant that the caste of "scientists" who were ruling in the future were actually mostly con-people, self-proclaimed "scientists" who took advantage of the collapse to take control. It doesn't really make sense in a way, they invented time travel after all. In my defense, I saw this movie when I was pretty young so most likely missed a lot of subtleties.

Cole's time was 2035; the plane scene was 1995. If it was just her before the epidemic she'd appear in her 20's. She must have been a time traveler.

Actually I do recall wondering about that possibility, but she didn't seem young enough. But perhaps it was intended to be ambiguous. Judging from this discussion, if that was the objective they nailed it.

"the ’90s, that bizarre blip in American history where it seemed like we were living in an eternal present, the End of History"
That's something millennials & later won't understand: 2000 was a mental barrier we couldn't really think past. Objectively, people may have addressed the next millennium's dates, but we just couldn't deeply believe we'd be living in what was always colloquially called "the future".

I have a very different take. As someone who grew up in the 90s I draw the line at 9/11. That event ended the brief post cold war era of peace, prosperity, and optimism. We still have not recovered culturally from 9/11. The optimism of the 90s is literally unthinkable today. The terrorists won.

idk why this is downvoted. the 90s is the period between the end of the cold war and the start of the war on terror. its the only time in living memory where there was no enemy.
9/11 absolutely changed the country. it was the start of militarized police, nationalistic displays, and 24/7 fear that have all been normalized today. Perhaps the terrorists didn't win (Bin Laden is dead and the house of Saud still stands) but we certainly lost.

Perhaps this is far too controversial a view for HN, and for many Americans, we'll see.
The terrorists absolutely won. Least that's my perception as a non-American. Your first mistake was legitimising them as "the enemy"
When the IRA were bombing Docklands, Manchester or Birmingham pubs we'd make a poor taste joke the next morning, walk past the wreckage and forget about it the day after that. When the Baader Meinhoff Group were killing public figures, and bombing Brits, Germans and Americans over in Germany they were treated as a bunch of insignificant extremists. Even by the Americans it seemed from news reports. There'd be a poor taste joke or two, and they'd be ignored. Much the same for other terrorist groups hijacking aircraft or killing people through history. "Don't deal with terrorists" was heard from every politician.
Then came 11/9 and the "war on terror." So determined were your politicians to legitimise the terrorists it became a war. Against a legitimate target. Globally. So determined were you to preserve your "freedoms" that you built an apparatus of surveillance to ensure that freedom. Apparatus so far reaching that it is indistinguishable from an apparatus of oppression. Most other countries played along too in support, and built the same apparatus of oppression to preserve freedom. Not only did the USA lose, and the terrorists win, but the UK, France, Iraq, Malaysia etc lost too. So did freedom.
No more bad taste joke the morning after and treating them as a bunch of irrelevant idiots unworthy of but the briefest air time (like I get the impression most Americans still do with a group like the Westborough Baptist Church), but an unwinnable war with a legitimate enemy and a leader, and endless analysis. Everyone except them, globally, lost.

I think you missed my point when I said "the terrorist didn't win but we certainly lost".
Everything you say about how we've lost our identity, optimism, and freedom is exactly what I meant by "we certainly lost". I agree with that 100%.
But none of these things were the goal of al quida. AQ doesn't win by virtue of what we've lost. AQ doesn't care that we turn ourselves into a police state. "They hate our freedoms" is a propaganda line we told ourselves. The goal of AQ was to end the rule of secular governments on the Arabian peninsula (namely the Saudi's) and they attacked the US precisely because we prop up the Saudi's. 17 years later we're still backing the Saudi's. Bin Laden is dead. An order of magnitude more death has been unleashed in the Muslim world than what was released on America on 9/11. 9/11 was ultimately massively counterproductive to the goals of AQ. The terrorists didn't win.

The price of freedom isn’t the WOT or trillions for wars - it was 9/11 and accepting what a few handfuls of men could do in a one-off in a free society.
We can win every tactical battle, but we lost strategically.

In a country of 325 million people, it seemed like there wasn't anyone who didn't know someone either affected or directly harmed by the 9/11 (11/9 as you call it) attacks. It didn't feel like "some poor saps over there got the short end of the stick" it felt like "we're all directly attacked".
This wasn't the first time Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda reached out and touched us. Previously, we'd treated him more or less the same as you'd suggested, thinking back to the attack on the USS Cole we just lobbed some missiles off into the desert and called it a day.
As for the surveillance apparatus that sprang up in response, there was most certainly a backlash against it, with all the dystopian oppressive government warnings. The general public didn't really mind much, though, because they'd felt that the government fundamentally failed at what could theoretically have been a preventable disaster.
So, given that, what were we to do? Say to our neighbors, "sorry, you have to risk death in future attacks because I can't be arsed to wait longer in lines at the airport"?
I don't think the terrorists have won, because their objective wasn't to make our lives a little less pleasant. Their objective (as stated) is the fundamental destruction of our nation. Sure, we've compromised our constitution by allowing our government more power than it ought to have. The consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other places) will be felt for generations. That doesn't mean that the terrorists have won, far from it.

> (11/9 as you call it)
I normally transpose to US order when it's 9/11 as it's become the name. Date habit got the better of me, sorry.
> So, given that, what were we to do? Say to our neighbors, "sorry, you have to risk death in future attacks because I can't be arsed to wait longer in lines at the airport"?
Not at all. It was a horrific, terrible event on an unprecedented scale, which I don't wish to play down or disrespect. Perhaps no reaction could have kept the trademark US unbounded optimism afterwards, but it seems that the reaction changed more than the event itself.
If the reaction had been more like other incidents, the authorities could have quietly done what authorities do whilst the politicians try to play down the drama and immediate desire for revenge, reinforcing the need to mourn but preserve all that's best of your way of life. The CIA and excellent special forces might have clinically cut al Quaeda and its leaders to shreds over the coming years with global support and enhanced US global reputation. It might have taken longer, or been more difficult with an organisation like al Quaeda. Smaller changes could have improved air security without the enormous security theatre industry that's resulted.
The creation of the surveillance state, the invasions, ongoing military casualties and gunboat diplomacy seems to have brought most of the changes to society and attitudes and subsequent change in international views.
> The consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other places) will be felt for generations
That's basically my point.

>> The consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other places) will be felt for generations
>That's basically my point.
I was replying more specifically to the claim that the terrorists have "won". By any measure of their stated goals, that simply isn't the case. They didn't want us to be inconvenienced, they wanted us to at least completely withdraw our military from the middle east. Beyond that, they'd love for a total collapse of society... Instead, we have been more heavily militarily entrenched than before ever since.

If their goal was to destroy our society, they certainly got quite far with that. Since 9/11 we have abandoned American optimism, openness, and sense of a positive future in favor of ideologies that more closely resemble the paranoid reactionary beliefs of the terrorists.

I'm fairly sure the cold war paranoia pervaded society at least as much as, if not far more deeply, than post 9/11 effects. Also, let's not forget the internment camps for Japanese after WW2.
We changed, but I wouldn't call that change the kind of "destruction" that am Qaeda had in mind.

Most of HN trends young (<=30) and maybe doesn't remember the before time.
There was a general optimism and sense of freedom in the 90s that is just gone. We have continued to progress in many amazing ways, but I feel like it's on inertia. The living, growing, vibrant ideas of today are totalitarian and paranoid: the alt-right, the authoritarian left, nationalism, technocracy, neo-feudalism, etc.
I think part of the popularity of 9/11 conspiracy theories comes from the deep intuition that something broke and never recovered. I think most of those theories are BS but the intuition is correct.

9/11 didn't come out of nowhere though. The 90s weren't actually war-free. There was, in fact, no shortage of wars[0]. Sure, they mostly do not involve western powers, but they can certainly be traced back to them. All of these civil wars are the reverberations of colonialism and the two world wars.
The former colonisers were so unwilling to relinquish their grasp on these territories and so willing to instead install puppet governments or just continue their colonisation through multinational corporations instead. It's no surprise it led to these insurgencies that have the US in their sights. We reap what we sow.
> its the only time in living memory where there was no enemy.
The reality is that we have always been the enemy. And we manufacture a bogeyman to legitimise our hegemonic power and the unjust actions it requires to maintain that power. When the USSR and other socialist powers fell, a new enemy had to be created and 9/11 worked perfectly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1990%E2%80%932002

You miss the point: it's not about drawing a line in the past, it's that we couldn't think past a date in the future. We didn't know society-changing events on 9/11/2001 would happen. We couldn't believe 1/1/2000 (and after) itself would happen, so mentally created a view of an eternal present where the 1990's wouldn't end ... 2000 & beyond were an unreachable future.

I definitely agree. I turned 18 in September just before 9/11. So, there's a very definite mental line in time drawn that year where everything since has vastly changed.

Indeed. Add to that the new fangled world wide web, that would change everything for the better.

slightly related but for me 80s are always 20 years back

Y2K had everyone spooked and everyone thought that all the machines would stop, looking back on it seems funny now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...

That threat was real, and an example of how concerted objective efforts could fix it.
Unfortunately, many people seem to think a risk is only real if something goes wrong; successful mitigation seems to mean the risk wasn't real.

It seems, these days, as though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know it.
Is there some name for the phenomenon that as things get better, our assessment of where things stand seems to get more and more pessimistic? I feel like you see this in issues of racial and gender equality as well. Things are so much better than they were 100 years ago, but even as I write that, I'm tempted to pre-empt it with an acknowledgement that things are still terrible, because I know that I'm going to get a bunch of comments about how bad race and gender relations are today. And those comments are not wrong, but they ignore the context of all the progress that's been made.
There will always be some kind of crisis and existential risk looming for some or all of civilization, but the more objectively better things get, the more disinclined we seem to be to acknowledge the progress that's been made. Why is that?
Don't get me wrong, climate change is horrific. But for almost the entire second half of the last century, we faced the very real threat of nuclear annihilation at any moment. It's terrifying how close we came to that tipping point. For the first half of the last century, we had two global wars that killed tens of millions of people and whose outcomes were not certain. When I read the history of World War I and II, I'm struck by how easily things could have gone differently and perhaps left us with a much worse world than the one we face today.
So while climate change is a huge problem, I think it's preferable to all-out nuclear war. I think we'll figure it out in the long run, not without a lot of suffering and cost, but we have options. Maybe I'm wrong though.
Regardless, as soon as we do, there will be some new problem that isn't quite as bad as climate change, and humanity will be as pessimistic as its ever been about our future ability to thrive.

Nuclear holocaust would have been caused and was prevented by just a few people. It would have been an action with a direct result. We could and did also just stop with the nonsense.
We dont have that option for climate change. We have a worsening situation and no realistic option to stop or even reverse things.
Differently put, nuclear holocaust was a threat, climate change an active process.

We have a worsening situation and no realistic option to stop or even reverse things.
I think this is where we probably disagree. I think things are going to get pretty bad, and many will needlessly suffer and die, but we'll switch to renewables and start doing large-scale geoengineering in the 2030s or 2040s to reverse some of the damaging effects of climate change and eventually stabilize things. Likely not before we've had some devastating wars and lost many species, but I personally think most of the predictions of civilization collapse are way overblown.
It's also possible that sometime in the next decade, all the nations of the world join some kind of super Paris agreement, but I'm not hopeful.

>It's also possible that sometime in the next decade, all the nations of the world join some kind of super Paris agreement, but I'm not hopeful.
It is to late for any meaningful change of heart to revert things. There is no option of everyone realizing it was a mistake and fixing it in ten or twenty years. We are currently at the possibility of mitigating the continuously worsening effects of climate change and we are not even able to not increase the degree of our negative impact every year. Instead we are still showing growth in the area.

we faced the very real threat of nuclear annihilation at any moment. It's terrifying how close we came
nuclear holocaust was a threat
I don't understand why these days people talk and act as if there's no risk of nuclear catastrophe. The effect of that seems to me incomparably worse than global warming. Yet no-one seems to talk about it anymore. I read on HN sometimes people saying they won't have kids because global warming etc, but never similar reference to nuclear war.
I just looked up the famous Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doomsday clock[0], which I hadn't heard about in years. Frighteningly, it is currently at 2 minutes to midnight, as close as it's ever been. Closer than it was at any time in the 60s, 70s, 80s. This is from the 2018 report[1]:
In 2017, world leaders failed to respond effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as dangerous as it has been since World War II.
The greatest risks last year arose in the nuclear realm. ... To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.
On the climate change front, the danger may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the long run requires urgent attention now. ...
But there has also been a breakdown in the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US actions. In 2017, the United States backed away from its long- standing leadership role in the world, reducing its commitment to seek common ground and undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance challenges. Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict US actions—or understand when US pronouncements are real, and when they are mere rhetoric. International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving it a surrealistic sense of unreality that makes the world security situation ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes to midnight—the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
[0] https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/past-statements/
[1] https://thebulletin.org/sites/default/files/2018%20Doomsday%...

If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at the 12 Monkeys universe, check out the excellent TV series of the same title.

As the article stated though, they aren't really the same story and don't share continuity. The show is good but it's not an adaptation of the film in any meaningful way.

Exactly, the show was ok but the film is much better. While the show takes place in a similar universe, it's not a continuity.

The opposite is true to me. The film was OK, but the show was excellent.

I rewatched both 12 Monkeys the film and Brazil and they both share an incredibly unbelievable romance - in the first the scientist falls in love with a homeless man and kisses him passionately over the span of about 10 minutes of screen time after thinking he was insane and finding proof he was a time traveler (homeless people are humans, too, but if Cole had been living like a homeless person long enough to appear like that he would have had a pretty foul odor) and in Brazil, Sam Lowry and the female lead are arguing and he singled handedly ends her career and in the next(?) scene we see them together they are in bed pre/post consummation ( though of course that scene makes more sense if it's only in his head after we watch the end of the movie). The TV series also manages to top Brad Pitt's crazy guy, that I thought was going to be impossible after hearing about the TV series initially.

I got the impression that the plague arc early in the show was an adaptation of the film — sharing several key characters — but the rest of it was not covered by the film. And if you watch the last season of the series, you get to see an adaptation of the ending of the movie.
Anyways, I think the series was excellent, even on its own.

The TV series was truly awful and utterly unrelated to the movie, except the weak linking to try and force it to be related in the first one or two episodes.

Utterly unrelated? How much of the show did you watch?
I don’t want to spoil much, but the focal point throughout the whole show was the relationship between the 12 Monkeys and the plague, just like it was in the movie.

I loved the movie enough that I wanted to love the series too. It helped that SyFy have turned out some great programming. I didn't reach the end of the first TV series. I tried, and definitely got past half way - maybe 8 or 9 episodes.
For me, it just kept reinforcing the thought that it wasn't a patch on the movie and felt more like any old time travel series. I couldn't connect with it or relate it to the film like I could with say Stargate or Star Trek film vs TV.
Maybe I should give it another go sometime. :)

Lol, no. The TV series has nothing to do withe movie other than the basic premise. It throws the best thing about the movie right out the window immediately.

Did you watch the entire series? See my reply to a similar claim below.
And what “best part” are you referring to, exactly?

The message I got from the film is that when people give in to despair, they're prone to take actions that may have catastrophic consequences. The virologist has lost his faith (in whatever he may have had faith in) and has become a nihilist. nihilists are the most dangerous sorts of people, as they're likely to take any action at all, unconstrained by morality, ethics, or common sense.

The catastrophe in 12 Monkeys is due to the action of a single individual - an ideologue concerned with the "biosphere". The pathology highlighted is ideological thought that justifies mass murder.
Love certainly conquers all in this film. It is precisely love (here romantic love) that weaves an unalterable thread through time and binds the two individuals who are absolutely necessary for the future salvation of mankind.
"I’ve been thinking about 12 Monkeys a lot lately. It seems, these days, as though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know it." - the OP.
"[I]sn’t it obvious that chicken little represents the sane vision? And that homo sapiens’s motto, ‘Let’s go shopping,’ is the cry of the true lunatic?” - the mass murdering virologist.

I've rewatched the movie recently. Humanity is definitly not saved. The whole quest is shown as being nothing a but a futile yet beautiful slice of life. It's espacially underlined with the scene revealing the origin of the voice mail that was supposedly the only clue of the whole shebang for the future scientists.

Isn't humanity saved? The main character's buddy from prison is able to show up to try to save him because greatly improved the tech; he claims that mc is a hero and things are headed to being solved?

Not in the movie.
They definitely can't change the past. They live in block universe where there is only one timeline that happens no matter what. They can only travel into the past and observe and bring some stuff back. mc is a hero because he discovers the real villain and sends message to the future.
The idea is to get sample of the original non-mutated virus and develop a cure in the future so that they can live on the surface again, not to prevent the outbreak.
The movie ends without a cure, but now the future scientists know who the villain is, so they might send other people to intercept the villain when he lands.

I think the idea was that the woman scientist "in insurance" in the plane at the end was in fact the next agent working on getting the pre-mutated virus. She knew to go back to that time and get on that seat of that plane because Cole's actions pinpointed the target, time, and place.

Precisely. They have found the source, can take samples at each stop, and "get people back on top" post Cole.

Ah, yes. I forgot that. There is in fact plot already going on in the last scene.

The whole thing for that movie is he couldn't save humanity by going back in time.

I thought it was that he couldn't prevent the catastrophe. It is greatly implied that he found the cause and set the future scientists up to get a direct sample of what caused things, possibly reversing it in their time.
What he couldn't do, was get what he wanted. He couldn't save his love, as she was of that time, and it was doomed.

Part of this is because he had proven that you could bring back a useful biological sample, by eating a spider in the early parts of the movie

Did you watch some alternate edit? Love conquers nothing in the film.

Cole has no reason to seek Railly on his second time jump. He seeks her because he is in love with her. Railly also makes decisions contrary to cold reason and sticks with Cole.
Don't forget, they had sent multiple agents back in time. None had succeeded. The romantic relationship is a key element of the narrative.

I guess that's not what I got out of it. He sought to get back to 1996 because she convinced him the rest of his experience in the future was an delusion.
Railly has experiences that challenge her idea of reality. At first she believes Cole is insane but then experiences evidence that he's not. Now believing the plague Cole mentioned is coming she really has no one else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com