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Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS | Hacker News Reader

I find I have a particular distaste for those who seek to profit from doomsday predictions.

The world as we knew it essentially ended in 1992 with the advent of the internet for the common man. It ended in 1903 with motorized vehicles. For every correct doomsayer there are unfathomably large numbers of people who got it wrong.

The subject of the article might bring up some legitimate issues, but framing it like this isn’t going to help anyone. In the small chance they are right, we will all be in apocalypse anyway, so do you really think that something like this is going to scare people into changing how they live and carry out their daily lives?

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To pile on, predictions like this should round to the nearest nice number within the error bars. Saying "49%" implies you have enough knowledge to distinguish between "49%" and "50%" (in this case, there isn't even any quantitative analysis -- it's just a made up number, so they might as well say "49.44232115%" if they're not going to say "50%").

Yeah. Sometimes we use "50/50" as a euphemism when we really have no idea. 49% sounds like "I have no idea but really want everyone to think I've given this a lot of careful thought."

If I had to be charitable, maybe Diamond believes a lone prediction at 50% is actually meaningless, so he always nudges to one side or the other so people can at least score him a little. No idea though.

You’re comparing the invention of a nifty replacement for horses with, for instance, the complete destruction of every city in the United States with a population over 1,000,000 in a global nuclear war.

Thanks, saved me the time that would have been spent saying exactly that.

Welcome to the new century where each distinct generation is so out of touch with the previous the only conclusion they have is utter destruction.

Jared Diamond isn’t talking about problems that can be tied to recent technologies or youthful ideology that can be explained away as one generation not understanding the previous. He is specifically citing 1) the release of carbon dioxide over the past 200 years of mass industrialization 2) the extensive and increasing overuse of resources such as water, topsoil, fisheries which has been increasing unsustainably for hundreds of years 3) the proliferation of nuclear weapons which is again a trend over many decades. I don’t understand how someone can read this interview and conclude “this old fogey doesn’t understand the zoomers!”

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