‘High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End’ Starting in 2050 | Hacker News Reader

‘High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End’ Starting in 2050

vice.com

On inspection, this article turns out to be based on a "report" [1] containing 11 pages of wide-spaced text, which break down as follows:

p. 1: Title.

p. 2: List of contents, blurbs about the authours.

p. 3: Foreword by retired admiral endorsing "this policy paper", same text as in [2].

p. 4: Overview and introduction (half page empty).

p. 5: Complaint about "scientific reticence" (2/3 empty).

p. 6: Explanation of the term "existential risk".

p. 7: Rumination about existential risk management.

p. 8-9: The "2050 Scenario" justifying the title. Turns out to be nothing more than the kind of synopsis a writer might jot down while planning a short story. No new research results are presented. It's just a story.

p. 10: Discussion and policy recommendations, and the obvious reason for the retired admiral's endorsement: the last point is "Urgently examine the role that the national security sector can play in providing leadership and capacity for a near-term, society-wide, emergency mobilization of labour and resources".

p. 11: Empty, except for a "BreakThrough" footer.

So what we have here is two elderly gentlemen suggesting that the task of leading Australia should be turned over to the military, a retired admiral enthusiastically endorsing this as a great idea (shocking, I know), and a chorus of (I'm willing to bet) mostly liberal, progressive young people chiming in on the basis of a "report" which they haven't read.

[1] https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/papers

[2] http://www.climatecodered.org/2019/05/can-we-think-in-new-wa...

One of the biggest challenges we face is the ingrained apathy toward this issue by older generations. How can they care as much as younger generations when it will be unlikely to affect them much in their lifetime?

As much as people may claim to have empathy for others, it's undeniable that their own personal viewpoint and stake has massive influence on mindsets.

Just imagine for a moment how children or teenagers feel about news like this while they see the 'elders' in charge of the world do so little and act with almost no sense of emergency

I'm quite young, in my early 20s, but I still struggle to comprehend how someone age 10 or even 15 must feel.

I'm not sure it's only older generations. Some people just aren't future focussed, just look at some peoples inability to save or look after their health.

It’s because the world has always been coming to an end. If you’re 50 years old today, you grew up hearing that nuclear war or acid rain or the population bomb would be the end of the world and the sky was falling. Eventually you stop listening to kids crying wolf.

0. Forget prepper YAGNI nonsense, get into stealth, defensible greenhouse farming outside of population centers with abundant and reliable access to freshwater.

1. Don't depend on electricity or civilization.

2. Get really good at the tools and techniques of tracking, hunting and war.

3. a) Have lots of kids and b) have enough trustworthy confederates who can keep their mouths shut.

>>b) have enough trustworthy confederates who can keep their mouths shut.

when that thing hits the fan, "trustworthy" or "brother" takes a whole new meaning. But, yeah, far, far away from people and get ready to go back 5000 years. Just in case. To be prepared for a lot of people costs next to nothing, but rewards can be immense. So it pays to be prepared.

There's also immediate benefits, like helping to alleviate some of the current issues with our mass-produced food chain, eg less concern w/ salmonella in your romaine if you grew it yourself, higher quality eggs and meat if you control what your birds eat, etc.

When I see articles like this I can almost predict the steps of the big, bad independent cowboys of the world showing up in a related thread. I fully expect them to be the first to come on their knees to the people forming collectives to more efficiently produce the same resources too.

I mean in and of themselves your steps aren't wrong per-se. It's just that things don't work out like you think and the people that call themselves confederates and encourage each other to be baby machines I imagine won't be very workable as a post-apocalyptic relationship. With outside groups or each other.

Meanwhile, these population centers tend to spring up around a social pillar for a reason and don't simply lose that robustness when the public works begin failing. People are way too quick to assume they're the only rational one surrounded by rabid beasts.

But keep on preppin', california cowboy (sorry couldn't resist, this sounds city boy af and you have it in your username).

If anyone here believes this I'd happily pay $100 today for all of your assets come 2050.

That makes no sense. If civilization does end, I’ll be more in need of my remaining (physical) assets, not less.

Would you be willing to enter a 3-decade wager on, say, whether we still have international commercial air travel and telephone service?

How would our contract be enforced if the world is over? I assume rule of law will go before human civilization.

what am I going to do with your $100 the minute civilization collapses? And that's leaving out all our issues...such as insurance, or keeping them just in case since $100 is nothing.

$100 today, not in 2059

>just in case

But the science is settled I'm told, do you lack faith?

Getting cute? Fine, want my PayPal address to send the $100? in 2059 come and get my earthly possessions

We are in a period between ice ages, couldn't this recent human-powered warming be a good thing in that it delays the onset of another ice age?

The problem is really not just global heating, but the pollution, CO2, loss of wild life, trees - the lungs of this planet. Also the variability of the climate is very detrimental for the vegetation https://youtu.be/Q_m_0UPOzuI?t=131

And I think, before governments set a global plan, people should already change their own behaviors: consume way less, drive less, travel way less (above all when it's 'just' for vacation), stopping to have pets (pet industry is quite large, so quite polluting, and they provide no benefits to the ecosystem, unlike wild animals, even if it's not significant compared to human consumption, it's worth) and so on

We are actually still in an ice age, although currently in a warming period known as an interglacial. All of human civilization has occurred in our present ice age.

The ice age will end when the large ice sheets still covering land are gone. That's mostly Greenland. At which point the world will be a total mess.

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