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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Why is it so in vogue to be a doomer? Malthus, the original doomer, was wrong on just about all of his predictions. Most likely, we're wrong too. I mean, the planet survived like half a dozen mass extinction events, what makes you think it won't survive another one?

I just don't understand the "woe is me" nihilistic narrative so many intelligent people are deeply fond of. Recycle, turn off the lights, vote with your conscience. Get a wife, make some kids, live a happy life, try to make a positive difference in the world. It's not hard.

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> Why is it so in vogue to be a doomer?

Let's not be "doomers", but let's not ignore emerging risks of catastrophic outcomes, either.

Playing Russian Roulette a few times and getting away with it doesn't make it safe.

And plenty of stuff that would have been really bad has been stopped by diligent response by people and governments considering those risks.

If we keep making the same mistakes and exposing consumers to toxic things, and lacing the entire environment with them... maybe there's some processes that need to improve instead of just shrugging and saying "well, that's how we do it 'round here!"

The “doomers” who were right are what we call “modern health and safety regulation”. All that stuff is written in blood.

It wasn’t doomsayers spreading that, it was people shining the light on “this is how it is and it’s disgusting”.

More Kitchen Nightmares less “The end is near!”

At the time, many of the people who brought legitimate concerns to light were dismissed as alarmist.

History is full of instances of people not taking concerns seriously because “I’ve done things this way for years and I’m not dead yet”, only to find out a 30 years later, that in fact, it was something that causes a chronic disease.

Some alarmists being right in the past does not validate all future alarmists.

I agree. Likewise, some alarmists being wrong in the past does not invalidate all future “alarmists”.

The "safety regulators" required spraying furniture and other products with PFAS in the name of flame retardants. If anything, it was the regulators that helped cause this mess.

I'm not blaming anyone. Just pointing out that we don't know something is bad until we know it's bad.

It's not hard to look at everything we have and do and see how fragile it all is. It feels harder and harder to acquire the "things" necessary to feel successful, and once you get them, and see how easy it is to lose, it's not weird to think people might feel extremely vulnerable.

It also doesn't help that most popular cinematic futurism is post-apocalyptic now. I remember RedLetterMedia pointing to the success of Independence Day as the turning point and I can see some validity in that.

Yup, the truth is that there are a host of things that are going to make all of our lives slightly shorter. Our doom is that we’re not living absolutely optimum length or quality lives… but the real doom is that some people spend their long lives terrified of losing the last few percent and spread the fear instead of focusing on what makes life worth living.

There is an amount of attention appropriate to give risks, but many people really overdo it and turn it into a kind of religion and obsession.

The only thing I've done in line with the absolute pessimism of my beliefs about the future is stop paying into my pension (for now). I still plan to have kids, gods willing.

It's one thing to worry about the planet and the animals, and people dying directly due to climate events (floods and storms, heatwaves and drought) etc. I am far, far more worried about what we will do to each other when the 3 billion of us who are vulnerable to climate change want to move somewhere else.

"The planet will be fine. The people are fucked!" said a wise man.

(It was George Carlin.)

Because for people who don't have their heads buried in the sand it can be very difficult to fully enjoy one's privileged position in the world without failing to recognize the vast socioeconomic disparity that got them there in the first place, and thusly be deeply frustrated when one's impact on the problem seems so inconsequential.

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