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Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps note that only 12% of Americans eat 50% of the beef. That group is men between 50-66 years old.

The remaining half is spread among the other 88%. Convince that 12%, or let them age out, and half the problem goes away.

[0] https://phys.org/news/2023-08-mere-americans-nation-beef-sig...

Edit: Fixed link — Thx myshpa! (still looks truncated, but seems to work now)

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> let them age out

Doesn't work. A long time ago I thought when all the old farts are gone, everything is going to be better. Had to have faith in my own generation right?

You know what happened... Humanity just grew a new set of old farts.

This, and so much this. "The hope of the world is in our generation". No, it really isn't. Any given generation is, statistically, a lot like every other generation (certainly over spans of 4-6 generations).

So basically we have no hope then?

Hope is fine. Hope based on "the kids today will do right by the world", not so much.

So hope based on eucatastrophe then? Works for me.

hope based on (a) there are always some number of people at a given point in time working toward the goals you want to be hopeful about (b) there's always some non-zero chance that they may be successful.

but hope somehow contigent or predicated on the age of those people? nah.

Exactly: look at what happened with the Hippies in the 1960s. They turned into the "Me Generation" of the 1980s.

>on a given day

That conditional statement should set your skeptic sense to Defcon one.

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