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Comment by lqet | Hacker News Reader

Yes, predicting the future was never possible. In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak. Yet I am immensely grateful that my ancestors chose to build homes and marry and have children and live life through the great plague, through middle ages in which most of the population expected the apocalypse to be just around the corner, the 30 years war with up to 70% of the population dead in some areas, two world wars, a time in which nuclear annihilation of mankind seemed just one false push of a button away, and a time when large parts of Europe were covered in radioactive substances following the Chernobyl disaster.

End times are nothing new, it's the historic default mode.

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> Yet I am immensely grateful that my ancestors chose to build homes and marry and have children

I think this premise is questionable. I double that choice had much to do with it, for most of our ancestors. In particular a large fraction of children (majority?) born were not born out the free choice of the parents, but rather as a result of accident, social pressure/expectation, economic necessity etc.

Given a free choice, the same uncertain and/or bleak future produces the rational outcome that it does not seem prudent to have children.

> In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak

In the past, this was a reason to have children, because you needed somebody to help out and look after you when you were old. Now, it's a reason not to have children, because you're putting people into a world knowing that there is a non-trivial probability that they will suffer all their lives through wars, famine, social unrest, and other man-made disasters.

But a lower probability than ever before in human history of those things

Climate change would like a word.

If you think that you're simply incorrect. For the average person in a Western country, life is dramatically better anytime in the next hundred years, including the worst possible outcomes of climate change. Not to mention that the exponential growth of solar panels is basically stabilized in climate right now.

Mostly agree, but:

> Not to mention that the exponential growth of solar panels is basically stabilized in climate right now.

Sadly, growth of PV can only deal with part of the problem. We're making PV fast enough now that, given panel lifetimes, in 30 years 100% of current electricity demand will be met with specifically PV, and we're also making wind turbines and nuclear reactors and stuff.

The "and also" means we'll probably also be fine electrifying land transport.

Air transport (also fast-and-reliable sea transport) is somewhat harder to make renewable, but theoretically possible. Metal extraction from ore can be done electrolytically.

Concrete's not limited by electricity, it's an independent thing to be solved. So is meat farming. Progress exists on these, yes, but my point is they're not solved just by us being on the home stretch for electricity.

I don't think your "worst possible" case is calibrated correctly.

The worst possible case is global famine and food chain collapse. Food wars, water riots. Starvation in the literal billions.

Living in a Western country won't solve the problems of "crops can't grow anymore" or "keystone species in the food chain are extinct". We'll starve and die in mass numbers just like everyone else.

Even if we had billions dead from starvation worldwide (huge if), life in a western country in 2060 will be better than life for almost anyone born in 1800 anywhere on earth.

That QoL is dependent on resource extraction from developing countries - if they crash, so do we.

More people will suffer and die over the next 50-100 years from efforts to counteract climate change than from climate change itself.

> you needed somebody to help out and look after you when you were old

Even with social programs in society, this still hasn't gone away. This is still kind of a reason to have kids, and for your siblings to have kids, and have family networks grow to help support each other.

> you're putting people into a world knowing that there is a non-trivial probability that they will suffer all their lives through wars, famine, social unrest, and other man-made disasters

Once again, all of this has also been true for all of human history. Other than a brief moment for the northwestern part of the world for wealtheir people in the 90s-maybe 00s, this has just been the normal state of affairs. Life has always had suffering involved.

"In the past, this was a reason to have children, because you needed somebody to help out and look after you when you were old"

I live in what is supposedly one of the happiest, wealthiest countries in the world, and even here few people trust the healthcare system to take care of them when they're old. My grandpa would have almost certainly died years ago if he had no children to look after him.

It's still valid, if selfish reason to have children.

Folks did not have kids during WW1 though: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalité_en_France#/media/Fich... :)

Was that out of choice or because all the men were at the front, far from the people they might otherwise have been having kids with?

don't forget all of the rationing, and disease, and terrifying uncertainty

there is always uncertainty, but not in the 60k people are going to die in a battle tomorrow level of uncertainty.

> Yes, predicting the future was never possible.

True, but...

> In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak.

No, the rate of change was slow enough that you could probably make a good-enough prediction: your life would be similar to that of your father's or grandfathers'.

The problem is that nowadays, some foolish technology-worshiping assholes have pushed the rate of change faster than almost anyone can handle: before we've started to learn to deal with the problems of one technology, another technology disrupts everything again. Society needs to operate at a human scale, and a human speed, or it will kill itself.

You might like this -

Future Shock (1972)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU&pp=ygUMZnV0dXJlIHN...

Yeah.

And it's worth noting (because I'm sure some "clever" software engineer is going to quote Socrates thinking its some kind of mic drop or something), that I'm not saying change all the sudden got too fast just recently. It's probably been like that for awhile (e.g. since the 70s or before).

I thi k the 70s was when they saw "oh hey this is gonna be bad" and now we're there.

> > In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak.

> No, the rate of change was slow enough that you could probably make a good-enough prediction: your life would be similar to that of your father's or grandfathers'.

You are not contradicting the quotation.

You could, as you say, probably make a good-enough prediction: your life would be similar to that of your father's or grandfathers'.

That prediction would be "Just like my parents and grandparents, I live in a cold rotting wooden shack, my entire family have to share a single bed to stay warm, I am only one step up from being my landlord's slave, and this will also be the life of my kids and grandkids".

"End times are nothing new, it's the historic default mode." -- might be the smartest thing I have read in many weeks.

A lot of those people were able to do it without debt which made it far less precarious. I have equally pessimistic view of the future so I built my house one piece of wood at a time with cash. I bought a piece of shit car with cash. I've never used debt, I just got all the things I have by buying shit cars and shit land and slowly slowly making things better until I have nice things.

For much of the youth, this is impossible. The permitting and regulatory process for houses is hostile to slow and DIY building so even if you can get cheap land near jobs (you can) you can't do it without predicting 30 years of mortgage payments. The pandemic monetary policy (more recently) and cash-for-clunkers(longer ago) trashed the used car markets. Increased regulation, licensing, insurance requirements and liability made childcare far less affordable. Also in the old days "neglect" was stuff like actually starving your kids to death so if you were broke you could work or do domestic stuff to save money and leave them home or to run around outside without Karen having them snatched by CPS.

Annihilation isn't so worrying, it's the surviving that's scary.

Their existence was even more precarious because they were one crop failure from starvation. They couldn't save food for long, and even if they tried an army is likely to come and take it all (if mice didn't get it first).

Dept is bad, but it isn't nearly as bad as the things they dealt with.

Most people worry more about what they'll do if they survive than what they'll do if they die to the point I don't think "what if we all die" even barely registers in the calculation of whether to have kids. IF you all starve it's all a moot point. In even an African village everyone who wanted a house could just build it on the copious land available with whatever materials you could find-- I would assert having a home is more precarious now than even medieval or even pre-historic times as the regulations and law will banish you to the street today if you just build whatever you can afford to build as was done in practically all times before.

I don't spend much time worrying about what I'll do for my kids if the nuclear apocalypse happens. I would still have kids if it was 90% chance of the apocolypse, whereas I'd probably not have kids if there were a 30% chance I make just enough to survive but not so much I can pay child support and I sit in a jail cell while everyone around me does nothing but rags on me for being a deadbeat and failure of a father.

Note: Also, except for the first few years, having kids made your situation less rather than more precarious in the agrarian age

Umm, have you ever heard of pickling? Root cellars? Canning?

I hate this fake idea that everyone in the past was one bad harvest from starvation.

They could survive a bad harvest every so often, its when the weather changed due to drought/etc. that caused famine.

Everything about being a male parent was far less precarious, and being a female parent was less precarious after childbirth. There was literally basically no liability if the children died, and not only that, the people around you would likely understand and sympathize with you. You could just make a best effort and if you failed, chalk it up to bad luck and try again. And if you died of starvation, welp your responsibilities in life have ended. That's a lot more inviting to having children than the current status quo.

Society today still doesn't really do dick to help parents but not only that they've built unprecedented apparatus around jailing, ridiculing, condemning, and harassing parents for any perceived weaknesses in their strategy including failing to foresee their financial situation decades into the future.

Have you been neglecting to pay your child support?

While child death was common, there is no reason to think it was somehow less devastating to the families it happened too.

There is every reason to think legal consequences + misfortune of a child are more devastating than just misfortune of a child. For one, for instance people have had all their children removed when a single child has a fragile bone disease or similar poorly explained illness causing injury or death and CPS accuses the parents of abuse and causes the trauma of not just losing/injury of the child but also losing all your children and possibly being charged. There are cases of people adopting abused children and documenting the prior abuse at time of adoption, but then having their other kids removed when doctors find the signs of the prior documented abuse when the child dies despite the best efforts of the person adopting the child.

I don't know why on earth you would think the trauma of having the legal system + other people attacking you + possibly losing custody of your other kids wouldn't cause more devastation. The whole system is geared around causing additional devastation for families this happens to compared to in prior times.

Maybe the chance of having a child die or an unfixable injured is less than before, but the weight of consequences to consider are higher than before.

From child mortality to soldiers in combat there is a nearly infinite amount of research indicating that whatever bad things you want to look are less devastating when the the entire society around you says "aw shucks, that happens sometimes, maybe just pray better and try again" rather than "omg that sounds horrible you must be so traumatized, have you tried therapy"

What a weird take. You make it sound like their dead children were no big deal, but by god, someone not paying for your children for you is a catastrophe.

> And if you died of starvation, welp your responsibilities in life have ended.

Yes, gosh, imagine people making a big deal out of starving to death. At least they didn't owe someone money.

>ou make it sound like their dead children were no big deal, but by god, someone not paying for your children for you is a catastrophe.

No I'm pointing out American society's fake concern for the welfare of children. They don't punish parents to help children. In fact, it's almost totally crickets when it comes to helping the children. We even spend a gazillion dollars on guided missiles to bomb girls' schools in Iran with barely a fuck given about the children inside. The point is to assert smug moral superiority and to punish, jail, and harass parents not help the children. Society wants all the upside of asserting their opinion on parenting and stomping the boot down on parents but none of the responsibility that goes with the choice to assert your opinion on how children should be raised. Wanting kids raised a certain way while shunting all the responsibility on others at ~no cost to yourself except to punish those who fail to live up to your standards, it's the cheapest and most disingenuous kind of concern but frighteningly actually backed by the precious projection of the "rule of law" that arguably makes children even worse off while also acting as a signal towards inhibiting people to have children since they don't want to subject their every lifestyle choice to the whims of "think of the children" psychopaths that can start a CPS investigation ("we investigate every tip") at the drop of a hat.

> imagine people making a big deal out of starving to death. At least they didn't owe someone money.

I don't think I need to explain why people who have starved to death are able to make less of a "big deal" out of their lot than living people who owe money.

> I hate this fake idea that everyone in the past was one bad harvest from starvation.

Perhaps one was/is sometimes a stretch, but starvation and famine were a thing:

> Over two million people died in two famines in France between 1693 and 1710. Both famines were made worse by ongoing wars.[127]

> As late as the 1690s, Scotland experienced famine which reduced the population of parts of Scotland by at least 15%.[128]

> The Great Famine of 1695–1697 may have killed a third of the Finnish population.[129] and roughly 10% of Norway's population.[130]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#17th_century

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1695–1697

But even a single year is not unreasonable:

> The Great Famine, which lasted from 1770 until 1771, killed about one tenth of Czech lands' population, or 250,000 inhabitants, and radicalised countrysides leading to peasant uprisings.[135]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#18th_century

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_Czech_lands

I was never implying famine wasn't a thing, it has toppled empires...

But to say one season of bad harvest will kill off everyone is ludicrous...

> But to say one season of bad harvest will kill off everyone is ludicrous...

"Everyone", sure. But the 1770-1 Czech example seems to have taken out 10%: that's not nothing.

I didn't say it would kill everyone though. I said it would kill you. Your neighbors may get just enough to survive, but not enough to keep you alive. (If they have surplus they would help you survive - with the expectation you would return that favor in 10-20 years when the situation reverses.

Correct, they were mostly two bad harvests away from starvation. 240,000 people starved to death in Sweden because 1867 was cold and 1868 was dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_famine_of_1867%E2%80%9...

The actual way the average farmer throughout history survived through failed harvests was the human way:

Their neighbor helped them

The most important human invention ever was a society built around sharing whenever you could because you knew you would rely on that sharing to survive at some point.

Modern civilization is ~2-3 years of correlated bad harvests away from major disaster. If food costs 20x what it used to, a good number of people will starve or die in the political turbulence that will follow...

Sounds like France circa 1790.

Modern society has much better transportation. The odds of correlated bad harvests around the world are much worse than local bad harvest in the past. I guarantee every place on earth will have a bad harvest, sometimes two in the next 20 years, but since there is enough harvest overall we are fine.

> ~2-3 years of correlated bad harvests

Yes, but that's quite an event. The odds are better that a major disaster causes those worldwide correlated bad harvests than the other way around.

I'm glad you addressed that your house-building strategy isn't feasible almost anywhere. There was an interesting article posted to HN on this topic a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31470400

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