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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Of the many topics that seem to capture the attention most readily, tales of the apocalypse to come are perhaps the most compelling.

For reasons I don't completely fathom, people gravitate toward stories of impending doom much more readily than stories of impending happiness. History shows that 'good' unexpected things happen just as frequently as 'bad' unexpected things happen, and consequently we get a lot of change but not necessarily all bad change or all good change.

Still you can write a blog post that the economy is near the breaking point, our civilization is mere moments away from collapse, or that some calamity is on the verge of wiping us out, and get all the page views you can monetize.

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Perhaps people want to know about impending doom in the faint hope they can do something about it, while they don't read about impending happiness because- well, who wants to prevent happiness?

Also, articles about impending happiness can wind up making you unhappy. Just think of all the "Cancer cured! (in mice)" articles, as well as product vaporware.

I think that is an excellent insight. Basically people are more invested in 'stopping' doom than they are in 'starting' happiness. A number of interesting behaviors fall out of that using a strict action selection type mechanism.

All it takes is for one impending doom, and bam! You'll never again have the luxury of even being able to think about happiness.

Course, most dooms aren't that final, and I agree that we should focus on the positive (such as, how can we change our actions to affect a positive outcome?), and a critical eye towards doomsayers is always called for (as is a critical eye to those who promise happiness), but ignoring problems usually doesn't make them go away (especially serious ones).

This article isn't some "2012" doomsday nonsense.

This is a real and pressing concern, indeed has been a concern for decades.

Just like the global food shortage that Malthusians assured us was bound to happen, the ozone layer fading away and UV rays destroying us all, Y2K breaking every computer on the planet.

This time it's for real. This time, technology and human ingenuity isn't going to save us.

And whether this is "the big one" or not, with this attitude, we'll never be ready for anything that actually does go seriously wrong. "It hasn't happened before, so it can't happen now" makes for nothing but a great epitaph.

The ozone layer survives because people caught it in time and banned the chemicals causing the problem.

We could do the same thing with antibiotic overuse and it would indeed prevent disaster. That's pretty much what every article about the problem advocates, explicitly or implicitly. Well that, and funding more research on new antibiotics, which we're not doing much of right now.

Just waving our hands and trusting to the magic of technology and ingenuity isn't going to get us out of this. We have to actually do something about it.

> Just like the global food shortage that Malthusians assured us was bound to happen,

How many times can we get lucky with rapid, unforeseen advances in technology?

> the ozone layer fading away and UV rays destroying us all,

Avoided by being proactive

> Y2K breaking every computer on the planet.

Avoided by being proactive

"How many times can we get lucky with rapid, unforeseen advances in technology?"

An infinite number of times. There's no "luck" to it - there are people actively searching for solutions to this shit so we don't end up dead.

There is absolutely luck, it's in the timing. The Green Revolution happened to arrive before we hit Malthusian limits, but that wasn't guaranteed.

If an asteroid is going to strike tomorrow the only solutions that matter are the ones that are economically and technically feasible today.

There's no law of nature that says technological advance will solve every problem in time. There are many examples of societies that destroyed themselves.

There is a story:

A man is walking to a village when he falls into a puddle of quicksand. His attempts to escape are futile and he is nearly about to die when a farmer happens by and hauls him out. The farmer tells him that he should watch out for that puddle. The man suggests placing a sign there to warn travellers, to which the farmer remarks, "Oh, we had one. But no one was falling in, so we took it away.".

About the ozone layer:

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

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

How quickly we forget the lessons of the past!

I'm struggling to understand how anyone could possibly be aware that there was a threat to the ozone layer, but also think that it magically solved itself. The catalyst action of CFCs is not remotely controversial, no more than the IR absorption spectrum of CO2.

Whether it's environmental disasters or internet social media activities, there's an interesting bias towards thinking that the status quo is stable, just because it's been that way for a few years. Stuff changes. Take a step back and actually look at the whole picture.

The ozone layer healed itself despite the fact the Chinese continued to produce and release MASSIVE amounts of CFCs after the signing of the Montreal Accord in 1987. It wasn't until 2007 or so until they stopped. However, the layer stopped thinning in 1997 [1]. Interesting no?

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/27/environment-china-...

Your article does not say that China was producing such massive quantities of CFCs that the efforts of all other signatories to the treaty were negated. What your article does say:

> Scientists largely credit the Montreal Protocol, signed by about 150 countries, with reversing the depletion of the ozone layer

This graph shows that in 1997, reductions in CFC had just begun, yet the ozone hole had been reversed.[1]

Also, apparently there isn't agreement that the hole has gotten better: "Work has suggested that a detectable (and statistically significant) recovery will not occur until around 2024, with ozone levels recovering to 1980 levels by around 2068."

So which is it?

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ozone_cfc_trends.png

These are cherry picked examples or anything. Besides some things actually get done in the expectation of a disaster (like banning ozone destroying chemicals or fixing Y2K bugs.)

Even in the current article, no one is saying this is going to happen for sure, just that it could if we don't do anything about it or invest in new antibiotics.

Everything you said is true. But so is the fact that people are starting to die of things that just a few years ago were curable.

Understanding downside is much more crucial for continual survival than upside: what is the worse case scenario, bottom line analysis - are the heuristic tools routinely used by people the world over.

A new solution to bacterial infection control problem is due and it might come with even greater benefits than antibiotics. The article makes us appreciate the pain of the problem and puts a greater value on achieving a solution.

Impending happiness comes from the trying to prevent impending doom, scientific advancement just doesn't come out from thin air.

That said, I'm not saying that people can't be overreacting in certain circumstances. But keep in mind this line of reasoning (ie things happen, and we can't do much) can be quite misleading and even dangerous in some cases (human can't cause global warming, how do you think some puny tiny human beings can do anything to the earth etc.)

Some would argue there's a fine line between nihilism (which is often misunderstood anyway) and stoicism . . .

This could be due to evolutionary adaption: for most of human history, prioritising information about "impending doom" over that of good news is a better survival strategy because, however pleasurable the good news, the impending doom could kill you. This might not be a effective strategy now, when sources of doom are often outside individual control, but we still do it.

Wikipedia has a page on "Negativity Bias" [1], which focusses on differential recall of positive and negative memories and is therefore not quite what you describe. The explanations section is also a bit light on facts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

It's great to be optimistic about this as well, because humans will find a way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibacterial#Alternatives

The alternative section is the largest section in wikipedia. Also, as more people die (sadly) more money and time will go into these alternatives.

I think you miss one point about doom and gloom; people can sometimes build something better in the ashes of failure. Looking into antibiotics, this seems inevitable anyway...

So we might as well create many, many effective alternatives as we shift towards living in a world where they are necessary.

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