quoderat

Over the past few months, I’ve gone from some optimism that we’ll be able to solve the environmental and climatic problems the world faces to complete pessimism.

Even if everyone on the planet were on board with the fact that climate change is real, and it will be disastrous, that soil depletion is happening and is effectively irreversible, it’d still be a hard slog to change it before mass death and possible human extinction occur.

But given that half or more of the planet doesn’t believe it, or doesn’t care, then there is just no chance at all.

So, what to do? Me, I’m going to selfishly enjoy the good times that are left, and support activities like establishing seed banks and archives of humanity’s achievements (because we have done some amazing things) in case there is any resurgence of human life or other intelligent life in the future.

But the hope of humanity even beginning to turn the tide against what’s coming? Evidence suggests it’ll be impossible. There’s too many us -- far, far too many of us -- and not enough who care about what’s happening, or even believe it.

What’s next is a fait accompli.

The problem is, I do believe it's training. There are large vested interest with absolute gobs of money who don't want folks to believe that resources are not infinite. Because if we did believe resources were finite, we'd change our behavior quite a lot -- thus resulting in loss of profit.

These people have, using the media and effective control of government (the US's is basically an arm of Goldman Sachs), trained people to believe things that will harm them -- and everyone.

It's not a conspiracy, just a lot of disproportionately greedy people behaving to maximize the same thing, and to achieve the same goal.

Most chip fabrication processes require hafnium, gallium arsenide and helium.

Helium will run out in my lifetime. Look it up yourself.

Hafnium is likely to as well.

I'm amazed by the rah-rah capitalism types (not saying you are one of them) on this site who know so little.

There are only so many resources on this planet. There are too many of us and too few of them. They will run out, no matter what many have been trained to believe. Not soon after, so will we.

A good point. I like that HN strikes a balance, whereas other sites don't. Reddit and Digg or as shallow as a Florida lake in early spring.

Not to inject politics into this, but can't we get some universal health care up in here, like the rest of the civilized world?

I can't think of a single better way to increase entrepreneurship.

It's the constant battle between those who are widely interested in the world and those who are interested in one or two little areas.

pg seems to be of the latter stripe, so it's no surprise that Hacker News reflects this bias, and will continue to do so in the future.

As I can tell you from past experience, 300-400 dollars a month is not a small amount for someone in their 20s with little to no income. In fact, that's a veritable sea of wealth.

If it's a choice between eating and health insurance, which it was for me at times, people will choose eating. And having a roof over their heads.

It's depressing reading this, and realizing how much large corporations have co-opted the entire culture, hurting both individuals and the culture itself.

Some of them I don't think are correct, quite, as it's obvious written from a copyright maximalist angle, but I don't have time to quibble with it.

Unix abandoned (or never had) any conception of WYSIWYG, and probably never will. I hate it, too.