Everything is not getting worse

Discuss the evolution of human culture, economics and politics in the decades and centuries ahead
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iridescentrae
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by iridescentrae »

MythOfProgress wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 9:47 pm
Nero wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 6:02 pm All of human history? That tangible enough?
No, not really, elaborate further because the only thing im getting out of this statement is that you're lumping all of human history into a narrow/linear view of development, it'd help me to understand if you explain further.
Was life better for people living in 1940 or 2022? Was life better in for people living in 1940 or 1860? Was life better for people living in 1860 or 1780?
Like i said before, you're not seeing the forest for the trees, only what's in front of you and without the context, you have a series of years consisting of technological development without acknowledging the social, geopolitical and environmental status of where we are nowadays, and that is what's most important.
Also human beings are notoriously difficult to kill, have mass engineered machines and technologies than can sustain them even in the aftermath of catastrophic events like an asteroid hitting the Earth.
no, we aren't that difficult to kill despite what you might think, crank the heat up one way and we start to suffer from heat stroke, instability from temperatures exceeding far beyond what we can handle, go the other direction and we freeze to death, often hypothermia sets in with the cells becoming crystalline as a result, that's not to mention the various ways we can die, usually from disease(which will most likely become more prominent as antibiotic resistance and fatigue from the pandemic sets in), blunt force trauma and projectiles(we've conjured up more ways and technologies of killing each other, on that we can agree on), becoming prey to a predator(bears often come in mind) i can go on and on and on about the multitude of ways we can die, but i'd rather save myself the time from doing so. forgive me for being doubtful but what machines and technologies have we made that can save us after a catastrophic event?
i have no doubt when it comes to the most important figures of our time(politicians, celebrities, billionaires etc) would have access to dedicated panic/safe rooms in which they can hide in the event of when SHTF(shit hits the fan) but i have much doubt that this would extend to members of the general public and if they would even be capable of surviving in the long-run, the infamous BIOSPHERE-2 experiment that occurred(which turned out to be a massive failure by the way) demonstrated the difficulties in creating a closed system that is self-sufficient, (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/sund ... hange.html), there is the BIOS-3 russian experiment that occurred though there hasn't been any updates as far as im concerned.
It is entirely possible to smart farm below ground:
I'm not debating if its possible, im debating if its practical and if its even sustainable in the long-run of things, the range of foods that can be grown with indoor farming are extremely limited not to mention the fact if its even scalable, using artificial lighting to replace the sun(which just doesn't have the same effect on the plants), not accounting for the high cost both economic-wise and energy-wise, this video goes into better detail as to why the process is incredibly inefficient and wouldn't be a substitute for regular farming.
Now such things are possible there is no ecological collapse that could kill off all humanity, short of the Earth being thrown into the Sun there is effectively nothing that can kill off humanity, and even then that will only hold true for the next decade at most until we become a multiplanetary species.
then i'll say what i've said before, you're blind. most of our ecosystems are in a dramatic state of decline as a result of our expansions out into the environment(the constant destruction, alteration of it in ways we still can't understand fully) and without their existence which manifests itself more significantly in the form of food chains, we won't last much longer. the fact is we evolved to live on a planet like this, and we still have the ability to die in a variety of ways and you're proposing/indicating that we will somehow expand into space and settle on alien environments? oh but wait this is the part where you mention body modification and terra-forming as credible ways we can sustain ourselves in these hostile environments?(though there doesn't exist much peer-reviewed evidence for this, feel free to link any sources you may find.)
What’s your opinion on geoengineering? And, in the meanwhile, cloud-seeding?
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iridescentrae
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by iridescentrae »

Nero wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 9:01 am All of human history is littered with human beings dying of the things you claim would make us extinct, 500 years ago in the year 1500 there were approximately half a billion humans living on the planet, now there are over 8 billion humans living on Earth and that number is not going down, do you understand these very basic figures?

Humans have always been susceptible to the things you are inferring will lead to their doom and despite that humanity is more prevalent than it has ever been, this is not an image of a species in danger of extinction. Humanity didn't suddenly increase it's population 400% in the span of one human lifetime because it is declining. If that were even close to being true we'd see some evidence of mass death that could lead to their extinction but even if we suppose to existence of such a cause of death we need to rule out what it can't be.

Things that cannot lead to the death of the human race are natural disasters, epidemics, illnesses, even the loss of items from the food chain will not lead to the end of humanity or the end of human civilization. The entire reason I keep stating the obvious to you is that you are overlooking it for the sake of arguing a nothing point. You intend for what? Apathetic resignation that somehow the human race is doomed to fail? It may well be, but it won't be within our lifetimes, assuming entropy is inevitable then yes the Heat Death of the Universe will lead to human extinction.

Everything else though is entirely manageable and easily resolvable. To ensure Humanity's survival all you need is the basic minimum, which modern technologies allow us to meet incredibly easily, you cannot grow everything in a vertical farm without natural sunlight true but you can grow anything you realistically require to sustain human life indefinitely within one.

And questioning their sustainability is a complete joke of an argument and one that is easily dispelled. Vertical underground farming is the most sustainable form of agriculture that exists it doesn't have fundamental shortcomings that regular farming does:

[*]With rows of in-demand veg stacked on top of each other, less space is used to grow more food.
[*]The crops are grown in an isolated environment, where factors can be manipulated. Fruit and vegetables grown outdoors are impacted by the weather and their environment, but vertical farms can grow all year round, uninterrupted by external threats.
[*]Furthermore, in traditional farms, crops are eaten by insects and animals, forcing some damaged crops to be disposed of. In vertical farms, they are protected from this. Water and nutrients can also be measured out exactly, so nothing is wasted.
[*]Exotic fruit and vegetables can be grown anywhere, instead of being farmed in suitable climates and then transported to their customers.

So that makes them immune to things such as famine, blight, plagues of insects, dust storms, external agents that can affect and influence massive spaces open to the elements but not easily controlled regulated environments where everything can be measured and ran to exacting standards that would impossible to enact in non-closed environments.

Now as to my original statements, I am not failing to see the forest for the trees, quite the opposite in fact, I am ignoring every individual tree to show you simply what is and what was. People who lived in hunter gatherer societies 20,000 years ago did not have a quality of life that would be considered in anyway superior to a human being who lived during the industrial revolution in Europe. The people who lived through the original industrial revolution would not have lived a life of considerable quality but undoubtedly their existence would be preferable over living as a nomadic forager or hunter, being entirely at the mercy of the elements and the immediately available resources in the area being the only thing you could rely on. Thanks to agriculture, cities and civilizations grew. Crops and animals could now be farmed to meet more people's needs and that in turn led to advances all across society allowing people to have permanent domiciles, allowing them the opportunity to teach and develop communicational standards such as writing and language.

These advantages have never stopped developing. Thus someone living in 2022 will by every measurable standard on average live a superior quality of life than what would have been possible for the mass majority of humans living only one lifespan prior that time. 80 years ago Europe was embroiled in a conflict that would see over 20,000.000 deaths on the continent alone, such a loss of life on such scale had never occurred before in all of recorded human history. In fact so many people died in the space of mere 7 year conflict that it would outweigh the total number of living humans on the planet before modern agriculture took hold a mere 10,000 years ago. Despite that however humanity is now in a better place than it has ever been, we have access to advances technology and medicine that would have been impossible to explain to someone born in the era of World War 2. The horrors of that period of human history all that we did all the lives that were lost that was perhaps our lowest point as a species and you wish to infer that somehow the challenges of today are more stark? No. We have conflict yes, we have societal issues and our technology is limited it cannot solve every issue.

That though is not the argument I am making, I will never claim that the world of 2022 is without fault but it is still the greatest era of all our history to live in. By every reasonable metric that one's quality of life can be measured every century in the past 1000 years would be preferable to the one that preceded it. Living in 1500 would be slightly preferable than living in 1400, living in the 1600's would be slightly more preferable than living in the 1500's living in latter half of the 1700's would be more preferable to living in the former. Living in the last quarter of the 1800's would be preferable to living in the first three. Living in the last 20 years of the 20th century would be preferable to living in the other 80. The rate of change is increasing but undeniable, there is no living human being that would if given all the data conclude that their chances of living a decent life would be worse now than they were during the Great Depression of the 1920's or the great wars of the 20th century, we are having this discussion separated by thousands of miles of land sea and air, while we have it I am wearing fabrics that didn't even exist 30 years ago, I am eating food that would have been impossible to grow en masse or to distribute at low cost a century before, I am living in a home powered by a renewable source of energy that is heated, cooled, maintained and contains technology that has undoubtedly provided me with a quality life far superior to any that could have been enjoyed by any living human on the entire planet, regardless of race, creed, wealth or societal status a century before me and I am far from the outlier in this situation.

All of this to say that life in 2022 may not be perfect but it is in every reasonable measure better than what came before it, you have a lower chance of being illiterate and a higher chance of receiving an education, you have a lower chance of dying many preventable illnesses and ailments that killed millions of your ancestors, even in abject poverty you can easily access things like the Internet or modern medicine that simply did not exist in previous eras.

https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of ... n-5-charts

https://sustainabilitymag.com/diversity ... ustainable

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/worl ... the%20goal.

With all that said I'd say it is very likely that someone living one human lifespan from now will on average have a higher quality of life than someone alive now. It is merely following the data.
You seem to be approaching this from a very selfish point-of-view. Yes, some people will continue to exist, maybe even thrive, but it’s because they’re rich AF and can afford all the luxuries that will later become necessary to live into old age.

I don’t know how much money you have, but what would you do if the cutoff to live to 80-100 stopped being $40,000/year or whatever it is now and became $500,000/year, or $2,000,000/year? Would your tone change then?

The rich have an obligation to help the poor survive. Most of them inherited their wealth through outright startup capital, opportunities, etc. Which came from suppressing the social mobility of the classes under it, all the way back to slavery and further.

It’s not right. The myth of an America where you can prosper if you just work hard enough is just that, a myth. The lucky few who do make it from nothing are the exception, not the rule. And people who do labor-intensive jobs work a lot harder than the people who sit in offices all day. Income isn’t based on how hard you work. It’s all about how lucky you got.

I believe that, in the future, a lot of Republicans (not the ones who are Republican because of their religion or because they think they’re doing the right thing—the selfish ones, the ones who just want to hoard as much money as possible) will be retroactively diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Whether that’s from how they were raised, their DNA, or because they made a conscious choice somewhere along the way will vary, but the result is the same. And, if it continues, Republicans will keep stepping on each other until only the richest of the rich are left. There will be no government programs, no adequate sources of philanthropy or religious charity to maintain a society. Then natural disasters will occur, as they always do, and the rich will scream for help, and there’ll be no one left who gives a damn.
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Nero
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by Nero »

If you'd looked at the sources I posted you'd quickly come to realize that no these advantages aren't reserved for the rich and the wealthy. In most of Europe you can be entirely penniless and have to pay nothing for access to modern medicine or for access to something like the Internet. Global poverty has decreased from nearly 1/3rd of all humans in the 1990's to near nearly 10% today.

And no the world is not going to fall into some mad climate crisis, the rate of growth for renewable energy is gigantic and the vast, vast majority of people survive most of the things that we deem to be crises. For example, there were nearly 60,000,000 deaths in World War 2 in the year that World War 2 began the global population was around 2.3 billion humans meaning that the total percentage of people who died that were alive before the start of the war is 1.73913043%. In other words if you were born before World War 2 and were unfortunate enough to have to live through it you still had a staggeringly large 98.26086957% chance of surviving the war.

To put that in a modern context your odds of surviving World War 2 were actually larger than the odds of an average human being surviving from COVID if you were double vaccinated on average: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/two-d ... -per-cent/

Despite that it is by far the deadliest conflict in the history of humanity, even though it was clearly much easier to survive that war than to die in it. This is true of all of the things claimed by "Doomers" who try and espouse the beliefs that humanity is failing and dying when in fact all the data shows that our entire history is filled with examples of human beings suffering needlessly and dying en masse the vast majority of of humans will always survive.

Humans are as I've stated notoriously difficult to kill, they are the apex predator of everything in every environment they exist in on the planet, from swamps to arctic tundra humans exist everywhere, in every climate on every continent and have done far before the advent of modern agriculture or society. They are an omnivorous species capable of consuming most foods and sterilizing that which they usually would not be able to in order to make it consumable, they are able to successfully survive and adapt to all manner of trials and hardships and this was true of the humans that were not anything more than mere hunter gatherers.

The unpleasant truth most of the "Doomers" do not want to acknowledge is that the past was infinitely more unpleasant to live through than the present day. I would far rather take my chances of surviving climate change than I would to live through World War 2, I would much rather live in an era where the only active conflict in Europe has claimed at most 100,000 lives than I would a conflict that would claim nearly 200 times as many 80 years before then. I would rather have lived through COVID with the benefits of modern medicine and technology allowing the world to adapt to the challenge than I would have lived through Smallpox or Whooping Cough or Polio or going further back Tuberculosis or any commonly treated bacterial infection before the discovery penicillin. I would much rather have lived through any of that than have taken my chances at surviving the bubonic plague.

Indeed such a deadly ailment is the closest thing we have ever seen to something that could realistically threaten human existence as it killed over 30% of all humans living in Europe at the time. We have nothing, nothing in the modern era that even comes close to threatening that level of disaster, no natural disaster, no war, nothing has come near causing the casualty rate of a virus that is now nothing more than a short course of antibiotics away from being forgotten. The future may not be perfect but I assure you by all measurable data it is superior to the past.
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MythOfProgress
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

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Nero wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 9:01 am All of human history is littered with human beings dying of the things you claim would make us extinct,
to be fair, i wasn't exactly claiming it would make us extinct, merely listing the ways we can die in to illustrate the point that we are not that durable, but ok.
500 years ago in the year 1500 there were approximately half a billion humans living on the planet, now there are over 8 billion humans living on Earth and that number is not going down, do you understand these very basic figures?
yeah i do, and it's not exactly a good thing that we have over 8 billion people living on the planet, this is where the topic of overpopulation and over-consumption come into play, a lot of people might argue it's not an actual thing and that we can keep going with little to no consquences, and yet we've replaced most of the animal biomass on the planet with ourselves and utilize them for farming(https://awellfedworld.org/wp-content/up ... 8x1024.png).
artificial fertilizers/pesticides(with the help of fossil fuels) have for a while aided in increasing the carrying capacity of our planet(thus allowing for the 8 billion humans to exist nowadays thanks to people like Norman Borlaug) however when these deplete and believe me it will eventually at some point(pretty sure at this very moment brazil and india are having trouble supplying fertlizer with these sanctions), the carrying capacity is going to lower and we will correct ourselves accordingly to account for the lower levels of food production(forgive me, if im saying this as if we have a choice but we dont), this will obviously come in the form of massive-die offs as famine kicks in.
more people = more consumption = less resources to go around for everyone else. it's not that hard to see what's gonna happen when the various, interdependent food production systems we rely on for survival fail. Here's a pretty good example of this in action(https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/2 ... ri-lankans).
Humans have always been susceptible to the things you are inferring will lead to their doom and despite that humanity is more prevalent than it has ever been, this is not an image of a species in danger of extinction. Humanity didn't suddenly increase it's population 400% in the span of one human lifetime because it is declining. I
But is it sustainable? Can we keep growing indefinitely as if we have no limits? What's gonna happen if we don't keep our population levels in check? those are the questions i want you to wrestle with and try to answer, because as far i've looked, there's nothing that warrants a positive response to them- we may not be an endangered species like the emperor penguins or functionally extinct like the woolly mammoths but the truth is we made those happen, eventually we will have to pay for the consequences one way or another.
Things that cannot lead to the death of the human race are natural disasters, epidemics, illnesses, even the loss of items from the food chain will not lead to the end of humanity or the end of human civilization.
in isolation, we could probably take on these issues, but they exist in tandem with each other, interacting often invisibly to make challenging problems into almost insurmountable ones. as for the last one, no, we cannot recover if the food chain collapses, sorry but we are not self-sufficient creatures capable of mass-producing our own food independent of these food chains- without them, we die, there is no argument to be had here.
The entire reason I keep stating the obvious to you is that you are overlooking it for the sake of arguing a nothing point.
lol im not overlooking anything, you're just smoking way too much copium and can't wrap your head around the fact that we aren't as special as we make ourselves out to be, that human ingenuity has limits and isn't gonna save us from the shit-storm its created, regardless- cope harder.
You intend for what? Apathetic resignation that somehow the human race is doomed to fail? It may well be, but it won't be within our lifetimes, assuming entropy is inevitable then yes the Heat Death of the Universe will lead to human extinction.
Apathetic? Why do you think im writing all these paragraphs and sifting through endless articles just to see if i'm wrong? if i genuinely didn't give a shit, i wouldn't have even gone through the trouble of replying to this thread in the first place. like i said in my very first statement of this thread, i do want to be convinced that we're on the right path and that we're all gonna be fine, unfortunately all the "solutions" folks in here keep giving me seem to rely on A) theoretical/non-existent technologies(i.e mind uploading, cyronics or super-intelligent AI), B) existent technologies but are impractical (i.e carbon capture tech or renewable energy) and C) existent technologies we still don't know what the full externalities (side effects) would be or consist of(i.e genetic modification or geoengineering of the planet).
Everything else though is entirely manageable and easily resolvable. To ensure Humanity's survival all you need is the basic minimum, which modern technologies allow us to meet incredibly easily, you cannot grow everything in a vertical farm without natural sunlight true but you can grow anything you realistically require to sustain human life indefinitely within one.
and then what happens when modern technologies fail? either because of human errors and the inability to account for the various complex systems that go into maintaining vertical farms simultaneously despite automated processes, or the laws of physics which dictates our growth is not eternal, got more to say about this in the next statement.
And questioning their sustainability is a complete joke of an argument and one that is easily dispelled. Vertical underground farming is the most sustainable form of agriculture that exists it doesn't have fundamental shortcomings that regular farming does:

[*]With rows of in-demand veg stacked on top of each other, less space is used to grow more food.
[*]The crops are grown in an isolated environment, where factors can be manipulated. Fruit and vegetables grown outdoors are impacted by the weather and their environment, but vertical farms can grow all year round, uninterrupted by external threats.
[*]Furthermore, in traditional farms, crops are eaten by insects and animals, forcing some damaged crops to be disposed of. In vertical farms, they are protected from this. Water and nutrients can also be measured out exactly, so nothing is wasted.
[*]Exotic fruit and vegetables can be grown anywhere, instead of being farmed in suitable climates and then transported to their customers.
i mean, you didn't really acknowledge the fact it requires copious amounts of energy use as a result of the artificial lighting( LEDS), heaters, water pumps, or the fact that the food we can grow is mostly limited(both in the types we can grow and the caloric intake)-ironically enough, the same article you posted pretty much agrees on this towards the conclusion paragraph"...the planet cannot be sustained solely on lettuce and strawberries...". Starting a vertical farm for the average farmer isn't really economically sound considering the high costs of starting up one, the maintenance and production involved, never-mind the low ROI(returns on investment). though this article says mostly similar things to what i've said, it does make a few references to greenhouse farming which you can take a look at if you're curious about it(https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192 ... nic-greens).
Now as to my original statements, I am not failing to see the forest for the trees, quite the opposite in fact, I am ignoring every individual tree to show you simply what is and what was. People who lived in hunter gatherer societies 20,000 years ago did not have a quality of life that would be considered in anyway superior to a human being who lived during the industrial revolution in Europe.
20,000 years ago, much of the Earth was covered in ice and while this did make human settlement difficult, it wasn't impossible. back then, we didn't have much capability for destroying the environment and making entire species go extinct(though im pretty sure, our existence has affected mega-fauna to some extent, my memory is failing me on this one though.) 20,000 years later, and we have resorted to extracting from the environment as opposed to developing sustainably(if that was even possible in the first place.),now we are fast on track to the opposite direction, living on a Greenhouse/hothouse Earth, something i doubt the human species-if any forms of multicellular life(besides extremophiles) will survive. yes, in the small picture we have definitely improved and made our lives substantially easier/convenient with technology, with people often in the developed countries opting to live in high-consumption, high waste lifestyles. in the big picture we(not counting american indians, the amish or uncontacted tribes) are just now starting to realize the importance of having a healthy environment/ecosystem(s) and a breathable atmosphere far too late and we will now reap the consequences(we already are, im just saying this to be theatrical).
The people who lived through the original industrial revolution would not have lived a life of considerable quality but undoubtedly their existence would be preferable over living as a nomadic forager or hunter, being entirely at the mercy of the elements and the immediately available resources in the area being the only thing you could rely on. Thanks to agriculture, cities and civilizations grew. Crops and animals could now be farmed to meet more people's needs and that in turn led to advances all across society allowing people to have permanent domiciles, allowing them the opportunity to teach and develop communicational standards such as writing and language.
honestly trying to get into your mindset in an effort to understand, and the way im looking at it is, so long as its good for humans, then we're on the right path to progress, the environment and ecosystems comes second to our needs, as if we are somehow superior to them. again, still getting caught up with the technological aspects and not acknowledging our environmental, political or societal health. growth for the sake of growth is not beneficial in the long-run of things.
These advantages have never stopped developing. Thus someone living in 2022 will by every measurable standard on average live a superior quality of life than what would have been possible for the mass majority of humans living only one lifespan prior that time.
depends on who you are, where you live and the general socioeconomic status of your area, if you live in a developed country, sure, you could probably afford a few gadgets and materials to make your life a little interesting-even then theres a pretty good chance of being born into poverty despite being in a developed country like the USA, if not- then prepare to suffer in a variety of ways; because being poor is heavily discriminated against in our society.
80 years ago Europe was embroiled in a conflict that would see over 20,000.000 deaths on the continent alone, such a loss of life on such scale had never occurred before in all of recorded human history. In fact so many people died in the space of mere 7 year conflict that it would outweigh the total number of living humans on the planet before modern agriculture took hold a mere 10,000 years ago.
not really refuting against this, besides the fact that the fascism of the era you're talking about is making a great resurgence nowadays.
Despite that however humanity is now in a better place than it has ever been, we have access to advances technology and medicine that would have been impossible to explain to someone born in the era of World War 2.
advances that are mostly temporary and will be regressed, as far as im concerned all the antibiotics we keep using is now resulting in antibiotic resistence becoming more of a grave threat, people are going to start dying of infections and sepsis.
The horrors of that period of human history all that we did all the lives that were lost that was perhaps our lowest point as a species and you wish to infer that somehow the challenges of today are more stark?
i'm sorry you can't wrap your head around the fact that billions of people will die as a result of decaying/rapidly changing environment(s), lack of adequate resources(which wars will be fought over) to go around, diseases becoming more common(as a result of climate change) and fascism making a return just to list a few examples, but yes that is exactly what i am saying, if you thought WW2 was our low point then get ready to see how lower we can get in the years to come.
That though is not the argument I am making, I will never claim that the world of 2022 is without fault but it is still the greatest era of all our history to live in.
Correction: we've peaked technologically and the only direction we can go towards now is down.
By every reasonable metric that one's quality of life can be measured every century in the past 1000 years would be preferable to the one that preceded it.
not exactly, now that i'm thinking about it im pretty sure a few civilizations from before have demonstrated the capacity to develop technologies that became lost for a certain time, ive already responded to this in the third page of this thread under a different question, but mostly recycling what i've stated before, ancient china did have the capacity for developing gunpowder and the printing press long before we did in the 1500's, ancient rome was able to keep up cleanliness and whatnot with their advanced engineering of sewage systems and aqueducts, ancient mayans having the advanced agricultural techniques of their time, just for a few examples to note.
Living in 1500 would be slightly preferable than living in 1400, living in the 1600's would be slightly more preferable than living in the 1500's living in latter half of the 1700's would be more preferable to living in the former. Living in the last quarter of the 1800's would be preferable to living in the first three.
growth comes in spurts, not in the consistent logistic(for lack of a better word) way you keep mapping it out in.
Living in the last 20 years of the 20th century would be preferable to living in the other 80. The rate of change is increasing but undeniable, there is no living human being that would if given all the data conclude that their chances of living a decent life would be worse now than they were during the Great Depression of the 1920's or the great wars of the 20th century
i mean we are on the verge of another economic recession and the water wars seem to be on the horizon, so....
I am living in a home powered by a renewable source of energy that is heated, cooled, maintained and contains technology that has undoubtedly provided me with a quality life far superior
that reminds me- while im not commenting on you specifically, pretty sure renewable tech does have to be maintained and replaced considering the energy efficiency and battery output do decrease overtime, so theres that.
enjoyed by any living human on the entire planet, regardless of race, creed, wealth or societal status a century before me and I am far from the outlier in this situation.
elaborate further, are you saying that race, social status and wealth can't affect someone on their quest to amass riches or relative financial security?
All of this to say that life in 2022 may not be perfect but it is in every reasonable measure better than what came before it, you have a lower chance of being illiterate and a higher chance of receiving an education, you have a lower chance of dying many preventable illnesses and ailments that killed millions of your ancestors,
great, now the only thing we have to worry about is the biosphere dying or the climate collapse or the micro-plastic crisis or the food shortages or the.... you know what i think i'll stop right now.
When it comes to the extreme poverty statistic , i've already responded to this when speaking to @funkervogt and @Cyber_Rebel in the 2nd and 4th pages of this thread respectively, but to save you the few clicks- the article you posted itself says that "This is an extremely low poverty line that draws attention to the very poorest people in the world.", if you don't know the significance of this statement it basically means this is not an adequate amount of money to live on and even for the people who are able to earn above $1.90 a day they often still remain poor in most aspects of their lives, struggling with malnutrition, infant mortality and having low life expectancy rates.

As for the health graph, it's a little outdated(also made another point countering this in my response to @Cyber_Rebel) considering the pandemic has drastically changed and affected the morality rates, some of the children in these places(developing/third-world countries im referring to) weren't able to attend school as a result of the pandemic and governments being forced to shut them down- to which children would be forced or strongly encouraged to work earlier, often to support their families amidst the pandemic- usually working hazardous jobs(lithium or cobalt mines are what come to mind).

With the freedom chart, it's a mixed bag- i'm not doubting the advances made, but again this stops 5 years prior to the pandemic and doesn't seem to acknowledge where we are at nowadays(this is probably because this was released back in 2015), furthermore i doubt this is something that can truly be quantified, not because of the impossibility but because of the very two things it mentions which are under attack as we speak(public discourse and journalism), without these it's a little hard to make judgements about whether or not a society is democratic, though im pretty sure most folks know without their existence- they most likely aren't living in a democratic society.

for the population chart, refer to my initial paragraph of this response.
With all that said I'd say it is very likely that someone living one human lifespan from now will on average have a higher quality of life than someone alive now. It is merely following the data.
it's not hard to paint a picture of our present being a good one given you choose cherry-picked, manipulated sources of information and data or worse, using the pretense of rationality and deciding we truly do live in good times, it's not "following the data", you're just settling for a future that doesn't exist because it's more comfortable that way. then again, i can't exactly blame ppl for this considering its in our nature to avoid anything potentially uncomfortable/traumatic so theres that.
R.I.P Ziba.
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joe00uk
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by joe00uk »

Brief thoughts on the matter:

Yes, the industrial revolution from the late 18th Century onwards improved life drastically for much of the world's population, having tapped into a vast and previously unheard of concentration of energy but this is ultimately a short-term frenzy of extravagance. Being dependent on non-renewable resources (at least not renewable on any timescale that matters to human beings), it's a self-limiting phenomenon which cannot continue indefinitely and is already going into reverse. As the resources which made this 300-year era of extravagance possible dwindle away, many aspects of life in the future will revert to pre-industrial norms as we find ourselves having to survive on far fewer resources than we've become accustomed to. Still, this is far from apocalyptic, and life will still be worth living, just as it was before the 18th Century.
Vakanai
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by Vakanai »

joe00uk wrote: Sat May 21, 2022 11:08 pm Brief thoughts on the matter:

Yes, the industrial revolution from the late 18th Century onwards improved life drastically for much of the world's population, having tapped into a vast and previously unheard of concentration of energy but this is ultimately a short-term frenzy of extravagance. Being dependent on non-renewable resources (at least not renewable on any timescale that matters to human beings), it's a self-limiting phenomenon which cannot continue indefinitely and is already going into reverse. As the resources which made this 300-year era of extravagance possible dwindle away, many aspects of life in the future will revert to pre-industrial norms as we find ourselves having to survive on far fewer resources than we've become accustomed to. Still, this is far from apocalyptic, and life will still be worth living, just as it was before the 18th Century.
We'll have mass adoption renewables by then, and more energy efficient devices. Barring catastrophe, there's no way aspects of our lives are going to revert back to pre-industrial norms. We won't have to raise sheep, shear them, and knit and sew our own clothes. We won't have to spends hours and hours doing back breaking work on farms to be fed. We won't be limited to horse and buggy or sailing ships to travel. We'll have electricity, internet, cars (albeit electric), running water and plumbing, satellites, planes (also electric), microwave ovens... I am at a loss to imagine in what way our lives will revert to the average person's from the 18th century.

I mean, it's not all good. Climate change will take a toll. People will probably starve as crops fail. But assuming civilization itself doesn't collapse, and I am doubtful that it will, we shouldn't experience a reversal of our technological fortunes.
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joe00uk
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

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Vakanai wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 12:46 am We'll have mass adoption renewables by then, and more energy efficient devices. Barring catastrophe, there's no way aspects of our lives are going to revert back to pre-industrial norms. We won't have to raise sheep, shear them, and knit and sew our own clothes. We won't have to spends hours and hours doing back breaking work on farms to be fed. We won't be limited to horse and buggy or sailing ships to travel. We'll have electricity, internet, cars (albeit electric), running water and plumbing, satellites, planes (also electric), microwave ovens... I am at a loss to imagine in what way our lives will revert to the average person's from the 18th century.

I mean, it's not all good. Climate change will take a toll. People will probably starve as crops fail. But assuming civilization itself doesn't collapse, and I am doubtful that it will, we shouldn't experience a reversal of our technological fortunes.
Not unless you can find some renewable source that has the same concentration of energy as oil. That's what our civilisation depends on, after all. The energy return on investment found with oil and other fossil fuels just isn't matched by anything else. The harsh truth is that as fossil fuels deplete, they'll become more and more expensive to produce until they become too expensive to be worth it, and we'll have to make do with a lot less energy.
Vakanai
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by Vakanai »

joe00uk wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 1:05 amNot unless you can find some renewable source that has the same concentration of energy as oil. That's what our civilisation depends on, after all. The energy return on investment found with oil and other fossil fuels just isn't matched by anything else. The harsh truth is that as fossil fuels deplete, they'll become more and more expensive to produce until they become too expensive to be worth it, and we'll have to make do with a lot less energy.
We don't need to find one with the same concentration of energy, we just need the same amount of energy overall. If every home has solar, or geothermal, or wind turbines, if we put solar power plants in every desert, if we access a portion of the hydropower of the oceans, it doesn't matter if it doesn't have the concentration of power as gas and oil, we still wind up with an abundance of power equal or greater than we were using before. Add in better batteries for vehicles and we can just keep on running even after we give up on burning fossil fuels.
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joe00uk
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by joe00uk »

Vakanai wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 1:33 amWe don't need to find one with the same concentration of energy, we just need the same amount of energy overall. If every home has solar, or geothermal, or wind turbines, if we put solar power plants in every desert, if we access a portion of the hydropower of the oceans, it doesn't matter if it doesn't have the concentration of power as gas and oil, we still wind up with an abundance of power equal or greater than we were using before. Add in better batteries for vehicles and we can just keep on running even after we give up on burning fossil fuels.
But we need concentrated energy to be able to do anything with it. If we have diffuse sources of energy, they’ll have to be concentrated in order to make use of them, and doing that requires an input of energy. All of these things you’re talking about require substantial investments of energy, and those investments render those sources far less efficient. For each unit of energy invested in renewables, there’s a much smaller return than there is for fossil fuels. To have that much abundance of energy from renewables, so much would have to be invested into it that the planet would be bankrupted several times over.
Vakanai
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Re: Everything is not getting worse

Post by Vakanai »

joe00uk wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 2:02 am
Vakanai wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 1:33 amWe don't need to find one with the same concentration of energy, we just need the same amount of energy overall. If every home has solar, or geothermal, or wind turbines, if we put solar power plants in every desert, if we access a portion of the hydropower of the oceans, it doesn't matter if it doesn't have the concentration of power as gas and oil, we still wind up with an abundance of power equal or greater than we were using before. Add in better batteries for vehicles and we can just keep on running even after we give up on burning fossil fuels.
But we need concentrated energy to be able to do anything with it. If we have diffuse sources of energy, they’ll have to be concentrated in order to make use of them, and doing that requires an input of energy. All of these things you’re talking about require substantial investments of energy, and those investments render those sources far less efficient. For each unit of energy invested in renewables, there’s a much smaller return than there is for fossil fuels. To have that much abundance of energy from renewables, so much would have to be invested into it that the planet would be bankrupted several times over.
I somehow really doubt that, considering how much better educated people on the subject than me discusses renewables, but this isn't something that I understand the technical aspects of. I will let people with more understanding debate those points. What I do know is that many people and communities already live with their homes entirely powered by renewables. People with homes and technology and gadgets like we have. They spend hours on their smartphones and laptops, they watch tv, they have lights, they have electric fans and heaters, they have air fryers and microwaves, they have every modern convenience. All run on renewables. Maybe it's an issue of scale, of providing enough for everyone, but I somehow doubt it. Renewables are working now, they provide millions of homes with energy now. I have no reason to believe that somehow when we move off of gas we'll have to live like people did centuries ago.
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