Brilliant: this just fits the facts. These 'men' are a bunch of boys raised in a zero sum world of video game 'reality' coded by immature adolescent minds just like theirs. (And as for Ayn Rand, well. Just look at the fact that the Queen of Self Reliance and Uber Individualism took welfare money (gasp!) from the (gasp!) government. And smoked. And was a beeyotch to practically everyone. And suffered from clinical depression. And yet, any number of illiberal libertarians luuuuuv her.) But nonetheless, they are dangerous and need to be cut off from their influence on our representatives in government. Repeal Citizen's United. Regulate AI. Expose the nutso tech boyz at every turn. Hey, Peter Thiel just held a seminar for his besties, calling environmental activists "the Antichrist." Good god.
I see only one flaw here: Failure to consider geophysics. Carl Sagan was a hero of mine, way back when. His reputation went down in flames following his endorsement of the Nuclear Winter hypothesis: When the full time Earth-based climatologists weighed in (Dr. Sagan studied Martian weather), their consensus was that a full scale nuclear war would cause an abrupt episode of global warming, not cooling. Ouch. This little drama was my introduction to Climatology, and I have followed it ever since.
Today, it appears that anthropogenic global warming has pushed the Earth's climate systems past a tipping point where positive feedback loops at a scale FAR beyond the possibility of human intervention guarantee exponential global warming, and the collapse of the Earth's aerobic ecosystem.
I deeply hope this is wrong - but to date I have found no way out. The most powerful positive feedback appears to be Arctic methane gas emissions driven by thawing permafrost. Methane is 80x as effective as CO2 for trapping Solar heat in the atmosphere, and it is boiling out of "former" permafrost all the way around the Arctic Circle faster every year. Absent a magic silver bullet that can re-freeze the permafrost (and radically reduce seafloor temperatures), global warming will accelerate exponentially with NO further human inputs required. I hope this is wrong. I pray this is wrong. But so far I have found no way to persuade myself that this is wrong.
But yes, I've seen that same science. Even so, it doesn't change my prescription for how to move forward.
It does help me understand Thiel's belief that those of us looking to repair the world or trying to help other people are Satan. In that view, every bit of time and energy we waste helping another human is time and energy distracting us from building the rocket or AI that escapes the inevitable collapse and allows for our transcendence.
Non-Doomers as Satan? Where's the harm in working to at least delay the onset of an upcoming population crash? Oh right: It would harm the short term interests of the major shareholders in the petrochemicals industries. They can't just switch to owning other technologies and make the same profits - laws of physics issues, extracting vs. creating value. So demonizing people who don't "just give up" or retreat into straight up denial makes sense from a certain perspective - one that no normal human has, unless as the result of indoctrination.
I would not object to a 'war on global warming' at the scale of both World Wars combined: Repurpose the industrial base to serve that one project. What if it turns out the ecosystem can be saved, or at least enough of it to support human life? Or that the population crash can be postponed by a whole generation, or longer? What breakthroughs in technology might be possible IF mitigation became a dominant industry? There is only one way to find out: Try it. That would mean throwing everything we've got at it, and I'm down with that.
Apropos of nothing special: Just for a few moments, one of my major mentors in absentia just noticed me, and documented the event. This happened once before, when RAW flamed me on his Groupmind list. It was brief but hilarious; I made it my sigfile on the list, titled "My first ever literary award." Thx for all the mind expanding verbiage, from Cyberia to present: Pray do continue!
Yes, yes, yes, yes!!! Thank you!!!! "Don’t hate them, or you become them. Instead, meet their hate with love. Counter their selfishness by sharing. Instead of building walls to keep out the others, open doorways that welcome them home."
I particularly resonated with it, as I recently also ended an essay with the call to love... after exploring the risks and benefits of AI and human empathy, the need for humanity to mature as a species, and the role of group facilitation in helping us make collective decisions.... https://publications.rifs-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_6004873
Brilliant: this just fits the facts. These 'men' are a bunch of boys raised in a zero sum world of video game 'reality' coded by immature adolescent minds just like theirs. (And as for Ayn Rand, well. Just look at the fact that the Queen of Self Reliance and Uber Individualism took welfare money (gasp!) from the (gasp!) government. And smoked. And was a beeyotch to practically everyone. And suffered from clinical depression. And yet, any number of illiberal libertarians luuuuuv her.) But nonetheless, they are dangerous and need to be cut off from their influence on our representatives in government. Repeal Citizen's United. Regulate AI. Expose the nutso tech boyz at every turn. Hey, Peter Thiel just held a seminar for his besties, calling environmental activists "the Antichrist." Good god.
I see only one flaw here: Failure to consider geophysics. Carl Sagan was a hero of mine, way back when. His reputation went down in flames following his endorsement of the Nuclear Winter hypothesis: When the full time Earth-based climatologists weighed in (Dr. Sagan studied Martian weather), their consensus was that a full scale nuclear war would cause an abrupt episode of global warming, not cooling. Ouch. This little drama was my introduction to Climatology, and I have followed it ever since.
Today, it appears that anthropogenic global warming has pushed the Earth's climate systems past a tipping point where positive feedback loops at a scale FAR beyond the possibility of human intervention guarantee exponential global warming, and the collapse of the Earth's aerobic ecosystem.
I deeply hope this is wrong - but to date I have found no way out. The most powerful positive feedback appears to be Arctic methane gas emissions driven by thawing permafrost. Methane is 80x as effective as CO2 for trapping Solar heat in the atmosphere, and it is boiling out of "former" permafrost all the way around the Arctic Circle faster every year. Absent a magic silver bullet that can re-freeze the permafrost (and radically reduce seafloor temperatures), global warming will accelerate exponentially with NO further human inputs required. I hope this is wrong. I pray this is wrong. But so far I have found no way to persuade myself that this is wrong.
Depends what you mean by "way out."
But yes, I've seen that same science. Even so, it doesn't change my prescription for how to move forward.
It does help me understand Thiel's belief that those of us looking to repair the world or trying to help other people are Satan. In that view, every bit of time and energy we waste helping another human is time and energy distracting us from building the rocket or AI that escapes the inevitable collapse and allows for our transcendence.
Non-Doomers as Satan? Where's the harm in working to at least delay the onset of an upcoming population crash? Oh right: It would harm the short term interests of the major shareholders in the petrochemicals industries. They can't just switch to owning other technologies and make the same profits - laws of physics issues, extracting vs. creating value. So demonizing people who don't "just give up" or retreat into straight up denial makes sense from a certain perspective - one that no normal human has, unless as the result of indoctrination.
I would not object to a 'war on global warming' at the scale of both World Wars combined: Repurpose the industrial base to serve that one project. What if it turns out the ecosystem can be saved, or at least enough of it to support human life? Or that the population crash can be postponed by a whole generation, or longer? What breakthroughs in technology might be possible IF mitigation became a dominant industry? There is only one way to find out: Try it. That would mean throwing everything we've got at it, and I'm down with that.
Apropos of nothing special: Just for a few moments, one of my major mentors in absentia just noticed me, and documented the event. This happened once before, when RAW flamed me on his Groupmind list. It was brief but hilarious; I made it my sigfile on the list, titled "My first ever literary award." Thx for all the mind expanding verbiage, from Cyberia to present: Pray do continue!
Yes, yes, yes, yes!!! Thank you!!!! "Don’t hate them, or you become them. Instead, meet their hate with love. Counter their selfishness by sharing. Instead of building walls to keep out the others, open doorways that welcome them home."
I particularly resonated with it, as I recently also ended an essay with the call to love... after exploring the risks and benefits of AI and human empathy, the need for humanity to mature as a species, and the role of group facilitation in helping us make collective decisions.... https://publications.rifs-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_6004873