A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? (wired.com) 216
"Twenty five years ago I made a bet in the pages of Wired. It was a bet whether the world would collapse by the year 2020." So writes the 68-year-old founding executive editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly.
He'd made the bet with a "Luddite-loving doomsayer," according to Wired — author Kirkpatrick Sale. "Sale while a student in the 1950s co-wrote a musical with Thomas Pynchon about escaping a dystopian America ruled by IBM," remembers Slashdot reader joeblog.
This month a new article in Wired re-visits that 25-year bet: They argued about the Amish, whether printing presses denuded forests, and the impact of technology on work. Sale believed it stole decent labor from people. Kelly replied that technology helped us make new things we couldn't make any other way. "I regard that as trivial," Sale said. Sale believed society was on the verge of collapse. That wasn't entirely bad, he argued. He hoped the few surviving humans would band together in small, tribal-style clusters. They wouldn't be just off the grid. There would be no grid. Which was dandy, as far as Sale was concerned...
Kelly then asked how, in a quarter century, one might determine whether Sale was right. Sale extemporaneously cited three factors: an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes... "I bet you $1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to the kind of disaster you describe," Kelly said. Sale barely had $1,000 in his bank account. But he figured that if he lost, a thousand bucks would be worth much less in 2020 anyway. He agreed... "Oh, boy," Kelly said after Sale wrote out the check. "This is easy money."
Twenty-five years later, the once distant deadline is here. We are locked down. Income equality hasn't been this bad since just before the Great Depression. California and Australia were on fire this year. We're about to find out how easy that money is... Sale failed to account for how human ingenuity would keep us from getting tossed into forests and caves. Kelly didn't factor in tech companies' reckless use of power or their shortcomings in solving (or sometimes stoking) tough societal problems...
Sale believes more than ever that society is basically crumbling — the process is just not far enough along to drive us from apartment blocks to huts. The collapse, he says, is "not like a building imploding and falling down, but like a slow avalanche that destroys and kills everything in its path, until it finally buries the whole village forever."
"I cannot accept that I lost," he wrote... "The clear trajectory of disasters shows that the world is much closer to my prediction. So clearly it cannot be said that Kevin won..."
Kelly warns Sale that history will recall him as a man who doesn't honor his word. But Sale doesn't believe that there will be a history.
Kelly responded by offering Sale a second double-or-nothing bet: I believe that we are in fact on the eve of a 25-year period of global progress and prosperity, the likes of which we have not seen before on this planet. In 25 years, poverty will be rare, and middle class lifestyle the norm. War between nations will also be rare. A bulk of our energy will be renewables, slowing down climate warming. Lifespans continue to lengthen. I'll bet on it.
Kelly added later that his rival "did not take me up on the double or nothing offer."
He'd made the bet with a "Luddite-loving doomsayer," according to Wired — author Kirkpatrick Sale. "Sale while a student in the 1950s co-wrote a musical with Thomas Pynchon about escaping a dystopian America ruled by IBM," remembers Slashdot reader joeblog.
This month a new article in Wired re-visits that 25-year bet: They argued about the Amish, whether printing presses denuded forests, and the impact of technology on work. Sale believed it stole decent labor from people. Kelly replied that technology helped us make new things we couldn't make any other way. "I regard that as trivial," Sale said. Sale believed society was on the verge of collapse. That wasn't entirely bad, he argued. He hoped the few surviving humans would band together in small, tribal-style clusters. They wouldn't be just off the grid. There would be no grid. Which was dandy, as far as Sale was concerned...
Kelly then asked how, in a quarter century, one might determine whether Sale was right. Sale extemporaneously cited three factors: an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes... "I bet you $1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to the kind of disaster you describe," Kelly said. Sale barely had $1,000 in his bank account. But he figured that if he lost, a thousand bucks would be worth much less in 2020 anyway. He agreed... "Oh, boy," Kelly said after Sale wrote out the check. "This is easy money."
Twenty-five years later, the once distant deadline is here. We are locked down. Income equality hasn't been this bad since just before the Great Depression. California and Australia were on fire this year. We're about to find out how easy that money is... Sale failed to account for how human ingenuity would keep us from getting tossed into forests and caves. Kelly didn't factor in tech companies' reckless use of power or their shortcomings in solving (or sometimes stoking) tough societal problems...
Sale believes more than ever that society is basically crumbling — the process is just not far enough along to drive us from apartment blocks to huts. The collapse, he says, is "not like a building imploding and falling down, but like a slow avalanche that destroys and kills everything in its path, until it finally buries the whole village forever."
"I cannot accept that I lost," he wrote... "The clear trajectory of disasters shows that the world is much closer to my prediction. So clearly it cannot be said that Kevin won..."
Kelly warns Sale that history will recall him as a man who doesn't honor his word. But Sale doesn't believe that there will be a history.
Kelly responded by offering Sale a second double-or-nothing bet: I believe that we are in fact on the eve of a 25-year period of global progress and prosperity, the likes of which we have not seen before on this planet. In 25 years, poverty will be rare, and middle class lifestyle the norm. War between nations will also be rare. A bulk of our energy will be renewables, slowing down climate warming. Lifespans continue to lengthen. I'll bet on it.
Kelly added later that his rival "did not take me up on the double or nothing offer."
I'll go with the third option (Score:5, Insightful)
"Kelly warns Sale that history will recall him as a man who doesn't honor his word. But Sale doesn't believe that there will be a history."
More likely, history will make no note whatsoever regarding either of these guys, nor of their silly bet.
Scary (Score:2)
Scary that two of those three things have already happened (albeit on a limited scale so far), and the collapse of the dollar might just be years off depending how we come out of the pandemic compared to the more prepared less impacted rest of the world. 25 years ago I would've predicted such things were more like 50 years away rather than coming upon us so soon.
Re: Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing concerning here, is how intensely your anxiety is distorting your perception.
Like saying everyone on the entire planet is at risk of sudden gruesome death because you coughed on a peanut accidentially put into your peanut-free candy bar.
Please, I am very serious about this: Stop reading online news, postsy etc! Go outside in the sunlight or get a 10,000 lux daylight lamp with a spectrum that matches the sun at least 98%! And socialize with kind, down to earth, people, however you make that possible right now! Because otherwise you're heading for suicide, mate!
Re: (Score:3)
Keep in mind a lot of people want to believe the end is neigh. Christians for example have been wanting to believe it for thousands of years. It would be exciting to live in the moment when everything ends, and the "I told you so" would be satisfying. The belief can reduce anxiety for some, because they no longer have to worry about their own problems: their life problems are irrelevant because bigger things are afoot and we'll all soon be living in caves / in heaven / whatever. It's a clear vision with a p
Re:Scary (Score:4)
Scary that two of those three things have already happened (albeit on a limited scale so far),
On a limited scale, those two things have happened every decade or so for centuries, if not millennia. "on a limited scale" is quite a qualifier.
Re: (Score:2)
The dollar's collapse is a gradual thing, counteracted by advancing technology and camouflaged by inconsistency. Compared to 1950, milk costs 5 times as many dollars, bread 15, and gold 30. That's a collapse, but it's happened so slowly that it requires thinking to realize it's happened.
The dollar's loss of value is not a good thing, but the slowness means it's not devastating.
So inflation is your measure? Every other currency in the world lost more (often far more) value than the dollar over that same time horizon (unless you count crypto which nobody does). Currencies have value because a government with an army demands tax payments in it. You see that ending anytime soon? Seriously, move to Mexico if you want to see what a currency losing its value is like. The dollar is still far and away the most stable currency in the world and you probably don't even know the name of
Kelly wins either way (Score:2)
Malthusians always lose (Score:5, Insightful)
Going back to at least the 60s we were supposed to have run out of: food, oil, clean water, clean air, farmable land, suffer total economic collapse, and a bunch of weather/climate events that wiped out civilization as we know it. None of it happened. This Sale guy is just one more negative Nelly and he should pay up and not be a dick.
The worst thing that's happened since the 60s (or last 25 years as per article) in Tech is the emergence of social media and big tech. But no, Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc, will not destroy civilization, either.
This is really a philosophical debate about the nature of Man. Are we Good or Evil? If you believe we are Good then you believe we will somehow stumble through and figure it out and it may not be perfect but over time things will improve because Good people generally drive society and Do The Right Thing for the most part. If you believe Man is Evil, then you believe r we are doomed because selfish people will grab what they can and fuck everyone else and that's what drives society.
I strongly suggest that 10k years of human history says the basic nature of Man is Good or we'd still be I caves throwing rocks at each other.
Complex societies require cooperation and self sacrifice on the part of enough people to survive and thrive and overcome the lesser negative elements in society.
And oh yeah, this guy is still a dick for not paying up.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Going back to at least the 60s we were supposed to have run out of: food, oil, clean water, clean air, farmable land, suffer total economic collapse,
And now we have more clean water, more clean air, and more farmable land than in the 60s.
Re:Malthusians always lose (Score:4, Informative)
Going back to at least the 60s we were supposed to have run out of: food, oil, clean water, clean air, farmable land, suffer total economic collapse,
And now we have more clean water, more clean air, and more farmable land than in the 60s.
Water, yes. Air, maybe. LA is certainly breathing more clean air. Farmable land? Not so. We have less now than in the 50s [bayer.com]. The U.S. alone loses about 3 acres per minute to development [modernfarmer.com]. Land is even considered an investment [seekingalpha.com] because it's not being made.
We're running short on potable water (Score:5, Interesting)
The doomsayer's point isn't that we're doomed, it's that we can see the doom coming and we're doing fuck all about it because, hey, let the good times roll.
Re:We're running short on potable water (Score:5, Insightful)
Our air is clean because we shipped the dirty factories to China.
Our air is clean because of EPA regulations.
Those are the same thing
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Malthusians always lose (Score:4, Interesting)
We only did not run out, *because* we listened, made a massive effort, and changed our ways!
E.g. we *did* run out of oil! The saudis started centrifuging their lst remains of oily sand sludge decades ago! We started fracking and are going to places that were previously taboo, just to make fosil fuel demand ends meet. And we massively flattened the curve!
Would we still as wasteful as we had been, all oil *would* be long gone. Ditto for those other factors.
Re: (Score:2)
"Would we still as wasteful as we had been, all oil *would* be long gone."
Bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I'm much more hopeful.
We keep using technological and social progress to push the carrying capacity of the planet forwar
Malthus was correct (Score:2)
He did not predict doom. Just that "The power of population so greatly exceeds the ability of earth to provide, that the balance can only be maintained through misery and vice."
In his time that was very much the case. It was only hunger that stopped the poor having large families. Just like for other animals.
We are in a weird situation now in which our evolutionary instincts are for comfort rather than breeding.
But some people still have large families. And children of those families tend to have large
Re: (Score:2)
And that would make him wrong. He had no idea at all contraception would become so simple and I don't think that's the kind of "vice" he was referring to. If so, he's wrong again.
Re: (Score:2)
Going back to at least the 60s we were supposed to have run out of: food, oil, clean water, clean air, farmable land, suffer total economic collapse, and a bunch of weather/climate events that wiped out civilization as we know it. None of it happened.
Yes, because we were worried about it.
People like Kelly are why we have problems like this and people like Sale are why we look for solutions.
Re: (Score:3)
That didn't happen by accident. Clean water and air are because the US created an EPA and other countries followed. Farmable land was helped by dwarf wheat (a combined project of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Government). Total economic collaps
They're not entirely wrong (Score:2)
We're also not doing what we need to be doing regarding climate change. Again, a little bit of action has bought time, but it's just buying time.
Finally there's an au
Re: (Score:2)
we've been borrowing time with science, specifically by using chemicals to treat land so that we can grow on it continuously without crop rotation. It's not impossible we'll run short on those chemicals at industrial scale (i.e. no, we haven't destroyed the matter that makes them up, but they're not easily obtainable like they are now).
That's not true. Crop rotation came in with the same package of chemical fertilizers. Native agriculture didn't usually practice crop rotation. Either they burned out the land or they were in such a fertile region that it was basically impossible for them to wear out the land. Also, the scale and economic sophistication necessary to do crop rotation widely wasn't available to them.
While we need to be more efficient with fertilizers to prevent blooms, those issues rarely effect farming regions like the
Re: (Score:3)
This is really a philosophical debate about the nature of Man. Are we Good or Evil? If you believe we are Good then you believe we will somehow stumble through and figure it out... Complex societies require cooperation and self sacrifice on the part of enough people to survive and thrive and overcome the lesser negative elements in society.
This is a stupid and irrelevant argument. Do you mean people are on average good? Surely you don't mean there's an essential Platonic Ideal of Mankind that is Good. People can't even agree on a definition of The Good. And even if that were settled, it's beside the point.
Sociopaths exist. They are congenitally unable to feel sympathy or understand self-sacrifice. They are small in number, but over-represented in leadership roles in industry and government. And as technology expands, it essentially expands th
Learn some history (Score:2)
Re: Learn some history (Score:3)
Precisely. Our situation is pathetic and laughable to anyone in any actual world war or plague.
Call me when more than a third of your entire village literally actually died in a few months, you're eating your own cat and newspaper out of hunger, in your 50% rubble house ruin, *and* winter is right around the corner!
Because I knew people that *actually* had to do that in WWII! (They became the hosts at the place where my grandparents went for their honeymoon after the war. And yes, they actually ate their ca
Re:Learn some history (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The Great Depression was very much international. Depending on which economist you read, the Great Depression may have been triggered by the UK coming off the gold standard. One of the first effects was a run on banks, with major banks closing in the US and continental Europe. The effects were most severe, perhaps, in Germany and the US.
The de-coupling of major currencies and international trade from gold spread the Great Depression from there quite effectively.
Generally, the speed with which a country swi
Yes, it did! (Score:2)
Since the use of the fire to warm up cold bare apes!
Instead of staying all together in a cave they started spreading all around!
Kelly is delusional (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that we are in fact on the eve of a 25-year period of global progress and prosperity, the likes of which we have not seen before on this planet. In 25 years, poverty will be rare, and middle class lifestyle the norm. War between nations will also be rare. A bulk of our energy will be renewables, slowing down climate warming. Lifespans continue to lengthen. I'll bet on it.
I ... have my doubts.
Re:Kelly is delusional (Score:5, Informative)
Most of those are already happening or getting noticeably closer. Which ones do you doubt?
Re: (Score:2)
War in particular. There's no way that the Middle East, Pakistan, India, China and Taiwan, North Korea etc. will change so dramatically in a quarter of a century.
Re: (Score:2)
There's no way that the Middle East, Pakistan, India, China and Taiwan, North Korea etc. will change so dramatically in a quarter of a century.
All of those changed quite dramatically in the last 25 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Towards being less aggressive?
Re: Kelly is delusional (Score:3)
Yes.
But just as humanity gets it right (Score:2)
Computers will become truly intelligent. Why would they want parasitic humans around?
http://www.computersthink.com/ [computersthink.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Are you insane? 25 years is a long time. In 1945 Europe was devastated by a war. In 1970 the prospect of France and Germany going to war again was relegated to fiction novels.
A *LOT* could change in a quarter of a century. A lot already has changed for the better in some of the very countries you list. Hell 25 years ago India and Pakistan were in the middle of an active war, the Kargil War. Since then there has been little more than minor skirmishes. In the past 20 years combined 1/4 of the people have been
Re: (Score:2)
War and poverty. Poverty in 1st world countries seems to be on the rise, as makes sense as technology starts hollowing out the middle class. Far-right fascist groups are also rising in the first world. Those tend to lead to war. Hell, weren't India and Pakistan shooting each other in 2019?
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, weren't India and Pakistan shooting each other in 2019?
What were they doing 25 years ago?
Re: (Score:2)
The same thing they will be doing 25 years from now as well, assuming China doesn't own the world by then.
Re: Kelly is delusional (Score:2)
All of that already is more the case than not.
You are seriously underestimating the amount of war and poverty that there was in the past.
E.g. only 50 years ago, people even in rural Germany, were on the brink of starvation. (Because they had turned all their forests into grassland monocultures, which did not sustain crop growth. Essentially like Easter Island.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that we are in fact on the eve of a 25-year period of global progress and prosperity, the likes of which we have not seen before on this planet. In 25 years, poverty will be rare, and middle class lifestyle the norm. War between nations will also be rare. A bulk of our energy will be renewables, slowing down climate warming. Lifespans continue to lengthen. I'll bet on it.
I ... have my doubts.
You missed the word "global".
If you take out the US from consideration, the rest of the world is on a trajectory of progress and prosperity, with some hiccups for sure, in particular places or particular times, but overall positive, for the past 15-20 years. Globally, poverty had been reduced, general income has increased (again, overall, with some regions not so), life expectancy had been increasing.
One big cause for disruption of the trend had been recently removed. Not a lot of optimism is required to
Bullshit! Bullshit raised the the power of bullshi (Score:5, Insightful)
It cleary has not "collapsed".
And to think that those criteria are met, requires mental contortions that would make a triple-jointed corporate PR circus artist sucking his own dick with his own legs around his neck look like a robot caught in a net of triangular girders, rigidly mounted along the axis of a container ship in the tightest bit of the canal.
Besides ... do you know how many people in the world would wish they had your pesky little sheltered problems?
You're sitting there in your comfy literal actual armchair, with a full belly, in a comfy warm room with a roof and intact windows, on your $1000 smartphone that has emergency healthcare, police and firefighters just three taps away, speaking to your loved ones that are neither dead nor imprisoned to raped or tortured, ... complaing like the world has ended...
Sincerely, Fuck Off, with a capital F, and bring us actual news or forever fuck the fuck off!
</angry>
Or maybe the point (Score:2)
e.g. you're thinking very individually, as in "these two guys have nice lives so why are they complaining" instead of how they're thinking ("things our shit all over, we should be doing something about it").
Technology is a tool. (Score:4, Insightful)
Technology has never capable of destroying society. Technology is just a tool and it's the people that control powerful tools that are the ones who may or may not destroy society.
We live in a dystopian society and it's the same group that has ruined societies for countless generations: unworthy people have taken power by convincing the gullible that his fellow man is responsible for their ills. It's a time-tested tactic that works on a portion of the human populace for unspecified reasons.
Re: (Score:3)
The interesting part is that as technology got better, so did the tools those same people will abuse. How far are we from SuperAirAIDS2.0 being engineered by a lone sicko in his basement? Did people 25 years ago imagine that guns would be easily printable with files downloaded from the internet? What will be easily printable in 25 years?
What I am personally anxious about, though, isn't a doomsday scenario where we wake up and The Big Bad Guy is holding us all hostages with his homemade graviton bomb of worl
Re: (Score:3)
All of those things are already happening, but there's going to be an inflection point at which society collapses, and people just go back to living normally.
Readers of the Old Testament know that nations rise and fall, that it's cyclical, that it is caused by wanton immorality. When Greek culture collapsed into immorality (they had slaves, you know), the Romans conquered them, and when the Romans went down the same path, their empire fell as well.
We in America have already surpassed the Romans in dec
But Sale Clearly won??? (Score:2)
Am I just crazy, or did Sale clearly win the bet at written. Remember Sale wins he he is even close on her three points.
1) Are we even close to serious environmental issues?
2) Are we having any serious issues with the economy?
3) A rebellion of the poor against the monied?
No serious person could argue against 2 out of thee of these, and no one is going to say that the third just not true, easily meeting any definition of "even close" to Sales perditions.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the bet was that it would be "not even close to the kind of disaster you describe". Now that is not very precise, but clearly over 50% is far past "even close". Clearly Kelly was thinking that their would be great progress, but instead we got a world that is over 50% of the way to the dystopia described by Sales according to their own arbiter.
Eternal cycle (Score:2)
The truth is that the world is constantly in a state of collapse and reconstruction. It's the eternal struggle of ossification vs. renewal, destruction vs. creation, conservative (maintain the status quo, respect tradition) vs. liberal (rebel! tear down the old world!).
"Nothing bad as yet happened, therefore..." (Score:3, Interesting)
"Nothing bad has yet happened, therefore nothing bad ever will" is basically the argument of every head-in-the-sand ostrich in this thread so far.
"I haven't killed myself so far, therefore I never will" says the drunk driver. Same logic.
Re: (Score:3)
"Nothing bad has yet happened, therefore nothing bad ever will" is basically the argument of every head-in-the-sand ostrich in this thread so far.
Nope, that's only a low-IQ view of the argument. The overwhelming majority of the arguments in this thread so far have been ones that have look at the state and trajectory of the world and have concluded that as technology has advanced civilisation hasn't decayed with it. Given our quality of life and the actions thus far, combined with the fact that technology is nothing new and social media and all those other "evil" tech things are just a natural extension of what humans have been doing for 100s of years
Re: (Score:2)
The parent was pointing out that just because something has happened in the past, even many times in the past, it in no way implies that it will necessarily happen in the future. To give you an example, someone keeps posting that "hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty in China and India" and using that to justify that the future will get better. That's a bogus argument.
Re: (Score:2)
The past is kind of our best guesstimate of the future though. We kind of sort of know History, but we have zero idea what will actually happen tomorrow.
Re: (Score:2)
It is quite rational to assert that the forces lifting people out of poverty for decades will continue. I'll predict the same will continue for the next two decades and be right. See you in 2040, tell me how in 2060 we'll all be doomed.
Thoreau went off the grid (Score:2)
I have more respect for people who act on their stated principles.
In the non-technological world he advocates, he would not have his eyeglasses. He takes them off for most pictures, but look long enough and they are there.
No! (Score:2)
Betteridge!
Next question?
The occupational hazard of betting with a nutjob (Score:2)
Is that the nutjob won't concede. You might as well have made an election bet with a Trump supporter.
SAFE Double-or-nothing bet (Score:2)
A double-or-nothing bet for an additional 25 years is absolutely safe. After an additional 25 years, the odds are quite excellent that Kirkpatrick Sale will be beyond caring about the money.
Has Gun Destroyed Society? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I love guns. It's bullets that I can't stand.
That's silly (Score:2)
not tech (Score:2)
Technology hasn't destroyed society. Capitalism is well on the way to do doing so - tech is just one of the tools they use.
the funny thing about capitalism (Score:2)
Sometimes it lifts people up into the middle class and democratizes skilled labor. And prosperity reaches nearly everyone.
Other times it is used to exploit the weak, vulnerable, and foolish. it can let a handful of people snowball their money and consolidate powerful allies in government, courts, and industry.
I would strongly encourage people to take their head out of the sand. Capitalism isn't a panacea that solves every problem. It is neither good nor evil and has been used to both ends throughout history
Kelly made it ... (Score:2)
Society was officially destroyed on January 21, 2021.
idiot (Score:2)
While it is true that society as it existed 25 years ago no longer exists today, it's not the same as being destroyed.
The only "tech" causing us problems right now is our love of pangolin meat and how it maybe improves our penis or something like that. Our ability to believe any horseshit theories we hear has been part of human society for thousands of years. Even the Roman military had their own mystery cult that was weirdly unlike the rest of Roman and Greek pantheism. We should probably accept that group
Two crazies petulantly egging each other on (Score:4)
Argh! That was 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back, reading about a nonsense squabble between two crazies - although it's hard to tell which one is crazier (or more idiotic) than the other.
Back in 1995, I'm sure I saw the title of the original article. Back then, I had 2 year old - and had to be stricter about what I spent my time on than I do now, idly trolling FaceBook (where I found this article) for something a little different. Clearly, my intellectual rigor is much weaker than it was 25 years ago, because instead of finding something different from the usual rehashing of insurrection, pandemic, and economic malaise - I find this article.
In 1995, sleep deprived by a toddler and family responsibilities, and doing my small part to build the Internet, I would have quickly recognized that this was a political stunt between two whiny do-nothings, each of whom were the beneficiaries of substantial (although not enormous) privilege. Two people who'd made a career of expressing dissatisfaction and malaise, tailored to the envious who'd seen life pass them by and couldn't understand why the privileges they'd enjoyed as children were missing in their current lives.
Bah. Storm and Fury, Signifying Nothing [1] [poetryfoundation.org]
Re: (Score:2)
pffft, so you focus on one country with less than a third the population of truly big countries and think 'oh noes we're dooomed'?!
What nonsense, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty in India and China. And you sit there in your first world comfort whining about some shit south USA city.
No, no miracles necessary, things will continue get better for most in the world, because of science, tech and more wealth creation.
Re: (Score:2)
society collapsing in our lifetime. I also read the climate change papers, not my science but I understand the statistics
If you really had read scientific climate change papers, you would have realized that none of them are theorizing society collapse in our lifetime.
Re: (Score:2)
And if you had read the parent's comments carefully, he/she in no way implied that the science papers theorized about societal collapse. You inferred that he did.
My guess is that he/she did what many people are now doing. We have read some of the science literature and understood it to some degree. We understand that almost all the scientific papers on climate change say that there will be large scale climate change in a short period of time, and that climate change will drive physical (note: not societa
Re: (Score:2)
After having understood the science we then turn to thinking about about how these physical changes will effect societies, culture, etc.
That seems like a reasonable thing to do. Is that what you think has happened?
Re: (Score:2)
Not really no. That was the point of the parent in this thread -- nothing much seems to have changed (he/she cited Miami real estate prices). Some small things have been done (e.g. Miami is working on raising street levels to counter sea level rise), farmers have improved some wet lands management, some renewables have been built but not enough, insurance companies are beginning to price vulnerable real estate properly, etc. As usual there has been lots of noise (articles, papers, internet chatter, politic
Re: (Score:2)
even as inequality has risen in USA
Even that is not entirely clear. Most of the people who try to demonstrate it fall into one or more statistical traps (including Piketty). They likely fall into these traps because they are looking for support, not understanding.
Re: (Score:2)
Some actual data -- https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R... [fas.org]
And that is only wage data. Data about income not tied to wages show that that kind of income has been growing much faster than even the wages at the top end of the wage spectrum.
Re: (Score:2)
Statistics fail, they only took into account wages, not total compensation. A common error (but at least they were smart enough to disclaim that they had done that).
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Speaking of the bottom end, that brings up a second statistical failure: not accounting for the fact that these are different people (again, the paper you linked to was honest enough to acknowledge that this was a weakness, so good for them). If millions of people immigrate to the US who can't even speak English (as they have), that ought to be accounted for in your statistics if you're trying to get a clear picture of the situation.
Re: calling b.s. on "income inequality" (Score:2)
PROTIP: Obesity is the result of low quality food. Like what poor people are forced to eat. So while I agree with your sentiment, please stop spreading what once was a Coca-Cola campaign.
The current state of research is that highly purified carbs cause intestinal inflammation with bad micro-organisms, which cause a Leptin resistance, aka making you permanently hungry. Which, if you can only afford that processed crap, leads to more of the same, and a vicioius cycle.
To make matters worse, this also leads to
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In the US richer men are more likely to be obese, and the converse for women. The situation is similarly complex, although not necessarily the same, in other countries. The causes of obesity, whatever they are, are considerably more complicated than you suggest.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/produ... [cdc.gov]
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Sorry, but beans, rice and produce are a lot cheaper then all that processed garbage. If these poor people would stop gorging on soda and chips and maybe did some walking, they'd see a lot of benefits.
Seriously, stop eating meat and dairy and buy a lot of produce, beans, pasta and rice. You'll be healthier and you will save money. Avoid frozen food, alcohol and all the chips and cookies and candies and ice cream. You don't need any of it and it's all highly processed.
Poor people just make bad decisions. Eve
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calling b.s. on your "stop eating meat." You can eat all the meat you want and be lean. Meat doesn't make people obese, excessive carbs do, raising blood sugar levels and making insulin resistance. Not a meat problem.
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besides, even if you just consider USA, we have morbidly obese "poor people" on welfare with iphones and $150 athletic shoes.
In a poor country, only the rich can afford to be fat.
In a rich country, only the rich can afford to be thin.
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Why shouldn't a poor person have an iPhone or expensive shoes. When you might be evicted at any second, making your valuables small and portable is a smart decision. And iPhones are certainly available pretty cheap if you don't go for the latest version.
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You could buy two pairs of really good work boots for $150...
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even as inequality has risen in USA
Income inequality wasn't part of the bet. TFA says "a rebellion of the poor against the monied." And that has been going on at a low level for over a hundred years, thanks to the trouble anarchists have been fomenting. But it's no worse now than 25 years ago.
Kelly won (Score:5, Insightful)
Society hasn't collapsed.
We haven't seen a great depression.
The dollar is still the global reserve currency.
What is there even to really debate?
There are lot's of aspects to Sale's argument that are valid, and it's certainly arguable that there is crumbling and decay, and that we are potentially headed for collapse, but it hasn't happened yet.
Maybe historians will call 2020 it a turning point, or the beginning of the end, or maybe they'll pick 2016 as the beginning of the end, or maybe not. Who knows, but nobody is going to point to any year between 1995 and 2020 as "the year society "collapsed".
Re:Kelly won (Score:5, Insightful)
Sale is pretty much entirely wrong. He's moving the goal posts to beat the band, and is falling victim to our human bias towards catastrophism.
Fewer people live in poverty than at any time in history, both in the world in general and in the US. The average income (in real purchasing power terms) is higher than it has ever been, both in the world in general and in the US. People live longer, healthier, lives and die violently less frequently than at any period in history, in the world at large and in the US (* with a very slight possible caveat for US life expectancy at birth in the last few years).
The world faces significant challenges, but it is also better off than it has ever been, and has absolutely unprecedented tools for facing those challenges.
Re:Kelly won (Score:5, Interesting)
The average income (in real purchasing power terms) is higher than it has ever been, both in the world in general and in the US.
Median income is probably a better measure as it's not skewed by a few people making billions. Though in this case it has also increased significantly [census.gov] for the years which we have data for.
No collapse for at least 50 years (Score:3)
When computers eventually become truly intelligent it is difficult to see why they would want humans around.
But society would still not actually collapse. It would just evolve from a meat based society to a silicone based one.
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Re:No collapse for at least 50 years (Score:4, Funny)
But society would still not actually collapse. It would just evolve from a meat based society to a silicone based one.
If you frequent certain gentlemen's establishments you will notice that meat has already mostly been replaced by silicone.
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When humans eventually invent mechanised transport, it is difficult to see why they would want horses around.
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The illusion is that there will be "a collapse" that's easily identifiable, like a civil war or some other giant systemic failure.
I think it's mostly a slow slide into crisis that is hard to comprehend as it happens, often mitigated by things like extremely cheap consumer goods which tend to mask perceptions of declining individual economic status.
I think the larger problems are market domination by companies which are hugely profitable but unwilling to use their profits for innovation, most likely because
Re: I would have taken the double or nothing bet (Score:2)
It'll be a short civil war, considering that the less ethical and principled side has all the guns.
A terrible problem, as Goldwater predicted.
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The rich will just pay half the poor to kill the other half. Works every time.
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Yeah, but don't forget that the USA has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over. Who knows what's going to happen to them if an all out civil war breaks out.
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Ah, populism .. Also known as "providing simplistic explanations to complex phenomenon", or "providing simplistic solutions to complex problems".
Here's a hint: almost all societal and cultural structures and trends are either complex multivariate problems, or we don't even know what the variables are. Explaining any societal or cultural phenomenon (e.g. the difference between how tech has affected the US vs Japan) by appealing to one variable (e.g. immigration), is ridiculous and undercuts your whole arg
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Consider California, the epicenter of high technology. Western culture is no longer the dominant culture. Hispanic culture is now the dominant culture. Hispanics are now the dominant ethnicity.
Um, what? I've lived in CA for decades and this just simply isn't true in any way shape or form.