quoderat

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

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

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

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

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

What’s next is a fait accompli.

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

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

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

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

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

Hafnium is likely to as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All IE6 users should be blocked until they upgrade from any and every site. Zero tolerance of terrible browsers.

"Don't you think they have spent a lot of time thinking this through, consulting with experts, and debating internally whether its been a good decsion?"

Having worked at a few large companies, it's more likely that some executive got scared, hired a few toadies to tell him what he wanted to hear, then put in place a "plan" that he'd already decided and that is doomed to failure.

That's the way it works most places.

Whoa, the fonts on that blog make my head asplode.

Nominally, it protects both.

But because some corporations have vastly more money and resources than the people they wish to bully (individuals, in this case), the outcomes are distorted, not to mention the lobbying power of a corporation vs. that of an individual.

If Apple gets any more evil, they will become kind of parody found in a Mike Myers movie. Makes me regret buying my Cinema Display from them

Let's hope so. It's incredibly hard to read.

No, but I know many medium-achieving students who could have contributed a lot more productively to society if they'd had the chance and the money to attend college.

By focusing on only the high-end (and the low-end) we ignore what makes America a great place to be.

The gifted will find a way. The untalented and those lacking willpower usually won't, no matter what.

Everyone else needs a little help, help that actually matters.

I haven't gotten an iPhone because it doesn't have a physical keyboard. And I never will.

Ahahahahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahaha!

Ah, the old media will be dying sooner than I thought.

If they don't put DRM in the shoes, then break into my house and steal them back in the middle of the night, I might consider buying something from Zappos again.

For being complete idiots and violating everyone's expectations of ownership? Is that enough?

They've lost my business over this, that's certain.

I wasn't trying to inflate the importance of my argument. I was offering a guess of a possible range, given that there aren't any statistics. That's a common thing to do, and I would do it again.

If I had to guess, I'd probably say about 5% of the US population in toto has heard of DRM and could define it to a reasonable approximation. (That's about 15 million people.)

You chose to take the higher number in my range for me to "prove." I called you on it.

There are about 5.8 million people in the tech industry in the US. I've worked in some pretty big tech shops (and some small ones) in the US. Almost everyone I've worked with has heard of DRM, no matter what they think of it.

But assuming even only 10% of them have heard of DRM (an extremely low estimate) that'd be 580,000 people right there.

That's not proof, as there can't be any such thing in this case.

It is unlikely, actually -- they were forced into DRM by the publishers, not because of any true desire to include it. DRM doesn't help Amazon; it hurts them.

As for DRM, if you think that at least 200,000 people haven't heard of DRM (all my statement requires, if you'll read closely) ok then.

Do your own research, if you want to. There are resources available. The EFF alone has around 80,000 members, I believe, and I am sure just about every one of them knows what DRM is.

The problem with measuring opportunity cost is that it is very, very, very hard to measure. DRM means that I haven't bought about $500 worth of books or so, so far, I'd guess.

Wonder how many people there are like me? More than a few, even without having hard numbers, I'd wager.

Amazon is -- like most companies do, as it is hard to quantify -- ignoring the opportunity cost of including DRM.

I and I am sure hundreds of thousands if not millions more like me would already have a Kindle were it not for the DRM.

Well, it certainly is a polemic, and it does try to make too many points in one post.

I'm also a left-leaning liberal -- in most areas -- but the value of the post was that it attempted to elucidate the links between the persistent corporatism of our society and the fact that the corporatists truly did intend at one time to take over the government.

I have no doubt that they would (and in many ways, already have, through direct purchase) attempt to do the same again.

All in all, the piece could use some more research and fewer ideas all jumbled together, but it rebuts pretty well the too-rosy view of corporations as beneficent angels that all too many here seem to have.

And also, I've had a problem lately as well with the attempted historical revisionism towards Nazism, and have been wondering what's responsible for this as well.

As for being intellectually interesting, I think that fits that particular criterion for HN pretty well.

To me it's a convenient filter that lets me know the likelihood of some comment being good -- though it's not always reliable because unpopular opinions (like, often, my own) that threaten people's self-interests or self-image tend to get voted down pretty aggressively.

A fine Hacker News post.

Wish I could unflag.

We in the US do very much live in a corporatist society. As the latest example, see Goldman Sachs making billions of dollars off taxpayer loans and government (AIG) guarantees.

There is vastly more evidence than that, but that is just the latest, most flagrant example. Some people disbelieve it out of self-interest (or they want to be one of the fat cats), but that doesn't make it false.

You'll never convince anyone that catastrophic climate change is likely, as too many people have their self-image and their perceived financial stability tied up in believing that it will not occur.

The more important question is, does Animal from The Muppet Show masturbate?