Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/05/06/one-million-species-face-extinction-un-panel-says-humans-will-suffer-result/ <comment><USER2> I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up.

The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. We're all collectively marching towards the edge of the cliff to jump off together. More people than ever have anxiety because we subconsciously (or consciously) know this.

We're unsustainable with how we pollute and how we treat the environment. How we overfish the oceans. Income inequality rising. Political and cultural polarization widening.

It's all so unsustainable.

<comment><USER3> I also have a theory. Anxiety is increasing because anxiety sells. The right leaning sites raise anxiety about immigrants. Left leaning sites raise anxiety that Trump is on his way to becoming a dictator. Environmental sites raise anxiety about species going extinct. Business sites raise anxiety about increase regulation and taxes.

Meanwhile, humans are the best off we have ever been. This is one of the most peaceful times in history. We have more opportunity and less inequality than before. For the first time in history, half our population is not subject to endless pregnancies and high maternal mortality. Women are valued not primarily for the child-bearing or child-rearing but for their ability to contribute to the full spectrum of society.

In addition, we are more capable of dealing with the vagaries of nature. Take for example Ebola. We came up with treatments and then a vaccine.

We also know how to control our environments. Air conditioning allows humans to live comfortably in some of the hottest climates on earth. We also know how to efficiently produce food, and more importantly to transport food from one area of the world to another.

For energy, we are not dependent on cutting down trees for firewood. We can know harvest sunlight, wind, and atoms to create unthinkable amounts of energy.

We are just on the cusp of having the capability to colonize another celestial body!

Yet, it is not the good news that sells in our attention economy. It is bad news and fear and outrage.

<comment><USER4> What you are saying is true.

However never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse.

<comment><USER5> Check out the global temperature record. [1] In particular this [2] is the temperature from ice core readings for the past 800k years. Modern humans evolved sometime around 300k years ago. Can you imagine going through such sharp changes with negligible technology? They were surviving through these changes with little more than furs and basic woodworking. Consider the first evidence of something as trivial as metalworking. It's required for basically any other meaningful task and can be achieved very easily. All you need is mud, ore, and fire. Nonetheless, it was incredibly difficult to discover. The first evidence of metalworking doesn't appear until around 11,000 years ago! And this is just the macro scale. Local game extinctions, droughts, disease, and so on were a constant and often fatal occurrence.

So you might say that we're now just living through the first highly publicized possible collapse. Yet once again this also would not be true. While we now find these things laughable, at one time people took doomsday predictions very seriously. And throughout the centuries there are invariably influential religious figures (including, for instance, popes) that have offered doomsday predictions. So seriously were these taken that some figures have even been punished for making such predictions and then them not coming to pass. There were also things like the 'Great Conjunction of 1524'. This was an event that based on astrological reading that predicted the world would end with a new great flood. This led tens of thousands of Londoners to abandon their homes and head for higher ground.

Ultimately, humans thinking they're all going to imminently die because of something outside their control is not a new phenomena. However, mass media is.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/med...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/media/File:EPICA_temperature_plot.svg)

<comment><USER6> Sigh.

I think you are trying to point out that we were wily enough to survive past swings with a fraction of the technological arsenal we have today. Is that fair?

We know _some_ humans survived history. How many? Where did they live? Did the survivors stay in a single place called "home" for thousands of years, change be damned? Did the survivors follow good weather and food? Did they live near the ocean, where _all_ temperature variations are smoothed out? Did they migrate for adventure, or follow the whims of season and climate?

When they moved to a new place, were there already humans there? Was there enough space, shelter, and food for both groups? Did they welcome each other, or fight?

It's not that I think you're wrong. We're creative, resourceful, persistent, stubborn, and adaptable. But I think the picture you're making leaves something important out. For most of that graph, we were smart, rare, small- group primates that used wit, teamwork, and basic tools to overcome our natural environments.

It's probably no coincidence that metalworking turns up so near the emergence of our early social and organizational super-organisms. You don't need bronze tools to hunt shellfish, fruit, or rabbits. Our super-organisms needed them to raze forests, clear land, excavate rock, and make war.

Surviving climate change is not be about overcoming our environment a final time. I agree, that is a fight we could win. Surviving climate change is about overcoming _our nature_ as individuals, the nature of the social and organizational super-organisms we form, and the historical accumulated impact of both with interest.

<comment><USER5> Apologies here for the length here. As Twain might say, _I didn 't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead._

I was simply responding to the statement that "never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse." That is not an accurate statement. Ecological collapse was very much an everyday reality, and battle, for humanity through much of its existence. And in more modern times, people lived through decades waking up each day knowing that nuclear war could very realistically end the world, as they knew it, at any moment. And indeed it very nearly did, multiple times!

Outside of that I fully agree with almost everything you've said. The 'almost' part comes primarily because I think you're not considering the imbalance of power that would result from the current mitigation strategy of reducing CO2 emissions. Developing nations and those who dependent on carbon output for revenue, such as China and the Mideast would be asked to entirely change their developmental trajectory. Developed nations, by contrast, need to do little more than possibly accelerate the trajectory they're already on. To deal with this inequity the Paris agreement, for example, proposed the developed nations subsidize the developing nations. This sounds reasonable on paper, but in practice what you're talking about is places such as China rolling back its development and then becoming dependent on US handouts to regrow and simply sustain itself. That's a relationship that could and would be abused, once established, to further our ends. This is a nuance that places such China are not going to ignore.

This certainly falls under the blanket of overcoming our nature as individuals, whether individual means a single person or a large group acting as an entity. But it also reframes the problem in a way that I think is somewhat more realistic than a rallying among equals to do their part for an equal outcome. This is why I increasingly think that technological solutions, such as carbon scrubbing, need to be playing a bigger role in the discussion. For instance imagine the US (and other developed nations) greatly subsidized the research, rollout, manufacturing, and deployment of carbon scrubbing industry in developing nations. This is something that I think could see real effect since there's a more equitable relationship. The developing nation is not only able to continue on their current trajectory, but to develop even faster through the further expansion of their energy/industrial facilities. And the developed nation is able to use little more than their great economic might to effect positive change. And there's less room for abuse of the relationship. If the developed nation pulls funding, they suffer due to the lack of scrubbing. And if the developing nations tries to use scrubbing as leverage (or misappropriate funds) they suffer for identical reasons. Interests are aligned with no imbalanced leverage.

For instance our current CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels is about 37 billion tons a year. One new technological solution [1] proposes an atmospheric removal of CO2 that could cost as little as $94 per ton. That's $3.5 trillion, 4% of the global GDP, to reach 0 carbon emissions. And that not only doesn't cripple developing nations but could greatly accelerate and strengthen them. I don't entirely understand why stuff like this isn't a more significant part of the conversation.

[1] - [http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and- science/technology/ne...](http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and- science/technology/new-method-reduces-the-cost-of-scrubbing-co2-from-the- atmosphere/article/524596)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for responding, and for correcting my takeaway. I agree it's not an accurate statement.

We might be chasing our tails at this point. Power imbalances (current and historic legacy) is a big component of what I mean when I say this fight is against our super-organisms and their accumulative impact. I'm optimistic about what technology can do, but skeptical of anything that sounds like an excuse for anyone with economic or ideological incentives to write off emission-reduction strategies.

All approaches to climate change have to be implemented through a complex adaptive system in which billions of human individuals and superorganisms that have their own concepts of what is/isn't in their best interest, constantly recalibrating behavior against each other.

Will impoverished people be willing to stay that way just because the fossil- fuel bonfire is passé? Will there be clean alternatives for them to improve their lives? Will they be able to afford them? If not, will other actors with sufficient capital finance them? Will they suspiciously reject gifts from colonial powers?

If we're unable to avert the collapse of some ecosystems, will the people living in/around them placidly endure misery and await death? Will they chase better weather and food?

Will people in areas relatively enriched by shifting climates help pump the brakes, or step on the gas? If some of these are the same developed powers largely responsible for emissions to date, will they have enough internal support to actively reject this boon and take responsibility for the actions of earlier generations?

When primary fossil fuel demand peaks, will countries and landowners sitting on large fossil fuel deposits and companies producing them ease off to hold prices steady, or lean in to force prices down, undermine the short-term profitability of renewables, and extract as much wealth as possible before the party is over?

What if individuals and superorganisms that invested in profitable atmospheric CO2 capture iterate into technology that supports profitable extraction far below ~278ppm?

How many superorganisms will make the bet that they can make short-term profit by externalizing costs and some conscientious third party who'll feel compelled to pay $94-232 per ton to capture extra emissions?

Will superorganisms acquire companies that invent potential carbon capture technologies like this in order to extort rents from the patents, or repurpose the technology for some other application with little urgency to support the original intent?

Will rumors proliferate on the internet that large carbon capture facilities are a secret plot to poison or pacify the population?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To put things in context; If we wipe from the planet ALL vascular plants, all flowers and trees and ALL vertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the full pack, plus SIX major phylums of invertebrates including all molluscs, snails, clams and squids, ALL corals and jellyfishes, ALL starfishes and sea urchins, ALL sponges, ALL flatworms, parasites and free living, and every one tunicate described by science...

... after killing all of those, we would have still to wipe 366.000 extra species to reach one million.

<comment><USER8> That's just... crazy.

<comment><USER7> Can turn crazier. Selecting carefully and with "1 million of nethack scrolls of genocide" we could probably wipe all extant life beings known heavier than 1 Kg, except fungus, macroalgae... and not much more.

I hope that this article is wrong. If not, one million of species is a lot of biodiversity about to jump by the clift in the next ten or twenty years.

<comment><USER9> > I hope that this article is wrong

Time (and further research) will tell, but truth be told nothing in it surprises people who have watched specific local nonurban areas for decent spans of time. Ecologies are collapsing. It's visible and obvious; scientific reports describe and quantify what we already see and experience daily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after report after report. Every one grimmer then the preceding. And nothing happens. I begin to believe individual action is the only option left. I don't know the circumstances of every person on the planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN crowd could do.

\- Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train.

\- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. If your boss won't let you, find a job that will. In the current job market you can negotiate almost anything, and remote work must be the easiest thing to negotiate.

\- Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity.

\- If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green.

\- Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously.

<comment><USER11> > " _Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don 't go all the way > vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity._"

No thank you.

I know vegans have an anti-meat agenda and have been promoting this idea, however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won't save the planet.

The elephant in the room is that sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. Sustainable farming also needs to do away with pesticides because we are killing the insects.

Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is not sustainable and we already have a huge health issue on it hands, not from meat, but from all the cheap corn, wheat and sugar ;-)

Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores, we do not have the digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins or the ability to synthesize vitamin C like carnivores for that matter.

If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat. Making corn more expensive will make CAFO operations and thus meat more expensive, which will in turn increase demand for animals raised using more sustainable practices.

<comment><USER12> What a bunch of bullshit. I'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact.

> industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and > switching to a plants-based diet won't save the planet.

Just because two things both cause emissions doesn't mean one isn't much, much worse than the other. The emissions impact of meat is far worse than the alternatives - beef emits a factor of 17x as much GHG than tofu.

Industrial farming at scale can oftentimes _lower_ the GHG emissions per unit of food (that's how scaling works, actually). The problem with factory farms is when it is applied to (you guessed it) the mass production of meat.

> Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, > vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores

First, this is just not true and nutrient deficiencies can be easily substituted for. None of this is a reason to not "reduce your meat consumption," specifically when humans today consume substantially more meat than they ever did pre-agriculture (despite being "meant" to be omnivores).

> The vegan diet is not sustainable

Based on what? It's more resource sustainable than our current level of meat consumption, for sure.

Look, you're free to make the choices you want - but don't pretend that they're more environmentally sustainable or rational than reducing your meat intake. You like meat and are putting your preference for meat above the associated environmental concerns. Be honest with yourself.

<comment><USER13> > _What a bunch of bullshit. I 'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll > label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on > my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact._

Do you fly less? Drive less or carpool? Recycle? Live in a small home? Did you decide to not to have children? Wear only used clothing? Do you track your trash and food waste? Do you eat less? Shower less? Do you donate money to environmental causes?

The militant "your opinion is bullshit" on individual issues is precisely why the majority of people don't take climate change seriously. I'll continue to enjoy my meat and do my part in many other ways, thanks.

<comment><USER14> You can continue to enjoy your meat, but still ensure your diet contains a responsible amount of it. A diet with proportionally less meat is both healthier and more environmentally sustainable.

I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. What makes it such an insulting proposition?

<comment><USER12> > What makes it such an insulting proposition?

People are bred and raised with this axiomatic, individualist "you against the world" attitude from birth. There's a huge cultural divide.

"Why the fuck should I have to ever give anything up that I don't want to, to help you? And fuck you for guilt-tripping me" is pretty much the standard fare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is a globalized, industrial economy is still considered "progress"? I haven't seen the stars in over a decade. We've lost so much.

> We need to link it to human well-being, that's the crucial thing. Otherwise > we're going to look like a bunch of tree-huggers

God forbid someone thinks you love nature.

<comment><USER16> The current forms of government we have in most countries seem to reward only economical success. Any attempts to tackle any environmental issues are invariantly watered down, postponed, or downright dismissed because enacting them has consequences for the electorate, and a large part of the electorate is willing to vote for parties or people that don't quite feel the urgency, or even downright deny the need to act.

Slowly, very slowly, society as a whole, worldwide, may move towards greener choices (eat less meat, improve home insulation, fly less, waste less, recycle more, consume less), but it's not fast enough is it?

<comment><USER17> > The current forms of government

It's not the form of government, it's not the form of society, it's a psychological vulnerability that has been exacerbated by the invention of agriculture, currency, paper money, and now digital money. It's about accumulation of goods as a hedge against future insecurity, when the irony is that the pursuit of the accumulation of goods and earthly wealth is _exactly_ the thing that has given rise to constant change, from which insecurity arises. It's literally because we cannot collectively _chill the fuck out_. There's a game theoretic problem in that defectors from the "chill" have a leg up on the chillers and get more money, wealth, goods, social cred, sexual mates, etc. The more humans there are, the worse it all gets.

And it will just go boom. Planet scale.

<comment><USER18> I agree, and I think that was well articulated.

Do you have any ideas for solving it?

<comment><USER17> Well, short of most humans becoming monks? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unpopular to say, but people as a group will not change. it won't just happen. We will destroy part of earth and as a consequence we will engineer a fix for it. It is maybe an unfortunate thing. But that's how we people work. We mess up first and clean after. It's quite unrealistic to expect the world to look the same in 100 years from now. We will slowly take control over every single square feet on this planet. That goes not without troubles.

<comment><USER20> I am not so sure about the "as a consequence" part. If people engineer a fix, it is because the problem is grave enough that it calls for a fix, on the other hand it might be so grave that engineering anything beyond simple stick and stone tools might become impossible.

The problem we are talking about here is in the geologic scale of things (250 million years without a precedent perhaps, going back to the Permian-Triassic extinction event), which means our mental models and analogies become dubious.

And as for people messing up first and cleaning after, I'm not so sure either. That's not the way things turned out to be with the Ozone Layer Hole.

<comment><USER21> > And as for people messing up first and cleaning after, I'm not so sure > either. That's not the way things turned out to be with the Ozone Layer > Hole.

I'm not sure what you mean? We switched from CFCs and the hole has been shrinking ever since.

<comment><USER20> I had in mind what you are saying re CFCs, and more specifically that the approach was not "messing up first and cleaning after." The harmful practice was discontinued early enough to allow natural recovery processes to take place. So this is a counterexample to the claim that people "mess up first clean after." I still agree that, unfortunately, Climate Change so far does not seem to provide such counterexample.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We need to do something; and that's heal our psychology. We can't just save the planet because all the thing that are killing it are things that we make "to feel good". Most of our economy is based on consuming things we don't need. Most of the pollutions comes for the energy sector and all the containers that get shipped across the ocean. Ocean Cruises are pretty bad also.

We need to focus on how to get the entire planet to execute on the same actions. That is our only hope. If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast). Getting individuals to do what is necessary will simply take pricing things correctly and making laws; most humans don't want any trouble and will easily be able to live a more sustainable life just through peer pressure.

FOCUS ON INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS. This will serve us in all problems, not just global warming.

To put it another way, if you have a cold, you don't solely focus on making the cough go away. Just drinking cough syrup isn't going to fix it. Global warming is the "cough" to our "cold". If we just "fix" global warming, we still have soooooo many other psychological issues as a species that it's not going to "save the planet". We can't even agree if humans should live or die. There is so much nihilism that there are lots of people who are content on doing whatever; until they die. Lo, they prolly want death and are just to scared to do it themselves.

This is a legit problem; that many humans (either through religion or personal belief) don't WANT humans to live; or don't think we deserve to live. How are you going to solve that by solving global warming? We can't even agree that, regardless of our impact on the climate, we should be as clean to our environment as we can. Half the population only cares about GDP.

Go back to first principles and let's SOLVE THIS. We all watch the Avengers, but don't come out wanting to BE THE HERO. We can solve this. We can't save all the animals; but we can solve this.

So stop bitching, let's come up with solutions. Until the last second on the game clock ticks, you are in the game. Make a friggin' play. (YES YOU!)

<comment><USER12> > If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we > are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast).

I'm not sure this is actually representative of the facts. We don't need 100% of the planet to go green to stabilize our temperature below a threshold and there are negative feedbacks on carbon emissions.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. And you are right. I made these numbers up; and I ca n imagine a scenario that would allow MOST of the planet to go green and we can stop the damage. But in my scenario, what if that 20% are countries like China and Russia; that produce and consume alot of energy. Just a thought experiment. My point is, we have to have the whole world be on the same page to solve the real issues that would cause us to continue to ruin our environment; even when we KNOW we are doing it (aka govt, military, corps know the truth and still continue on). This is a psychological problem. Do you agree?

<comment><USER12> > China and Russia

Well, that's already over 20% of the world population!

<comment><USER22> Throw in India and you now have a problem. I love sports analogies, because they represent pure human emotion and psyche. I'm not a stat padder. I don't care if I average a triple-double like Westbrook if I can't get past the first round. I want a championship.

If you have lung cancer, it's great that you can quantify how much LESS you smoke. "Since I've developed lung cancer, my smoking has decreased 90%". Cool story bro... Why don't you just quit.

For sure, we need to do EVERYTHING we can to keep us in the game and our planet alive; but I'm not interested in splitting hairs about what, for instance, China is or isn't doing. Be real. They have a WHOLE middle class that is growing and wants to live like Americans. Judging them now would be very wrong; because in 20 years their population of "polluters" is going to increase. Regardless of what green technology China invests in; the have a BILLION people living in smog and VERY POLLUTED areas that have NO INFRASTRUCTURE. They haven't begun to start paying that cost (you know that thing that took the USA 50 years to build and is even starting to break in our country). I think they only guarantee we have is if we are all on the same page; even if that only nets us a 1% change toward climate change in the short-term. We need a dramatic change in our outlook toward life and how we proceed to live. This has nothing to do with climate change directly; but is prolly the biggest driver of it.

I bring it back to the Avengers. We are in tech. We all talk a good game about changing the world with tech, AI, machine learning, etc. The end result is just another dog dating app, because people "can't find problems to solve". Are you kidding me? Save the world kid! We need heroes. We need individuals to take full responsibility and come up with moonshot solutions.

If the people who visit Hacker News can't at least use their imagination to try to thing of some global moonshot; no one will. I want you to realize that. I hope that my solution will help (still working on it); but it could just be a toy and a pipe dream. But you know what... At least I fucking tried. At least I can take these Super hero myths and do something constructive with them.

That's what we used to get in tribe, you know? You would be told stories of your great, great, grandmother; who saved the whole tribe. And that DNA runs in you; so you must live up to your ancestors. But instead of us internalizing these things, I guess we just wait for the last Star Wars movie....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Two anecdotes:

1) There was an area of marshland close to where I live. A small part of it was drained for agriculture. Immediately after this, the insect population in the area went way down. You didn't have to measure it. We were swamped with insects, then there were virtually none. Habitat seems to be a big thing but I'm not sure how it compares with pesticides.

2) I saw a documentary once about a guy in India growing roses on an industrial scale. But he didn't use pesticides or herbicides. His roses were the best and he could command a high price. It took a lot of work, but more importantly, he emphasized, it took a lot of knowledge. Just listening to him your had no trouble appreciating his intelligence. Unfortunately this may not scale up that well as there are not enough people of his calibre in agriculture. It's just not as sexy as tech or finance or law or whatever.

<comment><USER24> There was a Planet Money where they interviewed people about the Dicamba murder, and one of the farmers said something along the lines of "yeah, we can farm without pesticides. But it's a lot of work!"

The future may be in de-automating farming. Food is already a negligible cost in the US (compared to housing and healthcare). Create job programs for the heartlands! How is this a not a huge political opportunity! Do farm owners have that much rent-seeking influence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The current U.S. administration is hostile to the environment in general. All Republican administrations are, but this one is notably much worse. It's rolled back nearly all the regulations that were intended to prevent another Deepwater Horizon incident.

All those pesky regulations that cost corporations money! As if regulations do zero good. Well here's an example of where they do good and yes that absolutely costs corporations profits. That's the point. Quite a lot of those profits come from exploitation, and externalities. Inhibit them, and profits go down, not a surprise.

</comment><comment><USER26> One thing that I fail to wrap my mind around: aren't all those corporations executives, politicians, and poachers living on the same planet Earth as all of us? Don't they ever think that they're actually destroying our planet and there's no other place to live? I can imagine that they don't believe pro- climate change people, but they could simply hire an independent group of researchers, don't they? And I mean actually independent researchers, not those who will produce any outcome you demand from them.

<comment><USER27> That's the not-so-funny element. Companies like Exxon were the first to hire independent researchers back in the 70s and helped pioneer climate research, with management being briefed on the as far back as 1977, and had developed its own models by 1982 that were widely circulated within the company.[0][1] That research was allowed to continue for nearly a decade, and Exxon researchers consulted on DOE research and reports throughout the 80s. It wasn't hidden, either within the company or without, until management decided to take a somewhat different approach with its lobbying efforts. They saw the word "uncertainty" with regards to climate modeling as a lifeline, and they took it.

It's easy to generalize interested parties that promote climate change denialism as not giving a damn since they'll be long dead before the worst consequences hit. That may very well be a partial explanation, but if you look at how some of the rhetoric has shifted with talk of geoengineering, there's this idea that a future generation will be able to deploy technical fixes. And once you buy into the hope _that_ offers, it's inevitable that you'll downplay the sheer cost and scale of such an intervention. After all, computers are cheaper now than they were in the 80s, so who knows how expensive geoengineering will be in a few decades? There's a hope that an easier, cheaper solution will present itself in the future.

So I think a larger part of the answer isn't so much that corporate executives and politicians don't believe in climate change (though there are probably plenty who have bought into their own spin), as it is that they've pinned their hopes on the terribly alluring delusion that maybe it'll be cheaper to reverse the trend tomorrow than make the sort of difficult choices needed to start mitigating it today. Or, more accurately, over three decades ago.

0\. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew- about-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about- climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/)

1\. [https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon- confirmed-...](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-confirmed- global-warming-consensus-in-1982-with-in-house-climate-models)

<comment><USER28> Pretty sure Hollywood with all the films about a few thousand people escaping an uninhabitable earth only to settle on a desolate rock is not helping at all. I'm betting people watching that stuff imagine themselves on the escape ship, not as the billions who don't make it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Serious question: what things/science/technology should you work on that can impact this and compound positively over time (outside of just changing your own personal habits, but not to say you shouldn't do this as well)?

<comment><USER30> This is an issue of politics, not technology. Same with climate change.

It could _become_ an issue of technology if we discover some breakthrough, but wishing for that to happen isn't enough. We need to make use of the tools we have available today. And it needs to be done via legal means, because individuals alone cannot fix The Tragedy of the Commons.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. Global emission due to power generation can be cut by a lot (and become insignificant in long term) if we (planet) start switching to nuclear power instead of demonizing it for political gains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Alarming articles like this raise more questions than answers. The number of species on earth apparently ranges from 2 million to 1 trillion (??). One question is whether this biodiversity is needed. Life on earth has survived significantly larger extinction events and in the grand scheme of things "preservation" is not an optimal condition for anything. It just feels good for humans to preserve the planet.

More importantly however, evolution has found a clear winner in its path towards (whatever she was trying to do): humans. We are already beginning to alter evolutionary trends and this will only keep accelerating. It's worth considering whether evolution is now obsolete and whether indeed most species serve a purpose. With brains taking over, life is on transformative path which will lead to it becoming extraterrestial and generally way more transformative than evolution has ever been.

</comment><comment><USER33> The U.S. and Europe can't actually do much about this though. Look at this chart: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States#/media/File:CO2_emission_pie_chart.svg)

If everyone in the US and Europe dropped dead, that would be about a 24% decrease in global GHG emissions. Said emissions need to be 40% to 70% lower by 2050, according to the IPCC ([https://www.climatecentral.org/news/major- greenhouse-gas-red...](https://www.climatecentral.org/news/major-greenhouse- gas-reductions-needed-to-curtail-climate-change-ipcc-17300)).

Bottom line, you're not getting anywhere without a truly formidable effort by China, and likely Central/South America and Africa as well.

<comment><USER10> > If everyone in the US and Europe dropped dead, that would be about a 24% > decrease in global GHG emissions

That's not quite right. A lot of that pollution by China and Other is due to exports for US and European consumption. We just outsourced our pollution. So it depends on how one does the accounting.

<comment><USER34> Same applies to our trash/garbage/rubbish. Time and time again I hear the words "but all of our stuff gets recycled - China/India/Malaysia/[insert] is the problem". Little do they realise that we ship massive amounts of it away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Someone else commented: > If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green.

I'm interested in ideas about how to do this.

There are some MSCI indices along these lines like the "low carbon" ones[1]. But these still include fossil fuel companies, just with a lower weight.

There are also "ex fossil fuel" indices[2], but these only exclude companies that dig up the fossil fuels, and not necessarily those that emit. There is no weighting based on emissions in these.

Are there any broad equity indices that exclude fossil fuel companies and heavy emitters entirely, and then weight-adjust the rest based on emissions?

[1] [https://www.msci.com/low-carbon-indexes](https://www.msci.com/low-carbon- indexes)

[2] [https://www.msci.com/eqb/methodology/meth_docs/MSCI_Global_F...](https://www.msci.com/eqb/methodology/meth_docs/MSCI_Global_Fossil_Fuels_Exclusion_Indexes_Methodology_May_2017.pdf)

<comment><USER36> SPYX was a simple one to get for me: [https://us.spdrs.com/en/etf/spdr- sp-500-fossil-fuel-reserves...](https://us.spdrs.com/en/etf/spdr- sp-500-fossil-fuel-reserves-free-etf-SPYX)

<comment><USER35> That's similar to the "ex fossil fuel" indices I mentioned. It does not eliminate or lower the weighting of big emitters. For example, airline companies are built around the burning of kerosene, but they don't own fossil fuel reserves so they will be fully present in that index.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there a link to the actual paper for categorizing the number of species going extinct?

<comment><USER38> It is based on a report by this group:

[https://www.ipbes.net/](https://www.ipbes.net/)

The report will be published "later this year."

You can access a "summary for policy makers" from this press release:

[https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global- Assessment](https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment)

Edit: The summary for policy makers indicates that species extinction estimates are based on data maintained here: [https://www.iucnredlist.org/](https://www.iucnredlist.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The planet Earth has been evolving continuously for billions of years. Mass extinctions and non-anthropogenic climate changes are evident in the Earth's crust. We're not the only species that left its footprint. We should try to preserve biodiversity and prevent anthropogenic climate change but not at the expense of humanity's development.

We are the dominant species because we deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER29> serious question: what things should you work on that can have the greatest impact and compound positively (I.e go beyond changing just your personal habits)?

<comment><USER40> The flip question is interesting too. What should you _not_ work on, or at the very least strive to not work on or use?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Memories of [http://ziron.extinct.ly](http://ziron.extinct.ly)

</comment><comment><USER42> Here is the same story published in Nature (no paywall) - [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4)

<comment><USER43> There seems to be no paywall in WSJ for this article from where I read (India).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Isn't this an off-topic article for HN?

</comment><comment><USER45> What would be the likeliest outcome in 2050?

</comment><comment><USER46> How many are on the verge of creation?

</comment><comment><USER47> The article wasn't very clear, how does extinction of one million species affect my well being?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ecosystems are all interconnected. As an example, see "How Wolves Changed Rivers":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448929)

Now, imagine the impact of a million species being wiped from the earth.

<comment><USER47> There would be impact but if anything human are good with adapting and with technology. Is it impossible to image that these million species roles can be replaced with technology ?

<comment><USER48> This is an honest question: do you really see no issue in replacing bees with robo-bees? Do you really believe humanity can just technology our way out of every issue we face? What happens when the whole system collapses?

<comment><USER47> > do you really see no issue in replacing bees with robo-bees?

What issue do u see ?

<comment><USER48> Personally, I have a moral issue with it. Bees are living creatures. No amount of tech will ever replace the beauty of a living, breathing creature. This moral issue can be translated to any other creature that we are affecting. They depend on us to be good to them and treat them with the same respect we show any other creature, and we depend on them to sustain us and the planet as a whole.

<comment><USER47> I see, I personally don't have moral issue with it. I don't consider non-human well being as important.

Well, if anything the only time I concern about non-human well being is because it affecting human who care about them.

<comment><USER48> Thank you for sharing, while I disagree with you, I understand your viewpoint and I respect you for sharing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hopefully this will make us ditch the planet and finally look towards the stars.

But I fear it will actually lead us towards an "Interstellar" future: where our inter-planetary progress is hampered by this single planet that we want to save.

<comment><USER50> We're increasingly incapable of surviving on a planet that's _perfectly_ suited to us.

There's no chance we "look towards the stars" if we can't fix the ground.

<comment><USER51> If we hadn't looked to the stars in the first place, then we'd have a much worse idea of what is wrong with the ground than we currently do and technologies such as solar panels might not have entered commercial development. We are going to find this much more difficult to fix without a space industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> So? Isn't this just evolution in action? Isn't this what's supposed to happen? We kill off 1M species, we eat the planet, humans eventually go through a winnowing process, from lack of resources, or nuclear war, or AI, and in a couple hundred million years, everything adapts to fill out the prevailing ecology again. What makes us think we're so special?

I'm only being partly sarcastic here. With 500 MILLION years of change and adaptation -- to a climate we know to have been WILDLY different in times past -- through <checks watch for latest count> SEVEN mass extinction events -- why is RIGHT NOW the PERFECT moment in planetary evolution which must be preserved exactly, no matter the cost?

To me, it's all Horizon Zero Dawn territory.

<comment><USER53> Careful - the belief in evolution as a sacred and holy process is what leads to racism.

I know you said you're half sarcastic, but that means you half-believe it.

Evolution is simply a process by which generations of organisms become more fit to their environment over time. Treating it as something more - some kind of natural state of the universe or hand of destiny is what leads to the idea that it's necessary to facilitate it or perhaps remain uninvolved to allow it to come to a natural completion.

That's a real compassion killer, and it pushes people to belive that their hate is righteous and that they maybe even should hate others in order to help facilitate the divine evolutionary process.

To re-iterate: evolution is an observed phenomenon of the universe. That is fact. The ideas that it should be prioritized or respected or enhanced or left to do its work are all subjective beliefs, and that's a choice.

Humans are a lot less important than we like to think. Less than specks of dust in this vast universe. But pretending that we have no impact or control of any kind in the process of evolution on Earth is just an attempt wash our hands of responsibility. There are many objective ways that human behavior meaningfully impacts the process of evolution on Earth. I don't have the time to find sources or anything, but extinction events, usually involving large animals, have been reordered many times following the arrival of humans to a geographical location. We have the ability to reflect on our own behavior and choose to bahave differently in the future. Given that awareness, do we not carry responsibility for our behavior? That last sentence is obviously not a fact or objective truth. It's an assertion based on my own beliefs in compassion and the importance of reducing suffering in the world, but I urge you to consider it.

<comment><USER54> _But pretending that we have no impact or control of any kind in the process of evolution on Earth is just an attempt wash our hands of responsibility._

Intelligence can be humanity's evolutionary advantage. But that does not mean humanity is the final arbiter of evolution, even of its own, at least at this stage of development. To think that humanity exists outside evolution, or that humanity's intelligence is not the result of evolution, is hubris, instead of being subject to evolution's "successes" and "failures". It's just as likely that our "intelligence" ends up being an evolutionary disadvantage if we end up making ourselves extinct, as being an evolutionary advantage. Yes, we'd have to take responsibility for that, but then I guess we pay the ultimate price,

<comment><USER53> > that does not mean humanity is the final arbiter of evolution, even of its > own, at least at this stage of development

Oh, I agree, and I did not mean to imply so. I'm just saying that that we do have some degree of control. Choosing to launch a nuke at the Galapagos island would certainly shape evolution. That's just example to show that we have the power to interfere on a large scale if we choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm confused on why people actually care about global warming. That planet is in whats called a 'glacial age' on the historic time table of the earth. Yeah, we are rapidly depleting the ice caps (So what?) Yeah, we are slowly warming the earth. (So what?) yeah places like south florida are going to be underwater, and will potentially cost hundreds of billions (So what?). The point is, growth sacraficed now will have tremendous impacts on the future, as the law of compounding returns rings true here. It's pretty obvious that electric cars are much better than internal combustion, oil is a finite resource with tremendous political turmoil and complications sourounding it, and not to mention the costs of logistics while renewables are getting cheaper and more efficient by the year. People in the future will laugh at what we debated as a non-issue. Also, to be honest who cares about all the other animals? The same people who complain about climate change killing the polar bears are the same people who eat other animals. It's all rather laughable.

<comment><USER56> The bell tolls for thee.

Life will survive, but we will not if we destroy the ecosystem that supports us. What will you eat when the soil produces no crops? What will you drink when the water is toxic? What will you breath when the air is no longer suited for your lungs?

The only reason people pay their mortgages to earn you compound interest is because they have hope for their future and their children's future. The future does not invent itself. We do that, one day at a time.

This is no laughing matter.</comment></comment>


India Bans TikTok and 59 other Chinese apps - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tanvi_madan/status/1277626194339512320 <comment><USER2> Pretty dumb move in some ways tbh. WeChat is used by a lot of folks in the business community to sell goods to Chinese customers.

As for TikTok - I read an article that claimed they have some suspicious spyware-like features but I suspect it's no worse than Google or Facebook. Also from what I understand these may be for crash dumps / optimization reasons. I guess you'd have to trust the folks collecting it to not do nefarious things with it, so there's that.</comment>


Why Saints Sin and Sinners Get Saintly - <AUTHOR> http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2009/06/sinners.html <comment><USER2> Or, if you start pushing around powerful people: they push back.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...a modern rediscovery of the eastern idea of Yin and Yang.</comment>


Ghost Words and Mountweazels: Mistakes in Dictionaries and Encyclopedias - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ghost-words-and-mountweazels <comment><USER2> This is great. Reminds me of mondegreens, another phenomenon of mistaken language:

> A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of > near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thinking of Mountweazels and trap streets, I wonder if a similar concept exists in software. Maybe patents with non-obvious but critical flaws or useless embellishments put into the documents, or interfaces with extra fields or methods to trap wholesale copying.

<comment><USER4> I suspect you've finally explained the existence of IE6...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One problem with made up word like "esquivalience" is that many people loves new nice words appearing in dictionary. Maybe, dictionnary.com has not commit a copyright violation, but just followed a hype.</comment>


Court Orders FBI to Fix National Security Wiretaps After Damning Report - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/us/politics/fisa-court-order-fbi-surveillance.html <comment><USER2> *Court orders FBI to present a proposal on what it has done or plans to about preventing people from lying on applications. No actual changed are required.

<comment><USER3> And apparently no punishment for those who lied.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if it is possible for regular citizens to get cases moved to these alternative courts where the worst outcome is a strongly-worded letter rather than jailtime.

<comment><USER5> yes, you need to merely be worth $xx billion</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Zombies Are Here And Living Amongst Us - <AUTHOR> http://petenelson.co.uk/2012/07/the-zombies-are-here-and-living-amongst-us/

<comment><USER2> One such use of zombie accounts was to drown out anti-Kremlin tweets <http://j.mp/KPvgYw>

<comment><USER3> This seems to be the primary reason, although it also seems like there are attempts to modify the Google 'trending' line with keyword stuffing. (unclear how effective that is) Generally zombie armies like this serve either a marketing or political purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much of this has to do with the HBGary/Palantir plot uncovered by Anonymous?

IIRC, it was to manufacture identities on social networks to allow governments and big corporations to allow for "persona magnification" and "consent creation"

In short, could social-network ballot-stuffing be a likely cause?</comment>


Skill Doesn't Matter If You Lack Taste - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/skill-doesnt-matter-if-you-lack-taste/ <comment><USER3> Reminds me of Ira Glass on taste and work:

 _"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through."_

<comment><USER4> I love this quote. Everytime i read it, it reminds me that it is fine if i feel that i am producing crap. I just need to keep on working at it and eventually i'll do fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "If you watch the newer Star Wars movies pay attention to the transitions near the end. When they are switching between each of the battle scenes they use Powerpoint style transitions. Dissolve, blinds, swipe. It's an amateur effect in a movie that is otherwise very technically difficult and visually impressive. The skill is there, but taste is lacking."

I'm sure the use of dissolves and wipes in the newer Star Wars movies had absolutely nothing to do with the previous Star Wars movies using those everywhere. I'm sure it was a lack of taste on the part of the editor.

If anything those were the best parts of those movies, they were at least consistent.

<comment><USER6> I think that point was completely lost on the OP.

As far as lack of taste is concerned, people need to be more self critical and understand their limits.

I'm a good engineer, but not so great designer, so it's a lot more cost effective for me to find a good designer to work with.

<comment><USER7> I agree and might go so far as to say the transitions were in good taste. "Taste" seems to me like a fairly generic word that can be easily misused. To me, taste implies consistency with tradition as well as good design, etc., but the OP seems to think that taste is directly synonymous with good design.

If he really wanted to use an example of bad taste from the new Star Wars movies, it seems like everything Jar Jar would have been the easy target.

<comment><USER8> True, but that would be talking about script and character development rather than design.

<comment><USER7> Ah, but that's our point I think. You mean to talk about design, but taste is not synonymous with design. If you mean to say that the SW screen wipes are terrible design even if they're properly implemented, I think you'd have less people squawking. But you said they were bad taste, which is subjectively incorrect because they are in keeping with the older films.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Taste doesn't matter if you lack skill and knowledge.

The linked post is a fine example of a tasteful message falling completely flat because it was argued without skill or sufficient knowledge. i.e. It was pretty much undone by the use of a stupendously and hilariously wrong example: Lucas' love for (and homage to) Hollywood-serial era transitions.

</comment><comment><USER10> _"It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning."_

\- Salvador Dali

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of a certain hardware company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 'Blaring messages about sales, quickly spoken copy, and flashing graphics are not going to make anyone look fondly on your brand...Rewrite your script. Never use phrases like "4 easy steps." '

Tell that to direct marketers who very deliberately create such advertisements. While your statement may have validity, I would argue a more important point:

"Taste doesn't matter if you lack sales."

<comment><USER8> _"Taste doesn't matter if you lack sales."_

A lot of things don't matter if you lack sales. And I should say that good taste is certainly not a prerequisite to sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Taste is subjective and fleeting. The once lauded tastes of the 90s are now regarded as oh so _dreadfully_ pedestrian by enlightened contemporary minds.

The crux of taste is rooted in celebrity worship and group think. Taste is a roll of the die and a hope that your vision resonates with those around you. It's no coincidence that every great artist is eventually regarded as jumping the shark; their tastes evolve or remain static, but time tends to displace the alignment between one's taste and the world around them (hence the need to "stay on top" of the latest trends).

Taste is almost negligible.

<comment><USER14> _Taste is subjective and fleeting. The once lauded tastes of the 90s are now regarded as oh so dreadfully pedestrian by enlightened contemporary minds._

You seem to have specific examples in mind. I have no idea what they are on this side of your skull. More specific language would be appreciated.

 _The crux of taste is rooted in celebrity worship and group think. Taste is a roll of the die and a hope that your vision resonates with those around you._

A lot of what is called "taste" is group think. Not all of it is, however. In addition to "taste" there is also Taste. A number of the hallmarks of Taste in instrumental music, like the ability to use slight modulation of rhythm to convey the visceral feeling of specific dance steps, are demonstrably cross cultural and enduring across generations. Many of the hallmarks of Taste in visual design (rule of thirds) have endured over hundreds of years. Note that these examples are rooted in the function of the human sensorium -- that's not coincidence.

This isn't to say that absolutely everything Louis Armstrong's contemporaries did still resonates today. It also isn't to say that absolutely everything the old masters painted resonates with 21st century viewers. But note how much of what Louis Armstrong and Michaelangelo did which still resonates and which contemporary artists still include in their practice. We now know from science that people are not "blank slates." This notion was just an ideological fiction. Our senses and perceptions mostly work in a particular way, and this is bound to give rise to Taste.

That said, you are mostly right, and our functioning as social animals with the ability to maintain ideologies as a group bonding mechanism also gives rise to "taste."

 _Taste is almost negligible._

If by this, you mean that the ratio of Taste/"taste" is frustratingly close to zero, I'd say you're right. Groupthink is agonizingly powerful, but that's only most of what there is, not all of it. (Sturgeon's Law)

<comment><USER13> _You seem to have specific examples in mind. I have no idea what they are on this side of your skull. More specific language would be appreciated._

That was a bit tongue-in-cheek, my point is that tastes are in a state of perpetual change and instances that are regarded as representations of "good taste" are generally reflections of today's zeitgeist. Taste (as in gustation) is a good analog for social taste; people have a general idea of what tastes good to other people, but they almost always know what they like to eat and they also know that everyone is different and preferences in taste vary over time and by location. A good chef (someone that might be regarded as having good taste), certainly has his own preferences, but his _skill_ is the capacity to engineer a dish that meets the requirements of any taste (because "good" depends on the taster)

 _A number of the hallmarks of Taste in instrumental music, like the ability to use slight modulation of rhythm to convey the visceral feeling of specific dance steps, are demonstrably cross cultural and enduring across generations._

What you describe are skills. Someone who "has taste" simply has preferences that align with those around them; catering to taste is just marketing. This is not to say that works of intrinsic merit don't exist, but those who can appreciate the finer details of a given work (in any domain) are rare, thus we rely on the social taste as a heuristic for determining which things are good. Those who pay little attention to the trends around them and simply serve their own preferences/apathy are regarded as tasteless. Even those cheesy Star Wars transitions were hip at one time.

<comment><USER14> _What you describe are skills._

They are not just skills. The things I am referring to are tied to >awareness<. I say this as a musician of 23 years. Just because you have the neuromuscular resource to replicate a certain rhythm doesn't mean you know when and why to do so. (And if one has an incomplete understanding of exactly how you're trying to tweak the sensorium, one might also mess up the "how," yielding something that falls into an uncanny valley.) There is a certain knowledge of how and when and why which has to do with focused awareness of the moment and how the human sensorium works. This is tied to deep concentration, which seems to be the kind of deep concentration that meditation enthusiasts talk about. ("Being in the moment" is a part of this, but I don't think that's the totality of it.) This is why so many musicians emphasize >listening<.

 _This is not to say that works of intrinsic merit don't exist, but those who can appreciate the finer details of a given work (in any domain) are rare, thus we rely on the social taste as a heuristic for determining which things are good._

The former is Taste, the latter is "taste." The latter is like the people who only know they should become enthusiastic when opera singers hit the high note.

 _Those who pay little attention to the trends around them and simply serve their own preferences/apathy are regarded as tasteless._

This depends. Those who serve their own "taste" and fail to keep up with trends are eventually regarded as "tasteless" because they are using an outdated set of expectations. However, those with Taste, while they might be temporarily disregarded by those with "taste," eventually withstand the test of time. Often, when we are lucky, those with Taste set the trends.

 _Even those cheesy Star Wars transitions were hip at one time._

Yes, but when it comes to Taste, what matters is how well those transitions work in the context of the work they're in. Certain paints, techniques, themes can go in and out of "style" but what really matters is: did it work? (At a deeper level than mere expectations.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Taste depends on expectation and convention. There's no absolute standard to apply, only local and traditional practices.

As others have pointed out, the Star Wars transitions are part of the conceit of the movies. As an old fart, I grew up watching the movie serials that the Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, movies are made in homage of. If you aren't familiar with them then you are watching a _very_ different movie than I am.

This is probably one of the reasons that I rather like the prequels; I'm viewing them in the context that they were created in. If Lucas erred it was in expecting future generations to be aware of the context and not expecting them to simply take the movies at face value. Since the movies made _a lot_ of money, I don't feel he erred by much.

Lucas also is referencing a lot of post war Japanese film narrative technique; this is less critical to "reading" the film, though.

I've never heard _anyone_ who knows about film narrative technique say that Lucas was an "unskilled" film maker. As for the films literary quality, YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER16> I posit that taste is a skill. There's no reason why someone might be able to work to become better at understanding, distilling, and working with known stylistic & cultural touchstones.

Of course, the meaning of "taste" in general is also ripe for a huge argument about semantics between folks with some free time on their hands.

<comment><USER8> I think you're right that "taste is a skill." I think a lot of people would appreciate content on developing taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I posit that this argument is true in proportion to how much freedom you have to accomplish a task.

</comment><comment><USER18> Related reading: Taste for Makers by PG <http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone see the irony in referencing Star Wars in an article on taste. Not to mention the cinematic blasphemy of indirectly comparing Kurosawa to MS Powerpoint!

</comment><comment><USER20> "when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create." - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER11> Kind of ironic that the title of the post is written in an extremely tasteless font.

</comment><comment><USER21> Skill is secondary to _utility_</comment>


Ask HN : Google buzz, your views ? - <AUTHOR>

For me google buzz is a huge disappointment. The inability to block anyone from following you, who does not have a public profile is huge downer.<p>What do you think ? <comment><USER2> Few things I like: 1\. It lives within Gmail. Generally its very difficult to attract people to whole new thing, while its very easy to make them do some differently which they are already doing. 2\. Nice integration with Reader. 3\. Nice location based features. (I think Twitter is currently working on this. They acquired some company for the this purpose).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's noisy and useless. The UI isn't innovative or fun (or pretty), comments can't be threaded, the follower/friend model is too difficult for end users, it's not importing tweets at all, it's got massive delays for importing other media, it's pure clutter.

Moreover, most of us who want to use microblog platforms to communicate with friends already do, and we have established networks for those things. Google doesn't integrate those tools at all, neither by using FB Connect/Twitter OAuth to find Buzz-using friends nor by using those services' APIs to centralize posting, the way more successful clients have done.

Google reinvented the wheel, badly.

<comment><USER4> The delays and bugs importing tweets, I think, will sort themselves out as it matures.

One really powerful thing I see is that it could serve as a mechanism to join the various microblogging (and, really, blogging as well) platforms into a page that I'm already going to have a tab open for.

I like having it in my gmail, that's for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The inability to block anyone from following you_

You didn't go to the options drop-down next to each follower's name and choose "block"? I've heard that that works just fine. So far all of my followers are my friends whom I want following me.

To answer your question, I like Buzz so far. (I have never used Twitter, so I don't have Twitter as a point of comparison.) I think I will end up liking it better than Facebook, as most of my best friends are quite annoyed with Facebook's new home page and thus eager to try something else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well you can only block someone if they have a public profile. My x is in my "followers" list and does not have a public profile :-( . Why cant they have a facebook like option on whom to allow or not, why link something like this to a public profile.

<comment><USER4> I have to suspect they will increase privacy controls shortly. Remember, this has only been out for 24 hours.

Plus, I trust google more than facebook (I think). You hear what Zuck said? (This is paraphrased): "If we built facebook today I would probably make everything public by default. People need to get over their information being out in the public."</comment></comment></comment>


Shipyard activists take aim at Newsom over Camp Fire cleanup contract - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfexaminer.com/shipyard-activists-take-aim-newsom-camp-fire-cleanup-contract/ <comment><AUTHOR> Importance:

"Hunters Point residents who claim to have suffered health impacts as a result of the botched and allegedly fraudulent Hunters Point cleanup urged the governor on Monday to rescind a contract that a state disaster agency awarded to Tetra Tech, Inc. for the management of debris removal from Butte County in the wake of the deadly Camp Fire.

"It is a slap in the face of the injuries that these people have been suffering for years," said Charles Bonner, an attorney who filed a class- action lawsuit against the company on behalf of neighborhood residents last May. "It is an insult."

Tetra Tech, Inc. is the owner of Tetra Tech EC, Inc., which collected data samples during the cleanup of the former military base that the federal government has found to be largely unreliable. In 2017, two Tetra Tech supervisors pleaded guilty to falsifying soil samples in federal court.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Tetra Tech EC, alleging that the fraud expanded beyond the two supervisors, into the upper management of the company.

The Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, also known as CalRecycle, awarded the contract to Tetra Tech, Inc. through a competitive bidding process that began last month. "</comment>


The Swift Parallel Scripting Language (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://swift-lang.org/&qscrl=1

<comment><USER2> Not the same language as Apple's, in case anyone is wondering.</comment>


Why Are 20-Somethings Retiring? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-04/yellen-s-job-puzzle-why-are-20-somethings-retiring- <comment><USER2> It shouldn't be called retirement. It is probably more like a temporary hiatus.

Also, it isn't just 20-somethings. US employment has been somewhat of a raw deal in the last 15 years for all age groups. Some people have realized that working to live just isn't worth it.

There's a lot of bullshit work assigned in a typical corporate job, and this 'impedance mismatch' forces some people with financial strength to quit and do what they really want to do in life even if that means living on a much lower annual income.

<comment><USER3> They're defining retirement as "you don't have a job and aren't looking for one", which is an egregious stretch of a definition. They're not financially independent or retired, they've given up looking for work worth doing.

<comment><USER4> If they're neither working nor financially independent, what are they living on? Not a rhetorical question; I don't live in the US, and am a bit vague about its welfare system.

Is this essentially about people moving back in with family?

<comment><USER5> We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably. Either these kids are living with parents, living off parent's money, or are living out of their cars. There is no in between here. I suspect that it's the former, which is really giving an awful impression about what is possible in the States. The vast majority of Americans need to work their asses off just to make rent. If you don't do that, you are either living off someone else's money, or don't have a house. End of story.

<comment><USER6> >We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably.

State welfare programs, section 8, food stamps, "earned income credit", medicaid, SSI, TANF, SNAP, etc. There's lots of aid in the US. Over 100m people nationally are on some level of means tested welfare. That's pushing one third of this nation. National spending accounts for $1T in welfare spending. That's slightly less than Mexico's entire GDP; a country of 122m.

[http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.p...](http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.pdf)

The narrative of the US not having any welfare is asinine. In fact, the spending is staggering. When I lived in poorer neighborhoods in Chicago, most of my neighbors were on a fair amount of welfare to the point where they never had to bother getting a job. If you're willing to live in an urban area and live a modest lifestyle its largely trivial to game welfare benefits for a living.

<comment><USER7> >>>We have nothing approaching basic income or housing that anybody could live off reasonably.

>State welfare programs, section 8, food stamps, "earned income credit", medicaid, SSI, TANF, SNAP, etc. There's lots of aid in the US.

I question this response with the qualifier of "living off reasonably."

I'm certainly lucky enough not to need any of that, but from what I understand, it's barely subsistence existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > When you're in your twenties you should be spending that time really > exploring and thinking about the things that give you meaning. Once you > start growing up and living a life more you won't be able to do that again. > -Digit CEO (from video)

I hate the idea that once you leave college and get a job your life of having fun is over. As though fiscal irresponsibility is necessary for finding your life's "meaning" and you can only do that in the four years you spend at college. I really have to question someone that found their life's meaning at a point in their life where they couldn't bother to be financially responsible for themselves.

<comment><USER9> I hate the other end of that idea (reality) - that you have to grow up and be responsible and stop having fun or be spontaneous in your life, because from now on it's career, marriage, career, kids, career, retirement and death.

<comment><USER10> Which are all choices you make.

<comment> steve-howard Career is certainly not a choice I make. It's a necessity. Hell, I'd probably enjoy it more if I didn't need it.

<comment><USER9> Same here. For me personally, any task can be turned from fun to misery by setting the single bit labeled "work".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Totally anecdotal: A few months ago a friend was down by the Mississippi river park in downtown Minneapolis where there were a group of young homeless guys drinking under a bridge trestle. Turns out these guys had undergraduate degrees with massive student loan debt. They explained they'd decided to become homeless because they didn't see any way to ever pay it back.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yea, I am sure the percentage of 20-somethings who are actually financially independent is less than .0001%. Everyone else inherited money or gave up all hope of finding a real job.

<comment><USER13> 300e6*.0001/100 = 300 people in the USA.

There's probably more than 300, 20 year olds who are living off private incomes.

<comment><USER14> Even worse, he said of 20-somethings (not out of the whole population, and not just 20 year olds) which leaves a start number around 45 million, or a mere 45 people in the USA.

It's actually pretty easy to become financially independent before you hit 30 if you finish college on time (while you're 23) and get a 6-figure job out of college, and work for a few years with a small (sub-25k/yr) annual cost of living.

<comment><USER15> It's also "actually pretty easy to become financially independent" if you hit the lottery. Both our examples aren't really conducive to an actual discussion.

1\. The number of fields allowing a new grad to get a six-figure job are very small.

2\. The number of places offering the above while also allowing the new grad to live in an area where they can have a sub-$2k/mo footprint are incredibly limited.

3\. Of the people who are actually able to take advantage of the above, the majority of them will have no interest in doing so. For every highly- compensated employee at Google living in a van in the parking lot there are several in houses they can't afford with credit card and student loan debt to boot.

4\. Gaining financial independence for the sake of gaining financial independence is sort of a pointless goal.

My guess is if you collected every person in the US who retired by the age of 30 and removed those who inherited money, won the lottery, and started a business, you could fit them in in a single large room.

<comment><USER14> It's far easier to do a CS degree and get hired as a software developer (while not blowing your income on insanely high rent in San Francisco city-proper -- yeah you'll have to suck up a commute, live with roommates, or live almost anywhere else with a tech scene) than it is to win a lottery sum over $500k-600k. And there are more options than software -- just because the number of fields is small doesn't necessarily make it any harder if those fields are in high demand and you have the ability to work in them. This is actually conducive to an actual discussion, on HN, because a lot of us here have done this, are doing it (may have passed 30 though), or are still in high school and looking to do it.

Re 4. it's only pointless if you foresee nothing afterwards. To me there's nothing wrong with wanting to have "fuck you" money (not just being "independent") without really knowing what you'll do when you get it, you can figure that out later and you'll have many options available to you -- a lot of us just keep working, with the added benefit of being able to drop unsatisfying jobs without any anxiety of not being able to find a new one.

<comment><USER12> You must be CS Undergraduate

<comment><USER14> Nope, just very close to the fully financially independent group under 30. I work for a living.

Not sure that you understand that financial independence can be just as simple as a function of your total invested assets and expected future annual costs given the reasonable assumption that in the long run your investments will net you at least an average 5% return per year. Is that assumption guaranteed to hold? No, but it's reasonable, and that's what buffer room is for. My rent is $1300/mo, with utilities it's usually around $1500/mo, for a 3-floor house I share with a friend. With miscellaneous other expenses like food and entertainment I end up with living expenses in the neighborhood of $25k/yr, rent is my primary expense since I have no debt. When my investment assets reach $600k, 5% growth nets me $30k/yr (I'm ignoring taxes). So long as my average annual expenses does not exceed $25k/yr, and my average return stays at or above 5%, this is sustainable indefinitely.

And this isn't the only path to financial independence, it's just really straightforward for higher-than-average earners not burning an insane amount of their income on rent. (Mortgages are a different story.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know a guy who was an IT generalist making decent money, who met and married a woman who is a physican when she was in med school. Her first gig was to an impoverished rural area (to accelerate payments of med school loans), so he quit and went with her.

Now he's a 30-something stay at home dad. He does a few remote consulting gigs, more to stay in touch than for the money.

</comment><comment><USER17> Summary: the percent of people aged 20-24 who answered the survey an employment survey as "retired" changed from 1 to 2%. Bloomberg then finds a narrative and beats it to death.

</comment><comment><USER18> The article did a poor job of explaining its titular premise, imo

<comment><USER19> Agreed, and the video in the article had some advice that needs updated. What 20-year old is going to spend less because their credit card is frozen in a block of ice? I don't touch mine that often. There are so many ways to pay, service that already have the card number. It isn't a bad idea, just a bit out of date. I think I could freeze mine for most of the month and not change anything and I don't use cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Grr... autoplay video with a toolbar that auto-hides.

<comment> shawn-furyan As a bonus, if you accidentally scroll down far enough to kick off the here's-a-random-unrelated-article misfeature, then you're rewarded with a second autoplay of the video!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Fewer people willing or able to take a job might eventually cause a shortage of workers, leading to surge in wages and longer-term inflationary pressures, according to Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman._

 _" We're going to be running out of labor as we go through time,'' Blinder said on Bloomberg Television Dec. 31._

Oh, my. I hadn't even thought of that. I guess we'll need to expand the availability of slave-labour employer-controlled visas and guest worker programs, won't we? Let's forward this to our lobbyist.

</comment><comment><USER22> The numbers involved are extremely small. Twice nothing is still roughly nothing. My suspicion is at least some young women married an (older?) guy and are doing the stay at home mom thing. Its not like the economy is booming, they're not missing out on anything. "Maybe when the economy is better, and my kid is in preschool, my art degree will really pay off"

</comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps more are working for under-the-table wages.

</comment><comment><USER24> John Keynes and the 15 hour work week make the news rounds every now and then: [http://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted- we-...](http://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be- working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong) Perhaps we were wrong in predicting that he was entirely wrong. Obviously, companies themselves aren't going to be huge proponents of providing "part time" workers with full time benefits or providing opportunities for occasional employment, but people are finding ways through more creative methods that may not quite register as "in the workforce" according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. People stay in school for much longer because they can afford to (okay, yes, student loans are a problem, but there's also not a critical "you must be in the workforce otherwise your family farm will fail and everyone will starve" motivation), how hard they work is more often seen as an "option" rather than a survival need.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nothing gets in the New York Times unless it interests people over 50. Back when the boomers were young there were huge numbers of article about hippies, drugs and all that stuff because old people like to read about what young people are doing and try it out for themselves. It makes them feel young. Old farts have been obsessed with iTunes, iPhones, iPads, and all that i-stuff for Apple as long as they've been making it.

I think people of all ages and social classes are in a bad mood these days.

I saw some rich guy on CNBC this morning and he was pissed because we don't appreciate everything rich people do for us and it is not hard to find pissed off poor people. Lots of old people like Trump because they are pissed off about this or that.

People are pissed off about health care, obamacare, etc. It is so ungrateful when you consider that 200 years ago people had no idea why infectious diseases made you sick, there were no painkillers, no psych meds, no blood pressure meds, no insulin or thyroid hormone. No antibiotics, antivirals, no heart surgery, warfarin, etc. For almost all of human history faith healing was the first line treatment for everything and now people are pissed.

People get pissed off driving and don't think it is a miracle that we have cars, roads, gas, mechanics, etc.

Anyway you've got to get over this idea that any generation is special; often it is much more like 10% of the boomers did it, and 30% of X, and 50% of Y and 70% of the Millenials do it -- most generational change is a "diffusion of innovation" situation.

If you want to understand the post 2000 period you have to understand the 1960s and 1970s and a good book from that era is

[http://www.amazon.com/uncommitted-alienated-youth- American-s...](http://www.amazon.com/uncommitted-alienated-youth-American- society/dp/B0006BMZYC)

and it explains a lot of things like the hippie phenomenon and then the cult boom, school shooters and why people who don't have it bad join ISIS, all that. It is also the first academic book to use the word "postmodern".

He says "Our age inspires scant enthusiasm." and that is it. People don't really believe anything they are told and just go through the motions. For instance, look at defined contribution pensions. There has been Republican FUD against Social Security since it began, and now we have these private plans which might work if people had money to put in them, and some of us are fortunate enough to do so, but a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck -- personally I still think investing in the stock market is the best massy thing to do, but looking at the chart of the last 20 years I am not going to blame anybody who thinks it is a casino.

People are not committed, they are not engaged, they don't feel like stakeholders, they don't feel that they are valued, they see organizations such as schools, colleges, the military, corporations as exploitative, treating people like racehorses, burning them out, throwing them away.

At my local startup incubator there was this conversation I just couldn't take from some guy who had all this bullshit and weird ideas about networking and at some point it's like "bud... if you are talking to a VC they want to hear you are working on product and talking to customers"

Yet, disengaged people see something like "Y Combinator" and they see it like Harvard Business School, a credential, social proof because if you are disengaged you aren't experiencing the joy of learning, creating, etc.

<comment><USER26> Funny. Faith in institutions created a great society. People worked together for the common good. Then, the corruption and abuses of power in those institutions left that society disillusioned; uncommitted. Everyone became disengaged and individualistic. What happens after that? It really seems like a pattern in large social structures. Maybe it isn't, though. It's hard to say without generational bias. Any sociologists want to chime in?

<comment><USER22> In the old days culture would just transform to relieve old stresses (while planting the seeds of new stresses, usually)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_of_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_of_culture)

In the modern era that can't happen because we've fine tuned mass media and marketing and educational indoctrination such that there is only one correct culture, that being the culture of the recent past. The one true life path was laid out for you before you were born, and if the world doesn't cooperate, you need to try harder.

In the long run you can't stop cultural transformation, but trying to hold it back via weird new artificial technologies means when it does snap it'll be a doozy, make the '60s look positively tame in comparison. Imagine trying to advance, say, 50 years, in a just a couple years. Things that work will be fun; things that crash and burn under the intense acceleration will not be so fun.

The snap will likely be fairly unpredictable. For example the dominant culture today is intensely progressive. The snap will almost certainly not be perfectly in phase or perfectly out of phase with progressivism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They're not retired. They're probably selling drugs. Not kidding.

We have a lot of drug selling inmates (0.5% of Americans are in jail for drugs). It's also an industry people can get jobs in without experience and that booms in a recession. These retired kids are probably being honest in saying they're not just 'staying at home'. They're probably selling drugs. It's a job. Just not one they want to list on a survey.

<comment><USER27> I think this is a possible/probable explanation? Anyone who downvoted it want to explain why the downvote?</comment></comment>