Possible near term mega-crises and mental ability to comprehend them

[repoman]

As we all know some of us are more resilient than others in the face of even general crises. On the other hand some are over confident and get blind sided with problems that a more wary person would prepare for.

So if I were to look at four of the major crises coming our way: 1.) climate change from humans and positive feedbacks like arctic methane 2.) Overpopulation 3.) Species Extinction and habitat loss 4.) Resource depletion.


I was thinking to screen for temperament and childhood experience to get people who are centered enough to look at the problem instead of being chicken little. Yet on the other hand not overly optimistic in temperament.

I think it takes personal discipline to tune your outlook to see reality closer to how it really is.

 

[fast]

As we all know some of us are more resilient than others in the face of even general crises. On the other hand some are over confident and get blind sided with problems that a more wary person would prepare for.

So if I were to look at four of the major crises coming our way: 1.) climate change from humans and positive feedbacks like arctic methane 2.) Overpopulation 3.) Species Extinction and habitat loss 4.) Resource depletion.


I was thinking to screen for temperament and childhood experience to get people who are centered enough to look at the problem instead of being chicken little. Yet on the other hand not overly optimistic in temperament.

I think it takes personal discipline to tune your outlook to see reality closer to how it really is.

How probable is the possibility that multiple crises are near?

 

[repoman]

How clear can your mind be to perceive them free of optimistic or pessimistic bias?

 

[fast]

How clear can your mind be to perceive them free of optimistic or pessimistic bias?

Not clear enough, I predict.

 

[bilby]

As we all know some of us are more resilient than others in the face of even general crises. On the other hand some are over confident and get blind sided with problems that a more wary person would prepare for.

So if I were to look at four of the major crises coming our way: 1.) climate change from humans and positive feedbacks like arctic methane 2.) Overpopulation 3.) Species Extinction and habitat loss 4.) Resource depletion.


I was thinking to screen for temperament and childhood experience to get people who are centered enough to look at the problem instead of being chicken little. Yet on the other hand not overly optimistic in temperament.

I think it takes personal discipline to tune your outlook to see reality closer to how it really is.

Overpopulation is already solved. Your list should only have three items.

 

[fromderinside]

Overpopulation is already solved. Your list should only have three items.

So you don't think the water deficits in nations adjoining Turkey, in northern India, Indonesia, China, Russia, North Africa, US great plains and southwest, portend problems then.

I fear there are five. Let's generalize repoman's concerns to five by including the fact that humans are not at all capable of comprehending or reacting to the four he lists.

As the character said in a newsroom interview on The second to last episode of The Newsroom this fall "If we'd reacted 20 years ago there might be hope".

 

[bilby]

Overpopulation is already solved. Your list should only have three items.

So you don't think the water deficits in nations adjoining Turkey, in northern India, Indonesia, China, Russia, North Africa, US great plains and southwest, portend problems then.

I am sure that they do portend problems. But they won't result in, and are not caused by, the sheer number of humans alive. They are symptoms of items 3 and 5 on repoman's list.

 

[fromderinside]

So you don't think the water deficits in nations adjoining Turkey, in northern India, Indonesia, China, Russia, North Africa, US great plains and southwest, portend problems then.

I am sure that they do portend problems. But they won't result in, and are not caused by, the sheer number of humans alive. They are symptoms of items 3 and 5 on repoman's list.

Actually in each of the cases I listed other nations with problems are diverting water exacerbating shortages in the places I mentioned. So I contend they are, at root, caused by demand from the shear numbers of people alive.

 

[NobleSavage]

Over population isn't a problem. With the other three our only hope is technology. There will be no convincing the world to go back to a simpler time or to consume less. We are moving full steam ahead and there is no turning the boat around.

 

[fromderinside]

Over population isn't a problem. With the other three our only hope is technology. There will be no convincing the world to go back to a simpler time or to consume less. We are moving full steam ahead and there is no turning the boat around.

Overpopulation has already put us in the position where technology is our only hope. Its not about convincing the world to do anything since its about resource shortages. One can convince everyone that we should go to lower consumption but population production will put us in the position of insufficient resources. Technology has always provided release so there is some hope there but every release has led to new constraints.

Antibiotics increased survival but increased bacterial adaptation to the point where antibiotics are now pointed to as the reason we are facing resistant disease. Fertilizer provided food but soil depletion required more fertilizers and pesticides which are now feared to be increasing allergies and cancer. Apparently our inability to predict shifts in niche from technology produces new obstacles which should, sooner or later, produce conditions where we won't be able to over come resource deficit nor provide means to ward off the new threats.

Ultimately no matter what we do with the boat it will run aground disastrously. Entropy is a law after all.

 

[bilby]

If your definition of 'overpopulation' is that broad, then the world has been overpopulated for at least several thousand years.

Technology is what humans do.

You may as well say giraffes are overpopulated because they couldn't sustain their current numbers without long necks. They have already reached the point where long necks are their only hope!

 

[fromderinside]

If your definition of 'overpopulation' is that broad, then the world has been overpopulated for at least several thousand years.

Technology is what humans do.

You may as well say giraffes are overpopulated because they couldn't sustain their current numbers without long necks. They have already reached the point where long necks are their only hope!

Some species do wind up being painted into an ecological survival trap. Our trap is that we apparently need to continue developing remedies for our increased ability to live long lives while maintaining insignificant competition between us and our potential competition outside the human species and proliferating to our heart's content.

There seems to be some tendency for us to moderate our copulation success when we achieve material independence. That doesn't lessen the conditions we produce when we modify the environment to sustain high levels of free time.

Clearly when we don't produce enough to get by we tend to die or try to reproduce our way out the production corner in which we place ourselves when we overuse the environment.

Every time our technological solution provides more free time it is at the expense of degraded available resources. Each release in the past 20 k years or so has been followed by degradation of free time and population as the result of exhaustion of resources. Its only a matter of time until we both degrade the world's biome and resources producing our own tall tree long neck survival trap.