I think its a pessimistic outlook and I agree with the sentiment, but then I switch back to objectively how humanity has been historically and how far we have come, I can't stop thinking, "wow".
Being in my 30s I remember Y2K, OZone layer diminishing and a rogue comet coming to wipe out humanity, but it didn't. This is survivor bias just like the examples in the lecture around wildfires and Covid are surely survivor bias too.
My wife does not like when I solve problems instead of just acknowledge the problem and say "that's a shame/sad/terrible", but I can't help it, we as engineers are wired to do solve problems, not just acknowledge them.
Think of the Dog poo dilemma - most people will just point and say, "terrible someone has let their dog poo there". Then proceed to carry on with their day. My engineer brain says lets pick up the poo and then look at solutions to stop it happening again.
So when a crises happens I know there are lots of smarter men and women in my field and other areas, who won't just get sad about an issue and instead will start working their brains on the problem.
Until it isn't. The Cuban Missile Crisis could have put a very permanent end to it all, hadn't cooler minds prevailed, but that was a binary moment. There's absolutely no guarantee the coin won't flip to tails the next toss.
The Cuban missile crises I would say was a lot less precarious than Able Archer or the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm alert - which was averted, by, ahem - an engineer!
There is an incredibly good minute-by-minute account of the Cuban crisis: "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - it covers a lot of areas that aren't often mentioned such as the U2 flight at the North Pole going astray or the Soviet nuclear cruise missile teams targetting Guantanamo that taken together with the more well known events make it seem remarkable to me that we survived.
In first 20 minutes of the documentary The Fog of War Robert McNamara goes over the Cuban missile crisis in detail. Even he admits it came down to luck.
His meeting with Cuba in the 90s and the new information presented that McNamara didn’t have during the crisis was especially sobering. McNamara ended the meeting early because he was “unprepared” to learn there were missiles already operational and authorization was already granted to launch if the Cuban build sites were struck.
Didn't watch it. So what about the million dollar question: would nuclear (or global) war have started if the US didn't have nuclear weapons? I mean, it's the basis of the US nuclear strategy after all.
I think if someone came up with a liquid solution that could be easily carried and sprayed on dog poo, such that it harmlessly (to either the pavement or grass/soil it was deposited upon) dissolved in the space of a few minutes leaving nary a trace… that person would become very very rich.
That is your survivorship bias. There are societies that collapsed never to rebuild or became mere shadows of themselves. I'm not just talking complete collapses like the Easter Island or the Mayan civilization. In very recent past we witnessed the cultural collapse of Japan after their bubbles of the 1980s burst and derailed their economy. But the most spectacular collapse has been that of the Soviet Union. The moral and cultural sickness of that society is now on full display. It's a potemkin village of a society. On surface things look like they still hang together - they still have electicity, internet and even their iCrap. But the will to live, the idea that there is a better tomorrow is all gone from that society. It's a nation of ghosts who don't live but merely exist in a post collapse stupor. Things still function just enough to not spark a revolution but almost nobody finds it fulfilling to live.
You're talking about the "cultural collapse" of both Japan and Russia as if it was common knowledge. What exactly do you mean by this? Is this your personal opinion, or a reference to some quantifiable metric?
Japan is currently one of the hottest tourist destinations in the world. First because of the strength of the dollar vs the yen, but also because of their culture.
I would argue you're just not zooming out far enough. Those things were definitely a society-wide collapse, and horrible for the people who lived through them, but humanity as a whole has just continued to grow, develop, and thrive, at least from my perspective.
Let me put it this way: is there a time anywhere in the past 300,000 years where you'd prefer to jump back to if you were going to be born as a random person anywhere on earth?
In spite of everything we face today, I struggle to think I'd want to be born anytime in the past.
> There are societies that collapsed never to rebuild or became mere shadows of themselves.
Yeah but the people were still there. Collapse of a society is a change in people's point of view, not always (or just) fiery death for everyone. Armageddon is a change in social order.
To bring this closer to home; the dot-com bust wasn't really noticed by cash positive startups with clients in the real world. One person's collapse was another's Herman Miller and Ducati Monster sale.
> then I switch back to objectively
And that's one of the issues: there's no "objective" way to look at reality. What to you looks objective, to me seems optimistic, in the way that the author denounces as not helping.
> My wife does not like when I solve problems instead of just acknowledge the problem and say "that's a shame/sad/terrible", but I can't help it, we as engineers are wired to do solve problems, not just acknowledge them.
There is also a strong gender imbalance there, in that men have been evolutionarily hardwired as problem-solvers.
This is evidenced by the near-ubiquity of women who have been enraged by their male partners always trying to solve the problems that they bring up, when “solving” wasn’t even in the same universe of why they raised the issue.
It takes an immense amount of effort for most any man to just sit there and listen to a problem brought up by someone they care about, and to not offer up any solutions to that problem. Mainly because the only reason why any man would proactively confide in others with a problem is when they are actively soliciting for - or, at least being open to - advice on how to solve it. We simply cannot imagine why any proactive b*tching about a problem isn’t done explicitly for the purpose of finding a solution.
> My engineer brain says lets pick up the poo and then look at solutions to stop it happening again.
The people that put up the “no pee or poo” signs in the yard have dead bushes from dog urine.
Dogs pee and poo, dogs are good companions, you shouldn’t get rid of dogs or their people, there will always be dogs, resistance to pee and poo are futile.
In my country, there are little parks where dogs do their business. If you walk with a dog in public places, you are expected to have means for cleanup with you. If your dog soils the road, you're expected to pick it up in a tiny plastic bags and throw it in a garbage can. Violating either rule carries a fine. There is markedly less dog poo than there used to on the roads.
Which demonstrates grandparent's point. There are solutions to the problem. Nobody got rid of the dog, and dogs still pee and poo. There just are technical and legal means to keep the problem managed, even if not perfect.
More seriously, I think GP was commenting on the stereotypical response that when a "wife" brings up a "problem" they often want "emotional support" rather than "discussion of solutions".
Not that wife literally gets mad when he solves a problem, unless his problem solving is yet another "engineer system solution" (vs manual labor) which I know from experience, try the patience of everyone involved in family life :D
I'm not looking to get into a whole thing here, but I disagree. There are such things as people that will simply need emotional supportz and then there are those that cannot disagree and commit.
Thank you for replying. You're providing an excellent example of someone that can't disagree and commit and must have emotional support to validate their feelings.
Being in my 30s I remember Y2K, OZone layer diminishing and a rogue comet coming to wipe out humanity, but it didn't. This is survivor bias just like the examples in the lecture around wildfires and Covid are surely survivor bias too.
My wife does not like when I solve problems instead of just acknowledge the problem and say "that's a shame/sad/terrible", but I can't help it, we as engineers are wired to do solve problems, not just acknowledge them.
Think of the Dog poo dilemma - most people will just point and say, "terrible someone has let their dog poo there". Then proceed to carry on with their day. My engineer brain says lets pick up the poo and then look at solutions to stop it happening again.
So when a crises happens I know there are lots of smarter men and women in my field and other areas, who won't just get sad about an issue and instead will start working their brains on the problem.
The apocalypse is delayed, permanently.