What aspects of today's society will we be ashamed of in sixty years?

[bryan]

Continuing my train of thought from my previous serious reply, I wonder what would cause us to really become ashamed of how we've handled energy/pollution/sustainability issues? I saw Blade Runner 2049 and it seems like a plausible world (shithole earth, islands of artificial habitability, San Diego is LA's landfill, etc), and humans were still very human (mostly concerned about themselves).

@7W5, it would be really cool to be able to accurately perform such arithmetic quickly. Reminds me of when you talk about potato vs oil vs sun power etc.

I can't help but think that batteries are a pretty short-sighted "solution".. what will the future will look for synthetic fuel, aka energy storage (assuming we still have a need for energy density).

[jacob]

... and humans were still very human (mostly concerned about themselves).

And humans are also still very adaptable. I'm currently making my way through Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and in book 2 (I'm reading the Everyman's Lib edition), it's mentioned how people in short supply of food---which happened on a regular basis---would put their newborns out to die from exposure (kinda assholish if you ask me) or outright "off" them (more considerate if you ask me) during times of shortage and how making that choice used to be a regular and normal thing.

Conversely, I recently found myself being willing to choose to blow up to $20k to extend the lifespan of our dog by another few years because I felt pity and had the excess money (thanks Bernanke/Yellen). I was surprising and actually kinda embarrassed by that. Now, that spending didn't happen ... but I can not escape the fact that I was willing to double my regular spending for 0-3 years just to keep him around. The eventual vet price tag was $4k, but that's still completely irrational. Even 50 years ago, people wouldn't have thought twice about taking a lame dog out back and putting a .22LR through its brain(*) ... So I'm choosing between extending the lifespan of MY pet dog for another couple of years while knowing that $20k would be better spent doing a lot better if spent elsewhere. This makes me a terrible human being ... but it also shows that when it comes down to it, I'm just a silly normal person.

Humans are amazingly adaptable and selective wrt how they moralize their choices. I grok how choices mostly become local and temporal.

(*) And before you judge me for saving an old pet about to die... consider whether you'd do that to your own child if you have/had any. Because humans did that to their newborn children on a regular basis in the past. They're doing it now inthe present. And they'll do it again in the future. So this informs my understanding of how humans make these decisions, now, and the in the future.

Therefore, I don't think such choices are exclusively about virtue-signalling, once choices become close and emotional, they're often just that, close and personal.

[bryan]

Definitely.

I wonder what the rate of infant "euthanization" actually is in a society where it is not accepted? (Thanks to abortion and better capability to know your fetus, probably not as common as it used to be.)

Abortions have been popularly in/out of style (though not sure if eugenic abortions are really a thing). I suspect the genetic modification/selective fertilization will be a thing in a decade or few and we can figure out where that falls on the moral spectrum..

[Isabel]

And humans are also still very adaptable. I'm currently making my way through Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and in book 2 (I'm reading the Everyman's Lib edition), it's mentioned how people in short supply of food---which happened on a regular basis---would put their newborns out to die from exposure (kinda assholish if you ask me) or outright "off" them (more considerate if you ask me) during times of shortage and how making that choice used to be a regular and normal thing.

You don´t need to go that far. During the holodomor phase (famine) in the Ukraine 1930s people were doing much more terrible things to their children. I will not write it here in order not to disturb anyone. But you really lose your faith in humanity.

On the other hand there is always a minority which is really behaving like heroes, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak "After spending many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw, he refused sanctuary repeatedly and stayed with his orphans when the entire population of the institution was sent from the Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp, during the Grossaktion Warsaw of 1942" .

Generalising, I think that people believing in monoteistic religions like Islam, Chirstianity or Judaism are much more likely to behave like heroes. Because all the talk about human rights, respecting the weak etc. people comes from this side of religion.

If you read some antropology books you will find that killing off the weak, newborns, elderly was perfectly normal in the "old days". In Papua New Guinea it is perfectly normal for a new mother to strangulate the newborn if she doesn´t feel like raising it. The newborn becomes "human" only after the mother introduces it to the tribe.

In the Roman Empire it was also normal. Only in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church forbade parents to sleep in one bed with their children in order to prevent them from suffocating their children.

[7Wannabe5]

Humans are amazingly adaptable and selective wrt how they moralize their choices. I grok how choices mostly become local and temporal.

Right. That's why many of us become stuck in moral quandaries, such as my belief that I shouldn't eat meat if I don't have the steel that would allow me to slaughter a meat rabbit I raised, held in conflict with my belief that I absolutely would choose to slaughter a meat rabbit if I found myself responsible for feeding a hungry grandchild (or any human child in my care) under adverse circumstances. Realistic situational morality falls somewhere in between Ideal situational morality and Worst-case scenario situational morality. I observe this every day in the contrast between teaching in a very affluent community vs. teaching in a very low income community. Oftentimes policy-makers create rules that will result in terrible unintended consequences when uniformly applied across realms of varying resource bases. For instance, the policy that requires that very low functioning children be included in the general classroom population results in complete mayhem in low resource realm, but wonderful result of increased empathy in high resource realm. It's like the difference between being a medic working at the front line during a battle vs. being a medical assistant working in a V.A. hospital back state side.

@Ego: I asked my 77 year old multi-millionaire friend who grew up with 12 siblings on a farm in Illinois in the 40s/50s and is fairly knowledgeable about commodities investing, about efficiency of domestic animals eating crops. He said it was efficient when he was a kid because the simple equipment pulled by small tractors or draft horse left a lot of the crop in the field and the animals would clean it up. Also, one of his jobs was to walk along the roadside with one of his brothers and the dairy cows so they could mow the grass. It was a boring job, so he whittled a board into the shape of a bat, and practiced at hitting pebbles until he became quite skilled. Nowadays, soybeans and corn are produced from very expensive patented seed utilizing 16 row machines that use GPS and can even run at night and reject dud seeds, and very little of the crop is left for gleaning after harvesting. However, these machines cost upwards of $250,000 and require technical maintenance/updates, so can't be profitably utilized on small self-sufficient farm of less than 100 acres,such as the one my friend grew up on.

Maybe a general suggestion would be to try to go to the "front-line" and observe the practical difficulties with the production of anything, such as food crops or educated students, under adverse conditions, and then observe again under ideal conditions, before suggesting a generalized policy. For instance, "spend much less than you earn" is kind of a no-brainer policy for a young single person with a STEM degree under belt already, but a bit trickier for an individual with high school degree, disabled parent, mentally ill sibling, 3 kids under the age of 6, and no spouse. Initial conditions are very important consideration in systems theory. Authority (inclusive of self-authority which is pre-requisite for personal freedom) in practice comes down to deciding what will live and what will die, what will be tolerated and what will be exiled/thrown-out, within defined boundary. Shrinking the boundary down to level of own skin, contents of a back-pack and flow of money from a stock of passively-maintained productive assets is not a model without consequences.

[Ego]

@7W, I am not 100% consistent and admit to cultivating rationalizations for my infrequent airline travel and frequent use of airmail. I enjoy reading your long paragraphs of complex rationalizations because they help me to understand how I germinate and grow my own.

[7Wannabe5]

Consistency? That's a whole 'nother metric can of worms. I highly doubt I hit 18% even on a good day. How can anybody behave consistently when there is new information coming in every minute? For instance, just yesterday I read a study that proved that people with fat thighs live longer than people with skinny thighs, and I have already changed my behavior in alignment with this factoid

However, I would note for the record that when I was teaching high school level Home Economics yesterday, I did suggest that the Halloween Party menu for 50 might better be adjusted to include 40 portions vegetarian/vegan and 10 portions meat alternative, rather than the opposite proportion which was required in the assignment, and I informed the class about the availability of Kosher marshmallows.

I think shooting for 100% Vegan is about as likely to succeed as my suggestion of only allowing men to have sex with women over the age of 50 in order to reduce population. I think the term used in the article Jacob posted was something like "plasticity" of intended audience.

[Jason]

I'm American, so I can only respond to American society.

The concept of shame is more prevalent in older societies i.e. those dating back to the feudal period, where shame was utilized as public deterrent. That's why in Japan and other Asian countries, despite their economic and technological advancement, when there is corporate malfeasance there is a public display of contrition. There is also a higher suicide rate amongst those in authority that fail. They die on their own sword.

In America, where we value independence and rugged individualism, and have moved away from our puritan roots, shame is really not a part of our culture. That's why we are a country of second chances. We love the rise-fall-rise narrative.

But recently, and I'm not sure exactly when, its moved in the complete opposite direction and that's what I think we will feel ashamed about the most - not only our complete lack of shame but the fact that we live in a Kardashian world of public exhibitionism where the very lack of shame, virtue, and accomplishment are rewarded. At least that's what I hope.

[EMJ]

60 years ago:
The Lost Children of Tuam
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ldren.html

[bryan]

@EMJ, nice article, as well as the interviews with Catherine, etc, on youtube. Empathy indeed.

Really mental to realize (or be reminded) how close to the present "history" really is.. and how much is lost.

Maybe not recording/archiving our waking lives for history (like in the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You") will be seen as a big mistake ("a shame"; the dead can't feel shame and I doubt their progeny will have to worry too much..)? I know we wish we had more records of past cultures and I know many families wished they had more records of previous generations. In fact.. imagine the EHoY universe after a generation or two... very interesting (like, verrry interesting).

[BRUTE]

brute wishes there was less history. humans are doomed to repeat it anyway, might as well not put spoilers everywhere.

[slowtraveler]

@7w
"Shrinking the boundary down to level of own skin, contents of a back-pack and flow of money from a stock of passively-maintained productive assets is not a model without consequences."
Sounds mildly similar to me, though I'm not fully passive in my investments or down to just 1 backpack yet. What consequences are you alluding to? You make them sound steeper than I believe them to be.

@op
I believe in the singularity so I don't think this is truly knowable, not that the future ever was. But I hope we feel shame in having worked so hard, in having chased the carrot so much. In working 100 hour works and sleeping less than 8 hours a night. In skipping dinners with family, friends, loved ones to make more money. In letting companies externalize so many costs for the sake of higher earnings at the expense of the environment.

[Jason]

60 years ago:
The Lost Children of Tuam
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ldren.html

That seems to cut to the very soul of a country.

And I'm thinking there will be a movie.

[7Wannabe5]

@slowtraveler:

When I ran my small business out of my house, I stored my inventory nearby, and I paid my own children to work for me. Then my children went off to college, and I shipped all my inventory out to Amazon's warehouses. So, the situation had become more abstract, but it was still pretty clear that I was outsourcing work my children previously did to some employees of Amazon, maybe robots or humans who I did not and would not come to know.

Now, it is true that I did not pay my children very much, and I did require that they do work such as hauling around 40 lb. boxes full of books in a barn in January in Michigan, BUT I also hired my daughter's best friend, so that the two of them could chit-chat and have snacks together after school while they packed the books for shipment, and I did allow my son to have complete autonomy over the tasks he performed. So, it was all rather mutually beneficial.

So, the way I see it is that when you are passively invested in a business, and hoping it will succeed, that is just like if I had been hoping my business was so successful I could also employ, house, and feed another baby that I didn't have. The fact that there is just this very, very, long and skinny umbilical cord connecting you to your passive income flow in your system diagram doesn't negate the fact that there was some pregnant Chinese woman in a smock top working in the factory you owned 1/10,000,000th share of for two months last year. And, I'm not talking about moral responsibility or anything like that. I'm talking about math and science. Either something or someone is growing on the planet to feed you through the umbilical cord, or you and your fellow investors are just hoping that something is growing on the planet and really that is just a balloon under the Chinese worker woman's smock, and not your baby.

[EMJ]

In a situation such as the nuns in Tuam, a question is: why did no one say anything? Easy to think that each of us would speak up if we knew. But would we, would you?

An interesting discussion on whistle-blowing to think about in this and other contexts:

But if you are thinking of leaking, should you do it? Think hard. Only a very few who could, possibly should.

There may be legal consequences and perhaps criminal prosecution. (There may even be legal consequences for discussing it like this. I hope not.) They will certainly lose their job if discovered. They may become unemployable. It’s one thing to enjoy being a cause celebre, or have the quiet satisfaction of bringing about change, quite another to figure out what to put on LinkedIn and how to describe the lack of a reference when you’ve just blown up your career.

Whistle-blowers generally have their lives wrecked. This is pretty much universal. If you are a whistle-blower, you can say goodbye to several years of your life, and perhaps never fully recover your peace of mind and faith in mankind. There is a phenomenal amount of comfortable cowardice going round, and it’s horrible to be on the wrong end of it.

http://crookedtimber.org/2017/10/29/sho ... t-reports/

[7Wannabe5]

That's why it's better to live someplace where most people have their own 5 acres and there is a free press etc., so most people have some f.u. flexibility. One of my many red-headed Irish-American cousins was one of the primary whistle-blowers on the SEC, and I think he is doing okay. The problem is that many people think that loyalty and discretion are virtues, because (for obvious reasons) they have been trained to believe that they are. Shame can only grow in a closet, and it is one of the primary Vices along with Gluttony, Rage, Judgment, Sloth, Martyrdom, Ambition, Envy, and Greed.

[ira_kart]

Trying to find water on Mars and Moon when we make our oceans dirty.

Trying to find habitable planets in Space when we are driving our own beautiful planet to the brink of death, why to colonise them and make them dirty and move on? Why cant we realise this Eath is living and breathing.

[bryan]

@ira_kart, seems like that might be attribution error (which is something that is personally frustrating, especially on social media). I mean, folks saying we need to expand onto other planets are not saying we shouldn't sustain the Earth, folks wanting to find water out there are not saying we shouldn't keep the rivers and oceans clean? I think?

[ira_kart]

@bryan - for me, it is n't about the people who are arguing the case on social media. Social media does not capture the thoughts of the whole earth. It is about humanity's (as a whole species) quest for betterment. yes, I agree those on social media are not saying we do not want to sustain Earth, but my question for us, is why do we (Govt+Corp+people) continue to spoil this place we call our home(Remembering Carl Sagan's Pale blue dot where he says this is our home) and still continue to explore outer space. Why can't we spend the resources (money+ human will+efforts) we use on exploration of outer space on helping everyone on Earth lead a better life and then lead the quest for space with everyone on equal footing? i understand this is never going to happen, but just a wishful thinking on behalf of our species. I do not like ourselves to be painted as bad compared to others on this Earth.

[bryan]

I meant social media for the general case, where it is apparently used to point out some hypocrisy, irony, etc, and get internet points. Here's a not very good example since it's just a joke and it's just the first I could find: https://twitter.com/mckellogs/status/983402706843860993 the possible error is that since allegedly old people think young folks spend too much time on the phone instead of X, these specific old people are hypocrites. I've seen some real humdingers, sadly.