A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
The betrayal of generations from the 20th century against the future quality of life of humanity will be remembered for thousands of years.
That is not hyperbole, this period of human history is alone in its murderous intent to erase the human race and it can never be surpassed for if it does humanity will go extinct.
We'll now begin our unit on "the time the people who wanted to end the world got control of the world, and how that all happened in spite of them not even being fucking subtle about it."
Just call it the century of greed
Greed can at least account for the future. The most powerful government in the world is lead by people who actually think wrecking the world for everyone else will help them reach paradise.
we could call it the century of buttholes and you're going for greed? REAALLLY
Butt holes have a positive function, I do not agree with being that kind to our centuries.
I'll compromise
The century of greedy butthole
That's not a compromise, that's fucking synergy
Nah, I'm pretty sure it's regular synergy
But how will we get more money to the shareholders if we stop pushing humanity towards extinction!?
It's very interesting that the nukes dropped will be mentioned, but the real death toll of the century was plain simple greed and selfishness. Those two working together have and will kill countless more in the upcoming century
Yes, how disturbing is it that the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan will be most useful to historians not as a hyperbolic tragedy that stood alone but as a way to explain the much broader mass slaughter of humans that the 20th century perpetrated and locked in for thousands of years?
TBF the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was immediately preceded by far larger slaughters of humanity using more conventional methods, a fact which somewhat minimizes their significance. I'm referring mainly to the Holocaust and the Japanese genocide in China, but even the US firebombing of Tokyo in early 1945 exceeded the death tolls of the atomic bombings.
Are those generations really worse than those before it? Yes the environmental destruction is unparalleled but so were also the tools that enable that. In the Stone Age people could not have even come close to doing what we are doing right now to the environment even if they wanted too.
The term the tragedy of the commons originally referred to English cattle herders letting their cows overgraze public land because if they don't overgraze it some other herders would do it instead. Stories like this are everywhere in history. The Vikings cut down every single tree in Iceland and the Faroe islands when they arrived with no care for the environmental whatsoever.
Whaling, the clubbing of seals, the extinction of the dodo. There are countless examples. And if we are talking pure human to human cruelty, no war in the 20th century comes close to what the mongols did.
The people of the 20th century were not more cruel or selfish than previous ones. They were simply the first ones given the tools and ability to pollute the whole earth.
I am uninterested in comparing the moral qualities of generations. Humans are humans.
I am interested in the scale of the violence done by these generations against the earth as it will never be able to be surpassed without fully annihilating the human race.
800 years from now no one is going to care how sorry everyone was now about the damage they have done, what matters is the impact and for the destructive impact generations such as Boomers have done to the earth they will be remembered for thousands of years as a calamity.
By the way the "Tragedy Of The Commons" has largely been discarded as a useful way of understanding societies, it is a political narrative with an interest in specific ideologies more than a serious tool to understand humanity.
https://boingboing.net/2019/03/07/scientific-fraud.html
As Mildenberger points out, this isn't a case where a terrible person had some great ideas that outlived them: Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons was a piece of intellectual fraud committed in service to his racist, eugenicist ideology.
What's worse: the environmental movement elevates Hardin to sainthood, whitewashing his racism and celebrating "The Tragedy of the Commons" as a seminal work of environmental literature. But Hardin is no friend of the environment: his noxious cocktail of racism and false history are used to move public lands into private ownership or stewardship, (literally) paving the way for devastating exploitation of those lands.
By contrast, consider Nobelist Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons, whose groundbreaking insights on the management of common resources are a prescription for a better, more prosperous, more egalitarian future.
...
(Hardin quotes that didn't make it into his seminal paper: "Diversity is the opposite of unity, and unity is a prime requirement for national survival" and "My position is that this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster…we should restrict immigration for that reason.")
I did not know the history of the term tragedy of the commons. Thanks for educating me on that, I will now reconsider using that specific term in the future. However overgrazing is a real issue historically and still today. Overgrazing in the modern Sahel is a great contributor to the advancing of the sahara for example.
Oh definitely, my issue with the concept of the Tragedy Of The Commons is not that shared wealth is not vulnerable but rather that the idea that humans innately cannot function in an environment while preserving and growing a shared commons without some kind of system of authoritarian control and violence actively preserving that shared commons is a deeply political, problematic and scientifically incorrect way of understanding people.
supersquirrel: "The betrayal of generations from the 20th century against the future quality of life of humanity will be remembered for thousands of years." Also supersquirrel: "I am uninterested in comparing the moral qualities of generations. Humans are humans."
so like, people can have both bad ideas and good. i don't know enough about hardin, but the basic concept is a useful model to get people understanding a basic concept. is it a political narrative? i mean it's macroeconomics. the entire damn field is politics under a veneer. their best model is barely better than flipping a coin.
don't get me started on micro though, that field is just gambling analysis.
i don't have a chip on my shoulder or nothin'
Boomers lived through the easiest, most rewarding period of American history and immediately and repeatedly ensured that no cohort following them would ever have the same again.
As a group, they are the weakest, most selfish, and least adaptable generation in modern history.
we're really just starting to feel the ramifications of the industrial age, we will not be the villains because at least we did try to do something. the robber barons are the true villains in this. they created annd exasperated the problem while creating the race to riches that continues with the oil industry ignoring the problems they create
the early years of just pumping coal exhaust from factories, acid rain from uncontrolled diesel fuel burning and the nuclear waste buildup will compound to create a truly ugly mess.
The Handford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is 586 square miles that is fucked for thousands of years. even if we find a clean way to power the world. It will keep polluting the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean for much of this time and the Federal Government keeps cutting funding for the cleanup.
in my opinion, the whole world needs to help South Americans restore the Amazon and we in North America need to develop a solution to the Pine Beetle, or start planting invasive trees to take over when they destroy all the pine forests. It should be every humans roll to plant a tree once a year. If we cared more about plant life, we'd make a huge impact now
We also need to find leaders who will embrace wind and solar as our future and tax the fuck out of carbon based energy
we can find ways to slow and possibly even reverse this process but unfortunately the current powers that be don't give a fuck
when the oceans start consuming the big coastal cities, only then will it become a priority
when the oceans start consuming the big coastal cities, only then will it become a priority
Miami begs to differ lol, not that I can blame Miami, they are fucked anyways since everything is built on limestone which is very soluble to water... but I wish they would do their whole "stick their head in the sand" thing in a way that was less destructive to the rest of us.
remembered for thousands of years.
Remembered by whom? Big assumption there...
will be remembered for thousands of years.
By whichever species takes over after we've rendered ourselves extinct via greed, stupidity, and stubbornness in a century or two.
it can never be surpassed ~~for if it does~~ because humanity will go extinct.
Fixed it for you.
I don't think it's that justified to cast 20th century generations as villains as a whole. Most people definitely didn't possess a murderous intent to erase human race. And I certainly can't blame people for overdoing it with environmental harm when the increase in their own quality of life was tied to those technologies causing the harm. It feels like blaming a starving person who just got access to abundant food for giving themselves refeeding syndrome
The word is fuck. Cannot process anything else about this post.
I’m also like this. The one stupid annoying detail just getting bigger and bigger on the screen and everything else fading away.
Best not to feed the Butterfly, at this point I think they do it on purpose to rile us up.
Yeah.. it's basically:
"I don't see why you people get so mad about censorship that treats adults like babies!"
But isn't finding out their job?
We found out ages ago, told everyone, and no-one did anything
Well, some people did something, but it wasn't to try and prevent this.
"oh so I'll be 80ish when the consequences start to happen? Drill Baby Drill!!" - oil executives etc.
Don't look up.
That movie was criticized because it was on the nose, but if there's one thing the last 20 years has thought me its that there may have been a time for subtle implications, subtext, and understatement, but it's long over.
If you aren't screaming it, they won't hear you and even if they hear you they won't do anything...
I think thats part of the joke, they know enough to confirm it.
People who don't like to think or be told they're wrong are convinced their stupidity is equal or greater than facts and logic.
last century was where all the bio, stem people got jobs, 2000s, much more difficult since the turn of the century, made worse by job sites.
how the fuck was a century with 2 world wars, the cold war, iron curtain etc. a fuck around century
Because exactly those things you describe (as well as some other factors/events) were reckless, violent experimenting (ideological, military, technological). And now we're finding out. Like I'm not sure if you're aware but the world changed ridiculously fast during the 1900s and now the early 2000s compared to the rest of history.
They burned coal like crazy in 19th century, killed all the whales, soaked everything in mercury, genocide was the name of the game.
So close to getting it right with Merman Heckville
Many STEM grads are class traitors, we can't act like academic institutions didn't play a direct role in funnelling skilful students into military and private medsci employment while working diligently to instill as much punishment for empathy as possible into their programs.
....Yeah....