What will future generations find weird or bad about us?

[Pawz4me]

2 minutes ago, StellaM said:

I think it's interesting that some people assume we are heading for a progressive utopia. I see zero evidence of such a thing. Y'all are a heck of lot more optimistic than me. 

Remember the title says "future generations." Some of us may be thinking way further out in the future than others.

[Barb_]

1 minute ago, happysmileylady said:

Honestly, from experience with current modern reproductive meds and tech.....I wonder if the very idea that it's so within our control will be odd.  

Reproduction? Really?

[bolt.]

7 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

I hope I am wrong also, but even in 40 years I see so many positives I took for granted disappearing. I can only imagine what 400 years will do, or 4000.

I’d be interested to see another thread to brainstorm people’s opinions about the positive things that have disappeared over the last 40 years. It sounds worth exploring.

[Pawz4me]

4 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Just out of curiosity, how far ahead are you thinking ? Thousands of years ? I'm thinking 100-500. 

No set time, really. Just some hazy, distant future.

I'm not overly optimistic about the way things are currently headed, but I'm not totally pessimistic either. I still have at least a bit of faith in the power of good over evil.

[Barb_]

6 minutes ago, StellaM said:

I think if we ever fully control reproduction there will be some fairly terrifying outcomes of that. 

OK, I am scaring myself now. I can go on all day with my pessimistic predictions, but I won't ?

I think there’s a fundamental difference between controlling reproduction and coming up with a failsafe way to prevent it. 

[Wheres Toto]

31 minutes ago, StellaM said:

I think it's interesting that some people assume we are heading for a progressive utopia. I see zero evidence of such a thing. Y'all are a heck of lot more optimistic than me. 

I've been thinking the same thing, but I think it's just because I read WAAAAAY too much dystopian literature and always have.   I do think it will take something catastrophic for people to take the damage we are doing and the need for change seriously.  Hopefully it will be a more localized catastrophe and not worldwide.  But then again, parts of the world are already being affected catastrophically and we don't seem to be paying attention in any way that matters.

26 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

Honestly, from experience with current modern reproductive meds and tech.....I wonder if the very idea that it's so within our control will be odd.  

I'm not sure I understand what you mean?  You think future people will find birth control odd?

[SeaConquest]

34 minutes ago, StellaM said:

 

Just out of curiosity, how far ahead are you thinking ? Thousands of years ? I'm thinking 100-500. 

I honestly believe we're in the decline of the Western world and liberal values, and heading towards ecological collapse, and so many of the marvels that may rely on technological innovation, I just can't see. At all. 

But I guess if we don't wipe ourselves out, things could be different in thousands of years time, and from that perspective, we may seem like the barbarians, and the future-present may be more utopian than now.

 

Plenty of billionaires agree with you, and I am starting to think that you all are right.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/11/survival-of-the-richest-the-wealthy-are-plotting-to-leave-us-behind.html?__source=facebook|main

 

[Bluegoat]

I think it may depend on how things go with the environmental crises.  If we somehow manage to keep some semblance of civilization, people will think much different things than if we don't. If there is actually a society that manages to survive, I think they will have to grasp in a profound and physical way the dependence of individuals on each other and nature. I think people may look back at a lot of the things we import distances - including people, and think it's nutty.  

The commodification of people, land and natural resources in particular. The idea that communities should be so movable.  The idea that anyone can own things like natural landscape features or minerals, etc.   I also wonder how they will look at the way we have increasingly made a commodity of ideas, in terms of things like intellectual property and all the subsidiary ideas that spring from it.  

I rather wonder if the idea of the nation-state will survive in recognizable form.  I can't decide if people will think it's too parochial or too abstract.

If I try and think a little closer, I think the kind of secular scientism, or some of the pop ver of so-called enlightenment values, that is very popular right now among some,is done for, say in the next 100 years it will be seen as really out to lunch and obviously wrong.  

[Barb_]

Just now, happysmileylady said:

Yes, really, reproduction.  

I conceived DD22 while using protection.  I conceived DD9 after having endured years of tests and reproductive assistance, worth thousands of dollars.  I no longer believe that humans have nearly as much control over our own reproduction as we like to think we do.  

I still don’t understand how that relates to future advances in birth control.

[Barb_]

2 minutes ago, Bluegoat said:

I think it may depend on how things go with the environmental crises.  If we somehow manage to keep some semblance of civilization, people will think much different things than if we don't. If there is actually a society that manages to survive, I think they will have to grasp in a profound and physical way the dependence of individuals on each other and nature. I think people may look back at a lot of the things we import distances - including people, and think it's nutty.  

The commodification of people, land and natural resources in particular. The idea that communities should be so movable.  The idea that anyone can own things like natural landscape features or minerals, etc.   I also wonder how they will look at the way we have increasingly made a commodity of ideas, in terms of things like intellectual property and all the subsidiary ideas that spring from it.  

I rather wonder if the idea of the nation-state will survive in recognizable form.  I can't decide if people will think it's too parochial or too abstract.

If I try and think a little closer, I think the kind of secular scientism, or some of the pop ver of so-called enlightenment values, that is very popular right now among some,is done for, say in the next 100 years it will be seen as really out to lunch and obviously wrong.  

It took the plague wiping out a large chunk of the population to trigger a sociological reset. Perhaps climate change and antibiotic resistance will kill enough of us to make real change possible. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, scholastica said:

Did your faith really tell you that was literally what happened? Not that the first 11 chapters at least of Genesis are allegorical? Wow.

Yes, as is standard in any Christian branch that holds to young-earth Creation and a literal, six-day Creation. And not just the first 11 chapters of Genesis, either. Jonah literally prayed to God from the belly of a great fish for three days. A man literally became stronger the longer his hair grew. People literally lived to be five hundred years old and built great ships to house all the kinds of animals in the world when they were over 100. Had babies when they were over 100. And so on...

[Bluegoat]

As far as the idea of things getting better and better, I think that is a kind of cognitive bias, an illusion.  People in a society are shaped by the current beliefs and trajectory of that society - that's how culture works, and most people fall within some parameters of the cultural zeitgeist they are formed in.  Even when they are supposedly counter-cultural.  

Since everything in history has lead up to that current cultural and intellectual and moral climate, history inevitably looks to be leading in the same direction as the zeitgeist - because that is what history is.  If there is any cultural sense of movement forward in time, that can be very easily interpreted as some kind of progress that looks inevitable, an unfolding of the world spirit, a inevitable completion of history.  Our cultural history gives us that sense, and so it's very easily interpreted that way, it's like a kind of material and secular eschatology.

[SeaConquest]

Health care, and specifically medications, will become personalized, according to our specific genome. And, we will think it ridiculous that we gave everyone these very impersonal prescriptions for medications, like throwing darts blindfolded, and tolerated the side effects of improper dosing/medication selection. 

See this article as just one example of how pharmacogenomics will revolutionize health care:

https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/pharmacogenetics-of-antidepressants-a-review-of-significant-geneticvariants-in-different-populations-cdp-1000109.php?aid=73217

[Frances]

20 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I think we will come to realize that we actually do not know as much about birth control and reproduction as we think we do.  I think we will realilze that there are sociologial issues that bioligy like pills and such do not address.  But that, ultimately, to paraphrase a movie....."life will find a way."  Meaning no matter what we think we know about human biology right now....there is more that we don't know.

 

DD9 is an IVF baby.  In spite of the fact that DD22 is a condom (and spermicide) baby.  We like to think that we (humans) pulled out  3 eggs, shoved 3 sperm in them and ta da...a baby happened.  The reality is that we have absolutely no idea why some sperm and egg didn't form embryos.   I have a photo of am embryo, but, given that 3 were implanted, there's no way to tell if the photo I have is a photo of DD9's actual first 15 cells.  

And I think future scientists will think its goofy that we thought we could tell give our current level of tech.  

The permanent and long lasting types of birth control are very effective for most people. Other methods have both lower ideal effective rates and much lower actual effective rates due to human error. Personally, I place using condoms in the category of being fine with getting pregnant, just not planning for it right now. Even when used correctly every single time, the odds associated with them would not be acceptable to me if I really didn’t want to get pregnant. And then of course they are not normally used correctly every single time in practice. I don’t disagree that we will continue to learn more and more about reproduction, especially how to assist those struggling with it.

[barnwife]

9 hours ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

Like this? 

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/21/538472671/world-faces-global-sand-shortage

 

Yes, that was the "running out of sand" promo.  I find the idea of a global sand shortage laughable.  Granted, I live in the Saudi Arabia of sand, but that's irrelevant as the vast majority of sand is much more expensive to transport than to buy.  All of the articles mentioned HAD to have been written by naive journalists with very little life experience outside of college and their urban echo chambers.  Filled with repeated and borrowed misrepresentations and over dramatizations. "people are killed in sand mining accidents" I'm surprised they didn't blame all drownings on this sand shortage (look up the lethal chemical dihydrogen peroxide if you don't believe me, IT'S IN YOUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW).  Or mentioning that computer chips are made of sand as if that is relevant instead of alarmist, the price of sand could go up a million times and it would have no noticeable effect on the price of a computer.  There's thousands of times more sand used in solar panels than computer chips, no mention of solar panels? why not? hmmm.  

I call complete BS on the most of the assertions of those articles.  They are an example of the dumbing down of our society, and the proliferation of shallow journalism that leads to the "fake news" accusation and earned reputation.  

Not that yellow journalism is new, or will be seen as unusual by future generations.  Or that alarmism is new or will be seen as unusual.  I think the flavor of the day is what will be be seen as weird, the way we view the victorian era, or the eugenics/nazi era, the inquisition, etc. 

[elegantlion]

I've often wondered, especially as a historian, what will be made of all these paper journals people are keeping now. I know we talked about it here recently. I think they will be a valuable source to see an analogue slice of life is this digital world. 

They'll think its weird we used to live in such huge homes. 

Cash and coins will be the rarity

HGTV will be viewed as a weird and wonderful thing to poke fun of

Those boxes of electronic cables we all have will also be laughed at, everything will be wireless

The current world geographical boundaries will be outdated

Travel will become more affordable, which will increase the global mindset of this country

Squirrels will become domesticated (okay, that might be a stretch)

people will not work full-time, at least not to the extent of today. They will have 20-30 hour weeks

 

After studying medieval history, I see so many similarities to today, so some things that won't change: 

people will still disagree and wind up in courts

families will still fight

power will still corrupt

babies will still be loved and celebrated

parents will still worry how they're going to make it 

people will still mourn the dead

ritual will still have meaning in our society

Love will still be sought

people will still be lonely

there will still be wine at the end of a bad day

people will still find solace in faith or food or each other

music and art will still be valued, perhaps we'll go back to individual artists having patrons so they can do things like spend 40 years carving a set of doors. 

some People will still lie, some people will still seek truth, some people will still strive for excellent character

some people group will still try to marginalize another people group because they are "different" 

some people will hope for a better tomorrow

 

[Farrar]

Why is it naive to think that we could run out of a limited natural resource? We can presumably run out of any limited resource.

It's not just journalists thinking about this. I saw an entire exhibit a year or so ago about the ways in which construction is turning back to wood - there were several reasons, including that there are new ways to process wood to make it a stronger, safer building material than before - but one of the big reasons was apparently the growing cost of concrete, in part fueled by rising costs of sand because it's more scarce. That's by the people who doing the actual building of big buildings. Not "naive" journalists reporting on it.

[Barb_]

1 hour ago, barnwife said:

 

Yes, that was the "running out of sand" promo.  I find the idea of a global sand shortage laughable.  Granted, I live in the Saudi Arabia of sand, but that's irrelevant as the vast majority of sand is much more expensive to transport than to buy.  All of the articles mentioned HAD to have been written by naive journalists with very little life experience outside of....

...I call complete BS on the most of the assertions of those articles.  They are an example of the dumbing down of our society, and the proliferation of shallow journalism that leads to the "fake news" accusation and earned reputation.  

The NPR journalist profiled in the link was funded by the Pulitzer Center. That’s pretty much as far as you can get from naive or sensationalistic journalism. Difficult to comprehend doesn’t automatically equate to false.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Barb_

[Frances]

Just last week I read a Wall Street Journal article about sand being lost to erosion in Florida. Man made structures have altered the natural landscape and increased the rate of erosion. And methods previously used to get more sand from the ocean are no longer physically or financially viable. Now it needs to be trucked in, increasing pollution and costs. But many areas in Florida depend economically on there being sandy beaches.

[Bluegoat]

1 hour ago, elegantlion said:

I've often wondered, especially as a historian, what will be made of all these paper journals people are keeping now. I know we talked about it here recently. I think they will be a valuable source to see an analogue slice of life is this digital world. 

They'll think its weird we used to live in such huge homes. 

Cash and coins will be the rarity

HGTV will be viewed as a weird and wonderful thing to poke fun of

Those boxes of electronic cables we all have will also be laughed at, everything will be wireless

The current world geographical boundaries will be outdated

Travel will become more affordable, which will increase the global mindset of this country

Squirrels will become domesticated (okay, that might be a stretch)

people will not work full-time, at least not to the extent of today. They will have 20-30 hour weeks

 

After studying medieval history, I see so many similarities to today, so some things that won't change: 

people will still disagree and wind up in courts

families will still fight

power will still corrupt

babies will still be loved and celebrated

parents will still worry how they're going to make it 

people will still mourn the dead

ritual will still have meaning in our society

Love will still be sought

people will still be lonely

there will still be wine at the end of a bad day

people will still find solace in faith or food or each other

music and art will still be valued, perhaps we'll go back to individual artists having patrons so they can do things like spend 40 years carving a set of doors. 

some People will still lie, some people will still seek truth, some people will still strive for excellent character

some people group will still try to marginalize another people group because they are "different" 

some people will hope for a better tomorrow

 

 

I think travel increasing is really unlikely.  I'd say that travel, particularly by airplane, is going to crash as climate change becomes more obviously urgent.

[barnwife]

If we can presumably run out of sand, then we can presumably run out of room on the face of the planet for humans to live, in reality both notions are preposterous.

Yes, we could run out of economically viable oil deposits, or we could run out of economically viable groundwater in parts of this country, or California could run out of cheap sand in close proximity to major cities that is not off limits by ecological, political, or nimby restrictions.  That doesn't mean that sand is scarce, or we are running out of sand.

I understand the journalists fine, they have deadlines and have to come up with stories somewhere, and a story as shocking as we are running out of sand plays very well to a certain segment of the population who is inclined to believe that sort of thing, where will our computer chips come from without any sand left in the world?! 

Regarding travel, air travel with petroleum fuel seems extravagant today, maybe so?  That could change with technology.  Elon could make air travel seem like a stagecoach ride.  Or we could build trains like Japan has had for decades.  Travel is not doomed because of energy use. 

[Barb_]

We can run out of habitable places to live and grow food just like we can run out of the type of sand we need. We have plenty of desert sand but apparently it is too smooth and fine grained to be of use. The particular type of sand we need is growing scarce and we’re already seeing some of the effects.  Whole islands are vanishing, Singapore and other islands are hoarding, and there is a violent black market for sand. These are actually, verifiable facts. We can run out of clean water in spite of huge oceans and we can run out of sand in spite of huge deserts.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Barb_

[Tsuga]

5 hours ago, bolt. said:

I’d be interested to see another thread to brainstorm people’s opinions about the positive things that have disappeared over the last 40 years. It sounds worth exploring.

I think that unions have been on the decline. Women's participation in the workforce, which for many of us is lifesaving, is also declining. We are also running out of fresh water. 

The reason future generations will value water more is not that they will be hippies. It is because it will be much scarcer and therefore more valuable.

 

Edit: there are legitimate, ongoing water wars RIGHT NOW thanks to deforestation and desertificatuon. A big underlying cause if poverty, fascism and extremism in the Muslim world is where they are. Their mountains are among the first to dry up. In Afghanistan and Tajikistan water and river rights are a huge source of minor conflicts that spark major conflicts. And in Nevada, Arizona, and NM there are lawsuits right now... When they settle, God willing it will be on the side of traditional western water rights, some people are going to be pissed off. Part of the ranch occupations in Oregon was about water. Federal lands = federal water. The orca in Puget Sound whose baby died? No water, no salmon, no baby orcas... Water ties into so many problems.yhat are getting worse. ? Anyone who thinks this is not a serious issue globally needs to read up. It is consequential for all of us. You may find yourself voting on weird things like rainwater collection allowances. Pay attention. That is the lifeblood of your city or town.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Tsuga
Forgot that some people may not realize how serious the water situation is.

[barnwife]

1 hour ago, Barb_ said:

We can run out of habitable places to live and grow food just like we can run out of the type of sand we need. We have plenty of desert sand but apparently it is too smooth and fine grained to be of use. The particular type of sand we need is growing scarce and we’re already seeing some of the effects.  Whole islands are vanishing, Singapore and other islands are hoarding, and there is a violent black market for sand. These are actually, verifiable facts. We can run out of clean water in spite of huge oceans and we can run out of sand in spite of huge deserts.

 

 

Significant portions of several states are underlain with hundreds of feet of this "rare sand" that is so sought after by "violent black market gangs".  Some of this is off limits on govt property or wetlands protections, but the limiting factor for sand mines is usually finding rail siding in a rural enough location where the neighbors won't stand in the way.  The huge sand mines rarely take up even a hundred acres of mined sand just skimming the surface of the deposit mostly, the reason is the high yield. Besides the thin topsoil, every yard excavated is SAND, or maybe that's silica gold?  I doubt that the journalists involved could tell the relation between a square mile, an acre, a ton and a yard, those are the facts that separate a credible argument from an alarmist soundbite.

Water is certainly a big concern in the west.  Another example of the current swing towards "environmentalism extremism" is the battle over water in a midwestern area where lakes were created decades ago by damming creeks that drained out of a large sandy area (can't tell you where this is cause I'm hopin to cash in on the sand) that was drained marsh and industrial timberland at the time.  Homes were built on these artificial lakes and the industrial timberland has been sold to farmers who wish to turn it into irrigated fields, which would lower the level of these artificial lakes during dry summers, affecting the property values.  In the 50's or 60's this would have been a story of incredible development, able to save thousands from starvation, create dozens of jobs and help protect the world from communism.  In this era, it becomes a story that technologically illiterate journalists hyperbolically confuse with the dropping water levels in the Ogallala, the expanding Sahara, and the dustbowl. 

Edited August 7, 2018 by barnwife

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Reading through this thread, I find myself agreeing with just about everyone- including opposing ideas, because of the cyclical nature of history.  People will- in the future- be very aware of natural resources and living simpler lives.  But people in the future may also reach a level of extravagance to make Hunger Game Capital residents jealous.  We're already seeing the middle class disappear... but it will probably come back with a bloody vengeance at some point in the future.  Cue Les Miserables soundtrack...  Life saving medical procedures will advance, bionic devices will become commonplace... and yet human euthanasia will probably also flourish, as well as society taking over individual rights to choose their own end-of-life path... and then people will reclaim that right.  Religion will never die, but it will shrink and grow with the times and the trends.  As more and more information comes out about faulty/fraudulent science research, science will probably take a nose-dive.  And probably come back again years later.  Family life as we know it (nuclear) will probably disappear... then come back.  

Always a pendulum swing!

[Crimson Wife]

18 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

I think future generations probably will find abortions barbaric, but it will be because the very idea of needing one will be unfathomable to them. There will be multiple foolproof, non risky (and non-messy) ways of controlling conception for both women and men, and they'll be easily available to all w/o cost. It will take planning and consent of both parties for procreation to occur. 

Not to mention gene editing that will be able to fix medical problems and eliminate those as a reason for seeking an abortion.

[Crimson Wife]

12 hours ago, Barb_ said:

 We can run out of clean water in spite of huge oceans and we can run out of sand in spite of huge deserts.

States with vast coastlines that have water shortages do so because they refuse to invest in the infrastructure necessary to do desalinization. Israel gets 50% of its water from desalinization. There is no reason that the large cities on the California coasts should be drinking water from the Sierras or the Colorado River except that we have so far refused to build desalinization plants.

[GoodGrief]

I love that each of us is sure that the future generations will see that our beliefs were the correct ones ?

[goldberry]

2 hours ago, Crimson Wife said:

States with vast coastlines that have water shortages do so because they refuse to invest in the infrastructure necessary to do desalinization. Israel gets 50% of its water from desalinization. There is no reason that the large cities on the California coasts should be drinking water from the Sierras or the Colorado River except that we have so far refused to build desalinization plants.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2018/07/27/making-a-difference-for-student-parents-and-children-at-lavcs-family-resource-center/#2507ad644e80

The technology isn't economically practical yet on large scales.  It costs about twice as much to process water this way compared to other methods. That gets passed on directly to consumers. Hopefully technology will keep improving and the costs will come down. Or, water will just become something that we used to take for granted how cheap it was!

[Guest]

3 hours ago, GoodGrief1 said:

I love that each of us is sure that the future generations will see that our beliefs were the correct ones ?

Are you saying it is, in fact, turtles all the way down? 

?

[Barb_]

3 hours ago, Crimson Wife said:

States with vast coastlines that have water shortages do so because they refuse to invest in the infrastructure necessary to do desalinization. Israel gets 50% of its water from desalinization. There is no reason that the large cities on the California coasts should be drinking water from the Sierras or the Colorado River except that we have so far refused to build desalinization plants.

That is actually the point.  The US typically denies the problem, refuses to accept the science, creates an emergency, and then panics in reaction to it.  If we would meet these issues head on (shortages of natural resources, climate change, abortion, poverty) and dig for the root causes we could use our historic and unique ingenuity and problem solving abilities to help us adapt to a changing world.  Instead, here we are denying the problem, refusing to see what is right in front of us, ignoring the causes, and throwing up our hands saying, "Well, I suppose it is what it is."

[Bluegoat]

2 hours ago, goldberry said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2018/07/27/making-a-difference-for-student-parents-and-children-at-lavcs-family-resource-center/#2507ad644e80

The technology isn't economically practical yet on large scales.  It costs about twice as much to process water this way compared to other methods. That gets passed on directly to consumers. Hopefully technology will keep improving and the costs will come down. Or, water will just become something that we used to take for granted how cheap it was!

 

It's also not all that secure - it really depends on that infrastructure working.  And, in any case, it's not like there aren't people in Israel suffering from water shortages, which raises some questions about the efficacy of the technology.

[Bluegoat]

5 hours ago, GoodGrief1 said:

I love that each of us is sure that the future generations will see that our beliefs were the correct ones ?

 

I guess this is mostly a joke, but plenty of people haven't actually said that.

[Crimson Wife]

4 hours ago, goldberry said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2018/07/27/making-a-difference-for-student-parents-and-children-at-lavcs-family-resource-center/#2507ad644e80

The technology isn't economically practical yet on large scales.  It costs about twice as much to process water this way compared to other methods. That gets passed on directly to consumers. Hopefully technology will keep improving and the costs will come down. Or, water will just become something that we used to take for granted how cheap it was!

We SHOULD pay more for water. Why should farmers in the Central Valley who use the water to grow much-needed food crops have to compete for the Sierra melt with owners of golf courses, lawns, and swimming pools who live in coastal CA? Build the desalinization plants and pass the costs along to water users. Low-income residents could receive a subsidized rate up to a certain baseline the way there are subsidies for electricity & other utilities.

[SamanthaCarter]

7 hours ago, GoodGrief1 said:

I love that each of us is sure that the future generations will see that our beliefs were the correct ones ?

 

I get it. And rereading my own response to the op question, I see I am mostly guilty. Oh snap! 

[Farrar]

I don't understand burying one's head in the sand when actual experts are saying something. Of course there's "plenty" of sand in sight. If you do to the ocean, there's plenty of water in sight, but that doesn't mean we're not running out of sources of clean usable drinking water worldwide. If you went to a coal mine there would also be lots of coal to be seen. Doesn't mean we're not depleting it. Though, one of the reasons we're not likely to run out soon is that we stopped using so much because we found other fuel sources that were better. We may find replacements for sand. In fact I think it's likely. Or we'll start making it, as the NPR piece suggested might happen - it'll just cost more. But it doesn't mean that people aren't having to spend time actually thinking about it.

As for humans running out of places to live. That could also happen... but is very unlikely since world population is likely to start to dip in our lifetimes or at least our kids' lifetimes. Also because the numbers don't add up. If we all lived with the density of Manhattan, we could fit in a really small area. So while we could run out of habitable space, it's not about to happen. The sand... I mean, it "seems" preposterous to me too. But the fact that the Earth is round seems preposterous to all those Flat Earthers too. 

This is what I don't get. We live in a world where we cannot be experts about everything the way you could a century ago... or certainly several centuries ago you could learn all there was to learn about your little corner of the world. Now, it's essentially impossible. We have to trust experts and we have to trust interpreters of experts. If we don't, then we're the provincial, naive ones.

 

[Barb_]

This is a classical education board. Most of are more than roughly aquainted Galileo, Curie, Newton, Kepler, Edison, Einstein... we study their lives and admire their work. We appreciate that we no longer live in the Middle Ages where we pee in a bucket, burn literal witches, and die at 32 with three teeth left in our heads. Thank Science for that. 

Healthy skepticism supports critical thinking and allows us to make up our own minds, but habitual suspicion is corrosive. It doesn’t make us smarter than everyone to distrust everything, even those who have devoted their lives to improving or saving ours

[Farrar]

26 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

Healthy skepticism supports critical thinking and allows us to make up our own minds, but habitual suspicion is corrosive. It doesn’t make us smarter than everyone to distrust everything, even those who have devoted their lives to improving or saving ours

Yes. Well said.

I think it's a funny line to walk where we realize that... The things we understand through science will change. Many of our understandings today will be seen as extremely incomplete in the future. But also... Dismissing all science just because "things will change" is short sighted. Part of how we advance our understanding and get to that new level of science where today's understanding looks so silly is by not discounting the work of scientists and studies today. Scientific revolutions don't happen just because people were skeptical for the sake of being skeptical.

[Barb_]

That’s right, scientific understanding isn’t a linear discovery of a line of facts. Instead it works more like a spiral or maybe a footpath through the woods. You wander a little bit here, a little there, backtrack, come to a conclusion, discover something else you didn’t know before, readjust this piece, throw out that piece, and explanations are constantly expanded and revised as we continue learning. Think about how long the took to nail down planetary theory! Each interation came a little closer to the true nature of the solar system. The history of science is beautiful when observing from a distance of centuries, but it’s messy as heck up close as it’s happening. 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[Happy2BaMom]

I think future generations will largely regard current generations as profoundly selfish and morally bankrupt. "We" (generally speaking) know/have known about all sorts of immense problems for decades: climate change, the level of gov't debt (currently $21 Trillion & adding ~$1 Trillion every year, regardless of which party is in office), the solvency breakpoints of Social Security & Medicare, issues around health care access & affordability, the drying of the Oglalla aquifer (just one among many water issues), the lack of infrastructure maintenance (which, BTW, includes many dams in the West, which were largely built around the same time & which are all aging) etc etc etc. And, for the most part, we have done absolutely nothing other than to kick the can down the road & leave the problems - pretty much all of them - to future generations to face and to fund.

I hope they are more willing to deal with actual issues in a practical way than we have been, and that they will be successful. But I'm not under any illusion about how they are likely to remember us. 

[EmseB]

21 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Yes. Well said.

I think it's a funny line to walk where we realize that... The things we understand through science will change. Many of our understandings today will be seen as extremely incomplete in the future. But also... Dismissing all science just because "things will change" is short sighted. Part of how we advance our understanding and get to that new level of science where today's understanding looks so silly is by not discounting the work of scientists and studies today. Scientific revolutions don't happen just because people were skeptical for the sake of being skeptical.

It's an interesting idea, though, as to how one might get from "settled science" to a new understanding about something that we previously took for granted. People who have made those leaps were often ridiculed at best, excommunicated or worse. Maybe they weren't just skeptical for being skeptical, but it might have certainly looked that way in the eyes of people who "knew better". So it seems to be a bit of a fine line.

[Barb_]

Just now, EmseB said:

It's an interesting idea, though, as to how one might get from "settled science" to a new understanding about something that we previously took for granted. People who have made those leaps were often ridiculed at best, excommunicated or worse. Maybe they weren't just skeptical for being skeptical, but it might have certainly looked that way in the eyes of people who "knew better". So it seems to be a bit of a fine line.

People who made those leaps were educated in the field though. In some cases they created their fields of knowledge. 

[EmseB]

2 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

People who made those leaps were educated in the field though. In some cases they created their fields of knowledge. 

Right, but not always regarded as such by their contemporaries, so I'm not sure that's worth all that much unless you're just pointing out that we here on this message board aren't educated in any specific field of scientific discovery that we might be discussing (well, most of us aren't, anyway).

IOW, it's interesting to me that they could be pariahs and outcasts and blacklisted and still their discoveries are what came through their fields and they weren't stifled by that animosity or ostracizing. Now it is difficult to get published in a peer review journal if you aren't toeing the party line in many, many fields, not even just the politically charged issues.

Edited August 8, 2018 by EmseB

[Barb_]

1 hour ago, EmseB said:

Right, but not always regarded as such by their contemporaries, so I'm not sure that's worth all that much unless you're just pointing out that we here on this message board aren't educated in any specific field of scientific discovery that we might be discussing (well, most of us aren't, anyway).

That’s just it, most of us on this board don’t have the background knowledge to reject the assertions of respected scientific and journalistic institutions, but you see it happen daily.  I’m pointing out that untrained people, including many politicians and people in business with the power and the money actively dismiss science as trickery, which is arrogant, disrespectful and dangerous.

Science is never actually settled; it always evolving and deepening. 

You’ll have to give me some examples of people who changed our understanding of science who were regarded as untrained by their contemporaries. Unorthodox, sure. Uneducated? No.

As I said above, skepticism is good. Skepticism causes us to question, to work through problems, to experiment and invent. But the suspicion that science is somehow out to fool us is something new.

Our country didn’t used to be like this. We watch movies like Hidden Figures or Apollo 13 and feel proud to be part of a country that produces such incredible minds. The hard work, the talent, the perseverance—we have our kids watch because we want them to see those people as role models. Well guess what? There are people out there right now who are just as talented, hard working, and passionate but we no longer give them the funds or the respect they need to do their jobs. We used to approach novel ideas with curiosity and excitement and national pride.  We have very little to take pride in anymore.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_

[EmseB]

3 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

I’m pointing out that untrained people, including many politicians and people in business with the power and the money actively dismiss science as trickery, which is arrogant, disrespectful and dangerous.

Science is never actually settled; it always evolving and deepening. 

You’ll have to give me some examples of people who changed our understanding of science who were regarded as untrained by their contemporaries. Unorthodox, sure. Uneducated? No.

I guess I feel like this is a bit of a semantics argument. If a theory presented is regarded as quackery or not worth listening to according to the experts of the day, then I'm not sure how the person presenting it isn't considered, in some form or fashion uneducated. And if they are regarded as educated that isn't worth very much if no one thinks they are correct until long after they are dead.

Unorthodox is a nice word, but in history that's not really how people were treated who tried to break the mold. Semmelweis comes to mind as a tragic example of this, but there are others. And even if you don't end up fired and carted off to an insane asylum and beaten for your work, people just simply got ignored because they were thought to be ignorant of how things really worked. Kepler and Copernicus? Even if people thought they were educated (which it could hardly be denied that they were) it doesn't really matter if your contemporaries pat you on the head and say effectively, "That's nice, now, run along with your heliocentric nonsense."

Nowadays try getting a paper published talking about how solar cycles affect global warming (I mean, the SUN! the single biggest influence of temperature on the earth!), or try to bring up any concerns about neo-Darwinian evolution and you will not be long employed at many, many universities. There was recently a whole conference about this in Britain, and it is not wacky YE creationists arguing about this stuff. But it is not easily studied beyond what is currently accepted as the prevailing theory.

I digress. Anyway, my point was that it is interesting that many scientists of the past were ignored or ostracised for their work outside of contemporary theory, and yet we seem to do a lot of the same now, and with greater zeal in universities.

[Barb_]

All interesting points for a different discussion, none of which have anything to do with the general lack of regard and knee jerk suspicion of science we are developing as a societal norm.

[EmseB]

32 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

I’m pointing out that untrained people, including many politicians and people in business with the power and the money actively dismiss science as trickery, which is arrogant, disrespectful and dangerous.

 

1

Also, I think it's worth pointing out that this can go the other way as well. We might look on something like Lysenkoism now and think that could never happen to us because we are so educated and beyond that. Lysenko's science, as it turned out the wrong science, was embraced by his government. His research was well-funded and dissent from the consensus was punished severely. His government literally outlawed and imprisoned those who questioned his conclusions. So I see your point here, but in this case (and in other cases) the government thought they were doing the right thing by embracing the agricultural science and making sure no one could disagree with him in any form or fashion.

[Melissa in Australia]

I don't think humans as a race will survive another 100 years. We are just destroying our environment at a too rapid  rate

Edited August 8, 2018 by Melissa in Australia

[EmseB]

13 minutes ago, Barb_ said:

All interesting points for a different discussion, none of which have anything to do with the general lack of regard and knee jerk suspicion of science we are developing as a societal norm.

1

Okay, that's what I was discussing, but I guess I appreciate the condescension? You asked for examples and I gave a couple. Knee-jerk suspicion of science and lack of regard for anything except the "correct" view is what got Copernicus ignored, Gallileo suppressed by the church, and Avogadro passed by.

Have a nice evening.

[Barb_]

I don’t believe we’re in immediate danger of our government embracing and funding ANY science, even bad science.

Also Lysenko is a straw man.  Soviet support and funding of bad science and suppression of free thought leading to devastating consequences for the population isn’t really relevant to a discussion of US policy.

Or on second thought... 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Barb_