Easter Island - Humans typically don't hit the ALARM button.

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The Story of Easter Island has always fascinated me:

The Lesson? Remember Tang, The Breakfast Drink

People can't remember what their great-grandparents saw, ate and loved about the world. They only know what they know. To prevent an ecological crisis, we must become alarmed. That's when we'll act. The new Easter Island story suggests that humans may never hit the alarm.

It's like the story people used to tell about Tang, a sad, flat synthetic orange juice popularized by NASA. If you know what real orange juice tastes like, Tang is no achievement. But if you are on a 50-year voyage, if you lose the memory of real orange juice, then gradually, you begin to think Tang is delicious.

On Easter Island, people learned to live with less and forgot what it was like to have more. Maybe that will happen to us. There's a lesson here. It's not a happy one.

What Happened on Easter Island - A New (Even Scarier) Scenario

And the new research is even scarier. But it makes sense. We cannot use knowledge we do not have.

 

[bilby]

Sure, we cannot use knowledge that has died out; but modern society (unlike that of Easter Island) doesn't keep knowledge in fragile and short-lived brains; It is kept in libraries. And in modern society, knowledge kept by a few is used by all - You probably don't know how your cellphone works; but the guys who design cellphones do, so you don't have to.

So, given that our history exists, in (mostly) reliable and durable records, we CAN look back and see whether we have it worse than our forebears. And when we do, we find that we have it MUCH better then they did. Resources are not more scarce; they are more readily available. Famine has almost disappeared, after peaking in the 1950s. In the 1950s, with 3 billion mouths to feed, we failed to feed 578 out of every 100,000 people to the point that they died of hunger. In the 2000s, with 7 billion mouths to feed, we only failed to feed 3 per 100,000 so badly that they died.

In the same period, world GDP per capita in 1990 dollars has gone from $2,113 in 1950, to $6,516 in 2003 - so while population has more than doubled, the resources available per person have more than trebled.

If things are going downhill, then there should be some kind of objective measure that shows this; But there really isn't. Population growth has stopped (after allowing for demographic lag); War and violent unrest have fallen to historically low levels, and are still falling; resource prices are falling, and (outside the ever shrinking war zones) people are, on average, wealthier than they used to be. Life-spans are longer; General health is better; We have eradicated Smallpox, and are on the cusp of doing the same to Polio. Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Malaria, Dengue Fever and a host of other diseases are far less prevalent than ever before, and their incidence is still falling; Three times as many people suffer from obesity related health issues as suffer from malnourishment related issues. The number of nuclear warheads in the world has fallen from around 62,000 in 1985 to less than 16,000 today. Communications are faster and cheaper than ever, as are computers.

We live daily with conveniences, technologies and opportunities that are mundane to us, but which would astonish people as little as fifty years ago; and seem miraculous to people a century past, and literally like magic to anyone prior to about 1750.

The only measure I can think of off the top of my head that is moving in the wrong direction is atmospheric CO₂ levels (and therefore global average temperature, and sea levels); but we already know what to do about that, and it's just a matter of time before people insist that we stop burning fossil fuels - we have the technology to replace them right now, but as it is slightly more expensive, people are not keen to do it. Tax the stuff as it comes out of the ground, to the tune of the cost of recovering the CO₂ from the air, and there will be a rapid swing towards carbon neutral alternatives, like nuclear, solar, and hydro. Of course, that will make people effectively slightly poorer; but not by enough to prevent our grandchildren from being objectively wealthier than we are, as we are objectively wealthier than our grandparents were.

The reason people haven't hit the alarm button is that right now, there isn't anything to be alarmed about.

 

[skepticalbip]

....snip...

The reason people haven't hit the alarm button is that right now, there isn't anything to be alarmed about.

But then, as you say the condition of the world is the best in human history and getting better, the alarm button is still constantly being hit. The article itself was one of those "OH MY GOD, THINGS ARE TERRIBLE AND GETTING WORSE" slammings of the panic button. It is a rare news report if "some disastrous event that is a threat to humanity" isn't hyped.

 

[OLDMAN]

We don't fear long term dangers like we do immediate ones. Living in an earthquake zone vs running into a grizzly bear. Both are dangerous, but one must be acted upon immediately while the other can wait....till it's too late. So people continue to build on flood zones.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Sure, we cannot use knowledge that has died out; but modern society (unlike that of Easter Island) doesn't keep knowledge in fragile and short-lived brains; It is kept in libraries. And in modern society, knowledge kept by a few is used by all - You probably don't know how your cellphone works; but the guys who design cellphones do, so you don't have to.

So, given that our history exists, in (mostly) reliable and durable records, we CAN look back and see whether we have it worse than our forebears. And when we do, we find that we have it MUCH better then they did. Resources are not more scarce; they are more readily available. Famine has almost disappeared, after peaking in the 1950s. In the 1950s, with 3 billion mouths to feed, we failed to feed 578 out of every 100,000 people to the point that they died of hunger. In the 2000s, with 7 billion mouths to feed, we only failed to feed 3 per 100,000 so badly that they died.

In the same period, world GDP per capita in 1990 dollars has gone from $2,113 in 1950, to $6,516 in 2003 - so while population has more than doubled, the resources available per person have more than trebled.

If things are going downhill, then there should be some kind of objective measure that shows this; But there really isn't. Population growth has stopped (after allowing for demographic lag); War and violent unrest have fallen to historically low levels, and are still falling; resource prices are falling, and (outside the ever shrinking war zones) people are, on average, wealthier than they used to be. Life-spans are longer; General health is better; We have eradicated Smallpox, and are on the cusp of doing the same to Polio. Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Malaria, Dengue Fever and a host of other diseases are far less prevalent than ever before, and their incidence is still falling; Three times as many people suffer from obesity related health issues as suffer from malnourishment related issues. The number of nuclear warheads in the world has fallen from around 62,000 in 1985 to less than 16,000 today. Communications are faster and cheaper than ever, as are computers.

We live daily with conveniences, technologies and opportunities that are mundane to us, but which would astonish people as little as fifty years ago; and seem miraculous to people a century past, and literally like magic to anyone prior to about 1750.

The only measure I can think of off the top of my head that is moving in the wrong direction is atmospheric CO₂ levels (and therefore global average temperature, and sea levels); but we already know what to do about that, and it's just a matter of time before people insist that we stop burning fossil fuels - we have the technology to replace them right now, but as it is slightly more expensive, people are not keen to do it. Tax the stuff as it comes out of the ground, to the tune of the cost of recovering the CO₂ from the air, and there will be a rapid swing towards carbon neutral alternatives, like nuclear, solar, and hydro. Of course, that will make people effectively slightly poorer; but not by enough to prevent our grandchildren from being objectively wealthier than we are, as we are objectively wealthier than our grandparents were.

The reason people haven't hit the alarm button is that right now, there isn't anything to be alarmed about.

It's more than the loss of knowledge, it's loss of the source of that knowledge. It's one thing to not know the answer to a question, but something else entirely to not know there's even a question. On Easter Island they lost their Eden and all memory of their Eden.

The story interests me because I can still go to places that are small pieces of Wilderness. Sure, those places are surrounded by everything that isn't wild but those places are inspiring and even dangerous, and they're still there. I have experienced them and can experience them at will. To know they were once there but are no more, gone forever, might be worse than not knowing they were ever there at all. I'm not sure which is worse. They're much more valuable than cell phones.

And that's my point. The entire culture lost this richness, forever.