Not only teflon, but pfas. Overuse of pesticides. The second coming of authoritarianism 80 years after the last time. Not doing enough about climate change. Anthropocene extinction.
plastic will still be everywhere. The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
> social media as news
Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
> teflon
teflon has gotten a lot better since it was introduced. It will stick around.
> fossil fuel cars
will be seen like rotary phones: they will not understand why they are so cumbersome or why so many people had resistance against electric cars. It's like electric lights versus living with only oil/candle lights.
I think a near term would be: "you had to go to a cinema to watch a movie?"
> The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
Look at all the wood you have in your house.
Notice that it is still there. Despite the fact that bacteria are very, very good at eating wood.
Even in the hypothetical case that bacteria evolve that can digest plastic, the idea that they would somehow instantly spread to consume all plastic in the world is ludicrous.
We would just need to take a few new precautions with it.
A bacteria that could eat plastic and shit something nicer or at least further-biodegradable would be an absolute miracle. Sprinkle it on every landfill and ocean "plastic island" in the world and let it do its thing.
Oh, absolutely—and as I understand it, something like that has already been discovered or developed, at least in early stages (though I don't recall whether it's a bacteria or a fungus offhand).
But the post I was responding to made it sound like a plastic-eating bacteria would just instantly dissolve all the plastic in your house.
This is my take (speaking of political preferences) but gender reassignment surgery is going to look like giving people lobotomies.
I don't know when but I think attitudes abut sex/gender in future will be really different - not your side won and my side lost but just different then we understand. Like people won't do single sex sport different. I think the model for sports in the future is things like those obstacle course shows - Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities; so they know that a woman doing X is much more amazing then a man doing X+10.
> but gender reassignment surgery is going to look like giving people lobotomies.
Unlike lobotomies, there will always be some subset of the population who needs those kinds of surgeries. That said, as they've become increasingly sought after I do sometimes wonder if there will be enough detransitiors to cause us to be more cautious about performing them as readily in as many situations. Especially at young ages.
> Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities;
I doubt that'll happen. Not as long as we have sports with winners and losers. Too often it would mean that women would never (or almost never) win. Women would need to accept never stepping into the winners circle and taking the trophy home. Either that or we'd end up giving two trophies at the end of every game, one trophy for the best male winner, and another for the best female loser. At that point however, the men and women aren't really in the same competition with each other and you might as well just have two separate teams.
There are also a number of sports where it would be dangerous for women and men to compete together. It works out fine when they're just taking turns running an obstacle course, but it's less fine when you've got men killing and causing serious harm to women in contact sports like rugby, MMA, and ice hockey. There are sports that many women wouldn't want to participate in at all if they had to play against men. We shouldn't deny those women the ability to play the sports they love on teams where they feel safe. That said, I've always felt that the men's teams should be open to anyone who wants to participate and can qualify (and often that's already the case today).
Not to overly infantilize the fairer sex here, but imagine that same proposal only with children. We don't put 6 year olds on NFL teams for many of the same reasons. No amount of bonus points awarded to the kids for the handicap of their size/skill would make it acceptable. It'd be less safe, it'd be demoralizing for children to lose all the time, and it'd be less fun for the players and less fun to watch for spectators. People want to see the best of the best go head to head. We can compartmentalize them because even pitting teams of the best 10-12 year olds against each other is exciting. Everybody has a reasonably fair chance. What teams would even pick up the 8 year old football player when they could get even a poor adult player instead? I know that the differences between men and women athletes aren't as extreme but I think it illustrates the issues.
Plus having separate teams for people of different sexes, ages, weight classes, and skill levels means that there are more games to play/watch/bet on/sell tickets for.
The other stuff the parent mentioned I don't know about but this one I can totally see. Legalized gambling is going to see like a weird mania of this time in the future.
Time will ultimately tell, but I'd guess that the brief period of illegal gambling might end up being the weird blip, just like I think the period of illegal drugs will ultimately turn out to be a brief blip of history.
You think that our grandchildren will be shocked by sugar, something that has been in use for hundreds of years (and that's just refined sugar, not counting natural forms)? Not very likely.
Seeing some "coffee" products sold I feel there is certain line involved. And we are clearly over it. 100-200 grams of sugar in single drink. I think some sort of limits might reasonably be in order with those outliers.
Perhaps overuse of medication. No real proof it works, severe side effects, "misterious" rise in cancer and other dissieases, state sanctioned censorship, billion dolar corruption scandals...
All or almost all of fire is my guess. My guess is that celebratory fire is last to go, bonfires, fireworks, in 2070 probably roasting marshmallows is at the edge of reasonable behaviour, but the idea that we deliberately burned things as part of normal life will seem very odd.
In 1870 fire is the usual (and incredibly wasteful) way humans make light and heat everywhere. In 1970 there's more abstraction, the light is electrical but from thermal generation, so there is still fire but it's somewhere else, and your heat is more likely from fire inside a metal box in a distant room, a gas, oil or in some cases coal boiler to heat air or water.
My guess is that even in pessimistic models in 2070 that's all electrical and the electricity is generated from sources which do not involve fire. PV, wind, hydro, even the geothermal and nuclear plants don't actually make fire to heat steam, they're just hot.
It's not about giving a shit. It's about everything costing money and the highly engineered finance math that underpins 99.9% of construction/development and all the sub trades works out best when you use high efficiency everything which doesn't have "hot" exhaust so you get little vent stacks per appliance instead of a chimney.
I don't think new builds in this country (unless they're large houses and it's for show) have had chimneys for close to fifty years.
Bathrooms needing an openable window for ventilation lasted longer than chimneys here and I guess those were gone by like the turn of the century because fans†?
I feel like kitchens even if not burning stuff should have proper extraction fans. So I think there likely will be more balanced view with proper ventilation and air quality.
Sure, as has slavery and rape as a spoil of war, but we’ve managed to make that taboo in the last couple of hundred, so maybe there’s hope for us yet despite thousands of years of doing the wrong thing!
Just Covid? Not all vaccinations for endemic disease they will definitely be exposed to?
If so, why just covid? If not, when is the right time, if any, to give vaccinations that appear to be very effective (or do we think the data is unreliable/dishonest here?).
I certainly have my own take here but I'm trying to ask a neutral question and understand your perspective before it gets downvoted away.