[inigyou]

Maybe things are going bad suddenly in the near future. For instance, the projected weather cycle later this year is four times as powerful as a Super El Niño. The US is one week away from running out of gasoline (was 4 weeks away, 3 weeks ago). Are these not things that should be reported?

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don’t think it’s about what should or shouldn’t be reported. It’s about your relationship to those things. If you wake up on July 21 and there are no headlines saying “The US has run out of gasoline, no driving!”, will you breathe a sigh of relief and be happy things weren’t that bad after all? Or will you browse the headlines for other scary things that might happen in the near future?

[pixl97]

>It’s about your relationship to those things.

The year 2000 problem is a good example of this. The year 2000 problem was not a problem. Not because it wasn't a problem, but because a shitload of people did a lot of work to make sure it wasn't a problem. If we didn't have news saying 'oh no, this is a problem' before Jan 1 2000, would it have been taken so seriously?

In February 2021 Texas was so incredibly close to losing the grid that it should strike terror into the hearts of anyone that lives there (see Practical Engineering episode on black starts). Simply put this would have been a massive humanitarian disaster in the 3rd largest state in the US of a size the US has not seen in the modern era. Thousands would have died from the extreme cold that was occuring. Thousands more from a lack of medicine. Fuel would have been trapped in the ground, and ran out quickly anyway. The loss of refining capabilities on the coast would have crippled the entire US. Because of the stupid design of the Texas grid it would have taken weeks or months to get everything back online.

The modern world has become very fragile due to long supply lines of necessary supplies. Covid did a good job of showing some of these weaknesses. I don't think the "did bad thing happen or not" is the way we should be looking at this. It's "How can we reduced the impact of bad things happening". And we're doing a terrible fucking job at it by consolidating companies and industries even further.

Maybe we should actually be worried about a billion+ death event in the near future because of our stupid decisions at a global scale. Maybe we should turn that fear into doing something into preventing it.

[inigyou]

Speaking of grids, USA power companies are saying they'll have to start blacking out millions of homes within a year, to have enough power for AI DCs.

[pixl97]

Hopefully we're still at the point that millions of pissed off voters are more important than the relatively small number of DCs.

[inigyou]

We're still at the point where people who give money to politicians are infinitely more important than people who don't.

[cyber_kinetist]

If both parties are actively willing to do it anyway, then why do votes even matter?

[rmah]

This is, IMO, quite the insightful thought experiment. I suspect, however, that it is very difficult for most people to face.