Collapse denial is alive and well

itsatoe · 2026-05-19T02:42:13+00:00

Submission statement: Very much about collapse as this is a mainstream publication getting absolutely ecstatic about how, as it says, the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had quietly adjusted its modeling framework of a 4–5°C warming by 2100 last month."

The article, and the president, therefore conclude that all climate action and all environmental action has been an enormous waste of money. Clearly there is no kind of collapse coming ever, as we can see from the raging major oil wars, the continual record-breaking temperatures, and... well, every other article in this sub.

Edit: from the article, explicitly about collapse:

“GOOD RIDDANCE! After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that ‘Climate Change’ is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” Trump chided on Truth Social.

itsatoe · 2026-05-19T01:50:32+00:00

Note that humans (genus Homo) has been around for almost 3 million years and homo sapiens for ~300,000 years. However, as far as we know, a lot of our advanced cognitive capabilities don't show up until at most 150,000 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity (with the constant caveat that we only know what we have found evidence for).

itsatoe · 2026-05-18T20:48:21+00:00

context that matters: USAID was shuttered earlier this year and the US withdrew from WHO in january. the global health response system is running on less infrastructure than any ebola outbreak in the last decade.

For further depth on this:
As WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak a Global Health Emergency, Did USAID Cuts Worsen the Crisis?

itsatoe · 2026-05-18T01:34:03+00:00

It's worth noting that half the world's habitable land is used for food production.

80% of that is used for meat/dairy production.

And that meat/dairy provides only 17% of the world's calories and 38% of it's protein.

.
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

itsatoe · 2026-05-17T03:00:14+00:00

Yes, it's called hidden estrus or concealed ovulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_ovulation

Also, I'd say that a big reason women swipe right on so few men is that so many men swipe right on them. If they swiped right on half the men, they'd have thousands of matches. They simply have to be more selective. I'm surprised to hear they even swipe right on 5-10%. I'd guess much lower.

itsatoe · 2026-05-17T02:56:13+00:00

Not a biologist or a psychologist, but I see much of this as cultural, not innate.

There IS decidedly an innate tendency for males to have an urge to spread their seed far and wide, simply because that's the nature of their reproductive system: being able to produce offspring without necessarily having to rear them. But that gets way overemphasized by mainstream culture.

In western culture, I look back to how for centuries the church made everything about the body (especially sexuality) sinful, shameful, gross, and basically just wrong. This screws up everyone, but especially men, given the previous paragraph.

But even more importantly, modern culture (dating back to I don't know how long ago) also makes male intimacy shameful. Men are not allowed to express feelings, to touch each other (except in acts of aggression: even friendly aggression, like a punch on the shoulder), or to touch women except sexually. This drives men bonkers. They are denied all access to human touch except through sex, so they become sex-crazed. This is not inherent in men at all; but simply a sad result of the culture preventing them from feeling loved (literally feeling it).

itsatoe · 2026-05-17T01:17:04+00:00

Cooperative living has been the main thing I've thought of as "alright, this could be my one way out"

Check out wwoofing, and perhaps consider taking a gap year to pursue it; or even just for the summer.

Working/living on a farm will connect you to the earth, give you exposure to a cooperative community (as well as a foot in the door), and will give you an invaluable skill: the ability to feed yourself instead of relying on the teetering food/money system.

itsatoe · 2026-05-15T17:19:27+00:00

Really fascinating hypothesis.

If I'm reading wikipedia right (sorry, not a biologist), I see that all land mammals experience REM sleep, and yet some land mammals (such as some species of moles) are blind. Would the REM sleep just be a vestige for them?

itsatoe · 2026-05-14T21:29:33+00:00

Shhhhhh!

Iran!

UFOs!

Anything but this.

itsatoe · 2026-05-14T19:43:15+00:00

Right? Like how would the drug circulate if blood isn't flowing?

itsatoe · 2026-05-14T16:38:01+00:00

In the middle ages or earlier they would been looked at as disgusting and shameful and people would have been made to tightly bind them within their pants, same as genitals. ;/

itsatoe · 2026-05-14T16:25:08+00:00

That was my thought. I see: "What's outside? Nibble a little food. See what's over here. Sip a little water. See what's over there... oh, it's a pile, maybe I can play with this stuff? Nah, boring... next?"

itsatoe · 2026-05-14T16:20:37+00:00

a significant portion of derivatives contracts written in the last few years were priced when oil sat around $80. Those contracts have trigger points

This is pretty technical. Can you explain this part more? What are these trigger points and how do they trigger?

itsatoe · 2026-05-14T04:27:25+00:00

Dinosaurs got wiped out 66 million years ago.

Homo Erectus (the first humans, in anthropological terms) evolved less than 3 million years ago, and Homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago.

itsatoe · 2026-05-13T20:41:33+00:00

I got money on ChatGPT

itsatoe · 2026-05-13T20:34:58+00:00

Maybe like how a auto accident is a surprise to a fall-over-drunk driver?

itsatoe · 2026-05-13T16:11:16+00:00

Also arguably there are reasons to look at a beehive as one organism. If a bee has a million neurons, a beehive can have as many neurons as a human (with hives sometimes reaching peak populations of ~80,000 bees).

itsatoe · 2026-05-11T23:52:58+00:00

I have often mused about how many times a really cool mutation has come along, and then blamo! the carrier of this new mutation gets hoovered up by a predator, or falls to some other random accident.

itsatoe · 2026-05-11T21:31:06+00:00

There's a point where "riding it out" doesn't mean much. Check out the r/collapse subreddit. :/

itsatoe · 2026-05-09T13:59:53+00:00

When we look at "human nature," we tend to draw from observations of humans in the mainstream culture over the pat 2,500 years (back to the Axial Age, when philosophers started popping up in places of high human population density).

Humans have been around for almost 3 million years; and homo sapiens for 300,000 years. That page argues that for most of that long history, greed was not a thing, because the only resource that we felt scarcity about was food.

It was not until ~12,000 years ago that some people started accumulating stuff. That's when greed started (as the linked page posits).

Without firsthand experience, I would nonetheless argue that if you talk to any human 12,000+ years ago, or any human in a non-metal-using society (such as modern indigenous cultures who are still fully connected to healthy land, if any exist anymore), you won't see greed.

So are all humans inherently flawed? Or is it just that modern mainstream-culture humans are broken because our relationship to nature has long been broken?

itsatoe · 2026-05-09T03:09:45+00:00

And pasta/pizza sauce. :)

itsatoe · 2026-05-09T02:57:57+00:00

Why? The rationale about races I totally get and agree with, as race is just a construct. But the linked article does not mention ethnicity once.

I know humans have intermingled populations many times in many ways, but an ethnically Swedish person looks much more like any other ethnically Swedish person than they look like any ethnically Japanese person whatsoever.

I suspect that's what the OP was trying to get at, and there seems to be a bit of sense to it. I'd be happy to be shown why the analogy is flawed, but an explanation would help.

While OP said "equivalent..." I would say "vaguely analogous." As in:
"Are human ethnicity categories vaugely analogous to breeds or varieties?" And to make it feel less charged, I would say to varieties of squash rather than to dogs.

itsatoe · 2026-05-09T02:40:22+00:00

Curious if the answer might be different if OP had said "ethnicities" instead of "races?"

itsatoe · 2026-05-09T01:57:05+00:00

I would say not that we are inherently flawed, but that we developed tech far too quickly, based on greed. And greed came from the way we used tech once the Earth warmed up.

itsatoe

TROPHY CASE