Ask HN: What are we doing wrong now that will be painfully obvious in 100 years?
A lot of examples from the past show that people love to hurt themselves with their lack of knowledge: - bloodletting was a popular medical procedure up to 19th century - adding radium to toothpaste, hair creams and even water in the early 20th century And from much less distant past: - smoking - greenhouse gas emissions
What are we doing wrong now, which the general public isn't aware of currently? > What are we doing wrong now, which the general public isn't aware of currently? Industrial animal farming. Deforestation and greenhouse gases from it are destroying the planet when you don't need meat to be healthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... > "The livestock sector is also the primary driver of deforestation in the Amazon, with around 80% of all converted land being used to rear cattle.[37][38] 91% of land deforested since 1970 has been converted to cattle ranching.[39][40]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... > At a global scale, the FAO has recently estimated that livestock (including poultry) accounts for about 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions estimated as 100-year CO2 equivalents.[57] A previous widely cited FAO report using somewhat more comprehensive analysis had estimated 18 percent.[8] That's not even getting into the cruelty of slaughtering 70 billion a year (vegetarians are not exempt from this - farm animals are slaughtered when they can't produce any more milk or eggs). Most western countries would be appalled at eating dogs and cats but because it's cultural to eat cows, pigs and chickens for example, the cruelty of slaughtering them is normalised, ignored and casually joked about. The existence of the military and state sanctioned murder squads.
https://www.radford.edu/gmartin/Immoral%20to%20serve%20in%20... At the moment, it seems that the vast majority of people carve out a special ethical exception for the military but I suspect this will change over time. Many futurist/sci-fi dystopian scenarios have the general shape of the Terminator movies with autonomous killing machines roaming the planet. If these proliferate, perhaps the terror of that reality will bring into focus the immorality of using force to achieve geopolitical goals. And it feels like we're getting uncomfortably close to that future. https://twitter.com/DocBunker/status/1270390796978536450 https://www.ausa.org/publications/mission-command-and-armed-... Good point, the military is a necessary evil right now, but it could be disbanded if we learn to solve conflicts the proper way. I see robot vs robot battles as and intermediate step in this direction. "The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things." - Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Republican Candidate for US President I don't think robot soccer is going to be the intermediate step since the threat of human death and the follow through on that threat is an essential feature of the war machine. As difficult to get belligerents to agree to ethical rules of engagement, which would be a requirement for war as robot sport, we can't ignore the rise of asymmetric warfare and warfare via proxy through militias and unofficially backed terrorist organizations. These are often used by states as loopholes to get around treaties and international law. Are terrorists and militias going to be adhering to something resembling Asimov's laws of robotics when deploying their autonomous weapons? > the military is a necessary evil right now Good example of social stigma. No, in its current form, it's not. Troops amd toys at home, to protect people, not power and profits. I didn't even think of this, I live in a country where there is no military, but yes, this The disintegration of the nuclear family due to sociological and technological forces. For a preview, look at the black community where over 7/10 kids are born to single moms (for comparison, this number was below 3/10 in 1965). > bloodletting was a popular medical procedure up to 19th century You know a funny story about this, is that bloodletting (phlebotomy) is the standard medical treatment for iron overload and hemochromatosis. A hereditary condition that affects as many as 1% of Northern Europeans. Even for those without hereditary hemochromatosis, there's evidence of pernicious health impact from iron levels even on the high-end of normal.[1] Regular blood donors have much lower incidence rates of disease as varied from Alzheimers to colon cancer. This is especially true for those who are carriers of the hemochromatosis mutation, which is as much as 10% of Northern Europeans. [1] http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol We are not teaching our children Philosophy; most importantly, Epistemology. We are teaching children to know things, to judge others on what they "know" and think because of what they think they know, and giving them the false confidence of true belief without the caution of self-doubt. For interest, bloodletting might have some good health benefits and be due for a comeback... or encourage blood donation. https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-potential-benefi... making schooling not about actually useful information and skills, and maybe focused based on aptitude early on this might depend on the country, with some being better, or a lot better than others for example, in school, my teachers taught me useless trivia about Historical figures (some of which I later learned could be fictitious), I was also "taught" how to use sandpaper on an ornamental piece of wood (instead of learning how to use the tools to cut wood to make something useful, like a chair or a table) wasting time on those useless things, instead of first aid, handling money (basic financial information, like savings accounts, how interests can work for you, or agains you, loans, etc.), laws (as in, what's legal, and illegal, and why), knowledge that should be universal, like the declaration of human rights I also think shielding children from "bad language", and the knowledge of sex, and death does them a disservice, but I don't have an alternative that could be at least seen as reasonable also, religion, at least the way it's "introduced" on chilren (forced on them, really) Infant circumcision (common in the US). this, holy cow, this is certainly uncouth I think disconnecting will be a considerable part of the future when AR and VR or whatever will be around is a huge thing. It is already a thing now. Some people assume you write them back in Whatsapp in minutes. With health, I think the gut will play a significant role and also psychology. So many symptoms people develop have their roots in psychological problems. The addiction to news/social media is similar problem, like smoking, but destroying brain instead of lungs. Good point with mental health, maybe we should make psychological checkups common thing, like health or dental checkups, every year or so and not when we're sick. Apps that are designed to be addicting. We'll look back on that as evil insanity. Would like to point out that we're still allowing 18 year olds to pick up smoking, and we're still emitting greenhouse gases. I think driving is one thing humans will clearly not be doing in 100 years and it will be considered incredible that we put up with the human toll (injuries & deaths) that it caused. Wasn’t the legal age for smoking just bumped up to 21 in the US? We're replacing those with Marlboro Greens, so, no biggie. Working 8 hour days, 5 days a week. Putting sketchy fire retardant materials in everything. In the broader historical context we're still coming out total fire safety negligence. The last century has been a battle to get fire codes up to a reasonable standard, but now that momentum has brought us into overcompensation where novel hazards are being created. Bitcoin. And even using any form of currency for basic needs. Imagine if there were 'stores' that had all the basic product needs for free. There would be no point for anyone to have extra and the open market value would be 0. Travel visas based on country of origin - which is really a proxy for race. Usage of Oil and Gas
Which feeds religious fundamentalists You're allowed to say Saudi Arabia, this isn't Twitter. Incredibly high debt to cash ratios. Putting profits over people. too many tools, too much politics!
like other animals we should have kept it simple, KISS. Today, the location of your birth is the dominating factor in what life you will be able to enjoy and how much will you be able to contribute, ethnicity, religion, and other common bases for discrimination pale in comparison. The current citizenship system makes no sense, economically or morally. Why should the place of your birth or the citizenship of your parents should mandate which countries you are allowed to visit and in which markets you are allowed to participate? If the trajectory of liberalism continuous its march (a consistent trend for hundreds of years, but not a certain one), then the citizenship system that we as a world have crafted will be either replaced by a more sensical one or entirely scratched (i.e. open borders). I hope that this happens within my lifetime. I can't see how that would be possible, unless every country is equally wealthy and all wars and conflicts cease. What's anyone's incentive for staying in Syria, Iraq, Cuba, or Ukraine when bad things happen? What is going to keep people in their birth place, when they could earn orders of magnitude more in other countries? Then again, the far reaching implications of extensive automation could lead to this. We'll see! > What's anyone's incentive for staying in... when bad things happen? Well that's the beauty of it. Right now we are forcing (literally, by force!) people in war-torn countries to remain in them. Should they not have the option of escaping misery? > What is going to keep people in their birth place, when they could earn orders of magnitude more in other countries? There would be a new equilibrium. Poorer countries tend to be cheaper, so perhaps middle class first-worlders might move there (e.g. just like some Americans move to Mexico for retirement). Or perhaps the attachment to your local culture is strong enough. But most important of all, why do we need to keep people in their birth place? A captive population is part of what creates an incentive to seek power through violence. If people have freedom of movement, it's much harder to subjugate them by holding land. Part of why ISIS was able to scale so effectively was by capturing economic output. If people were able to flee it might have a quenching effect. > A captive population is part of what creates an incentive to seek power through violence. I'd say it is almost the reverse; the desire to establish a captive population is what leads one to seek power through violence. > If people have freedom of movement, it's much harder to subjugate them by holding land. If you hold land by force, you can thereby deny people freedom of movement in any direction. That's actually the only way to deny people freedom of movement, whether you concentrate on the inbound direction (as many countries do whether or not they also care about the other direction) or the outbound direction (Cold War East Germany, for a well-known example). The problem isn't that they were held (ISIS didn't have resources for such large scale operation), but that no place has accepted them. “No place accepted them” is also largely denial by force (both at boundaries and in the interior of they manage to evade it at boundaries), just from the other direction. Those that can leave, leave. Why leave the poor behind to be fodder in a war? The ease of straight up abandoning countries could have a minor rise in extremism leading to a full-on takeover. All the decent people would want none of that, and life would be easier elsewhere anyway. Such infighting and geopolitical issues would just get us back to where we are now, with maybe a few more EU-esque bubbles remaining. Sounds rather dystopian. This completely ignores the fact that the culture and people who make up a country do greatly impact it's success. Traditions of working together, independent thought, etc. None of this exists in a vacuum. If too many people of the same culture move to another country, they won't assimilate. They will form their own subcommunities. This is seen in America with the latin population and in europe with the muslim population. Very naive proposal. > This completely ignores the fact that the culture and people who make up a country do greatly impact it's success. Traditions of working together, independent thought, etc. None of this exists in a vacuum. > If too many people of the same culture move to another country, they won't assimilate. They will form their own subcommunities. This is seen in America with the latin population and in europe with the muslim population. Agree. And since we don't live in a vacuum, you will notice that third world cultures are increasingly similar to those in the first world. Assimilation is already happening. Nonetheless, the path there does involve periods of throttled migration, and this is fine. The important part is that we move in that direction as fast as feasible. > They will form their own subcommunities.
American history shows that, with time, most immigrants tend to assimilate to the mainstream culture just fine. In the 1800s, the Irish were regarded as backwards and Pope-idolizers, but they assimilated just fine. In any case, I don't worry about these subcommunities, it is a natural path for any sufficiently large state. > The current citizenship system makes no sense, economically or morally. In usa i found it weird that kids are only allowed to go to certain schools which fall in a geographic area. Why can't they go to any school that they please. Isn't this much simpler problem to solve than getting rid of citizenship. This is a brilliant and mind bending point of view. monetary policy Trash, literally waste processing We’re starting to see some big cracks in the armor of democracy (polarization and entropy) and capitalism (inequality) so perhaps iterations or complete substitution of these pillars of modern life should be expected sooner than later Good point, the thing we allow few hundreds of people rule whole countries seems ridiculous even now. TBH, it won't be any different under socialism. In fact it will probably be the same a-holes.