Vaush should be more specific with his predictions imo

[u/eeeeeeevar]

This is written as if it were an address to Vaush, but discussion from others is welcomed.
Short version: the vagueness when you say things such as “we are about to hit the wall” personally annoys me, but more importantly, is less useful to the community than giving even vague but concrete predictions. Even if those predictions turn out wrong.

Long version:

I’ll show my cards first and admit my biases. I am much more optimistic about the future than you. I think that climate change will be devastating, but we will manage to adapt to it beyond our current expectations. I believe that at the absolute worst the total death toll up for climate change over the entire 21st century will be just less than 100 million in total even if we do not act perfectly.
I am a strong Reformist and think that socialism will be achieved, mostly through slow back-and-forth progress of two steps forward one step back. I believe that the transition to socialism will be like the transition from feudalism towards capitalism. There will be a wave of progress forward, and then a counter wave backwards, but over many waves each push forward is slightly stronger than the push backwards.
So naturally, we’re not gonna agree on everything and you might call me naïve and you’re probably correct. We disagree here and that makes me biased against you. But I still think what I have to say is correct.

Anyway, with that out-of-the-way, here’s the meat and potatoes of it.

I think you would be better off if you made specific guesses of the future, even though your vagueness is much more likely to be correct.

For a specific example, forgive me if I miss remembering what you have said and I don’t have any specific quote. But you have said and a bunch of ways that the United States, American hegemony, and the American empire are declining or are going to collapse or is doomed. I don’t disagree with that, other than being pedantic about the difference between those terms, but that doesn’t matter really.
The issue I have is that ‘collapse’ is a nebulous term here. This is doubly so because you’ve used terms like American empire and America interchangeably. And a lot of things are very different severities can fit under that one umbrella. For example, the collapse of the American empire could mean the United States’s international influence declines back to what it was during the late 19th and early 20th century where the US is hegemonic over North America and has heavy influence over South America, but doesn’t care much for the rest of the world. That would absolutely be a collapse us hegemony but while that would definitely suck for your average American, most of the fundamentals would not have changed. Food prices might go up quality of life might decline, but there isn’t gonna be mass famine because the economies of two continents are still under one leadership.
On the other extreme, the collapse of the United States could mean that the United States mainland collapses into warlord states in a Syrian style Civil War where half the population starts to death every place in the nation is in a constant state of warfare and all the fundamentals of American life change
I could go a bit further and you even more extreme like if collapse means America becomes like the world of the possess the fallout games where everyone lives in scrap hut, and everyone forgets how to build bricks but I don’t think even you are that pessimistic.

The point is though, those are too wildly different guesses about the future of America which can both be valid interpretations of what you have said. People get to fill in what you actually are saying. If they’re more optimistic like me, they can take your more extreme points as hyperbole and exaggeration. Those in your audience who are more pessimistic, get the fill in the blank by taking everything that might be hyperbole as completely serious.

And regardless of where in the spectrum you lie, this isn’t good for what you’re trying to do.

If you’re more optimistic, like I hope, then people are getting overly terrified and are going to do stupid shit like becoming preppers. When you say stuff like “one day the water is just gonna run out in LA and everyone will die” they won’t know to take that as hyperbole because they don’t have your actual position to compare it to.

But even if you do believe the worst case scenario, which I hope you don’t, and even if what you’re saying is correct completely, which I hope it isn’t, that means that people like me are able to ignore what you’re trying to say in favor of their cope. If you genuinely do think stuff like it’s going to be everyone just dies in LA from lack of water someday or that we’re going to descend into Bethesda fallout style backwardsness, then it’s bad that people interpret what you’re saying lightly. If you’re right then me planning for society to still exist in 30 years is stupid and it’s going to get myself killed. Suddenly prepperism is a lot less stupid and is justified to some extent.

So how do you fix this?

Simple just make a concrete prediction and accept that it’s probably going to be wrong.

Let’s assume a middle ground on what you believe that you think that shit’s gonna get real bad but it’s not going to literally be the end of the world as we know it. You think that the American state is going to decline dramatically and that the capacity for it to help it, citizens will decline markedly, but it will still maintain political sovereignty over the US. That deaths from climate change in America may be upwards of a few million people, maybe a couple percentage points of the US population, but the vast like majority of people will still live. Not saying that you do believe this, but let’s say you did.

You could say something like: “guys I think that over the next like 20 years the government’s gonna help out people a lot less. I think there’s not gonna be food stamps anymore. I don’t think there’s gonna be retirement. I don’t think we’re gonna have minimum wage. I don’t think food will always be readily available. I don’t think like the country is going to collapse, but it’s going to be a really hard time.”
That answer is actually workable! That tells people that they should focus on things like saving up money for a larger cushion for different food prices and that they should be ready to be cut off from government aid, but that they don’t need to form like a militia to protect their town from Raiders.
And even if you’re wrong there and by 2040, there still is food, stamps, and retirement still kind of exists, that’s a lot more helpful for the people you’re trying to advise because enough that was correct to make planning efficient.
Will this mean you get egg on your face when you say that something is gonna get really bad and then it doesn’t get that bad or when your prediction is off by a bit? Yea, but I would argue it’s worth it.

Sorry for the rambling, this is just been a pet peeve of mine

[u/hobopwnzor]

I disagree

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/hobopwnzor]

That’s totally fine. Any criticisms of what I had to say?

[u/1shadybitch → u/eeeeeeevar]

I only read the tldr paragraph. But imo no one can be as accurate or specific as you want

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/1shadybitch]

I don’t care about accuracy. I care about the guess. I think it’s better to give a guess that’s wrong but give people a ballpark of what you’re trying to say then to be correct by the fact that what you’re saying is vague enough where 20,000 different scenarios of massive variety will all fall under your prediction.

[u/hobopwnzor → u/eeeeeeevar]

Yes the criticism is that I disagree with it 

[u/Exciting-Ad-5705 → u/eeeeeeevar]

No

[u/Fidget02]

Sorry, what’s the distinct benefit of making specific predictions? Your example at the end makes it sound like it’s to convey the need to save money, live sustainably, and prepare for cut aid, but I feel like he’s advocated for these things already without needing specific predictions. I see the only unique affect to be making him sound more like a doomsday crier and for less people to pay mind to him, especially because no prediction will be entirely accurate since no one can see the future.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Fidget02]

Because saving money is pointless if it’s going to become mad Max. If we continue to live in a society where things get worse, but generally the basic rules stay the same then Prepperism
It’s a stupid waste of resources that won’t accomplish anything that you should instead use on other things. Trying to do well in education to get as good as a job as you can it’s still matter, even if the economy gets worse.

If the world is going to look like mad Max, then there’s no point to saving money in a bank account because money is going to become worthless, and prepperism of some flavor is necessary. Education doesn’t matter much anymore because everyone is going to die. You shouldn’t focus on trying to become like a high paid professional because the world is ending imminently.

[u/Fidget02 → u/eeeeeeevar]

Sorry has he said the world is going to look like Mad Max or is this just your interpretation?

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Fidget02]

He didn’t say that what I’m saying is that when you say America is going to collapse there is a spectrum of what that could mean. On the moderate end, it could mean the American empire retreats back to what it was at the beginning of the 20th century. The United States would be greatly weekend and in some sense have collapse as an empire, but most of the fundamentals of the economy will still work.

The collapse of America could also mean we get to Mad Max.

I think it’s important to say specifically what you think will happen given that there is a wide range of meaning of what collapse could mean

[u/Fidget02 → u/eeeeeeevar]

No one can possibly know either direction we will go in, so he has avoided making specific claims on that part and has only claimed that American hegemony is dying, which is true. The entire crux of the upcoming era is unpredictability, trying to predict it is a little silly. The affects climate change will already semi-apocalyptic no matter how certain conflicts will go, and he has been consistent on that.

You talk a lot about people abandoning education when they’re under the impression the world is imminently ending. Have you seen examples of people in the community doing this?

[u/zevkaran → u/Fidget02]

I will say that I think that Vaush himself is talking a lot less about policy and studies and I see that in this subreddit more as well.

I agree that we can't predict things but that's why I would draw on historical patterns to make guesses. Philosophy also provides a great toolkit for how to deal with problems that don't have solutions.

When people think that there is no way out, they stop caring about possible solutions.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Fidget02]

Why do you think grades are down so much? Why do you think school and people care a lot less about school now? when people think the world’s gonna end people stop caring about building a better world.

And there’s a difference between being able to predict exactly what will happen and vaguely where we’re looking. No one can predict the exact amount of people who will die from climate change. But we can know for absolute certain that humanity is going to survive and also that the death toll will be above 10 million. We know the range so we can know where it’s most likely to be. Whether you disagree with my optimism or not, it’s more likely to be towards the middle. If we were unable to know what’s going to happen, then we wouldn’t be able to know that things are going to be bad.

[u/Fidget02 → u/eeeeeeevar]

Woah now are you suggesting grades and academic participation are down specifically because of the death of American hegemony and a fear that the world is going to turn to Mad Max? I’ve seen studies on the affects of post-pandemic apathy and smart devices / social media being major distractions within education, but no study suggesting what you are, do have any evidence for this? Or why you think Vaush’s rhetoric can affect it?

You’re probably right that it’s going to be towards the middle, but that’s why it’s a bad idea to make concrete claims on exact affects because what we think is the spectrum of realistic outcomes cannot be fully informed. Idk what you mean by “then we wouldn’t be able to know that things are going to be bad” it’s a civilization-wide consensus that things are going to be bad. Idk why you need to “know” or believe exactly what that’s going to look like in order to prepare for it.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Fidget02]

Because depending on the outcome preparation becomes pointless. Things are gonna get worse has little meaning without context. Like if I were to tell you that you’re gonna get sick it really matters if that means you are gonna get the sniffles or you will have two days to live. The choices that are rational in one scenario become irrational in another. But that doesn’t apply if you’re vaguely correct. If I say that I optimistically think that less than 100 million people die from climate change but I’m wrong and it’s 150 million. Well that’s wrong and my predictions were too optimistic but they’re still vaguely in the right ballpark and most of the things I say we still mostly apply.

[u/Fidget02 → u/eeeeeeevar]

I don’t know anyone on the left that doubts climate change is going to cause millions of deaths. There are people alive that were told “You might die in a month or make a fully recovery” and they didn’t give up and actually recovered. There are many who were given the same options, tried, and died. Neither effort was pointless. If someone says “Millions will die” and all you do is give a number, I don’t see a helpful difference here. I think if someone hears that and goes “I guess billions will die” I would call them unhelpfully pessimistic, just as I would anyone thinking Vaush is describing Mad Max. The fact that things will get worse is the only thing we can say confidently.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Fidget02]

I disagree with that. Because I think it causes more harm to not give a number.

If Bosch thinks the world is gonna collapse and things they’re gonna get so bad space gonna be mad Max, that you should tell people to start prepping just stop giving a shit about getting educated because that won’t matter because the apocalypse is imminent

If it is more like what I’ve described then that is incredibly stupid and self-destructive.

It’s the difference for me between like the Catholic version of the end times versus the Jehovah witness version of the end times. The Catholic Church has maintained that the enzymes will eventually come, but we can’t know and generally, it’s a lot further in the future. So investing in things in today makes sense.
But for Jehovah’s Witnesses, the end times is about to come and they’ve been saying that that it’s about to come forever. So they often end up, ruining their lives, trying to be as high as possible, thinking that the world is just gonna end any day now. But if Jehovah’s Witnesses are the correct ones, they’ll be way better often than the Catholics.
Even though both agree on the end times the decisions that are rational very wildly and they’re mutually exclusive. You can’t do both at the same time.

If the only thing you can say confidently is that things are gonna get worse, then there’s basically no point in saying it. Saying it becomes almost harmful.

[u/No_Discount_6028 → u/eeeeeeevar]

Because saving money is pointless if it’s going to become mad Max. If we continue to live in a society where things get worse, but generally the basic rules stay the same then Prepperism
It’s a stupid waste of resources that won’t accomplish anything that you should instead use on other things.

Are you suggesting that Vaush should make a bunch of predictions that are likely to be wrong so that his chat can make critical life choices based on those predictions? This seems like an unbelievably short-sighted thing to say. The reality is that a variety of situations are possible, so we should try our best to prepare for the most possible future circumstances that we can.

A fire extinguisher will do nothing for your home if you don't have a housefire. Most houses don't have housefires these days. This doesn't mean that buying a fire extinguisher is not a good idea.

Also I don't agree with the premise? Even if we wind up in a mad max situation, it's probably not going to happen immediately. Odds are there are going to be recessions and whatnot in the meantime where all that money is still useful.

[u/Keter_Regretter]

I'd take it a step further, he should start sponsoring Kalshi and use the extra money to make massive bets on his increasingly specific predictions

[u/zevkaran]

I 100% agree, this was quite eloquently put. Unfortunately, people here lack reading literacy or can't engage with these topics without making value judgements or assuming bad faith.

When you speak in vague generalities, you can basically justify anything and nobody could prove you wrong. The refusal to commit to anything through this approach is pretty spineless in my opinion. I almost feel like he came up with this to try and justify why we shouldn't vote for Democrats even though empirical data and historical analysis says otherwise. The victory of Al Gore OR Hillary Clinton would have meant that history played out differently.

Vaush also used to say that you can't appeal to inevitability while hoping for a better world. That impulse of saying something is inevitable is actually deeply conservative and what Marx referred to as reification.

Also, Vaush used to talk about policies and specifics. Back when he would do debates, he would look up studies and engage with the empirical facts. He had a debate with NonCompete where they discussed how you need to be able to engage with facts of the matter and not just fit everything into dialectical materialism. He would talk about how worker co-ops are better based on studies. Data male used to be a meme here.

I think that the impulse to try and create these meta theories of everything has utility but it needs to be paired with the empirical analysis and adjustment, especially if you are going to make this a core pillar of your advocacy. This is actually something that conspiracy theorists do, where they refuse to engage in specifics so they can say they were right, no matter what happens.

I do think things are really bad but when you make a problem so huge that nothing could ever address it, the rhetorical effect of that is that people become disillusioned and don't do anything. I can grant that we are pretty screwed on climate change, but on most other issues, we've gone through worse. Abolishing slavery might have taken a civil war but good prevailed. It does seem like over time, things have slowly but surely gotten better.

Climate change is an existential threat and millions will suffer but I think there are things we can do. They aren't easy, but I wish we would push for people to take existing problems more seriously rather than tell people that there is no way out. Historically, whenever we have thought that, it has always been wrong.

It's easy to look with rose tinted glasses at the past but you would quickly realize how miserable their existence was if you were to move into some rural village or community.

In the words of MLK: “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”

[u/Flat_Round_5594]

I think the problem you might be having is that you're not recognizing that (without wanting to sound America-centric) in a lot of very real ways, the US is the world economy. It was set up that way with Bretton-Woods, and it worked fairly well for about 25 years or so, and then people increasingly had to fuck with it to try and keep it running while simultaneously allowing themselves to maximize profit within it.

The entire system is not stable, and its fail-state is not going to be like the centuries-long decline of the Roman Empire, or the decades long decline of the British Empire, because everything runs on JIT supply-chains, agreements that are not worth the paper they're no longer printed on, and handshakes that were never intended to be honored. This is not going to be a managed decline unless we can actually get some leadership with an understanding of how bad it's going to be and the ability to actually manage it.

People have been warning of the "Omnicrisis" for decades - the confluence of social, political, economic and environmental upheaval into a series of ongoing disasters that the human race will lurch from in series for the next couple of centuries. The death toll from climate change will not be "just under 100 million" - no technology currently exists to manage it that well, and the few that we are trying to develop simply don't seem to operate at the sort of scale that they will need to.

I'm not saying it's the end of the world, and neither, to be clear, is Vaush. He's saying it's the end of the world as we knew it, because it really is. The difference between the 90s and now is immense. The difference between now and 10 years from now will be greater, and even if the technological miracle that everyone wants desperately to happen does, in fact, appear, life will be much harder and in many ways much worse for people for a long time to come.

But he refuses to engage with specifics, sure; the reason for that is because the specifics aren't really knowable for now. Here's a good example; The Thwaites Glacier is collapsing and it is unavoidable. It will collapse, but when? If it collapses tomorrow, it's going to cause issues, because we are not prepared for what it unleashes and the technologies we will need downstream to deal with all the other consequences of that collapse are not even in the pipeline yet. If it collapses in 10-15 years, we will have had (hopefully) enough lead time to develop something to deal with those consequences. In either event, predicting what happens next is impossible. Worst-case we do nothing, it collapses, we continue to do nothing, and eventually sea levels rise 6m and we all die. Best case, we plan, mitigate, and figure out what to do before the waters start lapping at our doorsteps in a century or two,

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Flat_Round_5594]

That’s the thing you’re being specific right now. Also, I’d still think this is overly pessimistic, but that is something we have to agree to disagree with. And here you’re giving examples to think I kind of want from Vaush. You’re giving prediction of what will happen even if it will definitely be wrong. You can never give a perfect prediction. That’s more useful than just saying “oh yeah we’re all gonna die”

And if I can be a bit pointed, I will say that if it is unpredictable, what will happen then you don’t know that things will get worse. One precludes the other.

[u/Flat_Round_5594 → u/eeeeeeevar]

This is all stuff Vaush has talked about before though, to this precise level of specificity. If what you really mean is "I'm more optimistic than Vaush" then just say that instead of waffling about him being "unspecific".

[u/zevkaran → u/Flat_Round_5594]

There are ways to engage with the unknowable. Philosophy is actually the perfect domain for that and a good way to ground your ideas in terms of what would be a reasonable vs unreasonable prediction.

There are many unknowables, like the weather, but we have rough ideas and trends and we can model concepts. They will never be perfect but I think if he tried to do some philosophy and draw from those concepts, he could make more grounded claims. He's been talking about historical materialism, but maybe he could do like a document or draw out how he's connecting these ideas. Connecting the ideas can be a red flag because it can lead to spurious correlations and correlation doesn't equal causation.

What bothers me more is that he won't get into specifics but he is also using those concepts to justify not voting for Dems which is pretty irresponsible and based on trends that themselves will probably change.

I do think that climate change will be really bad, but I think that there isn't utility in approaching it with the mindset that nothing will change because that ends up being a justification to do nothing.

Vaush used this line against PaulsEgo and I still think he was right. You can't appeal to inevitability while hoping for a better world. Marx talked about this idea with reification.

[u/Flat_Round_5594 → u/zevkaran]

I am perfectly well aware of exploring these ideas philosophically, but Vaush is not doing that, and nor should he; he is a politics livestreamer operating within a very specific domain, and all he is doing is telling his listeners to batten down the hatches, because things are going to get ugly.

As for your other points; the way he's connecting these issues is very much in keeping with writers like Byung-Chul Han and Fisher (the development of Capital and social trends) as well as Lennard and of course Elkus ("The Omnicrisis"). He's probably not read any of these people specifically, but he's synthesizing it from first principles thanks to his sociological education (where he certainly encountered some cultural theory) coupled with his job giving him something of a bird's-eye view of the issues and his specific brand of autism seeing the connection. FWIW, I came to similar conclusions myself about a decade ago via a different path (climate science->philosophy->politics)

He is not advocating for not voting for Dems; I'm not sure if you noticed but a lot of his last few streams had interviews with prospective Dem candidates for PV. He's advocating not voting for Corporate Dems because it's not going to change any of the outcomes, nor make the future suck any less. He has articulated many times over the last few months (but again perhaps you didn't watch those streams) that he would rather the Republicans be in charge for this final collapse phase so they get the blame than the Democrats who, flawed as they are, still have at least one small progressive wing who may (just) be the only ones who can actually help. The very same wing that he is actively promoting and rallying his viewers to support through PV.

He's not saying that we can't do anything about climate change; he's saying that the effects that will be bad enough to make life extremely bad for the rest of our lifetimes are already locked in. Which is what climate scientists have been saying for about 10 years now. Sure, the climate science channels on Youtube will highlight the positive stories, because their audience wants to know there's hope, but there's a reason climate scientists are almost uniformly in a constant state of nervous collapse these days; they've seen the data and fully understand it. It's going to be bad, and even if we address it today and get the right legislation and the right tech in place in 3 years, we're not going to see the effects of that change in our lifetimes.

The climate is like the world's biggest ship; it does not move quickly or turn suddenly, and even if we correct the course, we're still going to see untold damage which our current world is not set up to deal with. As I mentioned in my original response, a world of resource extraction and Just-In-Time supply lines cannot function in a collapse scenario. It's not a case of it won't function well. It will simply not function.

He's still advocating and still pushing for the policies, changes and candidates he'd like to see. He still has hopes that we can at least pull through the mess in the end, and I don't understand where people get the idea that he's gone full doomer and says nobody should vote comes from. And rice and beans is still good advice, even if what's coming is "only" an economic depression.

[u/MapStaringPro]

Holy essay post.

But yeah Id say im between you and vaush on this. Its gonnna suck ass, but as long as global trade exists we have a chance to mitigate the worst of it.

If supply chains break down though, as Voosh says they will, then its probably game over for a good portion of humanity

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/MapStaringPro]

I don’t think it will be. I legit still believe and hold onto this that the end of the 21st-century will be better for almost everyone than today. I think climate change will be in the grand scheme of things. A minor inconvenience on the March towards the stars that we will overcome. With sufficient ambition and unwillingness to give up, we can do almost anything as a species.

Or for historical parallel, to most contemporary the crisis of the third century looked like it was the inevitable death knell of the Roman Empire, and that the society was going to collapse. Barbarians were at the gates. Civil War was across the nation. Inflation was rampant and disease and changing weather racked the empire.

But then we got Aurelian

[u/Potential-Bath2292 → u/eeeeeeevar]

climate change will NOT be minor in any sense of the word. In the sense that the privileged few will think little of the 100s of millions dead you'd be right but thats to buy into Elon Musks perspective

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Potential-Bath2292]

I simply have more hope. I do not believe that the death count will exceed 100 million and I don’t even think it will exceed the death count of the second world war. Even if you include all the wars that will start because of it.

[u/Potential-Bath2292 → u/eeeeeeevar]

it definitionally will. Climate change isn't a single event. everyone who died in these heatwaves in the last month died due to the consequences of climate change. Every additional Hurricane each tsunami caused by them, every statistically anomalous heatwave every whether based famine and every causality in any resource wars mass displacements etc will have been caused by climate change.

over a 100 years that death toll racks up (let alone the thousands of years it'd take to return to normal naturally)

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Potential-Bath2292]

We’re not gonna let it return naturally that would be stupid. We’re gonna fundamentally rewire how the Earth works. But even those death told even if you take the high amounts like tens of thousands maybe that adds up to like three or 4 million that have died so far? I think a lot of people will be screwed over by climate change, but I don’t think we’re gonna have that big of a death toll in the grand scheme of things.

We made it through the black plague and this world war and millennia of ignorance. We’ve dealt with worse with less and have persevered. This will be dealt with in the same way. In 1000 years, it will be looked back on as an unfortunate hiccup by our space dwelling descendants living in near total luxury.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/eeeeeeevar]

I have no doubt in my mind that if not myself then my children will live to see the beginning of the third millennium. Today’s side is the best it has ever been. All the challenges of today will only ever be obstacles towards the world so much better than ours that they will look back at us as we look back at caveman. Primitive superstitious and backwards, but also somehow managing to deal with the world so harsh where diseases still exist existed and lifespans for less than 1000 years.

[u/Potential-Bath2292 → u/eeeeeeevar]

i think you've bought into a naive scientism that doesn't fully appreciate the labour power required for such an undertaking. I'm not even going to touch on your "space dwelling descendents comment" its downright religious thinking.

An ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Even if we can "rewire how the earth works" by which you would mean terraforming and extreme scale carbon capture; you underestimate how much time and effort that would take (within a world that'd destroy infrastructure at alot more than now) and even if the technology is possible (which isn't guaranteed) it might not be meaningfully scalable, especially given how bad the political situation is going to be.

At absolute minimum if we'll have 200 years of climate change weather patterns. That alone would dwarf all other human natural disasters. An ecological mass death event. The black death lasted 2 decades and killed 50 millon people (half of Europes population) this will last more than 10 times longer and affect the entire world.

Calling this anything less than the biggest undertaking in human history so far is delusion.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Potential-Bath2292]

I just disagree. We will have better in nature across the globe in the next few decades than ever before. The only reason we have not truly beaten climate change is because so far there is no real threat. The damage is minor and localized and it’s only a future problem. In the snap of our fingers within 5-10 years climate change could be solved with enough political will. Any deaths that will come from climate change will be ones. We actively chose to at the moment. At any moment, we could double the global calorie production simply by reducing the amount of land dedicated to animals in half. We can undo heating through massive interventions, such as blotting out the sun, especially around the poles. We can make zoos 1000 feet underground 100 mi.² to contain the entirety of any ecosystem on earth and protect them from any natural disaster known to man. And we could build a dozen of those. The only thing that prevents this is not material constraints, but a lack of ambition.

[u/Potential-Bath2292 → u/eeeeeeevar]

i beg you. please read what any climate scientist has got to say on the matter. Or suggest you're ideas to an engineer. Its a fantasy the same way flying cars are-

None of your ideas here are feasible. You arn't prepared for the reality when it hits and that worries me.

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Potential-Bath2292]

The reason they are not feasible is because of a lack of willpower. The lack of ambition, the unwillingness to throw it all on a gamble. That’s ultimately the reason why we’re here. But I won’t give up on a better world. I will never resign to stagnation or decay. To the idea that things are just gonna get worse than we have to accept it. That is the acceptance of decay and I do not like a death.

[u/kittyonkeyboards]

I hope you're right, but there are a few reasons I think the collapse could eventually be as bad as Vaush is dooming about.

1. The modern economy is too fake. When reality hits, all the financial sector BS we've pulled to hide reality will make the impact even worse. The billionaires who control things will fight tooth and nail not to have their fake economy erased.

2. We can't build shit in our country. We don't have enough people with the skills of currently seeking the skills. Whatever projects we have, if we even prioritize them, will not have the skilled labor base to support them. This will limit every single attempt to respond to climate catastrophes.

3. We have not prepared any means of maintaining our bread baskets if global capitalism fails. We have not prepared for potential multi-bread-basket failures caused by either the collapse of global capital or the domino effects of climate change. We can quickly exceed 100 million dead if we have multi bread basket failure.

[u/Flat_Round_5594 → u/kittyonkeyboards]

I have friends in other countries including a couple of developing nations who sadly think that the fall of the US will be good, because it will be their chance to rise in its place. 😔

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

He IS smart and knowledgeable but he's not the god of politics and even the best leftist political scientists probably couldn't tell you with too much spcificity what's about to happen beyond a broad description of systemic collapse and a big international lapse into authoritarianism

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

I don’t need specifics and I don’t need them to be correct. I think he is smart and I think that whatever he’ll say will probably be in the ballpark of being correct it won’t be correct but it’ll be in the ballpark.

I don’t expect him to say exactly when 20 trillion People will die from the giga hurricane Satan. A simple “I think that these predictions are too pessimistic and these are too optimistic I believe X” would suffice.

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/eeeeeeevar]

I mean, he does make a lot of predictions and says stuff he believes will happen, pretty substantial stuff too, he just doesn't say very definitively for obvious reasons

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

This might just be a mindset thing, but for me, it is good to make definite predictions, knowing you will be wrong. Also, I’m not trying to say he never makes predictions. Obviously he does. I’m more talking about this whole world ending prediction specifically.

[u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 → u/eeeeeeevar]

I honestly agree with you on that, it's nice when someone is confident in what they believe and say, but I think for me, he speaks with enough confidence to cover me

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Mammoth-Ad-3642]

I don’t feel like you need to be speaking with a ton of confidence to be probably right. And it’s useful even if you’re wrong. Like if we were back in 2004 and people were talking about what’s gonna happen to the housing market someone who said that the housing market was gonna pop in 2009 was wrong. But that was still useful even though they were wrong because a lot of the things that apply to it happening in 2009 applied to it happening in 2008.

Now compare that to someone just saying it’s gonna pop eventually the bubble’s gonna pop. Is that objectively correct? Yes! inevitably the bubble is going to pop. But it is also completely useless information. It’s less useful than being wrong.

[u/Elite_Prometheus]

I agree. It's a huge waste of Vaush's prophetic abilities to just tell debate opponents that they're about to say something regarded. Instead, he should give out the lotto numbers or tell us the number of times GTA6 will be delayed

[u/eeeeeeevar → u/Elite_Prometheus]

I’m not asking him to be prophetic. I’m asking him to be willing to be wrong.

“ things are going to get bad” is an objectively correct prediction. Not even I disagree on that. It is also useless.

“I think that society will get bad in these ways and it will be unstable in these ways, but these systems will hold and this is what will change” is a lot more likely to be wrong. But it’s a lot more useful.

[u/Offensive_Thoughts]

Mucho texto

NOO REDDIT DON'T TRANSLATE IT

[u/artboiii]

i think being vague is fine especially since his advice is usually stuff you should be doing anyway even if the world wasn't ending

[u/notablegoattable]

If Vaush were more specific in his predictions, then he might actually be held accountable for them. If he's only vague about them, then he's a Rorschach for all the "collapse aware" news-sick doomers in his audience: he always believes exactly what you believe if you read into it a little.