
Ask HN: What are we doing wrong now that will be painfully obvious in 100 years? - zola
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<p>What are we doing wrong now, which the general public isn&#x27;t aware of currently?
======
seanwilson
> 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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production)

> "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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production)

> 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.

------
doesnotexist
The existence of the military and state sanctioned murder squads.
[https://www.radford.edu/gmartin/Immoral%20to%20serve%20in%20...](https://www.radford.edu/gmartin/Immoral%20to%20serve%20in%20military%20paper.htm)

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://twitter.com/DocBunker/status/1270390796978536450)

[https://www.ausa.org/publications/mission-command-and-
armed-...](https://www.ausa.org/publications/mission-command-and-armed-
robotic-systems-command-and-control-human-and-machine)

~~~
zola
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.

~~~
doesnotexist
"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?

------
shahbaby
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).

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dcolkitt
> 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](http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol)

------
whytaka
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.

------
Gustomaximus
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...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-potential-benefits-of-
bloodletting-yes-bloodletting/)

------
eldacila
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)

------
stevula
Infant circumcision (common in the US).

~~~
eldacila
this, holy cow, this is certainly uncouth

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patatino
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.

~~~
zola
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.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Apps that are _designed_ to be addicting. We'll look back on that as evil
insanity.

------
jfoster
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.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Wasn’t the legal age for smoking just bumped up to 21 in the US?

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Raed667
Working 8 hour days, 5 days a week.

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yummypaint
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.

------
karmakaze
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.

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pinkfoot
Travel visas based on country of origin - which is really a proxy for race.

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digitalcrm
Usage of Oil and Gas Which feeds religious fundamentalists

~~~
ta17711771
You're allowed to say Saudi Arabia, this isn't Twitter.

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r2b2
Incredibly high debt to cash ratios.

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catacombs
Putting profits over people.

------
virologist
too many tools, too much politics! like other animals we should have kept it
simple, KISS.

------
huevosabio
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.

~~~
sk0g
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!

~~~
yummypaint
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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).

~~~
TomMarius
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
“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.

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alexandra_cgg
monetary policy

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thinkingemote
Trash, literally waste processing

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mguerville
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

~~~
zola
Good point, the thing we allow few hundreds of people rule whole countries
seems ridiculous even now.

~~~
eaandkw
TBH, it won't be any different under socialism. In fact it will probably be
the same a-holes.

