
If (big if) the world was ending, how would you know? - mooseburger
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/c7wmkq/if_big_if_the_world_was_ending_how_would_you_know/
======
AnimalMuppet
That writer is a kind of a jerk (more in the replies than in the original
post). "I know, you don't, I'm smarter than you, you have to prove that you
follow what I'm talking about (and I'm talking as obscurely as I can) before
you're worthy of me having a real conversation with you." Yeah, spare me; you
aren't so amazingly, uniquely insightful that it's worth it for me to jump
through your hoops.

That said, there's an interesting question in there. If our society were
starting into a technological collapse, what would it look like? And how would
it look different than what our current world looks like?

I'm not sure I buy that this is what's happening. But looking around, I see
enough that might be evidence that I can't rule it out...

~~~
ewl4
Definitely kind of a jerk but I genuinely believe it's a big issue especially
in technology. Technology and science isn't self-improving, we improve
processes because it's passed on throughout generations. The core of software
itself in the past 20 years hasn't really changed much from the 80s. Sure we
have new languages and processes but it's just the same stuff repeated over
again but each time bits are lost.

Basically we wouldn't know that an ongoing collapse is happening but
everything would get slightly shitter and shitter with older legacy processes
being unfixable once they break because none of that knowledge is being passed
down.

Great video on this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OCFfDStgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OCFfDStgM)

~~~
mooseburger
Nice! You're pretty smart. But you think me being a jerk is somehow relevant
to anything? Hmm. A-.

------
simonblack
Decline (99 times out of a hundred) is so slow and steady that the only way to
discover that it's happening is to compare things NOW with things THEN.

So: Can a single-earner family today buy a house, a car, and send their kids
through a good education system?

Is the US still capable of launching men into space, let alone sending several
at a time to the Moon and back safely?

Can a normal wage-earner still afford several weeks of hospital care?

50 years ago, we would be answering 'Yes' to all three of these questions.

~~~
mooseburger
But the US is Trantor. Trantor is the last place the decline starts to hit.
The decline is already hitting me on Terminus.

~~~
simonblack
Where's a Mule when you need him?

