500 hundred years from now...

[My Wife Hates CIV]

With all the digital history... what will those alive think of us?

[Aeson]

They'll look at us like we look at slavers. 6 billion people living on $12/day or less, genocides, wars, coups, puppet dictators, so a cult of demonic pedophiles can have bigger yachts.

They'll look at us in horror for how we treat animals and the environment. We are specieists commiting planetwide ecocide.

They'll look at us as thieves who stole from our own children. There's ~$300 trillion in debt. At ~5% that comes to ~$15 quadrillion in the lifespan of a newborn.

[Lorizael]

Without proper metadata and documentation, nothing at all.

[N35t0r]

Given our current trajectory, anyone still alive will be more worried about getting enough food to last the winter and/or fend off the raiders.

[BeBMan]

Maybe in 500 yrs the Zombie Inquisition will hunt down folks who still can utter something intelligible, use a coffee maker or a swiss army knife for witchcraft ... and for dinner of course

[Dauphin]

With all the digital history... what will those alive think of us?

Swipe left on their feed.

[Broken_Erika]

In 500 years, the world will be ruled by the Sea Otters

[The Mad Monk]

They will think that all the wire is good for tying stuff up, but the disks are useless for anything, except maybe shingles.

[ricketyclik]

Disks are good for keeping birds off your crops.

[Geronimo]

They'll look at us like we look at slavers. 6 billion people living on $12/day or less, genocides, wars, coups, puppet dictators, so a cult of demonic pedophiles can have bigger yachts.

They'll look at us in horror for how we treat animals and the environment. We are specieists commiting planetwide ecocide.

They'll look at us as thieves who stole from our own children. There's ~$300 trillion in debt. At ~5% that comes to ~$15 quadrillion in the lifespan of a newborn.

you do realize that in 500 years they would be just as likely to lump us in with the previous 10,000 years or so of civilization. None of the vices you mention were less obvious in any of that time frame really apart from ecocide where some hunter gatherer societies managed as a result of the hardships of prior experience led to various largely sustainable rules that they lived by To the best of my knowledge all of the civilizations to date failed in that regard, usually doing about as much damage as they could without going out of their way to cause it. Every generation seems to think that ubiquitous outrageous ethical lapses really started on their watch which is almost as funny as it is tragic.

[Aeson]

you do realize that in 500 years they would be just as likely to lump us in with the previous 10,000 years or so of civilization. None of the vices you mention were less obvious in any of that time frame really apart from ecocide where some hunter gatherer societies managed as a result of the hardships of prior experience led to various largely sustainable rules that they lived by To the best of my knowledge all of the civilizations to date failed in that regard, usually doing about as much damage as they could without going out of their way to cause it. Every generation seems to think that ubiquitous outrageous ethical lapses really started on their watch which is almost as funny as it is tragic.

So what you're saying is that you are indistinguishable from Hitler?

[Geronimo]

I think in 500 years from our digital record everybody might get the impression that millions of people were indistinguishable from Hitler or at least commonly equated to Hitler.

[Aeson]

Your posts are bad, but not that bad. We don't lump everyone together from the past 10000 years. Why would they?

Even if they did, then you're just agreeing with my first post. That's how they'd see us.

[Geronimo]

Your posts are bad, but not that bad. We don't lump everyone together from the past 10000 years. Why would they?

Even if they did, then you're just agreeing with my first post. That's how they'd see us.

no, in that case I think that rather than singling out Hitler and saying we are all like Hitler, they'd likely be paying a lot less attention to Hitler in general.

Every generation has this huge vanity that future generations will have the moral clarity to judge that generations failings to the same standard as they do. I'm saying that future generations may well look back on our bickering generation with a similar alienated mix of curiosity and moral revulsion that we might feel when look back on the 30 years war between the protestants and the catholics.

They'll probably just think the whole generation was a product of the same mess that led in turns to all of the prior generations. I really doubt that they will look back at our generation as some kind of huge dip in understanding and massive historical spike in vices and depredations as you seem to think they will. It's also entirely possible that some things that seem glaringly morally imperative to you now may scarcely matter to them while other things that you can't fathom inviting any judgement on will be condemed.

My takeaway is we should do the best we can with the standards we have now and let future generations and their weird hangups take care of themselves.

[Aeson]

I didn't give relative rankings other than they'd look at us "like we look at slavers". Your whole strawman about "huge dip in understanding and massive historical spike in vices and depredations" is entirely your own conjuration.

The facts are we are commiting ecocide on a global scale. We are specieists. 6 billion people living in horrific conditions. We fight wars, instigate coups, etc. We've accumulated a mathematically unsustainable debt. None of it necessary, and most of it detrimental to ourselves and our descendents.

In 500 years people will be far enough removed from us to more accurately assess our failings. So they will judge us more as I judge us. Their wittle itty bitty fee fees won't get hurt like your's have when reading my factual representation of what we are doing.