I feel this negative outlook isn’t very healthy. Yes there are problems, as there have been at any point in history. That doesn’t mean nothing good happens or can happen.
Go make some nice things happen to yourself or someone else.
Whoa. People born around this time will (hopefully) live to the year 2100.
mind be blown.
I’m 36 and it’s not impossible that I’d see the year 2100 so yeah.
In 2100 I will be 126 so I hope not. Not unless they have massively improved geriatric medicine.
But imagine a worst reality, what if they do invent immortality drugs, and then we’re stuck with these idiots forever? What if it’s just century after century of the flat Earth conspiracy theorists (despite us clearly having a moon colony) and Andrew Tate.
Your take is not the correct one, longevity treatments (immortality drugs isn’t something that can be made) will roll back your physical age by reparing you. Not just forcing life to stay in a decaying body.
So at 126 you’ll run around playing basketball and listening to heavy metal, if that’s what you like.
Well you can give me a new heart but unless they do something about the brain there isn’t any point.
The brain is “just” cells too, they regenerate and so forth. No specific problem keeping it in a young state.
No? It’s not 2026 yet
Is the year 2020 part of this century?Edit: am dumb
Yes but 2000 was not.
Sorry, I meant 2000, and thinking about it, yes I guess that’s correct
Found Arthur C. Clarke
yes. a lot.
Obviously not everywhere but marriage equality made great strides.
The first quarter of this century is over at the end of 2025.
2001 was the first year in this century. 2025 is the 25th year in this century. 2100 will be the 100th - and last - year in this century.
(1 was the first year in the first century, 100 was the 100th - and last - year in the first century. That’s why every subsequent century starts on xx1 or xxx1 as well)
So 2000 was still 2nd millennium?
On a 1’ ruler, the first half inch ends at 0.5". All of the measurements within that first inch are “0.x”. “1.x” will be in the second inch. “2.x” is in the third inch.
Calendars don’t work like that. 1 January 1AD is in the first year, not the second. 31 December 1AD is still in the first year.
364 days after his (ostensible) birth was December 31st, 1AD. At midnight that night (364.999… days) 1 full year was complete, and we entered the second year.
3650 days after 1 January 1AD is 1 January 11AD.
36500 days after 1 January 1 AD is 1 January 101AD.
365000 days after 1 January 1AD is 1 January 1001AD.
31 December 2000 was the last day of the second millenia. The first day of the third millenia was 1 January 2001.
Year 1 AD would have started on March 1st, as Pope Gregory hadn’t happened yet. Also, no-one knew they were in the Julian Calendar AD yet either.
See, the ruler analogy is why I was so confused, because that’s how, intuitively, I would have expected it to work. I just never actually checked if that’s correct, and now it turns out that it’s not.
Yes, the third rolled in 1 jan 2001.
2000 was the last year of the second millennium and also the first year of the 00s. 2001 was the first year of the third millennium and the second year of the 00s.
That makes it even worse
Don’t you remember all the pedantic asshats saying that 2000 wasn’t a new century? “There was no year zero!”, “People just want all the digits to change!”, “You’re celebrating a year early!”
They’ve now moved on to “water isn’t wet, it makes things wet”.
I guess it’s nice they want to be smart at least, even though their idea of smart is to copy some bit of pedantry they saw someone else do.
I don’t, to be honest. I wasn’t exposed to much pedantry back then. I wasn’t exposed to many people on general, but that’s not a conversation for this place :D
I’m an old fart who graduated high school in '99, so I was right in the middle of all the blossoming internet pedantry.
You’re in a safe space among friends here, feel free to expose yourself whenever you want!
…wait…
Expose myself? What kind of amateur fighter do you take me for?
oooh that kind of expose!
Nah, I had no PC or internet, not many friends and my parents didn’t do a lot of the “meet up with other parents so the kids can play together” stuff because we’re all socially dysfunctional.
Yes, but most people ignored it and celebrated the new millennium at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000 anyway.
See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium#Debate_over_millennium_celebrations
It’s quite interesting. For example Fidel Castro made sure that Cuba celebrated correctly at the end of year 2000. And the U.S. Naval Observatory, official timekeeper for the country, held a party for the new milennium then too.
Can’t we just redefine it? That doesn’t seem reasonable in my mind.
(This is a joke, I know how awful that would go)
We have redefined it. The thing about language is no one controls it. If enough people want to call 2000 the start of the new millennium, then that’s when it was. It’s all arbitrary numbers anyway.
I meant in the sense of “Make Year 1 Year 0, shift all dates back one year, cause a lot of headaches when dealing with dates written down before year shift vs after year shift, but at least the 3rd millennium now properly starts at 2000”, but you have a better point
If we were to redefine it I wonder what way we’d go. Make -1 the first year of the first century and go in consistent 100 year steps from there? Or just accept that the first century and the first millenium are a little shorter than a hundred or a thousand years respectively?
Name “-1” year zero and have that be the start of the first century and millennium, would probably be the most reasonable option.
The idea I originally had would have been to decrement the year numbers, so that year 1 is now y0, 546 is 545 and 2001 is 2000. But changing existing dates is a recipe for nightmares, so let’s not.
With that version you’re still changing some historical dates though, like dates of death for roman emporers. Admittedly it is less of a problem though because you need to do the conversion from their calendar to ours anyway. It’s just that modern documents containing already converted dates would now be off in retrospect.
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
But people chose to celebrate the new millenium in 2000 because it’s much more fun to have every single digit in a calendar year change than having only one digit change and calling it “a new millenium”. Also, January 1, 2000 looks and feels so much cooler in my opinion, unless you write it in the dd/mm/yy format (mm/dd/yy wouldn’t make much of a difference), in which case 01/01/01 has that nice satisfying feeling of all variables being the same value.
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
That was the point of my question, the disbelief of “wait, 2k is the last year and not 1999?”
And I think it would be even easier if one could just look at the thousands digit and tell from that. It would be even more easier if the millennia and years and such were all 0-indexed, so you’d have the zeroth millennium spanning 0-999, the first millennium 1000-1999, the 19th century would be 1900-1999…
Would be nice, but unfortunately you can’t change a calendar system the world is so incredibly used to. Just the change from the Julian to the Gregorian was a massive change.
I know, I can but dream…
That doesn’t make much sense though, year 0 does exist. We define our calendar based on Jesus’s supposed birth year, not his birth year+1. Or?
Is 0.5" within the “first inch” of a ruler?
1AD is every date within the “first year”.
0.5 years after his ostensible birth is a date within that first year: 30 June 1AD.
1.5 years after his birth is not within that “first year”; it is within the “second year”, or 2AD. Just like 1.5" is a measurement that falls within the “second inch” of a ruler.
Year 0 doesn’t exist because it’s either before or after Christ being born. What would year 0 be?
There’d also be asymmetry if there was a 0 A.D. but no 0 B.C. (as that wouldn’t really make sense)
Yeah, year 0 doesn’t exist, it goes 1BC -> 1AD
Only programmers start counting with 0. All the normal people start with 1.
You mean normal people start at 0 and non-programmers sometimes start at 1?
How many apples are you holding right now? Is it less than 1? How would you count that?
When I write that normal people start at 1 then I mean that normal people start at 1, funny enough. Also, I am currently holding 0 apples. No need to start counting.
Sounds like you started counting at zero apples.
I like having a smart phone, but maybe that’s just me.
Firefly
You know what, fuck you man, 'cause time’s gonna tell in that one. I’m sure some respected producer like J.J. Abrams will pick it up and have us enjoy some four or five more seasons.
Yes. The fediverse wouldn’t get much awareness if it wasn’t for Twitter and Reddit absolutely shutting themselves. I wouldn’t even be here if that never happened.
That’s technology in a nutshell. We moved off of one platform to join another.
If we didn’t, we’d still be sending each other messages on AOL and join chatrooms to have discussions.
At least this time around there’s no central server that can be shut down killing everything that exists in that platform. Obviously AOL Instant Messenger and many other popular messaging apps from that era suffered from this exact fate.
Haven’t thought of AOL in years but recently it’s been coming up at random. On a TV show last night somebody’s neighbor said “Check your AOL” because they sent an email that morning and the person hadn’t replied yet.
Assuming you meant “shitting themselves” - Lemmy is doing that too, it just wipes better, at least for now.
It’s a better description than mine.
I met and married an amazing person this century, so I’ve got that going for me which is nice.
Congratulations! Same here!
Congratulations! Same here!
Congratulations! Same here!
My dude, only 24 years have elapsed in this century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_century, the 25th year has only just started. Try again next year.
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Well yeah, I’ve got a better job and my country inflation is finally going down. That’s good in my books!
Has anything good even happened?
Yes, definitely. Americans are realizing that their country is shit too and they are not exempt from falling into an Autocracy. Maybe that will teach them a bit more compassion with other people around the world and will stop the arrogance of bringing “democracy” (because it’s “clearly the best form of state”) to countries who don’t want it.
The american system is not a guarantee for the wellbeing of the people, and now that americans finally understand that, we can start actual constructive dialogue based on mutual respect, i hope.
Lol, ok, they totally didn’t realize their country used to be good and will vote for anything thatll fix it, or at least, shake the fucking jar.
The country has always failed its people, and those of other nations worldwide.
Extreme poverty worldwide is down from 38% to 8.5% since 2000. Global median income has doubled in that period. And yes, that’s adjusted for inflation.
Oh, and renewable energy generation as share of the global energy mix has consistently beaten expectations during that period, too. Solar, specifically.
Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise. The extreme poverty crap is propaganda by the world bank who lowered the poverty line for no other reason than to make capitalism look good.
That stuff about renewaple energy is simple greenwashing. The only year since 2000 when CO2 emissions went down was in 2020 thanks to COVID.
Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise.
You are one of the many who has equivocated the ‘wealth gap’ with the incidence of poverty, when there is no direct casual relationship between them at all.
All the wealth gap essentially is is just a label of who has the most wealth. But you don’t need to be anywhere close to that to be stable/comfortable.
Fact: if everyone on Earth was poor, the wealth gap would be zero. A small/non-existent wealth gap does not equal things being in good shape.
Fact: The correlation between the size of the gap and the incidence of poverty in world history is negative–in other words, long ago, the gap was smaller, and many more people were desperately poor.
Fact: It is absolutely possible for there to be a wealth gap, even one as large or larger than the one we have presently, while no one is poor. Further, it’s extremely unlikely that the hypothetical total eradication of poverty would shrink the gap at all, or even slow its growth.
Fact: If you waved a magic wand so that everyone in every county of the US, for example, had their income raised to the median, essentially wiping out poverty nationwide, the size of the wealth gap would literally be unchanged–the gap from broke to comfortable is nothing compared to the gap between comfortable and ‘wealthiest on the planet’.
New wealth is created constantly, it is not zero sum and never has been. And there will always be someone who has the most.
P.S. The World Bank’s poverty line has never been lowered that I can see, only raised, most recently in 2022 from $1.90 to $2.15 per day. So no idea what you’re talking about with ‘lowering the poverty line to make capitalism look good’.
Interesting video, thanks. I think the main point is that most (historical) data has a lot of gaps and wrong interpretations / extrapolation. People like Pinker seem to (perhaps just ignorantly) somewhat cherry pick data and use it as an argument for their optimistic statement.
Doesn’t look that way to me, given that the change has been pretty smooth and shows up on specific regions and adjusting for outliers and inflation (and matches the rise in median income).
More importantly, it’s not incompatible with global inequality on the rise. Different stats measure different things.
Renewable energy beating expectations is the opposite of greenwashing, it specifically compares actual generated renewable energy against previous projections. If you want to poke holes into it for the sake of… denying anything good has ever happened, I guess? you should instead point out at how disproportionately that growth is driven by China.
And again, that’s perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.
And again, that’s perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.
The only reason to care about renewables is if they prevent climate change. Why am I supposed to be happy solar panels exist, if CO2 emissions are increasing?
Because more solar means that the increase in CO2 was much less than it would’ve otherwise been without solar. An ocean liner doesn’t turn on a dime. First emissions increase less than they would’ve, then they increase at rates lower than years past, then they stop increasing, and then finally they can begin decreasing
Because those are two separate parameters. Less solar panels don’t mean less CO emissions, they mean more. You are cutting down on one metric even if you’re not reversing the trend.
That is an absurd question, by the way. Why are you supposed to be unhappy we’re making more solar panels in this scenario? What is the downside?
More plebs suffering under capital owners = global poverty rate went down
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I guess that’s why America has so many school shootings 🤡
Name another country with the same problem
I don’t know too much about the median income, but I’d wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off. Also, at least according to Wikipedia, the latest definition of extreme poverty was made in 2015, before the recent inflation spikes.
And “beat expectations” is just a non-statement. What were the expectations? And how does it matter if we’re still on track for a climate catastrophe? We’ve crossed the 1.5°C target.
but I’d wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off.
That’s what happened. The bimodal world income distribution has become unimodal as the working class of East Asia has seen a lot of improvement. Inequality in the first world went up since a lot of working class jobs left their countries while the wealthy were able to get richer.
Hey, I’ll take poor countries getting a bit better off before any benefits to any American any day. That’s good news, so point made.
As for “beat expectations”, I was going off a specific study showing multiple official forecasts and how far behind actuals they all were, but unfortunately I don’t have it handy.
But the data is the data, so here’s another example from an Australian blog post: https://evcricketenergy.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/2030-renewables-in-australia-forecast-2024-update/
And some data on renewable generation overtaking fossil fuels in the EU: https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2024/09/Report_Wind-and-solar-overtake-EU-fossil-fuels-in-the-first-half-of-2024.pdf
I don’t know why people look at this as such a binary. Climate change isn’t an on-off switch. This has to happen regardless. Faster is better than slower. Climate catastrophe or not, we need to figure this out, it’s about how bad things get before we do and how much extra work and impact we have to deal with from going over certain thresholds. Going over 1.5 doesn’t mean we can give up now, we still have to get the renewable transition done, even if now we also have to deal with a bunch of humanitarian crises that wouldn’t have happened had we transitioned sooner.
But energy use is way up and AI data centers have erased all gains from renewables.
Care to source that statement? What’s the global consumption for AI compared to production by renewables?
Cool, but that’s unrelated. We need the energy transition to happen anyway. Energy consumption is still climbing regardless, so we still need to move things over to renewables on top of whatever other actions we take. When it comes to climate stuff people tend to want a silver bullet or claim that anything short of that is useless, which I find kind of infuriatingly counterproductive.
Also, data centre power consumption has been up on aggregate on a very smooth curve since the 2000s. AI or no, those things have been burning through an increasing amount of energy over time. They need to generate that energy from clean sources in any case, which requires a faster energy transition.
Incidentally, I don’t know if AI datacenters have “erased all gains”. I don’t have a direct comparison handy, but the numbers I see around for those two things seem an order of magnitude apart. If you have good sources I’d love to take a look, though.
I suspect the claim that AI has consumed all gains is hyperbole, given that it used to be applied to crypto.
Regardless, those assholes are still using too much power, privatising the benefits, and socialising the fall out.
Sure? But, again, the question is whether there have been positive changes this century. Separate negative changes are not a counterpoint.
AI power consumption would have been AI power consumption. The unexpectedly fast adoption of solar is there regardless.
Obviously, that depends how you’re counting.
In the year 2,000, if you projected solar adoption, you might now be pleasantly surprised.
However in the year 2,000 if you projected progress on climate change, you’d probably now be horrified.
Solar adoption wouldn’t be a positive if not for climate change.
That’s the best part, though, solar adoption has beaten forecasts consistently over time. Most revisions upwards have still been too conservative.
Now, is that fueled by an energy crisis in turn caused by war, making self-generation and energy independence more appealing? Maaaaybe. But still, sun power!
That doesn’t address my point though.
Solar is only good because climate change is bad.
You can’t say “solar adoption is good” and ignore the climate deteriorating faster than expected.
Lord of the Rings (movies) came out this century. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
JRR Tolkien would like a word.
I know the sorts of words he likes, and I just haven’t got that kind of spare time right now.
