- 14 Mar 2002
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Elon Musk's casual reply to a tweet about Japan's record population decline in 2021 provoked anger - at him and the Japanese government. I am not sure what caused that furor.
Musk: Japan will cease to exist
- Thread starter thomas
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- 8 Aug 2005
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I imagine there's a lot of frustration about the prospect of one's country declining, both at a government that fails to address the issue, and to outsiders who touch on this nerve whether they're honestly concerned about the future of Japan or just an attention-seeking sad-boy grasping at any chance to appear relevant...
Japan may just be on the forefront of an impending population decline, but if climate change is anywhere as severe as I fear it will be, populations around the world will face it as well. Especially considering how expensive and hostile a world we've made for would-be parents, it's little wonder our supreme court justices are writing about "infant supplies" like it's an economic barometer.
We are all so screwed, I feel especially bad for people who actually want to have children.
Japan may just be on the forefront of an impending population decline, but if climate change is anywhere as severe as I fear it will be, populations around the world will face it as well. Especially considering how expensive and hostile a world we've made for would-be parents, it's little wonder our supreme court justices are writing about "infant supplies" like it's an economic barometer.
We are all so screwed, I feel especially bad for people who actually want to have children.
Maybe someone here has heard of the Fermi Paradox. An unusual reply to that is that the populations/civilizations that survive will not be going hog wild with development. The ones that don't go nuts with development are the ones that will survive, the ones that find their own homeostasis.
Earth has backed off a little from one tipping point (nuclear war/annihilation), at least temporarily. Of course there's climate change, and some other problems.
It's like a firework. Does a species rocket up and burn out, never to be seen again? Or is that species a candle, that can burn for a long time? A personal opinion, but Musk is the firework type.
I think Japan is very survivable. The Jomon, from the time of the end of the ice age (somewhat like the pacific northwest) found a place that was suitable to harvesting the ocean with maybe a little agriculture on the side. Geographically, I like Japan's odds.
Earth has backed off a little from one tipping point (nuclear war/annihilation), at least temporarily. Of course there's climate change, and some other problems.
It's like a firework. Does a species rocket up and burn out, never to be seen again? Or is that species a candle, that can burn for a long time? A personal opinion, but Musk is the firework type.
I think Japan is very survivable. The Jomon, from the time of the end of the ice age (somewhat like the pacific northwest) found a place that was suitable to harvesting the ocean with maybe a little agriculture on the side. Geographically, I like Japan's odds.
- 21 May 2003
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- 6 Mar 2003
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Okinawa has the highest birthrate in Japan. Overall population is still falling there too, however.
- 12 Oct 2004
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Sorry, can I just say this for the record? F*** Elon Musk.
I'm not denying that Japan's declining birthrate is an issue, or that the Japanese government could be doing better.
Lots of governments around the world could be doing a much better job of making it easier for young people to raise families.
But why TF should anyone care what Elon Musk thinks about the subject? If he wanted to make the world a better place, maybe he could spend some of his billions helping to solve world hunger rather than buying Twitter on a whim because he's so f****** thin-skinned that he can't stand randos on the Internet making fun of him.
You know what else is going to eventually "cease to exist"? Elon f****** Musk.
I'm not denying that Japan's declining birthrate is an issue, or that the Japanese government could be doing better.
Lots of governments around the world could be doing a much better job of making it easier for young people to raise families.
But why TF should anyone care what Elon Musk thinks about the subject? If he wanted to make the world a better place, maybe he could spend some of his billions helping to solve world hunger rather than buying Twitter on a whim because he's so f****** thin-skinned that he can't stand randos on the Internet making fun of him.
You know what else is going to eventually "cease to exist"? Elon f****** Musk.
- 6 Mar 2003
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I'm no fan of Musk but I would say he's done quite a bit for the world compared to his peers. I do hope he doesn't make things worse with regards to Twitter. It's still not a done deal. He may still decide not go forward with it.
As for this tweet and the furor, it's ridiculous. Yes he exaggerated a bit but he literally stated the obvious.
- 12 Oct 2004
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What exactly has he "done for the world"? He's a pioneer in electric vehicles (yes, this is a good thing) but other companies are also doing that now without Tesla's horrendous record of intra-company racism.
He's also a pioneer in the field of helping his fellow billionaires go into space. Woohoo.
I honestly don't see what the huge difference is between him and someone like Jeff Bezos, who has made shopping incredibly convenient around the world mostly towards the end of enriching himself, and driven a lot of people out of business in the process.
Yes, they are making the world "better" in some ways, but do you think for a second they actually care about anything besides themselves, and getting richer and more powerful at the expense of literally anyone else?
And yes, he's "stating the obvious" (and I respect the fact that he framed it in a regrettable sense rather than a mocking one), but Japan is not the only country with a severely declining birthrate. You could say (almost) the same thing about South Korea, Italy, or any number of other countries. It's not a great thing, but it's hardly Japan-specific. The whole world needs to get its **** together if we want to have a sustainable society into the middle and latter half of this century and beyond.
He's also a pioneer in the field of helping his fellow billionaires go into space. Woohoo.
I honestly don't see what the huge difference is between him and someone like Jeff Bezos, who has made shopping incredibly convenient around the world mostly towards the end of enriching himself, and driven a lot of people out of business in the process.
Yes, they are making the world "better" in some ways, but do you think for a second they actually care about anything besides themselves, and getting richer and more powerful at the expense of literally anyone else?
And yes, he's "stating the obvious" (and I respect the fact that he framed it in a regrettable sense rather than a mocking one), but Japan is not the only country with a severely declining birthrate. You could say (almost) the same thing about South Korea, Italy, or any number of other countries. It's not a great thing, but it's hardly Japan-specific. The whole world needs to get its **** together if we want to have a sustainable society into the middle and latter half of this century and beyond.
Past reading seemed to say that with regards to aging populations, japan was at an advantage over other asian economies since it has already achieved a relatively high level of development--that it would be better able to cope because of that.
OTOH, china is aging more rapidly--in spite of reversing the one-child policy, and even offering some carrots, the birth rate continues to be stubbornly low. And aren't the fertility rates in taiwan and korea are lower than in japan? In east asia, china will be most affected by this.
Of course musk has bet big on china, so he has to avoid antagonizing his minders.
edit: of course, in saying that japan will cease to exist, maybe he's parroting his minders...?
OTOH, china is aging more rapidly--in spite of reversing the one-child policy, and even offering some carrots, the birth rate continues to be stubbornly low. And aren't the fertility rates in taiwan and korea are lower than in japan? In east asia, china will be most affected by this.
Of course musk has bet big on china, so he has to avoid antagonizing his minders.
edit: of course, in saying that japan will cease to exist, maybe he's parroting his minders...?
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- 8 Aug 2005
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I agree that Japan could be a good candidate for a mindfully developed agrarian society in the event of a societal pullback or technological regression, as long as climate change doesn't make agriculture or fishing too difficult (which is the biggest question mark for me... Just how bad will it get?). When the goal is to develop beyond that, the island's comparative lack of mineral resources would be a hurdle to overcome, and given the chance, history will repeat itself.
Isn't the Fermi paradox about why we haven't yet heard from extraterrestrial civilizations? I suppose it's possible for there to be a plurality of worlds whose cultures are advanced but inward-focused, able but uninterested in developing the technologies that would allow them to contact or explore the universe beyond their own cosmic neighborhood.
One of the beautiful fallacies of humanity is our endless capacity for self-absorption, so when we imagine extraterrestrial civilizations, more often than not we picture carbon-based humanoids who have developed along a similar timeline to our own. The recent revelation that the 8 chemical constituents of DNA have all been found in space makes it seem plausible that we ourselves may have an extra terrestrial origin of sorts, and similar conditions elsewhere may have brought rise to similar outcomes.
But damn do we lack imagination... Even the most fantastical worlds we imagine like Avatar's Pandora is basically run by a bunch of tribal native bipeds... "They're just like us, but 'primitive' and tall and blue!" (yeah yeah, it's a movie rehashing Fern Gully tropes, and we can't sympathize with aliens if they aren't basically exotic humanoids).
I feel the odds are better that extraterrestrial intelligence is unrecognizable or unintelligible to us even if we do stumble across them, having developed in unique siloes. Maybe there's silicon-based or fungal intelligence, complex organisms that don't operate as a collective of self-interested individuals... Or maybe it's that civilizations rise and fall in their own time, and over the distance of space our attempts to contact each other are merely radio signals passing in the night. Perhaps the distances are so great, that contact will constitute an archaeological study of a long-dead species on the other side of the Galaxy (or beyond). Maybe it'll be our signals being analyzed, long after we're gone. Maybe all traces of humanity will disappear before there's anyone capable of tuning in.
Which, speaking of self-absorption, brings me back to Musk... because in a way, the very systems that made his rise possible are the same systems responsible for our over-development vis a vis industrialization and resource exploitation. Capitalism is a game that is easy to win when you're born on third base, but the privileged lack the curiosity and empathy necessary to understand how diverse the human experience really is, and mistake their apparent success as evidence of their importance. Regardless of what good he has done (an arguable mess of dictating goals to engineers), he's clearly no more evolved than the rest of us, and though his wealth could be used to solve big problems, I have no expectation that he's capable of actually solving any big problems through his own volition, even if he were interested in doing something like addressing world hunger... the only thing he seems interested in is squandering it on vanity projects, or consolidating more resources for himself through subsidized enterprise.
You're posting about it on the internet, why should we care what you think? What have you done for the world? Is his fame confronting to you?
- 6 Mar 2003
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Is this not enough? He pushed the trajectory of EVs forward by years if not decades. He also accelerated automated driving technologies and disrupted the whole vehicle development paradigm.
Your comment about sending billionaires to space is shortsighted. That's not the end goal. See here for the vision of commercializing space. I'd rather the U.S. take the lead here than, say, China.
When I said "peers" I really had in mind all the world's billionaires, not the ones we all know and love or love to hate. Such as the Saudia Arabians, Russian oligarchs, hedge fund managers, defense indusry industrialists, etc. Compared to those whose only goal is to accumulate wealth with no positive impact to society, Musk is a saint. Granted, the bar is low.
I don't think Musk's driving force is wealth accumulation. I think he believes he is moving humanity forward, one problem at a time. Starting space companies is not the easy to way to achieving wealth.
I think that's the main reason. On the distance and time scales we are talking about, I think it's likely there are or have been many intelligent civilizations but the likelihood they will exist in the same time in the same vicinity of space is infinitesimal. Humankind itself has barely been around 200,000 years which is tiny in geological timeframes. And it's barely been 100 years since we harnessed electricity and radio waves. By the time a similar civilization in Alpha Centauri appears we'll likely be long extinct. Or vice versa.
It seems like our civilization and economies depend only on growth. We need to achieve some kind of homeostasis. I sure hope we figure it out before we perish as a species.
Two things/qualifications that I've read about. First, we're able to get off earth only because of its size--a bigger planet and the task (lift requirements) of going orbital (or to a moon or another planet) become increasingly huge. And we haven't even been back to the moon yet, in spite of the Mars dream.
Second, life has to not fizzle out (like summer fireworks). Civilization/tech may look like a nice arc, but imagine if it had been a nice arc from back when the Antikythera mechanism was made. Instead, that was lost--the greeks had the idea of heliocentrism a couple millennia before Copernicus, and look what happened in between. As for now, nuclear war has been back-burnered for quite a while (almost!), so maybe we've survived that stage.
But what about climate change? Will we still look so brilliant 100-200 years from now? Can we survive that (and not fizzle out)?
And the majority of our development in the last century or two has been due to that warming energy--fossil fuels. Subtract that from us (or any celestial civilization), and how different would our 'development' be? No coal in the the 19th century, no oil in the 20th.
edit: could it happen again? 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed - Wikipedia
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