Readit Newslelanthran commented on Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse thatjoescott.com/2026/02/... · Posted by u/rolph
You said
> some other spot will, necessarily, become viable.
and provided no basis for that claim.
Not "some other spot may become viable." Not "the amount lost will be minimal." Not "we will be able to get by with less." You made an extremely strong claim, that for every lost place to fish, we will, definitely, necessarily, be granted another.
That is what I was responding to. Indeed, I quoted it in my first message here.
> You said
>> some other spot will, necessarily, become viable.
You are correct, I did say that, but that's because the probability of that is so close to 1 that it's not worth splitting hairs about.
Can that fail to happen? Sure, but for the planet to heat up even by an exceptionally high 10c and have few places near the average is a vanishingly small possibility, and would almost certianly require a change in the earth's orbit.
> and provided no basis for that claim.
lelanthran commented on Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse thatjoescott.com/2026/02/... · Posted by u/rolph
> Those prawns can be replaced by food that is grown in other places that are viable, whether newly viable or always viable is irrelevant.
But those prawns are gone. The people whose livelihood depended on them have lost that. The people for whom they were a staple have lost that, no matter how replaceable they may be.
Sure, given time, we may be able to find replacements for the things we lose to this drastic climatic shift. But that's not a guarantee, and even if we do, there's huge damage and upheaval in the meantime.
> I find it unlikely that all areas become non-arable at the same time.
It's not about "all areas". Nowhere did I say that everywhere on the planet would become non-arable land at the same time. It's about having more land lose viability than gains it within a short span of time.
What you're positing—that as various areas of the planet warm and cool, there will be perfect balance in what arable land we lose and gain—seems much, much less likely than the scenario where land we have farmed for literally thousands of years becomes wasteland, and we do not immediately gain enough new arable land in other areas to replace it. In fact, every projection I have seen has suggested that while we may gain some new arable land, it will be much, much less than what we lose in a scenario like the one described.
What it looks like to me is that you are either handwaving the decades (or more!) of turmoil, hardship, and loss of life for people in the areas that will be most affected by this, or you're engaging in seriously magical thinking to posit that every acre of farmland lost will be perfectly balanced by an acre of farmland gained somewhere else, and no one will be seriously negatively affected by the move from one to the other.
> What you're positing—that as various areas of the planet warm and cool, there will be perfect balance in what arable land we lose and gain
I am not, and never did propose that. I am arguing that there is no model that I am aware of that predicts a such dramatic NET reduction in arable area that society collapses. If you know of such models, now would be a good time to make me one of the lucky 10k :-) The only ones I am aware of are those predicting specific collapse on specific populations, most of which are tiny, percentage-wise.
> What it looks like to me is that you are either handwaving the decades (or more!) of turmoil, hardship, and loss of life for people in the areas that will be most affected by this,
No, I am not. Respectfully, you appear to be ascribing intentions to my argument that I don't have. I quoted the bit I was responding to specifically!
>>> I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.
To which my answer is that this is very unlikely - there will be turmoil, hardship and (some - they aren't going to all die) loss of life in the affected currently-arable areas, but society does not depend on any specific area being viable.
The largest societies live nowhere near their source of food. The impact is not the same as the quoted "historical societies" that collapsed when the arable land did, because our societies don't have the dependency of "living on or near arable land".
Will there be a negative impact on those people living in and around arable land? Sure. Are they a significant percentage of our societies? Nope. Single-digit percentage of the population is nowhere close enough to cause a societal collapse.
All of this to say that, what happened to historical societies happened because those societies were built in, on and around their basic nutrition requirements.
Our societies are not.
lelanthran commented on I write games in C (yes, C) (2016) jonathanwhiting.com/writi... · Posted by u/valyala
DirectX is C++ (technically a set of COM interfaces) and most game engines are also C++.
Unlike, say, Linux programming where C is the standard, almost all games have been written exclusively in C++ for a long time now, probably three decades.
> DirectX is C++ (technically a set of COM interfaces) and most game engines are also C++.
So? Their interface is via C, just like OpenGL was.
lelanthran commented on Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse thatjoescott.com/2026/02/... · Posted by u/rolph
> some other spot will, necessarily, become viable.
What is your basis for this claim?
It's entirely possible for prawns fished from the coast of Mozambique to simply...go extinct. For areas with good arable land to be plunged into inhospitably cold temperatures, only for other areas with arable land to be made too hot to reliably support their crops.
There's no cosmic balance being kept here.
> It's entirely possible for prawns fished from the coast of Mozambique to simply...go extinct.
So? That isn't an irreplaceable staple, is it? Those prawns can be replaced by food that is grown in other places that are viable, whether newly viable or always viable is irrelevant.
> For areas with good arable land to be plunged into inhospitably cold temperatures, only for other areas with arable land to be made too hot to reliably support their crops.
I find it unlikely that all areas become non-arable at the same time. Not even the most extreme warnings about climate change go to this extreme.
What is your reasoning for considering a possibility so small that it exceeds all the most extreme models we have?
lelanthran commented on I write games in C (yes, C) (2016) jonathanwhiting.com/writi... · Posted by u/valyala
I write mostly like I would in C, but use C++ features as needed. It ends up looking similar to Rust if you squint. All these "I write games in C" people complain about C++ features, and then end up reimplementing virtual interfaces manually with struct headers or massive switch statements, just to feel better about themselves. Writing games in C is not harder, you just have to implement modern language features by hand.
Complaining about a language having features you don't want is silly. C++ doesn't take longer to compile if you don't abuse templates.
> Complaining about a language having features you don't want is silly.
If your criteria for a good language is "how many features does it have", then sure, C++ wins. OTOH, if you criteria is "How many footguns does the language have" then C++ loses to almost every other mainstream language, which includes C.
Sometimes the lack of footguns is a plus.
lelanthran commented on Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse thatjoescott.com/2026/02/... · Posted by u/rolph
Being cold doesn't seem that big a problem.
I think the bigger concern is what sudden climate shifts might do to agriculture. If some farmland becomes much less viable on a wide basis, that might be much harder to adjust to on the short term.
I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.
> I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.
They didn't have the logistical advantages we have today (storage and transport).
Okay, when prawns fished from the coast of Mozambique are no longer viable some other spot will, necessarily, become viable.
Historical societies did not have the technology to simply farm in another place when their current place become hostile to farming. We already do this.
The only danger we have is if the global area for farming decreases. I do not think this will happen - it will merely shift around.
Dead Comment
The proposition wasn't "all the viable land/fishing spots will be destroyed". No one has been arguing that.
It was "when we lose this viable fishing spot, another spot that was not viable will become viable".
And there is zero basis for that.
So either you have massively failed to state your position clearly, or you are so blatantly moving the goalposts, the dragmarks can be seen from space. Which is it?
Stop with the personal attacks - you are obviously emotional about this, and it's clear I am not.
My position is, and always has been, that there is no evidence that modern societies are as dependent on living on, near or around their source of nutrition.
Even an extremely high increase, past what all models predict currently, will still leave net than enough arable land on earth to continue sustaining societies.
I am arguing that an imbalance wide enough for societal collapse is highly unlikely.
My position is absolutely clear, from the very first message in this thread.
You have, variously, 1) strawmanned that I argued cosmic balance, 2) shifted the frame of the argument from societal collapse to individual human suffering, 3) Made personal slurs against me rather than my argument, and 4) Point-blank refused to address my argument, restarted here for the third time.
These optics are not good. Just to be clear, this is what you are supposed to be arguing against (because this is my point): "Climate change on its own will not be sufficient to cause societal collapse."
I cannot see how you have any argument against that, but you have replied so many times that I have to wonder why you are even replying, arguing against an argument that is not being made.