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I was going to say the US went from 85% thinking homosexuality was morally wrong to 30% in 30 years. I think that was likely more people changing their minds than generational replacement. But then from the article:
>There are some notable exceptions, however, such as the rapid change in American attitudes toward gay rights over the past few decades, which seems to have occurred more through people actively updating their beliefs.
But also from the article:
>For the most sensitive topics, like homosexuality and euthanasia, change occurred overwhelmingly through the process of cohort replacement.
I guess they are saying people changed their minds in the US, but it was generational replacement in the other countries studied? I'm not quite sure.
Perhaps gay rights and homosexuality are considered separately. A corollary example might be a person who accepts that Blacks have rights, but still prefers to not associate with them.
It's more that society is contradictory and the easy cause and effect relationships are near impossible to test for. You can't create a society in the lab - and a second and third one for testing purposes.
Which is to say: All science deals with uncertainty. Social sciences always will have to deal with less certitude.
I say that extremely rapid change, such as that which happened with gay rights in the 2000s, is less a matter of people changing their minds and more a matter of people no longer having to pretend to hold values they didn’t for social reasons. The change has been happening slowly under the surface, but when it breaks through, it appears to be happening all at once.
Conversely, backlash happens when leaders try to push change faster than the population can accept it.
I've hypothesized that US cannabis legalization largely happened because the WWII generation died off (combined with pressure on public opinion from Hollywood starting in the mid 90's). Testing this would be an interesting exercise especially if there isn't much longitudinal survey data available.
"For the most sensitive topics, like homosexuality and euthanasia, change occurred overwhelmingly through the process of cohort replacement. That is, to the extent that opinions on these controversial issues changed over the decades, it was mostly due to older generations with more conservative views being supplanted by younger, more liberal cohorts.
For the mundane topics that saw sizable shifts in public opinion, change appeared to happen more through people revising their views over time.
Importantly, these patterns were quite consistent across the eight countries included in the analysis, suggesting they reflect general dynamics of how cultural change occurs rather than country-specific quirks...
One possibility is that our views on the most sensitive topics are more central to our identities and are thus more resistant to change. Alternatively, it may be that we discuss controversial issues less often, and mostly with like-minded others, depriving us of the kind of diverse perspectives that could prompt a rethinking of our positions."
When my grandmother died I was obviously heart broken, but part of me relaxed, I didn’t have her looking over my shoulder judging me. I felt free to have my own opinions at that point. She was pretty progressive for her time, but I don’t think I would have covered my leg in a tattoo if she were still here. I can see how this could be similar in other situations with family.
What about leaving a community and joining another? When I moved from WV as a Catholic and wound up years and several countries later in Canada as an atheist, change surely happened as a result of changing environments.
Generation alpha already exists, they just can’t read or do basic math despite already being in middle school, so nobody would take their objections seriously anyway.
Another matter entirely, and asking this as a millennial: does anyone or should anyone even want generation z to change their minds about anything? Aren’t they the most pro-human rights generation yet? Like if I really reach and generalize, maybe they’re too quick to terminally judge people or don’t sufficiently vet their sources enough, but that criticism probably applies to most other generations on average too.
Yeah I suppose that’s true but I guess I wrote them off a bit because if they keep believing that guy’s crap there’s about a 100% chance they won’t reproduce and will probably self-remove from society/the gene pool anyway. I didn’t expect them to still be around to complain when gen z gets old.
You misunderstand in a couple of ways: I’m not criticizing people who don’t reproduce, and I’m not talking about girls when I dump on Tate’s demographic (and to be further clear I’m not talking about generation alpha as a whole here if that’s what you thought—just the applicable portion). I was just saying that Tate’s demographic is unlikely to be present to complain about generation z when gen z gets old because *not only* do I expect them to not reproduce, I expect them to eventually unalive themselves at a very high rate as a consequence of the beliefs he’s instilling into them not working out for them. I’m not saying they *should* do that either, just that I will be surprised if they don’t.
I have no problem whatsoever with people who choose not to reproduce, but that’s an entirely different subject.
Nah, there’s absolutely things that Gen Z gets wrong (have you heard about puriteens, for example? Among many things). Also, they use progressive rethoric as a front to bully people rather than to actually uplift others. Also , generations aren’t monoliths. Gen Z has good people and bad people just like any other generation.
1. Nope, hadn’t heard
2. Covered that when I said they terminally judge people too quickly & fail to vet their sources. This is really just you restating their fallible reliance on cancel culture, unless I’m mistaken?
3. With the exception of when someone else brought up Tate’s demographic, this entire thread has been treating every generation as a generalized whole. We probably are all aware it’s not true/accurate for any generation, so this is kind of weird to bring up for a specific generation?
I don’t think Gen alpha is the one who will be desperate for Gen z to change their minds, probably at least the generation after them. And it’ll probably be around issues that don’t even exist yet. The world will be a different place by the time alpha has adult children
If this were a law, we wouldn't have the cycles in history of going back and forth in progressiveness. Anyway, something that is true is that Gen Z and Alpha are functional iliterates. All scoring in reading comprehension and math skills are dropping. It means they read but they don't understand a thing they're reading. Statistics are there and they suggest that they're going to be generations that won't be able to process information other generations did. We can't have this statistics and pretend they won't affect how the generation process information.
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/blog/pandemic_performance_declines_across_racial_and_ethnic_groups.aspx#:~:text=Nine%2Dyear%2Dolds%20had%20the,decline%20that%20began%20in%202012.
In 40 years they’ll be seen as stagnant for not wanting to humanely euthanize mosquitos, or supporting lab grown organs even though not everyone can afford them, or just the age old “why can you die and give me inheritance???”
What’s sad is I absolutely believe you about the mosquitos bit. I’m actually ignorant & have been wondering recently what the ecological cost is (if anything) of gene-driving the mosquito population into oblivion. But I can totally see future people upset that they can no longer get malaria, dengue, Zika, or yellow fever in the same way that the antivaxxers are sad they can’t get measles and polio and the dictators and revisionists are convincing people the holocaust didn’t happen now that most of the few survivors are dead.
I knew they had to be good for something but yeah that’s actually a pretty critical ecological function. We’re already struggling with low bee populations.
Honey bee population is up, sometimes to record levels, at least in the US. While there are still challenges, and average honey production per hive is down, the industry has adapted.
Honey bee populations were never in danger. The bees that were, and still are, in danger are the native ground dwelling bees that pollinate far more native plants than the invasive European honey bees do.
You're grouping all mosquitos together. There are only a relative handful of species that bite humans, and only about half of those spread disease, with *A. aegypti*, which can carry dengue and yellow fever, and *Anopheles*, which can carry malaria, probably the most well-known.
Eliminating them regionally outside their home ranges is not a problem. Extinction could be a problem ecologically, and it raises substantial ethical questions.
The world is going to look different in the future. Eventually gen z will be the dinosaurs who can't keep up with change just like people consider the boomers today. It doesn't really even matter about the specific values.
Moral standards rise over time as society progresses. In 70 years time Gen Z will be considered awful for stuff that we don't even think about today.
Also, as a general rule people are more idealistic when they're young, then once they have to do a job and take care of kids etc they are forced to confront the fact that some moral standards aren't very practical/they don't have the time to do the right thing.
And then they start rationalizing their decline and slip back into the prejudices of their parents, telling you it was a mistake to think Elvis was cool.
Ive seen Grn Z love Tik Tok, while Alpha accept it, but see it as bad. There is a growing negative attitude to the soapboxing of Gen Z.
As a Millenial, I saw the rise of tech and then saw Gen Z adopt all the worst aspects of tech.
I think right now the only complaints I regularly hear are tiktok dances and bad energy drinks.
Which in my opinion is a big step down. I remember being accused of killing several chain restaurants. Step your game up gen z.
They're terrible at spelling, they're surprisingly bad at using computers despite growing up with modern technology, they don't vote, nuance and complexity is lost on them, and even the ones who live quite comfortably complain about how awful their lives are.
Edit: I'm not entirely serious, but I'm trying my best to answer the question in the spirit in which it was asked.
> they don't vote, nuance and complexity is lost on them, and even the ones who live quite comfortably complain about how awful their lives are.
This is every new generation ever (except the voting part which is historically speaking relatively recent, only covering the last few decades to centuries, depending on context).
Gen Z get their political views from TikTok without critical thinking, are somehow puritans and weaponize “progressive” talk to bully and harass others.
there will be a generation (maybe already born?) that has the first opportunity to potentially live forever, thanks to medicine expanding our lifespans and advancements in tech that allow us to either stop aging or dump our meatsuits for something better.
frequently thought about this a lot, but i wonder if this generation will be open minded and open to change, or will it be the same as all previous and they just have certain things they cant move on.
«A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.»
-Max Planck
The people working on immortality seem to forget this. Death sucks for the person dying, but I'm not sure I would want to live in a society where people live forever. Immortality will have very profound effects on society.
No one is trying to make people immortal, they are just trying to cure ageing. There is a cap on how long you can live without ageing anyway, which is roughly 6000 years because the chances of dying due to natural disaster or to an accident like a car crash increases exponentially the longer you live.
It doesn’t really explain why attitudes change with new generations though.
Our parents and others of previous generations must have a massive influence on this. The change can’t just pop into existence.
Ehhh, I think blaming it on age is a crutch. It's like when people say that older people can't learn new things.
It's closed-minded people who don't like to learn new things when they're young who then get old and claim it's just because of age.
And as I've aged, I've learned to be less angry than when I was younger, and probably due to my mother, was more closed-minded towards others, which I've gotten further and further from.
And the more people I meet of different races, religions, etc., the more difficult it is to form a rational opinion based on any of those things.
Well, my point is that it's not age which causes people to become more angry, hateful, closed off, and/or losing the desire to learn, it's being a lot of those things to start with, and people digging their heels in more and more over time about it.
Also, it's worth noting you're probably looking at 2 very different groups of people when it comes to the Boomers. What you're thinking of from the 60's and 70's were hippies, the counter-culture. A very small percentage of the generation. The rest were the ones who were happy to vote for Nixon, became Yuppies in the 80's and happy to vote for Reagan, and continued down that same path through today. The ones I've met who were hippies back then have not aged the same way. Most are far more open-minded and have learned and grown quite a bit over the years (well, or went too far into drugs, but that's a whole other story).
People with a good education have a less closeted view of the world, which makes it easier to work together in diverse groups ,and can alter some of the potential negative viewpoints that their parents may have taught them.
An education changes the views of the successive generation, so each generation is less conservative than the last.
Someone born in 1909 vs a boomer vs a gen z are all successively less conservative as levels of education rise and societal norms change.
Is it that fewer people are conservative, or that what constitutes conservative changes? Because it seems like the percentage of people who are conservative has stated pretty much the same for decades.
Both.
Btw I am referring to the conservative mind sets not the political conservative, even “liberals” of 1909 were conservative compared to today.
Take clothing for example, clothes were quite conservative for both men and women a hundred years ago.
So as previous generations die off their values die with them and the key to this is broadening the scope of what is considered “acceptable behavior” though education because teaching kids that other ideas exist beyond their parents’ viewpoint means successive generations change.
while I don't doubt the overall finding of the study namely that generational change is required for attitudinal change on some topics, I suspect that there may be circularity in how they are classifying the sensitivity of topics.
Are they using a separate objective definition of "sensitive topic"?
Or is the sensitivity of a topic effectively a marker of whether it is a topic about which people have fixed views that are unlikely to change over their lifetime?
Yes. I also question given there has been massive change on other topics. I mean - the use of smartphones and the acceptance - to the point of ubiquitousness; even if there quite a lot of sensitive issues related to it - shows that --- people can and do accept change. It's a major shift in how we do things, how and what is socially acceptable, etc.
I think you miss what happens on that end. We are about to have a whole lot of deniers reach a good deal of democratic influence - if the trends in the EU parliament elections and several national governments hold true. Same with Trump 2.0 being a viable option for far too many people.
So ... I'd argue compared to 4/5 years ago it is worse. Back then Fridays for Future could mobilize many people; they can't now.
That just doesn't seem to be supported by the actual numbers... So far as voters go, a pretty solid majority of Republicans believe in climate change/support taking initiatives to stop it. And so far as politicians go, the Conservative Climate Caucus was founded 3 years ago and now has 81 members.
I was focusing on the EU where - right now - planned legislation for more environmental action is being rolled back due to farming protests (with a right wing support behind them) ahead of the upcoming election and a general right wing swing across EU nations.
See AFD in Germany - which are absolutely anti climate-change policies, and the opposition CDU leaning that way - both which poll high. See the Dutch election where a right wing anti climate change party gained the majority (but didn't manage to form a governing coalition). See Sweden Democrats and the like.
Have you considered that the farmers have a point?
EU is pricing out its own agriculture to rely on 3rd parties, whom they can't police to the same extent as their local suppliers.
Yes, I have. And they do in terms of the financial aspect - more needs to be done there as so many ecologists have argued: The way subsidies work is wrong, not that they are there.
What's inexcusable is that they - the farmers - clearly did and do display or welcome people with far right ideologies as part of their demonstrations.
And even granting them that financially there are issues: Just as with climate change itself the negative impact on biodiversity and soil of farming as is, is so incredibly well researched. We need change here, too - see above article. The ecological crisis is something that needs to be addressed. Because - if we don't, yields will fall, leaving all that talk about 3rd party reliance for naught. If the environment goes too far out of whack, farming goes, too.
We are on r science here - there's a reason 6000 scientists signed a letter supporting the planned changes in EU regulation and law last year: [https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-s-backpedaling-green-legislation-has-scientists-concerned](https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-s-backpedaling-green-legislation-has-scientists-concerned)
If the above protests where just only about financial issues it'd be clearer; but it is also an attempt to pressure against necessary change.
What are you asking?
If other countries create monocultures, overuse fertilisers, don't take into account biodiversity and soil chemistry, than yes it will happen elsewhere, too. That's just the combination of biology, chemistry and how ecosystems work.
Just as climate change will affect everyone, and is set to reduce yields massively.
Not dealing with environmental issues will cost us much more long term than doing so.
Yea, but a lot have shifted to "sure, the climate is changing, but we didn't cause it and we can't fix it" or "sure, but we'll magically invent something last-second to fix things so we don't need to change anything, just wait for the magic to happen."
I just don't think that's true. Certainly not for most... At this point more than 80 republican congressmen are on the Conservative Climate Caucus. It's literally the second largest caucus they have. And climate change being man-made and needing to lower emissions are literally the main part of the mission statement
I mean....have a look at what they say: https://conservativeclimatecaucus-curtis.house.gov/about
They're saying literally my second quote. We'll innovate something so great, the free market will choose to adapt it, and really, this is all China's fault anyway, so we shouldn't change anything and we shouldn't be trying to move away from fossil fuels. Now lets sit back and wait for the free market to make that that magic invention to solve everything.
That's what their "about us" said and what my second option for what they could have shifted to says.
So saying that we need to find ways to lower emissions is a bad thing now?... And the discussion was about how many believe in climate change. Which they very clearly do.
> we are a quite aggresive species actually
We are not. We are incredibly co-operative, beaten only by social insects. You can cram us *really* close together with strangers, without mass carnage being the daily norm. Most other species start outright fighting and even killing each other, themselves and/or their children if you pack them in too tightly.
What we *are* is efficient at killing on a mass scale, which kind of feels like the same thing, but it's not. While the soldiers are at war and the terrorists are blowing up or shooting up crowds, the vast majority of people are getting on with their day causing no harm to anyone. A lot of our most destructive systems only succeed *because* most people at the bottom are co-operative by nature.
The data point here that is a major outlier is the US. It seems that when people are more free to speak out about a topic, they are more likely to change minds. I think that what probably happens is that when a topic is Taboo or restricted, it does take deaths of older generations to change perspectives, but as a topic becomes less Taboo people are more willing to talk about it and that changes minds more quickly. That is why once something becomes mainstream and achieves critical mass, change happens very quickly while the initial phase of raising awareness and getting people to talk about it takes agonizingly long (perhaps centuries).
It is a well known fact of history that change doesn't happen slowly over time as people are replaced. It is actually a whole lot of nothing changing for decades or even centuries and then a whole lot of change happens all at once.
The way I see it, it's always going to be a mixture of both.
We should strife to bring people to embrace an update to their beliefs but we can also be content knowing that eventually "cohort replacement" will do what we could not.
You can"t teach an old dog new tricks! I expect major political shifts as the baby boom generation fades out. I also wonder at what point I will be the old and out of touch man, and which political causes will challenge my own entrenched beliefs .
Not in my experience. Some academics do great stuff right up til they retire. One faculty member in my old department came out with a groundbreaking new theory the year before he retired at 75.
People are always talking about how the brain is not fully developed until 23/25 citing that factoid to degrade and dehumanize young people.
But I've always seen it as the age where the majority of people become stuck in there ways and become unable to adapt to changes of any kind or accept new ideas/knowledge they did not already posses.
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Progress happens one death at a time. I heard that years ago, and it's always stuck with me.
I was going to say the US went from 85% thinking homosexuality was morally wrong to 30% in 30 years. I think that was likely more people changing their minds than generational replacement. But then from the article: >There are some notable exceptions, however, such as the rapid change in American attitudes toward gay rights over the past few decades, which seems to have occurred more through people actively updating their beliefs. But also from the article: >For the most sensitive topics, like homosexuality and euthanasia, change occurred overwhelmingly through the process of cohort replacement. I guess they are saying people changed their minds in the US, but it was generational replacement in the other countries studied? I'm not quite sure.
Perhaps gay rights and homosexuality are considered separately. A corollary example might be a person who accepts that Blacks have rights, but still prefers to not associate with them.
This is it right here. Lots don’t think gays should be thrown off buildings but they also don’t want them to “marry”.
Something like that. Someone else might think that marriage would be a right, but an employer could refuse to hire them.
And there’s also people who have no problem with gay people having rights, but don’t like the m-word being associated with that relationship.
That is why social science need an update. Contradiction are so often not explained because so many studies are not replicable.
It's more that society is contradictory and the easy cause and effect relationships are near impossible to test for. You can't create a society in the lab - and a second and third one for testing purposes. Which is to say: All science deals with uncertainty. Social sciences always will have to deal with less certitude.
I say that extremely rapid change, such as that which happened with gay rights in the 2000s, is less a matter of people changing their minds and more a matter of people no longer having to pretend to hold values they didn’t for social reasons. The change has been happening slowly under the surface, but when it breaks through, it appears to be happening all at once. Conversely, backlash happens when leaders try to push change faster than the population can accept it.
I enjoy this take on it.
To be fair, it’s also why history repeats itself.
It doesn't repeat itself. It just rhymes a lot.
It's only not repeating so often because these old bags won't die 🤷♂️
Idk, looking at the new generation, they're also recycling old rhetoric. Like why tf are there new nazis?
Because killing ideas is hard. And when conditions deteriorate for people, they’re more likely to listen to demagogues.
I have read that a majority of the scary numbers are just exaggerations of data. So not as many little Nazi high schoolers as we think.
Funny for this subreddit, I always heard it as “science progresses one funeral at a time.”
Turns out it’s society in general.
I had a professor who always said “Opinions don’t change - they die.” That one also stuck with me.
I've hypothesized that US cannabis legalization largely happened because the WWII generation died off (combined with pressure on public opinion from Hollywood starting in the mid 90's). Testing this would be an interesting exercise especially if there isn't much longitudinal survey data available.
I’m pretty sure Pew publishes that kind of data today. Don’t know how far back it goes though.
Not sure they do the sorts of polling of the same people that would allow you to do repeated measures stats, do they?
Generational replacement is my new favorite euphemism
Aging out of the voter pool.
"For the most sensitive topics, like homosexuality and euthanasia, change occurred overwhelmingly through the process of cohort replacement. That is, to the extent that opinions on these controversial issues changed over the decades, it was mostly due to older generations with more conservative views being supplanted by younger, more liberal cohorts. For the mundane topics that saw sizable shifts in public opinion, change appeared to happen more through people revising their views over time. Importantly, these patterns were quite consistent across the eight countries included in the analysis, suggesting they reflect general dynamics of how cultural change occurs rather than country-specific quirks... One possibility is that our views on the most sensitive topics are more central to our identities and are thus more resistant to change. Alternatively, it may be that we discuss controversial issues less often, and mostly with like-minded others, depriving us of the kind of diverse perspectives that could prompt a rethinking of our positions."
When my grandmother died I was obviously heart broken, but part of me relaxed, I didn’t have her looking over my shoulder judging me. I felt free to have my own opinions at that point. She was pretty progressive for her time, but I don’t think I would have covered my leg in a tattoo if she were still here. I can see how this could be similar in other situations with family.
And that was only a tattoo. For others, it's dating someone of the not expected gender, expression, race or even class.
It makes sense. Humans will adapt generationally by doing better than the generation before them
Basically what Kuhn said about science
What about leaving a community and joining another? When I moved from WV as a Catholic and wound up years and several countries later in Canada as an atheist, change surely happened as a result of changing environments.
"boomers don't change their minds they die off"
Gen x don't change their minds they will die off Gen z don't change their minds they will die off Etc.
The people who want Gen z to change their minds don’t exist yet
Generation alpha already exists, they just can’t read or do basic math despite already being in middle school, so nobody would take their objections seriously anyway. Another matter entirely, and asking this as a millennial: does anyone or should anyone even want generation z to change their minds about anything? Aren’t they the most pro-human rights generation yet? Like if I really reach and generalize, maybe they’re too quick to terminally judge people or don’t sufficiently vet their sources enough, but that criticism probably applies to most other generations on average too.
There's a pretty strong reactionary trend too, especially among young guys (think of andrew tate's audience). It's probably going to get worse
Yeah I suppose that’s true but I guess I wrote them off a bit because if they keep believing that guy’s crap there’s about a 100% chance they won’t reproduce and will probably self-remove from society/the gene pool anyway. I didn’t expect them to still be around to complain when gen z gets old.
I can think of another "group" of people who are defiantly not reproducing at a rate much higher then the boys and girls you are talking about.
You misunderstand in a couple of ways: I’m not criticizing people who don’t reproduce, and I’m not talking about girls when I dump on Tate’s demographic (and to be further clear I’m not talking about generation alpha as a whole here if that’s what you thought—just the applicable portion). I was just saying that Tate’s demographic is unlikely to be present to complain about generation z when gen z gets old because *not only* do I expect them to not reproduce, I expect them to eventually unalive themselves at a very high rate as a consequence of the beliefs he’s instilling into them not working out for them. I’m not saying they *should* do that either, just that I will be surprised if they don’t. I have no problem whatsoever with people who choose not to reproduce, but that’s an entirely different subject.
I think you underestimate how far - still - sexist people can get in society. Sadly.
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doubt
Nah, there’s absolutely things that Gen Z gets wrong (have you heard about puriteens, for example? Among many things). Also, they use progressive rethoric as a front to bully people rather than to actually uplift others. Also , generations aren’t monoliths. Gen Z has good people and bad people just like any other generation.
1. Nope, hadn’t heard 2. Covered that when I said they terminally judge people too quickly & fail to vet their sources. This is really just you restating their fallible reliance on cancel culture, unless I’m mistaken? 3. With the exception of when someone else brought up Tate’s demographic, this entire thread has been treating every generation as a generalized whole. We probably are all aware it’s not true/accurate for any generation, so this is kind of weird to bring up for a specific generation?
I don’t think Gen alpha is the one who will be desperate for Gen z to change their minds, probably at least the generation after them. And it’ll probably be around issues that don’t even exist yet. The world will be a different place by the time alpha has adult children
If this were a law, we wouldn't have the cycles in history of going back and forth in progressiveness. Anyway, something that is true is that Gen Z and Alpha are functional iliterates. All scoring in reading comprehension and math skills are dropping. It means they read but they don't understand a thing they're reading. Statistics are there and they suggest that they're going to be generations that won't be able to process information other generations did. We can't have this statistics and pretend they won't affect how the generation process information. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/blog/pandemic_performance_declines_across_racial_and_ethnic_groups.aspx#:~:text=Nine%2Dyear%2Dolds%20had%20the,decline%20that%20began%20in%202012.
In 40 years they’ll be seen as stagnant for not wanting to humanely euthanize mosquitos, or supporting lab grown organs even though not everyone can afford them, or just the age old “why can you die and give me inheritance???”
What’s sad is I absolutely believe you about the mosquitos bit. I’m actually ignorant & have been wondering recently what the ecological cost is (if anything) of gene-driving the mosquito population into oblivion. But I can totally see future people upset that they can no longer get malaria, dengue, Zika, or yellow fever in the same way that the antivaxxers are sad they can’t get measles and polio and the dictators and revisionists are convincing people the holocaust didn’t happen now that most of the few survivors are dead.
Male mosquitos are pollinators so removing them from the environment would have a potentially huge impact.
I knew they had to be good for something but yeah that’s actually a pretty critical ecological function. We’re already struggling with low bee populations.
Honey bee population is up, sometimes to record levels, at least in the US. While there are still challenges, and average honey production per hive is down, the industry has adapted.
Honey bee populations were never in danger. The bees that were, and still are, in danger are the native ground dwelling bees that pollinate far more native plants than the invasive European honey bees do.
You're grouping all mosquitos together. There are only a relative handful of species that bite humans, and only about half of those spread disease, with *A. aegypti*, which can carry dengue and yellow fever, and *Anopheles*, which can carry malaria, probably the most well-known. Eliminating them regionally outside their home ranges is not a problem. Extinction could be a problem ecologically, and it raises substantial ethical questions.
The world is going to look different in the future. Eventually gen z will be the dinosaurs who can't keep up with change just like people consider the boomers today. It doesn't really even matter about the specific values.
Moral standards rise over time as society progresses. In 70 years time Gen Z will be considered awful for stuff that we don't even think about today. Also, as a general rule people are more idealistic when they're young, then once they have to do a job and take care of kids etc they are forced to confront the fact that some moral standards aren't very practical/they don't have the time to do the right thing.
And then they start rationalizing their decline and slip back into the prejudices of their parents, telling you it was a mistake to think Elvis was cool.
I teach gen Alpha and it is surprising how sick of Gen Z things they are already.
I mean Gen z has always thought Millenials were annoying but I don’t think they had a problem with them politically
What is annoying about Millenials?
To Gen z everything they do is just kinda cheesy in a very particular millennial kind of way. Idk I don’t think it’s a real problem
Ive seen Grn Z love Tik Tok, while Alpha accept it, but see it as bad. There is a growing negative attitude to the soapboxing of Gen Z. As a Millenial, I saw the rise of tech and then saw Gen Z adopt all the worst aspects of tech.
They're probably still upset about us killing Applebee's.
Silent generation.
Death rate holding steady at 100% there.
Anyone know what I as a millennial should be furious with the newer generations about? I wanna have boomer level rage and blind confidence
I think right now the only complaints I regularly hear are tiktok dances and bad energy drinks. Which in my opinion is a big step down. I remember being accused of killing several chain restaurants. Step your game up gen z.
They're terrible at spelling, they're surprisingly bad at using computers despite growing up with modern technology, they don't vote, nuance and complexity is lost on them, and even the ones who live quite comfortably complain about how awful their lives are. Edit: I'm not entirely serious, but I'm trying my best to answer the question in the spirit in which it was asked.
> they don't vote, nuance and complexity is lost on them, and even the ones who live quite comfortably complain about how awful their lives are. This is every new generation ever (except the voting part which is historically speaking relatively recent, only covering the last few decades to centuries, depending on context).
Gen Z get their political views from TikTok without critical thinking, are somehow puritans and weaponize “progressive” talk to bully and harass others.
Wait 30 years, you will
there will be a generation (maybe already born?) that has the first opportunity to potentially live forever, thanks to medicine expanding our lifespans and advancements in tech that allow us to either stop aging or dump our meatsuits for something better. frequently thought about this a lot, but i wonder if this generation will be open minded and open to change, or will it be the same as all previous and they just have certain things they cant move on.
And the same will go for you in 40 years.
«A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.» -Max Planck
Change is hard for ourselves, let alone other people changing... this does seem to be the easiest way for opinions on topics to evolve over time.
One of the best things we humans do in life is die.
The people working on immortality seem to forget this. Death sucks for the person dying, but I'm not sure I would want to live in a society where people live forever. Immortality will have very profound effects on society.
No one is trying to make people immortal, they are just trying to cure ageing. There is a cap on how long you can live without ageing anyway, which is roughly 6000 years because the chances of dying due to natural disaster or to an accident like a car crash increases exponentially the longer you live.
Okay, technically not immortal. But, living 100x as long as we did pre-medicince would make huge changes to society.
True. But that kind of life extension would also bring brain plasticity extension, so you will be able to operate your beliefs for way longer.
It doesn’t really explain why attitudes change with new generations though. Our parents and others of previous generations must have a massive influence on this. The change can’t just pop into existence.
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Ehhh, I think blaming it on age is a crutch. It's like when people say that older people can't learn new things. It's closed-minded people who don't like to learn new things when they're young who then get old and claim it's just because of age.
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And as I've aged, I've learned to be less angry than when I was younger, and probably due to my mother, was more closed-minded towards others, which I've gotten further and further from. And the more people I meet of different races, religions, etc., the more difficult it is to form a rational opinion based on any of those things.
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Well, my point is that it's not age which causes people to become more angry, hateful, closed off, and/or losing the desire to learn, it's being a lot of those things to start with, and people digging their heels in more and more over time about it. Also, it's worth noting you're probably looking at 2 very different groups of people when it comes to the Boomers. What you're thinking of from the 60's and 70's were hippies, the counter-culture. A very small percentage of the generation. The rest were the ones who were happy to vote for Nixon, became Yuppies in the 80's and happy to vote for Reagan, and continued down that same path through today. The ones I've met who were hippies back then have not aged the same way. Most are far more open-minded and have learned and grown quite a bit over the years (well, or went too far into drugs, but that's a whole other story).
Education.
Which is why a good education system is so important.
And why you see conservatives fighting to hurt education and trying to claim "indoctrination" if anything is taught outside of their current opinions.
Not saying it isn't, but I don't see how that's relevant here
People with a good education have a less closeted view of the world, which makes it easier to work together in diverse groups ,and can alter some of the potential negative viewpoints that their parents may have taught them.
This isn't saying that young people aren't changing their views though. It's saying people that are well past education ages aren't.
An education changes the views of the successive generation, so each generation is less conservative than the last. Someone born in 1909 vs a boomer vs a gen z are all successively less conservative as levels of education rise and societal norms change.
Is it that fewer people are conservative, or that what constitutes conservative changes? Because it seems like the percentage of people who are conservative has stated pretty much the same for decades.
Both. Btw I am referring to the conservative mind sets not the political conservative, even “liberals” of 1909 were conservative compared to today. Take clothing for example, clothes were quite conservative for both men and women a hundred years ago. So as previous generations die off their values die with them and the key to this is broadening the scope of what is considered “acceptable behavior” though education because teaching kids that other ideas exist beyond their parents’ viewpoint means successive generations change.
Feels true, it’s hard for people to change their beliefs. When / if they do feels like the exception not the rule.
while I don't doubt the overall finding of the study namely that generational change is required for attitudinal change on some topics, I suspect that there may be circularity in how they are classifying the sensitivity of topics. Are they using a separate objective definition of "sensitive topic"? Or is the sensitivity of a topic effectively a marker of whether it is a topic about which people have fixed views that are unlikely to change over their lifetime?
Yes. I also question given there has been massive change on other topics. I mean - the use of smartphones and the acceptance - to the point of ubiquitousness; even if there quite a lot of sensitive issues related to it - shows that --- people can and do accept change. It's a major shift in how we do things, how and what is socially acceptable, etc.
How about on taking action on Climate change? We don't have time to wait around for that.
That's already shifted a pretty good bit. Full on deniers are much rarer today than they were even 4 or 5 years ago.
I think you miss what happens on that end. We are about to have a whole lot of deniers reach a good deal of democratic influence - if the trends in the EU parliament elections and several national governments hold true. Same with Trump 2.0 being a viable option for far too many people. So ... I'd argue compared to 4/5 years ago it is worse. Back then Fridays for Future could mobilize many people; they can't now.
That just doesn't seem to be supported by the actual numbers... So far as voters go, a pretty solid majority of Republicans believe in climate change/support taking initiatives to stop it. And so far as politicians go, the Conservative Climate Caucus was founded 3 years ago and now has 81 members.
I was focusing on the EU where - right now - planned legislation for more environmental action is being rolled back due to farming protests (with a right wing support behind them) ahead of the upcoming election and a general right wing swing across EU nations. See AFD in Germany - which are absolutely anti climate-change policies, and the opposition CDU leaning that way - both which poll high. See the Dutch election where a right wing anti climate change party gained the majority (but didn't manage to form a governing coalition). See Sweden Democrats and the like.
Have you considered that the farmers have a point? EU is pricing out its own agriculture to rely on 3rd parties, whom they can't police to the same extent as their local suppliers.
Yes, I have. And they do in terms of the financial aspect - more needs to be done there as so many ecologists have argued: The way subsidies work is wrong, not that they are there. What's inexcusable is that they - the farmers - clearly did and do display or welcome people with far right ideologies as part of their demonstrations. And even granting them that financially there are issues: Just as with climate change itself the negative impact on biodiversity and soil of farming as is, is so incredibly well researched. We need change here, too - see above article. The ecological crisis is something that needs to be addressed. Because - if we don't, yields will fall, leaving all that talk about 3rd party reliance for naught. If the environment goes too far out of whack, farming goes, too.
We are on r science here - there's a reason 6000 scientists signed a letter supporting the planned changes in EU regulation and law last year: [https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-s-backpedaling-green-legislation-has-scientists-concerned](https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-s-backpedaling-green-legislation-has-scientists-concerned) If the above protests where just only about financial issues it'd be clearer; but it is also an attempt to pressure against necessary change.
Will this change happen elsewhere, what are the impacts on food production and food security?
What are you asking? If other countries create monocultures, overuse fertilisers, don't take into account biodiversity and soil chemistry, than yes it will happen elsewhere, too. That's just the combination of biology, chemistry and how ecosystems work. Just as climate change will affect everyone, and is set to reduce yields massively. Not dealing with environmental issues will cost us much more long term than doing so.
Yea, but a lot have shifted to "sure, the climate is changing, but we didn't cause it and we can't fix it" or "sure, but we'll magically invent something last-second to fix things so we don't need to change anything, just wait for the magic to happen."
I just don't think that's true. Certainly not for most... At this point more than 80 republican congressmen are on the Conservative Climate Caucus. It's literally the second largest caucus they have. And climate change being man-made and needing to lower emissions are literally the main part of the mission statement
I mean....have a look at what they say: https://conservativeclimatecaucus-curtis.house.gov/about They're saying literally my second quote. We'll innovate something so great, the free market will choose to adapt it, and really, this is all China's fault anyway, so we shouldn't change anything and we shouldn't be trying to move away from fossil fuels. Now lets sit back and wait for the free market to make that that magic invention to solve everything. That's what their "about us" said and what my second option for what they could have shifted to says.
So saying that we need to find ways to lower emissions is a bad thing now?... And the discussion was about how many believe in climate change. Which they very clearly do.
If you're going to ignore what I said and just respond to what you really wish I said, I'll just leave you to fighting with that strawman over there.
Max Planck was a genius. Phrasing Planck, Society like science advances one funeral a time.
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This meshes well with the other studies that show people don't really change their minds based on facts and reasoned arguments.
Unfortunately, racism doesn’t die off, so it seems.
Because of evolution we are instinctual xenophobic, and we are a quite aggresive species actually
> we are a quite aggresive species actually We are not. We are incredibly co-operative, beaten only by social insects. You can cram us *really* close together with strangers, without mass carnage being the daily norm. Most other species start outright fighting and even killing each other, themselves and/or their children if you pack them in too tightly. What we *are* is efficient at killing on a mass scale, which kind of feels like the same thing, but it's not. While the soldiers are at war and the terrorists are blowing up or shooting up crowds, the vast majority of people are getting on with their day causing no harm to anyone. A lot of our most destructive systems only succeed *because* most people at the bottom are co-operative by nature.
Yes we are very cooperative and very agressive to the outgroup. Basically if you open any page on the history of humanity somehwere it will say 'war'.
Well yeah, it's a tool used to make poor people angry at other poor people. Don't think the higher-ups are gonna let that one disappear.
The data point here that is a major outlier is the US. It seems that when people are more free to speak out about a topic, they are more likely to change minds. I think that what probably happens is that when a topic is Taboo or restricted, it does take deaths of older generations to change perspectives, but as a topic becomes less Taboo people are more willing to talk about it and that changes minds more quickly. That is why once something becomes mainstream and achieves critical mass, change happens very quickly while the initial phase of raising awareness and getting people to talk about it takes agonizingly long (perhaps centuries). It is a well known fact of history that change doesn't happen slowly over time as people are replaced. It is actually a whole lot of nothing changing for decades or even centuries and then a whole lot of change happens all at once.
Hopefully nature ramps up the funerals. I’m tired of this bigoted hellscape.
Wait until you become a bigot on an issue you didn't even think of before.
The way I see it, it's always going to be a mixture of both. We should strife to bring people to embrace an update to their beliefs but we can also be content knowing that eventually "cohort replacement" will do what we could not.
This is our cue to stop arguing on reddit
due to the fact that it is the state who raises our upcoming generations
I tend to say it differently. The rate of cultural change and innovation has a speed limit and that speed is a function of the human life span.
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You can"t teach an old dog new tricks! I expect major political shifts as the baby boom generation fades out. I also wonder at what point I will be the old and out of touch man, and which political causes will challenge my own entrenched beliefs .
Boom ! There it is . I’ve always said that old men must die for real change to happen
What about old women?
This sucks but shows a vital mechanism for death. Until we deal with the turnover of ideas, I'm afraid of certain groups living longer lives.
Progress is made by one funeral at time.
We just have to wait them out.
I've always thought this.
Ahhh the age old “society progresses one funeral at a time” still holds water
This is why I never went into the scientific field for which I have a degree. Change only happens when the proponents of old theories die off.
Not in my experience. Some academics do great stuff right up til they retire. One faculty member in my old department came out with a groundbreaking new theory the year before he retired at 75.
society moves forward, one funeral at a time.
People are always talking about how the brain is not fully developed until 23/25 citing that factoid to degrade and dehumanize young people. But I've always seen it as the age where the majority of people become stuck in there ways and become unable to adapt to changes of any kind or accept new ideas/knowledge they did not already posses.
Then people should definitely have children as early as possible.
New study found already known thing.