Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be.
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 I emailed this to Parklane Landscapes, "There is an interesting conversation on Mastodon social media about a graphic attributed to your organization. I have attached a link to the conversation. My question is was your graphic AI generated? It illustrates a concept we should be aware of, but using AI on a regular basis can be questionable for "nature workers" due to the negative environmental costs of implementing the technology. I would appreciate it if you were to clarify this."
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 Good for educational classes on the environment, notably to kids. It creates awareness.
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@Jeroen89 I emailed this to Parklane Landscapes, "There is an interesting conversation on Mastodon social media about a graphic attributed to your organization. I have attached a link to the conversation. My question is was your graphic AI generated? It illustrates a concept we should be aware of, but using AI on a regular basis can be questionable for "nature workers" due to the negative environmental costs of implementing the technology. I would appreciate it if you were to clarify this."
@gdjp Thank you. Since the picture had their label on it, I didn't think of putting it in the reference.
Likewise I didn't think to check if it's AI made. To me, it supports the message. And in this case, it's clear (being cartoonish).
But next time I will check it and add it if I think it's AI generated -
@gdjp @misty @kete @sarae Glitches. Is that only me ? Fish in the sky, lumpy damselfly, ...a flying toilet broom ?
Idk.
Also how the grasse isn't there in 2020 : why ? If anything the removal of trees favored grasslands (because access to light).
And what about the white stuff you can see everywhere, snow remnant ? Dust ? Pollen ? >_>
If it's not AI I'm very curious about the alien thought process at work and story behind all this.
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@roadskater @Jeroen89 my last long trip, I had hardly any hit
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 this is why we need large regions with untouched diversity - rainforests and wetlands, deserts & northern forests - so nature can trive. Where we must not destroy everything.
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There is no doubt that it is AI-generated. If you look closely, there's a depiction of a flying fish (Exocoetidae), which is native to the tropic and subtropic oceans, and not – you know – temperate forests.
Also, the tandem dragonfly (Anax tandemicus) went extinct in the 1740's.
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@souldessin but the state parks aren't sufficient. The more we 'develop', the worse it becomes.
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 Do this with public space, please.
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@Jeroen89 If you want a jungle, you need to let it be a jungle. There's no "carefully extracting some resources" or any such thing, it will destroy the jungle. (I use jungle in a generic way to mean "nature, undisturbed" if I may.) And that's why with capitalism, you cannot have jungles. All jungles will be "extracted for profit" because growing the jungle is an externalized (to the past) cost, not having the jungle is an externalized (to the future) cost, but profit is being made NOW. Want change? Gotta go chop down some rich people instead of trees, no way around it.
(Figuratively, of course. But chop you must.) -
@gdjp @misty @kete @sarae you can't really. At this point your best bet is to ask the person who posted/claims to have made it and even then they might just lie to you because the people who do this and aren't full-on AIbros harassing artists are deeply ashamed of it because they know what the public opinion is 🥲
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@Kurt Ah yes, the ever-present myth of humans making nature more natural by (carefully?) editing it. Because nature alone is "too dumb" to do it properly. Remind you of other colonial thinking patterns? Yikes.
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 This phenomenon merits a more emotive name!
As for the graphic - in all too many rural places, there's barely an insect to be seen.
Happily, I came across a veritable insect hotspot this week - a small farm in Sussex that has been chemical free for a decade or more... Insects everywhere - more than I can remember seeing for a long time!
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I was taught that Mesopotamia was "The Fertile Crescent", and that it is in what today is Iraq and Turkey.
I remember watching the news in 1991 the first time we bombed the shit out of Iraq. It didn't look very fertile to me. It looked like a desert.
Same thing?
@Uair @Jeroen89
The area was named the fertile crescent specifically for river valleys, and what they were like over 3000 years ago. The area was already becoming dryer at that time, and about 60,000 years ago the whole Arabian peninsula was a jungle.
Also the war wasn't fought in the prime farming areas. -
@Jeroen89 this is why we need large regions with untouched diversity - rainforests and wetlands, deserts & northern forests - so nature can trive. Where we must not destroy everything.
@Jeroen89 In addition the same for oceans. There's so much damage already due to climate heating but also deep sea mining and fossil fuel pollution!
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 I remember that butterfly I saw in 2020.
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89@mastodon-belgium.be the irony of talking about climate change with ai slop graphics
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@Jeroen89 I miss the fireflies from my childhood.
@AdmiralMemo @Jeroen89 In the late 1960s, I could see fireflies in large numbers every summer in a vacant lot in my New York City neighborhood. #bronx #nyc
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@Jeroen89 ok, but it's pretty ironic that you're illustrating this with AI style graphics
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Shifting baseline syndrome ( #SBS ) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.
Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.
@Jeroen89 there was a great story about #ShiftingBaselineSyndrome about a decade ago. A biologist reviewed photos from fishing expeditions in Key West over half a century. Charter boats that regularly brought in fish bigger than the tourists who caught them were, after some decades, only bringing in fish about 30cm long.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler
