Extinction won’t come about because the handful of people with yachts and golf courses led really good lives and used a fantastic amount of resources to do so. It’ll come about because hundreds of millions of “regular people” with cheap cars and jet travel led really good lives and used a mere extraordinary amount of resources to do so. And neither group wanted to diminish their standard of living one bit.
This is actually a plot point in Greg Egan's Diaspora. A moon-based laser interferometer is used to detect an impending neutron star merger that will have catastrophic results for biological life on Earth.
This statement caught my eye. In what ways can tell that someone is a great programmer without them being good in a particular language? Can someone be a phenomenal programmer without being well versed in any particular language?