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How Vulnerable Is the World?

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Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#51

Post by bobsmooth »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #12

I trust in our ability to cope and adapt. Civilisations have collapsed before, and will collapse again. We've been around as an identifiable species for 100,000 years, that's a couple of Ice Ages and at least one point where we were down to a few hundred individuals. Trying to control every eventuality and predict everything will be as destructive as the disasters the article talks about. Instead of shoring up contro…

Any future civilization won't have access to easily available natural resources. All the coal, ores and oil that exists can only be extracted with heavy machinery that couldn't be replicated without the easy stuff that we've already consumed.

If our civilization collapses, whatever comes after will have a very difficult time becoming industrialized.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#52

Post by marcus_holmes »

retrac wrote: post #39
marcus_holmes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. You're saying that because we've made a lot of stuff, if our civilisation collapses it'll destroy everything? How does one follow from the other?

The scale really is fundamentally different. What we are now, and what ware doing now, is just completely unlike anything that existed until a couple hundred years ago. This chart on land use maybe helps make the point https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-over-the-long-te... The emerging global civilization entered some sort of exponential consumption curve a few hundred years ago and the entire planet has bee…

Well, we have vast piles of resources sitting around in landfills ;)

When the Roman Empire collapsed, and the Saxons saw the concrete aqueducts they left behind, they thought that a race of Giants had built them. They'd lost the ability to even comprehend what was involved in building such things any more. It took us about 1000 years to get back to that kind of constructional know-how.

But the Saxons thrived meanwhile. It turns out that you don't actually need concrete aqueducts in order to make babies.

I've wandered around SE Asia a bit. If Civilisation collapsed there's plenty of people there that wouldn't hear about it for a few years, and wouldn't care much even then. Life will go on. People will cope. They'll carry on having babies and growing food.

If we can just somehow make sure the knowledge survives, it might not even matter that much. Our descendants can work out other ways of building stuff, more suitable to the circumstances they find themselves in. Who knows? They may develop better solutions because they never had the easily strip-mined resources.

Japan had very poor iron ores. To make steel weapons they had to develop some incredible methods of forging this poor ore. They ended up producing (arguably) the best swords in the world. Constraints can be overcome and adapted to. We will cope.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#53

Post by bearbawl »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #28
jbotz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Civilisations have collapsed before, and will collapse again. Civilizations have collapsed before... but none of those were nuclear-armed, global civilizations that have produced more artifact matter than there is biomass on the planet[1]. Our civilization is epic... and when we collapse it will be equally epic, so I'm wouldn't bet that the whole "it has happened before and will happen again" thing really applies h…

I don't understand. You're saying that because we've made a lot of stuff, if our civilisation collapses it'll destroy everything? How does one follow from the other?

It feels obvious to me. More and more the World looks like a very tiny house.

We’ve built tool and industrial processes that are bigger that our planet. Look at a cargo ship. Or a mine. It’s mind blowing.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#54

Post by TimBurr »

thejackgoode wrote: post #25

When the pandemic started it just coincided that I learned about the Bronze Age Collapse. I remember myself thinking about how a similar situation would unfold today. What if a meteor hits now? Solar flare strong enough to take out electronics? Some country deciding tactical nuke warfare is acceptable? A supervolcano? How many simultaneous catastrophes can current civilization survive? Only definite conclusion is tha…

Speaking of Asimov, "The Dead Past" explores government controlled research, which the article proposed as one defense against black-ball ideas.

Without spoiling too much, the story revolves around suspected government suppression of a time-viewing device. The story's pretty easy to find online; the link below lists books it appears in.

http://www.asimovreviews.net/Stories/Story046.html

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#55

Post by ip26 »

peterxpark wrote: post #46
ip26 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your critique of carbon capture tech, but it's also the only way we can clean up (that part of) our mess.

I'm not a scientist so if I'm incorrect, I would love to know. But given the current rate of accelerated use of carbon fueled technologies, how realistic is it that carbon capture technology will catch up within the next decade or less? How certain can we be that such technology won't lead to an even worse problem? Everything I've seen says carbon capture is a moonshot idea. I'd say Elon Musk has a better shot at pop…

To be clear I'm not saying carbon capture will single-handedly save us. Carbon capture is a bailing bucket. Our boat is sinking. The bucket can buy us time, and help clean up the boat once we've plugged the hole. We've still got to plug the hole. But we'd also be happy to have a good bucket.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#56

Post by AZ-X »

If the World is a big laboratory, the stuffs won’t end it by throwing black balls. The topic is human centralized, as well as viruses and bacteria are capable of black balling each other before human exist. If there are two World presenting and overlapping happens, one World could be corrupted due to such a black ball.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#57

Post by marcus_holmes »

bearbawl wrote: post #53
marcus_holmes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. You're saying that because we've made a lot of stuff, if our civilisation collapses it'll destroy everything? How does one follow from the other?

It feels obvious to me. More and more the World looks like a very tiny house. We’ve built tool and industrial processes that are bigger that our planet. Look at a cargo ship. Or a mine. It’s mind blowing.

Travel more :) The world is huge, and we are not as big as we like to think.

Catch the Trans-Siberian. Or the Indian-Pacific for that matter. Watch as thousands of kilometers of untouched wilderness roll by.

Visit some really poor countries and see the happiest people you've ever met living without technology.

See the ruins of vast ancient temple complexes, remains of entire civilisations that are now just tourist traps.

The world will go on without us.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#58

Post by gampleman »

> But now consider a counterfactual scenario – a ‘safe first strike’ – in which some technology made it possible to completely destroy an adversary before they could respond, leaving them unable to retaliate.

This is why I have been opposing Missile Defence. Strategically missile defence is a highly offensive technology, since it allows a safer first strike capability.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#59

Post by gampleman »

I think a far more robust solution would be spreading our species into multiple planets/solar systems, which are far enough that there is little incentive to compete with each other. (Think a generation ship kind of concept). These civilisations communicate with each other, but specifically treat each other as test beds for their technology. So if plant A invents technology X, it will send a message to B saying: "I invented such and such, and will let you know in 50 years on how it went". B will then not adopt that technology until it hears back about how it worked out for A.

Re: How Vulnerable Is the World?

#60

Post by rhn_mk1 »

Diederich wrote: post #44
Jon_Lowtek wrote: post #15

Reminds me of the "great filter" hypothesis that all highly intelligent species develop technologies that destroy them before they find a way to spread on a galactic scale.

I think there's a good chance that the 'black ball', the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter is advanced and rapidly increasing communication technology. I've typed up quite a few words about this, as visible in my HN and Reddit comment history, and I don't have free time to elaborate right now, except to note a (probably poor) analogy that just popped into my head. Our physical brains (and bodies) are like th…

> This exponential curve was extremely slow for the first 100,000 years. (Most people who throw the word 'exponential' around don't realize how slow the initial growth is!). It started to speed up a few thousand years ago, and now we are experiencing multiple doublings in our human life spans.

I think that's some sort of super-exponential you mean, like alluded to by Kurzweil [0]. Exponential growth means that doubling always occurs at the same interval, so those ancient people would have seen doubling just like us now. Are you using the word "exponential" too lightly ;)?

[0] https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

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