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My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

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Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#81

Post by jcranmer »

XorNot wrote: post #22
sillysaurusx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in the “peak oil” scene — and by that I mean, I listened carefully to my friend, who was really into the peak oil scene. It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fine to enjoy it. But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilizat…

That's making a rather broad claim from a rather specific one, even if the adherents have a lot of ideological overlap. Peak Oil was predicting a very real phenomenon, but it hasn't happened yet (oil, being finite, will have this happen eventually).

> Peak Oil was predicting a very real phenomenon, but it hasn't happened yet (oil, being finite, will have this happen eventually).

That's true only if you define Peak Oil so unusually as to make it true. The concept behind Peak Oil is that in the (near [1]) future, the available supply of oil will fail to meet the total demand for it, and then we'll be stuck in a world where there is forever an inability to get the necessary oil. In this model, it's great to be an oil supermajor holding one of the last great reserves of oil--you can basically charge what you want for it, and so it's worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars to get it.

An alternative model for the future is that the demand for oil peaks before the supply is. In this model, that same oil supermajor is now in a terrible position, and shelling out hundred of billions of dollars for new reserves is a stupid idea. In essence, from a planning perspective, this is the exact opposite of what Peak Oil predicts.

The current trends seem to indicate that it's the second scenario that is going to come true, not the former situation. Combined with the fact that more specific predictions about when it will happen have continuously failed to come true, it's hard to find much about Peak Oil thati sactually correct.

[1] The imminence of the catastrophe of peak oil is usually highlighted by its prophets, but it has been generally less assumed by planners working under its assumption, so it's debatable to what degree the imminence is a critical prediction of the theory. Whatever the case, nearly every single prediction of when the peak would occur has already been passed without that peak having happened.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#82

Post by drdec »

rurp wrote: post #18
reedjosh wrote: post #4

Just read the original paper. This synopsis mostly just reiterates what the original paper says and concurs. I personally don't think we're going to see any collapse as drastic as the models predict. People have been predicting collapse forever, but either way, this article doesn't add much to the paper itself.

But people have been right many, many times about other societies collapsing. All groups collapse, it's just a matter of time. Our ability to create existential threats is extremely new in historical terms. We have very little evidence for how they will be managed, but so far the indications are mostly terrible.

There are always people predicting the end of society just as there are always people predicting a stock market crash. I suspect they have similar levels of success.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#83

Post by yongjik »

iaw wrote: post #53
yongjik wrote: post #45

> One reason for this is that in Herrington’s words, “the scenarios do not significantly diverge until 2020.” After that point, the scenarios start to diverge drastically ... This sounds more like a selection bias. If any model drastically diverged from reality earlier, then it would have been already discarded, and we won't be talking about it. So, we'll be only talking about models that start to diverge around 2020…

Having dabbled with chaotic heavily dynamic systems in college I actually disagree. It may be that our system was in a relatively stable highly linear regime and we just knocked it out into a non-linear chaotic region that we can't escape even if we cut emissions entirely. Chaotic systems do some scary unpredictable things, I wish I shared your confidence.

Sure, I do agree that the world, especially the climate system, may veer off into uncharted territory soon. (Maybe it already started.) I'm just saying these particular "predictions" don't seem to contain any useful information. Anyone can say "things can go wrong." Hell, I can say that, and I may even be right.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#84

Post by sillysaurusx »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #68
sillysaurusx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in the “peak oil” scene — and by that I mean, I listened carefully to my friend, who was really into the peak oil scene. It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fine to enjoy it. But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilizat…

A cursory reading of history is enough to show that civilisations collapse regularly. It's not possible to comment on this topic credibly without being aware of this. As for "flexible social norms" - there was an attempted coup in the US, South Africa is on fire, Brazil is literally on fire, and the UK is opening up to Delta having apparently persuaded itself that 50,000 cases and 500 hospital admissions a day aren't…

It’s probably better for the thread to avoid any specific modern political collapse theory. For example, I think it’s nutty to say that the attempted coup in the US had any chance of collapsing civilization. But I can’t really say that without sounding insulting, so my “flamewar territory” alarms are starting to go off. And that makes me a sad panda HN user.

Suffice to say, yes, civilizations collapse. But that isn’t really the point. Everybody dies, but if you claim each day that one specific person is going to die of X, you’ll be mistaken more times than not. I see the same pattern in most collapse theories.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#85

Post by justbored123 »

thewarrior wrote: post #67
sillysaurusx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in the “peak oil” scene — and by that I mean, I listened carefully to my friend, who was really into the peak oil scene. It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fine to enjoy it. But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilizat…

I don’t think that peak oil has been truly debunked. Conventional oil production has indeed peaked and shale has come in to fill in the gap. However shale oil is a lot more expensive and this does propagate throughout the economy. Right now oil prices are still at 75 dollars a barrel. That’s still much higher than before we hit peak conventional oil. It could be one reason we never really recovered from 2008. It seem…

Shale is not economically viable, regular oil is profitable at 10 dollars a barrel, shale needs 60 dollars or more. That is an extreme difference that we are not feeling because of massive amounts of credit pumped into the shale boom. Once the fake money dries up and the market prices that shale oil at its correct value you are in for a world of pain. Imagine the gas a the pump station going x6 and that affecting the rest of the economy. That is a world based on shale instead of conventional oil.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#86

Post by username90 »

iaw wrote: post #53
yongjik wrote: post #45

> One reason for this is that in Herrington’s words, “the scenarios do not significantly diverge until 2020.” After that point, the scenarios start to diverge drastically ... This sounds more like a selection bias. If any model drastically diverged from reality earlier, then it would have been already discarded, and we won't be talking about it. So, we'll be only talking about models that start to diverge around 2020…

Having dabbled with chaotic heavily dynamic systems in college I actually disagree. It may be that our system was in a relatively stable highly linear regime and we just knocked it out into a non-linear chaotic region that we can't escape even if we cut emissions entirely. Chaotic systems do some scary unpredictable things, I wish I shared your confidence.

This is just the Mayan calendar phenomena. Just because something is old and accurate up until today doesn't meant that it actually predicts the end of the world.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#87

Post by yosito »

justbored123 wrote: post #79
sillysaurusx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in the “peak oil” scene — and by that I mean, I listened carefully to my friend, who was really into the peak oil scene. It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fine to enjoy it. But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilizat…

> “peak oil” ... It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. Are you suggesting that oil is not finite??? Or that we have an easy replacement at hand contrary to the people that says otherwise such as in the "Planet of The humans" documentary?

I think what they are suggesting is that humans will adapt to the changing environment as we have done over tens of thousands of years of evolution.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#88

Post by wussboy »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #68
sillysaurusx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be in the “peak oil” scene — and by that I mean, I listened carefully to my friend, who was really into the peak oil scene. It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fine to enjoy it. But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilizat…

A cursory reading of history is enough to show that civilisations collapse regularly. It's not possible to comment on this topic credibly without being aware of this. As for "flexible social norms" - there was an attempted coup in the US, South Africa is on fire, Brazil is literally on fire, and the UK is opening up to Delta having apparently persuaded itself that 50,000 cases and 500 hospital admissions a day aren't…

Yet here we are. Our current trials and tribulations are nothing compared to the Black Plague, the Hundred Years‘ War, WW2, even the stress of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yet here we are. Maybe it’s not so fragile after all?

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#89

Post by seibelj »

chestertn wrote: post #60

When I was an undergrad I discovered blogs about peak oil, the limits to the growth, and Turchin’s cliometrics. As an adolescent I really enjoyed Asimov’s Foundation and all of this knowledge resonated with me. I had a fried who read Von Mises’ Human Action and he labeled me as a neo-Malthusian . And, according to his “school of thought”, my understanding of the world and economics incorrect. We had many interesting…

The Austrian view of economics (and of human philosophy), when I finally sat down and read through the material, made so much sense to me and deeply affected me. It clarified several things I had been feeling about the world that I couldn’t fully comprehend, and made me feel much less stressed and more content.

The Malthusian (doom scrolling) impulse is stronger than ever. I feel happier not subscribing to the “end of the world” views that are prevalent everywhere.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#90

Post by yosito »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #52
Havoc wrote: post #42

Why would pollution be exponential?

Because, once electricity is no longer available, and you can't get coal from long distance, people burn wood or trash or dried grass or whatever they can get their hands on. If the alternative is freezing, you don't care about the pollution you're generating.

How much did pollution increase in Texas when the electric grid failed this winter?
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