My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse” • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

Is it annoying that people keep submitting "paywalled" Medium URLs to HN. This one is a re-cycled story first available from other sites that do not try to annoy readers into signing up.^1 Wonder if Dana Levine made some coin from Medium by submitting her medium.com hosted blog post URL to HN and hitting the front page.

1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicat...

Here is Herrington's analysis:

https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2021/y...

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

#172

Post by ggm » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

I was interested the article (and commentary here) makes no mention of either Ehrlich, or Simon, or the bet[1]

Because it was pretty contemporary, and I think influenced how people revised their thinking (at least in public) about the problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

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

#173

Post by bmitc » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #146

foxylad wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite Human ingenuity is impressive, but not infinite. I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's a long read, but every single society he examines thought they were doing great but ended up eating each other (literally) within a couple of generations once some vital resource dried up. Human ingenuity failed all of them. I'll give you peak oil: our i…

I never accepted the premise of that book as being universally true. Societies have collapsed for reasons other then resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other then resource scarcity. I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. My guess? The professional political/priestly/mid-level manager class gaining self serving control and…

> I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything.

Is this true? I thought it was drought and deforestation and over-farming that sped up the Mayan decline and that soil erosion and exhaustion and agricultural decline aided in the fall of Rome.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/0...

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

#174

Post by lmm » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:30 AM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #81

XorNot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AIUI US oil production actually did peak at more or less the originally predicted time, and the 1970s oil crisis was a reflection of that. Obviously it didn't result in the total collapse of civilisation, but it wasn't totally insignificant either.

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

#175

Post by bmitc » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

adnmcq999 wrote: post #169

cjohnson318 wrote: post #163

I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…

I don’t know man, the human race makes great technological leaps, or rather leaps in understanding that allow new technology. And nobody can really predict that. It’s almost like your Einsteins, Newtons, Boltzmanns, Maxwells Paulis and Plancks had some kind 2-way channel with divinity. Even though we all stand on the shoulders of giants, sometimes a new giant appears out of the ether. And there’s no doubt we’re done.…

How does new technology help these things exactly? Isn't technology, along with the discovery of coal and oil, a major contributor to the scaling of the human population and the effects of that? The vast industrialization over the past 150 has not been good for humanity or the planet.

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

#176

Post by dvt » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #83

iaw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Hell, I can say that, and I may even be right.

Not only may you be right, you are in fact guaranteed to be right. Of course, predicting exactly when things go wrong is another ballgame altogether.

Edit: the downvotes on HN are becoming so reactionary lately, it feels like it's slowly turning into reddit. Or maybe people just aren't familiar with Poincaré recurrence, etc.?

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

#177

Post by pharmakom » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

notjes wrote: post #99

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…

Someone once said: If you are a teen and you aren't a lefty, you have no heart. And if you are in your 30'S and you are still a lefty, you have no brain. Many travel along those lines. And in analogy to this, I am very optimistic about the future, because the resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite. There is no peak oil. There is no peak food. There is no peak climate. There is no water…

as people have children they become less interested in political theory (and theater) and more self-interested. These days voting preferences are almost entirely along generational lines in many countries.

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

#178

Post by cjohnson318 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

adnmcq999 wrote: post #169

cjohnson318 wrote: post #163

I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…

I don’t know man, the human race makes great technological leaps, or rather leaps in understanding that allow new technology. And nobody can really predict that. It’s almost like your Einsteins, Newtons, Boltzmanns, Maxwells Paulis and Plancks had some kind 2-way channel with divinity. Even though we all stand on the shoulders of giants, sometimes a new giant appears out of the ether. And there’s no doubt we’re done.…

I don't know either. We made giant steps in the 20th C, but I feel like we're seeing diminishing returns now. From 1950 to 1970 cars advanced a lot, but from 2000 to 2020, they're still largely the same. (Sure, there's Teslas with highway autonomy, and some systems can handle an on-ramp, but "Mexico City" autonomy seems really far off.) Unless someone breaks Moore's Law, figures out general quantum computing or general AI, I think the next 30 years are going to look a lot like the last 10, but with more hurricanes and global migration.

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

#179

Post by bmitc » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

cjohnson318 wrote: post #163

I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…

I agree with you and made a similar comment when the article talking about the report was posted here.

COVID-19 is a perfect example of the folly in believing "technology will always save us". In the U.S., the general sentiment was that technology in the form of vaccines and entrepreneurship will rise to the occasion, so let's just ride it out until then. Well after more than a year of shit show after shit show and 600,000+ deaths in the U.S. alone along with countless reverberations in society (businesses failing, long term health effects of COVID-19, basically a year wasted of schooling across all ages, unemployment, shortages, etc.), people are still like "we got the vaccine, we did it everyone!" I still hear people saying they got COVID-19 like it was an inevitability and no big deal and also now that the vaccine is here no worries. I honestly doubt that climate change, agricultural exhaustion, ecosystem destruction, over population, etc. are anywhere near the public's or even government's serious thoughts. If they are, they're likely to be wholly short term.

We can't even solve simple problems like destroying the dams and decreasing salmon farms in the Pacific northwest that are decimating wild salmon populations which has side effects like starving the resident orcas.

I have zero hope humanity will solve these upcoming problems in any way shape or form. We'll end up just dealing with them and reacting to them once they're here, like we do with everything else (at best).

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

#180

Post by mythrwy » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:48 AM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #173

mythrwy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never accepted the premise of that book as being universally true. Societies have collapsed for reasons other then resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other then resource scarcity. I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. My guess? The professional political/priestly/mid-level manager class gaining self serving control and…

> I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. Is this true? I thought it was drought and deforestation and over-farming that sped up the Mayan decline and that soil erosion and exhaustion and agricultural decline aided in the fall of Rome. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/0...

Rome got much (most?) of their grain from Egypt (which renews fertility due to annual flooding) and the cause of the Mayan collapse is unknown but I highly doubt it was primarily scarcity driven.

Societies collapse from social factors, not just resource scarcity and social factors are in my opinion a more common cause. War, internal conflict, and political instability.

And my favorite theory, the rise of parasitic and short sighted bureaucracies which snuff out the creative and competitive impulse of a culture.