271–280 of 520 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe that reductionist (materialistic) approaches to analyze human endeavor are misguided. There is a bit of hubris in thinking that a computer simulation can predict the entirety of human action. I am definitely not suscribed to the Austrian school of thought, however. That sounds very much like what FA Hayek called “the presence of knowledge” and warned us of in his 1974 Nobel acceptance speech [1]. Maybe yo…
presence -> pretence
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think technology will result in a great outcome for humanity as long as our greed is checked somehow. Most of the problems today are caused by our greed. I’m no MIT scholar nor as educated as most of you here, but from a anecdotal ground level I have seen it really seems some people at various positions from a office manager all the way to the highest political offices are driven by greed. Their greed usually resul…
A big part is our greed to procreate, take out 3/4 of humanity and climate change is solved
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 gener…
I think everyone has said this in every decade of the last century.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
The term "Austrian School" reads innocuous yet it really is about the fundamentals of neo-capitalism driven by greed. I do not feel easy about your comment. Sure the Austrian School describes a comprehensive model which might give you feelings of being able to describe the world, yet it might be a model towards self-destruction?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your intuition isn't flawed. People are both willfully dense, and typically unable to grasp extremely complex systems, and both are at play with regards to climate change and energy shortage. The one that always gets me is how people expect us to even develop those new technologies. With what energy? The ones we're running out of? The ones that are already more and more expensive to find? And the fact that we'll be d…
Why isn't nuclear power the answer to climate change and energy shortage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "peak whale" and "peak oil" are naturally self-correcting in a free-market, because as the resources become scarce their prices goes up hence leading to technological incentives to find alternative sources. This would also apply to topsoil erosion. However this isn't the case with carbon emissions for example, unless we had some financial feedback loop (e.g. some carbon tax).
> naturally self-correcting in a free-market Only once the resource has been consumed. And with topsoil I'm not sure you want to see what happens when food prices rise dramatically.
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…
Not in any magical way just simply in the fact that we are the first who through our combination of wealth and knowledge-creation and with the help of technology and science have the potential of solving the problems we encounter.
It's not a guarantee but it's very different than previous civilizations (just as the challenges are).
In general humans and our ansestors have gradually been turning an environment that was sheer hell in its inception, into a much more habitable environment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "peak whale" and "peak oil" are naturally self-correcting in a free-market, because as the resources become scarce their prices goes up hence leading to technological incentives to find alternative sources. This would also apply to topsoil erosion. However this isn't the case with carbon emissions for example, unless we had some financial feedback loop (e.g. some carbon tax).
Most markets aren't particularly "free". Agriculture for example is heavily subsidized.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>COVID-19 is a perfect example of the folly in believing "technology will always save us". From a purely collectivist point of view, unchecked Covid only kills around 1% of the population and the vast majority are retired people, so it's not something society needed saving from as it has pretty much zero effect on humanity's long-term economic/technological progress.
I think the serious issue is more around long COVID and the associated symptoms with something that could perhaps become a chronic issue down the line.
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…
The reason they are considered "magic bullets" is because they involve game-changing shifts in technology that couldn't easily be conceived beforehand. Just look at the traveling salesman problem for a sample as to how a handful of input options could output a massive amount of output combinations. Every so often, one of those output combinations turns into a game-changer...then we have people spewing a new version of the rhetoric stated here.
I'd put my money on the game-changer.