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

dana11235.medium.com

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

#291

Post by eecc »

hughrr wrote: post #243
swman wrote: post #230

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…

History shows us that greedy people end up with their heads on sticks. Even when they have armies to protect them. It doesn’t take a lot to regress to that again.

Problem is the process that brings those heads on the sticks. It often involves death & destruction of plenty other people and infrastructure.

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

#292

Post by polytely »

akmarinov wrote: post #256
swman wrote: post #230

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

And you think the people in the 3/4th are going to let you do that? Because I'm guessing that the 3/4th doesn't include you and your loved ones.

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

#293

Post by DaedPsyker »

adrianN wrote: post #244
99_00 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't nuclear power the answer to climate change and energy shortage?

Because it's pretty expensive and time consuming to build and people really don't like to have a nuclear power plant near them.

While the time to build is certainly true, is the cost truly more expensive than that of effects of climate change? I suspect not.

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

#294

Post by marvin »

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…

But we won't have 50 more years of complacent oil usage without alternatives. Oil at 75 dollars a barrel is expensive enough that renewables are profitable, so by the time supply becomes a problem and prices rise even more, renewables will be available in quantity to cover for it. Before, probably.

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

#295

Post by AYBABTME »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #171

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:…

I agree, Medium is pretty annoying to use as a reader. And for some strange reason, it doesn't work with Firefox's "reader view". I don't understand why people keep using this platform.

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

#296

Post by ben_w »

overscore wrote: post #54
johnisgood wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> live only 1.6m above the high water mark/strand line of the sea. Wow. I put myself in your shoes for a second and felt fear. Otherwise your life sounds pretty desirable. I always wanted to do the same (be self-sufficient in such ways). I probably will never be living like that (unless homelessness count, bleh), but good for you, I envy you. :)

> Wow. I put myself in your shoes for a second and felt fear. It is actually the only thing that keeps me up at night. I am crew on a lifeboat and need to live within a certain distance from the boathouse, otherwise I would move tomorrow. The RNLI is too important a part of my life to leave behind otherwise. I may be able to afford some land higher up (60m+ in the future). > I always wanted to do the same (be self-su…

> I am definitely not self-sufficient (especially not socially)! I could maybe take care of my family for one calendar year (one growing season and one winter), but it's a maybe.

For what it’s worth, the fact that you’re denying being self-sufficient, tells me that you’re not a nutjob, no matter what other people say.

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

#297

Post by sgt101 »

swader999 wrote: post #188
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…

Sure there will be weather events, but none of us will live to see anything climate related that causes an entire country to whither.

I think that big diverse countries like the USA will be able to cope better than small countries. So places like Fiji are probably more exposed than many imagine.

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

#298

Post by knuthsat »

99_00 wrote: post #227
rewgs wrote: post #223

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?

It is definitely a step in the right direction, but given the current demand the development is too slow.

Just look at China, with ~50 nuclear plants (just 5% of energy production), while they have thousands of coal plants. It's practically impossible that they can shift to a reusable carbon-neutral energy production methods.

Also, China can build a hundred coal plants in a year, but there's no way it can do that with nuclear.

The realistic picture is that growth cannot be sustained and there will be dire consequences due to other factors too.

(climate change, migration, wet bulb temperatures, crop failures, people being too good at capitalism, etc.)

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

#299

Post by watwut »

hughrr wrote: post #243
swman wrote: post #230

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…

History shows us that greedy people end up with their heads on sticks. Even when they have armies to protect them. It doesn’t take a lot to regress to that again.

I dont really think history shows that. The "greedy people" can keep power for very long and it takes special circumstances for the overthrow - and overthrow usually means instability with a lot of death, torture and pain for everyone.

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

#300

Post by ben_w »

elihu wrote: post #74
XorNot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wasn't really much of a shortage though - at any given time there were warehouses full of residential toilet paper, what their wasn't was capacity to keep supermarket shelves stocked when regular customers all suddenly doubled their purchasing pattern. A supermarket stocks maybe 150 packs but sees well over that in foot traffic per day: if a relatively small number of people simultaneously think "hmm, I might n…

Another thing that happens is that when Costco is the only place in town with TP in stock, then you end up buying 48 rolls or whatever because that's the minimum purchase size.

That doesn’t make much difference to Rewe or Sainsbury’s where the largest packs have 16, and even the 4-packs were absent from the shelves.
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