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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”

#351

Post by coldtea »

swman wrote: post #230
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 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…

>I think technology will result in a great outcome for humanity as long as our greed is checked somehow.

That's difficult, as technology is here mostly because of greed.

Much of technology we don't really need, and even more so for most technology we consume (of course, you can't convince tech workers for that, as their salary, and hobbies, are based on the stuff).

It's either pushed to us by greed, or given to us as a substitute for things we'd rather have (no friends, but here are games you can buy), (no work-life balance, but here's Netflix you can watch when you're home exhaused from work), (no community, but here's social media, go argue with strangers), etc.

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

#352

Post by adrianN »

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

No, you just have about 4 times longer to become carbon neutral.

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

#353

Post by Joeri »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #308
Joeri wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would need to build thousands of nuclear plants, adapting each plant for its location (so you can’t mass-produce a single design), and we don’t have the skilled people to do that. In addition, they will take decades to build, we lack enough fuel for those plants, and we still haven’t solved the disposal problem. Solar panels, batteries, and wind mills are comparatively easy to produce at ridiculous volumes. They’r…

Why do you have to adapt each plant for its location? or just find a suitable location and build a bunch of such plants and transmit the power to where it’s used. Buildings are also “adapted for each location”, but there is still an entire corpus of standardized techniques to do that that massively reduces costs compared to literally solving the problem from scratch at each site. And why is it the case that “we don’t…

From what I’ve read it has to do with the way the plant has to cope with water. Water needs to flow through the plant, which means you cannot put it just anywhere. At the same time the plant cannot be prone to flooding and its design must be such that even with a meltdown the radioactive material will not reach the water table. Both of those are not straightforward near abundant supplies of water.

Maybe you could have a universally implantable design, and maybe you could train people with the relevant skillset. The point is: we haven’t, and we aren’t, so other ways of generating green power are easier and cheaper. Nuclear will play a role for sure (the climate crisis is such that we need to do all the things) but it won’t cover more than 10% of our energy needs. I would be glad to get a rosier outlook on nuclear though.

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

#354

Post by belorn »

saurik wrote: post #334
belorn wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem which we already have the technology to fix is food. What people eat is cultural and is effected by cost and availability. There is much we currently discard or do not cultivate because it not what we traditionally see as food and because there is no cost incentive to encourage a change in culture. Changes can however occur given the right triggers, like how large portion of Europe went over to potatoes d…

I do not believe that everyone deciding to eat something different is "fixing" the food scarcity problem in the same way that desalinization (ignoring all other issues with it as we assumed technology improved to solve them also) "fixes" water scarcity: if everyone is told tomorrow "all water will safely come from desal" we might breath a collective sigh of relief... "starting tomorrow, all food will be replaced by s…

I agree fully that it is not a permanent solution, nor a possibility to replace all food with a single different one be that seaweed, insects farming, hydroponics, or other non-traditional forms. I do however want to highlight that food is cultural thus peacefully changeable. We can extend the window much further than just what currently exploitation of farm land do. Aquaculture is just one of the more likely approaches since it is already part of some cultures, although quite small ones in term of populations.

It is an interesting question if a new world war is more likely than a major cultural change in our diet.

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

#355

Post by simonh »

geoffbrown2014 wrote: post #330
ghufran_syed wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is defining “greed”. It feels like when I want more stuff per unit time/effort, I’m just “trying to support my family and build a better life for my children”. But when other people do the same, it’s “greedy”. Is there any definition of “greedy” we could use for the purposes of this discussion that would apply yo all humans equally?

Rent seeking and corruption are two definitions that spring to mind.

I think those are good ones because they're definable in ways that we can probably come to a consensus on.

The problem is the term greed is often used in a pejorative way as a proxy for success. If you work hard and achieve a lot and that comes with financial rewards, you are greedy by definition. Add in some snark about how the work hard part doesn't count somehow, and that's the modern critique of capitalism.

Oh, and rent seeking and corruption are because capitalism too and not at all human flaws seen to an even greater degree in every other economic system ever devised.

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

#356

Post by adrianN »

asdff wrote: post #205
jandrese wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that "pollution" chart showing it dropping off sharply in all scenarios (due either to clean technology or societal collapse) were unlikely. If you are counting CO2 as pollution (and you should) then it's very hard to get it back out of the air, especially in a short timeframe. So in all cases the pollution line ends up in a steady state at roughly wherever society either weaned itself from fossil fuels or…

Rather than burn coal to smelt steel beams, we could start opting for more timber frame construction and growing more trees, capturing carbon out of the air and turning it into housing.

A very rough ballpark estimate is that you'd need to use at least as much timber as we've mined coal. Probably a lot more since coal has a higher carbon content than timber and we've also burned plenty of oil and gas. That's a mind boggling amount of timber.

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

#357

Post by trompetenaccoun »

jhoechtl wrote: post #261
seibelj wrote: post #89

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?

>neo-capitalism

The term doesn't make much sense, it was likely coined by people who do not understand our economic system. Capitalism never went away, it's the dominant system we live in now and have for centuries. There isn't anything "neo" about today's capitalists.

As for some of the promoters of Austrian school teachings I agree with you they aren't the most charitable types, however the theory itself just looks at the economic system the way it works - there's actually less social judgement in Austrian school thought than other economic schools. Which is why it's less popular. A rational and neutral approach when it comes to macroeconomics does not have mass appeal.

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

#358

Post by golergka »

swman wrote: post #230
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 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…

Most of the progress is caused by greed too.

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

#359

Post by mellavora »

fogihujy wrote: post #345
ddalex wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things I am very confused about this statement, can you please explain what is the "natural state of things" ?

Let's imagine a hypothetical crisis, say a building on fire. You can save your own child/spouse/relative or you can save a complete stranger. You will succeed in saving any of them, but not both. Most people will chose child/spouse/relative without thinking twice and doing so is quite natural. Not everyone agree on that though, and would argue that the potential benefit the stranger could be to society should be take…

Clearly, people will prefer their own in-group. I think, however, you just made the parent poster's point.

People will often prefer their own in-group to themselves.

Thus, it depends on how one defines the in-group, and one's own interests.

Looking at Coldtea's earlier comment:

>It's either pushed to us by greed, or given to us as a substitute for things we'd rather have (no friends, but here are games you can buy), (no work-life balance, but here's Netflix you can watch when you're home exhaused from work), (no community, but here's social media, go argue with strangers), etc.

showing how the 'in-group' has shrunk. Used to be a larger tribe, now you could be lucky to consider it an atomic family.

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

#360

Post by kokey »

native_samples wrote: post #304
pksebben wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's fundamentally confounding to me that more people don't seem to come to this conclusion. I would love to hear a reasonable argument from someone in this cohort, because I'm willing to accept that my intuition is flawed, and I just can't see how.

OK, I'll do so. To put it brutally it's because on Hacker News and probably your social circle, there are too many people whose social status and income depends on being clever, or at least the perception of being clever. This leads us to seriously over-index on things that look like science or data analysis, without even being able to see alternatives that in my experience easily occur to the less (over?) educated.…

We use increasingly sophisticated models to make the same mistake they made 130 years ago when they projected the increase of horse manure.
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