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”

#391

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

jand wrote: post #362

coldtea wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> That's difficult, as technology is here mostly because of greed. I am not sure if by technology you mean products or ideas. In case of the latter, that does not sound right. Smart driven persons do not have to be greedy in order to devote their live to something.

However personal interest (i.e. greed) is a big factor that motivates them to devote their lives not to something that's simply very interesting to them personally, but rather something that just happens to be practically useful for large numbers of people very unlike themselves.

Smart people who have the ability and resources to change things don't really share the same problems as the target audience of mass market tech (I mean, hackernews is full of product reports illustrating this) - greed motivates them to solve problems of their "outgroup", filling the needs of all the people they don't really care about much.

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

#392

Post by jopsen » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:02 PM UTC

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…

> There is a bit of hubris in thinking that a computer simulation can predict the entirety of human action.

Individually humans are hard to predict... but a flock of humans might not be so hard to predict :)

That said: it's easy to underestimate the power of economics. Once natural resources becomes expensive, we'll find ways to minimize, recycle and migrate to renewable resources.

The biggest risk is if we don't limit pollution.

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

#393

Post by harimau777 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:04 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #327

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…

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 would like to see more effort towards making alternative foods acceptable to people. For example, I think that there could be a big difference between trying to get people to eat a plate of raw grubs versus a tofu like food produced from grub protein.

Perhaps seaweed could be used to produce something equivalent to tortillas or bread?

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

#394

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

boredtofears wrote: post #325

fsloth wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's horrible and would not solve the climate change.

It would not solve climate change, but really, what's horrible about it? We live in a world of finite resources. If we, as a species, overpopulate to the point where these finite resources run dry, what are the best options?

Because climate change is the only reason to do something like that - we need to solve the short term issue of pollution, because in the long run (e.g. a few centuries) overpopulation is not a problem as we're going to get a population stabilization and decrease just with current trends without a need to sacrifice anything for it; and we are getting more resource efficient over time, GDP growth has now finally (unlike all history) decoupled from growth in energy use and mineral use, etc.

Climate change is a problem that makes us need a rapid solution right now even if its costly and painful, general depletion of resources really isn't; if it wasn't for climate change then we could just let the replacement of oil to renewables happen "naturally" as oil prices slowly increase as the supply decreases, the usual market incentives would be enough to manage the resource allocation.

Finiteness of resources is not as big of an issue as it looked in 1970s (when the original Limits to Growth study was made) - with a stable or shrinking population (current situation in developed world, soon-to-arrive globally) each person's share of physical resources is the same all the while as each person's need for physical resources (except energy) is not growing now (unlike 1970s), with advances in tech meeting the same needs now requires less resources so we can continue to grow our economy within the limits of the same finite resources.

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

#395

Post by harimau777 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:13 PM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #301

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…

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?

One approach might be to compare how much wealth someone is attempting to attain with how much they could conceivably be outperforming the average person.

For example, if we make a back of the envelope estimate that an elite person has skills that are 10 times those of an average person (10 times smarter, stronger, more charismatic, better educated, etc.) and works 3 times longer then they could conceivably be 30 times more productive. If, to be conservative, we doubled that, then we could define greed as attempting to amass more than 60 times more wealth than the average person.

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

#396

Post by jopsen » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:14 PM UTC

puchatek wrote: post #228

xxpor wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Supreme Court. And there's a very good chance the entire world look different if Gore won. There may have not been a 9/11, for one. There would have certainly not been an Iraq war.

It takes a while to plan and execute something like 9/11. This is not one guy with an IED in Kabul. The pilots got their licences for that specific purpose. That alone takes months. Bush became president in January 2001. You think Al Qaeda was like "oh no, Gore lost? Let's proceed with that airplane plan" right there and then? Like they even remotely care if it's a dem or Rep.

Yeah, it probably wouldn't have changed anything.

But US intelligences services might have caught it, by sheet chance if history was to replay with slightly different variables. Just saying, they got lucky.

Consequences of 9/11 certainly could have looked different, if the US was less focus on oil and less concerned about confronting the Saudis.

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

#397

Post by webinvest » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:19 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #202

webinvest wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I watched a cspan question and answer session and one dinosaur-aged Republican representative from West Palm Beach Florida sounded so backwards. He was saying that we shouldn’t transition to green energy because of all the coal miner jobs that will be displaced by green energy jobs. It seemed like he was just being difficult or corrupt because Florida doesn’t even have any coal mines or coal mining jobs! Also, i…

If Gore won there would be no global warming movie and the movement might not have taken off. Gore would have been to entangled in 911 make global warming a priority. The green party not winning is the shame. Never blame a third party for a majority party not winning. If they caused Gore to lose hopefully he tries harder to win over 537 people next cycle.

I don’t blame the third parties. I blame not having ranked choice voting.

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

#398

Post by pirate787 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:20 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #361

zug_zug wrote: post #232

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).

> [Limited resources 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. You say that as though it's a theorem. It's not. It's perhaps reasonable when discussing small perturbations of resources, but it's not a magical phenomena that will "just work" in a free market (assuming one even exist…

The best way to understand global warming is that the market doesn't account for the true cost of carbon emissions. That's because the atmosphere is an unregulated commons, lacking property rights or other legal mechanisms to assign the costs of carbon emissions. A carbon tax or some other way to assign a "price" to carbon twill begin to assign that cost, and the market system will naturally, in a million small ways, reduce the emission of carbon. The result will be dramatic, unforeseen levels of reductions.

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

#399

Post by harimau777 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:20 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #355

geoffbrown2014 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

I think that the issue is when the financial rewards are dramatically greater than how much harder someone could conceivably be working.

A billionaire could conceivably work much harder than the median person. However, they don't work 8000 times harder ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122k).

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

#400

Post by Draken93 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:21 PM UTC

tanbog4 wrote: post #185

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…

It's not that silly to model as historically that has also happened. To use the "peak oil" example this work also influenced, the technology of fossil oil reserves was a response in part to "peak whale" (not a joke). The main source much commercial 'oil' for things like Street lamps in the 1800s was whale blubber. As whales got overfished fossilised oil reserves were developed and not only took over those markets but…

Two completly different situations,

Today the problem is less the lack of ressources, but that we destroy the eco-system with our current technology. We can not just use another technologie to exploit a different kind of ressource. Instead we need a technology that has less consequences or even one that undoes the damage we already made.

Fossile oil reserves where not developed around 1800. They developed over millions of years. And actually they were already used in the middle east, china and myanmar way before europeans&americans started to use them to replace the shrinking and therefore more expensive supply of whale oil.

IMO the usage of petroleum was fueled(no pun intended) by the market and the rising price of whale blubber. It could have been used way earlier but was not lucrative.

Sadly the technologies that destroy our environment are still more lucrative then existing solutions that could solve our problem. That is especially if you look at the investments that are still made in this sector. We have the technologies to solve our problems, they are called renewable energies.

The problem is that we need a technology that takes over the market share that is currently taken by technologies that damage the environment. But that is very hard, as it would need to be more lucrative.

Just having the technology does not help, if people still use the damaging technologys. Cause they alone are enough to reach certain tipping points. And after those, no technology can save us even if it would undo damage that we caused earlier.