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”

#401

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

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…

One aspect of customization is regarding cooling - large nuclear plants can't be self-sufficient, they need to integrate some large natural supply of water. Rivers are different than lakes which are different than seaside; each river is different, etc.

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

#402

Post by jopsen » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #17

thewarrior wrote: post #3

I’ve become a follower of the Collapse subreddit. I initially dismissed it as a bunch of alarmist doomers but the more I looked into the more I realized that even if they end up being wrong modern civilization is a lot more fragile than most people think. Climate change, resource depletion and environmental damage all have the potential to severely destabilize the entire system we have built. I really wish we had a l…

A relatively simple lockdown was enough to drastically impact our “just in time” supply and manufacturing system. We’re still recovering from that, and likely will be for months, if not years. Even mere rumors of TP shortage caused such a shortage to actually occur through mostly social interactions. Larger scale disasters will definitely screw things up for us all.

> Larger scale disasters will definitely screw things up for us all.

Most natural disasters tend to be local..

It's actually hard to imagine something more global than a pandemic.

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

#403

Post by aww_dang » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

>The original study and subsequent research was funded by the Club of Rome, a European organization focused on solving the larger problems facing humanity.

Ah yes, our benevolent overlords who have selflessly offered themselves up as our technocratic central planners. Such premises should at least inspire mild curiosity or skepticism from readers.

Counter point: https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/

>The classical case against population growth was expressed in 1798 by Thomas Malthus, the British economist and country parson who wrote in An Essay on the Principle of Population: "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second."

...

>Or so it would appear, except for the following embarrassing fact: "Population has never increased geometrically," says Simon. "It increases at all kinds of different rates historically, but however fast it increases, food increases at least as fast, if not faster. In other words, whatever the rate of population growth is, the food supply increases at an even faster rate."

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

#404

Post by AlgorithmicTime » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:32 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #399

simonh wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

They may not work 8000 times harder, but they may bring to the table a skill which is 8000 times more valuable than a shelf stocker at Walmart.

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

#405

Post by headmelted » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:32 PM UTC

boredtofears wrote: post #324

headmelted wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? Even if there were an event that wiped out 75% of people, it kicks the can down the road at most 30 years due to a baby boom. Refusing to solve the real problem is what got us in to this mess. It’s also utterly like us as a species to think that killing 3 out of 4 people is an easier fix than just living within our means.

> It’s also utterly like us as a species to think that killing 3 out of 4 people is an easier fix than just living within our means. Individuals aren't really responsible for the mass amounts of pollutants put into the atmosphere the same way corporations are. In order for the human population to "live within it's means" at an impactful scale it would require a change of capitalist philosophy that quite obviously isn…

In order for the human population to "live within it's means" at an impactful scale it would require a change of capitalist philosophy that quite obviously isn't going to change anytime soon.

Yes.

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

#406

Post by conjectures » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:34 PM UTC

Wow, actually slightly shocked how seriously this model seems to be taken or, at least, how sticky it is.

Coefficients, dynamics, number of entities involved, stationarity. There are so many unknowns and so many reasons to believe incomplete understanding could scupper predictions...

I know everyone likes to believe themselves to be a good Fermi estimator. But trying to model the world beyond 2050 when the weather a month from now is a hard problem. Well, let's say it's Quixotic at best.

Which makes me think the model isn't actually under discussion here, it's just all our priors about how much we fancy technology as a solution or not etc.

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

#407

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

panta wrote: post #237

fennecfoxen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic growth is not just energy consumption. We measure it in dollars, not watts, because energy is just an input. We have ways of optimizing to use less or do more valuable things with it.

Yes, there are ofc different byproducts (knowledge, health, leisure, fulfillment of needs, …) but, at the end of the chain, a dollar spent is ultimately converted into energy/resource consumption, no?

Not really. It used to be that economic growth is strongly coupled to energy and resource consumption, that meeting more needs was done through people getting more stuff. But this has decoupled now for some decades already (in the developed world - in the developing world there's still a hug lag of "stuff backlog") as consumption and its growth shifts towards various intangible goods and services where people get increasingly more desires met in better ways (i.e. economic growth) without an increase in electricity and metal and plastics required for that.

More people than before getting a car inherently requires an increase in consumption of energy and resources as car manufacturing needs to grow; but more people getting access to a Netflix series does not; if people use larger cars then it requires an increase in consumption of energy and resources, but iPhone 12 mini is much better than the original first iPhone and meets more needs while requiring about the same energy and resources.

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

#408

Post by coldtea » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #390

coldtea wrote: post #349

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 That's not fixing, that's a band aid, and an ugly one at that. "Let's just eat worms, algae, problem fixed".

And if we suggested ten years ago that your burgers would be plant-based I am sure you would tell us how much Americans hate tofu and that this was just another ugly band-aid. Food is trivial to fix and is barely a small step below clothing choices when it comes to things that are driven almost entirely by culture and fashion. My children regularly request food like sushi and spring rolls that I was ridiculed for eat…

>And if we suggested ten years ago that your burgers would be plant-based

Ten years ago? I'll still say it now and in 50 years.

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

#409

Post by aga98mtl » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

maCDzP wrote: post #123

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…

I had never heard of Neo-Malthusianism but I realize that I ascribe to this school of thought. What ideas made you change your view?

When a ressource gets rares, prices go up. This drives big incentives to work on substitutes, recycling, higher efficiency, etc.

Ex: People were predicting Peak Oil is the end of our civilisation. Turns out there is plenty of oil deep in the seabed if you are willing to pay $100 per barrel. In turn, $100 barrel push hard on consumers to use more efficient vehicles.

Market prices are a powerful signal that causes everyone to adapt.

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

#410

Post by ta988 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:55 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #386

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the uproar if you tried to build a nuclear powered desalination plant on Long Island. That's basically what you're alluding to with the seaweed and food thing. Cultural and ideological hangups will go right out the window in a hurry when there's a real crisis and a culturally incompatible solution. People aren't gonna let things truly go to shit over something as trivial as what they eat or where their water…

"Doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine how climate change might F-over downstate Illinois (because farms) but Chicago won't let them do anything about it because they hold all the cards and they make their money a different way." I actually can't envision what you mean by "Chicago won't let them do anything about it". Isn't Chicago the more liberal area that wants to fight climate change?

On paper, but it is also full of rich liberals that care more about their money and look at people downstate with disdain.