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”

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

rbanffy wrote: post #378

adrianN wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "a technological solution" crowd isn't looking for something that requires lots of money to roll out, like renewable energy.

If you count the externalities of nuclear (eventually having to abandon a city every hundred years or so), gas (some pollution, catastrophic climate change), and coal (pollution, catastrophic climate change), wind and solar look really cheap. Hydro can also be useful by creating reservoirs of fresh water for managing drought cycles. The biggest issue is that we don’t monetize the externalities in the current state.

The biggest issue is that the costs of not changing anything will have to be paid long after the next election, so why do something today?

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

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Post by jrsj » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 12:57 PM UTC

foxylad wrote: post #132

notjes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone once said: If you are a teen and you aren't a lefty, you have no heart. And if you are in your 30'S and you are still a lefty, you have no brain. Many travel along those lines. And in analogy to this, I am very optimistic about the future, because the resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite. There is no peak oil. There is no peak food. There is no peak climate. There is no water…

> 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…

Food/water/land can all be solved via war. Which is probably more concerning than rising costs of those things alone.

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

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Post by IfOnlyYouKnew » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

bklaasen wrote: post #382

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).

You'd hope so, wouldn't you? However our markets aren't free. I can highly recommend Clive Ponting's "A New Green History of the World". The weight of historical evidence is against us finding a fix. We have tended to over-exploit every resource until it's depleted. For instance, we switched to coal because the wood and whales were running out, not because coal was a better source of energy. (My main concern with the…

Parent's point was that "whale oil scarcity" had a natural mechanism to get people invested in alternatives because as whale populations dwindle and it becomes expensive. That was the problem and it was solved to our satisfaction.

It also helped the whales, but that was purely incidental. Without fossil energy, the whales would be gone.

Today, there is unfortunately too much oil and coal to force the search for alternatives. And the "whales" are the the climate and, again, that problem doesn't have the feedback loop because the atmosphere, like the high seas, does the tragedy-of-the-commons thing.

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

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Post by belorn » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #384

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…

The Netherlands is a net exporter of food and it does this by producing what people want to eat. See https://aboutthenetherlands.com/why-does-the-netherlands-exp... Why should we have to change what we eat? Surely taking that choice away takes away part of what we are, reduces our autonomy. Why switch to seaweed when we can already produce what we already know we want?

My point is primarily that we are not going to run out of edible food. I have no intention to try force anyone to change their culture.

Here in Sweden we eat fermented fish. Other countries eat ferment cabbage, beans, goat stomachs, or other fermented things which in my culture we would be weird to eat. I think fermented seaweed is also a thing somewhere.

There are things that could force a culture change, such as famine, war, social status signals, media, and religion to mention a few examples. Humans are social creatures, and culture is a social phenomenon, so the cause for a cultural change would likely be social in nature. I guess a societal collapse could also trigger a change in culture, or a cultural change could prevent a societal collapse. I guess it depend on how one want to perceive it, and what meaning people put into the word "societal collapse".

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

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Post by tarsinge » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #384

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…

The Netherlands is a net exporter of food and it does this by producing what people want to eat. See https://aboutthenetherlands.com/why-does-the-netherlands-exp... Why should we have to change what we eat? Surely taking that choice away takes away part of what we are, reduces our autonomy. Why switch to seaweed when we can already produce what we already know we want?

I don’t see that convincing, a huge part of what we eat currently is the result of marketing (sugar, meat, dairy…), very anecdotical for defining oneself and the future of human society.

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

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Post by Dudeman112 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #389

Dudeman112 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also mostly assumes that the undeveloped world won't eat the developed world. Societal collapse in for example India or Brazil would make things awkward real fast for a large chunk of the world

In general, that would be prevented by the fact that the developed world is militarily stronger than the developing world. If some resources are not enough for India or Brazil, they can't take them from the developed world in the style of the earlier resource wars for e.g. oil.

I wasn't even thinking about their states trying to take resources by force.

What would happen if 20% of India decided that their society has collapsed and they should migrate at any cost to some developed country?

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

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Post by dgdosen » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

The first thing I wondered about these comments is how often "Peak Oil" would be mentioned. There has been no peak oil related crash. I think the world's economy and markets are now resilient enough to safely say 'peak oil' will never be a cause for the collapse of civilization. Rising energy prices will just usher out the age of fossil fuels faster.

I now wonder what happens when (if?) we get to 'net 0' (which hasn't been mentioned in these comments). If we can reach a point of unlimited, renewable, clean energy that's (almost) too cheap to meter, that just upends any model because it'll zero out factors that are parts of or 'limits' in those models.

- Lack of fresh water: solved by free/clean energy (desalinization)

- Lack of adequate food supply: solved by free/clean energy (fertilizer production)

- Lack of resources: potentially solved by free/clean energy (asteroid farming? recycling?)

It's hard to imagine a problem that unlimited, clean energy won't help solve.

The question is, can we get to net zero?

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

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Post by ModernMech » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:20 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?

We could decrease our rate of consumption/production, for one. The rate at which we're consuming is what's unsustainable. We have enough resources today to cover everyone's needs. The problem is we are producing well past that, and even still not everyone is getting what they need. Just look at how much food is thrown into dumpsters every day. Or all the energy locked up in landfills in the form of deteriorating plastics and electronics. All the junkyards filled with cars. Look at the thousands of acres of almond farms in CA's central valley. It takes a gallon of water to grow a single almond, yet the central valley is in perpetual drought. A better allocation of resources is what's needed.

We live in a society where everything is disposable, and that has a huge energy cost that we don't factor in because energy is so cheap right now. When energy is more expensive, repairing, conserving, and reusing a thing will be a better choice instead of throwing it out and buying a new one.

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

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Post by tarsinge » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:23 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…

To add to that there is the obvious low hanging fruit of meat as the main source of proteins. Feeding animals perfectly good proteins and using the majority of agricultural land (more than 70% if I remember correctly) and a lot water to finally to eat them after so much waste makes no sense as a main source of feeding a population, it’s not political or philosophical question just a practical one (I’m not vegetarian but eat meat only on rare occasions).

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

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Post by jonfw » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #395

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?

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 tim…

What if our elite 30x productivity person takes a significant risk? If he flips a coin and wins he should rightfully expect 60x

And you can be much more than 10x more productive than your average person without being 10x smarter. You can just have skills or have an idea that allows you to scale your contributions much more than an average person.

For instance, if we can teach cars to drive themselves, we have the capacity to save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of man hours a day.

The people who made significant contributions to that effort will have contributed thousands of times more to society than an average person.

If a surgeon saves 50 lives a year, I'd say that's a lot more than 10x what I'm doing.