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”

#441

Post by adolph » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #435

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…

Let's alter the start conditions a bit: the same Long Island with the same people, but the Hudson river dries up. And everything around dries up, too. How about a desalination plant now? Even nuclear?

A combination of aqueducts, reservoirs, and tunnels supply fresh water to New York City. With three major water systems (Croton, Catskill, and Delaware) stretching up to 125 miles (201 km) away from the city, its water supply system is one of the most extensive municipal water systems in the world.

The water system has a storage capacity of 550 billion US gallons (2.1×109 m3) and provides over 1.2 billion US gallons (4,500,000 m3) per day of drinking water to more than eight million city residents, and another one million users in four upstate counties bordering on the system. Three separate sub-systems, each consisting of aqueducts and reservoirs, bring water from Upstate New York to New York City.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_sys...

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

#442

Post by geodel » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

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.

They both seem fine to me. Rent seeking keeps system stable. It keeps a balance between crash-and-burn vs absolute no risk types by taking little risks to collect rent and providing some useful service.

As a third world native I find corruption works better than everyone mindlessly following law under one self-righteous government becomes illegal under the next one, thereby making citizens life hell.

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

#443

Post by smt88 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #161

dukeofdoom wrote: post #160

We need a cabal of Billionaires to get it into their head that the world is ending unless they do something drastic. That will save us. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a...

I remember reading that Peter Thiel bought land in New Zealand as a huge against a societal collapse that he predicted and/or was attempting to hasten. The scary thing is that many billionaires are wealthy enough to pull it off.

hedge against*

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

#444

Post by BeFlatXIII » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #40

falcolas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes there was a brief TP shortage. I think the bigger takeaway was that a large portion of the workforce just stopped and there wasn’t a material reduction in the standard of living. I’ve come to believe fraction of of the workforce could keep the economy going at current levels and much employment is only marginally productive and exists only to distribute the wealth of society.

That tracks with my gut feeling: many jobs (possibly a majority, but I’m not confident that it’s that many) exist as a fig leaf for the government to say “see, these people aren’t on the dole. Look how close we are to full employment.”

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

#445

Post by DaedPsyker » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #421

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…

"If you are counting CO2 as pollution (and you should)" There is a caveat. They only consider CO2 from specific sources to be pollution, so we can't just blanket call it pollution. For example, the CO2 I exhale would not be considered pollution, but if it's coming from fossil fuels or even burning trees, then it is. I'm not sure how they handle the natural burning of tree, like wildfires though.

I am absolutely not a climate scientist but my understanding is c02 from the likes of us isn't a problem as we are naturally part of a cyclical process. Same goes for forest fires which is burning trees that had been absorbing carbon.

However we are releasing an excess amount that had been trapped and removed from that cyclical process, adding more energy into the system than its natural equilibrium usually takes.

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

#446

Post by adolph » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

kiliantics wrote: post #440

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…

Which is why we should push for the stable world (SW) scenario, rather than gambling with our collective future on something that is not a sure bet. Why do all climate policies currently being adopted allow increased carbon emissions and assume we will have carbon capture technologies to negate them right in the nick of time? This is the kind of irresponsible behaviour that we usually see only in addicts or psychopat…

> why we should push for the stable world (SW) scenario

Alternatively, a push for antifragility acknowledges human's scale of environmental control and the tendency for unexpected things to happen simply because they are possible.

Ergodicity expresses the idea that a point of a moving system, either a dynamical system or a stochastic process, will eventually visit all parts of the space that the system moves in, in a uniform and random sense. [0]

Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. [1]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodicity

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility

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

#447

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

DaedPsyker wrote: post #445

giantg2 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you are counting CO2 as pollution (and you should)" There is a caveat. They only consider CO2 from specific sources to be pollution, so we can't just blanket call it pollution. For example, the CO2 I exhale would not be considered pollution, but if it's coming from fossil fuels or even burning trees, then it is. I'm not sure how they handle the natural burning of tree, like wildfires though.

I am absolutely not a climate scientist but my understanding is c02 from the likes of us isn't a problem as we are naturally part of a cyclical process. Same goes for forest fires which is burning trees that had been absorbing carbon. However we are releasing an excess amount that had been trapped and removed from that cyclical process, adding more energy into the system than its natural equilibrium usually takes.

"Same goes for forest fires which is burning trees that had been absorbing carbon."

This actually isn't true. They say they burning of trees requires such a long cycle time that the release of CO2 does contribute to global warming.

My main point was that this distinction isn't something that people commonly think about. Usually think mercury, sulfur, etc, which are not things we naturally emit.

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

#448

Post by kiliantics » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #446

kiliantics wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why we should push for the stable world (SW) scenario, rather than gambling with our collective future on something that is not a sure bet. Why do all climate policies currently being adopted allow increased carbon emissions and assume we will have carbon capture technologies to negate them right in the nick of time? This is the kind of irresponsible behaviour that we usually see only in addicts or psychopat…

> why we should push for the stable world (SW) scenario Alternatively, a push for antifragility acknowledges human's scale of environmental control and the tendency for unexpected things to happen simply because they are possible. Ergodicity expresses the idea that a point of a moving system, either a dynamical system or a stochastic process, will eventually visit all parts of the space that the system moves in, in a…

How do you propose making an antifragile system?

The most antifragile system we know is the earth's biosphere and its component ecosystems. By reorganising it for our industrial processes, we have made it pretty fragile and we will be experiencing the results of that (in the form of more droughts, storms, temperature swings etc.) increasingly if we keep it up.

Adopting the stable world scenario would be accepting that we need to limit our use of the world's resources and give back a lot of land and ocean use to the natural ecosystems that gave us those resources in the first place -- rewilding large portions of the earth. This is about the only reasonable suggesting for antifragility I could conceive of, making it basically the same thing as the SW option.

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

#449

Post by webinvest » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #323

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In two decades of reading about it I've seen this oil theory many times but I haven't seen anything that convinces me that it was the real motivation. The closest strategic explanation was the neocons' PNAC letters which were basically just bravado about America throwing its weight around to maintain their global dominance. Reprehensible stuff.

If it wasn't the real explanation then nothing America does makes any sense. There have been a notable lack of invasions of African, Asian, European or South American countries. The Middle Easterners aren't that different from everywhere else - except they have lots of oil.

Military industrial complex? “Alleged” weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Islamic extremists? Politicians wanting to appear tough on crime? Avoiding another 1970s energy crisis? Islamic suicide bombers / terrorists?

I don’t know.

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

#450

Post by ModernMech » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

exporectomy wrote: post #282

inlikealamb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they were bad at it doesn't mean they didn't try. Here's a list: * Breaking into congress * Carrying flags representing a rival (dead) government * While wearing tactical gear, some carrying blunt objects, handcuffs, mace * Stealing computers and documents * Searching for congresspeople * Killing a police officer, beating others Not to mention they were doing it while Congress was meant to be counting el…

Apply the criteria for criminal attempted crimes. You have to do more than just attempt it, you have to have a realistic possibility of succeeding. Sticking pins in a voodoo doll isn't attempted murder, no matter how seriously you believe it will kill the person. So how would that event in the US have succeeded in overthrowing the government? What would the next steps have been? Even if they killed everyone in the bu…

> So how would that event in the US have succeeded in overthrowing the government? What would the next steps have been? Even if they killed everyone in the building, would the rest of the government/military/courts/etc. agree to follow orders from the new kings? Why?

Here's how it would work:

The process for electing the president is that states certify their electoral college votes in what's known as the Certificate of the Vote. On 1/6 the certificates are counted and objections are raised. It takes one Senator and one Representative to raise an objection in writing, and Republicans had planned on objecting to Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan at least. Objections are settled by voting in the House and Senate. Each chamber gets a vote, and if they agree the objection is sustained and the votes discarded. If they are split or disagree, the objection is overturned. Democrats had a majority in the House while Republicans had a majority in the Senate, so this would have went in favor of Joe Biden.

To succeed then, the Republicans needed to get outside of the regular Constitutional order. Their main objective on 1/6 was to delay the certification past that day. There is no precedent for this. At first Trump wanted Pence to simply refuse to certify the vote and then force the GOP friendly states to "recertify" their results. Trump only needed a few states to recertify to win. But Pence refused to do this, hence the chants of "Hang Mike Pence".

However, the invasion of the Capitol gave new life to this idea of recertification. The hope here was that if the proceedings were disrupted, we were in uncharted Constitutional territory. This would have given additional time for Trump to try and twist the arm of the various states, as he had been doing before 1/6 to the states of Arizona and Georgia (at least).

Once the states recertified their votes, they would have reconvened the Congress and VP to certify the election. This puts the Democrats in a tough spot. They could have let the "recertified" results stand, in which case Trump would win. Or they could object. If they did, then the Republicans could also object. This would throw the recertified votes out.

But here's the catch. If no candidate has 270 electoral college votes after the counting, then the matter is put before the House, but not in the normal way. Instead, each state delegation gets 1 vote, for a total of 50, with 26 to win. State delegations are decided by the states, and Republicans would have a 26-23 majority in this scenario (PA would have tied, if they don't agree their vote doesn't count). The House would then vote for Trump, and he could have been President despite losing the popular vote and the electoral college.

There's a lot that needed to go right for Trump for this to work, and that's why it didn't. But it went a lot further than it should have, and definitely broke a 240 year streak of peaceful transitions of power in the US. In fact, it seems like the only reason the vote was able to be certified on 1/6 is because Mike Pence refused to leave the Capitol with the Secret Service. Had he left with them when they wanted him to, the proceedings would have been delayed indefinitely.