Earlier quoted context omitted.
But are they "not mainstream" or just "not affordable"?
One of the great things about this restaurant is that it was super cheap. $5 could easily get lunch for two, which would consist of noodles, vegetables, some type of imitated meat chunks or cubes with sauce, and tea back when I used to go there. And it tasted really quite good. According to their current menu, you can still eat well there for less than $10 per person, and they have a whole lot more items than they di…
My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
511–520 of 520 posts
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
> History is not littered with civilizations that got universal computation and computers to execute them. All countries have this now. How's this relevant to the point that less complacent countries will eclipse more complacent ones?
almost a billion people dont have reliable access to energy a large part of them dont have any at all
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 inc…
With a product like Netflix, is that the result of greater productivity? Did Netflix invent some kind of new food that meant humans who made the films or created the website could work twenty hour days for the same wage? The innovation was cutting out other parts of the distribution chain, not more efficient energy usage.
It isn't about more stuff either but more inputs. And there has been a significant increase in energy capture (I was talking about a far larger timescale, but this is over the 20th century) but there has been a larger increase in inputs (and a small increase in efficiency, although one that continues to compound), that is why climate change is occurring. Intangibles are neither here nor there because humans still expend calories (real solar energy) to produce those intangibles.
To say this another way, the value of an intangible product is (usually) closely related to the productivity of other parts of the economy. A film in Mauritanian street market is not worth as much a film on the Apple Store in the US. That elides the point that growth either comes from growth in inputs, or growth in efficiency of input usage (the increase in energy capture is, I think, efficiency...but it is usually not what people are thinking of when they think about efficiency).
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Absolutely the scale of the problem is unprecedented though, but that message hasn’t changed in 50 years.
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please tell me this is supposed to be a joke and that you don't seriously think this, given the ocean of literal video evidence out there.
Evidence like this? https://rumble.com/vh52u9-watch-u.s.-capitol-police-gave-pro... https://twitter.com/i/status/1347596278583197698
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
almost a billion people dont have reliable access to energy a large part of them dont have any at all
You're so far away from the original point, that computation etc is available to any up and coming competitive country, and thus this computation is not the most the previous commenter was implying it was.
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#517Earlier 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…
Most of the progress is caused by greed too.
also, scientists, doctors, researchers, even maybe the military?, progress has been defined by a lot of different motivators than just greed i would think… (was einstein full of greed when he made his breakthroughs?)
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#518it always does.
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”
#520Earlier 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).