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Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

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Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#241
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lack of economic ability is not the same as someone forcing you not to have children. And you can still have children even when facing economic hardship - lots of people have done it (think immigrant families who start out poor). I would also claim that a lot of western nations subsidize families already, so economic factors is not considered eugenics imho.

How would you feel about a free test for $genetic_marker coupled with taxes for parents that have children with $genetic_marker ? Surely that would count as "forced"?

GP said that we do have a society right now where economics is a eugenic factor. Please name one instance of the pattern you described in society today. I'm not aware of any tax on generic markers.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#242
Population stabilisation: Most of the societies even in the developing world are now seeing stagnation in replacement levels of population growth. It will be challenging in the future to ensure economic growth rates of present times for that reason alone. When population stagnates, labour becomes expensive, consumption decreases and growth flattens. Even the last remaining regions of Africa are now seeing rapid urbanisation, and consequently will see this trend in the next 20 years. In a way, evolution itself is forcing humanity to cut down on its wasteful ways. The authors of this article should have touched upon the factor of population deflation in their article to make a more balanced case.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are all fertilizers and material used renewable or are they coming out of finite earth resources? Nitrogen is about 75% of the earth's atmosphere and potassium and phosphorus make up 2.6 and 0.1% of the Earth's crust, so we have plenty of all of them. To turn them into most of the common fertilizers, we need energy (and water, which is plentiful for this purpose). And atoms don't go away (with the exception of atom…

Nitrogen is only one ingredient, what about the others phosporus and potassium? If it was so readily available why did the war in the Ukraine affect the fertilizers market? Also what about soil degradation...? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus In the top 5 phosphorus producers are China, Russia, Morocco and Jordan. Sounds super stable. > Way before that happens, we should be able to use Thorium or fusion.…

> I hope we can but it's not a given and no one knows the likelihood. Bigger VC investments are finally being poured into energy but nuclear fission and fusion are not new concepts - we haven't been able to do anything with them at scale yet.

If we're willing to use uranium, we have enough energy there for a few hundred years (even if extracting it gets somewhat more expensive over time, it will take a while before the fuel becomes more expensive than hydrocarbons). And let's say we use 40/40/20 solar/uranium/other renewables, we can double that or more.

I'm pretty confident we will be able to leverage some other energy source before that time.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That small group of people is in fact connected to the rest of the world's population by a chain of progress that eventually leads everyone through the same level of prosperity. By turning the head and thus the direction of progress downwards you are committing the rest of the population to at the very least never achieving any level of prosperity greater than that. In the middle you're dooming them to stagnation at…

Suppose we were in 1890 discussing how we need to get rid of horse manure in our cities and there were a hot debate on how this "horseless carriage" thing is highly experimental and threatens the livelihood of a whole supply chain around horses. As it turns out, you can get rid of manure and it does in fact make a lot of people poorer, but in the end it enables a lot more prosperity for future generations.

[deleted]

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That small group of people is in fact connected to the rest of the world's population by a chain of progress that eventually leads everyone through the same level of prosperity. By turning the head and thus the direction of progress downwards you are committing the rest of the population to at the very least never achieving any level of prosperity greater than that. In the middle you're dooming them to stagnation at…

Suppose we were in 1890 discussing how we need to get rid of horse manure in our cities and there were a hot debate on how this "horseless carriage" thing is highly experimental and threatens the livelihood of a whole supply chain around horses. As it turns out, you can get rid of manure and it does in fact make a lot of people poorer, but in the end it enables a lot more prosperity for future generations.

The big difference here is that horses were nearly exclusively used for transportation. Fossil fuels currently provide something like 80% of all the energy used. So if you want your analogy to be accurate then you'd have to be back in 1890 saying "Ok, we're going to get rid of horses AND fossil fuels".

Personally, I do think that burning oil derivatives is a waste and I would like to see it replaced where possible with a superior energy source but the only source that fits the bill for me is nuclear and the only responsible way to do it is to build the new power plants first and then phase out the old fossil fuel plants.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When we do things such as “screening for down syndrome” [1], we are already actively engaged in a eugenics project, but we don’t think of it as one because it’s the kind of intentional genetic control we like. Historically, many cases of "eugenics" involved a lack of informed consent, even blatant coercion. That screening is entirely voluntary–you have the right to say "no", and I know couples who have (due to mora…

> That screening is entirely voluntary–you have the right to say "no" The child doesn't, though, and, if you'll excuse my frankness, I think the abortion affects his/her future the most out of all the parties involved.

If you'll excuse my frankness, at the point of screening it's much more an idea of a child, than an actual he/she.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you feel about a free test for $genetic_marker coupled with taxes for parents that have children with $genetic_marker ? Surely that would count as "forced"?

GP said that we do have a society right now where economics is a eugenic factor. Please name one instance of the pattern you described in society today. I'm not aware of any tax on generic markers.

In practically any country with socialized healthcare you will be strongly encouraged to terminate a child that might turn out unhealthy, and in a lot of them you will lose "benefits" (on which you depend because you were forced to pay mandatory social insurance before, taking away your ability to save/invest by yourself) if you don't listen/go to the doctors as "you are supposed to because that's the system". Where I live in Central Europe, going to the gynecologist and listening to their recommendations is a requirement to get full parental social benefits - and the policy most certainly is also based on what's economical for the state/"the system", and only parents that were previously working can get the benefits.

Additionally, you will have to pay the full price for any treatment that's outside their recommendations, this often turns out higher in absolute prices than in any US hospital - even though the people are much poorer.

Then once an unhealthy child is born they often don't get the full benefits of socialized healthcare as they should according to the constitutions, the administration will say "the system works in a different way and you went outside it, so you need to take care of it yourself" and the parents are forced to pay for treatments and medical equipment by themselves because what "the system recommends" is not nearly enough (we are talking about US$ millions of additional out-of-pocket expenses in some real world cases that I follow locally). That could be interpreted as a form of tax too, especially since you are forced to pay mandatory health insurance in most of these countries.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#248
post #36

I do think some of the concerns here are right on the nose > What can be done to minimize the chances of colossal failure or sub-systemic breakdown, which in the worst case could threaten preservation of science and human knowledge? It seems like the two extremes are degrowth and malthus on the one hand, and haughty denialist expansionism on the other. One is borderline eugenicist and denies billions of people of our…

Do you think we will ever turn back to eugenics? It has deeply immoral roots and has led to some of the most messed up scenarios in our history, but it is also a crazy powerful tool we have been unable to leverage in a non-evil way. (This is kinda tangential but related) I have a weird theory about humanities purpose: Assuming someone/thing created life (if life wasn't created then it truly is random chaos and we hav…

> If we can reverse engineer the mechanisms of evolution

Evolution is a very simple process, broadly speaking. You can implement your own model of it fairly easily. Survival is basically the only driving force, only those variations that survive to reproduce will be present in the next generation. It's a useful tool but we shouldn't let it guide us since it is quite blind.

> What is evolution driving us to become?

There is no destination for the evolutionary process. It's creation by subtraction really, everything that doesn't work gets eliminated. Mind you, it's always only applicable to the current circumstances. What works in one time and place will not always work in another. Hence the constant change.

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

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#249

Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. Obviously at some point limits will kick in (unless we can expand to other planets) but what to do about that is more of a political question than a scientific one. I personally think it is more appealing to attempt expanding the limits, as we've done in the past, than to pre-emptively ad…

> Similar things were predicted in the 70s but new sources of energy and improvements in productivity invalidated those predictions. ok, cool. So you've identified the limits (energy and productivity). Are you sure productivity has grown? Is this growth sustainable? For example, agriculture. Highly dependent on rapidly disappearing resources Like i.e. dirt. If you look at erosion rates in the US, we are on track to r…

A key insight into agriculture is that the main reason we spread our farms out over massive areas of land is because it is simply more economical. If you think about it from first principles, farming outdoors has major flaws the biggest of which is seasonality. Most crops mature in a handful of months but must be grown only at specific times of the year in order to maximize yield. Doing this out in the open puts you at the mercy of nature. Besides the limited growing season you also have to deal with losses due to weather, pests, competing plants (weeds), and other local conditions like drought or soil quality. The only reason we do it is because it's cheap. It requires less initial cost to set up and less energy input.

If you were to redesign the process you could conceivably build massive greenhouses to control conditions. If you had surplus energy you could also actively heat, cool and light these greenhouses. From a quick look, greenhouse conditions can produce 15 times more yield per acre. They reduce wastage by a comparably large amount as well since half of produce is thrown away due to cosmetic blemishes. They would also drastically reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticide needed. I think you could drive yields even higher with round the clock lighting, studies as well as practical experience from farmers in northern territories have shown that longer daylight hours allow plants to mature much more rapidly.

An ideal farming setup to me would look like hectares of greenhouses located next to a nuclear power plant that can provide heated water for keeping them warm and cheap power for cooling and lighting.

Re: Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: a PLAN for the future

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as the children survive to give birth to more children it doesn't matter how poor they are. Evolution doesn't care for the comfort of anyone.

> So long as the children survive to give birth to more children Big if. In a true famine, the poor usually die first. > Evolution doesn't care for the comfort of anyone. Evolution cares about sexual desireability and fitness. Rich people usually have more. In nature we see these two strategies as well. Some species try and have as many babies as possible, where others have fewer but concentrate resources to make sur…

You're mixing up personal fitness with the fitness of a meme. Sure rich people have more surviving children in the long run, but why don't we ask the rich Pagan Roman Senators how well their money protected them from the hungry Christian mob?
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