Death by hockey sticks • Hacker News Board

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#141

Post by cornel_io » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 10:50 AM UTC

postkey wrote: post #139

cornel_io wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we "get our shit together" in all the rich countries on the planet, which are barely at replacement levels? Did we hit a massive die-off level by overexploiting our resources? No. We got rich and having kids was less economically valuable (in fact it becomes a cost in rich societies). The Elon Musks of the world are now more concerned about lack of growth than the opposite. Who knows if Elon is right or you, but…

"The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did,…

What in the world does any of that have to do with birth rates and overpopulation, which is the only thing I mentioned? Are you just spamming a link and quote?

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#142

Post by sacrosancty » Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 12:48 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #35

sacrosancty wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hockey sticks usually end up being S-shaped curves. The author is just doom-screaming because we're currently in the rapid change phases of lots of them but hasn't shown on any of the graphs the point where disaster will occur. What's the critical rate of extinctions that would end global economic growth before most of the world has western quality of life? He has no clue! So his worries are just emotional and based…

I'm not sure how S-shaped curves help when it comes to the collapse of all ecosystems is concerned... are we supposed to innovate our way out of rapidly dwindling biodiversity on the planet? insects and pollinators birds and large game animals forests and rainforests kelp forests dying coral reefs dying overfishing plastic pollution greenhouse gas pollution acidification of oceans 1/3 of all arable land underwent des…

You're just doing what the TFA did, which is notice some trends and assume they'll continue until the point of some sort of "disaster". But you don't have a clue, just been exposed to too much hype.

To be specific - how much biodiversity do we need to avoid disaster such a global economic collapse? I don't know how to measure that but you surely do or you'd have no justification for your stated opinions.

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#143

Post by cornel_io » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 10:09 AM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #138

cornel_io wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with a pessimistic estimate about the rate of progress, fully general AI will be here loooong before population decline decimates the economy, as will good robotics and all the stuff needed to basically put resource gathering and production on autopilot. At that point "on welfare" would easily be the equivalent of living like a millionaire today. The bigger questions are whether global warming or WW3 will fuck u…

Population decline will be a problem in your lifetime. I’ve become disillusioned with the idea that hyper-automation is just around the corner. Observing a Chrysler assembly plant from almost a century ago, vs our current car assembly plants (wiring harnesses still very stubbornly manual), has tempered my expectations of automation progress, as has the slowing of Moore’s Law and the failure of self-driving-cars to ma…

Seeing modern day "best in class" is a great way to become pessimistic about progress, you see the best of now but don't realize it's the worst of "soon". In 8 years you'll reverse course completely based on machining automation, and in 11 we'll have true AGI.