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Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#11

Post by friedman23 »

legutierr wrote: post #8
friedman23 wrote: post #4

> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics. This is easily proven false by contradiction: Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materi…

> No extra raw materials were required to get from the planks of wood to the chair but value was created anyway. The labor required to build the chair is one additional ingredient. The transformation of wood and nails to chair does not happen spontaneously.

The labor is a small fixed cost. Depending on what is done with the labor the leverage is potentially infinite (eg. many internet business that earn a million or more per year for every employee they have hired).

Growth can happen by getting the same labor to do something more valuable (maybe building houses instead of chairs?)

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#12

Post by harryvederci »

I do. But when that makes me sad I think of the following bit from The Chronicles of Riddick:

Imam: "Have you heard anything I've said?"

Riddick: "You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?"

Imam: "That's right."

Riddick: "Had to end sometime."

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#13

Post by sdflhasjd »

friedman23 wrote: post #11
legutierr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No extra raw materials were required to get from the planks of wood to the chair but value was created anyway. The labor required to build the chair is one additional ingredient. The transformation of wood and nails to chair does not happen spontaneously.

The labor is a small fixed cost. Depending on what is done with the labor the leverage is potentially infinite (eg. many internet business that earn a million or more per year for every employee they have hired). Growth can happen by getting the same labor to do something more valuable (maybe building houses instead of chairs?)

Labour is people, which need food and water.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#14

Post by koyanisqatsi »

These are great references. Thanks for putting this together and I agree with your assessment. Logically it is impossible to have infinite growth on a finite planet. Destructive human activity in the past tended to be isolated but the rise of industrial society and machinery has made local human activity a global problem (industrial societies produce a lot of CO2 and there is no way around this).

On top of this there is also the problem of an economic model that incentivizes ransacking natural resources in order to turn it into profits. That's probably the main reason there is a lot of pushback to degrowth philosophies because it requires a fundamentally new way of measuring economic activity and value. No economic models properly account for biospheric destruction and resource depletion from human economic activity so almost all existing economic thinking is completely useless for addressing the current crisis.

All the pie in sky solutions to the current crisis assume we solve the problem of limited energy resources and then use this newly abundant source of energy to terraform the planet and fix the problems created by industrial activity. I'm calling it pie in the sky because I have seen no real concerted effort to actually make this happen. The timelines for fusion reactors make no sense and will not be ready in time to address the impending ecological disasters. Almost every other technical solution is equally nonsensical, e.g. AGI.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#15

Post by popara »

friedman23 wrote: post #4

> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics. This is easily proven false by contradiction: Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materi…

You are excluding human labor, which requires energy, which brings us back to thermodynamics.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#16

Post by barbariangrunge »

Forge36 wrote: post #5

I am a firm believer that the world has always being going to shit. It's called change and accepting that has made life much more bearable. While change is increasingly happening faster, the changes are (mostly) smaller. We're in one of the longest periods of “peace time“ and threat of war/death continue to decrease (while not evenly distributed that's not a reason to lose hope).

This period of peace time is, admittedly, because world war 3 will end human life on earth and it’s making leaders slightly more shy than usual

It doesn’t even have to be a world war. It will only take 1 nation to make the choice

We’re one mistake from extinction

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#17

Post by smitty1e »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #7
Forge36 wrote: post #5

I am a firm believer that the world has always being going to shit. It's called change and accepting that has made life much more bearable. While change is increasingly happening faster, the changes are (mostly) smaller. We're in one of the longest periods of “peace time“ and threat of war/death continue to decrease (while not evenly distributed that's not a reason to lose hope).

I wouldn't call the changes "smaller". Climate change is an existential threat. Possibly the greatest one we've ever faced, certainly the greatest since WWII and so far we're definitely NOT rising to the occasion.

To quote the Instapundit: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."

There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#18

Post by imgabe »

> there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint.

Yes there is. We are vastly ineffecient with our use of energy. Fusion power, better use of solar, wind, geothermal power, better energy storage. The amount of solar hitting the Earth every day is several orders of magnitude larger than what is needed to run society at our current level. There is no shortage of energy, only our ability to make use of it.

Obviously nothing grows indefinitely. Eventually the sun will go supernova and consume the solar system. For an amount of energy needed to sustain human life comfortably, there is more than enough.

The degrowthers would have us go back to living in grass huts and dying in droves from diseases we have long since eradicated. It is not a way forward. It is species suicide.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#19

Post by nickpinkston »

(1) I'd encourage you to look at Jason Hickel's sources/bibliography closely before taking him too seriously. When he has numbers, they're from very biased sources that make too many assumptions from a place of extreme technological/economic conservatism.

This isn't necessarily done consciously - the scientists who often make these predictions, like all scientists, have a very high standards for what facts are. While this is good for creating sound science, it's bad for predicting the direction of tech/econ development because this method essentially always fails because it's overly rearward looking, using a mix of linear progress lines to predict what ends up being an exponential process.

See this chart for an example of this happening with solar deployment:https://www.visualcapitalist.com/experts-bad-forecasting-sol...

(2) On decoupling, it looks like advanced economies are doing this, but the problem is the rest are still going through the CO2 expansionary phase.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling

(3) My main issue with Hickel's work is that his proposal (and other degrowthers) is actually less likely to lead to carbon reductions than the green growth scenario. Namely, you're never going to convince those countries to slow growth enough, so your time is best spent figuring out better green growth or things like geoengineering.

(4) It seems like the degrowthers are more shouting into the void because they actually also have anti-capitalist sentiments (in addition to there environmental ones) which aren't going well. I really recommend Leigh Phillips' book: "Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff" for a defense of green growth from the Left.

https://www.amazon.com/Austerity-Ecology-Collapse-Porn-Addic...

(5) On preppers, crazy news, etc. I think we're going through a very real systemic inflection point similar to how the Industrial Revolution in Europe led to capitalism and liberalization of governments. The same types of forces are at play, putting pressure on our whole social structure and even to the global ecology itself.

Add to this, the collapse of meaning-making structures like family, community, religion, etc. and you have a machine that converts external stress into personal stress - even if you're personally doing fine. Like all those rich preppers.

(6) Long story short: Hang in there! We are probably going to go through some crazy shit in the coming years because of recession, political upheaval, wars, etc., but remember that even throughout all of humanity's worst times, most of us survived and in the moment mostly lived decent lives.

We may need to temper our expectations and be okay with a little rough living, but we are human fucking beings god dammit! and we were built to resilient in the face of crazy odds, and we made it this far!!!

Maintain your optimism and dreams personally. Focus on what you can actually control and who/what matters most to you. Life is too short for constant worry, and if it should pass that our world does end, take solace in that, no matter what we do, we're all dead in the end. So enjoy this life while you've got it.

Good luck stranger and godspeed!

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#20

Post by Bin1864 »

1. No. People are getting dumber at (IIRC) about 0.6 IQ points per 10 years. Obviously this is going to make society and technology worse. It's like every month that something breaks around the house and I can't find somebody who knows how it works. Tech support used to be tolerable but now it's useless.

2. I don't know what you mean by "collapse", but yes it's a belief. "Tech will save us" is one of the (IIRC) 3 textbook responses to the climate change narrative.

3. IDK it looks like Western Europe is de-industrializing, we'll see how much this winter but I'm hearing about large industries shutting down in response to fuel prices. They're definitely not trying to prevent panic, just trying to maintain hypernormalization.

4. They are and you can go outside and you can find them. You don't hear about it on the internet because the internet is run by multinational corporations selling you products made many thousands of miles from where you live.

4.1 Technology is a force multiplier - people with more technology are better at conquering their rivals. I think this is mentioned in Industrial Society and it's future.

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