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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?

#101

Post by tuatoru »

badpun wrote: post #90
imgabe wrote: post #18

> 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, onl…

Energy problems is just one of ways in which our societies can get into a decline. There's also loss of arable land (industrial farming is slowly but surely destroying the soil across the world), destruction of biodiversification, leading to freak incidents (one pest/disease wiping out lots of crops, forests, farm animals, or humans for that matter), depletion of minerals in the Earth (who knows if even right now the…

It's technically possible now to synthesise carbohydrates, fats, and proteins directly from the air: in effect, doing artificial photosynthesis at something like 200 times the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, without using land.

With cheap enough energy and more practice (descending the engineering learning curve) producing food this way may be profitable in 30 or 40 years. We can re-wild all arable land.

There are at least dozens and possibly hundreds of alternatives to lithium chemistry for batteries, that are nearly competitive with it. Some of them are better than lithium in some applications. Watch for CATL's sodium batteries.

But say it's worst case, none of the alternatives turn out to be better cheaper, and more environmentally benign: no problem. There most definitely is enough mineable lithium. There's a temporary shortage of lithium refining factories.

If we had to, we could get by with water, rock, iron, sodium, potassium, calcium, phosphates, carbon, aluminum, and trace amounts of other things. The minerals we need a lot of, we have a lot of.

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

#102

Post by thunky »

soulofmischief wrote: post #83
solarmist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but even if 90% or even 99% of humanity dies it still isn't an existential threat. If 100k humans survive that's more than enough to carry on humans and civilization as a whole.

This take always rubs me the wrong way because it conveniently ignores the fact that letting 90% of humanity die is wrong and should be avoided given that 1% of humanity is more or less to blame for this mess.

Nobody said it was ok, they just said it's technically not an existential threat if humanity persists.

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

#104

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

midoridensha wrote: post #62
imgabe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all methods of using energy require releasing heat to space. Solar energy uses heat and light that comes in from space and converts some portion of it to useful work, reducing the amount of heat that needs to be released to space. That also ignores the fact that technology gets more efficient. A laptop today uses 50W and is thousands of times more powerful than a roomful of computers 50 years ago that used thousa…

Same with wind energy: wind is ultimately created by solar energy heating the atmosphere, so wind turbines are simply removing some energy from the atmosphere and converting it to useful work.

Its still exponential growth so it will eventually mean all possible useful wind and solar is used up. Then what?

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

#105

Post by [deleted] »

mberning wrote: post #98
cableshaft wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s just like everybody upset about the climate, but none of them have installed solar and geothermal on their home. Average cost of a residential geothermal system: $15k to $38k[1] Average cost of solar panel roof: $11k to $14k after tax credits[2] Also your roof shingles should be 10 years old or less before installation[3] (my roof shingles are definitely that old), so for a lot of people they'd have to replace…

Which is exactly my point. It’s not cheap or easy to put your money where your mouth is. Talk is cheap. In the end, is $60k too much to ask to save the planet? People should stop being pretenders. If they really care about the climate, do something about it. If they think the world sucks and is going down the drain, do something about it.

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by [deleted] »

chki wrote: post #88
vinyl7 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most "crisis" are developed for election marketing and grifting. Horrible situation such'n'such is an existential threat! Vote for me or give me money to save all of humanity! The other side of it lately has been creating crisis that divide and conquer society. Most of the "crisis" in the past several years have been terribly polarized. Keeping people divided stops them from focusing on the real issues that p…

>I think most "crisis" are developed for election marketing and grifting. Horrible situation such'n'such is an existential threat! Vote for me or give me money to save all of humanity! I think that's much more reasonable. I wouldn't agree with you that it's "most" but sure, that's certainly happening to some amount. >Keeping people divided stops them from focusing on the real issues that politicians can't/won't tackl…

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by HKH2 »

chki wrote: post #87
HKH2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness? It's easier to rule happy people. If you want to control them, you can lull them into inaction with vices, then control them with fear. We're all individuals; divide and conquer.

Sorry, but the difference between "rule" and "control" seems more like a play on words and less like a coherent argument. Also, "divide et impera" might be reasonable if you are in the business of ancient roman foreign policy but I would need to be convinced that it holds true for the inner workings of modern democracies. I don't have the feeling that the people around me are particularly afraid all the time and if t…

> Sorry, but the difference between "rule" and "control" seems more like a play on words and less like a coherent argument. 'Rule' is a neutral word. I meant it in the way that a ruler generally tries to do good for their subjects because on some level they have to. 'Control' is negative and implies no concern for subjects because the subjects have no recourse.

> Also, "divide et impera" might be reasonable if you are in the business of ancient roman foreign policy but I would need to be convinced that it holds true for the inner workings of modern democracies.

If you've been awake in the past 3 years you will have seen obvious government overreach. You can justify it if you want to, but it's clearly gone way beyond public health concerns.

> I don't have the feeling that the people around me are particularly afraid all the time and if they are, it leads to them wanting change instead of being paralysed.

I'll assume you're American. What percentage of Americans do you think use psychiatric medication or drugs (including alcohol) on a regular basis?

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

#108

Post by jononor »

gruez wrote: post #53
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Climate change might be the greatest challenge we've ever faced, but it's hardly an "existential threat" (ie. something that threatens our existence). Even under the worst IPCC forecasts, there won't be enough land lost (eg. by flooding or desertification) to wipe out humanity. Don't get me wrong, billions dying or displaced would be a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions, but isn't something that threatens our…

In workplace health and safety there is a term "life altering". This is used for the high impact but not deadly accidents, that are still very valuable to reduce the risk of. Like having an arm torn off, or going blind. I think we should adopt similar terminology when it comes to risks to humanity as a whole. "Civilization-changing perhaps"? And try to attach some meaningful examples of this. Fixating only on total anhilation of the entire species is not so useful when trying to design policies.

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

#109

Post by koyanisqatsi »

scotty79 wrote: post #94
koyanisqatsi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't because a virtual infinite economy is essentially a game like minecraft. It has nothing to do with reality other than being a toy simulation with no physically relevant constraints.

But the entire financial sector is sort of virtual economy where people gamble wealth with nearly zero connection to physical world.

It's not entirely the case because there are still some commodities that are connected to actual productivity in the real world but by and large you're correct, it's mostly a game with monopoly money and mostly destructive consequences. It's again another reason we are collectively in this current mess. People have been chasing fake tokens in an economic game without paying any attention to real world consequences of their actions.

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

#110

Post by scotty79 »

koyanisqatsi wrote: post #109
scotty79 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the entire financial sector is sort of virtual economy where people gamble wealth with nearly zero connection to physical world.

It's not entirely the case because there are still some commodities that are connected to actual productivity in the real world but by and large you're correct, it's mostly a game with monopoly money and mostly destructive consequences. It's again another reason we are collectively in this current mess. People have been chasing fake tokens in an economic game without paying any attention to real world consequences of…

But my question still stands. Can we have infinitely growing economy if we make the real world part of it increasingly small?

We managed to reduce food production from something like 90% of the economy to 5%, industry to 15%.

Maybe at some point all of non-virtual part will be like 1% of our total economy?

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