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Continuous growth is cancer

christianheilmann.com

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Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#121

Post by kilgnad »

roenxi wrote: post #116
kilgnad wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example programmers can understand, machine learning is a better model for this than a logistic map. Natural selection is basically gradient descent with random walk as the "step" algorithm rather than back propagation. At each step, you randomly adjust the weights by a small amount. You do this with like 100 candidates and pick the best one that lowers the cost function the most. This is one generation, and yo…

You're talking about evolution here, but I was never talking about evolution; nor was the original article.

My entire initial post was about evolution and natural selection. And how cancer, growth and life needs to be interpreted within this framework. Your analysis is flawed because it is entirely missing this perspective in the same way a car is flawed when it's missing it's wheels.

Reread my post initial post with this in mind, because you don't get it. I've been speaking about evolution from the beginning and you've been missing the point since the beginning.

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#122

Post by drudolph914 »

kaashif wrote: post #93
arcticbull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have continuous exponential population growth. That's not to say that we won't exceed the limits of the biosphere at some point to meet our needs, but as a society becomes more developed the birth rate falls off massively. Just 60 years ago the US and Canada had a fertility rate of 4, meaning 4 children born to the average woman. In the US, it's now 1.64 and Canada is just 1.4 - well below the replacement ra…

The incentives here seem worrying. Developed countries must keep other countries undeveloped to maintain the flow of immigration. If everyone develops, Europe and North America's power and share of global GDP will decrease significantly.

agreed - and this just reinforces one of the core themes in the article. on a long term scale, this hyper growth capitalist phase we’re in now doesn’t work. talk about a “non scalable solution.“

I get you’re talking about a more macro level issue, but at the core, capitalism is what’s driving this anti-pattern into existence. I’m not someone who’s anti-capitalism, but the fact that it takes the concern of our global GDP to consider the livelihood of people underdeveloped countries is depressing

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#123

Post by corbulo »

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #120
corbulo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the same kind of faith as the sun rising tomorrow. The universal constant of human history is finding new resources to exploit and manipulating our environment, the scope of which grows exponentially by the century. Why do you think this will suddenly change, without precedent? There is no reliable science behind 'cooking the planet beyond livability'. We already have adaptations (carbon extraction) for that even…

If you're going to handwave away climate change and the resultant catastrophes as "not real" then I see no point in engaging further. I don't know if you meant carbon capture when you said extraction, but that's vaporware. Sudden change, without precedent... sounds like a black swan event, which ironically we have a term for. But there is precedent. Many civilizations before us have collapsed due to lack of resources…

We aren't the exception to the rule even remotely. Macroevolution is eternal growth. Its been around for quite some time. Life finding ways to adapt to differing resource ratios.

I'm not handwaving away anything; i'm admiring billions of years of clear precedent.

You're handwaving away all of that precedent based on extreme pessimism and alarmism that has no basis in any evidence to date. Simply because climate change exists doesnt mean its the most extreme version cooked up by a crackpot journalist.

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#124

Post by kilgnad »

yuhaa98 wrote: post #118
kilgnad wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Technology production requires an energy input. It's fundamental physics. Reversing entropy requires an energy input, and technology is essentially entropy reversing. At the more scientific level you can see this occurring by simply correlating energy expenditure per country per capita with the technological achievements of the respective country. Western countries are among the top energy users and technology de…

And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest? I'd say you have seen nothing yet. And history is on my side here. Besides, creating smarter things doesn't necessarily need more energy. We are pretty wasteful with energy at the moment. What you are talking about, entropy in the sense of progressing anywhere, is a ridiculously small fraction of what we are currently using ene…

> And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest?

Nope. But any exponential growth in consumption of energy will hit the existing limit very quickly. Even if that limit was magically increased by 10x we'd still hit it very very quickly.

> higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun will be magnitudes improved from what we do today. Just look back 100 years

Technological gambles are speculative. The failure of fusion is unfortunately just as realistic of a possibility that must be considered in a logical analysis.

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#125

Post by CatWChainsaw »

corbulo wrote: post #123
CatWChainsaw wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to handwave away climate change and the resultant catastrophes as "not real" then I see no point in engaging further. I don't know if you meant carbon capture when you said extraction, but that's vaporware. Sudden change, without precedent... sounds like a black swan event, which ironically we have a term for. But there is precedent. Many civilizations before us have collapsed due to lack of resources…

We aren't the exception to the rule even remotely. Macroevolution is eternal growth. Its been around for quite some time. Life finding ways to adapt to differing resource ratios. I'm not handwaving away anything; i'm admiring billions of years of clear precedent. You're handwaving away all of that precedent based on extreme pessimism and alarmism that has no basis in any evidence to date. Simply because climate chang…

"Macroevolution is eternal growth" - what is this supposed to mean? Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance? Forget previous civilization collapses, remember we're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. As for "eternal", that's a bold claim to make for all the eternity that hasn't happened yet.

I can just as easily say you're handwaving away the pessimism based on precedent. Precedent holds, right up until it doesn't.

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#127

Post by corbulo »

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #125
corbulo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't the exception to the rule even remotely. Macroevolution is eternal growth. Its been around for quite some time. Life finding ways to adapt to differing resource ratios. I'm not handwaving away anything; i'm admiring billions of years of clear precedent. You're handwaving away all of that precedent based on extreme pessimism and alarmism that has no basis in any evidence to date. Simply because climate chang…

"Macroevolution is eternal growth" - what is this supposed to mean? Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance? Forget previous civilization collapses, remember we're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. As for "eternal", that's a bold claim to make for all the eternity that hasn't happened yet. I can just as easily say you're handwaving away the pessimism based on precedent. Precedent hold…

>Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance?

No, it means there are always adaptations. I defined what it means.

The precedent is what has evidence. Your pessimism doesn't have evidence to support inhabitable conditions within a few decades unless we initiate an authoritarian world government to control all growth and control the climate. The burden of proof is on you, not me.

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#128

Post by CatWChainsaw »

corbulo wrote: post #127
CatWChainsaw wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Macroevolution is eternal growth" - what is this supposed to mean? Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance? Forget previous civilization collapses, remember we're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. As for "eternal", that's a bold claim to make for all the eternity that hasn't happened yet. I can just as easily say you're handwaving away the pessimism based on precedent. Precedent hold…

>Beehives keep growing infinitely, civilizations always advance? No, it means there are always adaptations. I defined what it means. The precedent is what has evidence. Your pessimism doesn't have evidence to support inhabitable conditions within a few decades unless we initiate an authoritarian world government to control all growth and control the climate. The burden of proof is on you, not me.

>evidence to support inhabitable conditions within a few decades unless we initiate an authoritarian world government to control all growth and control the climate.

I'm assuming you meant uninhabitable conditions. And that you're putting words in my mouth.

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#129

Post by wizofaus »

corbulo wrote: post #117
wizofaus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to poke fun at government incompetency but like it or not they are who your country elected to make the sorts of decisions that shape its future. The only truly abysmal government is one that is paralysed into doing nothing at all.

Therefore they should be empowered to have full authoritarian control over your life? Government incompetence is why limited government exists. Can you state a definitive opinion instead of dancing around with nihilistic platitudes?

My opinion is that if a government can be elected on the grounds of promising to improve how we define what sort of "growth" is worth pursuing and implement policies to achieve that, then it has a duty to follow through on such promises. The only thing nihilistic is concluding voters genuinely don't care, or simply don't believe there are better ways of measuring and sustaining growth (in which case, so be it, and we accept whatever fate such nihilism consigns us to).

Re: Continuous growth is cancer

#130

Post by yuhaa98 »

kilgnad wrote: post #124
yuhaa98 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest? I'd say you have seen nothing yet. And history is on my side here. Besides, creating smarter things doesn't necessarily need more energy. We are pretty wasteful with energy at the moment. What you are talking about, entropy in the sense of progressing anywhere, is a ridiculously small fraction of what we are currently using ene…

> And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest? Nope. But any exponential growth in consumption of energy will hit the existing limit very quickly. Even if that limit was magically increased by 10x we'd still hit it very very quickly. > higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun wi…

Again.

1. "Progress" does not need to imply "exponential growth in consumption of energy".

2. Even if it does, we may be many thousand generations away from hitting a ceiling.

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