Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 54 posts

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#21

Post by [deleted] »

seldo wrote: post #16
mynameishere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staved = Pushed back the date. .... I'm honestly not sure why people are dazzled by this guy. Partly it was...his specific intention to increase yields, which make him seem like a humanitarian. The Fordson tractor did more for agriculture (and, much much much more for the economy and day-to-day existence) than this guy. Is Henry Ford the greatest human being who ever lived?

My use of "staved off" was entirely intentional. I'm sure we'll hit apocalypse some how... (P.S. "staved" by itself means "crushed inwards" ;-))

[deleted]

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#22

Post by hughprime »

immad wrote: post #12
hughprime wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the assumption is that eventually the world's population will stabilize as third-world folks start breeding at bare replacement levels like rich folks do. If we (as a species) can keep producing enough food right up to that point, then we're fine. The alternative is that we hit the point where a massive worldwide famine (like, hundreds of millions of deaths) is required to get things back in balance. I'd rath…

Why does it have to be a "massive worldwide famine" rather than a general slow starvation that forces an overall balance? I get why some human issues lead to catastrophe like, global warming, but I never get why all issues will lead to catastrophes rather than gradual equilibrium.

Well, if the world were a simple mathematical model it might go as follows: there's enough food to feed ten billion people, so one day a baby is born taking us up to ten billion and one and oops -- somebody dies of starvation. From that moment on, the death rate due to starvation is equal to the birth rate minus the death rate due to non-starvation causes, and that's not _too_ bad.

In practice, though, that's not the way it's gonna happen. For starters, we have a bunch of food stored up, so the population will overshoot the limit by eating stored food, maybe for a bunch of years, enabling the population to get way above what it should. (I'm not just talking about canned beans here -- living animals are "stored food" too). Secondly, food production varies from year to year -- in a good year we might be able to feed eleven billion, and in a bad year only nine... that's gonna cause some problems when a bad year rolls around. Finally, a world where everybody has _just_ enough food to not die is still a pretty miserable and malnourished world... plus you've got the whole "hungry people with guns vs hungry people without guns" problem which leads to a whole bunch of other bad stuff happening.

Anyway, I hope that has been enough to convince you that awful things happen anytime you get a population anywhere near the very fuzzy and variable limit which is the maximum agriculturally sustainable population.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#23

Post by petercooper »

webwright wrote: post #20
socratees wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will NEVER happen. We already have enough food to feed 7 billion people over multiple years. The problem we face now is more related to "distribution of food to the right people" rather than production. What if the population explodes? Earth can sustain more human beings than you can imagine. The only thing we need to be careful about is polluting the atmosphere.

Really? So groundwater, soil, wild fish populations, etc. All that's going to keep scaling nicely? http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ucs-statement.tx...

It doesn't need to as long as technology keeps scaling. Pointing out that groundwater and soil aren't going to scale reminds me of the people who freaked out over the scalability of x86 in the mid 90s - we're an ingenious bunch, we find solutions.

Genetically modified meat grown in vats, compact nutrition rich superfoods/tablets.. there are all sorts of technologically possible creations around the corner.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#24

Post by petercooper »

This guy isn't famous because people who complain about GM food, the environment (or whatever) are louder and harder to ignore than scientists quietly solving those problems. Science and technology have provided most of the solutions to our most pressing problems, typically quietly, over a long period of time, and with little fanfare. This noble work will go on even if "eco-warriors" or anti-GM activists only want to whine and make little impact except to make people feel bad.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#25

Post by ghshephard »

awt wrote: post #8

This is an honest question: How does creating more food prevent these problems? Won't populations grow enough to consume all available food? Haven't populations in 3rd world countries exploded since the "green revolution"?

It turns out that countries with better crop yields per person, require fewer people, resulting in reduced population.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#27

Post by RyanMcGreal »

petercooper wrote: post #23
webwright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? So groundwater, soil, wild fish populations, etc. All that's going to keep scaling nicely? http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ucs-statement.tx...

It doesn't need to as long as technology keeps scaling. Pointing out that groundwater and soil aren't going to scale reminds me of the people who freaked out over the scalability of x86 in the mid 90s - we're an ingenious bunch, we find solutions. Genetically modified meat grown in vats, compact nutrition rich superfoods/tablets.. there are all sorts of technologically possible creations around the corner.

The dramatic increases in per acre yields over the past fifty years are closely tied to equally dramatic increases in per acre energy inputs over the same period. The Green Revolution amounts to the replacement of sunlight with hydrocarbons as the main fuel of food production.

Global oil production has now peaked and will slide, sooner or later, into permanent and progressive decline year-over-year. When that happens, all the blue-sky technology in the world won't keep food production rates increasing.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#28

Post by petercooper »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #27
petercooper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to as long as technology keeps scaling. Pointing out that groundwater and soil aren't going to scale reminds me of the people who freaked out over the scalability of x86 in the mid 90s - we're an ingenious bunch, we find solutions. Genetically modified meat grown in vats, compact nutrition rich superfoods/tablets.. there are all sorts of technologically possible creations around the corner.

The dramatic increases in per acre yields over the past fifty years are closely tied to equally dramatic increases in per acre energy inputs over the same period. The Green Revolution amounts to the replacement of sunlight with hydrocarbons as the main fuel of food production. Global oil production has now peaked and will slide, sooner or later, into permanent and progressive decline year-over-year. When that happens…

Global oil production has now peaked and will slide, sooner or later, into permanent and progressive decline year-over-year. When that happens, all the blue-sky technology in the world won't keep food production rates increasing.

Hydrocarbons aren't the only source of energy into the future. Your complaint is like noting that a shortage of horses in the 1880s would lead to a lack of future mobility. When resources fail, you change the rules of the game beyond what can be imagined at the time.

Technology has always and will always tackle our scaling problems. At least, if a few thousand years of such is good precedent.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#29

Post by petercooper »

b1tr0t wrote: post #19

Ad hominem attack completely unexamined by the article's author: """Of his harshest critics Borlaug stated, "some… are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be…

But there are lots of interesting questions to ask about his work, and it doesn't make someone an "elitist", or a bad person to ask them.

It didn't say anything to the contrary. Note the phrases "of his harshest critics" and "many of them." He claimed that many of his harshest critics were elitists - that does not mean he thought anyone who criticized his ideas was elitist. I would suggest that he believed his harshest critics to be those presenting no reasonable basis (from his POV, at least) for their claims.

Re: "The greatest human being who ever lived" has died

#30

Post by petercooper »

awt wrote: post #8

This is an honest question: How does creating more food prevent these problems? Won't populations grow enough to consume all available food? Haven't populations in 3rd world countries exploded since the "green revolution"?

More food leads to better health (up to a limit), leading to lower mortality and increased wealth, which means fewer children born. Note that the countries with the most ready access to food have the lowest local population growth.

Couple this with improving sexual education (as tends to occur in wealthier countries) and you end up with population growth going through the floor, not up.

Post reply on HN