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Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

dothemath.ucsd.edu

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Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#5

Post by seiferteric »

Only complaint is the discussion about super computers consuming vast amounts of power. I do think there is still room for many more doublings in efficiency for computers, it will likely require a switch to a completely new technology though. Also a bit more wild speculation... He does not account for the idea of space based manufacturing (he just mentions living in space). It's at least conceivable we could one day have almost everything made in space (even food) and air dropped to us periodically. Wouldn't this bypass his main argument? We could even have space based energy production, beamed down to earth via laser. There would still be waste heat of the energy consumed, but you would eliminate the waste heat of the actual energy production (he sited ~30% efficiency for power plants, so 70% waste heat).

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#7

Post by jbay808 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #4
kreldjarn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the piece? They talk about VR.

Actually, they dismissed it pretty quickly I thought.

I believe the "dismissal" is this cogent argument:

Shuffling bits around takes energy; if your virtual reality services grow exponentially and energy production doesn't, then the price of energy must also increase exponentially or else one of your VR companies could buy all the energy and shut down the competition.

Energy production (and computation) are limited by the capacity of the earth to vent heat into space at a reasonable surface temperature.

So unless you allow for an exponentially expanding real-world physical economy, you can't have an exponentially growing virtual economy.

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#8

Post by heraclius »

It’s not clear how meaningful these measurements are anyway. Consider two years: in the first, 1000 tonnes of wheat are produced, and in the second, 500 tonnes of wheat and 300 of steel. Which year, one asks, is more productive? We can measure everything in wheat-equivalent or steel-equivalent or (commodity-basket)-equivalent (i.e. PPP) but ultimately such calculations are just as arbitrary as reduction to wheat bushels (or carpet kilometres or whatever.) Incommensurability therefore seems to make all this fairly meaningless.

Re: Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

#9

Post by jbay808 »

seiferteric wrote: post #5

Only complaint is the discussion about super computers consuming vast amounts of power. I do think there is still room for many more doublings in efficiency for computers, it will likely require a switch to a completely new technology though. Also a bit more wild speculation... He does not account for the idea of space based manufacturing (he just mentions living in space). It's at least conceivable we could one day…

"I do think there is still room for many more doublings in efficiency for computers"

I don't think our finite physicist is arguing that exponential growth can't happen temporarily, just that eventually we hit the boundaries of our petri dish. It's a challenge to economic models that sometimes deny in principle that the petri dish even has boundaries.

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