11–20 of 62 posts
I’m currently leaning in this direction myself. Not necessarily just this, but “big filter ahead” (or lots of small filters). Perhaps it will be this, perhaps it will be a Jonestown massacre but with entire O’Neill cylinders instead of individual people, leading to a Kardashev II scale Kessler syndrome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is he then uses the approximations to do with math without calling them approximations. 1.10^7 is reasonably close to 2, but 1.1^21 is 7.4 which is a fair distance from 8. He goes so far as asks someone to do the approximation across several hundred years of compounding. And sure it get’s a big number but one no even close to accurate.
You do realize the rule of 70 is used to approximate continuous compounding not periodic compounding right?
"Salvaging a decent future requires keen awareness, quantitative assessment, deliberate preventive action, and—above all—recognition that prevailing assumptions about human identity and destiny have been cruelly misshapen by the profoundly unsustainable trajectory of the last 150 years." Brilliantly said. I believe a lot of resistance to the idea that our way of life is unsustainable stem from grief that the future t…
The way you’re phrasing that gives me a certain impression of your beliefs about what is and isn’t sustainable that may not be warranted, so I should ask explicitly: What do you think a sustainable way of life looks like? In terms of both global population size and typical life experiences.
That's why I expect we're headed for tragedy- we can't and won't collapse everyone's consumption to that level. The people who consume the least will be the most hurt by the ecological consequences of what we in the high-consumption regions of the world do.
Here's a fun little exercise: Open up a spreadsheet. Label the first column C for capital. This starts at 1. Label the second column T for total resources extracted. This starts at 0. Label the third column r for resources extracted this step. Label the fourth column E for extraction efficiency. Label the 5th column m for maintenance. Make it proportional to capital. Now, for each step: E is some positive function of…
So much so that this trivial exercise imparts real wisdom and is definitely not mental masturbation.
Here's a fun little exercise: Open up a spreadsheet. Label the first column C for capital. This starts at 1. Label the second column T for total resources extracted. This starts at 0. Label the third column r for resources extracted this step. Label the fourth column E for extraction efficiency. Label the 5th column m for maintenance. Make it proportional to capital. Now, for each step: E is some positive function of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way you’re phrasing that gives me a certain impression of your beliefs about what is and isn’t sustainable that may not be warranted, so I should ask explicitly: What do you think a sustainable way of life looks like? In terms of both global population size and typical life experiences.
To me a sustainable lifestyle would be one where if every person alive today's annual consumption was at the same level humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services could be regenerated over the course of that year- effectively balanced. I'm a fan of Earth Overshoot Day and their approach to this problem so I am using their definition: https://www.overshootday.org/about-earth-overshoot-day/ . A sustainable…
Here's a fun little exercise: Open up a spreadsheet. Label the first column C for capital. This starts at 1. Label the second column T for total resources extracted. This starts at 0. Label the third column r for resources extracted this step. Label the fourth column E for extraction efficiency. Label the 5th column m for maintenance. Make it proportional to capital. Now, for each step: E is some positive function of…
Because human economics in the realm of energy and or resource extraction are easily predicted by simple equations in a spreadsheet. So much so that this trivial exercise imparts real wisdom and is definitely not mental masturbation.
The issue, of course, is in step 2.
Here's a fun little exercise: Open up a spreadsheet. Label the first column C for capital. This starts at 1. Label the second column T for total resources extracted. This starts at 0. Label the third column r for resources extracted this step. Label the fourth column E for extraction efficiency. Label the 5th column m for maintenance. Make it proportional to capital. Now, for each step: E is some positive function of…
from math import exp
k = .01
q = .2
C = 1
T = 0
E = lambda T: 0.1 * exp(-0.01 * T)
for step in range(3000):
r = C * E(T)
m = C * k
C += r * q - m
T += r
print('%5i %g' % (step, C))