Live data from Hacker News

Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com

191–200 of 205 posts

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying. The difficulty is that you're another non quant trying to make a general argument and failing. I'll spell out what a strong argument for the point you're trying to make might look like: A) An estimate of the total number of calories coming from purely grazed meat on this sort of land. B) An estimate of the total number of calories of meat consumed. C) A/B > 3/4.

I think I did better than your quant way :-) Without having to resort to any kind of estimates[0] I have demonstrated for anyone interested that a purely vegan alternative will render lots of land unproductive, so - even given an optimal use of the rest of the land - you will still leave unused resources on the table. I can go deeper into this subject, but I think this will suffice for now. And: I'm all for reducing…

> lots of land.

How much in comparison to farming generally?

You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy.

These two things are quite different scenarios. Scenario 2) is tacitly accepting that most people would be vegan most of the time. But hey, if you want to argue that under both our optimal policies there would be many more plant eaters, fine by me.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the sky is blue because air is blue This comes off as a smart-alecky non-answer to anyone not already familiar with what gives things colours in the first place. John Baez's answer captures the core mechanism in two sentences and one diagram, and provides more detail below for the curious: > A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter re…

That is not the point. The point is that anything scatters and absorbs the light in a particular way, and we cal this phenomenon the "color" of the object. "Vegetation is green because chlorophyll is green" is deemed a correct answer. The same for the sky and for anything else. Ref: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1818:_Rayleigh_Sc...

"Vegetation is green because chlorophyll is green" is a borderline useless answer that intentionally misses the point of the question. Assuming the asker knows what chlorophyll is, all this does is shift the need for explanation one link up the chain.

Try to empathize with someone asking this type of question. Would you be satisfied with the type of answer you support? Would it trigger immediate follow-up questions that are basic rephrasings of your original question?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I did better than your quant way :-) Without having to resort to any kind of estimates[0] I have demonstrated for anyone interested that a purely vegan alternative will render lots of land unproductive, so - even given an optimal use of the rest of the land - you will still leave unused resources on the table. I can go deeper into this subject, but I think this will suffice for now. And: I'm all for reducing…

> lots of land. How much in comparison to farming generally? You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy. These two things are quite different scenarios. Scenario 2) is tacitly accepting that most people would be vegan most of the time. But hey, if you w…

> How much in comparison to farming generally?

This has already been answered elsewhere in this discussion.

> You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy.

I'm not doing a bait and switch. Here is what I wrote:

1.) in a sibling thread before this one:

> So maybe your idea would work in a more temperate climate. And maybe it would provide extra food for people further north, but it would mean a lot of land that cannot be used for anything but pastures would go out of use.

2.) On top of this thread:

> I'm not saying this is not possible. But I am saying - as someone who has grown up on a farm and studied farming - that it might be somewhat more complicated.

I write that in reply to you writing a comment in support of this comment:

> Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat.

> I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

Back to your claim of bait and switch :

It is more like as I proceed down the thread I get more and more specific to make my point easier to understand.

I still stand by my original claim.

My point is that while vast areas can be repurposed other vast areas cannot.

I point out early on that it might be possible anyway.

I also claim that like a lot of other topics it isn't something you can understand in ten seconds like the comment you supported seems to claim.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#194
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, externalized costs are considered independently from financial costs. Now, it's just a matter of time before fossil fuels are no longer an issue - we are rapidly moving to renewable energy. And that will have a significant impact on farming practice, by altering the cost of tillage and transportation. And as these costs accumulate to the point where they enter the financial equ…

Unless the underlying models are corrected and replaced, we'll continue to have the problem. To give a concrete example, Google (well, "Alphabet", but really, Google) launched a project whose entire premise and name were "RE It failed. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineer... The problem, if you subscribe to my view, is that the underlying premise was wrong. It's not that renewables are too exp…

Yes, in this day and age, famine is basically obsolete. It's not just advances in food tech. Changes in transportation (locally and globally), communication, refrigeration and other preservation techniques, sanitation, and a host of other things affect the situation. Localized crop failures shouldn't lead to massive hunger, and they won't, unless someone wants them to go hungry and is willing to use force to prevent aid.

So what are the odds of something like the Irish potato blight happening on a nationwide or worldwide scale, large enough to disrupt a global food supply? Like the entire US corn crop failing all at once? I'm more concerned about genetic monocrops like Gros Michael bananas or rubber trees than I am about rice or wheat. But one country having a bad year? That's not the problem it was.

Slow yield declines is also a concern, but those are likely to be regional and crop-specific. These things can be managed with modern farming techniques - change crops, or use alternate varieties.

And beyond that, I think we have at least one, maybe a couple more agricultural technical revolutions up our sleeves. The first is already underway - detailed sensors monitoring crop quality down to a plant-by-plant level. When integrated with small, inexpensive crop-tending robots, whole new worlds open up. Who needs "Roundup Ready" when robots that can recognize and pull weeds on sight are roaming the fields? The second is also underway... starting with GMO crops, but I think we will cross over to genetically targeted poisons for common pests. There's a lot of potential there.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I did better than your quant way :-) Without having to resort to any kind of estimates[0] I have demonstrated for anyone interested that a purely vegan alternative will render lots of land unproductive, so - even given an optimal use of the rest of the land - you will still leave unused resources on the table. I can go deeper into this subject, but I think this will suffice for now. And: I'm all for reducing…

> lots of land. How much in comparison to farming generally? You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy. These two things are quite different scenarios. Scenario 2) is tacitly accepting that most people would be vegan most of the time. But hey, if you w…

There is a reason the Dalai Lama (nor any Tibetan) is not a vegetarian...not much arable land above 3k meters (well, you can grow some barley). Likewise, next door India has so much arable land vegetarianism makes sense, China on the other hand is in between, being fairly mountainous and lacking much arable land (so they have more vegetables but still rely on meat).

Worldwide distribution changes things up a bit, but barring that entire cultures fit their habits according to the land they had, not vice versa.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of land. How much in comparison to farming generally? You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy. These two things are quite different scenarios. Scenario 2) is tacitly accepting that most people would be vegan most of the time. But hey, if you w…

> How much in comparison to farming generally? This has already been answered elsewhere in this discussion. > You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy. I'm not doing a bait and switch. Here is what I wrote: 1.) in a sibling thread before this one: > S…

So, now you've had a chance to 'get more and more specific' (sic.), this is my understanding of your understanding of an optimal food production policy:

1. Vegan food production wherever possible. 2. Non-vegan food where vegan food is not possible (the Norwegian uplands case).

Is that correct? Or would you like to finesse things any more?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of land. How much in comparison to farming generally? You're attempting a bait and switch: 1) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output if everyone switched now. 2) Claim veganism is bad because it would reduce output at the margin of an optimal policy. These two things are quite different scenarios. Scenario 2) is tacitly accepting that most people would be vegan most of the time. But hey, if you w…

There is a reason the Dalai Lama (nor any Tibetan) is not a vegetarian...not much arable land above 3k meters (well, you can grow some barley). Likewise, next door India has so much arable land vegetarianism makes sense, China on the other hand is in between, being fairly mountainous and lacking much arable land (so they have more vegetables but still rely on meat). Worldwide distribution changes things up a bit, but…

What's your point?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#198
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the underlying models are corrected and replaced, we'll continue to have the problem. To give a concrete example, Google (well, "Alphabet", but really, Google) launched a project whose entire premise and name were "RE It failed. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineer... The problem, if you subscribe to my view, is that the underlying premise was wrong. It's not that renewables are too exp…

Yes, in this day and age, famine is basically obsolete. It's not just advances in food tech. Changes in transportation (locally and globally), communication, refrigeration and other preservation techniques, sanitation, and a host of other things affect the situation. Localized crop failures shouldn't lead to massive hunger, and they won't, unless someone wants them to go hungry and is willing to use force to prevent…

We've not seen a major famine for 35 years, true. I'd not be too blase in considering this a solved problem though.

On the plus side: crop diversity (three or for major staples), regional production, and major transshippment capabilities.

On the negative side, continued massive global inequality, high birthrates in the poorest (and in some cases least agriculturally productive) lands, and a globally interconnected transport (goods, people) network that's phenomenally effective at spreading disease and pests, changing climates and sea levels, and a continued reliance on unsustainable inputs, as well as major increases in plant productivity largely by offloading native disease resistance with artificial supplementation, and, despite the 3-4 major crop diversity, a very high level of monoculture within those.

The main question will be whether a famine will be localised or globalised. As an example, China is buying up cropland rights in Africa now, much as England once did in Ireland, or the US exported colonial crop cultivation in Latin America. If Africa gets hungry again, who eats what is produced? Africa or China?

In several recent historical famines, money and legal institutions and dynamics starved farmers and fed cities, most especially in the Great Irish Famine, Holdomor, and Dust Bowl.

The general problem is one of building an increasingly complex and optimised system until it starts failing critically at multiple points, stressing resouces and knowledge. Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies (https://www.worldcat.org/title/collapse-of-complex-societies...) gives the general dynamic. Much of the reading on complex systems bolsters his view, as does the study of ancient civilisations. Most of which thought themselves the ultimate pinnacle of progress.

Additional technical means are possible, yes. One of my projects over the past few years has been looking at the mechanisms by which technology works, and the specific capabilities and limitations of these. I've come up with a fairly consistent list of nine:

1. Materials: Substances, minerals, elements, molecules, organics. Provide properties, have associated abundance, cost, and side effects.

2. Fuels: Dispatchable consumable stores of potential energy, largely fossil fuels, biomass, and nuclear. (Stored and kinetic or photovoltaic potential are considered separately: wind, geothermal, hydro, solar.)

3. Process knowlege: Roughly, technology. Domain-specific understanding of how to achieve some ends, independent of other characteristics.

4. Structural knowledge: Roughly, science. Domain-specific understanding of causes and interactions, based on experience, experiment, and observation.

5. Power transmission and transformation: Any communication or conversion of power or energy. Examples: missiles, shafts, rods, gears, electricity, magnetism, beamed energy, batteries.

6. Networks: Structures usefully describable as nodes and links or vertices and edges, whether physical or conceptual, having arity and topology. Examples: transport network, web of knowledge, comms netwok, social netework, land and its varying qualities and capabilities.

7. Systems: Multi-part structures (often networks) with sensing, processing, action, and assessment feedback loops. Roughly, the domains of cybernetics, operations research, or systems theory, in the general, or the topics of most social sciences and management domains.

8. Information: Receiving, parsing, processing, storing, retrieving, and transmitting. Examples: speech, writing, logic, magnetism. Affects focusing activities, managing systems, or disrupting other (or others') systems.

9. Hygiene: Side effects and unintended consequences affecting overall function. Inevitable, often emergent properties, which require mitigation or management.

What this provides is a way of looking at problems (or solutions) and breaking them into components that are not siloed by traditional disciplines (scientific or technological domain silos), hence, they are mechanisms. You get something more useful than "technology is efficiency", or "the power of thought". It's also possible to look at past developments in terms of what contributed to them.

Ag has benefitted hugely from domain-specific knowledge: what plants grow where yielding what requiring what inputs, methods, protections, and processing, and further through hybridisation and now direct genetic manipulation. From energy inputs, especially in supplying water, but also in preparation and transportation. From mechanisation of cultivation -- tractors, combines, and harvesters. From energy- and materials-specific treatments of fertilisers and pesticides.

The biggest changes in 200 years have been the vast reduction in labour inputs (from ~90% of the population to What automated rather than merely mechanised methods can provide is the ability to further reduce labour, though as that's already low on staples, an Amdahl's Law type dynamic kicks in: parallelisation (of labour inputs) is limited by the nonparallelisable portion of your operation, an example of mechanism-specific limitations. You're also pushing utilisation to ever-more marginal land -- there's more of it, yes, but it's frequently more easily damaged, or more subject to swings in climate, hydration, salt intrusion.

And we're left with the bits we cannot readily change: perennial crops can be sown or left fallow, but vine and tree crops require consistent maintenance across years, if not decades and centuries. Topsoil, literally the top few centimetres or metres across large parts of entire countries, is not a factor which can be meaningfully artificially manufactured, though it can be moved or amended, with tremendous effort. Salinisation, desertification, and innundation are threats that can be managed poorly. As are runoff and ecological disruptions from fertiliser and pesticides, or habitat displacement.

TL;DR: Technology lets us approach limits. It does not let us erase them.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason the Dalai Lama (nor any Tibetan) is not a vegetarian...not much arable land above 3k meters (well, you can grow some barley). Likewise, next door India has so much arable land vegetarianism makes sense, China on the other hand is in between, being fairly mountainous and lacking much arable land (so they have more vegetables but still rely on meat). Worldwide distribution changes things up a bit, but…

What's your point?

My point that some land being suited for growing thing and some land being suited to grazing is totally a thing. If the whole world were as arable as India, we might all be vegetarians. But it isn’t.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? There's sooooooo much electronic equipment in the world right now. Huge datacenters, landfills filled to the brim with electronics. I think it's a stretch to assume that would all just evaporate. You could load the entirety of Wikipedia onto an e-reader and power it with almost no electricity. Data centers are basically bunkers and there is a tremendous amount of replication occurring. If anything I think we're…

> Data centers are basically bunkers and there is a tremendous amount of replication occurring. All encrypted at rest. Lose those keys and the data is gone...

I think there are plenty of unecrypted copies of Wikipedia floating around. Good point though.
Post reply on HN