Civilizational Collapse, Part 4 • Hacker News Board

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#201

Post by rnernento » Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #158

rnernento wrote: post #21

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…

The supply chain is long and fragile. With interruptions in the provisioning of everything from the electricity required to parts for power management, cooling, air handling, networking, memory, disks, CPU, etc., the half-life of such centres would likely be on the order of a few years, even assuming local power. Talent is probably the biggest factor. Even absent greater civilisational collapse, a multi-billion-dolla…

I'm imagining the equivalent of our archaeologists finding their way into one of those data centers and figuring out what to do with a hard drive.

I wonder what a datacenter would look like 10,000 years from now if no one did anything to it. obviously it wouldn't be powered but I'm thinking there would be recoverable data.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#202

Post by eitland » Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

conjectures wrote: post #196

eitland wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Now we are getting somewhere. That would be one reasonable if boring policy :-) Compared to todays reports from different parts of the world about

- feedlots,

- constant use of antibiotics,

- use of food grade grain for animal feed

- unhealthy overconsumption in small parts of the human population

- while others are starving

it sounds like an improvement.

If you ask what I want though I still think we could do even better than that.

There are a number of other parameters I think we should try to optimize for as well instead of thinking just vegan/not vegan:

- Regional and national or even local production to reduce fragile dependencies and reduce the need for transport.

- Healthier food.

- Happiness.

- Better conditions, both for workers and for the livestock.

- etc

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#203

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

rnernento wrote: post #201

dredmorbius wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply chain is long and fragile. With interruptions in the provisioning of everything from the electricity required to parts for power management, cooling, air handling, networking, memory, disks, CPU, etc., the half-life of such centres would likely be on the order of a few years, even assuming local power. Talent is probably the biggest factor. Even absent greater civilisational collapse, a multi-billion-dolla…

I'm imagining the equivalent of our archaeologists finding their way into one of those data centers and figuring out what to do with a hard drive. I wonder what a datacenter would look like 10,000 years from now if no one did anything to it. obviously it wouldn't be powered but I'm thinking there would be recoverable data.

Clearly, it's a religious temple devoted to ritualistic ceremonies and sacrifices to our gods.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#204

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #178

dredmorbius wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Table crops" (vegetables, fruits) are not dietary staples, that is primary sources of calories. Grains are. Rice. Wheat. Maize (corn). Rye. Oats. Barley. Millet. A handful of others. A 50# bag of rice (22.7kg) costs less than $20, and provides 17,800 calories, or about 900 calories per dollar, or about 0.1 cents/calorie. I see chicken at about $2/lb, 102cal/3oz, or 544 cal/lb. That's 2.7 cents/calorie, 27 times more…

I think the math isn't quite right: that's about 0.4 cents/cal for chicken? 200 cents / 533 calories

Hrm: A third of a cent?

$ units Currency exchange rates from FloatRates (USD base) on 2019-05-31 3460 units, 109 prefixes, 109 nonlinear units

    You have: 2/544 kcal
    You want: 0.01/kcal
            * 0.36764706
            / 2.72

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#205

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 8:42 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #166

beat wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's a totally legitimate point - but does it support your contention? You seem to be arguing that it is too expensive to raise meat. But food is driven largely by economics. Replacing the integrated farm with the sort of separation of duties you're talking about here is succeeding because it's cheaper. If you're talking about thermal efficiency.. what you're saying is true but irrelevant. Whether my food is th…

"Economics" unfortunately excludes numerous costs and risks associated with both provisioning and consumption of resources, including not only economic impacts, but fully-costed ecological inputs. Most especially in the accounting and market price mechanisms for utilisation of nonrenewable (or, read equivalently: nonsustainably-utilised) resources. The alternatives to sustainable, integrated, ecological agricultural…

I'm sorry but we've been using fossil fuels for over 130 years at this point and best estimates are that we have at least 100 years of untapped reserves. At 5 million to one that would imply we've already burned through the Jurassic, Mesozoic, and Triassic periods. This of course, is false or we wouldn't have so many reserves being discovered all the time.