31–40 of 66 posts
Must man destroy everything?
yes. http://www.npr.org/2014/02/12/275885377/in-the-worlds-sixth-...
>"But here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again."
Yeah, just like Bertrand Russel's inductivist (and rational optimist) turkey:
The turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkey farm, he was fed at 9 a.m. Being a good inductivist turkey he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he collected a large number of observations that he was fed at 9 a.m. and made these observations under a wide range of circumstances, on Wednesdays, on Thursdays, on cold days, on warm days. Each day he added another observation statement to his list. Finally he was satisfied that he had collected a number of observation statements to inductively infer that “I am always fed at 9 a.m.”.
However on the morning of Christmas eve he was not fed but instead had his throat cut.
There's a seemingly reasonable fallacy embedded in the argument that so far technology has been able to dig us out of the holes that it itself digs: That past performance is indicative of the future. Of course, the past often does predict the future -- yet, we can't bank on it, because there are sometimes qualitative shifts, and exceptions. The problem with hoping that technology will solve climate change before it h…
If there is a subtle fallacy embedded in the idea that innovation will always save us, there's a blatant fallacy in the idea that we're inevitably doomed because we're absolutely guaranteed to continue on our current course with no changes until we consume all the resources that we are consuming in the current static snapshot of the world. Looking back over the past couple of hundred years of us overcoming challenge…
I agree that predicting based on a static extension of the present may be limiting -- but prediction in general is a pretty tough game, and we should not put too much faith in any extrapolations into the distant future; meaning that there is much uncertainty in the future, and we should acknowledge that we can't know what will happen; and thus we should try to minimize risk if possible when dealing with singular resources (like our planet as a whole).
My main point is that technological optimism should not be an excuse for failing to ask inconvenient questions (that may demand opposing the current inertia of technology-driven capitalism): Are we negatively impacting the environment in a way that may undermine our grandchildren's quality of life? What happens as technology automates away a large percentage of cognitive jobs and displaces those workers? Is the current trend of increasingly powerful technology and relative moral stagnation likely to lead to our species' extinction?
Two fundamental arguments of the thesis that we will not "run out" of natural resources for productive purpose have been made eloquently in: - The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon [1] --the human mind has limitless potential to select and pursue the use of materials; and - Capitalism by George Reisman [2] -- the phenomenon of price responds to actual supply and demand, and prompts profit-seekers to develop and switc…
Only if those materials exist in the actual world first. So not that limitless after all. (And that's if we indeed accept that the mind's potential is "limitless", which is non-scientific mumbo jumbo).
>Capitalism by George Reisman [2] -- the phenomenon of price responds to actual supply and demand, and prompts profit-seekers to develop and switch production accordingly.
Says nothing about resources "not running out" -- just about distribution and demand of them, when they are available. A tribe of capitalists in a desert without water would still die of first.
So in short: The free market will save us.
It always has.
The proponents of free market say:
"The market will adapt to fix the problems causing climate change!"
What really happens:
"I've built a mask that lets you breath the Earth's new poisonous atmosphere!"
"Well my mask lets you breath twice as much air per minute!!"
"My mask does all this !but! shows an interactive map of the next sulfuric acid rain storm so you can find your way to our nearest BioShelter2000. Buy now, and you get a month BioShelter pass, letting you stay for free up to 4 hours per day, including use of the bathroom!"
Time lag is a critical issue that needs to be accounted for. If we assume that innovation will mediate the worst effects of global warming then we neglect the possibility that forcing conditions created today may have consequences that manifest themselves over the next 20 or 50 years. Global warming is not like any problem that humanity has ever had to confront and it's dangerous to wave away the scale and complexity…
There's a seemingly reasonable fallacy embedded in the argument that so far technology has been able to dig us out of the holes that it itself digs: That past performance is indicative of the future. Of course, the past often does predict the future -- yet, we can't bank on it, because there are sometimes qualitative shifts, and exceptions. The problem with hoping that technology will solve climate change before it h…
This is indeed a problem. If there is an event which causes the extinction of humanity, then by definition we will not find a parallel event in the past to use for prediction. Yet to conclude that humanity will never go extinct is ridiculous. It's only going to happen once. There's also another problem from the opposite direction. Resources have run out plenty of times. Entire civilizations have collapsed because the…
An alternate view of Easter Island includes these sorts of points:
- Forests on Easter Island were largely killed by rats (an invasive species) and to (productively!) clear land for agriculture, not to make statues.
- Civilization there grew and persisted and thrived even well after the trees were gone due to human cleverness at finding and making new resources. (The Islanders ate fish and rats and eggs and chickens at that time)
- When their civilization eventually collapsed it was because they were pushed. It was due to war and diseases brought by outside invaders who sold a lot of the locals into slavery.
Mark Lynas sums up the situation here: http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-...
Jared Diamond, sticking to his guns, responds to Mark: http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-...
Lipo and Hunt in turn respond to Jared's response filling in lots more detail: http://www.evobeach.com/2011/10/diamond-attempts-to-defend-m...
Leading quote: "Diamond would have readers believe that the majority of archeologists who have studied Easter Island support his thesis. It is simply not true. The new evidence that we and other serious scholars have provided over the past decade not only contradicts the old story that Diamond has so heavily invested in, but has led to a new consensus among the majority of scholars around our work."
UPDATE: Okay, now THIS is my favorite thing I found revisiting this old argument. Diamond thinks the statues were moved on logs but Lipo thinks they were "walked" into place upright...and here is a video showing how one does that - walks a multi-ton statue upright using only people and ropes:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/easter-island/walk...
- Catastrophes happened in the past that killed lots of people. Technology did not always save our ass - Read "Collapse" - What about resources like housing? It sounds to me as if housing in SF has run out? Build lots of skyscrapers everywhere? Then what about sunlight in your apartment?
I think in a tradeoff of "There's literally no more room for anybody to live," and "I have to go outside to get sunlight," I'd choose the latter.
- Catastrophes happened in the past that killed lots of people. Technology did not always save our ass - Read "Collapse" - What about resources like housing? It sounds to me as if housing in SF has run out? Build lots of skyscrapers everywhere? Then what about sunlight in your apartment?
> What about resources like housing? It sounds to me as if housing in SF has run out? Build lots of skyscrapers everywhere? Then what about sunlight in your apartment? I think in a tradeoff of "There's literally no more room for anybody to live," and "I have to go outside to get sunlight," I'd choose the latter.