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In general, reading histories of technology and economics, as well as histories of the claims of peak coal or peak oil, made it generally impossible for me to m

In general, reading histories of technology and economics, as well as histories of the claims of peak coal or peak oil, made it generally impossible for me to maintain the pessimistic view. The famous test of this is the Ehrlich bet.[12] Paul Ehrlich predicted the population boom would make commodities vastly more expensive over a ten year period. He lost the bet. Defenders have quibbled that if he had run it slightly differently, he could have won, that this might be down to timing. But research that bases commodity prices in hours worked to extract or generate, it's far more clear -- the amount of work we're having to do to get access to "finite" commodities is rapidly decreasing over time. How can that be? How does something fixed get steadily cheaper, across all these categories of commodities simultaneously? The only explanation that fits the facts is that human ingenuity continually outraces scarcity, and that combination makes abundance naturally emerge.[13] I know most neomalthusians find this... unpersuasive. But hopefully you can admit that it's at least not crazy to think this enduring trend, which persists pretty much everywhere we've measured it, will continue. That maybe this trend won't be suddenly displaced by an admittedly seemingly logical outcome that has simply never actually been observed. > As long as X resource is cheap, we use it for whatever BS we make. When it gets rarer and pricier, sure, higher prices will regulate its use towards more serious stuff. But by then we'd already have lost huge, non recoverable, and often non recyclable either, quantities of it to BS uses. There's an important separate question here in determining the proper discount rate for scarce goods. How much should we use them for society's goals right now, and how much should we reserve for 10 or 100 years? That's a really important question and I'm not sure we have a firm answer. There are arguments to be made that future generations tend to be so much better off than previous generations so that we should not really worry about them. My grandparents spent something like $3500 on their first house. If the had the chance to go back in time and not buy it, but give me $3500 today, it would be a monumentally bad decision. They'd have to command a massive rate of return for that to be as meaningful to me as it was to them (I'm not sure there's any amount I'd take to deprive my loving grandparents of homeownership... maybe if I could like eradicate malaria in a country or save some huge number of lives with the money I'd have to consider it, but it'd certainly be more than $3500). On the other hand, there are counterarguments that we should defer to future generations far more than we currently do, or that new trends like population decline or environmental issues might make some of these trends reverse. One of the neat things is that if you think society is making the wrong call, you get a vote. You don't get to veto all of society, because there are reasonable differences of opinions. But if you think we're hastily exhausting oil, you just can hoard oil, and sell it at a handsome profit in retirement. You don't even have to physically possess it, you can just buy futures contracts. If you're right, you'll not only be hugely rewarded as it gets more scarce and valuable, but your purchase will have slightly nudged up current prices to deter some of the most frivolous uses. If you really believe we're heading to peak oil, you might have a moral obligation to do this. I would strongly recommend you do not. Most of the world thinks it's not going to turn out that way, and they've been right decade after decade, with small exceptions when cartels and wars have artificially interfered with supplies. Maybe the pessimists will actually be right this time. I would not bet on it. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-28/this-is-what-peak-car-looks-like https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-28/this-is-w... [1] https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bullshit https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bulls... [2] https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2346/is-recycling-worth-it/ https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2346/is-recycling-... [3] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20272240W/Brilliant https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20272240W/Brilliant [4] https://allthatsinteresting.com/norman-borlaug-green-revolution https://allthatsinteresting.com/norman-borlaug-green-revolut... [5] http://graphics.wsj.com/oil-barrel-breakdown/ http://graphics.wsj.com/oil-barrel-breakdown/ [6] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20272240W/Brilliant https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20272240W/Brilliant [7] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6038624W/How_We_Got_Here https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6038624W/How_We_Got_Here [8] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24080190M/The_master_switch https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24080190M/The_master_switch [9] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23276740M/The_box https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23276740M/The_box [10] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1958850W/The_Singularity_Is_Near https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1958850W/The_Singularity_Is_... [11] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL792952W/The_ascent_of_money https://openlibrary.org/works/OL792952W/The_ascent_of_money [12] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300198973/bet https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300198973/bet [13] https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/new-paper-allays-fears-of-scarcity-depletion/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/new...

coldtea 7y ago
> Most of the world thinks it's not going to turn out that way, and they've been right decade after decade, with small exceptions when cartels and wars have artificially interfered with supplies. Maybe the pessimists will actually be right this time. I would not bet on it. Ever heard of the inductivist turkey? "This turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkey farm, he was fed at 9 a.m. However, being a good inductivist, he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he had collected a large number of observations of the fact that he was fed at 9 a.m., and he made these observations under a wide variety of circumstances, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, on warm days and cold days, on rainy days and dry days. Each day, he added another observation statement to his list. Finally, his inductivist conscience was satisfied and he carried out an inductive inference to conclude, “I am always fed at 9 a.m.”. Alas, this conclusion was shown to be false in no uncertain manner when, on Christmas eve, instead of being fed, he had his throat cut. An inductive inference with true premises has led to a false conclusion". (Bertrand Russel) (I though there's also a Black Swan NSS theme in this, but on a second thought the eventual exhaustion of limited resources is hardly an unforeseeable Black Swan -- whether people have bet on them being exhausted and lost a billion times in the past or not).
- brownbat 7y ago
  Sure, love the reference. I studied analytic philosophy and Russell is one of my favorite philosophers. I'm quite fond of his version: "We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken." Notably, Russell does not abandon induction in that work, he seems to retreat to a probabilistic, almost Bayesian conception of it (along with a resignation that it seems the best we can do, but a passionate closing defense that it's good enough). I'm very comfortable with that same probabilistic confidence approach here. (Hence the "bet" language.) Humanity has frequently abandoned scarce resources upon discovering superior substitutes, while seldom abandoning them through exhaustion. Theories of economics and measures of human progress, while not being ironclad rules, provide rough explanations as to why this keeps happening. So, sure, happy to concede it is not a foregone conclusion that humanity will always outgrow scarce resources. Nothing is ever 100% certain. But our certainty should generally increase with our observations of a trend, so it seems highly probable for any particular case. It remains generally unwise to bet against all well established trends, the mere possibility of wrung necks notwithstanding. Or, as Russell closed the work: "That some risk of error remains must be admitted, since human beings are fallible. Philosophy may claim justly that it diminishes the risk of error, and that in some cases it renders the risk so small as to be practically negligible. To do more than this is not possible in a world where mistakes must occur; and more than this no prudent advocate of philosophy would claim to have performed. "

coldtea 7y ago

> Most of the world thinks it's not going to turn out that way, and they've been right decade after decade, with small exceptions when cartels and wars have artificially interfered with supplies. Maybe the pessimists will actually be right this time. I would not bet on it. Ever heard of the inductivist turkey? "This turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkey farm, he was fed at 9 a.m. However, being a good inductivist, he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he had collected a large number of observations of the fact that he was fed at 9 a.m., and he made these observations under a wide variety of circumstances, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, on warm days and cold days, on rainy days and dry days. Each day, he added another observation statement to his list. Finally, his inductivist conscience was satisfied and he carried out an inductive inference to conclude, “I am always fed at 9 a.m.”. Alas, this conclusion was shown to be false in no uncertain manner when, on Christmas eve, instead of being fed, he had his throat cut. An inductive inference with true premises has led to a false conclusion". (Bertrand Russel) (I though there's also a Black Swan NSS theme in this, but on a second thought the eventual exhaustion of limited resources is hardly an unforeseeable Black Swan -- whether people have bet on them being exhausted and lost a billion times in the past or not).

brownbat 7y ago
Sure, love the reference. I studied analytic philosophy and Russell is one of my favorite philosophers. I'm quite fond of his version: "We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken." Notably, Russell does not abandon induction in that work, he seems to retreat to a probabilistic, almost Bayesian conception of it (along with a resignation that it seems the best we can do, but a passionate closing defense that it's good enough). I'm very comfortable with that same probabilistic confidence approach here. (Hence the "bet" language.) Humanity has frequently abandoned scarce resources upon discovering superior substitutes, while seldom abandoning them through exhaustion. Theories of economics and measures of human progress, while not being ironclad rules, provide rough explanations as to why this keeps happening. So, sure, happy to concede it is not a foregone conclusion that humanity will always outgrow scarce resources. Nothing is ever 100% certain. But our certainty should generally increase with our observations of a trend, so it seems highly probable for any particular case. It remains generally unwise to bet against all well established trends, the mere possibility of wrung necks notwithstanding. Or, as Russell closed the work: "That some risk of error remains must be admitted, since human beings are fallible. Philosophy may claim justly that it diminishes the risk of error, and that in some cases it renders the risk so small as to be practically negligible. To do more than this is not possible in a world where mistakes must occur; and more than this no prudent advocate of philosophy would claim to have performed. "