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It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we u

It’s fascinating how the reality of Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource is completely lost on so many. Human ingenuity is key. With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. If anything social organization and financial frameworks need to support the unfolding of our technology tree. As humanity we just woke up. Enlightenment now.

coldtea 7y ago
Embedded in a vast ocean of mostly unattainable resources, pipe dreams of "conquering the universe" aside.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Embedded in a vast ocean of resources that are harder and harder to extract : http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/ http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/
paulintrognon 7y ago
> Human ingenuity is key That's a bet that many of us are not willing to take. Sure, you can imagine that a future technology we haven't thought of yet will save growth, but I think it's very important to think about scenarios when that won't happen. Are we really wanting to bet humanity's future on just "technology"? If you read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed[1], you'll realize that socities that did collapse were over confident. Let's no repeat that mistake. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse%3A_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse%3A_How_Societies_Choo...
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > That's a bet that many of us are not willing to take. So don't take it. But don't complain when you end up losing out to people, institutions, and countries that haven't adopted this defeatist attitude. As for Collapse: Diamond is wrong on many of his specifics (e.g. Easter Islander depopulation) but even in his own framework, collapse comes from a lack of ingenuity, a sclerotic loss of the ability for a society to solve problems.
  - paulintrognon 7y ago
    I'm not saying "let's just despair and do nothing", of course we should focus resources on innovation. In fact that's what we're doing right now. But let's not focus _all_ of our resources on a hope. Don't you think it's safe to assume that technologies might not save us and that we should work on some alternatives, just in case the first scenario doesn't work? > collapse comes from a lack of ingenuity, a sclerotic loss of the ability for a society to solve problems. So you're saying that the _only_ way of preventing collapse is by technological advance? And that we should not try to make sociaty sustainable without growth, or at least to do some reasearch on how that might be possible?
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Yeah, and one key issue seems to be how "technological progress" is associated with "anything that uses ever more resources" or these days "anything that has a computer inside, even though there's no good reason that the user would need it".
lcam84 7y ago
Most of human ingenuity is based on the consumption of cheap finite resources. Every time we had new tecnologies it results in more consuption of resources. We need to listen what the science is telling us for 40 years now with the report from the club of rome "limits of growth", and slow down our consuption levels. Apply new techonologies as an excuse to keep growth (green growth) will accelerate the degradation of the environment. Edit: typos
- HPsquared 7y ago
  Isn't work done for environmental protection counted under 'growth'? (provided someone is paying for it) - it's adding value, after all.
  - lcam84 7y ago
    It depends. If it generate any kind of money exchange it counts to GDP. But there are many solutions that don't generate growth (like walking to work instead of using other means of transportation) The way we measure growth is nuts. the best way to acknowledge that is to watch this speech from Robert F Kennedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY
- novalis78 7y ago
  I can’t emphasize enough to check out Dr Robert Zubrin’s work, founder of the Mars Society. In this particular context his book ‘Merchants of despair’ a great resource on Antihumanism of the Malthusian flavor.
slumdev 7y ago
> Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource This reads like prosperity gospel and law of attraction nonsense rolled together and repackaged for a technical audience. A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. No technology will change that within my lifetime. If there are no physics-redefining advances in nuclear fusion and/or nuclear fission, my grandchildren will probably be able to make the same claim.
- pixl97 7y ago
  >A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. Eh, that's because you, like most of humanity, like to hide 99% of the cost. What is the cost of pollution? What is the cost of environmental destruction? Once you destroy a habitat on earth, there is no more cost associated with it, it's just gone and no amount of money can ever bring it back.
  - slumdev 7y ago
    You're responding to something I didn't write. You have an obvious great respect for the environment. I do, too. Mining asteroids and colonizing other planets will do more to destroy Earth's environment than just building nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro, and improving battery technology without leaving this planet.
- dTal 7y ago
  >A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. This is true, if you are on Earth and wish to remain there. If you are in space already, and don't have deal with pesky things like gravity and friction, it could conceivably be way easier to chip a lump of metal off an asteroid and hurl it in the general direction of where it needs to be, than to dig it up and put it on a boat. It's a bit chicken and egg, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where off-world becomes the new Shenzen.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
pixl97 7y ago
>With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. I'll let you play this for a bit. https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
jrimbault 7y ago
Calculate what 2% growth per year means after say 5000 years. What implications this has. It means everything beyond the visible universe has been consumed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem This problem is weirdly everywhere. Especially in software, this should be understood. We can't have exponential anything, it's just reckless.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Logistics and communications certainly scale pretty well. Remembering how young the industrial revolution actually is and how many problems we already have, it seems be foolish to keep growth the goal. Although you would need to differentiate. Growth in resource consumption? Nobody would want that. Growth in wealth? Yes, please... Maybe logistics and communications had litte effort to keep up with exponential growth, but other sectors certainly seem tired from time to time. It just isn't possible to grow food with exponential efficiency, even if recent developments (last ~200 years would have us believe otherwise).
dredmorbius 7y ago
What are the specific mechanism of ingenuity, innovation and technology? Is this a general notion, or is there a limited set of dynamics in play? What are the capabilities and limitations of those dynamics? What are the role of latent, occult, or unintended consequences? How do those develop with time? What is progress? What are the goals of progress? What are its limitations? What are technology traps? What are progress traps?

coldtea 7y ago

Embedded in a vast ocean of mostly unattainable resources, pipe dreams of "conquering the universe" aside.

BlueTemplar 7y ago
Embedded in a vast ocean of resources that are harder and harder to extract : http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/ http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/

paulintrognon 7y ago

> Human ingenuity is key That's a bet that many of us are not willing to take. Sure, you can imagine that a future technology we haven't thought of yet will save growth, but I think it's very important to think about scenarios when that won't happen. Are we really wanting to bet humanity's future on just "technology"? If you read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed[1], you'll realize that socities that did collapse were over confident. Let's no repeat that mistake. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse%3A_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse%3A_How_Societies_Choo...

quotemstr 7y ago
> That's a bet that many of us are not willing to take. So don't take it. But don't complain when you end up losing out to people, institutions, and countries that haven't adopted this defeatist attitude. As for Collapse: Diamond is wrong on many of his specifics (e.g. Easter Islander depopulation) but even in his own framework, collapse comes from a lack of ingenuity, a sclerotic loss of the ability for a society to solve problems.
- paulintrognon 7y ago
  I'm not saying "let's just despair and do nothing", of course we should focus resources on innovation. In fact that's what we're doing right now. But let's not focus _all_ of our resources on a hope. Don't you think it's safe to assume that technologies might not save us and that we should work on some alternatives, just in case the first scenario doesn't work? > collapse comes from a lack of ingenuity, a sclerotic loss of the ability for a society to solve problems. So you're saying that the _only_ way of preventing collapse is by technological advance? And that we should not try to make sociaty sustainable without growth, or at least to do some reasearch on how that might be possible?
BlueTemplar 7y ago
Yeah, and one key issue seems to be how "technological progress" is associated with "anything that uses ever more resources" or these days "anything that has a computer inside, even though there's no good reason that the user would need it".

lcam84 7y ago

Most of human ingenuity is based on the consumption of cheap finite resources. Every time we had new tecnologies it results in more consuption of resources. We need to listen what the science is telling us for 40 years now with the report from the club of rome "limits of growth", and slow down our consuption levels. Apply new techonologies as an excuse to keep growth (green growth) will accelerate the degradation of the environment. Edit: typos

HPsquared 7y ago
Isn't work done for environmental protection counted under 'growth'? (provided someone is paying for it) - it's adding value, after all.
- lcam84 7y ago
  It depends. If it generate any kind of money exchange it counts to GDP. But there are many solutions that don't generate growth (like walking to work instead of using other means of transportation) The way we measure growth is nuts. the best way to acknowledge that is to watch this speech from Robert F Kennedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY
novalis78 7y ago
I can’t emphasize enough to check out Dr Robert Zubrin’s work, founder of the Mars Society. In this particular context his book ‘Merchants of despair’ a great resource on Antihumanism of the Malthusian flavor.

slumdev 7y ago

> Earth being embedded in a vast ocean of resource This reads like prosperity gospel and law of attraction nonsense rolled together and repackaged for a technical audience. A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. No technology will change that within my lifetime. If there are no physics-redefining advances in nuclear fusion and/or nuclear fission, my grandchildren will probably be able to make the same claim.

pixl97 7y ago
>A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. Eh, that's because you, like most of humanity, like to hide 99% of the cost. What is the cost of pollution? What is the cost of environmental destruction? Once you destroy a habitat on earth, there is no more cost associated with it, it's just gone and no amount of money can ever bring it back.
- slumdev 7y ago
  You're responding to something I didn't write. You have an obvious great respect for the environment. I do, too. Mining asteroids and colonizing other planets will do more to destroy Earth's environment than just building nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro, and improving battery technology without leaving this planet.
dTal 7y ago
>A kilogram of anything from space is orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire than a kilogram on Earth. This is true, if you are on Earth and wish to remain there. If you are in space already, and don't have deal with pesky things like gravity and friction, it could conceivably be way easier to chip a lump of metal off an asteroid and hurl it in the general direction of where it needs to be, than to dig it up and put it on a boat. It's a bit chicken and egg, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where off-world becomes the new Shenzen.
- 0xffff2 7y ago

pixl97 7y ago

>With every step we unlock another level of resource utilization driving prosperity. I'll let you play this for a bit. https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

jrimbault 7y ago

Calculate what 2% growth per year means after say 5000 years. What implications this has. It means everything beyond the visible universe has been consumed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem This problem is weirdly everywhere. Especially in software, this should be understood. We can't have exponential anything, it's just reckless.

raxxorrax 7y ago
Logistics and communications certainly scale pretty well. Remembering how young the industrial revolution actually is and how many problems we already have, it seems be foolish to keep growth the goal. Although you would need to differentiate. Growth in resource consumption? Nobody would want that. Growth in wealth? Yes, please... Maybe logistics and communications had litte effort to keep up with exponential growth, but other sectors certainly seem tired from time to time. It just isn't possible to grow food with exponential efficiency, even if recent developments (last ~200 years would have us believe otherwise).

dredmorbius 7y ago

What are the specific mechanism of ingenuity, innovation and technology? Is this a general notion, or is there a limited set of dynamics in play? What are the capabilities and limitations of those dynamics? What are the role of latent, occult, or unintended consequences? How do those develop with time? What is progress? What are the goals of progress? What are its limitations? What are technology traps? What are progress traps?