3 ms·

That is a mighty convincing argument you made there. Care to back it up?

nerpderp82 4y ago
Think of the multitude of economic structures that don't rely on an infinite exponential. Relying on a capitalistic system to handle this shock is the last thing you would reach for. I am not saying socialism, communism or anything else, but there are literally 1000 other solutions. The population bubble due to industrial revolution needs to be handled from a global perspective.
- baremetal 4y ago
  I appreciate your thoughtfulness of this. Allow me to throw my hat in the ring. How do you feel about localized food production? I am a proponent of people producing more of their own food, this reduces both transportation costs and pollution. Considering AGI and automation, this would free people up to return to the land more and produce more of their own food. Which is more sustainable. Of course implementation details would need to be worked out.
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    I agree. But my opinion should mean nothing without the science and quantitative numbers to back it up. I think most production should be within 200km of the consumer, that goods should probably move at the rate of a horse. We should strive for equilibrium over the time scale of 1000 years.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    This little fixture intrigued me the other day when sharing on a slack channel at work https://farm.bot/ https://farm.bot/. It was briefly featured in some summary YouTube video that danced around a bunch of impressive automation used out in the world for a lot of agricultural stuff.
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    Now that sounds good, in fact I can only think of three problems with it: - producing food takes space (preferrably arable land, though a larger plot of pasturable land will also work). - producing food takes time (taking care of crops or animals takes a significant amount of time, which is time people can't spend on salaried work). - producing food takes knowledge (knowing which crops to plant, when to plant them, how to properly care for them, and when to harvest them, for example). Aside from those three problems and, where applicable, the problem of needing water (I hear some place called California tends to have problems with that) I can't see any notable issues with that idea.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      >the problem of needing water (I hear some place called California tends to have problems with that) I There sure are a lot of green lawns in California, maybe we can start replacing them with gardens. >- producing food takes time (taking care of crops or animals takes a significant amount of time, which is time people can't spend on salaried work). Automation seems to be taking care of that issue, if gradually. >producing food takes knowledge (knowing which crops to plant, when to plant them, how to properly care for them, and when to harvest them, for example). ChatGPT and other educational tools can take care of that. > producing food takes space (preferrably arable land, though a larger plot of pasturable land will also work). We would be able to justify single family residences more if the yards were used to grow food, and keep chickens. Added benefit of reducing kitchen waste to near 0.
  - pempem 4y ago
    A world in which people return to the land and produce mostly, if not entirely, their own food is defined as subsistence. Local food production is a necessity and even their minister of agriculture finds the possibility of future famine to be real, but there are limited incentives even as young people consider starting farms: https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/japan's-food-self-sufficiency-alarmingly-low-72-mil-could-go-hungry-magazine-says https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/japan's-f... Most people are leaving rural japan to find more than subsistence as I would imagine many people on this platform have left one place or another to find means that ideally outstrip their needs and allow them to save for the future. Japan has a serious depopulation problem and is the first country to tip into negative population growth without much policy change to soften it. The results are not good. They are things like: - not being able to move out of your parents house - not being able to have kids - old people starving to death -limited food production, limited social services (where's the tax base), greater divides between density and rural life Like others mention Japan needs to have leadership that is not xenophobic and begin to embrace policies that encourage family growth including supporting women who work rather than continuing to build on female invisible labor at home and a salaryman effort in the public sphere.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Food production is arguably the most heavily automated sector right now, especially agriculture. I think there are many benefits to bringing food production closer to the people, but it will be a hard sell if efficiency is a factor (which it is in almost any society)
Bran_son 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen... The problem is, of course, that immigration turns it into a tragedy of the commons: Population A won't reduce their birth-rate, if that just means population B will take their place, and the strain on their local environment won't be reduced: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-... Europe needs immigrants, young and committed and eager to learn. They are the future taxpayers who will support an ageing population - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/12/the-guardian-view-on-global-migration-its-part-of-europes-future https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/12/the-gu...
- baremetal 4y ago
  How much weather data do you think it would take to be able to predict the weather 100 or 1000 years from now? People who have never trained a neural network nor attempted to model the weather or any large system might be inclined to believe current climate modeling. Unfortunately we lack the data to do so with any precision or accuracy. And I'm not convinced by someone yelling at me to trust experts. I can reason well enough on my own to know that we lack the data to know if humans are causing global climate changes or if these are just natural progressions.
  - Bran_son 4y ago
    There's a lot more in that wikipedia article than just climate change. But even on climate change, suppose as you say there was reasonable doubt - given the potentially devastating consequences of human CO2 emission that we have not yet ruled out, shouldn't we take the precautionary principle? I.e. limit emissions until we are reasonably sure about how much harm they'll cause.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      I think we should have discussions on these things, but I don't trust some self appointed entities to have mine nor anyone else's best interests at heart, other than their own. In other words I am suspicious of the motives of the people pushing the agenda. And they have done little to allay my fears, instead it seems to be increasingly militant in their rhetoric. And I don't believe for a minute that the people advocating that we reduce our standard of living intend on sharing in that reduction. I think they are hypocrites. When I see them raising their own animals or having a garden then I might believe them. Instead they try to tell me that we should eat bugs instead of raising chickens, despite chickens being more palatable and emitters of 0 green house gasses compared to insects at 2g/kg.[1] Chickens also eat kitchen waste. We don't have kitchen waste at my house. If they instead advocated for things like that, things that make sense and have a tangible benefit today, they would have more credibility. Not to mention the mental health benefits of returning to the earth and being closer to nature. Instead they come up with these half baked authoritarian notions and seem intent on ramming them through. 15 minute cities, eating bugs, and owning nothing. zero emissions. no gas powered engines. and on and on it goes. Qui bono? Just taking things away and providing no real solutions. Battery powered earth moving/farming equipment is not feasible, for example. I don't take kindly to being ruled by people with less sense than I have, who refuse to include the very "stakeholders" that they are making decisions for. And who use force to impose their will. [1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-might-be-eating-insects-soon/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-migh...

Think of the multitude of economic structures that don't rely on an infinite exponential. Relying on a capitalistic system to handle this shock is the last thing you would reach for. I am not saying socialism, communism or anything else, but there are literally 1000 other solutions. The population bubble due to industrial revolution needs to be handled from a global perspective.

baremetal 4y ago
I appreciate your thoughtfulness of this. Allow me to throw my hat in the ring. How do you feel about localized food production? I am a proponent of people producing more of their own food, this reduces both transportation costs and pollution. Considering AGI and automation, this would free people up to return to the land more and produce more of their own food. Which is more sustainable. Of course implementation details would need to be worked out.
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  I agree. But my opinion should mean nothing without the science and quantitative numbers to back it up. I think most production should be within 200km of the consumer, that goods should probably move at the rate of a horse. We should strive for equilibrium over the time scale of 1000 years.
- jxramos 4y ago
  This little fixture intrigued me the other day when sharing on a slack channel at work https://farm.bot/ https://farm.bot/. It was briefly featured in some summary YouTube video that danced around a bunch of impressive automation used out in the world for a lot of agricultural stuff.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  Now that sounds good, in fact I can only think of three problems with it: - producing food takes space (preferrably arable land, though a larger plot of pasturable land will also work). - producing food takes time (taking care of crops or animals takes a significant amount of time, which is time people can't spend on salaried work). - producing food takes knowledge (knowing which crops to plant, when to plant them, how to properly care for them, and when to harvest them, for example). Aside from those three problems and, where applicable, the problem of needing water (I hear some place called California tends to have problems with that) I can't see any notable issues with that idea.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    >the problem of needing water (I hear some place called California tends to have problems with that) I There sure are a lot of green lawns in California, maybe we can start replacing them with gardens. >- producing food takes time (taking care of crops or animals takes a significant amount of time, which is time people can't spend on salaried work). Automation seems to be taking care of that issue, if gradually. >producing food takes knowledge (knowing which crops to plant, when to plant them, how to properly care for them, and when to harvest them, for example). ChatGPT and other educational tools can take care of that. > producing food takes space (preferrably arable land, though a larger plot of pasturable land will also work). We would be able to justify single family residences more if the yards were used to grow food, and keep chickens. Added benefit of reducing kitchen waste to near 0.
- pempem 4y ago
  A world in which people return to the land and produce mostly, if not entirely, their own food is defined as subsistence. Local food production is a necessity and even their minister of agriculture finds the possibility of future famine to be real, but there are limited incentives even as young people consider starting farms: https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/japan's-food-self-sufficiency-alarmingly-low-72-mil-could-go-hungry-magazine-says https://japantoday.com/category/features/kuchikomi/japan's-f... Most people are leaving rural japan to find more than subsistence as I would imagine many people on this platform have left one place or another to find means that ideally outstrip their needs and allow them to save for the future. Japan has a serious depopulation problem and is the first country to tip into negative population growth without much policy change to soften it. The results are not good. They are things like: - not being able to move out of your parents house - not being able to have kids - old people starving to death -limited food production, limited social services (where's the tax base), greater divides between density and rural life Like others mention Japan needs to have leadership that is not xenophobic and begin to embrace policies that encourage family growth including supporting women who work rather than continuing to build on female invisible labor at home and a salaryman effort in the public sphere.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Food production is arguably the most heavily automated sector right now, especially agriculture. I think there are many benefits to bringing food production closer to the people, but it will be a hard sell if efficiency is a factor (which it is in almost any society)

Bran_son 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen... The problem is, of course, that immigration turns it into a tragedy of the commons: Population A won't reduce their birth-rate, if that just means population B will take their place, and the strain on their local environment won't be reduced: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-... Europe needs immigrants, young and committed and eager to learn. They are the future taxpayers who will support an ageing population - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/12/the-guardian-view-on-global-migration-its-part-of-europes-future https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/12/the-gu...

baremetal 4y ago
How much weather data do you think it would take to be able to predict the weather 100 or 1000 years from now? People who have never trained a neural network nor attempted to model the weather or any large system might be inclined to believe current climate modeling. Unfortunately we lack the data to do so with any precision or accuracy. And I'm not convinced by someone yelling at me to trust experts. I can reason well enough on my own to know that we lack the data to know if humans are causing global climate changes or if these are just natural progressions.
- Bran_son 4y ago
  There's a lot more in that wikipedia article than just climate change. But even on climate change, suppose as you say there was reasonable doubt - given the potentially devastating consequences of human CO2 emission that we have not yet ruled out, shouldn't we take the precautionary principle? I.e. limit emissions until we are reasonably sure about how much harm they'll cause.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    I think we should have discussions on these things, but I don't trust some self appointed entities to have mine nor anyone else's best interests at heart, other than their own. In other words I am suspicious of the motives of the people pushing the agenda. And they have done little to allay my fears, instead it seems to be increasingly militant in their rhetoric. And I don't believe for a minute that the people advocating that we reduce our standard of living intend on sharing in that reduction. I think they are hypocrites. When I see them raising their own animals or having a garden then I might believe them. Instead they try to tell me that we should eat bugs instead of raising chickens, despite chickens being more palatable and emitters of 0 green house gasses compared to insects at 2g/kg.[1] Chickens also eat kitchen waste. We don't have kitchen waste at my house. If they instead advocated for things like that, things that make sense and have a tangible benefit today, they would have more credibility. Not to mention the mental health benefits of returning to the earth and being closer to nature. Instead they come up with these half baked authoritarian notions and seem intent on ramming them through. 15 minute cities, eating bugs, and owning nothing. zero emissions. no gas powered engines. and on and on it goes. Qui bono? Just taking things away and providing no real solutions. Battery powered earth moving/farming equipment is not feasible, for example. I don't take kindly to being ruled by people with less sense than I have, who refuse to include the very "stakeholders" that they are making decisions for. And who use force to impose their will. [1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-might-be-eating-insects-soon/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-migh...