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How, Mathematically, We’re Fucked: Exponential growth on a finite planet
- dannylandau 3y agosite disappears, not sure what is going on.
- pixl97 3y agoMedium sites are garbage anyway, partial account wall.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 3y agoUnpaywalled: <https://indi.ca/how-mathematically-were-fucked/ https://indi.ca/how-mathematically-were-fucked/>
- slashdev 3y agoSo this is very true, any exponential growth has to end at some point. If you just plot it out you’ll quickly exhaust the entire universe. So a society, economy, or civilization predicated on growth would have to adapt to a steady state, or at least more controlled linear growth. I think that’s what will just naturally happen. Current forecasts call for the global population to shrink. The economy will follow.
- mempko 3y agoYou are causally talking about collapse and all the misery it will cause. We need to get to a steady state (or controlled decline) or face extinction. Unlike bacteria or other animals, we have the potential to prevent 'natural things'.
- slashdev 3y agoIt's been happening in Japan for a while now. I don't think misery is the right word for it. Adult diapers have been outselling baby diapers there for a while now. Maybe it hasn’t progressed far enough to judge yet. As long as it happens at a slow enough pace for us to adapt, it could be alright. I wouldn't want to depend on social security or pension programs for my retirement though. Those systems would collapse in an environment where the aging population outnumbers the working population that drastically.
- myshpa 3y ago80% of bugs are gone. https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-flying-bugs-climate-change-pesticides-population-decline-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-fl... We're driving 1 million species to extinction. Tens of millions of Chinese died in famine when they got rid of sparrows. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4 https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/catastrophic-climate-doom-loops-could-start-in-just-15-years-new-study-warns https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/cata... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7... https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2023/07/19/modern-sixth-mass-extinction-event-will-be-worse-than-first-predicted/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2023/07/19/modern... Oceans will be probably without fish before 2040 due to overfishing. 90% of sharks are already gone, without them the whole marine ecosystem collapses. https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts Greenland is going to melt relatively soon, bringing many major cities underwater. https://today.uconn.edu/2023/07/greenland-melted-recently-shows-high-risk-of-sea-level-rise-today/ https://today.uconn.edu/2023/07/greenland-melted-recently-sh... Seas are warming at alarming speed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36838991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36838991 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230720-theres-a-heatwave-in-the-sea-and-scientists-are-worried https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230720-theres-a-heatwav... > As long as it happens at a slow enough pace for us to adapt, it could be alright. Hmm ... ok.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago> If you just plot it out you’ll quickly exhaust the entire universe. Not even the universe: assuming you get off-planet in the first place, you'll find that exponential growth of any amount will sooner or later outstrip the cubic-law increase in accessible volume of the sphere of space you can expand into at light speed.
- tzs 3y agoTo put some numbers on it, at a 1% growth rate starting with the current population in around 12100 the volume of space we could theoretically have access to (a sphere with a radius of 12100 light years), the amount of volume available per person would be under 0.06 m^3, which is what the Internet tells me is the volume of a typical human. Of course we couldn't get anywhere near that, because that 12100 light year radius sphere doesn't contain enough mass to make that many humans. At 1% annual growth here are some of the mass bottlenecks we'd hit. 3400 years for the mass of living humans to equal that mass of the Earth and Moon. 600 years after that we would equal the mass of Jupiter. 700 more years and we equal the mass of the entire solar system. 2000 years after that (or 6700 years from now) we'd need the entire mass of the Milky Way to make those humans. From there it is just another 100 years until we need the mass of the Andromeda galaxy. Another 5500 years (12300 years from now) and we'd need the mass of the entire observable universe.
- tomatocracy 3y agoI agree that population looks likely to shrink, especially across much of Europe and Asia; in reality even without that, population growth tends to look rather more like a logistic function than an exponential anyway which makes the analogy a bit silly. I don't think this necessarily means we will see economic degrowth though. A common mistake is to equate economic growth with the use of more natural resources or a greater population. Neither of these are needed for economic growth to occur - a lot of it is really driven by finding ways to use less natural or labour resources to achieve the same end, meaning more of that end can be achieved for the same cost. I'm far from convinced we're at the plateau of human ingenuity and our ability to drive efficientcy improvements in everything we do.
- slashdev 3y ago> a lot of it is really driven by finding ways to use less natural or labour resources to achieve the same end, meaning more of that end can be achieved for the same cost Yes, and I think that's what's been cushioning the blow in Japan. Eventually the growth in economic activity must end though. It has to be constrained by something in the physical world, be it resources, energy, or build-up of waste products. There's even a limit as to how much waste heat we can produce on Earth. But moving beyond Earth buys a lot more room for growth, and I expect that will eventually happen.
- myshpa 3y agoNo paywall: https://indi.ca/how-mathematically-were-fucked/ https://indi.ca/how-mathematically-were-fucked/ Great acceleration graph: https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_accel-12graph-SE.png https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc... Exponential growth vs. carrying capacity of the environment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc
- roadrunna 3y agoSank uu. Before I watch that video I want to say that people, even smart and educated ones, don't understand the exponential function. It applies to everything, including evolution, including the poor, the working class and the ways humans merge with tech and nature. Some people just consciously decide to opt out ... and many of those opt in again, once the solution are convenient enough. Too much progress has been lost because the top kept the lower 50% below their potential. And even though the bottom 50 % know very well who is responsible for the state of the planet, the supply chains of the top 13 %, there is no anger and no hate. Most of them will go nuts in terms of productivity, if you give them UBI. If I think of the German-[insert any eastern country], there is not a single person who will sit on their ass and do nothing. And they won't go all self-sufficient and all that jazz, absolutely not. They will join the markets and increase the margins of all the investors. It took me a long time to understand why so many people misinterpreted the potential of the working class. They are proud about what they do, they gladly help and grow anyone's wealth, as long as you give them what they need to thrive. The ROI would be super freaking hot. Don't take my word for it. Try it.
- dredmorbius 3y agoI'd thought you might be linking Albert Bartlett's exponential growth 'splainer video. Turns out not, though the video you've linked is interesting. Bartlett is a classic however: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4>
- dr_dshiv 3y agoOk Malthus. This is exactly what prompted Alfred Russel Wallace to propose his theory of evolution to Darwin (who happened to have the same theory). Given the number of babies that die, the selection force drives the harmonization of the species to the environment. Wallace compared it to the governor of a steam engine — a cybernetic control system.
- harshreality 3y agoIf it were merely a matter of harmonizing our behavior with the environment so we could continue along in steady-state, that would be fine. Unfortunately there's this concept also from control theory called overshoot, that we are almost certainly past the threshold for, by a lot... although how much depends on what near-future technologies become available to reduce the gap between where we are and the Earth's carrying capacity.
- paulddraper 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism There are two issues: (1) growth rate isn't constant, it peaked 60 years ago (2) resources are not "fixed" when technology is taken into account, which is why estimating peak oil has been so difficult.
- myshpa 3y ago> which is why estimating peak oil has been so difficult Peak oil or not, the declining EROI of oil however could make the continued functioning of the industry economically unviable in the 2030s. https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/20/oil-system-collapsing-so-fast-it-may-derail-renewables-warn-french-government-scientists/ https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/20/oil-system-collapsing-so-... Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is a ratio used to measure the amount of usable energy that can be extracted from a particular energy source compared to the amount of energy required to extract, process, and distribute that energy source. https://jpt.spe.org/plummeting-energy-return-on-investment-of-oil-and-the-impact-on-global-energy-landscape https://jpt.spe.org/plummeting-energy-return-on-investment-o...
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoBacteria also multiply at an exponential rate, ergo, we're fucked. Rats also multiply at an exponential rate, ergo, we're fucked. Ants also multiply at an exponential rate, ergo, we're fucked. Oh wait, we're not overrun by bacteria, rats and ants you say? The Malthusian argument has some obvious flaws that have been well documented over the decades. The real story here is that serious people still fall for it.
- drewcoo 3y agoNo. Malthus would have said . . . > Bacteria also multiply at an exponential rate, ergo, _they're_ fucked. > Rats also multiply at an exponential rate, ergo, _they're_ fucked. > Ants also multiply at an exponential rate, ergo, _they're_ fucked. And he'd have been right. Horrible things happen to those populations when they grow too large. If you want to talk about Malthus being wrong, that has to do with human inventiveness, disease, and war, among other things, throwing off his simple extrapolations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 010101010101 3y ago> In fact, it’s entirely possible that we already did this to Venus in the long-forgotten past. oh. ok.
- PurelyApplied 3y agoThis just in: flawed model discovers flaws in model!
- joak 3y ago1. The planet is not a closed system. For what matters the planet has an infinite stream of (solar) energy getting in. So, no, we are not on a finite planet. 2. The plants do a pretty good job with the solar energy, is there some technical impossibility for humans to do the same? 3. Exponential growth can keep going for a while outside of the planet, the universe is pretty big. Agree: with such a lack of imagination we are doomed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- myshpa 3y ago1. the planet is a finite system, it has a defined size and limited resources, and the amount of solar energy available to earth is not infinite 2. no, we can replace melanin with chlorophyll and we'll be ok, if we can imagine it 3. has elon started selling tickets yet? Agree: we are doomed.
- roadrunna 3y agoAll humans get an account on the stock markets and all those accounts are run by robots. [Hyper Light Version] Robot 1: Winning. Robot 2: "I'm losing, need to improve, copy winning moves of robot 1" Robot 1: "I'm losing, improve by adapting to robot 2, wait wtf." Calculating ... Robot 1: "Ok, we're good, I'm not making as much, but this way I will never reach a limit." Robot 2: "Same." Robot 1: "Sweet, wanna jam?"
- bigfryo 3y agoBut we have the ability in the future, the distant future, to mold and shape the solar system as we please.. there is always new Mass, new matter, coming into the solar system from other star systems nearby, this new matter can be used to create new planets even a new star.. and who knows faster than light travel may come along
- bitshiftfaced 3y agoHighly recommend the YouTube channel Primer and the simulations he does to get an intuitive understanding on why, for example, finite resources lead to logistic growth: https://youtu.be/uRTtlpD_U54 https://youtu.be/uRTtlpD_U54
- hackeraccount 3y agoI'm doubtful on the largest scale. Fucked is decreasing complexity / un-fucked is increasing complexity. The relationship between those two things and entropy is at least an open question - i.e. Entropy has been increasing in the Universe since the beginning but the complexity of life on Earth has been (arguably) increasing over time. I'm not saying peaches and cream but - we use stuff, there's limited stuff and so we're screwed - is to my mind an over simplification.