3 ms·

So 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, econom

So 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 ago
You 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 ago
  It'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 ago
    80% 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.
    - roadrunna 3y ago
      the working class can fix most of that. and with the help of engineers and scientists, all of it. just give them the financial means.
    - slashdev 3y ago
      You must be fun at parties. Not sure where you're going with this though. Your point is things are going to hell, so a gradual decline in population, growth, and economic activity wouldn't be as good as a hard crash?
      - myshpa 3y ago
        > You must be fun at parties. Yep, that's me ;) > a gradual decline in population, growth, and economic activity No time for that, probably. And it's not even on the horizon ... all policies have economic growth encoded in them. We're not even thinking about slowing down. We're not talking about/doing degrowth, afforesting, reforming industrial agriculture, abolishing animal agriculture, making a dent if fossil fuel consumption, stopping overfishing and biodiversity loss ... we don't really do anything, instead just dream of blocking the sun with sulphuric aerosols and leaving for another planets. Hard crash, and soon, would be probably better. More resources for the civilization that comes after this one.
        slashdev 3y ago
        Burn it all down and start over? I think that's rarely the best approach. We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though, we can't just ignore the problems. Either way, it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly.
        myshpa 3y ago
        > Burn it all down and start over We won't be the ones doing that. > We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though It may be already late. I wish it wasn't so. I think we could have chance at repairing it ... if only we would do what's necessary. But we're not doing what's necessary, we never started even discussing it, and I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever do. We're talking only about climate change, but that's only one of the symptoms of the overshoot. Even people @ hacker news mostly don't have a clue. > we can't just ignore the problems We've been ignoring them for 50-70 years. The limits to growth / club of Rome was in 1972? So far ... we did nothing but ignored the problems. We may cross the 1.5C threshold in 5 years. Not in 2050 as previously expected, but in 5 years. And we're still pursuing economic growth. Have you noticed any evidence to the contrary lately? > it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly I recommend few videos for you. I must warn you ... it may hamper your ability to enjoy parties. Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario - Arthur Keller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc How to Enjoy the End of the World - Dr. B. Sidney Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8 Arithmetic, Population and Energy - Dr. Albert A. Bartlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 Why Societies Collapse And What it Means for Us - Joseph A. Tainter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI Revealing the Naked Emperor – Paris, 2° & Carbon Budgets - Kevin Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEbIEc1n0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEbIEc1n0s
  - roadrunna 3y ago
    ok, what if all those old people would get to be fit enough to do stuff? how long would, or rather _could_, they really chill? All the old people I know wish they were fit enough to be productive and constructive. Drugs and tech will provide this opportunity at some point in the near future. And what is all this nonsense about social security and pension systems breaking down because the aging population outnumbers the working population??? Think about the exponential function. Everything will get more efficient. Up- and recycling, too. We only consume so much because nature had no way to be more efficient. That's where freaking sentient human beings come into the picture. And AI. I really don't understand the pessimism. If we set up an account on the wall street for every citizen of the planet and let robots do their magic, nobody would lose, everyone would gain. How? "MAGIC". I'm kidding. By ways of the exponential function. You can simulate it yourself. Are there more and more ideas waiting to get on the market or less? To fulfill some desire or need, to fix something that urgently needs fixing? More and more and it will never end. The amount of desires will keep growing. And everybody is misunderstanding the expanding universe. What do you think 100 cooperating billion humans will do? Cooperating in a decentralized way, how most of the economy works, minus the bad top level management and the inefficient ways of the stock markets (the greedy people). When has the human brain become sentient? And so incredibly powerful? After it grew to about 70? 80? 100 billions brain cells? I'm in my thirties and so is my brother. We now laugh about the ways our parents grew stuff and procured food and stuff. And we realized that it took us so long to understand so many things because our psycho-social environment was too busy being drunk. Which is fine, because the top level management of the professional, local, regional, national and global systems are incredibly incompetent and nobody wants to harm anyone and or go to jail and leave the family worse off. We were slow for multiple reasons but now that we are catching up with the rest, and more importantly, our own potential, things will speed up exponentially. I take care of the tech side and he gets into the whole sustainable gardening side of things. There is enough water and enough energy sources. The only problem to solve will be the chemicals in water, ground and air, but we are positive that there will be progress in the many approaches we have already found online and offline. I used to like the term "self-fulfilling prophecy" until I understood it is equivalent to "the purpose of a system is what it does". People get smarter and improve systems. It's a beautiful and never-ending story.
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 ago
  To 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 ago
I 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.

mempko 3y ago

You 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 ago
It'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 ago
  80% 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.
  - roadrunna 3y ago
    the working class can fix most of that. and with the help of engineers and scientists, all of it. just give them the financial means.
  - slashdev 3y ago
    You must be fun at parties. Not sure where you're going with this though. Your point is things are going to hell, so a gradual decline in population, growth, and economic activity wouldn't be as good as a hard crash?
    - myshpa 3y ago
      > You must be fun at parties. Yep, that's me ;) > a gradual decline in population, growth, and economic activity No time for that, probably. And it's not even on the horizon ... all policies have economic growth encoded in them. We're not even thinking about slowing down. We're not talking about/doing degrowth, afforesting, reforming industrial agriculture, abolishing animal agriculture, making a dent if fossil fuel consumption, stopping overfishing and biodiversity loss ... we don't really do anything, instead just dream of blocking the sun with sulphuric aerosols and leaving for another planets. Hard crash, and soon, would be probably better. More resources for the civilization that comes after this one.
      - slashdev 3y ago
        Burn it all down and start over? I think that's rarely the best approach. We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though, we can't just ignore the problems. Either way, it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly.
        myshpa 3y ago
        > Burn it all down and start over We won't be the ones doing that. > We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though It may be already late. I wish it wasn't so. I think we could have chance at repairing it ... if only we would do what's necessary. But we're not doing what's necessary, we never started even discussing it, and I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever do. We're talking only about climate change, but that's only one of the symptoms of the overshoot. Even people @ hacker news mostly don't have a clue. > we can't just ignore the problems We've been ignoring them for 50-70 years. The limits to growth / club of Rome was in 1972? So far ... we did nothing but ignored the problems. We may cross the 1.5C threshold in 5 years. Not in 2050 as previously expected, but in 5 years. And we're still pursuing economic growth. Have you noticed any evidence to the contrary lately? > it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly I recommend few videos for you. I must warn you ... it may hamper your ability to enjoy parties. Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario - Arthur Keller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc How to Enjoy the End of the World - Dr. B. Sidney Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8 Arithmetic, Population and Energy - Dr. Albert A. Bartlett https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 Why Societies Collapse And What it Means for Us - Joseph A. Tainter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI Revealing the Naked Emperor – Paris, 2° & Carbon Budgets - Kevin Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEbIEc1n0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPEbIEc1n0s
- roadrunna 3y ago
  ok, what if all those old people would get to be fit enough to do stuff? how long would, or rather _could_, they really chill? All the old people I know wish they were fit enough to be productive and constructive. Drugs and tech will provide this opportunity at some point in the near future. And what is all this nonsense about social security and pension systems breaking down because the aging population outnumbers the working population??? Think about the exponential function. Everything will get more efficient. Up- and recycling, too. We only consume so much because nature had no way to be more efficient. That's where freaking sentient human beings come into the picture. And AI. I really don't understand the pessimism. If we set up an account on the wall street for every citizen of the planet and let robots do their magic, nobody would lose, everyone would gain. How? "MAGIC". I'm kidding. By ways of the exponential function. You can simulate it yourself. Are there more and more ideas waiting to get on the market or less? To fulfill some desire or need, to fix something that urgently needs fixing? More and more and it will never end. The amount of desires will keep growing. And everybody is misunderstanding the expanding universe. What do you think 100 cooperating billion humans will do? Cooperating in a decentralized way, how most of the economy works, minus the bad top level management and the inefficient ways of the stock markets (the greedy people). When has the human brain become sentient? And so incredibly powerful? After it grew to about 70? 80? 100 billions brain cells? I'm in my thirties and so is my brother. We now laugh about the ways our parents grew stuff and procured food and stuff. And we realized that it took us so long to understand so many things because our psycho-social environment was too busy being drunk. Which is fine, because the top level management of the professional, local, regional, national and global systems are incredibly incompetent and nobody wants to harm anyone and or go to jail and leave the family worse off. We were slow for multiple reasons but now that we are catching up with the rest, and more importantly, our own potential, things will speed up exponentially. I take care of the tech side and he gets into the whole sustainable gardening side of things. There is enough water and enough energy sources. The only problem to solve will be the chemicals in water, ground and air, but we are positive that there will be progress in the many approaches we have already found online and offline. I used to like the term "self-fulfilling prophecy" until I understood it is equivalent to "the purpose of a system is what it does". People get smarter and improve systems. It's a beautiful and never-ending story.

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 ago
To 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 ago

I 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.