3 ms·

This is article is wrong on both sides of its reasoning. On one, yeah, people built grids and started farming, this is how our civilization came around. These p

by blfr 3y ago

This is article is wrong on both sides of its reasoning. On one, yeah, people built grids and started farming, this is how our civilization came around. These people were more numerous and more dominant, pushing hunter gatherers out. However, they lived worse: they were shorter, worked more, played less, had less interesting routines. It is only recently that we matched hunters in health. And then almost instantly became massively obese. On the other, we* are not headed for any widespread climate disaster. Yeah, fires, waves of migration, etc, sure. None of that will be worse than things we have deliberately caused ourselves (like the collapse of Libya and its aftermath). It won't even come close to pointless slaughters of first and second world war after which our civilization flourished to new heights. * I mean the first world we.

asimovfan 3y ago
Interesting that you think that, don't you think a domino effect is possible regarding climate disaster?
pixl97 3y ago
I really think you need to study more history.... there are massive chunks of what was once fertile land in Iraq that will never be cultivated again. Humans had settled and cultivated it for millennia, but salinization has ruined the dirt. Humans moved away from there and now depend on other land. It was 'easy' back then because the other land was empty. But uh, we've ran out of that empty land. As we burn up more land with climate disasters, over farming, and land destruction via building and run off we aren't getting new land back. These are not short term problems like wars. These are problems that last at geologic time scales.
- blfr 3y ago
  If the climate warms significantly, we are getting millions of kilometers of previously unusable taiga in what is now largely empty regions of Canada and Russia. And the population in most countries is already in decline. We will need less food and farming, not more. The fall of ancient civilizations is always a great story but I think we have fundamentally changed when we attained systematic knowledge. There will be no great collapse with massive loss of capacity because we put our understanding of the world and our tech into models and then wrote it all down millions of times. Basically, we know how to build a nuclear reactor, an internal combustion engine, and a computer, we will never forget it, and therefore can always run an industrial civilization.
  - saulpw 3y ago
    Sorry to say, the ideas in your comment are false. It's engineering hubris at its worst. Primarily, this idea that we've written it all down so we'll never forget it, is not true. Advanced technology requires industrial infrastructure and gobs of tacit knowledge that absolutely can be unlearned at a societal level. It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again--and that process looks like redevelopment, not just filling in some gaps. And as that development process will require the coordination of millions of people to set up and maintain the supply chain of materials and logistics, it won't be possible in an unstable society that doesn't have the natural endowment of cheap energy that we've had for the past 100 years. For one paper that explores this, see "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons" (1995): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699
    - blfr 3y ago
      > It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again This is simply not true. There is no secret in this sauce any more. Sure, you would need to relearn how to actually do some things, but the recipes are all there, well documented. Not quite youtube tutorials but we have videos. This is not a hypothetical. We tested this[1] and it matches my expectations (I studied physics). Esoteric materials, very precise optics, or spare parts to f22, things that are made in one or two places, we may lose that capacity. But fundamental inventions like flight, electricity, radio, fertilization are gonna stay with us as long as there's some version of us around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
      - saulpw 3y ago

by blfr 3y ago

asimovfan 3y ago

Interesting that you think that, don't you think a domino effect is possible regarding climate disaster?

pixl97 3y ago

I really think you need to study more history.... there are massive chunks of what was once fertile land in Iraq that will never be cultivated again. Humans had settled and cultivated it for millennia, but salinization has ruined the dirt. Humans moved away from there and now depend on other land. It was 'easy' back then because the other land was empty. But uh, we've ran out of that empty land. As we burn up more land with climate disasters, over farming, and land destruction via building and run off we aren't getting new land back. These are not short term problems like wars. These are problems that last at geologic time scales.

blfr 3y ago
If the climate warms significantly, we are getting millions of kilometers of previously unusable taiga in what is now largely empty regions of Canada and Russia. And the population in most countries is already in decline. We will need less food and farming, not more. The fall of ancient civilizations is always a great story but I think we have fundamentally changed when we attained systematic knowledge. There will be no great collapse with massive loss of capacity because we put our understanding of the world and our tech into models and then wrote it all down millions of times. Basically, we know how to build a nuclear reactor, an internal combustion engine, and a computer, we will never forget it, and therefore can always run an industrial civilization.
- saulpw 3y ago
  Sorry to say, the ideas in your comment are false. It's engineering hubris at its worst. Primarily, this idea that we've written it all down so we'll never forget it, is not true. Advanced technology requires industrial infrastructure and gobs of tacit knowledge that absolutely can be unlearned at a societal level. It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again--and that process looks like redevelopment, not just filling in some gaps. And as that development process will require the coordination of millions of people to set up and maintain the supply chain of materials and logistics, it won't be possible in an unstable society that doesn't have the natural endowment of cheap energy that we've had for the past 100 years. For one paper that explores this, see "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons" (1995): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699
  - blfr 3y ago
    > It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again This is simply not true. There is no secret in this sauce any more. Sure, you would need to relearn how to actually do some things, but the recipes are all there, well documented. Not quite youtube tutorials but we have videos. This is not a hypothetical. We tested this[1] and it matches my expectations (I studied physics). Esoteric materials, very precise optics, or spare parts to f22, things that are made in one or two places, we may lose that capacity. But fundamental inventions like flight, electricity, radio, fertilization are gonna stay with us as long as there's some version of us around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
    - saulpw 3y ago