5 ms·
That's not a great argument by the physicist, the economist definitely won that debate. The physics guy only seems to realize that though when he wakes up the n
by nvm0n2 3y ago
That's not a great argument by the physicist, the economist definitely won that debate. The physics guy only seems to realize that though when he wakes up the next day and has calmed down a bit.
Although the link is useful for the thermodynamic calculations, there are two major problems with the argument as presented:
1. Right up front the physicist arbitrarily bans space travel. The economist, being an agreeable man who'd probably rather be making smalltalk with a pleasant member of the opposite sex rather than defending his whole profession to a bolshie physicist, accepts this limitation, but he shouldn't have done. Nothing in economics is predicated on a space travel ban. We are already obtaining economic growth from space via satellites and that era has barely got started. None of the physics arguments work if you make the relatively small leap to putting factories, power plants etc on moons, asteroids, space stations or other planets. This doesn't require colonization assuming progress in robotics.
2. Much more seriously, the physicist doesn't understand what growth or wealth mean in an economic context. The economist tries patiently to explain this to him many times, and he just doesn't get it. This is a very common problem when talking about economics because people aren't used to the expansive definition of wealth economists use, so often conflate it with other things like money or (in this case) energy.
You can increase wealth indefinitely even with a stable population and stable energy/resource usage. This isn't controversial or weird, it's just part of how wealth is defined. The VR example is one attempt, dessert another attempt to explain this to him, but he just doesn't get it until the next day when he suddenly has an epiphany but decides it wasn't his fault because he personally distinguishes between "growth" and "development". No such distinction is recognized by actual economists for valid reasons. But you don't get to claim there's a problem with economics just because you failed to understand the lingo of the field.
- dTal 3y agoIf that's "wealth", then "wealth" is worthless. When you have a capped number of humans, and every last one of them is jacked into the Matrix and has everything they could possibly want - what is there left to grow? If the growth in "wealth" doesn't actually reflect an improvement in human experience, then it's a pointless term. Sure you can have two computers trade virtual tokens at an ever-increasing rate until you saturate the network cable, but calling it "wealth" is an exercise in semantic subterfuge. It's like saying economic growth is unbounded because you can always print more money. Eventually it has to bottom out in something real.
- nvm0n2 3y agoI think you're arguing at cross-purposes with me. Nobody has argued that bouncing virtual tokens around creates wealth. That's the "wealth is money" fallacy that I just criticized. Wealth as used by economists just means all the goods and services that we provide to one another, sometimes with the addition of "services" like a clean environment. It's very broad and includes things like cultural wealth, and doesn't even have to involve selling something. That's why printing money doesn't create economic growth and nobody claims otherwise. In fact in the debate they specifically agree to discount inflation to avoid it getting in the way.
- dTal 3y agoThe point is that there's no such thing as a (meaningful) good or service that doesn't require some amount of a tangible and finite physical resource - human time, if nothing else. The economist's position - and yours, apparently - is that "growth", whatever it is, can be sustained literally infinitely, on a finite rock amongst a finite group of hairless apes where nothing about the actual situation is infinite. So you can either have a highly abstract definition of "growth" that allows this to be true, or a definition that most people would recognize as meaningful or positive, but not both.
- nvm0n2 3y agoBe careful here - the economist's position about a finite world was something the physicist picked. The economist agreed to it early on, probably to try and seem agreeable, but it's not a reasonable concession to make. Space exists, we put things there today, presumably will put more things there in future. So there is no finite world. But let's make the same assumption for a moment. For economic growth [of wealth] to stop requires two things to stop: population growth and productivity growth. As GDP is roughly population * productivity. Clearly, populations can stop growing or shrink. We can also assume a finite population limit. So this is an argument that productivity growth is also finite. But, why should that be the case? Take the example of computers. Modern computers are much more productivity enhancing than older computers, but they are also smaller (i.e. less physical resources needed) and more energy efficient. Even if the Earth had reached carrying capacity, smarter chips would continue to be designed and the productivity boost of computers would keep increasing. That's just one example, there are many others. But again, the finite world assumption doesn't hold. So the whole debate is a bit of ivory tower silliness anyway.