10 ms·

Ask HN: Assuming this 2023 LtG paper is correct, how do you prepare?

93 points by _ddzr 3y ago

pclmulqdq 3y ago
You start by operating as though this sort of bullshit is not correct. Since the beginning of recorded history, people have thought that they were at the end of human growth. Despite that, people operating as though their future will be brighter have defied their predictions.
- corethree 3y ago
  There's tons of examples of civilizations dying and ending. There's tons of examples of species going extinct. History is not just linear growth with constant "defied expectations".
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    History is not linear growth, but it is just growth. In fact, historical growth trends are pretty much superlinear. When a civilization/empire dies, people should think of it more like the failure of a company than a zombie apocalypse. People largely continue their day-to-day lives, just with a new person in charge. As a prime example of this, people think of the end of the Roman empire as starting some sort of "dark age" where humans made no progress for 500-1000 years, but it really was the end of one government structure with one power center and the beginning of another. Technology and society continued to develop.
    - corethree 3y ago
      > In fact, historical growth trends are pretty much superlinear. There's no evidence of this at all. We are at a peak right now so it only seems this way. (In fact arguably technological growth seems to be slowing down, only IT seems to be growing). Extending history beyond just "recorded history" or "recent history" will make it clear that the earth is full of cycles of dominant species and civilizations becoming extinct.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        I am suggesting that people believe constantly that we are at a peak because we have never been at this level before. For example, this was a very popular belief in Victorian England and the 1650's in the Netherlands. These are societies that experienced rapid growth for a while, and then started to see the top of the S curve. Just like humans see the bottom of the S curve and think "it's an exponential explosion!" (see the AI doomers), humans see the top of the S curve and think "it's all downhill from here," when things are really just slowing down. Now that you have mentioned it, do you have an example of a civilization before recorded history "going extinct"? In fact, do you have an example of such a cycle of a "civilization going extinct" (interesting choice of words to use "extinct" there) where the prosperity of ordinary people materially declined?
        corethree 3y ago
        Rapa Nui.
        pclmulqdq 3y ago
        Are you referring to the largely unconfirmed story that Rapa Nui was in some sort of decline cycle before Europeans came and ravaged the place? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter-islands-historic-collapse/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter...
        corethree 3y ago
        First off ecocide is the default narrative accepted by most of academia. You're just posting an obscure alternative hypothesis here that's been promoted to you through popular media. Here's another alternative hypothesize again over popularized by the media to the general public: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island https://www.americanscientist.org/article/rethinking-the-fal... Either way it's still an example of a civilization ending completely.
        withinboredom 3y ago
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Understand that the papers emphasize they are not predictions, but illustrating complex relationships. (Or at least trying to illustrate complex relationships based on what we know of them right now). There is very little we as an individual level can do about whether or not full scale technological advancement occurs enough to reach steady state of equilibrium on a global level. It’s very important cognitively to realistically assess your personal ability to influence or not influence a global phenomenon. Personally? I want to make sure my local community is strong. Even if no collapse occurs, a strong community is good. But if anything happens, a strong community is great. I do food coops (I buy a share of a farms crops ahead of the growing season, so the farmer shares the harvest with me. Sometimes I also pitch in to pack the shares for others in the coop!). I donate to community food availability(not just food kitchens but also paying way more for pay-what-you-can produce). I attend community events like cleanups, town halls, etc. Most of us in tech are lucky enough to be able to work from the neighborhoods where we live, and be able to step out for the occasional chore. We inherently have more time to directly benefit our neediest. Why not take advantage?
- ahepp 3y ago
  > the papers emphasize they are not predictions, but illustrating complex relationships If it has no predictive power, why should it be taken seriously? I'm concerned about the environment and sustainability too, but that's the exact reason we can't afford to throw empiricism out the window the second things start looking a bit hairy.
  - john-radio 3y ago
    A paper not containing predictions is not the same thing as its having no predictive power!
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      This paper makes a lot of predictions despite the lack of predictive power. Hence, it should not be taken seriously. Since the 1970's the group producing it has made a lot of very wrong predictions out of the hubristic belief that they can reduce everything about life to a simple system of differential equations.
dogline 3y ago
LtG - Limit to Growth -- re: Worldwide growth rates
ahepp 3y ago
Is there any reason to take this more seriously than garden variety malthusianism?
- mempko 3y ago
  Yes, the malthusian growth model assumes resources grow linearly while population is exponential. This model is obviously wrong since we are using up resources exponentially.
corethree 3y ago
The majority of people will assume it's not true because as humans we bias towards optimism and lying to ourselves. We choose to artificially scaffold logic to fit our positive bias and you're going to see a lot of arguments in this thread attempting to refute this study. Most of those comments will be of that nature: composing different facts and figures and evidence in a specific way to fit their own desired outcome. Studies prove that the majority of people are like this and I'm one of them. Therefore I'm going to what everyone else does and that is work and drive to work, spend time with my family, spend time with my friends and not do anything different everyday. I guess being self aware of my own biases makes me slightly different, but in this case people who are self aware probably just choose to avoid thinking about it. We got daily problems to deal with and the environment is still too abstract to consider even when there's a lot of evidence suggesting it's too late. This is the reality of people. It's predictable. Even people on this thread "claiming" to do something about it likely aren't doing much or doing anything meaningful. What's written in this thread is rationalization to keep doing what they're currently doing. Only a very small small small percentage of the population can actually be genuinely panicked by what the evidence suggests. They will be making drastic changes to their own lives and attempting to change the world. People who build and construct their lives around rationality are the ones we classify as extremist. I'm not saying these "extremists" are smarter or have higher IQ. It's more of a behavioral trait among a small portion of the population. They lack the normal biases people have, and I think this may have a small association with lower IQ as some of them are unable to weigh the rational logic against the consequences of going against the grain of popular opinion/behavior.
- sva_ 3y ago
  > as humans we bias towards optimism and lying to ourselves I'm not convinced that the optimists are the vast majority among humans. It seems more like pessimists never get anything done, due to their outlook on the world (survivorship bias.) Although in this case, you'd think the pessimists would be the ones to take action. Perhaps the real optimists in this case would be those who believe that in spite of these processes being in place, they can do something about it.
- _ddzr 3y ago
  I find the resistance to understanding these models so interesting. I talk to friend about this and few people are able to get over their initial optimism bias. Some of us who have familial experience with less ideal circumstances—war, poverty, genocide, and hyperinflation—do not hold the same biases.
snakeyjake 3y ago
My default assumption is that the collapsitarians are as correct in 2023 as they were when they predicted the imminent collapse of humanity and its descent into barbarism toward extinction back in the late 1700s. There is a reason every prediction of doom has been updated with new editions or "recalibrations" every decade or so for the last several centuries.
- jackcosgrove 3y ago
  The collapse dynamic seems to get attention since it implies that everything will appear fine until some Wile E. Coyote moment when you realize too late you've run off the cliff. I think discontinuities are rarer than continuities in complex systems. If the world will get worse, it will more likely be a gradual worsening than a collapse. Also, miracle wheat happened and soylent green did not.
louismerlin 3y ago
You read up on permacomputing[0] and embrace the resilience mindset. [0]: https://permacomputing.net https://permacomputing.net
gemstones 3y ago
If you're already an American, move to St. Louis. - North enough that climate change will not affect it as much - Inland so not at risk of sea level change - Next to a large fresh water source - Food security - weather suitable for all kinds of crops, even as temps rise - A large enough group of people in a rich country that it will still be able to get resources as things get worse - Because of the city/county split, the city crime rate is arbitrarily high despite being a safer metro than most. Means that housing prices are low. Places like Chicago are more at risk of becoming unaffordable as refugees crises get worse - The region is one of the few that has been continuously settled from pre-colonial days, indicating some Lindy effect in play
- itake 3y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you that St. Louis is good, but sea level rises in our lifetime will be a drop in the ocean compared to climate changes (severe flooding due to excess rain, heat waves, etc.). No one cares about 4 inches higher water (Except maybe a few Florida boat owners whose boats can no longer fit under bridges).
  - natch 3y ago
    It's not just about our lifetimes. Some people have children who would prefer that if they are to inherit a house, they will inherit one that will not be submerged or subject to the hurricane swell lottery when they leave it to their children. And four inches doesn't begin to capture the potential.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  The Lindy effect really doesn't apply there. If we were still a pre-colonial society and you were trying to find the best place to build your mostly-agrarian city, fine, but the conditions for survival are unrecognizably different than they were then.
- dahfizz 3y ago
  St Louis is also the most dangerous city in the country. Macro trends 50 years from now don't matter if I'm just going to be murdered anyway.
fsflover 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594008
svara 3y ago
I tried for a bit to understand this paper since the result, if true, seems extremely significant. If I understand correctly they are saying that non renewable resources, specifically oil, will soon run out, leading to a collapse in industrial output which in turn leads to a loss of agricultural efficiency and thus famine. In their plots, they show non renewable inputs to industry and farming running out right about now. This seems like complete nonsense? You can make a model say literally anything... If this was true, we'd see commodity prices going through the roof as a long term trend. And even if that was happening, the food supply would be the last thing affected due to the demand being completely inelastic.
- woleium 3y ago
  i am a but concerned about soil compaction after the transition though. Farm machinery has been getting heavier and heavier. Compaction is already an issue. If we change to batteries within the next 30 years this problem will get much worse very quickly.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  They show availability of non-renewable resources declining from the 00's to a few decades ahead, depending on what resource you track. And those almost perfectly coincide with those resources prices exploding. The book uses some very well informed geological predictions. Where it completely fails is on making any good sociological prediction derived from those. (Like the impact on farming.)
  - svara 3y ago
    > They show availability of non-renewable resources declining from the 00's to a few decades ahead, depending on what resource you track. And those almost perfectly coincide with those resources prices exploding Are you referring to something available online? Not sure I want to buy the 1972 book, but I'd love to see this data.
- polotics 3y ago
  Energy prices do not follow the simple price elasticity curves of substitutable goods: check out the non-correlation curve between availability and price for oil, as published by JM.Jancovici, also his explanation of why.
zebomon 3y ago
Maybe the most important line of the paper comes toward the end, in 4.2: "Another uncertainty is the impact of crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic ... LtG as a model is not able to reproduce these short-term events. Rather, it serves to reveal broad trends and dynamics." There's an important connection here I don't think the paper draws so explicitly. What will matter most to any of us, in terms of planning and preparation, is what masses of other people will do in response to these crises, and our models for that are still much less precise than our models for climate, resource depletion, etc. Hopefully we get closer to Foundation territory sooner rather than later, for the sake of better long-term projections, though as we've seen through relatively benign algorithms for engagement on social media, that too will probably lead to some uncomfortable places. So in terms of personal preparation, until Hari Seldon shows up, our own human intuition (i.e. rolling the dice) will reign supreme. Unfortunately. Does it seem like your fellow humans will innovate sufficiently if every major port city goes underwater? Or does your gut tell you we'll panic, fight a global war, and send ourselves back to something that more closely resembles the 19th century? Feel it out and plan accordingly.
SeanAnderson 3y ago
I found it surprising that ChatGPT is restricted from accessing this website: https://chat.openai.com/share/4ccee094-20a7-47eb-88c8-e0103e7a008a https://chat.openai.com/share/4ccee094-20a7-47eb-88c8-e0103e... Anyway, in short, I would never try to prepare for worst-case global scenarios because the magnitudes don't make sense for me to try to influence. Even if I was a prepper - I would have no insight into what would signal me being prepared/safe. I try to focus a lot on optimizing my local conditions because they influence my daily life much more significantly and with much higher guarantees. I'm in the market to buy a house in the next year or so and even asking myself the question, "Will living in <area> be a good choice in 50 years?" seems like a laughably difficult question to answer. I can look at how insurance prices are changing and historical patterns in temperature fluctuations, or I could bet on living next to civilization is better than living in the middle of nowhere, or I could bet living in a colder region is smart because it'll warm up, or I could find a warm region with geographical landscapes that insulate it from more extreme weather patterns, etc. etc.. but then what if the North Atlantic Current collapses and all the historical weather patterns are void? In the end, I haven't found it good or healthy to try to build my life in the direction of that mindset. Instead, I strive to adopt an anti-fragile mindset and lifestyle (https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680 https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...). I want to be healthy and fit so that my body and mind are adaptable to the ever-quickening pace of the world. I want to minimize my physical and mental addictions. I want to be kind, friendly, and outgoing to those in my local community as to strengthen them and to increase the likelihood of reciprocity. I want to be comfortable with leadership, and have enough confidence to lead when I feel I can get us to good outcomes. I don't want to make decisions based off of anxiety, fear, or scarcity. I want the systems I employ in my daily life to be efficient to the point of mindlessness. I want enough money to have a couple of years of runway if I have a serious injury. None of my strategies guarantee me survival in black swan events, but who cares? Nobody's getting out of here alive anyway. Try to not make your lived-life hellish by envisioning what a worse tomorrow could be.
- nostromo 3y ago
  > ChatGPT is restricted from accessing this website Huh... they're banning ChatGPT specifically from accessing anything on their website. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/robots.txt https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/robots.txt User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: /
georgeoliver 3y ago
It would be interesting to take the same model but use known inputs for different eras, i.e. 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and see when it would then predict collapse.
Geisterde 3y ago
They are estimating that population collapse is a function of resources, google "civilizational metrics", everything from food to steel production looks like an exponential graph. Population decline will/is occuring, just due to things like 50 years of inflation and a century+ of central planning. They were totally wrong then, and now as an inevitable chapter of history begins, they are saying "look, we were just off a few years!". That said, you should take the apocalypse as an opportunity to brush up on philosophy. We could have engineered our societies such that they are further constrained in their ability to violate human rights, and avoided this entire thing, but they didnt have a full deck when they wrote the constitution. You can help build a better tomorrow by demanding universifiable moral values and sound economics lie at the foundation of the society to come.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  >"look, we were just off a few years!". Which is what most every doomsday cult does when the world doesn't end on the predicted date. Just off by a few years.
  - CSMastermind 3y ago
    Seriously - the original study doesn't make definitive predictions so it can't be proven wrong but they keep updating the model to push the collapse date back "by a few years" because we keep diverging from their original trend lines. Even if their predictions were valid it could be another 'peak oil' moment where we simply invent new technology that undermines the original assumptions.
    - westcort 3y ago
      The comprehensive technology sensitivity analysis already takes into account a possible rate of technology development beyond what has been achieved before, so that argument is baked into this analysis. Another sensitivity analysis for their being twice as many resources as previously known is also accounted for. The initial 1972 estimate placed collapse around 2040. This update places peak civilization around 2018 based on human development index, with slight but measurable decline since, and more decline in the forecast.
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dmitrygr 3y ago
Google a guy named Malthus and read about his predictions
- westcort 3y ago
  Read about the Victorian workhouse, the Irish potato famine, and Rawanda in the 1990s. In the latter example, the average person had less than a backyard worth of land to work on for subsistence. Jared Diamond discussed the case of Rawanda in his book, Collapse. Joseph Tainter provides many examples in his book. It has happened before, just not within the limits of experience of those living through all of the exponential growth we have lived through, so it is hard to imagine. From a summary of the relevant chapter: “In the Northwest Rwandan region of Kanama, population densities were higher than in Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on Earth. With nowhere to move and set up a home, most women and all men in their early 20s lived with their parents, putting further loads on each tiny farm until the average person lived off one-seventh of an acre. By 1990 40% of Rwandans were consuming calories below famine levels.” https://www.supersummary.com/collapse/part-3-chapters-10-13/ https://www.supersummary.com/collapse/part-3-chapters-10-13/
mplewis 3y ago
If you’re really serious about survival, build your local community up. Volunteer to help folks in need, learn the names of your neighbors, and get to know them so that you have folks you trust when you need help.
jazzyjackson 3y ago
get right with god
pcthrowaway 3y ago
World3 was so 2005. The new hotness is World4
cornholio 3y ago
This approach is fundamentally flawed. Exponential economic growth can continue as long as economic substitutes can be found. For example, extrapolating the growth of road transport at the start of the 19th century would have predicted that by the year 2000 we would have so many horses that the entire arable surface of the world would be dedicated to feeding them. Fortunately, substitutes were found and the pasturepocalipse was averted. Economic growth deals with money and things that can be expressed in money. If in the future human contact becomes a highly sought after commodity and people are willing to pay a market price of $1 million for a hand-holding session, then as far as the GDP is concerned, 1$ million of economic value has been created. For another example, a new smartphone delivers without any doubt orders of magnitude more economic utility than a traditional telephone in your home, while requiring a tiny amount of actual physical resources, miles and miles of dedicated copper wire for each subscriber etc. Undoubtedly, there are still some human desires that are quite toxic to our limited planet and can't be virtualized easily - for example, the dream of suburban mcmansions a few billion earthlings share, and continuing to grow mindlessly would wreck a good part of the planet. It's quite a distant problem for all but the most prosperous and dense countries, but we will need to deal with it - "no, you can't have more than one home on each continent". But fundamentally speaking, economic growth is about relative value we place on things not absolute consumption of resources.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  It is precisely the point that in reality, the system under consideration is finite. Consequently, you cannot find "economic substitutes" forever, as they are finite and limited themselves. One central restriction here is the limit to pollution, which you cannot help by polluting with different stuff. So long as the economy depends on physical objects, these restrictions apply. And they aren't "in the distance" either, but right around the corner.
  - cornholio 3y ago
    > the economy depends on physical objects That's entirely the point, the economy is quickly dematerializing. As the smartphone example shows, we can provide the same service (and in fact, a far superior one) using a tiny fraction of physical resources. Electronic mail and newspapers, online marketplaces, real time video-communication are in every way better, cheaper and environmentally friendlier than their traditional counterparts. So we can generate far more economic output (defined as transactions people are willing to make, for example software licenses, apps etc) using the same physical input.
bryan_w 3y ago
"There's no way the earth can support 1 billion people, especially with peak oil within the next five years!" -Someone in the 1980's, probably.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  1780's?
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  That was Malthus, in the 1780's. His 1980's alter-ego was and is Paul Ehrlich who warmed up Malthus prognosis with numbers adjusted to fit our era. Ehrlich is, just like Malthus, known for failing in each and every one of his predictions. Both Malthus as well as Ehrlich failed - and in Ehrlich's case most likely ignored - to take into account that the population not only grows but also develops new technologies. These new technologies increased the carrying capacity of the world's economies faster than the population increased which has led to a staggering reduction of the fraction of the population which lives in poverty.
- fluoridation 3y ago
  "Because we've been able to grow enormously in the past, we'll always be able to grow enormously in the future", is what you're saying?
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Beijinger 3y ago
Move to this island and live happy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island Everybody knows the limits of growth are bullshit and they are just some doomsdayer :-)
wait_a_minute 3y ago
This is just bullshit negativity wrapped up in an academic veneer. Prepare for explosive and unlimited growth instead. Invest into new skills. Be optimistic. Make everything better around you. Make systems better and more efficient around you. We will obtain limitless resources from other stars, planets, and rocks floating around in space. We will create new innovations that will once again change the calculus on resource utilization and give us more yield even with far less input. Human systems will continue to improve. We will produce better systems and better software and better hardware. We will renew what is already in place and settle the moon, Mars, Venus, Europa, Pluto, and beyond. Keep in mind that the global population will drop significantly below replacement in the coming decades as well.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  Where do you propose your "limitless" supply of toys to fit within the finite confines of earth? Even if you could "spread out to the stars", earth stays a closed system. It can take only a finite amount of pollution, which we actually already overstepped. You propose escapism. That's not a solution.
  - wait_a_minute 3y ago
    Earth is indeed finite, but if presently accessible resources give humanity tens of thousands of years of runway, that is for all intents and purposes limitless - because in that time the science and tech that get developed will resemble magic. Consider how peak oil turned out to not be a problem after all. Now humanity is on the verge of a renaissance in nuclear reactors, a revolution in fusion reactors, and the success of renewables deployment at scale. I propose making everything better around us.
0xbadc0de5 3y ago
Assume it's as correct as every other Malthusian argument that has been made since 1798.
marcinzm 3y ago
If I read the footnotes correctly, they claim things peaked in 2019 because the numbers were lower in 2021 and 2021 (no numbers for 2022 and 2023 in their sources). I'm sure the unprecedented but temporary global pandemic had absolutely nothing to do with that.
mikewarot 3y ago
Digging into things, I find that it all hinges on the World3 model. Looking at a Python implementation of the model[1] I found this dcfsn : float, optional desired completed family size normal []. The default is 4. This is clearly an abnormality, in and of itself. When you're living on a farm, or birth control isn't available, or are a member of certain groups, that number is effectively infinite. If you happened to live in the reign of Mao, it was 1. Now, I assume there are many such nits to pick. I think the biggest limits to growth are the ERoI of fossil fuels, and the treatment of women and support for parenting in societies. Population crash is a real phenomenon in China, and most "developed" nations are somewhere on the curve, despite lifting an incredible portion of the world's population from crushing poverty, birth rates are falling. Local change is about the only thing you can realistically have any effect on. Just try to pass on any knowledge and wisdom you can to others, especially with regard to repairing existing technology, and ways to work without it. As China goes offline in the next decade, and globalism collapses, we'll have a lot of jerry-rigging to get around the things we used to have in abundance. [1] https://github.com/cvanwynsberghe/pyworld3/blob/main/pyworld3/population.py https://github.com/cvanwynsberghe/pyworld3/blob/main/pyworld...
- westcort 3y ago
  Great comment and thank you for digging into the code!

93 points by _ddzr 3y ago

You start by operating as though this sort of bullshit is not correct. Since the beginning of recorded history, people have thought that they were at the end of human growth. Despite that, people operating as though their future will be brighter have defied their predictions.

corethree 3y ago
There's tons of examples of civilizations dying and ending. There's tons of examples of species going extinct. History is not just linear growth with constant "defied expectations".
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  History is not linear growth, but it is just growth. In fact, historical growth trends are pretty much superlinear. When a civilization/empire dies, people should think of it more like the failure of a company than a zombie apocalypse. People largely continue their day-to-day lives, just with a new person in charge. As a prime example of this, people think of the end of the Roman empire as starting some sort of "dark age" where humans made no progress for 500-1000 years, but it really was the end of one government structure with one power center and the beginning of another. Technology and society continued to develop.
  - corethree 3y ago
    > In fact, historical growth trends are pretty much superlinear. There's no evidence of this at all. We are at a peak right now so it only seems this way. (In fact arguably technological growth seems to be slowing down, only IT seems to be growing). Extending history beyond just "recorded history" or "recent history" will make it clear that the earth is full of cycles of dominant species and civilizations becoming extinct.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      I am suggesting that people believe constantly that we are at a peak because we have never been at this level before. For example, this was a very popular belief in Victorian England and the 1650's in the Netherlands. These are societies that experienced rapid growth for a while, and then started to see the top of the S curve. Just like humans see the bottom of the S curve and think "it's an exponential explosion!" (see the AI doomers), humans see the top of the S curve and think "it's all downhill from here," when things are really just slowing down. Now that you have mentioned it, do you have an example of a civilization before recorded history "going extinct"? In fact, do you have an example of such a cycle of a "civilization going extinct" (interesting choice of words to use "extinct" there) where the prosperity of ordinary people materially declined?
      - corethree 3y ago
        Rapa Nui.
        pclmulqdq 3y ago
        Are you referring to the largely unconfirmed story that Rapa Nui was in some sort of decline cycle before Europeans came and ravaged the place? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter-islands-historic-collapse/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter...
        corethree 3y ago
        First off ecocide is the default narrative accepted by most of academia. You're just posting an obscure alternative hypothesis here that's been promoted to you through popular media. Here's another alternative hypothesize again over popularized by the media to the general public: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island https://www.americanscientist.org/article/rethinking-the-fal... Either way it's still an example of a civilization ending completely.
      - withinboredom 3y ago

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

Understand that the papers emphasize they are not predictions, but illustrating complex relationships. (Or at least trying to illustrate complex relationships based on what we know of them right now). There is very little we as an individual level can do about whether or not full scale technological advancement occurs enough to reach steady state of equilibrium on a global level. It’s very important cognitively to realistically assess your personal ability to influence or not influence a global phenomenon. Personally? I want to make sure my local community is strong. Even if no collapse occurs, a strong community is good. But if anything happens, a strong community is great. I do food coops (I buy a share of a farms crops ahead of the growing season, so the farmer shares the harvest with me. Sometimes I also pitch in to pack the shares for others in the coop!). I donate to community food availability(not just food kitchens but also paying way more for pay-what-you-can produce). I attend community events like cleanups, town halls, etc. Most of us in tech are lucky enough to be able to work from the neighborhoods where we live, and be able to step out for the occasional chore. We inherently have more time to directly benefit our neediest. Why not take advantage?

ahepp 3y ago
> the papers emphasize they are not predictions, but illustrating complex relationships If it has no predictive power, why should it be taken seriously? I'm concerned about the environment and sustainability too, but that's the exact reason we can't afford to throw empiricism out the window the second things start looking a bit hairy.
- john-radio 3y ago
  A paper not containing predictions is not the same thing as its having no predictive power!
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    This paper makes a lot of predictions despite the lack of predictive power. Hence, it should not be taken seriously. Since the 1970's the group producing it has made a lot of very wrong predictions out of the hubristic belief that they can reduce everything about life to a simple system of differential equations.

dogline 3y ago

LtG - Limit to Growth -- re: Worldwide growth rates

ahepp 3y ago

Is there any reason to take this more seriously than garden variety malthusianism?

mempko 3y ago
Yes, the malthusian growth model assumes resources grow linearly while population is exponential. This model is obviously wrong since we are using up resources exponentially.

corethree 3y ago

The majority of people will assume it's not true because as humans we bias towards optimism and lying to ourselves. We choose to artificially scaffold logic to fit our positive bias and you're going to see a lot of arguments in this thread attempting to refute this study. Most of those comments will be of that nature: composing different facts and figures and evidence in a specific way to fit their own desired outcome. Studies prove that the majority of people are like this and I'm one of them. Therefore I'm going to what everyone else does and that is work and drive to work, spend time with my family, spend time with my friends and not do anything different everyday. I guess being self aware of my own biases makes me slightly different, but in this case people who are self aware probably just choose to avoid thinking about it. We got daily problems to deal with and the environment is still too abstract to consider even when there's a lot of evidence suggesting it's too late. This is the reality of people. It's predictable. Even people on this thread "claiming" to do something about it likely aren't doing much or doing anything meaningful. What's written in this thread is rationalization to keep doing what they're currently doing. Only a very small small small percentage of the population can actually be genuinely panicked by what the evidence suggests. They will be making drastic changes to their own lives and attempting to change the world. People who build and construct their lives around rationality are the ones we classify as extremist. I'm not saying these "extremists" are smarter or have higher IQ. It's more of a behavioral trait among a small portion of the population. They lack the normal biases people have, and I think this may have a small association with lower IQ as some of them are unable to weigh the rational logic against the consequences of going against the grain of popular opinion/behavior.

sva_ 3y ago
> as humans we bias towards optimism and lying to ourselves I'm not convinced that the optimists are the vast majority among humans. It seems more like pessimists never get anything done, due to their outlook on the world (survivorship bias.) Although in this case, you'd think the pessimists would be the ones to take action. Perhaps the real optimists in this case would be those who believe that in spite of these processes being in place, they can do something about it.
_ddzr 3y ago
I find the resistance to understanding these models so interesting. I talk to friend about this and few people are able to get over their initial optimism bias. Some of us who have familial experience with less ideal circumstances—war, poverty, genocide, and hyperinflation—do not hold the same biases.

snakeyjake 3y ago

My default assumption is that the collapsitarians are as correct in 2023 as they were when they predicted the imminent collapse of humanity and its descent into barbarism toward extinction back in the late 1700s. There is a reason every prediction of doom has been updated with new editions or "recalibrations" every decade or so for the last several centuries.

jackcosgrove 3y ago
The collapse dynamic seems to get attention since it implies that everything will appear fine until some Wile E. Coyote moment when you realize too late you've run off the cliff. I think discontinuities are rarer than continuities in complex systems. If the world will get worse, it will more likely be a gradual worsening than a collapse. Also, miracle wheat happened and soylent green did not.

louismerlin 3y ago

You read up on permacomputing[0] and embrace the resilience mindset. [0]: https://permacomputing.net https://permacomputing.net

gemstones 3y ago

If you're already an American, move to St. Louis. - North enough that climate change will not affect it as much - Inland so not at risk of sea level change - Next to a large fresh water source - Food security - weather suitable for all kinds of crops, even as temps rise - A large enough group of people in a rich country that it will still be able to get resources as things get worse - Because of the city/county split, the city crime rate is arbitrarily high despite being a safer metro than most. Means that housing prices are low. Places like Chicago are more at risk of becoming unaffordable as refugees crises get worse - The region is one of the few that has been continuously settled from pre-colonial days, indicating some Lindy effect in play

itake 3y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you that St. Louis is good, but sea level rises in our lifetime will be a drop in the ocean compared to climate changes (severe flooding due to excess rain, heat waves, etc.). No one cares about 4 inches higher water (Except maybe a few Florida boat owners whose boats can no longer fit under bridges).
- natch 3y ago
  It's not just about our lifetimes. Some people have children who would prefer that if they are to inherit a house, they will inherit one that will not be submerged or subject to the hurricane swell lottery when they leave it to their children. And four inches doesn't begin to capture the potential.
ajkjk 3y ago
The Lindy effect really doesn't apply there. If we were still a pre-colonial society and you were trying to find the best place to build your mostly-agrarian city, fine, but the conditions for survival are unrecognizably different than they were then.
dahfizz 3y ago
St Louis is also the most dangerous city in the country. Macro trends 50 years from now don't matter if I'm just going to be murdered anyway.

fsflover 3y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594008

svara 3y ago

I tried for a bit to understand this paper since the result, if true, seems extremely significant. If I understand correctly they are saying that non renewable resources, specifically oil, will soon run out, leading to a collapse in industrial output which in turn leads to a loss of agricultural efficiency and thus famine. In their plots, they show non renewable inputs to industry and farming running out right about now. This seems like complete nonsense? You can make a model say literally anything... If this was true, we'd see commodity prices going through the roof as a long term trend. And even if that was happening, the food supply would be the last thing affected due to the demand being completely inelastic.

woleium 3y ago
i am a but concerned about soil compaction after the transition though. Farm machinery has been getting heavier and heavier. Compaction is already an issue. If we change to batteries within the next 30 years this problem will get much worse very quickly.
marcosdumay 3y ago
They show availability of non-renewable resources declining from the 00's to a few decades ahead, depending on what resource you track. And those almost perfectly coincide with those resources prices exploding. The book uses some very well informed geological predictions. Where it completely fails is on making any good sociological prediction derived from those. (Like the impact on farming.)
- svara 3y ago
  > They show availability of non-renewable resources declining from the 00's to a few decades ahead, depending on what resource you track. And those almost perfectly coincide with those resources prices exploding Are you referring to something available online? Not sure I want to buy the 1972 book, but I'd love to see this data.
polotics 3y ago
Energy prices do not follow the simple price elasticity curves of substitutable goods: check out the non-correlation curve between availability and price for oil, as published by JM.Jancovici, also his explanation of why.

zebomon 3y ago

Maybe the most important line of the paper comes toward the end, in 4.2: "Another uncertainty is the impact of crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic ... LtG as a model is not able to reproduce these short-term events. Rather, it serves to reveal broad trends and dynamics." There's an important connection here I don't think the paper draws so explicitly. What will matter most to any of us, in terms of planning and preparation, is what masses of other people will do in response to these crises, and our models for that are still much less precise than our models for climate, resource depletion, etc. Hopefully we get closer to Foundation territory sooner rather than later, for the sake of better long-term projections, though as we've seen through relatively benign algorithms for engagement on social media, that too will probably lead to some uncomfortable places. So in terms of personal preparation, until Hari Seldon shows up, our own human intuition (i.e. rolling the dice) will reign supreme. Unfortunately. Does it seem like your fellow humans will innovate sufficiently if every major port city goes underwater? Or does your gut tell you we'll panic, fight a global war, and send ourselves back to something that more closely resembles the 19th century? Feel it out and plan accordingly.

SeanAnderson 3y ago

I found it surprising that ChatGPT is restricted from accessing this website: https://chat.openai.com/share/4ccee094-20a7-47eb-88c8-e0103e7a008a https://chat.openai.com/share/4ccee094-20a7-47eb-88c8-e0103e... Anyway, in short, I would never try to prepare for worst-case global scenarios because the magnitudes don't make sense for me to try to influence. Even if I was a prepper - I would have no insight into what would signal me being prepared/safe. I try to focus a lot on optimizing my local conditions because they influence my daily life much more significantly and with much higher guarantees. I'm in the market to buy a house in the next year or so and even asking myself the question, "Will living in <area> be a good choice in 50 years?" seems like a laughably difficult question to answer. I can look at how insurance prices are changing and historical patterns in temperature fluctuations, or I could bet on living next to civilization is better than living in the middle of nowhere, or I could bet living in a colder region is smart because it'll warm up, or I could find a warm region with geographical landscapes that insulate it from more extreme weather patterns, etc. etc.. but then what if the North Atlantic Current collapses and all the historical weather patterns are void? In the end, I haven't found it good or healthy to try to build my life in the direction of that mindset. Instead, I strive to adopt an anti-fragile mindset and lifestyle (https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680 https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...). I want to be healthy and fit so that my body and mind are adaptable to the ever-quickening pace of the world. I want to minimize my physical and mental addictions. I want to be kind, friendly, and outgoing to those in my local community as to strengthen them and to increase the likelihood of reciprocity. I want to be comfortable with leadership, and have enough confidence to lead when I feel I can get us to good outcomes. I don't want to make decisions based off of anxiety, fear, or scarcity. I want the systems I employ in my daily life to be efficient to the point of mindlessness. I want enough money to have a couple of years of runway if I have a serious injury. None of my strategies guarantee me survival in black swan events, but who cares? Nobody's getting out of here alive anyway. Try to not make your lived-life hellish by envisioning what a worse tomorrow could be.

nostromo 3y ago
> ChatGPT is restricted from accessing this website Huh... they're banning ChatGPT specifically from accessing anything on their website. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/robots.txt https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/robots.txt User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: /

georgeoliver 3y ago

It would be interesting to take the same model but use known inputs for different eras, i.e. 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and see when it would then predict collapse.

Geisterde 3y ago

They are estimating that population collapse is a function of resources, google "civilizational metrics", everything from food to steel production looks like an exponential graph. Population decline will/is occuring, just due to things like 50 years of inflation and a century+ of central planning. They were totally wrong then, and now as an inevitable chapter of history begins, they are saying "look, we were just off a few years!". That said, you should take the apocalypse as an opportunity to brush up on philosophy. We could have engineered our societies such that they are further constrained in their ability to violate human rights, and avoided this entire thing, but they didnt have a full deck when they wrote the constitution. You can help build a better tomorrow by demanding universifiable moral values and sound economics lie at the foundation of the society to come.

marcinzm 3y ago
>"look, we were just off a few years!". Which is what most every doomsday cult does when the world doesn't end on the predicted date. Just off by a few years.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  Seriously - the original study doesn't make definitive predictions so it can't be proven wrong but they keep updating the model to push the collapse date back "by a few years" because we keep diverging from their original trend lines. Even if their predictions were valid it could be another 'peak oil' moment where we simply invent new technology that undermines the original assumptions.
  - westcort 3y ago
    The comprehensive technology sensitivity analysis already takes into account a possible rate of technology development beyond what has been achieved before, so that argument is baked into this analysis. Another sensitivity analysis for their being twice as many resources as previously known is also accounted for. The initial 1972 estimate placed collapse around 2040. This update places peak civilization around 2018 based on human development index, with slight but measurable decline since, and more decline in the forecast.

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dmitrygr 3y ago

Google a guy named Malthus and read about his predictions

westcort 3y ago
Read about the Victorian workhouse, the Irish potato famine, and Rawanda in the 1990s. In the latter example, the average person had less than a backyard worth of land to work on for subsistence. Jared Diamond discussed the case of Rawanda in his book, Collapse. Joseph Tainter provides many examples in his book. It has happened before, just not within the limits of experience of those living through all of the exponential growth we have lived through, so it is hard to imagine. From a summary of the relevant chapter: “In the Northwest Rwandan region of Kanama, population densities were higher than in Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on Earth. With nowhere to move and set up a home, most women and all men in their early 20s lived with their parents, putting further loads on each tiny farm until the average person lived off one-seventh of an acre. By 1990 40% of Rwandans were consuming calories below famine levels.” https://www.supersummary.com/collapse/part-3-chapters-10-13/ https://www.supersummary.com/collapse/part-3-chapters-10-13/

mplewis 3y ago

If you’re really serious about survival, build your local community up. Volunteer to help folks in need, learn the names of your neighbors, and get to know them so that you have folks you trust when you need help.

jazzyjackson 3y ago

get right with god

pcthrowaway 3y ago

World3 was so 2005. The new hotness is World4

cornholio 3y ago

This approach is fundamentally flawed. Exponential economic growth can continue as long as economic substitutes can be found. For example, extrapolating the growth of road transport at the start of the 19th century would have predicted that by the year 2000 we would have so many horses that the entire arable surface of the world would be dedicated to feeding them. Fortunately, substitutes were found and the pasturepocalipse was averted. Economic growth deals with money and things that can be expressed in money. If in the future human contact becomes a highly sought after commodity and people are willing to pay a market price of $1 million for a hand-holding session, then as far as the GDP is concerned, 1$ million of economic value has been created. For another example, a new smartphone delivers without any doubt orders of magnitude more economic utility than a traditional telephone in your home, while requiring a tiny amount of actual physical resources, miles and miles of dedicated copper wire for each subscriber etc. Undoubtedly, there are still some human desires that are quite toxic to our limited planet and can't be virtualized easily - for example, the dream of suburban mcmansions a few billion earthlings share, and continuing to grow mindlessly would wreck a good part of the planet. It's quite a distant problem for all but the most prosperous and dense countries, but we will need to deal with it - "no, you can't have more than one home on each continent". But fundamentally speaking, economic growth is about relative value we place on things not absolute consumption of resources.

Loquebantur 3y ago
It is precisely the point that in reality, the system under consideration is finite. Consequently, you cannot find "economic substitutes" forever, as they are finite and limited themselves. One central restriction here is the limit to pollution, which you cannot help by polluting with different stuff. So long as the economy depends on physical objects, these restrictions apply. And they aren't "in the distance" either, but right around the corner.
- cornholio 3y ago
  > the economy depends on physical objects That's entirely the point, the economy is quickly dematerializing. As the smartphone example shows, we can provide the same service (and in fact, a far superior one) using a tiny fraction of physical resources. Electronic mail and newspapers, online marketplaces, real time video-communication are in every way better, cheaper and environmentally friendlier than their traditional counterparts. So we can generate far more economic output (defined as transactions people are willing to make, for example software licenses, apps etc) using the same physical input.

bryan_w 3y ago

"There's no way the earth can support 1 billion people, especially with peak oil within the next five years!" -Someone in the 1980's, probably.

quickthrower2 3y ago
1780's?
the_third_wave 3y ago
That was Malthus, in the 1780's. His 1980's alter-ego was and is Paul Ehrlich who warmed up Malthus prognosis with numbers adjusted to fit our era. Ehrlich is, just like Malthus, known for failing in each and every one of his predictions. Both Malthus as well as Ehrlich failed - and in Ehrlich's case most likely ignored - to take into account that the population not only grows but also develops new technologies. These new technologies increased the carrying capacity of the world's economies faster than the population increased which has led to a staggering reduction of the fraction of the population which lives in poverty.
fluoridation 3y ago
"Because we've been able to grow enormously in the past, we'll always be able to grow enormously in the future", is what you're saying?

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Beijinger 3y ago

Move to this island and live happy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island Everybody knows the limits of growth are bullshit and they are just some doomsdayer :-)

wait_a_minute 3y ago

This is just bullshit negativity wrapped up in an academic veneer. Prepare for explosive and unlimited growth instead. Invest into new skills. Be optimistic. Make everything better around you. Make systems better and more efficient around you. We will obtain limitless resources from other stars, planets, and rocks floating around in space. We will create new innovations that will once again change the calculus on resource utilization and give us more yield even with far less input. Human systems will continue to improve. We will produce better systems and better software and better hardware. We will renew what is already in place and settle the moon, Mars, Venus, Europa, Pluto, and beyond. Keep in mind that the global population will drop significantly below replacement in the coming decades as well.

Loquebantur 3y ago
Where do you propose your "limitless" supply of toys to fit within the finite confines of earth? Even if you could "spread out to the stars", earth stays a closed system. It can take only a finite amount of pollution, which we actually already overstepped. You propose escapism. That's not a solution.
- wait_a_minute 3y ago
  Earth is indeed finite, but if presently accessible resources give humanity tens of thousands of years of runway, that is for all intents and purposes limitless - because in that time the science and tech that get developed will resemble magic. Consider how peak oil turned out to not be a problem after all. Now humanity is on the verge of a renaissance in nuclear reactors, a revolution in fusion reactors, and the success of renewables deployment at scale. I propose making everything better around us.

0xbadc0de5 3y ago

Assume it's as correct as every other Malthusian argument that has been made since 1798.

marcinzm 3y ago

If I read the footnotes correctly, they claim things peaked in 2019 because the numbers were lower in 2021 and 2021 (no numbers for 2022 and 2023 in their sources). I'm sure the unprecedented but temporary global pandemic had absolutely nothing to do with that.

mikewarot 3y ago

Digging into things, I find that it all hinges on the World3 model. Looking at a Python implementation of the model[1] I found this dcfsn : float, optional desired completed family size normal []. The default is 4. This is clearly an abnormality, in and of itself. When you're living on a farm, or birth control isn't available, or are a member of certain groups, that number is effectively infinite. If you happened to live in the reign of Mao, it was 1. Now, I assume there are many such nits to pick. I think the biggest limits to growth are the ERoI of fossil fuels, and the treatment of women and support for parenting in societies. Population crash is a real phenomenon in China, and most "developed" nations are somewhere on the curve, despite lifting an incredible portion of the world's population from crushing poverty, birth rates are falling. Local change is about the only thing you can realistically have any effect on. Just try to pass on any knowledge and wisdom you can to others, especially with regard to repairing existing technology, and ways to work without it. As China goes offline in the next decade, and globalism collapses, we'll have a lot of jerry-rigging to get around the things we used to have in abundance. [1] https://github.com/cvanwynsberghe/pyworld3/blob/main/pyworld3/population.py https://github.com/cvanwynsberghe/pyworld3/blob/main/pyworld...

westcort 3y ago
Great comment and thank you for digging into the code!