6 ms·

I actually argue the opposite zooming out. Zooming out our trajectory is up and to the right, like a hockey stick. Almost on every level. We’ve done that with a

I actually argue the opposite zooming out. Zooming out our trajectory is up and to the right, like a hockey stick. Almost on every level. We’ve done that with all these disasters that have always happened. Almost like we can innovate or something

itsanaccount 3y ago
Technocrats on this site are very fond of your argument, so fond that I stored the reply I saw years back when someone else said the same thing. There is no monitoring dashboard for the planet. News articles like this are your warnings. There is no innovation to be had that fixes global aquifer levels. >>> Original Mathusianism should be distinguished from neo-Malthusianism, in that the latter does at least have some evidential basis in that it is based on measurement of resource levels and their rate of use, not just some political philosopher's wooly notion of overpopulation. The problem, as I see it, is that even if you are optimistic about the theoretical capacity of the planet to sustain human life, its practical capacity is limited by how efficiently we use the resources to hand, and the current system does not properly incentivise efficient use. More often, it's the complete opposite, because the price of resources like water and soil does not reflect their true scarcity. It's like having a large store of firewood. Enough, in theory, to heat your home through several years of harsh winters. Then you burn the whole stockpile in a great bonfire on the first cold Autumn night. That night, by every metric, you'll be warmer and cosier than you ever have been before, but you'll still have doomed yourself. * * * Reminds me of the well-known type of question in introductory calculus: Q: "A population of bacteria in a petri-dish doubles every hour, after 24 hours the petri-dish reaches 100% saturation. At what time did the petri-dish reach 50% saturation?" A: 23 hours.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  What about the birth rate collapse[0] and how this affects things? It’s easy to project out with holding population levels but as the oldest among us die in the next 20-30 years there will be significant drops in population worldwide, before factoring other forms of population decline it’s already naturally going to happen. I wonder how this factors into all this. [0]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertility-has-collapsed-with-profound-economic-consequences https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertilit...
  - itsanaccount 3y ago
    population is still rising into 2050 by conservative estimates, and it's not counting the energy requirements per person that's exploding. on a century scale, we will fix this by either getting to space or having a lower population. but the pressure is going to crack our systems long before that. I'm still hoping we get better as pressure increases, but there's nothing in nature that says that has to be true. the system will correct itself but how we will look as a species on the other side can be vastly different.
    - tuatoru 3y ago
      Getting to space is not going to happen. We don't have the ability to live sustainably on Antarctica, which is several orders of magnitude easier logistically and technologically.
      - kwere 3y ago
        there is no economy in Antartica besides resource extraction, which is banned. Instead a space economy (logistics, tourism, manufacturing, research) its on the rise. No selfsufficient space colonies in the next 50 years for sure
        tuatoru 3y ago
        We still don't have the ability.
  - slavik81 3y ago
    Is there any reason to think that the birth rate collapse is a long-term phenomenon (e.g. one thousand years)? There will presumably still be some subcultures that will have high birth rates, and I imagine they will make up an increasingly large proportion of the population as time goes on. There's a lot of noise about the population decline for 2100, but I wonder about 2200 and beyond.
    - Tade0 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lettergram 3y ago
  Bacteria cannot produce new ways to obtain resources, we can. Quite literally we’ve developed ways to grow food in space. We will be fine.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Lenski.
VelesDude 3y ago
To be fair the steepest part of the hockey stick is tiny compared to the history of out species. Heck even written texts are a comparitively new invention on that scale. The problem with overshoot is that the situation looks best after the point of sustainablility is long gone. Like flying off a ramp. The peak of heigh comes after you have left it. You could be right, and there are plenty if examples of that. It is just a case of we wont know the full story until a long time in the future.
Voultapher 3y ago
Hockey sticks you say, I have an article for you https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/. If we continue our current growth of energy use, we'll be using the entire luminosity output of the milky way galaxy in, drum roll, 1000 years. I'm skeptical if that's going to happen. To me a much likelier option is that the exponential growth stops at some point. The trajectory of the slime mold is also a hockey stick, until it isn't.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Want to know where you can shove your hockey stick?

itsanaccount 3y ago

Technocrats on this site are very fond of your argument, so fond that I stored the reply I saw years back when someone else said the same thing. There is no monitoring dashboard for the planet. News articles like this are your warnings. There is no innovation to be had that fixes global aquifer levels. >>> Original Mathusianism should be distinguished from neo-Malthusianism, in that the latter does at least have some evidential basis in that it is based on measurement of resource levels and their rate of use, not just some political philosopher's wooly notion of overpopulation. The problem, as I see it, is that even if you are optimistic about the theoretical capacity of the planet to sustain human life, its practical capacity is limited by how efficiently we use the resources to hand, and the current system does not properly incentivise efficient use. More often, it's the complete opposite, because the price of resources like water and soil does not reflect their true scarcity. It's like having a large store of firewood. Enough, in theory, to heat your home through several years of harsh winters. Then you burn the whole stockpile in a great bonfire on the first cold Autumn night. That night, by every metric, you'll be warmer and cosier than you ever have been before, but you'll still have doomed yourself. * * * Reminds me of the well-known type of question in introductory calculus: Q: "A population of bacteria in a petri-dish doubles every hour, after 24 hours the petri-dish reaches 100% saturation. At what time did the petri-dish reach 50% saturation?" A: 23 hours.

no_wizard 3y ago
What about the birth rate collapse[0] and how this affects things? It’s easy to project out with holding population levels but as the oldest among us die in the next 20-30 years there will be significant drops in population worldwide, before factoring other forms of population decline it’s already naturally going to happen. I wonder how this factors into all this. [0]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertility-has-collapsed-with-profound-economic-consequences https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertilit...
- itsanaccount 3y ago
  population is still rising into 2050 by conservative estimates, and it's not counting the energy requirements per person that's exploding. on a century scale, we will fix this by either getting to space or having a lower population. but the pressure is going to crack our systems long before that. I'm still hoping we get better as pressure increases, but there's nothing in nature that says that has to be true. the system will correct itself but how we will look as a species on the other side can be vastly different.
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    Getting to space is not going to happen. We don't have the ability to live sustainably on Antarctica, which is several orders of magnitude easier logistically and technologically.
    - kwere 3y ago
      there is no economy in Antartica besides resource extraction, which is banned. Instead a space economy (logistics, tourism, manufacturing, research) its on the rise. No selfsufficient space colonies in the next 50 years for sure
      - tuatoru 3y ago
        We still don't have the ability.
- slavik81 3y ago
  Is there any reason to think that the birth rate collapse is a long-term phenomenon (e.g. one thousand years)? There will presumably still be some subcultures that will have high birth rates, and I imagine they will make up an increasingly large proportion of the population as time goes on. There's a lot of noise about the population decline for 2100, but I wonder about 2200 and beyond.
  - Tade0 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lettergram 3y ago
Bacteria cannot produce new ways to obtain resources, we can. Quite literally we’ve developed ways to grow food in space. We will be fine.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Lenski.

VelesDude 3y ago

To be fair the steepest part of the hockey stick is tiny compared to the history of out species. Heck even written texts are a comparitively new invention on that scale. The problem with overshoot is that the situation looks best after the point of sustainablility is long gone. Like flying off a ramp. The peak of heigh comes after you have left it. You could be right, and there are plenty if examples of that. It is just a case of we wont know the full story until a long time in the future.

Voultapher 3y ago

Hockey sticks you say, I have an article for you https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/. If we continue our current growth of energy use, we'll be using the entire luminosity output of the milky way galaxy in, drum roll, 1000 years. I'm skeptical if that's going to happen. To me a much likelier option is that the exponential growth stops at some point. The trajectory of the slime mold is also a hockey stick, until it isn't.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

Want to know where you can shove your hockey stick?