tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17908317.post8997332346474951764..comments2024-03-15T20:20:47.934-07:00Comments on Unenumerated: Staving off the Cosmic MalthusNick Szabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16820399856274245684noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17908317.post-62568235950752820232010-06-29T06:58:08.613-07:002010-06-29T06:58:08.613-07:00Don't worry. The Big Bang will come around aga...Don't worry. The Big Bang will come around again. Even if it doesn't, we won't be around for the heat-death, so let's live it up now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17908317.post-88981327027662558632009-09-27T08:43:35.397-07:002009-09-27T08:43:35.397-07:00@nick
Malthusian effects were entirely normal bef...@nick<br /><br /><i>Malthusian effects were entirely normal before the agricultural revolution ... worked on the Green Revolution).</i><br /><br />I was not well aware of that fact. If Malthusian were normal then, they become normal again.<br /><br />However, I do not think Hnason's reasoning carrier much value as physics has a tendency of being re-written about every century in previously unforeseen ways and I have yet to see a detailed prediction about the human environment* farther than a few decades and based on some systematic theoretical basis that has been proven correct (or am I wrong here as well?).<br /><br />* By "human environment", I mean the world that humans will be living in. I.e., the knowledge of physics, economic advancements, or temperature of the air. This is in contrast to humans themselves who have been predicted by quite a few people over times as large as two centuries. Here would be Tocqueville's or Carlyle's analysis of American democracy, or over a shorted period, Burnham's prediction of massively increased crime.newt0311https://www.blogger.com/profile/00275501056310821335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17908317.post-69653100655449514332009-09-26T12:00:22.077-07:002009-09-26T12:00:22.077-07:00Malthusian effects were entirely normal before the...Malthusian effects were entirely normal before the agricultural revolution that accompanied the industrial revolution in Britain, and in the 3rd World before the Green Revolution in the latter half of the 20th century. (A big h/t to Norman Borlaug who recently passed, and to my dad who also worked on the Green Revolution). Hanson and Sandberg are convincing that for current growth rates in use of materials to continue exponentially for 10,000 years there has to be vastly (far more than the mere improvement from atoms to photons I'm talking about here) more room at the bottom, or no limits on velocity at the top -- both of which violate currently known physics.<br /><br />Of course, one of my points here is that predicting the future of resources is not so simple as counting things (whether it's barrels of known oil, in a previous post, or even something seemingly so basic as atoms when were are talking about the distant future).<br /><br />Other arguments (material use may or may not become an exponentially small proportion of the value of our economy, Darwinian reproduction pressures may or may not be indefinitely overcome, etc.) are needed to address the question of whether per capital economic growth (i.e. value per capita) can continue indefinitely.nicknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17908317.post-43752756504066092972009-09-26T10:32:12.223-07:002009-09-26T10:32:12.223-07:00Wow, it amazes me how consistently meta-physicists...Wow, it amazes me how consistently meta-physicists continue to ignore historical evidence and assume (implicitly to be sure) that they are different from the past.<br /><br />It is very easy to tell how probable Hanson's theory is. We collect up the major Malthusian predictions in the past and consider how many of them worked out. Answer: almost none. Therefore, the chances of this one being important are similarly low to nil (assuming that we are going by logico-experimental reasoning here).newt0311https://www.blogger.com/profile/00275501056310821335noreply@blogger.com