Granted, these are from biased sources, because most sources are biased. But we must balance that against our own confirmation bias. I don’t have to agree with them on their proposed solutions in order to recognize that there is a credible problem.
Scarcity growing fast enough so that it’s unreasonable to expect that technology will compensate for that.
I think it would be very worthwhile to think about what exactly would be a reasonable rate at which we can expect technology to compensate. That’s what I’m trying to say—not that the scaremongers are right, but that we don’t have good estimates for demand growth versus technological growth. Actually we have excellent estimates for demand growth, it’s the compensating technological growth rates that are problematic to accurately forecast. If we can’t reliably forecast them, I submit that the safe course of action is to pour resources into many different types of basic and applied research instead believing that the current rate of progress will suffice with absolutely no evidence (other than “been okay so far”) to back it up.
Here then.
Granted, these are from biased sources, because most sources are biased. But we must balance that against our own confirmation bias. I don’t have to agree with them on their proposed solutions in order to recognize that there is a credible problem.
I think it would be very worthwhile to think about what exactly would be a reasonable rate at which we can expect technology to compensate. That’s what I’m trying to say—not that the scaremongers are right, but that we don’t have good estimates for demand growth versus technological growth. Actually we have excellent estimates for demand growth, it’s the compensating technological growth rates that are problematic to accurately forecast. If we can’t reliably forecast them, I submit that the safe course of action is to pour resources into many different types of basic and applied research instead believing that the current rate of progress will suffice with absolutely no evidence (other than “been okay so far”) to back it up.
Let’s continue this discussion here please.