That is your present position, not a good argument for it. It could be valuable as a voice of dissent, if many other people shared your position but hesitated to voice it.
My position, for example, is that resource depletion isn’t really an issue, it may only lead to some temporary hardship, but not to something catastrophic and civilization-stopping, while negative AGI is a very real show-stopper. Does my statement change your mind? If not, what’s the message of your own statement for people who disagree?
is that resource depletion isn’t really an issue, it may only lead to some temporary hardship
I think that this is overconfident. I would say that resource depletion—especially of fossil fuels—combined with war, famine, etc could permanently put us back in the stone age.
Exactly. The surface-accessible minerals are entirely gone, and pre-modern mining will have no access to what remains. Even meaningful landfill harvesting requires substantial energy and may be beyond the reach of people attempting to “pick up the pieces” of totally collapsed civilization.
Even thrown back to a stone age, the second arc of development doesn’t need to repeat the first. There are plenty of ways to systematically develop technology by other routes, especially if you don’t implement mass production for the planetary civilization in the process, working only on improving technology on small scale, up to a point of overcoming the resource problem.
Technological advance is strongly dependent on “mass production for the planetary civilization”, because otherwise most people are busy doing agriculture and don’t have time to become PhDs.
That’s only because the power of technology wasn’t realized until the industry was way under development. Roughly speaking, you can always tax everyone 10%, and have 10% of the population do science.
It’s always possible to spare if not 10% then 5% or 2%, still enough to sustain a considerable number of people. I don’t see what is the point of your argument.
Do you actually believe that 10% of the population are capable of doing meaningful science? Or that post-collapse authority figures will see value in anything we would recognize as science?
This addresses the wrong issue: the question I answered was about capability of the pre-industrial society to produce enough surplus for enough people to think professionally, while your nitpick is about a number clearly intended to serve as a feasible upper bound being too high.
I concede that a post-collapse society might successfully organize and attempt to resurrect civilization. However, what I have read regarding surface-mineral depletion and the mining industry’s forced reliance on modern energy sources leads me to believe that if our attempt at civilization sinks, the game may be permanently over.
Why would we need to mine for minerals? It’s not as though iron or copper permanently stop being usable as such when they’re alloyed into structural steel or semiconductors. The wreckage of an industrial civilization would make better ore than any natural stratum.
No, once a technological civilization has used the minerals, they’re too scattered and worn to be efficiently gathered. When the minerals are still in the planet, you can use geological knowledge to predict where they are and find them in concentrated form. Once Sentients start using them for various purposes, they lose the order and usefulness they once had.
In short, the entropy of the minerals massively increases, because the information about its distribution is destroyed. Therefore, it requires greater energy to convert back into useful form, almost certainly needing a higher energy expenditure per unit useful mineral obtained (otherwise, humans would be currently mining modern middens (aka landfills) for metals).
OTOH, when large concentrations of metal (buildings, vehicles) are disposed of, they’re almost always recycled. Many such large concentrations would survive a collapse. I’m not sure how long it would take for iron/steel buildings to mostly rust away, or how much steel would be buried safe from rust.
I do. So do a lot of other people. Because it is, in fact, a good idea. IIRC, it’s more efficient than mining, what with all the easily-accessible minerals already mined out.
Of the consequences of resource depletion, catastrophic social collapse seems to require something like famine (which it should be possible to avoid, given a bit of planning), and even then stability may be achieved once some of the population died out. Quality of life might drop significantly, due to inability to make all the stuff with present technology. But meanwhile, you don’t need a lot of resources to continue (or renew) R&D, laboratories won’t take too much stuff, only efficient services that come with economy of scale. In time, new technologies will appear that allow better and better quality of life on the resources that were inaccessible before. (And of course, at one point, AGI gets developed, leaving these issues irrelevant, at least for the survival of civilization, for either outcome.)
Quality of life might drop significantly, due to inability to make all the stuff with present technology. But meanwhile, you don’t need a lot of resources to continue (or renew) R&D, laboratories won’t take too much stuff, only efficient services that come with economy of scale. It time, new technologies will appear
Consider the following chain of events: resource depletion (in particular of fossil fuels) causes countries to fight over resources, and populations to elect more aggressive leaders, leading to global nuclear war in 2050. Worldwide famine, Gigadeath, and a long new dark age follow.
Suppose this is followed by a massive famine which kills, say, 90% of the world’s population. This could easily cause every single advanced society in the world to collapse and revert to medieval style fiefdoms circa 2075. Such societies will not have access to fossil fuels, and therefore they won’t have modern agriculture. Population density therefore plummets to medieval levels, with people feeding themselves using subsistence agriculture. You then have a medieval population without fossil fuels and therefore it is harder to get the industrial revolution going again. Though, on balance, it seems more likely than not that technological civilization would rise again eventually.; and on this second take, perhaps humanity would be more careful, taking care to see where they went wrong the first time. The huge amount of data and artefacts stored around the world would surely allow archaeologists of the 23rd or 24th century to piece together what happened.
I suppose that my true objection to this scenario is that I would die, almost for certain.
In fact, such a scenario seems to me to be a very likely route to eventual human colonization of the stars.
Resources don’t become scarce overnight. It happens a little more slowly, the price of the scarce resource rises. People find ways to use it more efficiently; they find or invent substitutes.
Nor would unprecedented levels of resource scarcity be likely to lead to a war between major powers. Our political systems may be imperfect, but the logic of mutually assured destruction would be clear and compelling even to the general public.
Nor would unprecedented levels of resource scarcity be likely to lead to a war between major powers. Our political systems may be imperfect, but the logic of mutually assured destruction would be clear and compelling even to the general public.
This statement lacks evidence to support it; we have been close to war between nuclear powers in the past; I don’t think that either of us know whether resource shortage would lead to nuclear war. Severe resource shortage makes people desperate and makes them do silly things that aren’t really in their interest, just as shortage of sci-fi future progress is making ascilifeform desperate and advocate doing things that aren’t really in his/her interest.
I’m not saying it would, but I’m not saying it wouldn’t, and I don’t have a good way of assigning probabilities.
Nuclear war might escalate in a way that those who started it didn’t predict.
I feel that in this argument, the onus is on you to provide evidence that most people are ignoring a serious risk.
I don’t have a good way of assigning probabilities either, but I feel obliged to try.
I estimate the probability that scarcity of natural resources leads to a fifty percent decline in real GDP per capita in many wealthy countries in the next fifty years is less than one percent.
Conditional on my being wrong, I would be very confused about the world, but at this point would still assign less than a five percent risk of large scale nuclear war between major powers which are both aware there is a very high risk of mutual destruction.
I don’t think I’m looking at the world through rose colored glasses. I think the risk of small scale nuclear conflict, or threats such as the use of a bioengineered virus by terrorists, is much greater.
I estimate the probability that scarcity of natural resources leads to a fifty percent decline in real GDP per capita in many wealthy countries in the next fifty years is less than one percent.
Ok. What’s your expertise? Are you just generally well informed, or are you a business person or economist etc?
I haven’t earned a great deal of authority on these topics. I am a phd student in sociology who reads a lot of economics. As far as I can tell, economists don’t seem to think we should worry that scarcity of natural resources could lead to such major economic problems. I’d be interested to know what the market “thinks.” What investment strategy would profit in such a scenario?
he logic of mutually assured destruction would be clear and compelling even to the general public
When was the last time a government polled the general public before plunging the nation into war?
Now that I think about it, the American public, for instance, has already voted for petrowar: with its dollars, by purchasing SUVs and continuing to expand the familiar suburban madness which fuels the cult of the automobile.
Do you agree that you hold a small minority opinion?
Yes, of course.
Do you have any references where the arguments are spelled out in greater detail?
I was persuaded by the writings of one Dmitry Orlov. His work focuses on the impending collapse of the U.S.A. in particular, but I believe that much of what he wrote is applicable to the modern economy at large.
catastrophic social collapse seems to require something like famine
Not necessarily. When the last petroleum is refined, rest assured that the tanks and warplanes will be the very last vehicles to run out of gas. And bullets will continue to be produced long after it is no longer possible to buy a steel fork.
R&D… efficient services… economy of scale… new technologies will appear
Your belief that something like present technological advancement could continue after a cataclysmic collapse boggles my mind. The one historical precedent we have—the Dark Ages—teaches the exact opposite lesson. Reversion to barbarism—and a barbarism armed with the remnants of the finest modern weaponry, this time around—is the more likely outcome.
Your belief that something like present technological advancement could continue after a cataclysmic collapse boggles my mind. The one historical precedent we have—the Dark Ages—teaches the exact opposite lesson.
IIRC, Robert Wright argued in his book NonZero that technological development had stagnated when the Roman Empire reached its apex, and that the dark ages actual brought several important innovations. These included better harnesses, better plows, and nailed iron horse shoes, all of which increased agricultural yield. The Dark Ages also saw improvements to water-wheel technology, which led to much wider use if it.
He also makes the case that all the fractured polities led to greater innovations in the social and economic spheres as well.
The key is that some group would set up some form of government. My best guess is that governments which established rule of law, including respect for private property, would become more powerful relative to other governments. Technological progress would begin again.
Also, see what I just wrote to Roko about why resource scarcity is unlikely to be as a great a problem as you think and why wars and famines are unlikely to affect wealthy countries as a result of resource scarcity.
belief that something like present technological advancement could continue after a cataclysmic collapse boggles my mind.
It could—and most probably would—rise up again, eventually. Rising up from the half-buried wreckage of modern civilization is easier than building it from scratch.
But I don’t go as far as Vladimir and say it’s virtually guaranteed. One scenario is that the survivors could all fall to a new religion that preached that technology itself was evil. This religion might suppress technological development for longer than Christianity suppressed it in the dark ages—which was 1000 years. I still think it is likely that technology would eventually make it through, but perhaps it would be used to create a global totalitarian state?
It could—and most probably would—rise up again, eventually. Rising up from the half-buried wreckage of modern civilization is easier than building it from scratch.
Not necessarily. To be blunt, we’ve basically exhausted practically all the useful non-renewal natural resources (ores, etc.) that a civilization could access with 1200s-level technology. They’d have to mine our ruins for metals and such—and much of it is going to be locked up in forms that are completely useless.
Of course it’s nowhere near the guaranteed—notice, for example, that I excluded all other catastrophic risks from consideration in that scenario, such as crazy wars for scraps, only looking at the effects of shortage of resources stopping much of the industry, because of dependencies that weren’t ensured.
That is your present position, not a good argument for it. It could be valuable as a voice of dissent, if many other people shared your position but hesitated to voice it.
My position, for example, is that resource depletion isn’t really an issue, it may only lead to some temporary hardship, but not to something catastrophic and civilization-stopping, while negative AGI is a very real show-stopper. Does my statement change your mind? If not, what’s the message of your own statement for people who disagree?
I think that this is overconfident. I would say that resource depletion—especially of fossil fuels—combined with war, famine, etc could permanently put us back in the stone age.
Exactly. The surface-accessible minerals are entirely gone, and pre-modern mining will have no access to what remains. Even meaningful landfill harvesting requires substantial energy and may be beyond the reach of people attempting to “pick up the pieces” of totally collapsed civilization.
Even thrown back to a stone age, the second arc of development doesn’t need to repeat the first. There are plenty of ways to systematically develop technology by other routes, especially if you don’t implement mass production for the planetary civilization in the process, working only on improving technology on small scale, up to a point of overcoming the resource problem.
Technological advance is strongly dependent on “mass production for the planetary civilization”, because otherwise most people are busy doing agriculture and don’t have time to become PhDs.
That’s only because the power of technology wasn’t realized until the industry was way under development. Roughly speaking, you can always tax everyone 10%, and have 10% of the population do science.
You’re assuming that 90% of the population can spare 10%. If things were to revert to subsistence-level farming that might not be possible.
It’s always possible to spare if not 10% then 5% or 2%, still enough to sustain a considerable number of people. I don’t see what is the point of your argument.
Do you actually believe that 10% of the population are capable of doing meaningful science? Or that post-collapse authority figures will see value in anything we would recognize as science?
This addresses the wrong issue: the question I answered was about capability of the pre-industrial society to produce enough surplus for enough people to think professionally, while your nitpick is about a number clearly intended to serve as a feasible upper bound being too high.
See also: Least convenient possible world.
Thank you for the link.
I concede that a post-collapse society might successfully organize and attempt to resurrect civilization. However, what I have read regarding surface-mineral depletion and the mining industry’s forced reliance on modern energy sources leads me to believe that if our attempt at civilization sinks, the game may be permanently over.
Why would we need to mine for minerals? It’s not as though iron or copper permanently stop being usable as such when they’re alloyed into structural steel or semiconductors. The wreckage of an industrial civilization would make better ore than any natural stratum.
No, once a technological civilization has used the minerals, they’re too scattered and worn to be efficiently gathered. When the minerals are still in the planet, you can use geological knowledge to predict where they are and find them in concentrated form. Once Sentients start using them for various purposes, they lose the order and usefulness they once had.
In short, the entropy of the minerals massively increases, because the information about its distribution is destroyed. Therefore, it requires greater energy to convert back into useful form, almost certainly needing a higher energy expenditure per unit useful mineral obtained (otherwise, humans would be currently mining modern middens (aka landfills) for metals).
OTOH, when large concentrations of metal (buildings, vehicles) are disposed of, they’re almost always recycled. Many such large concentrations would survive a collapse. I’m not sure how long it would take for iron/steel buildings to mostly rust away, or how much steel would be buried safe from rust.
We do. It’s called “recycling”.
You should recycle.
I do. So do a lot of other people. Because it is, in fact, a good idea. IIRC, it’s more efficient than mining, what with all the easily-accessible minerals already mined out.
Possible, but again your reply doesn’t contain an argument, it can’t change anyone’s beliefs.
I agree with the opinion presented in this comment.
This is why upvoting was invented.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/
I disagree with this comment.
Of the consequences of resource depletion, catastrophic social collapse seems to require something like famine (which it should be possible to avoid, given a bit of planning), and even then stability may be achieved once some of the population died out. Quality of life might drop significantly, due to inability to make all the stuff with present technology. But meanwhile, you don’t need a lot of resources to continue (or renew) R&D, laboratories won’t take too much stuff, only efficient services that come with economy of scale. In time, new technologies will appear that allow better and better quality of life on the resources that were inaccessible before. (And of course, at one point, AGI gets developed, leaving these issues irrelevant, at least for the survival of civilization, for either outcome.)
Consider the following chain of events: resource depletion (in particular of fossil fuels) causes countries to fight over resources, and populations to elect more aggressive leaders, leading to global nuclear war in 2050. Worldwide famine, Gigadeath, and a long new dark age follow.
Suppose this is followed by a massive famine which kills, say, 90% of the world’s population. This could easily cause every single advanced society in the world to collapse and revert to medieval style fiefdoms circa 2075. Such societies will not have access to fossil fuels, and therefore they won’t have modern agriculture. Population density therefore plummets to medieval levels, with people feeding themselves using subsistence agriculture. You then have a medieval population without fossil fuels and therefore it is harder to get the industrial revolution going again. Though, on balance, it seems more likely than not that technological civilization would rise again eventually.; and on this second take, perhaps humanity would be more careful, taking care to see where they went wrong the first time. The huge amount of data and artefacts stored around the world would surely allow archaeologists of the 23rd or 24th century to piece together what happened.
I suppose that my true objection to this scenario is that I would die, almost for certain.
In fact, such a scenario seems to me to be a very likely route to eventual human colonization of the stars.
Resources don’t become scarce overnight. It happens a little more slowly, the price of the scarce resource rises. People find ways to use it more efficiently; they find or invent substitutes.
Nor would unprecedented levels of resource scarcity be likely to lead to a war between major powers. Our political systems may be imperfect, but the logic of mutually assured destruction would be clear and compelling even to the general public.
This statement lacks evidence to support it; we have been close to war between nuclear powers in the past; I don’t think that either of us know whether resource shortage would lead to nuclear war. Severe resource shortage makes people desperate and makes them do silly things that aren’t really in their interest, just as shortage of sci-fi future progress is making ascilifeform desperate and advocate doing things that aren’t really in his/her interest.
I’m not saying it would, but I’m not saying it wouldn’t, and I don’t have a good way of assigning probabilities.
Nuclear war might escalate in a way that those who started it didn’t predict.
I feel that in this argument, the onus is on you to provide evidence that most people are ignoring a serious risk.
I don’t have a good way of assigning probabilities either, but I feel obliged to try.
I estimate the probability that scarcity of natural resources leads to a fifty percent decline in real GDP per capita in many wealthy countries in the next fifty years is less than one percent.
Conditional on my being wrong, I would be very confused about the world, but at this point would still assign less than a five percent risk of large scale nuclear war between major powers which are both aware there is a very high risk of mutual destruction.
I don’t think I’m looking at the world through rose colored glasses. I think the risk of small scale nuclear conflict, or threats such as the use of a bioengineered virus by terrorists, is much greater.
Ok. What’s your expertise? Are you just generally well informed, or are you a business person or economist etc?
I haven’t earned a great deal of authority on these topics. I am a phd student in sociology who reads a lot of economics. As far as I can tell, economists don’t seem to think we should worry that scarcity of natural resources could lead to such major economic problems. I’d be interested to know what the market “thinks.” What investment strategy would profit in such a scenario?
I don’t know.
When was the last time a government polled the general public before plunging the nation into war?
Now that I think about it, the American public, for instance, has already voted for petrowar: with its dollars, by purchasing SUVs and continuing to expand the familiar suburban madness which fuels the cult of the automobile.
I encourage you to write more serious comments… or find some other place to rant.
Please attack my arguments. I truly mean what I say. I can see how you might have read me as a troll, though.
In the next century I think it is unlikely
resource scarcity will dramatically lower economic growth across the world, or
competition for resources will lead to devastating war between major powers, e.g. U.S. and China, because each country has too much to lose.
I believe my opinions are shared by most economists, political scientists, politicians. Do you agree that you hold a small minority opinion?
Do you have any references where the arguments are spelled out in greater detail?
Yes, of course.
I was persuaded by the writings of one Dmitry Orlov. His work focuses on the impending collapse of the U.S.A. in particular, but I believe that much of what he wrote is applicable to the modern economy at large.
Thankfully, it’s not up to you.
For the record, what about that comment struck you as unserious?
Not necessarily. When the last petroleum is refined, rest assured that the tanks and warplanes will be the very last vehicles to run out of gas. And bullets will continue to be produced long after it is no longer possible to buy a steel fork.
Your belief that something like present technological advancement could continue after a cataclysmic collapse boggles my mind. The one historical precedent we have—the Dark Ages—teaches the exact opposite lesson. Reversion to barbarism—and a barbarism armed with the remnants of the finest modern weaponry, this time around—is the more likely outcome.
IIRC, Robert Wright argued in his book NonZero that technological development had stagnated when the Roman Empire reached its apex, and that the dark ages actual brought several important innovations. These included better harnesses, better plows, and nailed iron horse shoes, all of which increased agricultural yield. The Dark Ages also saw improvements to water-wheel technology, which led to much wider use if it.
He also makes the case that all the fractured polities led to greater innovations in the social and economic spheres as well.
The key is that some group would set up some form of government. My best guess is that governments which established rule of law, including respect for private property, would become more powerful relative to other governments. Technological progress would begin again.
Also, see what I just wrote to Roko about why resource scarcity is unlikely to be as a great a problem as you think and why wars and famines are unlikely to affect wealthy countries as a result of resource scarcity.
It could—and most probably would—rise up again, eventually. Rising up from the half-buried wreckage of modern civilization is easier than building it from scratch.
But I don’t go as far as Vladimir and say it’s virtually guaranteed. One scenario is that the survivors could all fall to a new religion that preached that technology itself was evil. This religion might suppress technological development for longer than Christianity suppressed it in the dark ages—which was 1000 years. I still think it is likely that technology would eventually make it through, but perhaps it would be used to create a global totalitarian state?
Not necessarily. To be blunt, we’ve basically exhausted practically all the useful non-renewal natural resources (ores, etc.) that a civilization could access with 1200s-level technology. They’d have to mine our ruins for metals and such—and much of it is going to be locked up in forms that are completely useless.
Of course it’s nowhere near the guaranteed—notice, for example, that I excluded all other catastrophic risks from consideration in that scenario, such as crazy wars for scraps, only looking at the effects of shortage of resources stopping much of the industry, because of dependencies that weren’t ensured.