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.
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.