This is like most of the responses to Robin on OB; extreme examples of wishful thinking. None of the responses, here or there, are stable or address Robin’s point that in the very long term population will probably grow until it reaches the level of subsistence.
In the very long term, concepts like “population” may be hard to measure. The clear identifiable edges between humans may be historical accidents, sometime around the evolution of multicellularity and/or immune systems. Accidents, that with careful refactoring, might be smoothed away.
Do you count bacteria as individuals? Or is the line drawn better around bacterial colonies? For a boundary-blurring example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvox
Suppose that in the future, civilization as a whole has some aspects of being a single organism, but also some aspects of being composed of a small number of separate organisms. Suppose that each of those components are similarly blurry, and could be construed as being composed of subcomponents, and so on.
This “fractal population” scenario demonstrates that, in order for the prediction “population will probably grow until it reaches subsistence” to be falsifiable, the notions of “population” and “subsistence” need more explication.
Johnicolas: The clear identifiable edges between humans may be historical accidents, sometime around the evolution of multicellularity and/or immune systems. Accidents, that with careful refactoring, might be smoothed away.
I always felt that this very important truism is neglected around these parts. People here often construct thought experiments about the well-being of populations in the very long run. And often these thought experiments become meaningless when considering that in the long run, individua (?) can gradually become parts of larger systems and give up some or most of their free will. (Gradually is an important word here. Any numerical formalization of the well-being of a population must be robust to this, without artificial phase-transitions.)
I call this half-jokingly the “Individualism Bias” at Less Wrong, and was thinking about writing it up as a post. Frankly, it would be better if you did.
The concept of near subsistence income is robust to aggregating smaller individuals into larger individuals. However you group or divide very poor folk, they remain very poor.
I’m just trying to understand how you compute “income” and “subsistence” for entities like “earth as a whole”. From your tone it ought to be easy, but there isn’t really money, or trade, at this level of organization. Earth as a whole doesn’t buy things from other entities, not with money, nor with barter, so I don’t see how to compute those numbers. The best parallel I can see between human-scale economics and earth-scale is “sustainability”. If a human’s income exceeds subsistence, then I’d say they were in a good situation regarding sustainability. However, the ecological-footprint figures argue that earth as a whole is in a bad situation regarding sustainability.
This is like most of the responses to Robin on OB; extreme examples of wishful thinking.
Singleton isn’t. Robin both hates it and doesn’t think it’s likely. It makes me very uncomfortable… but a Singleton is clearly not subject to evolutionary pressures.
The only two that seem to have a chance of avoiding Hansonian scenarios in the very long term, IMO, are the “unlimited economic growth is possible” scenario (which requires us to be wrong about physics, AFAICT) or a very powerful and far-thinking singleton. The selection for expansion is an incredibly strong optimization process, and it could only be kept in check by a stronger optimization process with a goal of keeping it in check. But that’s not a priori impossible, nor an especially unlikely subgoal for (say) a FAI.
Given current cosmological theory, our access to negentropy is limited, so that we probably won’t get to see the effects of natural selection go to the limit as generations approach infinity.
Consider the scale of the living standard drop Robin is predicting: roughly an order of magnitude. That’s much larger than the great depression—which set the stage for WWII. A prospect of an order of magnitude drop in living standards would probably be enough to trigger wars of extermination. To put it another way, a cross between “Strong Security” and a policy by population-limiting nations to limits the populations of neighbors as well (with nukes if needed) could be stable.
This is like most of the responses to Robin on OB; extreme examples of wishful thinking. None of the responses, here or there, are stable or address Robin’s point that in the very long term population will probably grow until it reaches the level of subsistence.
In the very long term, concepts like “population” may be hard to measure. The clear identifiable edges between humans may be historical accidents, sometime around the evolution of multicellularity and/or immune systems. Accidents, that with careful refactoring, might be smoothed away.
Do you count bacteria as individuals? Or is the line drawn better around bacterial colonies? For a boundary-blurring example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvox
The Gaia hypothesis argues that our ecosystem as a whole has some aspects of homeostasis, making it in some ways similar to a single organism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
Suppose that in the future, civilization as a whole has some aspects of being a single organism, but also some aspects of being composed of a small number of separate organisms. Suppose that each of those components are similarly blurry, and could be construed as being composed of subcomponents, and so on.
This “fractal population” scenario demonstrates that, in order for the prediction “population will probably grow until it reaches subsistence” to be falsifiable, the notions of “population” and “subsistence” need more explication.
I always felt that this very important truism is neglected around these parts. People here often construct thought experiments about the well-being of populations in the very long run. And often these thought experiments become meaningless when considering that in the long run, individua (?) can gradually become parts of larger systems and give up some or most of their free will. (Gradually is an important word here. Any numerical formalization of the well-being of a population must be robust to this, without artificial phase-transitions.)
I call this half-jokingly the “Individualism Bias” at Less Wrong, and was thinking about writing it up as a post. Frankly, it would be better if you did.
The concept of near subsistence income is robust to aggregating smaller individuals into larger individuals. However you group or divide very poor folk, they remain very poor.
Very well, at what level is the earth now? At subsistence, above, or below?
I said at OB; median is 5-10 times, mean is about 20 times.
I can’t find the post on OB that you’re referring to, otherwise I would reply there.
Do these (5-20) figures disagree with estimates that humanity is consuming more “ecological services” than the rest of Earth’s ecology can renew?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint
I’m just trying to understand how you compute “income” and “subsistence” for entities like “earth as a whole”. From your tone it ought to be easy, but there isn’t really money, or trade, at this level of organization. Earth as a whole doesn’t buy things from other entities, not with money, nor with barter, so I don’t see how to compute those numbers. The best parallel I can see between human-scale economics and earth-scale is “sustainability”. If a human’s income exceeds subsistence, then I’d say they were in a good situation regarding sustainability. However, the ecological-footprint figures argue that earth as a whole is in a bad situation regarding sustainability.
The usual methods use market prices, which of course would not be available if the Earth had no internal smaller units trading.
Singleton isn’t. Robin both hates it and doesn’t think it’s likely. It makes me very uncomfortable… but a Singleton is clearly not subject to evolutionary pressures.
The only two that seem to have a chance of avoiding Hansonian scenarios in the very long term, IMO, are the “unlimited economic growth is possible” scenario (which requires us to be wrong about physics, AFAICT) or a very powerful and far-thinking singleton. The selection for expansion is an incredibly strong optimization process, and it could only be kept in check by a stronger optimization process with a goal of keeping it in check. But that’s not a priori impossible, nor an especially unlikely subgoal for (say) a FAI.
Given current cosmological theory, our access to negentropy is limited, so that we probably won’t get to see the effects of natural selection go to the limit as generations approach infinity.
Consider the scale of the living standard drop Robin is predicting: roughly an order of magnitude. That’s much larger than the great depression—which set the stage for WWII. A prospect of an order of magnitude drop in living standards would probably be enough to trigger wars of extermination. To put it another way, a cross between “Strong Security” and a policy by population-limiting nations to limits the populations of neighbors as well (with nukes if needed) could be stable.