> Or does it have to say, somehow, we are now in a special position with respect to this, or do we have to do something to accelerate the timeline? It tells me nothing on this, as far as I can tell. Except to ignore it.
Am I missing something? Of course you (or anyone else) founding a company planning to get rid of Stonehenge means you're in a special position and the argument no longer applies. You don't have to found it either; observing the existence of it, and knowing such a company didn't exist for most of the time Stonehenge existed, should be enough.
"the population has been exploding. Exponentially." Is this reflecting a 1980s claim, or is this supposed to be a result of current science? In either case, what's the exponent? 2? 1? 0.5? This sounds more like rhetoric than science. The UN said (see this NPR story at https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/nx-s1-5037684/united-nations-world-population-report) that, based on current trends, the world population will peak in about 60 years and that many countries already have a birth rate below the replacement level. If those UN statements are correct, then the population isn't growing exponentially or even arithmetically (doubling, for example).
In this context, I mean it as a general description of the world population over the course of the last several centuries (and last century), which exhibits a classic exponential growth curve. In the longer interview, I actually mentioned the UN population report and its current predictions of the population plateauing in the next few decades, but I cut it for space. The tricky thing about the plateau is that it still is a pretty high resource "requirement” — 10 billion people is a pretty high “carrying capacity.” Neither I nor Nasser are population alarmists, and both of us are pretty skeptical of the “solutions” that population alarmists tend to propose. But I also think that our current approach to growth doesn’t seem like it is all that sustainable.
This is a really deep and fascinating interview I hope to reread a couple of times. I probably agree with the statement that metaphysical discussions typically seem like an infinite time loop of zero progress and are hard to nail down. For delta-t, there may be some truth to it probabilistically, but it’s always hard to say when extrapolating. Just because the odds are low, doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and there’s no way of running the scenario again to try and see how many futures would have ended that way. It either happened that way or didn’t. Whether it was 5% likely, or 99% likely, it was a binary outcome.
I did read the entire article. Honestly, I prefer a simpler more common sense type of analysis.
A consistent pattern repeats itself throughout human history. Things go along pretty well for awhile, and then every so often human beings go bat shit crazy. The scale of destruction that occurs during the bat shit crazy periods seems to depend on what tools are available to us at the time. Those tools have changed radically over time, but human nature has not. Thus it seems very reasonable to assume another bat shit crazy period is coming, and given the tools now available to us the destruction that will result will be generally in the neighborhood of what religious texts refer to as "End Times".
I favor this kind of common sense analysis because it seems far more accessible to far more people than the more sophisticated analysis in the article above. Not that there is credible evidence that any kind of analysis will be sufficient. But if we are to analyze I would hope the following analysis might be of interest to historians of science.
We have the miracle of the modern world because over recent centuries we have more deeply embraced what can be called a "more is better" relationship with knowledge. It's become a dogma of the modern world that more knowledge is always better. This "more is better" knowledge philosophy is particularly strong in the science community.
While this "more is better" knowledge philosophy served us very well in the past, what nuclear weapons seem to be teaching us is that this "more is better" relationship with knowledge which we take for granted has become dangerously out of date. We're basically trying to run the 21st century on a knowledge philosophy left over from the 19th century. We're failing to adapt our knowledge philosophy to changing conditions, and thus risk the fate nature imposes on any creature which fails to adapt to changing conditions.
We should be asking:
QUESTION: How much knowledge and power can human beings successfully manage? (success defined as avoiding civilization collapse)
No one can provide a definitive answer to that question, but we should be able to agree that whatever our ability to manage power is, it's not unlimited. If true, then it seems inevitable that sooner or later a "more is better" relationship with knowledge will collide with human limitations.
It's typically assumed that if we are smart enough to invent something, we are also smart enough to manage it. Is that true? Is putting our civilization within minutes of total destruction an example of successful management?
A key problem we face is that our relationship with the "more is better" knowledge philosophy can be reasonably compared to the blind faith relationship our ancestors had with the divinity of Jesus philosophy of the 12th century. The "more is better" knowledge philosophy is an extremely strong dogma of the modern world. I've been writing about this for years all over the net, and when the subject is engaged at all it almost always receives very strong resistance from both professionals and members of the public.
There is another element to the threat equation which can be examined, but we will likely find confronting this part of the threat even more challenging.
If we can step out of the sophisticated analysis favored by highly educated people and look at the threat to the modern world in a straightforward common sense manner, a very simple fact presents itself. Throughout human history almost all the violence at every level of society arises from a small fraction of the human population, violent men.
And so we can describe the threat to the modern world with a simple equation.
Knowledge explosion + violent men = civilization collapse
One or both of the factors in that equation has to go. And we're not willing to talk about either.
I’ve only skimmed the article as it seems to be fairly standard fare. No disrespect but not much new information BUT worth reading. Here’s the thing… if there is a nuclear exchange the end result will be at a minimum 5B+ dead within the first year. Another 2B+ will be dead within 18 months due to starvation. The remaining 1B will survive provided they have 6-10 years worth of food - which is how long the nuclear winter will last. The world at the other end will be a far cry from what we have today. Methinks 1700s if we’re lucky. Otherwise we’ll just muddle along indefinitely IMHO. Pax
> Or does it have to say, somehow, we are now in a special position with respect to this, or do we have to do something to accelerate the timeline? It tells me nothing on this, as far as I can tell. Except to ignore it.
Am I missing something? Of course you (or anyone else) founding a company planning to get rid of Stonehenge means you're in a special position and the argument no longer applies. You don't have to found it either; observing the existence of it, and knowing such a company didn't exist for most of the time Stonehenge existed, should be enough.
"the population has been exploding. Exponentially." Is this reflecting a 1980s claim, or is this supposed to be a result of current science? In either case, what's the exponent? 2? 1? 0.5? This sounds more like rhetoric than science. The UN said (see this NPR story at https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/nx-s1-5037684/united-nations-world-population-report) that, based on current trends, the world population will peak in about 60 years and that many countries already have a birth rate below the replacement level. If those UN statements are correct, then the population isn't growing exponentially or even arithmetically (doubling, for example).
In this context, I mean it as a general description of the world population over the course of the last several centuries (and last century), which exhibits a classic exponential growth curve. In the longer interview, I actually mentioned the UN population report and its current predictions of the population plateauing in the next few decades, but I cut it for space. The tricky thing about the plateau is that it still is a pretty high resource "requirement” — 10 billion people is a pretty high “carrying capacity.” Neither I nor Nasser are population alarmists, and both of us are pretty skeptical of the “solutions” that population alarmists tend to propose. But I also think that our current approach to growth doesn’t seem like it is all that sustainable.
This is a really deep and fascinating interview I hope to reread a couple of times. I probably agree with the statement that metaphysical discussions typically seem like an infinite time loop of zero progress and are hard to nail down. For delta-t, there may be some truth to it probabilistically, but it’s always hard to say when extrapolating. Just because the odds are low, doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and there’s no way of running the scenario again to try and see how many futures would have ended that way. It either happened that way or didn’t. Whether it was 5% likely, or 99% likely, it was a binary outcome.
Really interesting stuff and great interview!
Understood almost zero.
I did read the entire article. Honestly, I prefer a simpler more common sense type of analysis.
A consistent pattern repeats itself throughout human history. Things go along pretty well for awhile, and then every so often human beings go bat shit crazy. The scale of destruction that occurs during the bat shit crazy periods seems to depend on what tools are available to us at the time. Those tools have changed radically over time, but human nature has not. Thus it seems very reasonable to assume another bat shit crazy period is coming, and given the tools now available to us the destruction that will result will be generally in the neighborhood of what religious texts refer to as "End Times".
I favor this kind of common sense analysis because it seems far more accessible to far more people than the more sophisticated analysis in the article above. Not that there is credible evidence that any kind of analysis will be sufficient. But if we are to analyze I would hope the following analysis might be of interest to historians of science.
We have the miracle of the modern world because over recent centuries we have more deeply embraced what can be called a "more is better" relationship with knowledge. It's become a dogma of the modern world that more knowledge is always better. This "more is better" knowledge philosophy is particularly strong in the science community.
While this "more is better" knowledge philosophy served us very well in the past, what nuclear weapons seem to be teaching us is that this "more is better" relationship with knowledge which we take for granted has become dangerously out of date. We're basically trying to run the 21st century on a knowledge philosophy left over from the 19th century. We're failing to adapt our knowledge philosophy to changing conditions, and thus risk the fate nature imposes on any creature which fails to adapt to changing conditions.
We should be asking:
QUESTION: How much knowledge and power can human beings successfully manage? (success defined as avoiding civilization collapse)
No one can provide a definitive answer to that question, but we should be able to agree that whatever our ability to manage power is, it's not unlimited. If true, then it seems inevitable that sooner or later a "more is better" relationship with knowledge will collide with human limitations.
It's typically assumed that if we are smart enough to invent something, we are also smart enough to manage it. Is that true? Is putting our civilization within minutes of total destruction an example of successful management?
A key problem we face is that our relationship with the "more is better" knowledge philosophy can be reasonably compared to the blind faith relationship our ancestors had with the divinity of Jesus philosophy of the 12th century. The "more is better" knowledge philosophy is an extremely strong dogma of the modern world. I've been writing about this for years all over the net, and when the subject is engaged at all it almost always receives very strong resistance from both professionals and members of the public.
There is another element to the threat equation which can be examined, but we will likely find confronting this part of the threat even more challenging.
If we can step out of the sophisticated analysis favored by highly educated people and look at the threat to the modern world in a straightforward common sense manner, a very simple fact presents itself. Throughout human history almost all the violence at every level of society arises from a small fraction of the human population, violent men.
And so we can describe the threat to the modern world with a simple equation.
Knowledge explosion + violent men = civilization collapse
One or both of the factors in that equation has to go. And we're not willing to talk about either.
I’ve only skimmed the article as it seems to be fairly standard fare. No disrespect but not much new information BUT worth reading. Here’s the thing… if there is a nuclear exchange the end result will be at a minimum 5B+ dead within the first year. Another 2B+ will be dead within 18 months due to starvation. The remaining 1B will survive provided they have 6-10 years worth of food - which is how long the nuclear winter will last. The world at the other end will be a far cry from what we have today. Methinks 1700s if we’re lucky. Otherwise we’ll just muddle along indefinitely IMHO. Pax