> 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.
Birthrates are dropping in most of the world; it looks like the peak population won’t get too much beyond 10 billion and then start to fall from there. That causes its own problems, though, like how to support social programs with a shrinking working population.
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’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.
Birthrates are dropping in most of the world; it looks like the peak population won’t get too much beyond 10 billion and then start to fall from there. That causes its own problems, though, like how to support social programs with a shrinking working population.
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!
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