Thesis #16: Technology cannot stop collapse.
by Jason GodeskyInvariably, the threat of our own civilization’s collapse is readily answered with the hope of technological progress. Progressivists deny that we face any systemic problems, only technical problems, with technical solutions. As we have seen in the previous theses, this is most certainly not the case, but the question remains: could these systemic problems be solved through the proper application of technology? Technophiliacs and techno-utopians often wax poetic for the prospects of our technological future. Science fiction like Star Trek often portrays this vision, where technology has solved all of our problems. But ultimately, such hopes are statements of belief, not fact–and a belief that is not very well-grounded in reality, at that.
Primitivists often define themselves in regard to their dim view of technology, but they inherit from this a Romantic idea of “technology” as referring solely to the metal machines of the Industrial Revoluton. The genus Homo is separated from the Australopithecines by our use of tools. The creation of stone technology led to handedness, and was closely related to an expansion in cranium capacity, and the development of the areas of the brain used for language. Humans make technology, but to a significant extent, technology also made us. A complete rejection of all technology is a rejection of ourselves. Most of the great apes make and use tools. Even crows have technology. Obviously, there are sustainable levels of technology.
However, since the Enlightenment, most of our thinking about technology has been set by a different idea, the notion of unbounded progress, which is just as flawed. Foragers evidence little concern for the sweep of history. There is a certain sense of a timeless present in many such societies. Very often, there is only two real time periods–the present, and the mythic past. The Australian concept of the Dreamtime highlights how different forager conceptions of time can be–the Dreamtime is, simultaneously, the distant past, and coterminous with the present. Other societies, primarily agrarian, developed ideas of cyclical time. The best known of these systems is likely the Mayan and Aztec calendars, that charted out history in the same kind of cycles that governed the passage of days, seasons and years on a larger, historical level. Much more prevalent in past civilizations, however, has been a sense of degradation, of a lost “golden age,” and the impression that the present is inferior to the past. This idea is found strongly in Greek and Hebrew beliefs. The idea of history as the story of human progress is largely a result of the Enlightenment, though it would be a mistake to claim it was entirely unrepresented before that. Robert Nisbet’s “The Idea of Progress” highlights the pre-modern history of this notion. He concludes:
As I have shown, the Western idea of progress was born of Greek imagery, religious in foundation; the imagery of growth. It attained its fullness within Christianity, starting with the Church Fathers, especially Augustine. Central to any genuinely Christian form of religion is the Pauline emphasis upon hope: hope to be given gratification in this world as well as the next. Basically, the Christian creed, its concept of Original Sin notwithstanding, is inseparable from a philosophy of history that is overwhelmingly optimistic about man’s estate in this world and the next, provided only that due deference and commitment to God are given.
This highlights the essentially religious nature of such belief in progress, no less religious than previous ideas about history as regress, or history as cyclical. While science itself may be wholly secular, the religious faith in science–and the salvific hope of future progress, thanks to science–is anything but. August Comte was more honest with himself than most of his contemporary fellows in his attempts to found the “Positivist Church.”
In Collapse, Diamond refutes a number of “one-liner” objections, including “Technology will solve our problems,” saying:
This is an expression of faith about the future, and therefore based on a supposed track record of technology having solved more problems than it created in the recent past. Underlying this expression of faith is the implicit assumption that, from tomorrow onwards, technology will function primarily to solve existing problems and will cease to create new problems. Those with such faith also assume that the new technologies now under discussion will succeed, and that they will do so quickly enough to make a big difference soon. In extended conversations that I had with two of America’s most successful and best-known businessmen and financiers, both of them eloquently described to me emerging technologies and financial instruments that differ fundamentally from those of the past and that, they confidently predicted, would solve our environmental problems.
But actual experience is the opposite of this assumed track record. Some dreamed-of new technologies succeed, while others don’t. Those that do succeed typically take a few decades to develop and phase in widely: think of gas heating, electric lighting, cars and airplanes, television, computers, and so on. New technologies, whether or not they succeed in solving the problem that they were designed to solve, regularly create unanticipated new problems. Technological solutions to environmental problems are routinely far more expensive than preventive measures to avoid creating the problem in the first place: for example, the billions of dollars of damages and clean-up costs associated with major oil spills, compared to the modest cost of safety measures effective at minimizing the risks of a major oil spill.
Most of all, advances in technology just increase our ability to do things, which may be either for the better or for the worse. All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology. The rapid advances in technology during the twentieth century have been creating difficult new problems faster than they have been solving old problems: that’s why we’re in the situation in which we now find ourselves. What makes you think that, as of January 1, 2006, for the first time in human history, technology will miraculously stop causing new unanticipated problems while it solves just the problems that it previously produced?
Diamond is touching on the first factor that makes technical solutions so ambiguous: unintended consequences. Diamond goes on to discuss the effects that CFC’s have had on our atmosphere, but other examples abound–and not all of them negative. Benedictine monks invented the clock to help maintain their schedule of prayers, but, as Mumford put it, “Time-keeping passed into time-serving and time-accounting and time-rationing. As this took place, Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.” Johannes Gutenberg was a devout Catholic, but, as Diamond discusses in Guns, Germs & Steel, the printing press helped create a shared linguistic world which, manipulated by politicians lke Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, resulted in the myth of the “Nation.” Bronze casting techniques invented for church bells revolutionized warfare by allowing the producton of bronze cannons. Science historian James Burke’s 1978 television documentary series, Connections, presented the entire history of invention in terms of such unintended consequences, with the unintended consequences of one invention precipitating the next.
The problem with unintended consequences, however, is that since they are unintended, they can be good, bad, or indifferent. While we can certainly characterize any of the unintended consequences above as “good,” there are others which are much less clear. The hygenic advances of the 1900s reduced diseases like cholera, cleaned up the cities, and had more to do with the extension of the industrialized life span than any of our investments in medical technology. However, the cities became so clean, it allowed a previously endemic disease to become epidemic. For the first two weeks after birth, a baby still has the mother’s antibodies in its bloodstream. After two weeks, those are cycled out, and the baby relies on its own antibodies. Any pathogens the baby encounters in those two weeks will be counteracted by the mother’s antibodies, and so, carries a low risk of actual illness. However, that exposure will allow the baby to begin creating her own antibodies to it. This is why poliovirus spent so many millennia endemic to humans. It is a relatively weak virus, but once the cities became sufficiently clean and babies were no longer encountering it in their first two weeks, an entire generaton grew up with no immunity to polio whatsoever. Though polio never achieved the truly terrifying numbers we normally associate with an epidemic, the personal toll the disease took on its victims created a pervasive aura of fear. The polio epidemics of the twentieth century were an unintended consequence of the hygenic advances of the decades prior.
This set the stage for what is perhaps the most clear-cut success story of Western biomedicine, alongside the eradication of smallpox: the polio vaccine. Yet the polio vaccine is not without its own unintended consequences. Though far from proven, it is possible that the research for a polio vaccine created AIDS. We know that the monkey tissue cultures used to develop the polio vaccine (for which Ender recieved the Nobel Prize in 1954, the same year Jonas Salk used the technique to develop the first working vaccine) introduced a number of simian virii (SV’s) into the human population on a large scale for the first time. It is known now, for example, that SV40 went undetected in the first years of the polio vaccine, contributing to many patients developing cancer later in life. This, too, was an unintended consequence–SV40 went undetected because is was unknown at the time, and thus, impossible to test for. There is some indication that AIDS may have been caused similarly: by introducing a simian virus into a large human population, early polio vaccine trials in the Belgian Congo may have provided the perfect environment for such a simian virus to jump the species barrier and mutate into HIV as we know it today. To date, this theory has not yet been properly investigated, so conclusive evidence is lacking.
Bill Joy was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems in 1984, its chief scientist until 2003, and the programmer responsible for BSD. In short, he is one of the greatest innovators of new technology in computer engineering–itself the field of technology which still shows the greatest potential for future growth. Yet Joy’s 2000 article for Wired magazine (according to Wikipedia, the “Bible” of techno-utopians), “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” has become a significant work for primitivist thought. After a quotation from the Unabomber’s manifesto, Joy writes:
I am no apologist for Kaczynski. His bombs killed three people during a 17-year terror campaign and wounded many others. One of his bombs gravely injured my friend David Gelernter, one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time. Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber’s next target.
Kaczynski’s actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it.
Kaczynski’s dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well-known problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy’s law - “Anything that can go wrong, will.” (Actually, this is Finagle’s law, which in itself shows that Finagle was right.) Our overuse of antibiotics has led to what may be the biggest such problem so far: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant and much more dangerous bacteria. Similar things happened when attempts to eliminate malarial mosquitoes using DDT caused them to acquire DDT resistance; malarial parasites likewise acquired multi-drug-resistant genes.
Unintended consequences, however, are hit and miss. As unlikely as it is that no future technology will ever have unintended consequences when so many past inventions have, such consequences are sometimes beneficial. If this were the only limitations to technology’s role, then we would merely have to be more careful with our innovation; it would not eliminate the possibility of a technical solution. However, unintended consequences is not the only, nor even the most pressing, limitation that technology faces.
William Stanley Jevons is a seminal figure in economics. He helped formulate the very theory of marginal returns which, as we saw in thesis #14, governs complexity in general, and technological innovation specifically. In his 1865 book, The Coal Question, Jevons noted that the consumption of coal in England soared after James Watt introduced his steam engine. Steam engines had been used as toys as far back as ancient Greece, and Thomas Newcomen’s earlier design was suitable for industrial use. Watt’s invention merely made more efficient use of coal, compared to Newcomen’s. This made the engine more economical, and so, touched off the Industrial Revolution–and in so doing, created the very same modern, unprecedented attitudes towards technology and invention that are now presented as hope against collapse. In the book, Jevons formulated a principle now known as “Jevons Paradox.” It is not a paradox in the logical sense, but it is certainly counterintuitive. Jevons Paradox states that any technology which allows for the more efficient use of a given resource will result in greater use of that resource, not less. By increasing the efficiency of a resource’s use, the marginal utility of that resource is increased more than enough to compensate for the fall. This is why innovations in computer technology have made for longer working hours, as employers expect that an employee with a technology that cuts his work in half can do three times more work. This is why more fuel-efficient vehicles have resulted in longer commutes, and the suburban sprawl that creates an automotive-centric culture, with overall higher petroleum use.
Most of the technologies offered as solutions to collapse expect Jevons Paradox not to hold. They recognize the crisis we face with deplenishing resources, but hope to solve that problem by making the use of that technology more efficient. Jevons Paradox illustrates precisely what the unintended consequence of such a technology will be–in these cases, precisely the opposite of the intended effect. Any technology that aims to save our resources by making more efficient use of them can only result in depleting those resources even more quickly.
The best hope technology can offer for staving off collapse is to tap a new energy subsidy, just as the Industrial Revolution tapped our current fossil fuel subsidy. For instance, the energy we currently use in petroleum could be matched by covering 1% of the United States’ land area in photovoltaic cells. However, the hope that human population will simply “level off” due to modernization is in vain (see thesis #4); human population is a function of food supply, and population will always rise to the energy level available. The shift to photovoltaics, like the shift to fossil fuels, is merely an invitation to continued growth–another “win” in the “Food Race.” If our energy needs can be met by covering just 1% of the United States with photovoltaic cells, why not cover 2% and double our energy? Of course, then our population will double, and we’ll need to expand again.
Such technological advances can postpone collapse, but they cannot stop it. However, there is also a cost associated with such postponements: each one makes collapse, when it eventually does happen, exponentially more destructive. Had the the timber crisis of the 1600s resulted in the collapse of Renaissance Western Europe, millions would have died, and Europe would have been ecologically ruined. New energy sources were found in New World colonies, and coal. Collapse was postponed, but the toll of collapse was increased by an order of magnitude. Now, we face a collapse that will kill billions rather than simply millions; rather than simply ravaging Europe, we have set off the single worst mass extinction in the history of the planet and set off massive global climate change, reversing a cooling trend that has guided the earth through geological time. A shift to photovoltaics would limit us only when we have covered so much of the earth’s surface that there is no longer sufficient sunlight for green plants to grow–thus breaking the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle, and damning humanity to extinction as we suffocate on our own breath.
Unless, of course, technology can deploy a solution to that, as well. That is the promise the techno-salvationist offers: to solve every problem just in the nick of time, thanks to the market forces that compel innovation, and eventually, to leave the earth behind and move from planet to planet, consuming the resources we need, and moving on. Most of them say we will “sow life throughout the universe” with such a plan, but they’re neglecting a very basic fact: that our civilization is not devastating our planet because it is evil, but because these problems are systemic. Every resource has some rate at which it is replenished. Sometimes, that rate is “zero,” but even fossil fuels are replenished over a sufficiently long time scale. Thus, the distinction between sustainable and unsustainable is the rate at which that resource is consumed–whether it is consumed faster, or slower, than it is replenished. Because complexity creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop (see thesis #12), complexity is a function of energy, and energy is obtained from resources, even a complex society that begins with sustainable practices must eventually become unsustainable as its complexity increases, and its need for more energy grows. Thus, civilization can never spread life through the universe. The brightest hope the techno-salvationist can offer is to become the alien villains of science fiction movies like Independence Day.
Fortunately, such a nightmare scenario, like “the Singularity,” are merely fits of techno-salvationist hyperbole. The Singularity, sometimes called “the Rapture of the Nerds,” predicts that the exponential curve of technological development will continue until we reach that point where the graph most resembles a straight, vertical line, and technological innovation comes at a pace too great for anyone to predict.
The problem with this scenario is that it only looks at a small part of the graph. If we see it in its whole, we see that technological invention is not following a graph of exponential growth at all–but a curve of diminishing marginal returns. We saw this in thesis #14, and in the previous thesis, we saw that we have passed the point of diminishing returns. Facile excitement about “the Singularity” is engendered by such ideas as “Moore’s Law” (”computer chip performance doubles roughly every 18 months”), which remains “true” only because computer technology is younger than most other forms, and so is one of the very few areas of technological innovaton still seeing significant activity–because computer technology, unlike technology in general, has not yet reached the point of diminishing returns. However, even here, Moore’s Law is beginning to fail. In “The Lives and Death of Moore’s Law,” Ilkka Tuomi writes:
Contrary to popular claims, it appears that the common versions of Moore’s Law have not been valid during the last decades. As semiconductors are becoming important in economy and society, Moore’s Law is now becoming an increasingly misleading predictor of future developments.
In a Business Week article, the difficulties of maintaining that pace–and the threat of diminishing returns being reached–is raised:
Now more than ever, though, upholding Moore’s Law will require imagination. So far chip companies have relied mostly on one clever trick: They shrink the transistors on chips so that electrons have less distance to travel, thereby speeding up the processing of data. But that trick is getting harder to perform. In the 1990s, shrinking led reliably to faster speeds. It was “the cream-puff era,” says Gary Smith, chief analyst at Gartner Dataquest (IT) in San Jose, Calif. Today, though, circuits are packed so closely that chips are heating up, and performance is starting to suffer. That’s one reason giants such as Intel Corp., No. 52 on this year’s Info Tech 100, and IBM, No. 44, have fallen behind schedule in launching new generations of microprocessors in recent years.
Even so, chipmakers think they can still pull off a few more generations of shrinking before they hit the wall. They’re trying new materials and production tools, and most experts see an orderly progression deep into nanotechnology. Today’s circuit lines measure about 90 nanometers in width — or 90 billionths of a meter. This year and next they’ll go down to 65 nm, then 45 nm by 2010, 32 nm by 2013, and 22 nm by 2016, says International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, an industry research group. After that, says Paolo A. Gargini, Intel’s director for technology strategy, “it’s unclear what will come next.”
Computer technology is unique in that it has not yet reached the point of diminishing returns, but technology in and of itself most certainly has. Our greatest inventiveness is behind us, not in front of us. Technological innovations will continue to be made, but they will continue to be more rare, more modest, and more expensive. Eventually, even computer technology will suffer this fate, for it, too, is subject to diminishing returns. This means that the likelihood of a “techno-fix” is small, and growing smaller.
Ultimately, though, technology can never stop collapse because collapse is caused by greater complexity, and technology is one facet of complexity. The diminishing marginal returns of complexity make a society susceptible to all manner of various proximate causes for collapse, including invasion, ecological devastation, and others. Technological solutions address the proximate causes of collapse, but they do so only by exascerbating the ultimate cause of collapse, by introducing still greater complexity.
Technology is part of the problem we face, not because technology is, in itself, “bad,” but because the accumulated unintended consequences of those technologies–especially Jevons Paradox–have continued to hound us. Technology can provide momentry relief or put off the inevitable, but only by compounding the problem still further. The crisis of too much complexity can never be solved by creating still more complexity, just as you can’t save your burning house by spraying gasoline on it. Ultimately, what we face is a systemic problem. No technical solution is possible to systemic problems; they can only be solved by changing the system.
Two things I just want to add:
1. Often, technology and energy are confused and intermixed. Even if the technology could be found to fix all our problems, what would power it?
2. I want to see a world where people look at a given piece of technology, all of its many attachments, and think, “Is this sustainable? Does this represent a net savings of labor and time? And if not, how can we get rid of it?”
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 3 November 2005 @ 1:40 AM
The techno-salvationist viewpoint is limited to only of the upside of the bell curve of diminishing returns. Technology, at this stage, coming so fast and furious and widespread - is compressed (complex) to more resemble a spike, or a nearly vertical peak - rather than a bell curve. They fail to expand their view of the whole curve (spike), and thus fail to see the equally rapid crash beyond the razor sharp peak. It’s nearly impossible not to overshoot, into collapse…
Comment by JCamasto — 3 November 2005 @ 1:53 AM
If resource is scarce, wouldn’t Jevon’s paradox break down?
If there was very little coal, it wouldn’t matter how efficient Watt’s engine was, it would still not be economical to produce. If there is only one ton of uranium left, it doesn’t matter if one or two reactors can work on it.
If I am starving to death, and somehow I figured out how to increase food efficiency and starve slower, that wouldn’t impel me to produce children to starve with me, because I’d still be starving.
Only if I figured out how to stop starving.
When oil production is past peak, civilization will begin starving. Efficiencies will slow down the energy starvation, but will not stop civilization from starving.
Computer technology came dangerously close to producing artificial reasoning capacity that needs less energy than all the humans, and will not need a lot of humans. Cybernetic organisms could be developed, that could operate on sunlight and require very little minerals and nutrients. Apparently, there is not enough resources to increase complexity to this level. Ultimately, the techno-salvationists come to the point that humans are the problem in the current system and the ultimate technological solution is replacing most humans with a superior organism, capable of withstanding even greater complexity.
Comment by _Gi — 3 November 2005 @ 11:25 AM
Not quite. What you have are two different factors. Scarcity means low supply. Supply and demand set price. Low supply will raise price, and thus lower demand.
A more efficient technology will make the marginal utilty of the resource greater, so demaned will increase rather than decrease.
If both are in play, as you suggest, then both are quite true, so the actual result depends on which one is stronger. How much more efficient is the technology? How scarce is the resource? If it’s a modest efficiency increase, and the resource supply is dropping precipitously, you might see lower demand–not because Jevons Paradox has somehow magically been suspended, but because its positive effect on demand is quite modest, while the negative effect on demand of low supply is much stronger. Even so, demand will still be slightly higher than it otherwise would have been just with low supply.
In pure math terms, -10 + 5 is still negative, but that doesn’t mean that 5 = 0.
Having written quite a few AI’s …. no. No, not nearly so much. AI is still all smoke and mirrors, and probably always will be.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 November 2005 @ 11:33 AM
“However, the hope that human population will simply “level off” due to modernization is in vain (see thesis #4); human population is a function of food supply, and population will always rise to the energy level available.”
“Jevons Paradox states that any technology which allows for the more efficient use of a given resource will result in greater use of that resource, not less. By increasing the efficiency of a resource’s use, the marginal utility of that resource is increased more than enough to compensate for the fall.
Both of these statments assume that this will remain a private property, market oriented, civilisation that is not able to overcome the tradjedy of the commons. That in spite of all the data we refuse to reduce population and consumption of resources to a sustainable level either through cooperation or coersion.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 3 November 2005 @ 2:07 PM
I just wanted to say that I love this website. Keep up the good work.
Comment by DigitalDjigit — 3 November 2005 @ 2:08 PM
Bob,
That’s because such measures are fundamentally flawed. Firstly, it requires the world to accept such measures in unison. If anyone doesn’t, they’ll merely outcompete those who do. Secondly, if such a state is achieved, it’s a cartel–with the usual short sustainability of such cartels, and for the same reasons: the advantages of defection are very, very high. See China.
Societies cannot allow surplus energy to go unused. It must either be invested into greater complexity, or greater expansion–either way, it must continue to grow. The only way for this to stop is if we lose the ability to set our own carrying capacity. So long as we can arbitrarily choose that capacity, we will always increase it, without fail.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 November 2005 @ 2:43 PM
Jason,
I agree that a global state is not the answer. A possibility is a rhizome structure with all of the nodes determined to squash any hierarchical transgressions. Such a change will only be possible if we can replace the memes of consumerism and competition with sustainability and mutual aid. Protecting all commons that are essential to sustaining life on this planet would need to be a binding moral value on all humans. Until memes make it unnecessary, a method of monitoring and enforcing this would need to be devised. The structure for accomplishing this, with minimum interference with all other aspects of the lives of individuals in the nodes of rhizomes is a problem that must be solved.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 3 November 2005 @ 3:26 PM
Bob-
The problem [I]is[/I] being solved, through the economizing process of collapse.
Your solution to our problem, relies on the impossible: humans being something “better” than what they are, and all humans adopting this “better” way, simultaneously.
Or building a para-miliatry enforcement regime to control and force the world of humans toward one right way, until they learn or evolve into something better - is nuts. We’ve tried that one a thousand times, already. It’s playing god. It’s the opposite of free-flowing, indifferent evolution. Calling such a thing “rhizome” does not make it rhizome.
Comment by JCamasto — 3 November 2005 @ 3:55 PM
When people speak glowingly about the benefits of technology they often are thinking on a purely local level. In the United States and the wealthy West technology has provided the average person with powers which former generations would consider miraculous: Flight, instant communication and McDonald’s. On the other hand, the Third World and less developed nations have harnessed technology for the purpose of exponentially increasing their populations to unsustainable levels.
While all these things are happening (that is, the wealthy are increasing their luxuries and the poor increase their population) the humankind continues to experience all of the same problems which have afflicted our species since Adam and Eve left the garden. Violence, greed, lust, waste, war and destructiveness are humankind’s perpetual companions.
Is technology such a wonderful thing? No, I don’t believe so. Consider how many billions of dollars are spent on advertising in order to mesmerize the consumer into thinking that he or she needs to buy the “next great thing.” Soon after the purchase is made a feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction resumes. The cycle continues until the consumer has filled his or her house with thousands of nearly useless things. Each house is a privately operated landfill and some people lease storage space because they cannot break the consumption addiction.
I don’t believe that technology is an intrinsic good. I appreciate watching nature programs on television. Observing wildlife on HDTV is incredibly relaxing. The same technology which makes such pleasures possible threatens to drive the wildlife to extinction. At least the HDTV programs will still exist. Future generations can cry over what they have lost.
Nature’s technology is altogether better than humankind’s technology. Hummingbirds are smaller than cell phones and they are more aware of the Universe than all of humankind’s technology combined. The little ants that you can crush with your fingers have survived on the Earth for millions of years, and they will continue to exist for millions of years after all human technology has failed. Nature’s creative genius exceeds human imagination. Even so, humans are inclined to destroy everything.
If humans had the discipline to live at peace with nature and within the budget of solar power our species could persist on the Earth for a million years or longer. Humans lack that capacity and are addicted to the cult of speed. The urge to do things quickly has brought about all these technologies and created a culture of impatience and rudeness. The price of success is immediate extinction (from a geological standpoint) and that fate is inevitable.
Those who want to preserve humankind from extinction ought to cease consuming. Stop shopping at the mall, stop buying the latest fad, stop eating well-travelled food, stop using gasoline, minimize electrical usage, and … stop having children. Accept a vow of perpetual poverty and encourage all of your friends and neighbors to do the same.
Comment by David Mathews — 3 November 2005 @ 4:45 PM
JCamasto-
I guess I’ve misstated what I consider to be the problem. I have been trying to digest some of the formidable information on this site and also on Jeff Vails’s (www.jeffvail.net). My problem is the collapse itself. Although I’ve been aware of this impending doom since the publication of “Limits of Growth” in 1972, I didn’t realize that we were probably beyond the peak of the curve until recently. I am very impressed with the depth of information available here.
I am very aware of the quite likely impossible odds of humans changing soon enough to prevent this disaster. However I also don’t think there is a limit to human improvement. Because of the stakes, the deaths of billions of human and other beings and possibly the extinction of mammals, I feel that trying to prevent or at least mitigate the extent of the collapse is worth some effort.
Being committed to anarchy, I cannot advocate the creation of a super state. A rhizome structure or structures as described by Jeff Vail seems a promising replacement for the nation state. However as a rhizome does not have power, I don’t see how it can overcome the tragedy of the commons. For this some kind of structure, possibly a confederation of rhizomes (which is of course a hierarchical structure) seems necessary.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 3 November 2005 @ 4:59 PM
Hey –
David…
A perpetual level of poverty? Not gonna happen. But it is also not neccessary or desireable to push for that.
Why? Living in poverty allows for the population to soar to yet greater heights… which damages the rest of the living planet. Better to have people living fullfilled lives, with all that they want and need, but just fewer people. (its a simple comparison between small ecological footprint and high population vs high footprint and small population. the latter is more sustainable, more practical to accomplish and based upon strategies that successful human populations have used for 100,000 years)
Bob…
Humans don’t need to be ‘fixed’ — we are no more ‘wrong’ than any other species. So why all the problems? Systemically Broken Culture. So the question is not ‘is it worth trying to change people‘ which has historically, always failed. the question is what systems DO work for people and how?
That’s what Rhizome is about. A new look at how human populations can flourish without destroying everything around them in the process.
Tell me, how can one be a ‘committed anarchist’ and yet be unable to conceive of people living sustainably without some coercive force making it happen?
Janene
Comment by Janene — 3 November 2005 @ 5:19 PM
Nature’s technology is altogether better than humankind’s technology. Hummingbirds are smaller than cell phones and they are more aware of the Universe than all of humankind’s technology combined. The little ants that you can crush with your fingers have survived on the Earth for millions of years, and they will continue to exist for millions of years after all human technology has failed. Nature’s creative genius exceeds human imagination. Even so, humans are inclined to destroy everything.
If humans had the discipline to live at peace with nature and within the budget of solar power our species could persist on the Earth for a million years or longer. Humans lack that capacity and are addicted to the cult of speed. The urge to do things quickly has brought about all these technologies and created a culture of impatience and rudeness. The price of success is immediate extinction (from a geological standpoint) and that fate is inevitable.
Those who want to preserve humankind from extinction ought to cease consuming. Stop shopping at the mall, stop buying the latest fad, stop eating well-travelled food, stop using gasoline, minimize electrical usage, and … stop having children. Accept a vow of perpetual poverty and encourage all of your friends and neighbors to do the same.
David,
I know it’s convenient to place all of the blame on human nature and our supposed “doom to failure”. But there’s simply no real evidence to support it. We only see the destruction going on within a single type of system. Any humans that have managed to survive outside the system are not systematically destroying the Earth. So would I place my bets with the culprit being the humans, or the system? I’m gonna go with the system. We are addicted to a cult of speed because this culture amd system encourages it. Look at a culture that doesn’t, and you will see that humans are not behaving in that way. So it just doesn’t make sense that it’s the fault of humans.
Why spend your time wishing humans had discipline and focusing on all the things we must give up? I know how easy it is to be pessimistic about humans - I used to be that way too. But it really isn’t about humans and their “inherent faults”. It’s about a single culture gone haywire. And it’s nothing that can’t (or won’t) be changed.
Bob,
Why does a confederation of rhizomes have to be hierarchical?
Roxy
Comment by Raku — 3 November 2005 @ 5:36 PM
Janene:
I don’t believe I said anything about fixing people. I did speak of people changing. I didn’t mean genetically. In my view people change when they change the way they relate to their environment (to each other, to other life forms, to our planet, and even to themselves). For instance a person who reads a book, or learns how to trap animals changes her/himself. In this sense I think you will agree that we do change. It is this kind of change that I feel is necessary and can be encouraged.
I can conceive of people living a sustainable live style intentionally and joyfully without coercive force. It has been, is being, and will be done. I don’t think it’s likely that the time when everyone will do this will arrive before collapse. In spite of this even the word “coercive� gives me a bad feeling. I came to this tentative position after reading this thesis: “A General Statement of the Tragedy of the Commons� by Herschel Elliott
http://www.dieoff.com/page121.htm
Raku:
I just recently read Jeff Vail’s book and may not have a correct understanding of the rhizome concept. My understanding is that all nodes in a rhizome are peers. None is above or below the other. In this sense I think that a group of nodes, or affinity groups, communicating and cooperating together to accomplish a common goal could be called a rhizome. However if these affinity groups decided to create a federation through which decisions could be made that bound all groups, I think this might be called a hierarchy. I guess we should ask Jeff.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 3 November 2005 @ 10:50 PM
Peer groups making decisions together that they all agree to…no heirarchy I’ve ever seen involves everyone in the decision making process. It’s “I said so, that’s why.” So, no the Confederation is not a hierarchy. A hierarchy needs to involve an elite and a slave class, not a group of peers making decisions together for the benefit of everyone.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 3 November 2005 @ 10:55 PM
Hey–
Sorry if I was a little harsh, yesterday, Bob. It was a bad day.
What I was trying to get at is that this idea of the world (or any subset thereof) being fixed by way of people changing, presupposes that the world needs to be saved because there is something wrong with people.
If by ‘changing’ you mean any combination of ‘if people just were a little more/less understanding(knowledgable, caring, belligerant, selfish, etc)’ then you are doomed to fail — because that is the same thing our culture has been trying to do from the very beginning and things have only gotten worse.
The opposite approach is to change the environment — the system — within which people live. Do you ever hear that lions are endangering the very planet because they are too vicious? Why not? Why only humans? Because only humans (and only some humans at that) live in a system that is maladaptive to our species. Yet if you caged enough lions in a small enough space, it is virtually guaranteed that they would destroy themselves. So remove our cages, and lets see what happens
Janene
Comment by Janene — 4 November 2005 @ 9:47 AM
Janene (and Bob by proxy)
Actually re: lions and other animals, we’ve already done that. There was a famous rat experiment where rats were placed in forced populations approaching our urban density and lo and behold a number of problems occurred (violence, cannibalism, incest, stress-induced deaths).
In zoos and circuses, there have been repeated reports of animals acting strange / hostile / destructive because their circumstances are different from the environment they were designed to live in.
So, we do see what happens when other species have been compromised by a system. It’s just that system happens to have been inflicted on them by us.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 4 November 2005 @ 1:38 PM
High footprint (per person I am assuming) and small population is no more sustainable than low footprint and high population. Footprint does not measure how well off you are but how much you are imposing on the environment. Humans have a much higher footprint now than ever so I do not understand what you mean when you say it worked for 100,000 years.
Tragedy of the commons. Allow me to refer you to the following though provoking entry:
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2005/11/the_myth_of_the.html#c10853173
basically it seems that the “tragedy” was propaganda for proponents of fencing the commons off. Similar to how today privatization proponets claim that privatized water utilities are more beneficient for consumers (despite experience to the contrary).
Comment by DigitalDjigit — 4 November 2005 @ 2:46 PM
Hey –
Footprint relates, very specifically, to how much land you need to support your lifestyle. It says nothing about what percentage of the resources of that land you are using. That’s a fundamental problem of footprint as an analysis tool.
When i use High Footprint, I am specifically (though not specifying) refering to societies that need lots of land available because they actually use a smaller proportion of the resources of that land.
So Modern Americans with a footprint of, what is it, 9.5 or so are not living sustainably. Neither are (east) Indians, with a footprint of 2.5 (???). However, traditional hunter-gatherers, with a footprint in the area of 100 are living sustainably. That is the model we need to be considering — because increasing efficeincy and decreasing luxury have never succeeded at improving sustainablity.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 4 November 2005 @ 3:29 PM
Ok, you are right about footprint Janene. But of course you agree that an Amerian footprint of 50 acres is not the same as the primitive footprint of 50. If the American footprint was to be decreased such that the total is equal to or less than the land area of America then the American population would presumably be sustainable (assuming no population growth).
The number you cite: 9.5 is the number of Earths that would be required to sustain the human population leading the American lifestyle so it is population x footprint-per-person. You can reduce either term to get under the magical 1.
Now I am a bit mystified by another claim you make: “increasing efficiency and decreasing luxury have never succeeded at improving sustainablity”. What allows you to make that statement? Do you have any particular examples in mind? Because to me it seems like those conditions would lead to getting closer to sustainability.
Comment by DigitalDjigit — 4 November 2005 @ 3:48 PM
Hey –
YEah, I was actually talking in hectares (my ‘personal’ footprint guru is canadian :-))… here is a chart from ‘97 that puts the US at 10.2 while India is at .8 I don’t know if the numbers I was remembering were off, or more recent, or less recent. But I wasn’t citing the ‘number of Earths’ figure.
Regarding increasing efficiency and decreasing luxury….
There are a couple of sides to the issue… the first is easy: Jevon’s Paradox. Every increase in efficeincy leads to increasing use of the resource/commodity/what have you. More fuel efficient cars lead to more driving, not less. Computer Technology leads to longer work hours, not shorter, etc.
Now, as far as reducing luxury, what are we actually talking about? We have never actually seen an example of populations voluntarily reducing thier standard of living and I can think of no way to convince 6.5 Billion people to do so now. Now, 10% of SoL for the poorest of the ppor is a death sentance… so that has its own problems. How about wealth redistribution. Again, every time it has been tried, the elites have worked real hard to turn it back around again.
So I guess what I am saying is that any effort to attempt to ‘reduce luxury’ has failed in its inception. So it is not that previous reductions in luxury have failed, but that they have never occured systemically. (ie in any way that is both population encompassing and designed to be a negative feedback loop creating stability)
Janene
Comment by Janene — 4 November 2005 @ 4:38 PM
Janene: You don’t need to be sorry. I think we’re both having difficulty understanding where the other is coming from. This is my first experience at responding on blogs so I will try harder.
I still think that the way that people relate to each other and the environment does change. That it is possible for people to cause change both in themselves and others. Our environment can also change us. Likewise we can manipulate our environment and cause changes in society. I am also disappointed with the results so far and am not at all optimistic about the eventual outcome.
Janene said: “The opposite approach is to change the environment — the system — within which people live. Do you ever hear that lions are endangering the very planet because they are too vicious? Why not? Why only humans? Because only humans (and only some humans at that) live in a system that is maladaptive to our species. Yet if you caged enough lions in a small enough space, it is virtually guaranteed that they would destroy themselves. So remove our cages, and lets see what happens.â€?
If by stepping out of the system, you mean bringing down the political/economic system, I’m with you. We would still have a problem with a growing population of 6 billion free humans.
The metaphor of the cage could be seen as this planet. Although it is a large cage, it is critically overcrowded. The lions and all other creatures are locked in here with us. I don’t see how we can remove this cage. We can either find a way to purposely decrease our population and the rate we are destroying resources or like rats we can eat each other and the lions too. If we just allow it to go this way the result will not be a roomy seemingly infinite cage like our ancestors inhabited. It will likely be a very desolate environment for any human survivors with very few other surviving life forms. I am not optimistic about the quality of life for hunter-gatherers after the collapse or likely the series of them.
DigitalDjigit:
DigitalDjigit said:“basically it seems that the “tragedy” was propaganda for proponents of fencing the commons off. Similar to how today privatization proponets claim that privatized water utilities are more beneficient for consumers (despite experience to the contrary)â€?
It’s true that a “straw man� version has been used in that manner. The concept as I, Harden, and Elliott are referring to is not about a tract of land, but about all the resources on the planet that are necessary to sustain life. It’s kind of an extension of the ‘prisoners dilemma’. If you check this url which I posted above you’ll see what I mean. “A General Statement of the Tragedy of the Commons� by Herschel Elliott
http://www.dieoff.com/page121.htm
Comment by Bob Harrison — 4 November 2005 @ 7:12 PM
Hey Bob –
Bob Wrote:
Absolutely. People change all of the time, as individuals. All I’m saying is that we cannot expect any sort of fundamental change, worldwide, for 6.5 billion people based upon the ‘ideal’ of people changing. Does that make sense?
Bob Wrote:
Well, yes and no. Its MORE than just the political and economic system — because those are founded on much more basic characteristics of our culture. I forget, sometimes and just jump past a lot of this… but the premise ‘we’ are working on here is that all of our problems can be worked backwards all the way to the agricultural revolution. Basically like this (for the long version, start with Jason’s Thesis #1 and work on forward
)
As our ancestors began to embrace agriculture as a way of life, they found it to be a very tenuous strategy. It kicked off a positive feedback loop between labor requirements and surplus food supplies that resulted in growing populations ALL THE TIME. With rising populations and more complex divisions of labor specialization led to hierarchal systems led to social stratification. As population rose, soil quality declined (topsoil loss, nutrient depletion etc) so in order to simply maintain thier lifestyles, expansion became neccessary. Which then led to more stratification, more division of labor, greater populations, more concetration of coercive forces (military/police) which led to more expansion etc. All of this and famine-as-a-way-of-life to boot.
Here on an Anthropik the solution draws explicitly from our human non-ancestors — those cultures and populations that did NOT choose this path. The Hunter-Gatherer lifestyle. I personally am looking for a third option (drawing ALOT of inspiration from those same cultures) Perhaps fundamentally for some of the same reasons that you say you are not optomisitc… but Tribe Anthropik has one big advantage on me — they are pusuing a proven strategy whereas I am pursuing a strategy yet undefined
Janene
Comment by Janene — 4 November 2005 @ 7:48 PM
It’s important these days to be alert for the soft signals that things are a changing.
For example, it appears that we have already hit “Peak Hummer”. http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2005/11/hummer-overfloweth.html
Comment by Peter — 4 November 2005 @ 8:24 PM
Pulled from the comments of the above, hysterical article:
I’m thinkin’, another sign the collapse can’t “come” soon enough…
then…
That’s a shitlicker of a bummer, I’d say… Another possible indicator blown to holes… Out the ass… Rimming, rimming… [I]no basket.[/I]
(Save me, I’m stuck in here!)
Comment by JCamasto — 5 November 2005 @ 2:40 AM
Janene:
I understand that we got into this predicament because of social hierarchy, which was reinforced by agriculture and the concept of ownership or control of the land and its resources by an elite. I have also learned that our human genetic evolution has been slowed while our cultural evolution has accelerated since the time of agriculture and the survival of the group rather than the individual. Because our genetic makeup is still similar to what it was 12 millennium ago, it is much more “natural� for us to relate in small groups and not globally. I also understand that evolution is random and therefore this “natural� characteristic is not necessarily better. Although we can see from the condition of our present society that concern for the other is not common, individual exceptions show that it is possible.
I agree that there is much to be learned and adapted from primitive lifestyles. There is also much to be learned and hopefully preserved from modern cultures. I doubt that the physical environment after collapse will be very similar to that experienced by hunter-gatherers 12 millennium ago. It is not certain that even those cultures that chose a different path will be able to survive in what’s left of our ecosystem.
I believe that although the use of technology is very dangerous, that it is not an evil in itself. I agree with the position of this thesis that technology cannot stop the collapse. I still hope that social measures can at least mitigate the effects, prevent as many human deaths as possible, and most importantly, assure that the planet can sustainable support as many differs life forms as possible. Some technological examples that I personally wouldn’t want to lose are the ability to replace my eyeglasses and my false teeth.
Things like agriculture, technology, complexity, specialization, competition, and coercion have all undoubtedly contributed to our present dire circumstances. This does not mean that these things will always be wrong in all circumstances. It does mean that they are dangerous and their overall effects musts be taken into account before they are implemented. For example both intuitively and because of my Buddhist faith I consider killing an individual of any species to be wrong. However I also know that I cannot support my own life without taking others. Tomorrow I will kill one of my sheep for our table. I have 4 acres of grass around our trailer. Instead of using a mower like my neighbors I keep sheep both to eat the grass and feed my wife and myself. In this way the sheep are enabling us to sustain ourselves with the grass that would otherwise be wasted. Although emotionally I will still feel it is wrong to slit my sheep’s throat, I will have no guilt because with all factors considered I think the action is positive.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 5 November 2005 @ 8:11 PM
Hey Bob –
I agree with a lot of your ‘beliefs’…though not all
Sounds like you have a nice set up, and I would characterize what you have described as ‘rewilded sheep’. They are still genetically domestic, but you have removed most of the labor cost of raising them by simply giving them a place to be and leaving it at that. Is that accurate, do you think?
I, personally, think that our future depends on embracing our biological nature (not because it is ‘better’ somehow, but simply because it IS) and adapting social strategies that work with that biology (again, simply because it is practical, not out of any moralizing). Band level society gives us guidelines to work off of, but I agree that there is nothing inherantly wrong with technology (all humans have tech, after all), nor do I think there is anything inherantly wrong with modern technology, and I don’t think there is any reason that we cannot find ways to fuse ‘natural’ social groups with any technology that we find worthwhile enough to find a way to do within those societies.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 5 November 2005 @ 8:36 PM
Janene:
I would not consider my sheep “rewilded�. Besides the sheep we have 3 cats, 3 large dogs, 2 donkeys, geese, and chickens. These critters all interact together in a large field. The humans, the cats, and the dogs also have access to our tailor. Culturally I would call the result an inter-species tribe. The sheep trust and depend on the humans, the dogs, and the donkeys to protect them. They will not trust or tolerate strangers of any of these species. I will not go on, but the inter-species relationships between domesticated animals that are allowed to interact together are very divers and interesting.
I agree with your second paragraph but would add that we must also find a way for groups of these groups to deal with each other and protect our ecosystem. Rhizome?
I’m feeling that this is getting off subject for this thesis. I took your advice and read Thesis 1 and 2. I was surprised that there are current comments on Thesis 1. I have an urge to make a comment there but will need some time to develop my thought on the subject of primary good.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 6 November 2005 @ 4:05 PM
Hey Bob –
Yeah, I see the distinction you make re: rewilding. Really, I hould have said, the first step (of many) toward rewilding. I see this as eventually leading toward new symbiotic relationships between man and our food sources….
Janene
Comment by Janene — 6 November 2005 @ 5:50 PM
first of all, i fail to see how some modern technologies, like computers and the internet for instance, can be used in a band society because these technologies require mass systems(i.e. civilization) for there production. but i digress from what i wanted to bring up. i stumbled across this article: the CIA is helping this research from what i have heard. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1627424,00.html
as one of the posters noted, he relized this problem back in 72(!). this is important because are we so naive to think that the state also has been aware of the problem for just as long too? do we think that the will not do anything they can to maintain the hierarchy to the highest degree possible? yes it is true that they are subject to diminishing returns and cannot really stop collapse. but i think it would also be a leap of faith to believe that they cannot succeed in formulating a way to maintain their control. the reason i say this is that there seems to be some belief of this site that since collapse will happen, all we need to do is wait. i think that if such things as stated in the above link become, then we cannot afford to just wait for collapse but to actively help it along and attack.
Comment by anarcho-feralist — 6 November 2005 @ 8:29 PM
anarcho-feralist:
That’s a very interesting article. I’m skeptical about this new hydrogen reaction because I remember all the hype about cold fusion. Of course we know that an energy breakthrough will probably cause more rapid consumption of all other resources and greater environmental devastation before the collapse.
It was I that spoke earlier about “The Limits of Growth� in 1972. It was the result of a study by the Club of Rome which was/is an Industrial sponsored think tank. Of course the elite are aware and will act in their own interest. I would not be surprised by a kill-off. What do you suggest instead of waiting?
Comment by Bob Harrison — 6 November 2005 @ 10:58 PM
I haven’t heard much about it, but even ignoring what little I do know about quantum physics, admittedly little, I’m not scared in the least. According to that article the only scientists that are saying it’s a waste of time and money are the only scientists that both looked into his research and rutinely deal with particles inside an atom. The only ones who said it’s worth more research don’t deal with anything smaller than hydrogen, with the sole exception of electron transfer. Gee, so the scientists most able to critique his work says he’s full of it, while the scientists who can only read the synopsis and hear his accusation of being a victim of scientific heresy thinks it warrents “further study.” Hmmm, from that it sounds like not a big deal to me. Besides, the same rules that prohibit something like that from working are the same rules that destroyed Hiroshima. Which is more real?
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that he is right. What of it? Civilization will still collapse, albeit perhaps later than we thought. But also perhaps not that much later, we still have the environmental impact to deal with and their target date is a decade away. They wouldn’t have time to implement and distribute anyway. And even if they did, remember that at that time even more threshold points would have been reached. The Siberia permafrost holds an unbelievable amount of methane, and it’s already melting. In another ten year all of that gas would have been released into the atmosphere. You think this past year was a bad hurricane season? Wait until we’re down to Egytian ideographs.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 7 November 2005 @ 12:58 PM
thanks for the info on in which circles it is seen as credible or not. hopefully this is just further evidence of those to which the continuation of civilization(in this case techno-burocrats/scientists) becoming further entrenched in a reason-stopping nerosis. i do not doubt the exponencial exceleration of climate change, this will accelerate a great deal collapse i think. bob harrison writes:
“Of course the elite are aware and will act in their own interest. I would not be surprised by a kill-off. What do you suggest instead of waiting?”
there is something amiss with waiting for a kill off. as should , i feel, be obvious at this point, the longer civilization exists the worse the mess will be after. if one takes the time to understand the physical workings of the physical aspect of civilization (civ is also manifest in our way of thinking, a way of perciving the world) then it soon becomes obvious how dependent civilization is on a few fragile technological systems/infostructures. of course there is winds on the horizon set to blow the house of cards over, but it is easy enough to blow the “key stone” card over with our own breath.
Comment by Anarcho-feralist — 10 November 2005 @ 7:23 PM
G’day Jason,
Great work for Thesis #16, Technology in & of itself can never be a solution. However your whole thesis would be aided by an appendix listing some-of what you view as benign acceptable technologies for a post-collapse sustainable context.
BTW: Off Topic: (maybe better answered by direct email)
In answer to my comments on your previous thesis your wrote;-
“I have no idea what you’re talking about with the “Academic Inflation or Knowledge Domain Saturation”” Yet in the Comment here you say;- “Having written quite a few AI’s …. no. No, not nearly so much. AI is still all smoke and mirrors, and probably always will be.” What sort of AI could one be writing with-out any understanding what a Knowledge Domain is? Or are you just coding other folk’s specs??
Best of luck, Shawn
Comment by W.Shawn Gray (AuzGnosis) — 4 January 2006 @ 7:16 PM
Knowledge Domain I know quite well. “Knowledge Domain Saturation” and “Academic Inflation” I’d never heard of before. I thought the latter might be the sometimes decried trend of teachers handing out higher grades.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2006 @ 7:30 PM
I remember reading on a website a while back about how if our consumption of natural resources continues to increase without finding out a way to technologically ween ourselves off from them, we will eventually see a global “crash”, taking us back to the Pre-Industrial Era.
There was a term that the site called this, but I cannot remember it and have been searching Google all day trying to find it.
I think it was some sort of “era” and the word started with a “c”, I think.
Does anyone know the term I am trying to refer to?
Comment by Nano — 10 February 2006 @ 6:02 PM
Collapse?
There is no “technological weaning.” There will be a collapse. That isn’t necessarily the worst possibility–it’s far preferable to, say, not collapsing. See the rest of the Thirty Theses for further elaboration.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 February 2006 @ 6:21 PM
Okay, but you did not answer my question. What is this collapse supposed to be called? Like I said before, I do not remember the term, but am very interested in this topic. I remember it was specific to returning to a Pre-Industrial Period. Any thoughts?
Comment by Nano — 12 February 2006 @ 1:04 AM
catabolic collapse ?
Comment by gunnix — 12 February 2006 @ 6:55 AM
I don’t know what you read, specificially. That’s why I offered “collapse.” Specifically, as Gunnix mentioned, we refer to “catabolic collapse” around here to refer to the self-reinforcing cycle by which a society falls apart. I have no idea even what book you read, so I can’t tell you what term it might have used.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 February 2006 @ 11:48 AM
On AI:
Currently its all smoke and mirrors. But thats because we know next to nothing about intelligence and how it works. But we wont necissarily need to.
1. Computer power is increasing exponentially. If moores law continues (and developing quantum computing, nanotechnology etc suggests it will), by 2020 £1000 PCs will have the computing power to funtionally simulate the human brain.
2. Developing nanotech/brain scanning shows every indication that it will be able to completely map the human brain in enough detail to create a funtional model on a shorter timescale than 1.
3. Once such a model exists, scientists will play with it using trial and error. They will quickly find out how to make it smarter/change its motivations.
4. There will then be a smarter than human AI (which we never need to fully understand). Someone will give it the motivation to recursively self improve, and its intelligence will grow exponentially.
5. The actions of such a hugely smarter than human AI would be impossible to predict - but if it wanted to it could develop technology at a ridiculous pace.
But, if there is a collapse in the next 20-30 years, obviously it wont be built.
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 4:00 PM
Moore’s Law is already ceasing to hold true, as noted in the article.
Nanotech remains, for the most part, a pipe dream for the foreseeable future.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 March 2006 @ 4:02 PM
Maybe, depends what you mean by nanotech. Little robots in the bloodstream yes.
However, the ability to manipulate matter on the nanoscale already exists. Its just a case of making it economically viable. Its like how the first steam engine was rubbish compared to a horse.
Current computer developments are slowing because wever reached the limits of microtech. when limited nanotech becomes feasable (5-10 years) computer power will most likely increase much faster than it would under moores law.
Steadily improving brain scanning is not a pipe dream.
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 4:28 PM
Slothboy, re #41,
Can anyone show us the code that will enable “AI” to have creativity? or motivation to self-improve? (that is not a sledge on your moniker, btw)
How would you even define the algorithm for creativity?
Comment by Steve Z — 12 February 2007 @ 12:12 AM
technology is one of the reason why people become lazy..
Comment by harold — 4 February 2008 @ 8:11 AM
If I thought that, I’d like technology much more than I do. See: “In Praise of Laziness.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 February 2008 @ 12:51 PM