Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function
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- Know your stuff. It's obvious he's been over all of this hundreds of times.
- Figure out great analogies and other aids. Part 3: 5:20 he makes an analogy out of multiplying bacteria in a bottle that fill it in an hour to show us at what point of the exponential function you notice your in one. It's got two parts and is very effective. It allows him to say things like "5 minutes before the bottle is full."
- Introduce your aids gradually and keep using them. Make clever decisions about your aids and make sure they accumulate to a powerful toolset. After that analogy which all the time he introduces the analogy above he has:
- A trick for calculating doubling time 70/annual growth in %
- A graph
- A table
- An example (Boulder) that he keeps running scenarios on.
- The bacteria analogy
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Based on reactions to this video (among other things), I'd add Hartl's Counterpoint:
Just because you're willing to do arithmetic doesn't
mean you're not talking nonsense.
The Dr. also mentions that 0% growth is inevitable, so that is covered - but I had no idea it was called the logistic function, thanks.
Nuclear fission is currently on decline. We aren't even building enough power plants to maintain its output, nor are we likely to do so in the next 20 to 30 years. Industrial nuclear fusion is decades away, probably a century.
From the 18th century onwards, we went from tapping ever better energy sources (denser, lighter): animal power, coal, oil. There aren't any better energy source than oil available now, or in the foreseeable future. At some point, we'll have to do with /less/.
This part of the long business cycle always produces a lot of arguments for austerity. So far they have always turned out to be spectacularly wrong.
"Nuclear fission is currently on decline."
Nuclear power, both fission and fusion, is currently in a renaissance and we appear to be laying the groundwork for the next stage of advances: gas- and metal-cooled reactors, superconductors, mechanical compression systems, reliable mode-locked lasers, dielectric wall and wake field particle accelerators, electronics that can do real-time gigahertz feedback, etc.
When the next long expansion gets into full swing, I predict that the nuclear logjam will break loose.
"There aren't any better energy source than oil available now, or in the foreseeable future."
There's a lot of solar power in space. A lot. And literal mountains of metal, richer than the best terrestrial ores and pre-smelted too. At some point technology will tip the profit margin positive on exploiting it.
So far, there weren't 7 billions humans neither.
> Nuclear power, both fission and fusion, is currently in a renaissance
Absolutely not. This is GE and AREVA PR, but doesn't reflect the truth. We aren't building enough nuclear plants now to compensate for the future closing of the old ones. The numbers aren't even ramping up fast enough. As time goes by, there will be less and less active nuclear plants.
Fusion research is blooming, but it didn't make much progress, particularly compared to the huge effort (see ITER).
> There's a lot of solar power in space. A lot. And literal mountains of metal, richer than the best terrestrial ores and pre-smelted too. At some point technology will tip the profit margin positive on exploiting it.
This is science-fiction. I'm pretty close to say this is complete BS. "Space ore" simply can't happen unless you find the way to harvest the power from some magic ponies yet to discover.
Also if we look back at the past 1000 (or even just 100) years of human history, we've been pretty good at discovering and harvesting 'magic ponies' of all shapes and sizes.
Maybe if thorium comes on the radar.
> we've been pretty good at discovering and harvesting 'magic ponies' of all shapes and sizes.
Well, not that much. By the end of the roman republic, most of what made the industrial revolution possible was available, but it didn't happen until 18 centuries later.
* Throw it away. Deep-sea subduction zones work nicely for this. Tremendously wasteful, though; that "waste" is valuable fuel.
* Recycle the waste to decrease its volume. This isn't a full solution, but it makes the waste cheaper to store for a while.
* Store the waste for a while, and later we can use it in breeder reactors or fusion/fission hybrids. There's so much useful U-238 in that slightly-used fuel. After this, the waste is pretty much dead.
If it's so easy to get rid of nuclear waste, why didn't we do it yet?
Which is an intentional choice, arising from a combination of ennui, defeatism, and witch hunting. Those political movements seem to have run their course.
"Fusion research is blooming, but it didn't make much progress, particularly compared to the huge effort (see ITER)."
Most of the tokamak megaprojects were done to give academics a safe way to demonstrate activity. ITER is the plasma physics version of string theory. In my opinion, the real progress has come from small quiet projects involving vacuum physics and power electronics.
"'Space ore' simply can't happen unless you find the way to harvest the power from some magic ponies yet to discover."
It's metal, not ore. If you can lay your hands on asteroidal metal, you can turn it into useful articles with a blacksmith's forge. Fancy alloys and precious metals are more effort, but often easier than dealing with crappy terrestrial ores.
The magic pony is to cancel the failed Shuttle, yet another stagnant megaproject. And avoid replacing it with other doomed megaprojects. The barrier to space activity is heavy lift capability to get there at all. Once you can get above the atmosphere cheaply enough, the solar system is your oyster. (It's like Fed Ex. The capital investment to build Fed Ex is ludicrous, but once somebody has the balls to do it, entire industries rise up from nowhere to exploit it.)
Pipe dreaming. The barrier to space is the _tremendous_ amount of energy required to get anything to low-earth orbit, let alone getting raw material going back from Jupiter's vicinity. Even with 1000 times better technology (which won't arrive soon), your asteroid iron still will be costlier than platinum.
Science-fiction is mostly fiction, you know.
The reason rockets are so inefficient is that we don't know how to keep cracks from spreading through our structural materials, so we have to derate their strength by huge factors to get reliability. Nano- and micro-composite materials look like they will be able to vastly improve this situation (and indeed already are in the latest jetliners), and the rocket equation gives big big cost savings for weight savings. High strength materials are also good for rotovators and other semi-passive lifters.
Another big opportunity is to shift some of the propulsion to the ground. It should be straightforward to shine launch lasers up the tail of a standard rocket and reduce its propellant requirement by many percent, which the rocket equation then multiplies into a large cost savings. Exclusively laser launched vehicles are also possible but speculative at this point (they need visible light lasers to get range but those are still too inefficient). Most of the necessary technology exists or can easily be built. All we lack is the optimism to make the investment.
As for getting metal back, the asteroid belt is energetically close despite the distance. A small nuclear reactor and patience will do the job.
That's a choice, one that we could change.
There are no technical or economic obstacles to building nuclear plants for far less money and in far less time that are just as safe (or safer) than what we have now. (France is an existence proof for much of the potential savings.)
There are, however, legal and political obstacles.
Define "we". Take a look at China's nuclear power program sometime; they've brought the cost of their CPR1000 plants down to where they're cheaper to build than coal plants of the same size, and they're well on their way to do the same for the more modern AP1000 reactor design. They've got a bunch of new nuclear plants under construction, with more on the way as they pick up momentum. We're talking about 10-15 large reactors coming on line every year, with the production rate increasing as they ramp up.
Also, they've got their first commercial-scale pebble-bed reactors being built right now. If I remember correctly, they're also looking at incorporating thorium into the fuel mix.
Also, they're working on 40% and 70% more powerful versions of the AP1000 that will not add much to the cost. Nuclear power in China is going to be seriously cheap.
Also, they're working on fast breeder reactors, which use uranium much more efficiently. They're building two BN-800 reactors, working together with Russia, since Russia has been profitably operating fast breeder reactors in the BN series for decades.
If you're only looking at the US and Europe, then sure, the Nuclear Renaissance is looking a little feeble. But the US and Europe are not the whole world.
Do you plan as if disk drives won't get more capacity? That ram and cpus won't get cheaper?
It's only irresponsible if you promise growth that won't happen. It's irresponsible to ignore growth that will or can happen.
"Except for the petroleum graphs, the things I tell you are
not predictions of the future. I am only reporting facts and
the results of some very simple arithmetic." (1:22)
"Please you check the facts. Please check my arithmetic. if
you find errors, please let me know. But if you don't find
errors, I hope you take this very very seriously."Around minute 7 of the second video (did you actually watch it?) he points out that many of the checks on population growth are generally considered bad things - war, famine, disease (the alternative being birth control). This is hardly a reason not to freak out.
Yes.
many of the checks on population growth are generally considered bad things - war, famine, disease
The countries with the lowest population growth (e.g., Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Japan) are among those with the least war, famine, and disease. Something else is going on.
This checks do apply do the countries you cited, but the list is still far from comprehensive. They are far better than war, famine and disease, but still regarded as bad things, which is the point.
70 / x = number of years of constant growth required for a quantity to double given that it grows at x percent
The example used in the video: if the price of lift tickets goes up by 7% per year, in 10 years, that price will double.
(and actually, the constant 70 is an approximation, the actual constant is ln (2) * 100)
"Oh they're starving because they get almost no rain, so that land really shouldn't support anywhere near as many people as are there. Let's give them food aid."
10 years elapse, and say they're getting 7% per year growth thanks to food aid keeping them from starving, lack of contraception, etc.
"Oh, there's twice as many of them now, so they're starving despite our current food aid. Double the food aid!"
Repeat until you realize that you can't double the food aid forever.
Starving a people until they can eat off of the barren land they inhabit is certainly one way of taking care of the problem. Educating them on the merits of contraceptives, and teaching them how to use their land to greater effect is another.
For example, farming families have major incentives to have large families so that the kids can help with the farming tasks. So you'll need a China-like child limit or some other way to incentivize them to actually use the contraception you provide.
That's why education is key as well. People who are well-educated have less children, on average. Look at the US, for example. So educate them, and enable them to become wealthy. Right now, they can't.
But that doesn't mean that a well educated farmer will have less children. He can be as educated as you like but unless he can increase productivity in some way (access to loans for equipment say, like through Fairtrade) then he still has as much work to do and still needs to provide the labour.
Suppose the education increase yields, unless we're on top of the trading practices then the value falls - everyone's yield has increased, if this means the market saturates he might make less money (perhaps none). If the market hasn't saturated he still needs more labour to gather the increased yield but gets the same income to share amongst the labourers - increasing the pressure to provide cheap labour by expanding his family.
In short the problem is more complex and IMO is not due to lack of education. What you're saying is that a poor agricultural labourer should sacrifice there own ability to earn more in order to stave off over-population - why is it down to them.
I'll go with the converse though. If you ensure that workers get a fair wage (Fairtrade again), one that can pay basic healthcare and education costs and ensure they have healthy food intake and a reasonable dwelling, then there is less pressure to reproduce (but possibly more opportunity to choose to? again it's complex).
And, if you're in the part of Africa where growing crops is not feasible....move?
(For those unaware, they both contain progesterone; wild yams were the first plant to be used in synthesis of birth control pills.)
Here is a great link to the farm subsidies recieved in Manhattan, it's odd how one never notices the wealth of family farms surrounding central park. http://wildgreenyonder.wordpress.com/2007/10/
Not to mention, why the fuck in this day and age is the west still responsible for African people eating? We have the technology, the entire country has been geographically analyzed for where maximum food can be produced, etc etc. It is not a geographical problem, it is a political and cultural problem.
It seems fairly obvious they can't sort out this problem, so whats the next move?
We can tell them where to grow food, and where not to. We have given them Billions of dollars in aid. What else can you do?
Of course, this is assuming foreign aid exists to achieve what it says it is trying to achieve....I can think of several groups of people that would like to keep Africa in the stone age for the time being.
However, this doesn't dismiss the responsibilities of the leaders and citizens of Africa. All the technology you need is available on eBay, how about some charismatic man rises up and convinces you to get your shit together?
The entire country of Africa?
The GNP and life expectancy of Africa is about as good as it was in the western world around 1930, that's not exactly stone-age, and the situation is steadily improving. They'll get there.
Most answers in the affirmative involve a lot of rationalization and dehumanization and in the modern world likely some kind of starvation default swap sold by a financial institution.
We're all individuals sharing this planet. We are not our government(s). (Unless you're a head of state, then maybe)
When making considerations of the well being of whole populations one has to consider the whole population not the individual.
A decision to withhold food aid now might kill 10%, but supplying that food and buoying up the population until the next big crisis is likely to kill far more people and could push us beyond sustainability - there is a point at which renewable resources become to depleted to recover. Sure, one can consider that the Jones family will lose their daughter and so we have to send food but this leads us on and on to overpopulation.
It actually doesn't lead us to overpopulation. Once wealth & education increases to a certain point cultures change and people have fewer children. Paul Ehrlich went over this in the 60s and then made the famous wager with Simon over resources. I think this Malthusian argument has been thoroughly debunked.
The best result for the well being of whole populations is generally achieved by each person in that population doing what is best for themselves.
That actually is a really bad idea from a public health perspective. Generally you need well in excess of 50% of the population to be vaccinated before it starts to provide protection to non-vaccinated individuals.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infec...
I am not picking on you here--I think this is a failing in the way we're wired that some part of us (including me) can consider tragedy at that scale as a possible solution.
I read something that made sense to me which was that OP was objecting to subsidies to African countries--not subsidies for Western farmers. My objection makes no sense in the context of what OP actually said.
I assumed that was one of the roles of religions, but they seem to have a difficult time getting the idea to stick in the majority of their believers.
Take a look at the green industry ramping up. In the not too distance future, I think most of us here expect oil replacement to be highly profitable.
I disagree with these doomsday predictions from pure arithmetic. It seems to me that the reverse is true - exponential "problems" provide the core drive for our economy. What drives the entire start-up industry? I'd say it's identifying profitable exponential growth scenarios and providing for them. To me, this explains how primarily capitalist countries tend toward stability, until them become strangled by ever increasing regulation (that's not to say I'm against regulation in general, but I think we need to be as proactive about removing it as we are about adding it [wow, I went off topic there]).
Economic development directly correlates with energy use. To reduce energy use you would either need a massive depression, or for a lot of people to die.
But the news isn't all bad - nuclear power is both green, and sufficiently available to allow us to continue energy growth. So I would make that the goal.
* Except for the petroleum graphs. Video 8/8 1:00-2:00ish.
Except that doubling GDP, resource consumption, etc every 20 years hardly can be called "stability".
The population bomb is kinda heading the other direction though. People moved to cities, where kids were a liability instead of an asset, life was exciting, and women had opportunities. Now birth rates in modernized countries are below the replacement rate (which causes exponential decay as impactful as exponential growth), which is largely made up through immigration.
In the limit case, birth rates in modernized countries are close to zero, and the entire population is comprised of newcomers from the places that are above the replacement rate. These countries could places for opportunity, not familyeither be like companies (where people work and live much of their lives but don't replenish themselves), or they could be like retirement homes.
But one thing I didn't like about the bacteria in the bottle story was that he conveniently switched to 100% growth for that example. And then made it sound like Boulder was in the same position "it's 11:59 in the Boulder valely" etc.
But still his main point it dead on.
In 50 years at 1.3% growth we'll basically double our population, and go from about 8000 m^2 per person to 4000 m^2 per person. After 780 years, the growth starts adding up, you can play with the numbers.
So we should be at roughly 25,336 meters / person currently. (But remember that plenty of that is more-or-less unlivable--Siberia and the like.)
In 50 years, the population will have increased by a factor of exp(.013 50) = 1.91554, so in the next 50 years population will roughly double, so that number will go down to about 13k meters/person.
Exponential resource waste, population growth, etc doesn't become a non-survivable event for a few more generations - at that point we may actually start to see realistic change.
But we very intuitively get things like "really big changes will come from small things" And we rate highly getting a seemingly small increase in personal ability. This is why videos like this can capture our attention at all. It seems like a basic ability to recognize and reason approximately about exponential growth is required to do agriculture.
I think this is why we like RPG's and katamari damacy, and talking about peak oil.
I think that this mental flag also makes us extremely sensitive of people 'from the wrong tribe' being in our area.
In short, I think that we were surrounded by exponential functions in our ancestral environment, and developed an ability to recognize them and see them as very important, with out really knowing what they are.
Simon believed that there is more than simple arithmetic (as Bartlett calls it) when it comes to growth. You have to throw something like technology into the mix, which is difficult to predict.
The Simon-Erlich bet is a good, real-world illustration of their disagreements.
That's a long way from Bartlett.
Don't take Ehrlich as a spokesman for anybody who believes in limits to growth.
Feynman made explicit observations on this topic, quite critical ones, if I remember right.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth...
You can play with the data here: http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...
Great video. I'm on part 2 and I'll finish the rest in the morning.
* $16,435 for traditional gall bladder removal, somewhat below the estimate http://healthcarebluebook.com/page_Results.aspx?id=75&da...
* $6,934 for the modern minimally invasive equivalent, far below the estimate http://healthcarebluebook.com/page_Results.aspx?id=74&da...
More evidence that projecting trends without considering technical progress is bound to result the sort of overly pessimistic results that Malthus made famous.
For example, Dr. Bartlett's two-column view on population assumes that people will need some certain number of square feet of land. But why wouldn't we build up, ala NYC? Or settle the ocean (http://seasteading.org/)? Or colonize the stars? Or perhaps even transfer our consciousness to some more efficient representation?
Yes, exponential growth presents problems, but exponential progress in technology has the power to solve them. That's where we (and others like us) come in.
The intellect of the planet is a constant, the population is increasing.