The Complexity Trap | Hacker News Reader

The Complexity Trap

consciousnessofsheep.co.uk

39 pointsmocko13 comments

The point is that most of these technologies have already reaped the cheap and easy, and, indeed, almost all of the hard and expensive improvements that are ever going to be made. In this respect, we are entering a period similar to the early twentieth century when we hit the limits to coal-powered technologies. The big difference today being that there is no even more energy-dense and easily available new energy source available to us to usher in a new suite of technologies in the way that oil-based technologies rapidly replaced coal in the years after World War Two.

Disagree, we have at least two and possibly third sources of energy that can replace oil. Those being solar & wind plus nuclear respectively. Historically speaking it took large investments in drilling techniques and infrastructure to allow oil to replace coal as a major energy source. It isn't that different now.

Not to mention efficiency gains on the energy consumption side.

Out of curiosity, what gains do you see and where?

[Alternative link]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220528074047/https://conscious...

While a good set up the conclusion isn't really supported by the arguments. Just increasingly bizzare assertions that complexity is somehow a trap while conflating it with energy usage (nevermind that said complexity is often used to reduce usage of energy).

It seems to be one of its own tiresome arrogant meme "the world is too complex for me personally to understand so we should make things worse so I feel better!".

Understanding is being able to predict.

Predicting with sufficient accuracy is a prerequisite when it comes to rule.

It becomes more and more difficult to show that some group is able to do so.

Therefore, bar any "some can but are all evil-minded", stating that we less and less can understand seems to be a solid case.

The next question is "why?", and a potential answer seems "because everything is already too big and growing: more and more agents interact more and more frequently".

I don't see big problem here. At some point in the future we probably can't increase our consumption any further. Maybe even have to reduce it. It's gonna be painful but not catastropic.

I don't see this is a trap. More like an inevitability.

I'm surprised this hasn't elicited more commentary. His thesis seemed to be pretty simple, that as we burn through our low-cost, high-return, surplus energy, our economics worsen. We then seek to remedy the problem through more energy-intensive complexity (The Complexity Trap), which doesn't work very well. He then seemed to argue that we got kind of a pass during the Industrial Age, because of oil's greater efficiency than coal, but that we won't be so lucky this time.

I guess I'm surprised someone hasn't come back with some well known counter theory? I kind of like this one, but I'm sure there are other interesting ones?

... uranium to oil is what oil is to coal.

That's an interesting idea. I also think quantum may be to traditional computing as oil was to coal. The OP would probably just write it off as increased complexity though.

but whereas once upon a time one could find very good quality oil very easily. uranium has always had to be processed a lot to reach usable form.

also, making oil into usable gas also yields (or used to yield?) lot's of very useful resources used for plastic and lubricants and so on.

It turns out this processing has the magnitude of a rounding error in the uranium lifecycle. Also, not all reactors require it.

No coincidence that Soddy was the discoverer of transmutation. Writing in the 1920s, before the fission chain reaction was conceived, he anticipated its potential

"If ... there is at hand not merely in the remote stars, but at our feet, an unlimited source of energy of the order of a million times more powerful than any known, what tremendous social consequences await the discovery of artificial transmutation!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com