[Serious] The Post-Technological World.

[Yonadav]

I imagine that post-tech world could occur if Humanity reaches a certain 'plateau' in science. Thanks to the advances in science the technology has been growing at a relatively steep rate from the early 1800's. Of course this resulted not only in big benefits but also in major problems such as pollution, global war risk etc. But at least we have hope that science would bring solutions to our current problems. There is another problem though. Scientific knowledge has been getting ever more complicated over the time. Different areas of study are getting more and more specialized yet it's clear that there are many intricate interconnections between them. A day could come when Humanity will no longer be able to sustain current rate of growth both in science and technology. This could result in a situation when qualitative growth halts but quantitative growth persists. If Human race isn't actively colonizing space by then it would become a grave problem. Earth would get over-harvested with no hope for a more light-handed solution, which would gradually result in wars for basic resources because it would become impossible to sustain such a big population as we have now. This would be accompanied with gradual deterioration of existing high-tech installations which would lead to all kinds of disasters (Bhopal and Chernobyl-style). The result may be a heavily polluted agrarian world where only the privileged use technology more complicated than simple mechanical tools. And the technicians may be considered 'wizards'. Such crisis may as well result in a rise of religiously-backed Luddism.

I wrote all this in an assumption that human nature doesn't change considerably over time.

I have pretty much rejected the idea that colonizing space can give us relief from our problems on earth. We either master our problems on earth, or we just replicate them on other worlds in probably a pretty short period of time. People fleeing an over crowded, polluted, depleted earth could probably destroy a pristine earth-like world in just a few hundred years.

I am sometimes called a luddite because I actually do favor a more simple life of massively reduced consumerism as a response to global warming. A small minority of the brightest and most inquisitive could live in cities that are basically high tech research campuses. But about 95% of people would live pleasant lives in the countryside where they indulge in simple pleasures and work for about 16 hours per week.

I think that it is actually what a lot of people want, and they just don't realize it. Or they don't think that it is realistic to want that. Or they just resolutely believe that others won't want it, so they go along to get along.

But I think that it is the truly rational response to global warming. A technological messiah might solve the problem. But waiting for any sort of messiah is usually not a solution to anything, ever. So the sane response is to massively curb consumerism. And massively curbing consumerism completely destroys the concept of the continuously growing economy. So we would lose the majority of the world's jobs. We would have a whole bunch of people with nothing to do. Basically, their job would become living environmentally healthy lives and learning to enjoy themselves without setting gasoline on fire.

[Smaug]

I imagine that post-tech world could occur if Humanity reaches a certain 'plateau' in science. Thanks to the advances in science the technology has been growing at a relatively steep rate from the early 1800's. Of course this resulted not only in big benefits but also in major problems such as pollution, global war risk etc. But at least we have hope that science would bring solutions to our current problems. There is another problem though. Scientific knowledge has been getting ever more complicated over the time. Different areas of study are getting more and more specialized yet it's clear that there are many intricate interconnections between them. A day could come when Humanity will no longer be able to sustain current rate of growth both in science and technology. This could result in a situation when qualitative growth halts but quantitative growth persists. If Human race isn't actively colonizing space by then it would become a grave problem. Earth would get over-harvested with no hope for a more light-handed solution, which would gradually result in wars for basic resources because it would become impossible to sustain such a big population as we have now. This would be accompanied with gradual deterioration of existing high-tech installations which would lead to all kinds of disasters (Bhopal and Chernobyl-style). The result may be a heavily polluted agrarian world where only the privileged use technology more complicated than simple mechanical tools. And the technicians may be considered 'wizards'. Such crisis may as well result in a rise of religiously-backed Luddism.

I wrote all this in an assumption that human nature doesn't change considerably over time.

I have pretty much rejected the idea that colonizing space can give us relief from our problems on earth. We either master our problems on earth, or we just replicate them on other worlds in probably a pretty short period of time. People fleeing an over crowded, polluted, depleted earth could probably destroy a pristine earth-like world in just a few hundred years.

I am sometimes called a luddite because I actually do favor a more simple life of massively reduced consumerism as a response to global warming. A small minority of the brightest and most inquisitive could live in cities that are basically high tech research campuses. But about 95% of people would live pleasant lives in the countryside where they indulge in simple pleasures and work for about 16 hours per week.

I think that it is actually what a lot of people want, and they just don't realize it. Or they don't think that it is realistic to want that. Or they just resolutely believe that others won't want it, so they go along to get along.

But I think that it is the truly rational response to global warming. A technological messiah might solve the problem. But waiting for any sort of messiah is usually not a solution to anything, ever. So the sane response is to massively curb consumerism. And massively curbing consumerism completely destroys the concept of the continuously growing economy. So we would lose the majority of the world's jobs. We would have a whole bunch of people with nothing to do. Basically, their job would become living environmentally healthy lives and learning to enjoy themselves without setting gasoline on fire.

I agree that space colonization without changing the attitude would not be a completely proper solution. Moreover, in such a scenario the Humanity could become a sort of 'Space Locust'. But there's a principal difference. Space colonization helps spread human species which technically rises its chances for survival in general and buys Humanity more time. While on Earth humans are much more cornered with the problem of limited resources. So I had to mention it to specify the conditions for my further reasoning.

To add to what you've mentioned, limiting the consumerism alone would not be enough. Humanity will inevitably face the over-population problem. Even if the society you've described is possible it would still hit certain limits. So it's either environmentally healthy way of life has to include Medieval-style medicare to 'naturally' limit the lifespan or people have to get more reasonable about having and raising kids.

[Yonadav]

I have pretty much rejected the idea that colonizing space can give us relief from our problems on earth. We either master our problems on earth, or we just replicate them on other worlds in probably a pretty short period of time. People fleeing an over crowded, polluted, depleted earth could probably destroy a pristine earth-like world in just a few hundred years.

I am sometimes called a luddite because I actually do favor a more simple life of massively reduced consumerism as a response to global warming. A small minority of the brightest and most inquisitive could live in cities that are basically high tech research campuses. But about 95% of people would live pleasant lives in the countryside where they indulge in simple pleasures and work for about 16 hours per week.

I think that it is actually what a lot of people want, and they just don't realize it. Or they don't think that it is realistic to want that. Or they just resolutely believe that others won't want it, so they go along to get along.

But I think that it is the truly rational response to global warming. A technological messiah might solve the problem. But waiting for any sort of messiah is usually not a solution to anything, ever. So the sane response is to massively curb consumerism. And massively curbing consumerism completely destroys the concept of the continuously growing economy. So we would lose the majority of the world's jobs. We would have a whole bunch of people with nothing to do. Basically, their job would become living environmentally healthy lives and learning to enjoy themselves without setting gasoline on fire.

I agree that space colonization without changing the attitude would not be a completely proper solution. Moreover, in such a scenario the Humanity could become a sort of 'Space Locust'. But there's a principal difference. Space colonization helps spread human species which technically rises its chances for survival in general and buys Humanity more time. While on Earth humans are much more cornered with the problem of limited resources. So I had to mention it to specify the conditions for my further reasoning.

To add to what you've mentioned, limiting the consumerism alone would not be enough. Humanity will inevitably face the over-population problem. Even if the society you've described is possible it would still hit certain limits. So it's either environmentally healthy way of life has to include Medieval-style medicare to 'naturally' limit the lifespan or people have to get more reasonable about having and raising kids.

I think that not having too many children would be a natural part of living an environmentally responsible life. There is some cause for optimism on that front. There has been some evidence that people a sort of hardwired to want 2 to 3 surviving children. Throughout history, women who were able to survive it basically had as many children as they could. And despite having so many children, population growth was very, very slow. It took about a thousand years from 1 CE for the population of the world to double. Every woman who could survive it basically had to have as many children as she could, just to maintain global population, and create just a very slightly positive growth in population.

Evidence indicates that once a society has experienced a generation or two of a high survival rate among their children, then they naturally dial back the number of children that they have. We are more or less hardwired to want two or three surviving children. So in a sort of neo-luddite world like I described, where most people are just living pleasurable low carbon footprint lives which is basically their job, they would likely have an accompanying ideology about keeping it to two children or less.

I have frequently argued that people don't have reproductive rights. Despite believing that reproductive rights are an imaginary concept, I usually don't push the population angle very much in discussions about global warming. In fact, some of the people who have argued most vigorously for population reduction have then become very angry at me when I agreed that people don't have reproductive rights. As it turns out, most of these people want China and India to somehow reduce their populations because apparently the Chinese and Indians don't have reproductive rights, but when the matter of their own reproductive rights comes up they get sort of angry. And then it goes sideways even further when I point out that we would have to reduce the population by three average Chinese folks to reduce carbon emissions by the amount of one average American's emissions. So if we are going to eliminate carbon emissions by population reduction, then it is the American population that should be targeted most aggressively.

[The Grand Nudger]

In the wife and I's low carbon life, we wish we could have had more than the four we did. Only reason we didn't, is that I'd rather have four kids and a wife than five and no wife.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Those of you who have rejected the idea of space colonization can sit quietly over there.

[Smaug]

I agree that space colonization without changing the attitude would not be a completely proper solution. Moreover, in such a scenario the Humanity could become a sort of 'Space Locust'. But there's a principal difference. Space colonization helps spread human species which technically rises its chances for survival in general and buys Humanity more time. While on Earth humans are much more cornered with the problem of limited resources. So I had to mention it to specify the conditions for my further reasoning.

To add to what you've mentioned, limiting the consumerism alone would not be enough. Humanity will inevitably face the over-population problem. Even if the society you've described is possible it would still hit certain limits. So it's either environmentally healthy way of life has to include Medieval-style medicare to 'naturally' limit the lifespan or people have to get more reasonable about having and raising kids.

I think that not having too many children would be a natural part of living an environmentally responsible life. There is some cause for optimism on that front. There has been some evidence that people a sort of hardwired to want 2 to 3 surviving children. Throughout history, women who were able to survive it basically had as many children as they could. And despite having so many children, population growth was very, very slow. It took about a thousand years from 1 CE for the population of the world to double. Every woman who could survive it basically had to have as many children as she could, just to maintain global population, and create just a very slightly positive growth in population.

Evidence indicates that once a society has experienced a generation or two of a high survival rate among their children, then they naturally dial back the number of children that they have. We are more or less hardwired to want two or three surviving children. So in a sort of neo-luddite world like I described, where most people are just living pleasurable low carbon footprint lives which is basically their job, they would likely have an accompanying ideology about keeping it to two children or less.

I have frequently argued that people don't have reproductive rights. Despite believing that reproductive rights are an imaginary concept, I usually don't push the population angle very much in discussions about global warming. In fact, some of the people who have argued most vigorously for population reduction have then become very angry at me when I agreed that people don't have reproductive rights. As it turns out, most of these people want China and India to somehow reduce their populations because apparently the Chinese and Indians don't have reproductive rights, but when the matter of their own reproductive rights comes up they get sort of angry. And then it goes sideways even further when I point out that we would have to reduce the population by three average Chinese folks to reduce carbon emissions by the amount of one average American's emissions. So if we are going to eliminate carbon emissions by population reduction, then it is the American population that should be targeted most aggressively.

I get your point although I'm not sure it's correct to compare China and the U.S. head on in this respect. While China is one of the leading economies it still has much larger percentage of poor population with very low quality of life than the U. S. does. India is even poorer. I doubt that hardly anyone from Western world would want to live in Indian suburbs. It's not about excess but about basic commodities to live a healthy live - clear water, good nutrition etc.

In the more distant past the population growth was more limited by epidemics, lack of basic medicine and other such factors influence of which has since been reduced with the help of science and technology.

My point is that most people would naturally like to live longer and safer lives. I doubt that anyone who knows better would enjoy a life of a Medieval peasant where one could rather easily end up dead by catching a flu or having a light wound. But providing high-standard life conditions to ever-growing population would inevitably become a problem even if 95% lives 'eco-friendly' lives. Since 'natural' ways of population control are not an option it's only philosophy, ideology or legislation that is left. I wonder how this can be carried out without plunging into a dictatorial dystopia. Knowing that human societies tend to only learn from great catastrophes it's very interesting how handle all this in a reasonable way.

[Yonadav]

I think that not having too many children would be a natural part of living an environmentally responsible life. There is some cause for optimism on that front. There has been some evidence that people a sort of hardwired to want 2 to 3 surviving children. Throughout history, women who were able to survive it basically had as many children as they could. And despite having so many children, population growth was very, very slow. It took about a thousand years from 1 CE for the population of the world to double. Every woman who could survive it basically had to have as many children as she could, just to maintain global population, and create just a very slightly positive growth in population.

Evidence indicates that once a society has experienced a generation or two of a high survival rate among their children, then they naturally dial back the number of children that they have. We are more or less hardwired to want two or three surviving children. So in a sort of neo-luddite world like I described, where most people are just living pleasurable low carbon footprint lives which is basically their job, they would likely have an accompanying ideology about keeping it to two children or less.

I have frequently argued that people don't have reproductive rights. Despite believing that reproductive rights are an imaginary concept, I usually don't push the population angle very much in discussions about global warming. In fact, some of the people who have argued most vigorously for population reduction have then become very angry at me when I agreed that people don't have reproductive rights. As it turns out, most of these people want China and India to somehow reduce their populations because apparently the Chinese and Indians don't have reproductive rights, but when the matter of their own reproductive rights comes up they get sort of angry. And then it goes sideways even further when I point out that we would have to reduce the population by three average Chinese folks to reduce carbon emissions by the amount of one average American's emissions. So if we are going to eliminate carbon emissions by population reduction, then it is the American population that should be targeted most aggressively.

I get your point although I'm not sure it's correct to compare China and the U.S. head on in this respect. While China is one of the leading economies it still has much larger percentage of poor population with very low quality of life than the U. S. does. India is even poorer. I doubt that hardly anyone from Western world would want to live in Indian suburbs. It's not about excess but about basic commodities to live a healthy live - clear water, good nutrition etc.

In the more distant past the population growth was more limited by epidemics, lack of basic medicine and other such factors influence of which has since been reduced with the help of science and technology.

My point is that most people would naturally like to live longer and safer lives. I doubt that anyone who knows better would enjoy a life of a Medieval peasant where one could rather easily end up dead by catching a flu or having a light wound. But providing high-standard life conditions to ever-growing population would inevitably become a problem even if 95% lives 'eco-friendly' lives. Since 'natural' ways of population control are not an option it's only philosophy, ideology or legislation that is left. I wonder how this can be carried out without plunging into a dictatorial dystopia. Knowing that human societies tend to only learn from great catastrophes it's very interesting how handle all this in a reasonable way.

In a neo-luddite world like I am talking about, people wouldn't be living like medieval peasants. They wouldn't want for any of the necessities of life. They would have plenty of food, modern medicine, and they wouldn't live completely without technology. They would have access to digital libraries. They would have electric lights and refrigeration. And yes, there would be serious potential for it to become a dictatorial dystopia. It would have to be authoritarian. Probably not ruled by a single individual, but probably by a council that has a pretty firm grasp its objectives. They couldn't be elected officials. They would have to be chosen through some type of well regulated meritocracy.

Population can't increase that much from longer lives. If everyone is limited to two children, then there will be a gradual reduction in population once we pass through equilibrium and then deaths start to very slightly outnumber births. Here's an interesting TED lecture about why the population of the earth is unlikely to become greater than 11 billion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

The thing is, with our current economic ideology being predicated on continuous economic growth, we develop more and more of the undeveloped world. With global warming being an imminent threat, we can't possibly have billions more people living the way that we do. But that's exactly what our economic model is pushing us to do. Since everyone can't live like us, we probably need to live more like them. We live lives that the rest of the world aspires to, but the world can't take that kind of growth in consumerism. But since we do set the standard that others aspire to, then we should live our lives in a way that would be possible for all.

[The Grand Nudger]

That sort of world has been referred to on the boards, in a novel fashion, as "techno-facism". Well, okay, I guess, but it's the sort of world we're headed to out of practicality alone.

[Yonadav]

That sort of world has been referred to on the boards, in a novel fashion, as "techno-facism".  Well, okay, I guess, but it's the sort of world we're headed to out of practicality alone.

The way I look at it, if we go that way by necessity, it won't be very nice.
If we go that way intentionally, before it becomes necessary, then it could be pretty nice.

[The Grand Nudger]

I agree.  If we have to force it on people by surprise, it'll be shit.  If we can incrementally establish it...then people will probably find that it's pretty nice.  I've been doing this with my own family and my customers for years.

We live in season, and they get whats in season. I grow things out of season..and they see that....but I do that for extension research to cover the cost of what I do for their dollars. There are always a few people who can't get that, and we lose their business every year. Oh well.