This is a great analysis about what happens if our economic growth keeps going at 2% per year, without it being decoupled from energy use.
But I'm wondering why are you implicitly making quite a strong assumption that this will be the case?
First thing, maybe I'm naively assuming, that at some point our economic growth could stabilize, reach a steady state, and stop growing.
Perhaps global population will stabilize, we'll one day reach some kind of perfect utopian society in which everyone has a very long and healthy life and is completely satisfied and happy and we can keep this population and this way of life stable without the need for expanding or consuming more energy.
Now this would probably go against the utilitarian decree to create as many happy people as possible (including digital minds), but maybe we'll for some reason realize that it's better to have a small population that can be sustainable for billions of years on various planets, etc... than to have an exponentially growing population of biological and digital entities that would use up all the reasources in a few thousand years. Of course this is just wild speculation, who knows what we'll conclude, and who knows whether we'll even get to the point where we can make such type of choices.
Second thing, which is a bit less important, but still... I'm wondering why you make a strong assumption that economic growth and energy use will be coupled together? What about potential increases in efficiency - doing more useful thing with less energy? (Like LED lamps vs. incandescent light bulbs)
Finally, this seems to me more like a thought experiment about far future than anything else. We can't be sure about what will happen in next 10 years, let alone have any assurance when making this type of extrapolation.
Still, even as a thought experiment, I find it a very interesting read.
Thanks! I generally agree with what you wrote. I wanted to do a thought experiment on the absolute upper bound. The only way I see something close to this actually happening is like the scenario described here - https://grantslatton.com/technocapital or some ASI maximizing for growth
Great write-up, though a bit beyond my understanding, too many variables. Just recall that probably humans won't be around due to icbm's or equivalent way before any of this (de)materialises.
(Some of the links were broken, maybe just my phone)
The “exponential growth must end someday” mantra is doomsayers’ last resort once all their specific predictions of collapse—overpopulation, resource exhaustion, climate catastrophe, and so on—are proven wrong again and again. In principle, exponential growth cannot, of course, continue indefinitely, but imagine another 250 years of technological progress on the scale of the past 250 — that would mean that anything we can conceive of today, from radical life extension to becoming multiplanetary, could become reality.
This doesn’t feel like techno-optimism— more like techno-nihilism to me. How are models of growth sustainable on a warming, decreasingly habitable planet?
The question of “is infinite growth possible?” just seems so irrelevant in these times. Unless we are talking about a future of machine races that can outlast all climatic impacts of the growth. What a dark, bleak version of prosperity.
Apologies if I am in over my head and have made an idiot out of myself :)
I didn't comment on it, but an almost unspoken assumption in techno-optimism is that humanity is going to go interplanetary at some point, and get good at terraforming. It's certainly a technology a lot simpler than some of the others I alluded to us having in this future
This is a great analysis about what happens if our economic growth keeps going at 2% per year, without it being decoupled from energy use.
But I'm wondering why are you implicitly making quite a strong assumption that this will be the case?
First thing, maybe I'm naively assuming, that at some point our economic growth could stabilize, reach a steady state, and stop growing.
Perhaps global population will stabilize, we'll one day reach some kind of perfect utopian society in which everyone has a very long and healthy life and is completely satisfied and happy and we can keep this population and this way of life stable without the need for expanding or consuming more energy.
Now this would probably go against the utilitarian decree to create as many happy people as possible (including digital minds), but maybe we'll for some reason realize that it's better to have a small population that can be sustainable for billions of years on various planets, etc... than to have an exponentially growing population of biological and digital entities that would use up all the reasources in a few thousand years. Of course this is just wild speculation, who knows what we'll conclude, and who knows whether we'll even get to the point where we can make such type of choices.
Second thing, which is a bit less important, but still... I'm wondering why you make a strong assumption that economic growth and energy use will be coupled together? What about potential increases in efficiency - doing more useful thing with less energy? (Like LED lamps vs. incandescent light bulbs)
Finally, this seems to me more like a thought experiment about far future than anything else. We can't be sure about what will happen in next 10 years, let alone have any assurance when making this type of extrapolation.
Still, even as a thought experiment, I find it a very interesting read.
Thanks! I generally agree with what you wrote. I wanted to do a thought experiment on the absolute upper bound. The only way I see something close to this actually happening is like the scenario described here - https://grantslatton.com/technocapital or some ASI maximizing for growth
Great write-up, though a bit beyond my understanding, too many variables. Just recall that probably humans won't be around due to icbm's or equivalent way before any of this (de)materialises.
(Some of the links were broken, maybe just my phone)
Yeah definitely, I mostly just thought it's an interesting thought experiment
The “exponential growth must end someday” mantra is doomsayers’ last resort once all their specific predictions of collapse—overpopulation, resource exhaustion, climate catastrophe, and so on—are proven wrong again and again. In principle, exponential growth cannot, of course, continue indefinitely, but imagine another 250 years of technological progress on the scale of the past 250 — that would mean that anything we can conceive of today, from radical life extension to becoming multiplanetary, could become reality.
This doesn’t feel like techno-optimism— more like techno-nihilism to me. How are models of growth sustainable on a warming, decreasingly habitable planet?
The question of “is infinite growth possible?” just seems so irrelevant in these times. Unless we are talking about a future of machine races that can outlast all climatic impacts of the growth. What a dark, bleak version of prosperity.
Apologies if I am in over my head and have made an idiot out of myself :)
I didn't comment on it, but an almost unspoken assumption in techno-optimism is that humanity is going to go interplanetary at some point, and get good at terraforming. It's certainly a technology a lot simpler than some of the others I alluded to us having in this future
Thanks for the generous reply