ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
I learned my sneering for the purpose of papering over the point that "more of the same, which had absolutely terrible results" is transparently a very bad idea from only the very best.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Oh goody! I know you won't want anything that could be cast as "more of the same, which had absolutely terrible results", so I'm sure you'll be very forthcoming with your incredible, innovative solutions to current problems, solutions which don't look anything like what has come before. I so look forward to that little red bell icon.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Sure. He has not yet actually assented to the empirical evidence that people can mostly be self-sufficient. I did not claim that he assented to this, and if he would like to disagree with this, he is still able to (so are you). I pointed out that he did claim that self-sufficiency was a lower bound for purposes of comparative advantage. I then also addressed his stated concern that a small class of people cannot attain self-sufficiency (e.g., severely disabled folks). But for all of the other folks, who I pointed out empirically can attain self-sufficiency, his lower bound holds that comparative advantage will still make them better off. Which would contradict his conclusion that a vast majority of folks will end up at sub-subsistence levels.
Now that we've cleared up that I have not claimed any assent to the empirical evidence and clarified further how the argument goes, do you have any objection to the logical portion of the argument? Or are you just happy that we've agreed that we're still waiting to see if he assents/objects to the empirical evidence?
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
From the linked comment:
...which, of course, brings us back to where everything ultimately brings us back to - Donald Trump. I can't pass up incredible hypotheticals that cut to the crux of things and make all the partisans want to switch sides. Suppose Trump made what could have been argued to be a false business record in the state of New York with the intent to conceal something about Assange's actions related to this guilty plea. Would the NYT still think the true reality is that Assange actually pled guilty to a non-crime? Would they say that Trump could have an appeal to the courts of law, not the courts of fact, by saying, "No dawg, that's not a crime"? Or would they say that Assange's plea deal settles the matter, thoroughly establishing the fact that such actions absolutely are a crime, with no First Amendment defense?
The search/replace is "Assange" and "Cohen". So many people are perfectly happy saying that Cohen's guilty plea settles the matter that a campaign finance violation actually occurred and that there is no First Amendment defense against it. I think it's entirely reasonable to think that both Assange and Cohen actually pleaded guilty to non-crimes.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
I'm really not following what you're trying to say. Can you try again? Capital_Room did, indeed, use the word "try". You pointed out that there is a gap between "try" and "be". I pointed out that I've already covered that gap with empirical evidence. I have no idea what you're trying to say.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration I pleaded guilty to journalism.
Tiny reminder that there are loads of people who will nod their head yes, agree that it is totally possible for someone to plead guilty to a non-crime, yet not be willing to keep that thought in their head while thinking about other cases.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Right in that first block quote is:
That is, excepting the severely disabled, the vast vast majority of able-bodied humans can, indeed, be self-sufficient, as evidenced by millennia of history.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
We care about fuels to the extent that we have invested energy into them to render them usable.
So do you count the energy content of fossil fuels? Honestly, I don't know how much clearer I could make the difficulty in your current statements than I did in my last comment. You're really going to need to show at least an indicia of engaging with the question or I'll probably just have to write you off as non-responsive and give up.
Your current response doesn't tell me anything about how I go through the process of factoring in consumption rates. When I'm determining whether something is on a "timescale relevant to humans", I need to do some math on some numbers, and one of the variables I have is, possibly, consumption rates. How does that variable fit in?
I don't think your latest response actually gave me anything to go on here. I still have no idea how to use numbers and math to determine whether something is on a "timescale relevant to humans".
Energy is the fundamental unit of investment because the measure under discussion is ENERGY RETURNED ON ENERGY INVESTED.
Ah yes, ipse dixet. I'm starting to get the feeling that you're not really trying to engage.
That's an appropriate measure to use when discussing sources of energy! We are talking about energy
I mean, are we? I thought we were talking about agriculture. Why is energy the real topic when we're talking about agriculture?
If it makes it easier to think about, then picture an incredibly tiny power plant which costs 100 calories to build and fuel, which then generates 90 calories worth of usable power as a result.
Do you count the energy content of the fuel?
the actual answer is that we're talking about energy rather than money
Why? I thought we were talking about agriculture. Why are you talking about energy rather than money or any of the other things that could be involved in the discussion?
As I mentioned, I already went through that article 9 months ago. I quoted the authors because I agree with their understanding of their own results - agreeing with something doesn't mean that I just scanned through for a sentence I agree with.
In that case, you could probably say something relevant concerning my remarks on the data contained therein, rather than simply resting on one of their quotes.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Comparitive advantage only holds true in very limited circumstances
Nah, there's plenty of work that extends the concept to much more robust circumstances. And most of the time, when they're talking about limitations, it's like, "Yeah, gains from trade are still obviously positive and a major factor, but it's a bit trickier to make mathematically-precise statements that also work perfectly for predicting observational data, since there are all sorts of things like trade barriers and other refinements." This is throwing out all intuition gained for some strained belief that some fourth-order term that is mathematically-difficult to solve in closed form is going to actually magically reverse the sign of the result.
immediately
A claim literally no one has ever made.
what happens when excess production pushes prices so low that it's simply not worth it to employ them as farmers
Good news! We went from a world where some 90+% of people were employed as farmers to a world where ChatGPT tells me that the global figure is about 28%, but regions that are hardest hit by comparative advantage are down to 1-2%. I'm sure I would hate to live in one of those areas where it's down that low; those places probably suck from all the unemployment, starvation, etc.
what happens if another country can grow wheat more efficiently
That's literally the question of comparative advantage. Are you just worried about going beyond the two-country model in Econ 101? I'm pretty sure that even in Econ 301, they do multi-country models.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Ok, let's work through this. Let's actually start here:
Indeed, there are some people alive right now, among the most severely disabled, whose labor is worth less than what it costs to keep them alive.
I agree that there are, and have always been, severely disabled people who are simply unable to support themselves.
"Comparative advantage" says that the value of an individual's labor will never fall to zero, and that they will still be better off specializing in something, and trading the products of that specialty for the things they don't specialize in, than if they try to be fully self-sufficient.
Here, you acknowledge, but skip right over something key. You acknowledge that being fully self-sufficient is a lower bound. That is, excepting the severely disabled, the vast vast majority of able-bodied humans can, indeed, be self-sufficient, as evidenced by millennia of history. Comparative advantage means that you will be better off than being self-sufficient, by your own acknowledgement.
It does not at all guarantee that the maximum value of an individual's labor, when they specialize in their comparative advantage, cannot fall below their cost of living.
But here is where you contradict yourself. You just said that they will be better off than being self-sufficient. That is, better off than their cost of living.
humans are horses
Humans are not horses. They're still not horses. This is literally a meme on the badecon subreddit, for good reason. Humans have agency, can understand (or at least act as if they understand) opportunity cost and comparative advantage. Like, the primary things under discussion here are a major reason why humans are not horses. Horses are more like hammers than they are humans.
Humans are finite, and thus, I would argue that our capacities are finite, and thus, the number of ways we can meaningly contribute to the production of goods and services is ultimately also finite.
Sure. Irrelevant, but sure.
automation will eventually cover all tasks, leading to complete automation
You're telling me that delivering me an even better standard of living than I currently have is going to be fully automated? And the marginal cost of such automation is going to be basically zero? (At the very least, lower than the cost of convincing someone to switch from their life of abundance and leisure to helping out.) Huh. Sounds pretty nice.
Like, what is even your model here? A magic robot that can provide all your food, shelter, luxury desires, etc., it costs how much? Why does it cost that much? Who is being paid when one is purchased? It must be obscenely cheap to beat out how cheap those things would be otherwise. $10? $100?
some of us will "run out" of ways to meaningfully contribute — again, the value of contributing will never hit zero, but it can fall below subsistence
Nah, you already agreed that subsistence is a lower bound for anyone who is not severely disabled.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
there are revisionist interpretations pushed by those who want to do it again
Nah. I think a lot of the data requires a pretty significant revision on the standard narrative, but I also don't want to do it again.
And the US drug prohibition has not, regardless of your protestations, covered itself in glory.
The good news here is that we now have memorialized that this is your standard. Not covered in glory. Oof, you are a pure child of light, and I'm sure this standard will never come back to bite you ever.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
From time to time, people discuss prohibitions here. The general zeitgeist is often that one particular interpretation of the the US's experience with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s is conclusive for all prohibitions of any type everywhere and always. Nevermind that there are alternative interpretations of the US's experience with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Nevermind that different prohibitions are different. We now have one data set from South Africa.
In 2020, the South African government banned alcohol sales as part of their COVID measures. Then they lifted the ban, and then brought it back unexpectedly, and then did that again
Every ban saw murders decline, and every reprieve saw them return. Stunningly, prohibition worked:
Perhaps they just didn't keep the prohibition long enough over any time period for the data to show that murders would have really gone up massively over time. Perhaps murders aren't the right measure. (EDIT: Perhaps there were other restrictions that happened concurrent to the alcohol prohibition; one might be interested to see if there are any differences in start/end dates for other restrictions and see if there is something like a DiD.) Lots of interpretations, but only one limited data set. I'm not a huge fan of alcohol prohibition, personally, but I wonder if that is, to some extent, a luxury belief of mine.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Somewhat following hooser, I believe I can defend that term as it applies to the comment I was responding to.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
healthcare is more expensive mostly because we're using more of it
The healthcare industry is so addicted to insane price opacity aided by gov't subsidy of demand (and restriction of supply) that people are using significantly more, at higher prices, than they would otherwise.
education's getting more expensive because ... people want more of it, and price isn't tied to anything
On top of subsidizing demand (causing the people wanting more of it) and restricting supply, the price actually is tied to something - the gov't swoops in and helps universities price discriminate and try to tie the price as close as they possibly can to your personal willingness to pay. It's the outliers like Harvard where they hardly even bother with prices for most customers. They can focus almost entirely on the few 'whales' who will 'donate' tens of millions of dollars with no explicit promise (only a wink) that their daughter or granddaughter will be admitted and then hold distributional power over the rest to give out as is politically useful or maximally self-serving.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
What happens when we, individual human beings without exceptional skills (and eventually them too), are no longer productive in any job?
I suggest you read about the microeconomic term "comparative advantage".
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Lack of high-quality data on an important women's health procedure is another indication of how the patriarchy doesn't take women's issues seriously.
Oof. I only tried to thread that needle one, many many moons ago, and I've mostly avoided engaging with bullshit people who demand such bullshit things ever since. It's real icky, and you will respect yourself a little less and hate them a little more for a long time. So, my first line advice would be that if you can think of literally any other options that allow you to avoid it, do those things instead and never look back.
(FYI: I didn't get the one thing I did try for; one interpretation could be that I'm just a hater for not getting it, though TBH, in hindsight, if I had gotten it, it would have been quite minor in terms of meaningful change to my life; but I am at least avoiding the alternate interpretation that could happen if I had gotten it, where someone could accuse me of asking others to make sacrifices that I didn't or whatever; there's never going to be any winning if people want to shit on you. Anyway.)
I don't think I didn't get it because of the DEI thing; I think their biggest negative was on something unrelated (which was annoying in itself, but that's a story for another day). But even so, I didn't personally think that my approach was remotely convincing, anyway. But I think that, in practice, my thing was actually just assessed by a bunch of profs from a bunch of different universities, with a much higher chance that they were really just assessing science stuff and totally ignoring the DEI stuff. I know from experience with the inside of quite a few different academic selection processes that in many cases, it just gets completely ignored. But of course, it's always a difficult challenge to figure out whether this university will mostly ignore it or pay close attention. I don't know of any strategies here other than having made friends with someone who has served on a faculty search committee there and had some sense about how seriously they thought the 'higher ups' took it. Of course, any particular department can also be more/less committed to the cause, but that's even harder to get good info on.
Up to this point, it's all reasons to run or to not care, which isn't super satisfying to you. My last suggestion will be the least satisfying. If you really want to still apply, and you really think you need to have something that is somewhat conforming, just use ChatGPT or pay someone to write it. They'll probably get the job done as good or better than you could do, and you'll feel slightly less icky, not having had to literally squeeze the words out of your own mind. At a minor cost of increased involvement, but to get slightly increased personalization, prompt it with anything about yourself that might be relevant or look for any area-specific DEI-sounding orgs on campus. It's cheap and easy to say you're going to engage with "[DEI Group] In [Academic Discipline]" or whatever that already exists on campus, and they're probably not going to follow-up to make sure you've actually done so. That said, I probably need to check in with some of my folks who either just went through their tenure review or are about to in order to see how much they seem to care about this BS stuff at that point. It's really hard to know if you're signing up to an organization that is going to make you constantly grovel to the golden calf or just pay a little lip service from time to time.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
You're losing track of the thread.
I had asked:
Do you count the energy content of the fuel?
You had responded:
If the fuel is something that humans have processed and worked in order to make it useful, yes.
Then, I asked:
Does "build[ing] a solar panel to process and work the energy from nuclear fusion" count as processing/working to make it useful?
Now, here, you say:
We only care about the energy cost of building the solar panel, because that's what it takes to actually use it.
But this doesn't make sense, especially in contrast to how you seem to still think in the subsequent paragraph that we do count the energy content of fossil fuels, because we do work on it.
You need to choose one or the other option. We do work on both things to make them usable. Either we only count the work we do on it, and we do not count the energy content of the fuel, itself... or we do count the energy content of the fuel, itself, because we do work on it. Please clearly pick one standard to apply evenly.
The second point you've made also lost the thread. I had asked:
What is a "timescale relevant to humans"? Do consumption rates factor into this?
You responded:
Consumption rates could factor into this
I then asked:
How?
Your current response doesn't tell me anything about how I go through the process of factoring in consumption rates. When I'm determining whether something is on a "timescale relevant to humans", I need to do some math on some numbers, and one of the variables I have is, possibly, consumption rates. How does that variable fit in?
We're spending those resources on military conflicts, poll numbers (see Biden draining the SPR), happy meal toys, artificial islands in the shape of a sheik pissing money away and making as many Americans as obese as possible for as long as possible.
I could make an even longer list of things I don't like about the world, but I don't see how any of these things are really relevant to the questions at hand. In fact, why didn't you just start with that in the first place? Just start with saying that we're totally ruined because we're squandering resources on all these things, then we don't even have to get into any tricky questions about how to measure real things.
Did you know that modern industrial farming techniques require 13 calories of energy to create 1 calorie of food?
That tells me a lot about the relative value of those forms of calories. Which also tells me that, unlike in one's personal diet, a calorie is not just a calorie, so it's surprising and weird that you want to make the measure be about unlabeled calories.
What is "productive"?
You get more out of it than you put in. If I build a powerplant for 100 dollars, and it generates 90 dollars of power before needing to be scrapped, I would have been better off not building it.
Ok. Do you think modern farmers are getting less money than they put in?
Calories is a convenient and easily understandable way to measure energy - I'm not sure how much more basic I can get here.
You can tell me, in basic terms, why energy is the fundamental unit of investment. You didn't seem to think that it was just one sentence ago. You seemed to think it was dollars for some reason. So I ask again. What is "productive"? Is it some measure of calories (which seems to be more confusing to measure with every comment that goes by)? Is it dollars? Or are other human values involved in some way?
Are you for real?
Yes, I am for real. If your predictions are correct, the price of certain resources will rise, and we have very clear results about price elasticity. Do you think price elasticity is bullshit, fake science? Short term financial crises/recessions are in a completely different category on completely different timescales.
Did you actually go and read the article you posted?
I did. But rather than just trust the words that potentially-motivated authors wrote to describe their own interpretations of the data, I actually went and looked at the data myself and drew my own conclusions. Did you actually go look at the data or even bother to read my alternate interpretation, then think about the data that you've seen and consider how to judge the differing interpretations? Or is the standard literally, "One author wrote one sentence of interpretation in a published article, so therefore it is revealed truth"? If so, I'll need a few minutes, but we can find some, uh, alternate revealed truth that might make you uncomfortable.
Sort of hilariously, just yesterday, Practical Engineering took a little run at one of the slew of modern myths about us running out of this or that resource. Focus special attention on his discussion of adaptation. And no, just because sometimes, there are fuck-ups and some bridge collapses somewhere or something, that does not mean that it is impossible for price changes to drive adaptation.
I know that at an entire three days old, this thread is completely dead, but I want to observe that NYT has suddenly found Jesus on this topic, now that it's Not Trump:
Still another challenge stems from a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court that narrowed the instances in which the bribery statute applies to acts by public officials, a ruling that makes the crime more difficult to prove if the government cannot show that payoffs were made with the intent to reap a quid pro quo.
Yes, yes, there was a SCOTUS ruling recently on the bribery statute. You know what else had a SCOTUS ruling, saying that it needed to be a quid pro quo? Campaign finance laws. Almost fifteen years ago. NYT obviously didn't care when it was all about getting Trump. It had never made sense and continues to make no sense to think that Donald Trump entered into a quid pro quo with Donald Trump to exchange Donald Trump's official acts for Donald Trump's money to pay off Donald Trump's financial expense.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Do you count the energy content of the fuel?
If the fuel is something that humans have processed and worked in order to make it useful, yes.
I'm confused again. Does "built a solar panel to process and work the energy from nuclear fusion" count as processing/working to make it useful?
we didn't invest anything to turn the sun on, and so we don't account for it in calculating EREOEI
We also didn't have to invest anything to create fossil fuels, so...?
Consumption rates could factor into this
How?
in the sense that if you are rapidly burning your lottery win to support an unsustainable lifestyle "hope you win the lottery again" is a strategy that someone might pick
I prefer "invest the proceeds of my previously productive business venture into a new productive business venture". If it's argument by analogy, then I don't see why this analogy isn't just as valid.
EROEI is a method for working out whether or not those ventures are actually productive
I mean, is it? That's kind of the question I started with. What is "productive"? Is it some measure of calories (which seems to be more confusing to measure with every comment that goes by)? Or are other human values involved in some way?
When I said adjustment there, I meant taking steps to prepare for a future with less available energy and more climate disruptions
Got it. You just define adjustments at the type that you like. But the good news is that market prices will cause people to take those steps anyway. Sounds like we're all good here.
Limits to Growth
Whelp, let's not talk about any of the theoretical problems with this work... or the failed price predictions. Let's just bask in the update. Oh Figure 3, how glorious you are. We were apparently wildly off on our estimate of how many resources there were (again, ignoring the theoretical problem with definitions here), but surely, we're right on tract to get exactly back in line with the old predictions... basically exactly in the politically-convenient near-future. So what if pollution hasn't taken off like predicted? It'll surely surely happen in the future, but now it looks significantly decoupled from the rest of the subsystems, so what the hell is the point of that again? Population might be coming to a peak; we'll see. And so what if we've done better at industrial output and food production; they're also surely to suddenly and precipitously collapse.... basically exactly in the politically-convenient near-future.
In the 70s, maybe this wasn't all that bettable (except for the bets that were made and were lost by the degrowthers). But now, this chart is suuuuuuper bettable. It's predicting sharp and rapid collapses from peaks that are pre-2025. Certainly, the data will be in to confirm this by, say, 2030. You should formalize the predictions from this model and put them on a popular prediction market. At least if society is going to collapse, you can make some money to mitigate the individual pain.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
What I was told did not correspond to my lying eyes. What should I do? Check myself into an insane asylum?
Check your hyperbole. Think seriously about whether this is a remotely reasonable thing to suggest. Perhaps think about the example of someone trying to make their own semiconductors. If their project fails, and they decide that being told that semiconductor physics works and that semiconductor technology is possible disagrees with their lying eyes, would you suggest that they check into an insane asylum? If not, what might you suggest instead?
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Can I piggyback and have a non culture war sub thread?
I'm interested in learning and pragmatics. I've looked at predictive flood maps before, but it's hard to have any sense of 'how good' they are. I'd also like to know if they are pretty off in some ways, are there any heuristics shy of literally replicating all of the work of coding up a topographic model, a precipitation model, etc., and just turning the dial up, that I could use to more easily get a sense of where is still pretty safe and where might be deceptively dangerous.
One thing that would be helpful is that if anyone knows where I can find recent observational data to compare to the old predictive maps, so preferably maps of the current major flooding with geographic detail that is somewhat close to federal predictive flood maps. Any other reasonable heuristics would be appreciated, though I am open to the answer being that there just aren't any good heuristics that can be generalized beyond detailed knowledge/modeling of a particular geographic area.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Epistemic hygiene is a community practice, not an individual practice
It's an individual practice with community effects, like any other hygiene. You seem to have been inoculated against actually engaging with the research by focusing on some random people that you think are stupid. Reversed stupidity (if it does exist out there somewhere) is not intelligence. If you're finding such people, engaging with them, and responding by becoming strongly epistemically closed, resistant to criticism, prone to lashing out with personal attacks or retreating to saying that you can't possibly know anything about how the world works, you're descending to the lowest of the lows that you imagine your enemies to be.
What capability do most modern people lack in comparison to ye ancients? I'm not asking about current habits/practices or individual skills. Those things can be learned and adopted. And we're certainly not lacking in access to knowledge that can be leveraged to get there. So, what capability are modern people lacking that would prevent them from becoming self-sufficient?
Good news! We have gobs of land. It's going to be pretty much abandoned by all those farmers who are currently specialized in growing crops for trade. I mean, it's not going to be worth anything to them if they can't sell in trade. We'll basically have new frontiers for a new homesteading era.
Sounds perfectly fine, then. Since you're predicting that their family/household/tribe is also going to shunned by TPTB, then those folks might want to trade with you in your little group. Everything is just like it was! Proven capability!
ROFL. If you just deny it without even bothering to engage with it, I'm mostly going to just laugh at you. Because it's hilariously bad.
I mean, at least try. Try to tell me why it's irrelevant. To do so, you have to say something about what it is and how it works. You can't just declare it irrelevant and then talk about something else entirely.
That sounds pretty nice, then. How much will this cheap, plentiful substitute cost? Is it like, $10 to replace a gigahuman worth of labor/knowledge/etc.?
This is a complete distraction. You had specifically predicted that humans will be unable to maintain subsistence. I argue that we do not lack any capability to maintain subsistence, that we have gobs of empirical evidence that it is, in fact, possible, that even if you think small group trade was important to this process, your own predictions imply that we will have plenty of similarly-situated humans who would like to engage in precisely the same small group trade that you think is critical, that humans are in fact different from horses in part because we can understand opportunity cost (at least well enough to realize that if the opportunity cost of just sitting there doing nothing and hoping for a handout is sufficiently large to jump the gap between 'starve to death' and 'not starve to death', we can make the choice to use our capabilities at the very least to sustain ourselves), and that if we're getting magical super cheap everything anyway, you have significant explaining to do in terms of a model for what this price point is, what it gets you, etc.
We can't even get to discussions about transitory whatever until you even have a basic model that has even the most elementary components in it. Like, no, we're not going to jump to questions about dynamics if we don't have any sense of even partial equilibrium, much less general equilibrium.
So they're going to be expensive? How expensive? What are the limiting factors? Don't we have magic automated mining equipment? That stuff is going to have to be cheaper than it is now, resulting in lower costs of materials, otherwise folks might consider employing humans again. Unless you're positing a paperclip-maximizing-scale increase in use of resources, but that doesn't make sense, because in reality, technological advances that are increasing efficiency have actually resulted in us using less resources than we did in the past.
More options
Context Copy link