Technology, sustainability, and the future of Mankind

[Terring 6,476]

I accidentally derailed a bit the Natural Growth Philosophies / Mindsets topic with my futuristic visions (sorry for that ), so I decided to make a different one to talk about possible events and scenarios that we might live in the near and far future. How things might look like? Will the next decades or centuries be better or worse than today? Or we'll get better in some aspects and worse in others? Is using advanced technology enough to solve our problems and improve our life, or we'll need an advanced code of morality and responsibility as well? Is sustainability possible at all? Will our future be Star Trek or Mad Max? Well, you get the idea.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

I believe the future will not be an all-out Mad Max, but it won't be a collection of bright days either.

I'm not sure if I will be able to explain my (fairly remote) theory well, but I'll try.

The problem is connected to the innate character of people who care and don't care about the future.

People who are creative, educated and skillful and who offer and produce life-improving technologies are also very idealistic and, as a result, lacking the "punching power" to pursue their views and agenda in the same, unscrupulous and egoistical manner that oil moguls or other morally-questionable individuals do.

So the point, as I see it, is that people like rashists, NRA, MAGAs et alia will always be bolder and louder compared to peacefully-minded scientists who play it clean and don't force their views through power, war or treason but only through reasoning. A tough thing to say but the former usually seems more effective if you want to get something accomplished. At least in the immediate and short term.

So the bottom line is that criminals will always be more bold, faster and radical in doing things and destroying humanity, while altruists and optimists will be a silent voice of reason that just won't get through in time.

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 17/09/2022 at 7:11 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

People who are creative, educated and skillful and who offer and produce life-improving technologies are also very idealistic and, as a result, lacking the "punching power" to pursue their views and agenda in the same, unscrupulous and egoistical manner that oil moguls or other morally-questionable individuals do.

Yes, that's precisely why I think it takes a big enough set of crises to shift a society, otherwise self-interest rules.

On 16/09/2022 at 11:57 PM, Terring said:

Will our future be Star Trek or Mad Max? Well, you get the idea.

Some parts of the world are already becoming like Mad Max, and more are heading in that direction.  Some other parts of the world will be relatively sheltered from dystopian outcomes.

On 17/09/2022 at 8:19 AM, Scribosilyn said:

The energy density is lower in renewable energies, to which is added the cost of resource extraction, the manufacture of the plant, its maintenance, and its replacement at the end of its life. All this at an energy and material cost. So we still have to define precisely what we mean by "renewable". But going back to my first sentence, resources are limited. What does "renewable" mean? For the case of a wind turbine, does this only mean producing electricity with an infinite source of energy? Or do we also take into account the cost of manufacturing, maintenance and dismantling? If we take the last perspective, which seems to me to be the most judicious, then no, a wind turbine is not renewable but less polluting than a coal-fired power plant.

"Renewable" is a relative term, but when done right, it is a big step in the right direction for resource and environmental impact.

For grid scale energy, it has less to do with energy density, and more to do with economics.  e.g. Nuclear is the most energy dense fuel, but for various reasons it has neither time scale nor LCOE suitable to current needs for most countries.  Nuclear has a safety record orders of magnitude better than coal, but politics prevents that safety benefit from being realised.  Nuclear waste reprocessing and storage are essentially economic and political issues, too.

On the subject of wind turbines, did you know that graphene is already being used to extend their life and reduce maintenance costs?  Further scale on renewable energy inspires further innovation, and scarcity of one material inspires material science development of others.  Carbon nanotubes here we come.  

On 17/09/2022 at 8:19 AM, Scribosilyn said:

Whatever we do, it's the snake biting its own tail, we can't keep the same comfort of life without sacrificing one or more things on the other side: pollution of the land and water due to extraction of resources, pollution of the atmosphere mainly due to methane and CO2, greenhouse effect, rising oceans (melting ice) and of course global warming which will lead to the loss of fertile land, more diseases, certain species of animals that will disappear, etc... It's a snowball effect: once the temperature rises, the whole environment on earth suffers, and humans too!

Turns out that our environment is a finite resource, too, with food scarcity and water scarcity being one grim way to identify ecological bankruptcy.

I believe there is reason for both pessimism and optimism.  In terms of resource costs, city governments and state governments are starting to grapple with the immense cost of protection against rising seas, or relocation and rebuilding.  The amount of construction, or reconstruction, implicit in rising sea level is immense, and might be one of the key motivators for some nations to take action on CO2 reduction.  So both pessimism and optimism arise from the same cause ... crisis.

Disaster mitigation is another immense cost governments are only just starting to realise.  Among many climate tipping points, there is also an economic tipping point, where we discover that we're too overwhelmed coping with disaster to prepare for the future.  Climate refugee nations have already reached that point.  There is a real risk that only a few nations survive.

On 17/09/2022 at 8:19 AM, Scribosilyn said:

My vision of the future, by no means an absolute truth but only a vision that seems realistic and highly plausible to me. Don't see anything negative, or even positive, just realism.

I've heard some philosophers and futurists say that both utopia and dystopia are unstable states.  They posit an idea they call protopia, which provides an achievable path that turns out to be a better fit for the human species than any ideal.

[Naomi57 2,985]

DW Planet A does not always present a balanced picture, but this particular video released today fits other facts I've collected, and is a representative sample of one corner of climate migration and disaster mitigation which is already in progress.

Not covered by this video, is the impact of glacial retreat on water scarcity.  Freshwater flooding mitigation and water harvesting are vitally important to maintaining both ecosystems and broader habitability.

We increasingly need to care for the world like a garden, and to involve traditional people groups in that ecological care.  In that sense, significant portions of a protopia future will be a curious mix of futuristic and traditional.  It reminds me of the Kingdom of Bhutan, where most of the inhabitants of this very traditional country skipped landline telephones to go straight to 4G mobile phone networks.  As at 2012, the Kingdom of Bhutan had reached 560,000 mobile phone users but just 27,900 installed landline phones.  I see climate change adaptation in poorer countries heading in a similar direction, a pragmatic mix of technology and tradition.

Why the Himalayas have so many ghost villages | DW Planet A

[Terring 6,476]

Sorry for the lack of replies. I'm very busy with my bachelor and my free time is limited. The fact that my psychology has been dropped into the abyss of Tartarus doesn't help either. But I'm not shunning the topic. I have a lot to say.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

On 24.09.2022 at 6:57 AM, Naomi57 said:

DW Planet A does not always present a balanced picture, but this particular video released today fits other facts I've collected

Sadly, this is true of DW in general. I dropped their documentaries altogether after watching one that was a non-stop, 90 minute praise of Karl Marx and his philosophical heritage which, as we know, works wonders in russia today (pun, fully intended) and is making a big, anachronic comeback to parts of Ukraine.

On 24.09.2022 at 6:57 AM, Naomi57 said:

We increasingly need to care for the world like a garden

I would rather say that we increasingly need to care for humanity like a terminally ill person.

The world will exist for eons in this or other form. With or without us. It's about saving our own existence. Not the planet. It has never been about the planet because it will heal on its own as soon as we are finally dead.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

From our interactions @Terring, I have come to the conclusion that you are a proponent of technological utopianism. I am deliberately calling it by the practical, empirical name rather than "solarpunk". "Solarpunk" is an adjective reserved for the world of literary and artistic fiction and it is widely considered as a name for an art trend. However, here, as I understand, we discuss scientific notions and variables rather than art. This is why I want to be clear about the semantics first, and "technological utopianism" is what I consider to be the scientific extension of "solarpunkism".

Technological utopianism assumes that the humanity will be able to breach the current boundaries of misunderstandings and abuse towards the planet and together live a happier, more sustainable life, based on the technological potential and inventions that it is in, or will be in, disposal of.

However, this line of reasoning encounters numerous problems and fallacies the more you think of it. I will start with one of @Scribosilyn's points in which he says...

On 28.09.2022 at 10:55 PM, Scribosilyn said:

But we can't create more energy forever.

Indeed, no matter what you do and what technologies you have, you can't just make new materials and resources out of thin air. In fact, you can't even hope to achieve a perfect circular economy, because it is physically impossible - there will always be waste, even if on a scale that we cannot observe. This is not a hypothesis, but one of the core tenets of the laws of thermodynamics which postulates that energy as such, cannot be created nor destroyed. In other words, your resources are always finite and it's a matter of physics, regardless of what humans do.

Another notion that is worth mentioning here is the so-called "entropy". A measure of disorganization of a given system and the very reason why usable energy constantly depletes. Entropy can only grow and there is no way to pull it back and turn it around. Assuming otherwise is no less than magical thinking. Eventually, the entire Universe is going to run out of energy to do any work or even computing as such.

If the universe itself is finite in terms of energy and not renewable, how much time of resources and power do you think we have on our minuscule planet? I'm afraid that in 200 - 1500 years, we will achieve a "manufacturing singularity" in which all available resources will be depleted and nothing new could be produced without retiring or reassembling already extant tools and objects. And even then, you will constantly be experiencing some losses during this process, even if on molecular level.

The next issue is to assume that humanity can work together in order to achieve the goal of living in a stable, nurtured environment. To claim so is to disregard all the evidence to the contrary that never in the history of world had humanity been united in anything. There is no empirical evidence to point to the fact that climate catastrophe is uniting people. In fact, it is creating an even deeper division between those who believe they simply need, say, fossil fuels, and those who start to phase them out. If you think that people around the world can work together for a better environment, go ahead and try to convince an impoverished Bengali community that it is better to install expensive solar panels rather than use cheap coal (which they can still hardly earn money for). Or better yet, try to convince China that their profit margins will remain unchanged when they forgo dirt-cheap coal as their main power source.

We also need to note, that technology is a dual-bladed sword in most aspects and the same invention can be used to advance as well as devolve human race. Due to the increased connectivity, many people's lives have become easier. However, I think we have long lost the drive to actually physically be next to one another (this, by the way, is the #1 reason why I loathe technology understood as connectivity and virtual life). Analogically, like @Scribosilyn says, the same goes for environmental factors. Although electric cars and solar panels do not pollute during their lifecycle, we will have to face the garbage and hazardous materials that these technologies will leave behind themselves once their lifecycle ends. And do not be fooled - even in the best attempt at creating a circular economy, you will simply not be able to reuse all components of some devices. The best we can do, due to physical, chemical and molecular realities is to pursue a near-circular economy, but we cannot attain 100% recycling rate, no matter how one looks at it.

There is also one idea that I always find very convincing as far as human survival is concerned. It is one of the proposed solutions to the so-called "Fermi Paradox" which stipulates that it is the inherent nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. For every discovery that people make, is followed by another, dangerous or downright dumb discovery which sets us back again and reduces our chances of survival...

On the one hand, we got energy-saving light bulbs and home appliances. On the other, you deal with a group of idiots who mine sh*tcoins, using tremendous amounts of power.

On the one hand, you have innovative programs which help out the least fortunate, improve their access to education and reduce, say, energy poverty. But on the other, you have f**kwits who are rich beyond belief, yet, apply for governmental funds to make private trips to space.

This is why I believe that any technological step that we as a race make will be insufficient unless useful inventions applied to our life outpace those that are killing us or making our environment less hospitable. However, given various social and mentality problems that we face as humans (greed, need for expansion, resource scarcity) it is unlikely that the positive drive for survival will take the upper hand. At the same time, one needs to remember that the natural tendency of an intelligent life is to expand. But this brings us to my first point in which I argue that life as we know it, is an ordered system with an inherently entropic properties. As such, it is impossible for humanity to keep expanding forever. Eventually, the system reaches a point of instability which causes it to collapse, regardless of the intelligent and well-meaning individuals that may exist within this system!

I have a lot more critical points to bring up when it comes to technological utopianism and the overly optimistic thinking about the future but my time is limited and I'd have to write a full essay to cover all of the points that I'd like to mention.

However, the bottom line of my reasoning is that technological utopianism (whatever you call it actually) needs not one, but a whole series of "leaps of faith" to even start considering it as a viable future for the mankind. I see too many flaws and holes in this, perhaps otherwise tempting, reasoning to be convinced by what it proposes as it is simply too theoretical and lacking hard data.

P.S.: I hope you can work through your challenges @Terring and cheer up a bit. My psychological wellbeing has also been down the drain recently due to Covid and need to stay home for a full week...  If I may suggest something, try joining a gym if you haven't already. When I returned there after my sick leave I somehow quickly felt a lot better...

[Naomi57 2,985]

13 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

It is one of the proposed solutions to the so-called "Fermi Paradox" which stipulates that it is the inherent nature of intelligent life to destroy itself.

Yes, this one solution to the the Fermi Paradox is called The Great Filter.  Kurzgesagt has a fun video which explains it well:

“It needs to be something that's so obvious, 
that virtually everybody discovers it,
and so dangerous, that its discovery leads almost universally
to an existential disaster.”

At this point, we don't know enough about The Great Filter to use it for predicting the future, but we may come to know more within this lifetime.

Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter | Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

2 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

Yes, this one solution to the the Fermi Paradox is called The Great Filter.

Partially, yes. As long as we assume that Step 8 or 8.X is the filtering event. But I prefer to view both of these solutions as separate ones to analyze them individually.