[ExI] How the world collapses

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2014 8:22 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] How the world collapses

 

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 6:54 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

>>…Depressing, huh?

 

>…No, just more (easily seen through if you know what to look for) disasterbationism.  For instance, note that in what you quoted, they claim that alternatives to oil are illusions - without citing evidence.  The solar panels on my roof don't seem very illusory.  … Adrian

 

Ja.  Civilization doesn’t come to an end, but rather only our crazy wasteful way in which we use energy gradually ends.  I think we will figure out ways to become waaay more efficient.  Think of food production for instance, which is perhaps our largest energy consuming activity.  Ponder often how much more efficiently it could be done.  Ponder how humanity could rebuild society if we don’t start with the assumption that work is always in the form of a 9 to 5 where scores of proles meet five days a week in an office, by driving from their homes to that office.  

Imagine alternatives to the energy-intensive office space environmental control systems, enabled by having far fewer proles using those kinds of facilities.  Imagine away retail sales; that can all be done online.  Imagine away most forms of mass entertainment that require gathering huge crowds: we can broadcast football games and similar forms of sports-related mass insanity with the teams playing in an empty stadium, but we don’t need the stadium.  A professional-grade field could be set up anywhere if you don’t need the enormous parking lots and spectator seating.

Imagine alternatives to traditional farming, where the machines are far more sophisticated, carrying within their circuitry knowledge of individual edible plants, their diseases, their water and nutrient needs, their harvest schedules.

Imagine the industrial technology needed to produce and program these farming machines, with most of the humans in that industry working from home offices.  Imagine the mostly empty highways, and the flood of ideas we would get from some actual pressure on us.  Right now we are comfortable.  Comfortable people don’t accomplish anything.

spike

 

 

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