LQD: Capitalism is Not Worth Saving | 98 comments (98 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

There is no way to handcraft a microprocessor even remotely close to anything that's around today, even with all the time in the world.

Trust me on this - there really isn't.

Aside from the core technologies of logic generation and path routing, which are so complicated they cannot be done by hand, the energy requirements needed to build a processor are staggering - from ovens which can melt sand, to far-UV light sources for lithography, to some of the hardest vacuum you'll find outside of space.

As for legacy - written material turns out to be useless if no one understands it. Most engineering and science is really taught in person, supported by text.

It would take a rare genius to work through a text book unaided and make any sense of it at all.

Collapse to a post-agrarian society with plenty of farming supporting 10% of the current population is plausible. But it would lose at least 99% of today's knowledge, and would likely revert to a much more superstitious, more violent and even less rational culture.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri May 15th, 2009 at 09:57:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

I wasn't implying that you could make one with wooden tools in a blacksmiths shop.

But it seems that there's a huge difference in the plant and energy necessary to run an assembly line of whatevers with production runs in the hundreds of thousands, and the plant necessary to make them one or two at a time. The latter may well be unsustainable, but would the former be as well?

Technical issues aside, I mainly want to challenge the idea that any collapse will follow the popular image of collapse following Rome - that the end of the capitalist world system would result in a "dark ages" of ignorance and superstition from which recovery would be impossible. For a whole variety of reasons, I just don't think things would run the same way. Really, though, this is a topic for another time in another diary.

by Zwackus on Fri May 15th, 2009 at 11:02:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 0)

There's a huge difference in the resources required to run it... but in the case of microprocessors in particular, I'm not certain that the resources to run it are more important than the resources to build it in the first place.

Industrial society is both highly resilient and highly vulnerable. If you take out a sufficiently small part of the system, it will be able to repair or replace it with relative ease. But if you take out too large a part of the system, the rest will collapse catastrophically. It is hard to see any viable path from here to a "half-industrial" society. And it is even harder to see why such a society would be desirable.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 01:12:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

I can't argue on the technical feasibility of such a system, so I won't. It is an interesting question to think of absolute minimum-possible plant requirements to make certain things, but not one that I can engage in on anything more than a purely speculative nature.

However, as for the desirability of such a thing, well, that seems a bit easier to answer. The possibility of a "half-industrial" society provides an alternative to the either/or dichotomy we seem faced with - mass industrialism or life in 1700. There are things that are good and useful and valuable in our modern technological repertoire, but our current means of producing them is horribly wasteful and environmentally damaging. As most of our technology has been developed in the age of mass-production, our ways of thinking about these things has been similarly linked to the idea of mass-production. However, is this a necessary link? I don't think the technological means or possibilities of small-scale production have really been explored, because in our current system, they don't make sense. However, that does not mean that they are impossible.

This is turning into a diary. Maybe I'll write one.

by Zwackus on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 02:14:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 4)

Depends on your definition of "mass production." If you mean mass production in the sense of assembly-line production of more or less uniform copies of a single blueprint, there is nothing that prevents mass production from being compatible with sustainable consumption patterns. Very few things are produced in only a handful of factories - meaning that we could scale back production of most goods by a factor of at least ten, and still not hit the physical limits where this definition of industrial mass production becomes non-viable. This would still be a fully industrial society, but it would have a much smaller ecological footprint.

OTOH, if you mean "mass production" in the sense of "producing a lot of cheap stuff that breaks fast and cannot be repaired," rather than - say - making stuff that's a little more expensive up-front but doesn't break if you give it a nasty look, and which can be repaired when it does break. Then yes, I agree that that kind of "mass production" has to go away.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:03:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

"I mainly want to challenge the idea that the end of the capitalist world system would result in a "dark ages" of ignorance and superstition from which recovery would be impossible."

Seems to me that the point is not whether it is POSSIBLE to "recover" from such a collapse, but whether there is a large chunk of humanity to which it doesn't really matter. Most people, the huge majority, are interested primarily in football and beer and conversation. Add in a nice ritualistic religion that provides rote answers to all existential questions, and most people are happy.

Suffering? Hello, everybody experiences dukkha. Modern medicine? People still die. War? Sure. Thanks to us not being in the Dark Ages, now we have supercomputers. Big deal!

In what way has the Enlightenment actually made things better for most people? The most secure and self-satisfied people I know are hard line Catholics and Presbyterians and Evangelicals who know all the answers and watch TV all weekend.

by asdf on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:37:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 3)

In what way has the Enlightenment actually made things better for most people?

We have hot showers, running water, electricity and usually don't die from lung infections. Does that count?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 06:04:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

Yeah, but excepting hot showers, running water, electricity and modern medicine, what did the Romans ever do for us?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 06:43:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

Personally, I can totally relate to the "they don't die from XXX" argument, because in the absence of modern medicine, I would have checked out a long time ago.

HOWEVER, everybody still dies. Instead of dying at 35 from a lung infection, we die at 95 after 10 years of "living" in vegetable mode in a nursing home. Which is somehow better, I suppose...

by asdf on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 12:35:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

You can always shoot yourself in the head at 85 if you prefer that. Still much better than dying at 35 in the body of a 60 year old.

My grandmother became 93 and lived at home all the time until her death, with complete mental clarity all the time.

Still, my fathers grandmother became 99(!) and that was without much modern medicine as she was born sometime in the mid 19th century.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 05:20:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

There is no way to handcraft a microprocessor even remotely close to anything that's around today, even with all the time in the world.

As someone familiar with what it takes to make a processor, I disagree. A century or millennium of technological development in an extremely energy limited environment will produce results as radical as the microprocessor of today would have looked a century ago when we were on the front edge of our current environment of nearly free energy.

But it would lose at least 99% of today's knowledge, and would likely revert to a much more superstitious, more violent and even less rational culture.

But for how long? My core question here is why do we assume the level of social organization and technology we can achieve has to be proportional to the amount of energy we are able to exploit? Arguments that have nearly convinced me of what chaos is likely to come over the next century have far less power, IMO, to predict the course of the future beyond that, not because it gets harder to predict the further into the future you go, but because they assume our technical know how will not only diminish but stay at that diminished level in perpetuity.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 01:50:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

As someone who's also familiar with what it takes to build a processor, I disagree with your disagreement.

MillMan:

A century or millennium of technological development in an extremely energy limited environment will produce results as radical as the microprocessor of today would have looked a century ago when we were on the front edge of our current environment of nearly free energy.

That's just a statement of faith, and ignores the long dark periods that happen after empires fall - which are part of the historical record, and not just speculation.

I'm thinking in terms of the technology available today, which took the best part of 5000 years to develop.

If you lose the essential industrial base needed to build stuff, you're going to have to retrace those steps in a more hostile environmemt where resources are more expensive.

I can imagine, maybe, progress in bio-engineering which could grow systems instead of building them mechanically. But that still needs a solid industrial base to bootstrap itself.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 11:55:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

Are the long dark periods really there though, or are they interpretations of later historians living in an empire? I still haven't quite figured that out.

And in any case, all of this is speculation: your argument seems to me at least as faith based as Millman's. Past performance does not guarantee future results, after all.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 11:59:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 3)

All the things ive read suggest that suggest that its part of a suggestion that the culture of kingdom and empire are direct successors to the knowledge and culture of the Classical world. Conveniently editing out the culture of the Islamic world in-between. If they had been acknowledged as co-inheritors, and cultural leaders, then political and ethical situations would be somewhat different.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 12:24:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 0)

And when? For the first three centuries, those centuries bin Laden laments the grandeur of, every day, in his cave, most of the "Islamic world" was undergoing its "Golden Age", characterized by a Judeo-Christian majority.

... Many top "Islamic" scholars, with impressive Arab sounding names, turn out to have been Jews.

It is true, though that in the times of Ibn Rushd ("Averroes"), the Islamist world was truly Islamist, while capable of conducting a conversation with the West on Physics. But Ibn Rushd was a Spaniard, and his influence (in particular his theory of secularism being compatible with theocratism) had a huge influence on the Franks, but not in the rest of the Muslim world (Muslim Spain was its Caliphate).

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:26:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 1)

So you want to discount the contribution to mathematics and medicine? or are you to claim that any discovery was made by jewish scholars?

Or their founding of optics? major works in Astronomy, Geology and Chemistry?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 04:42:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 1)

or are you to claim that any discovery was made by jewish scholars?

Well, Jews and Christians did have special status in Islamic society, especially during the Caliphate. The Jews in particular tended to occupy positions of importance. That period of Islamic culture was particularly pluralistic. I don't think it occurred to the Caliphs to be concerned that many of the best works were produced by Jews.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 12:33:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

When "Islam" was strong, (4.00 / 2)

the "Islamic" world was a melting pot, multi ethnic, multi religious, multi cultural.

Not all, but many "Islamist" thinkers were not that Islamist. So many ended up stoned to death.

So I am not dismissing. Pure Islam, like pure Christian, is rare as a contributor (great Xtian thinkers were later condemened by the fascist Xtian church; Erigenus, Abelard, Buridan, etc..)

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 05:55:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 1)

Algebra.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 06:06:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I confess to some provocativeness (4.00 / 3)

...I had been provoked first... True some Arab speaking Muslim mathematicians did contribute. But Babylonian, Greek and Indian contributions were more important.
Full symbolic algebra was invented by Descartes.

Al-Jabr is the description of the maneuver to solve the quadratic equation. That came, and was invented by the treatise written in 820 by the Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (from which algorithm comes). He was from Uzbekistan, although he was resident at the "House of wisdom" in Baghdad (then held by Persians, not Arabs).
PA

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 06:25:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

There were DARK AGES (none / 1)

The collapse that was the Roman empire, especially after it went plutocratic theocratic fascist after being simply plutocratic fascist, is a case in point.

Dark Macedonian ("Hellenistic") another example. Dark Age of Greece ~ 1000 BCE, another. Collapse of Mayas, an even more spectacular case. Collapse of Crete, too.

And then, of course, there is what happened to what was long the richest and most civilized region of the world, the Middle East.

PA

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:01:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: There were DARK AGES (none / 0)

I always thought that Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was a history, but Gay in "The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism " seems to say it's more of an anti-Christian screed...

by asdf on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:29:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Long subject, on which I have written hundreds (none / 1)

of pages already.

Christian propaganda has highjacked civilization, after Christianity tried its best to destroy it completely.

Why did all the books end up with the Arabs? because the Arabs were dedicated scholars? No. The first book written in (primitive, experimental) Arabic was the Qur'an.

The books of the West ended in the East and South because the Christians destroyed them. Oh, they also destroyed physically the intellectuals, who fled to Persia. To protect them, Persia declared war to Xtian fanatical Rome/Constantinople. That terrible war destroyed both empires, and Muhammad decided to pounce, as is explained in the Qur'an.

And so on...

Gibbon: too nice. But we are 250 years later, and I do not have to be as nice...
PA

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 06:03:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

I should have said "could" instead of will. Sure, running ourselves to extinction is also a strong possibility. But I think you are tying the concept of the microprocessor to the technologies we use to create it. They are not the same thing.

I can imagine, maybe, progress in bio-engineering which could grow systems instead of building them mechanically. But that still needs a solid industrial base to bootstrap itself.

Our disagreement boils down to this comment - you're assuming a very specific base state for the creation of a microprocessor, whereas I think there may be alternatives that I can't imagine as my mind is limited to what I see before me and an imagination that lets me move outside that box - to some extent.

I can imagine creating a microprocessor in a craft environment even if it takes thousands of years after a dark age to develop radically low power technologies to create a device that looks alien in form but the same in function. I also won't underrate human ingenuity to tackle our core limitations, and as energy scarcity is a 180 from energy abundance (the world I live in), I believe my imagination is quite limited.

Don't underrate that 1% of knowledge that gets passed forward, either. How much fossil fuel does that knowledge amount to? A lot. And the simple knowledge that something was possible in the past is an extremely good motivator for recreating it in the present, even without an instruction manual.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 12:34:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

LQD: Capitalism is Not Worth Saving | 98 comments (98 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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