[Beijinger]

"The growth is unsustainable argument is very strange to me. We absolutely have the technology to make growth sustainable, but societies choose to go for other things because overall growth and advancement of humanity is not generally a goal at mass individual level."

Well, it is seventh grade mathematics. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

https://expatcircle.com/cms/why-the-future-might-hold-troubl...

The limits of growth are real. Very real. And unfortunately, many problems we are seeing might be the prelude to the prediction.

"It’s quite human-centric to assume that all other possible civilizations will make the same choices."

Well, there should be many and we see none. This is not encouraging. While the best idea to look for life is to look for an entropy source, I think advanced live in space may be similar to us. They would need some kind of sensors (eyes, ears) and likely they would have been predators at one stage in the evolutionary path.

[sologoub]

Those links are so oversimplified to not be useful. The arguments are for an ideological point of view and not a real analysis. Just consider that population growth is stagnating and going into decline. While energy use per capita is likely to increase, it’s not clear at all that things will continue as before even a 100 years from now. Even the AI race is seeing smaller models perform as well or better a year old ones. We are definitely in a fast growth phase of energy use there, but will it continue to grow indefinitely or will we become much more efficient and hit diminishing returns stalling further investment or plateauing energy use? Who knows… On the scale of the next 100 years, humanity can definitely meet its energy needs with nuclear and clean sources if we have the collective will. Will we? Time will tell.

[c22]

The argument that our rate of growth will decrease in the future is not incompatible with the argument that our current rate of growth is unsustainable.

[Beijinger]

The changes that our growth rate will turn long term negative before 2050 are pretty good. I won't go into details for the consequences.

[baq]

Sir, on this planet we obey the laws of thermodynamics, but politicians don’t seem to mind. If you argue that growing energy by 2% yoy is oversimplifying, look at previous trajectory and who gets to lose their jobs if the pattern stops.

[zmgsabst]

Your first link says that in 400 years, we’ll need a second location to continue growing.

And…?

I think that actually supports the other person’s view: if your entire argument amounts to “in 400 years, we’ll need to have space stations or settle Mars with nuclear!” that isn’t really an argument against growth now.

[c22]

The link predicts that in 400 years we reach a growth limit at the 100% solar exploitation of earth's entire surface area, so it's likely we'll have to get off planet well before that.

It goes on to predict that to maintain

> 2.3% annual energy growth for 1350 years from the present time

Will require total exploitation of our local star. This is a tight timetable to construct the relevant dyson sphere, even with the associated gains in engineering/construction efficiency and expertise.

There are additional cogent arguments that bypassing the solar energy requirement (with e.g. nuclear methods) will pose significant challenges in radiating the waste heat within ~1400 years.

These projections are based solely on the rate of growth, so it seems clear that while we may be able to keep growing indefinitely, the rate at which we do so will need to asymptotically approach zero.

[zmgsabst]

I couldn’t have predicted 2024 from 1624 — so I assume I’m similarly incompetent at forward predictions of 2424.

Trying to guess from 1AD what 2024AD would look like would make me sound like I was speaking myths — so again, I have to assume I’m similarly unable to guess at the timeline (4000AD) where we’d run out of galactic solar energy what our existence would be like.

There’s nothing in my grandchildren’s grandchildren’s time that would prohibit growth — and I’m okay admitting I lack the wisdom or capability to solve problems on so grand a scale. The links posted bolster my position that the “limits of growth” are irrelevant to me, almost entirely.

To the extent that they may impact my great-great-great-great-grandchildren, I think they’ll be better able to handle the troubles of their time with the benefits of a robust economy, vibrant society, and abundant wealth. Nothing you’ve posted suggests that I should try to limit growth or that anyone would benefit from the attempt.

[c22]

Certainly--I am still investing in the stock market.

However, this thread is about detecting alien civilizations in far off star systems so I'm not sure why you'd expect any of this conversation to be relevant to your immediate situation.

[theamk]

You can clearly see the energy growth slowing down starting from 1980's or so.. and yet the rest of article keeps going like this is not happening, and same rate from 1650's will hold for many more years.

It won't. Population growth is slowing down, per-human energy growth is probably even decreasing compared to 20 years ago.