[Daz1]

>Plenty of places have had catastrophic droughts, famines, and plagues. Nearly half of Europe died a few times from plagues. Most natives in America were absolutely wiped out from disease and other issues. Tens of millions died of famine in China last century. Tsunamis washed away and killed hundreds of thousands in Indonesia and Japan this current century.

Conveniently you selected pre-technology examples. How curious.

Meanwhile the impending global famine(s) - (plural) of the 20th century never came to be because captitalism kept pumping out agriscience improvements to improve crop yields to 10 times what they were in 1900.

[forgotoldacc]

???

Technology has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. What are you defining as "technology"? Software as a service chatbots? Because those aren't saving anyone.

And 227000 people died 20 years ago in a tsunami in Indonesia. They had cell phones and the internet. Is that pre-technology? 50 million died in famines in China in the 1950s. They had TV, radio, and computers. Is that pre-technology?

Technology is just tools that humans make to solve a problem.[1] It's not magic. And in the case of the Japanese tsunami, the most basic technology that humans have had for tens of thousands of years saved countless lives: just building a wall, and making it tall enough to block rising water. [2] But wrapping an entire country in walls is kind of unfeasible. And you can't protect the entire world. We never know what kind of disaster will strike next, and technology to protect us only develops after we suffer the consequences at least once.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology#Prehistoric

[2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/photo-essay-the-seawalls-of-toh...

[fsloth]

> Technology has been around for hundreds of thousands of years

Vernacular methods of doing things have been around - without science or rapid innovation. Key point in time was invention of printing press combined with lutheran zeal to read and the western alphabet that allowed unprecedented platform for knowledge transfer. After that it's been pure acceleration.

Before literacy was a major thing (which it has not been historically) knowledge transfer and preservation was based on human to human contact. You could not literally just crank the machine to print out out going edges in a knowledge graph.

I'm not meaning just a few literate people. I mean an entire society capable of reading and eager to create and learn new information.

> Technology is just tools that humans make to solve a problem.

According to a dictionary it's "the branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences" / "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry" and I would argue it's this sort of technology that enables novel, rapid adaptation.

Applied sciences need science before application. Now - knowledge seeking that sure looks likes science even though it was not called that has been around few millenia - Thales of Miletus, Ibn al-Haytham etc etc.

What is novel in our time is application of science to every goddamn problem on an industrial scale. And the understanding that things can improve. This requires a literate society (imo but arguable maybe), eager to adapt, and pragmatic recognition of what works and what does not.

There are areas that are lacking in literacy and capital. While people in those areas sure enough are able as anybody else to individually use technology developed and manufactured elsewhere, the societies in which they live simply lack the means to apply industrial level technological innovations.

With industrial level technology adaptation it's a whole different ballgame.

Many places in US would be uninhabitable without technology and are thus testaments to the idea that MODERN technology allows survival in unprecedented places. For example Colorado. The place was so arid and unhospitable no one could or would want to live there. But then there came railroads, industrial engineering to implement water reservoirs etc etc and visit Denver today and it's very hard for an outsider to realize they are visiting a modern goddamn miracle.

I'm fairly sure if people can live in Colorado they can live anywhere given sufficient capital is applied (capital being the enabler of applied science and technology).

[forgotoldacc]

A lot of ancient societies rapidly adapted to problems. In my previously mentioned tsunami example, ancient societies would build their towns above a certain point to be safe from them. Some cultures used to (and some poorer people still do) build houses on stilts near flood areas to stay safe from rising water.

But in modern, literate society, people think "nah it'll be fine bro" and build houses right up on and flat against the coastline. Then entire towns get washed away.

The biggest mistake modern people make is assuming ancient societies were stupid. They didn't have people sitting in offices thinking up solutions to problems. But the reality is those societies learned just as quickly as anyone else did, and a lot of them probably had a much stronger fear of nature and didn't sit around thinking "nah bro we'll totally survive. we have technology". They knew a tiny mistake meant death. Death to modern first worlders seems like a very out of reach thing. We operate on the assumption we'll live long lives and die in a retirement home.

And Colorado isn't by any means inhospitable. There were plenty of tribes in Colorado before literate enlightened megagenius westerners came along to save the day. It has some of the oldest known towns on the North American continent.[1] Westerners may have at first struggled to survive there with their modern technology, but natives lived just fine in Colorado for thousands of years.

Tibet is a far more inhospitable place. So is Saudi Arabia. But those also have thousands of years of history all without a printing press. Arabian culture even managed to spread across the world out from the inhospitable desert and even dominate part of Europe before the printing press existed. Spain and Indonesia became Islamic before enlightened Europeans went out to save the world and make it "habitable".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Verde_National_Park

[fsloth]

I agree humans as individuals regadless where they came from or when they lived have always been equally precious in potential, and all traditions are valuable, but it’s simply false narrative to claim modern technology & capital would not make a difference.

My point was it’s false narrative to compare any historical society to a modern industrial one.

Printing press, latin alphabet and market economy were suberb for knowledge transfer. There was no historically comparable system to commodotize and scale literacy.

It’s false narrative to claim european developments were not unique and transformative. That’s just how the history goes. Literacy, capital, binding contract law and science created a heady mix that created a system that now is global standard how societies try to operate.

Large parts of the system came from other parts of the world. The point is not where this happened or by whom, but the point is it happened.

Modern technological societies are able to adapt in unprecedented scale. Regardless of culture or ethnicity.

It would be pretty weird to think this would be a narrative of european supremacy - cultural, racial or otherwise. Europe was an inconsequential periphery and it’s once again an iconsequential periphery.

[forgotoldacc]

Japan had literacy rates equal to the west during the age of exploration. [1] And when you go back to historical records, Egypt and Mesopotamia had insane good record keeping and were stabler, longer lasting societies than anything else earth has yet seen. They're also in some notably harsh environments compared to the easy living of Europe.

Latin characters really had nothing to do with it. Western society was built off the lessons learned from those two societies. What separates post-printing press western civilization has been the incredibly rapid expansion (which Mongols also achieved with nothing but horses and bows and arrows). But whether this post-printing press civilization will last as long as Ancient Egypt did (3000 years) is yet to be seen. We've got about 2600 years to go.

[1] https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/pdf/unknown_0003.pdf

[Ekaros]

I would argue that Egypt apart from temperature was lot less harsh than Europe. Nile offers water all through the year. And the flooding brought fertilizer each year. Also lot less risk of any type of weather causing famine.

In reality that is lot less harsh than Europe before industrial agriculture. Just looking at list of famines shows that Europe was a harsh place to live for stable society.

[fsloth]

Exactly.

What makes the capabilities of the current civilization different is a combination of things, some of which are unique this time around.

The major differentiators are 1. Global scale monoculture in knowledge (take engineers from US midwest, Ethiopia, China, Brazil, France, Japan, Finland, Chennai - we all basically can mesh instantly to a product team since tehcnological education is so homogenous). This monoculture was enabled by the printing press and later digital technologies. 2. Insane amount of energy per capita available 3. Amount of capital available including finance

2. and 3. simply were not available before. We can argue all day about merits of education systems of old but you simply did not have this global talent mass on hand. This talent mass is prerequisite so that you can scale capital and technology rapidly on a global scale.

Energy&Capital then feed the machine to give it energy. This machine simply did not exist before. The energy per person in any society was tiny fraction what we can utilize. Similarly for capital.

Japan is excellent example.

a) It demonstrates how long it takes for a society, if it's educated and all around excellent but pre-modern to reach parity with modern societies. I would argue based on facts it's about two generations or 50 years (for Japan) from Perry expedition 1850's to Japan wiping a western industrial nation state fleet to the bottom of the Tsushima straits (1905).

b) It demonstrates this society, when in it's pre-modern configuration lacked things, that it felt necesary to acquire to be able to go head-to-head with societies that had these implemented.

It's this difference between pre-modern,pre-capitalist pre-industrial and modern I'm talking about, why it's false narrative to state "people througout history have been smart and able" as a contradiction why modern societies would be more capable. Because they are. It's not a statement about why some people with different upbringing or genes would be different. That's irrelevant (except up to a point where their upbringing relates to prevalent institutions i.e Acemoglu, "Why nations fail" etc).

I agree we know nothing of how long the current system can last, or will it evolve or devolve. But it's very hard for me to imagine the system going away unless we go full mad max. Because it's not about cultural identity anymore. Who is your king or god. While we live in tumultuous times, Fukuyama was still more or less correct IMO, even though clearly it's not a "end of history" as much as "beginning of new history".

It's about capital, energy, education and markets.

[jerjerjer]

> Daz1: Conveniently you selected pre-technology examples. How curious.

> forgotoldacc: Technology has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. What are you defining as "technology"?

I think he meant "industrial".

[Sabinus]

Technology can't save you from famines when there isn't enough sunlight to grow crops for a season or two. One good supervolcano and civilization might collapse or at least take such a hit as to be utterly transformed. Billions dead, etc.

[lazide]

Literally grow lights and nuclear reactors? (Or plain old gas turbine generators)

Technology is the only thing that can save anyone from that type of situation. Prayer sure wouldn’t help!

[Sabinus]

You think it's possible to put any decent percentage of our GLOBAL food production in greenhouses (remember with less light global temperatures go down) within ~6 months?

Billions would perish. If the luckier rich countries did not get nuked or invaded by armies or waves of endless starving refugees then they would be able to save a good amount of their population. At best world development goes back ~50-100 years. At worst, modern civilization basically ends from the combination of conflict and famine.

[lazide]

that doesn’t address the context of the response at all.

is technology helping, or hurting in that situation?

near as i can tell, it is the only thing that could help.

we aso have significant food stores and buffers, and if it was the situation you described it would literally be a ‘drop everything and get working’ emergency. we’d likely do better than you expect.

what else could possibly help besides technology?

But yes, a lot of people would die.

[Daishiman]

You don't have the _slightest_ idea of how much energy and materials you would need to provide sufficient grow lights to feed humanity right?

[lazide]

Sure I do. Do you have anything else you can propose that would help at all?

And if a couple billion people (minimum) would be dead if we didn’t do it ASAP, do you think that energy or material wouldn’t be expended at the drop of a hat?

Hell, look at how much energy we expend just to serve cat videos.

People generally respond to sudden, external, visible risks pretty well.

It’s when risks are hidden, build slowly, or are caused by behaviors they consider ‘unsolvable’ and they’ve learned to adapt to that they suck.

[Daishiman]

Serving cat videos is about at least three orders of magnitude less energy than required to grow food. How much energy do you think you need to light half a hectare with 1 kWh LED lamps?

[lazide]

Depending on a bunch of factors

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601....]

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/how-much-energy-does-it-take-t...]

But let’s say we take the upper end of energy consumption multiples between input energy and output energy (kcal), say 120 times. So to feed 1 person 2000 kcal per day, would require 240,000 kcal worth of ‘production’ energy, which at that multiple would add up to 278 kWh per day per person. Signifiant!

Multiply that by the population of the US (345 million), and that is a lot of kWh for sure - 95910000000 kWh. But it looks like national energy usage is measured in ‘quads’. And that is .3 quads per day.

Current US energy production is approximately 100 quads per year, and consumption a bit less than that at around 90 something.

[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/]

So if we picked the absolute least efficient most energy consuming plants, and grew them in the least efficient type of growing environment, we’d need to drop everything and devote all our energy production to it.

Assuming no rationing, no efficiency improvements (LED lights are quite efficient now, and if we really had this issue we’d of course devote 100% of available production to them!), and no bulk commercial production of simpler foodstuffs (we can make bulk sugars and proteins via bioreactors right now, for instance), it would be terrible but possible. At least for the US.

Countries with more solar production, or colder, would be harder hit of course.

China would be well positioned probably to pivot, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t use it to their advantage. Especially with turning up their nukes and pivoting all their solar plants to making LEDs instead.

India and Bangladesh would be really screwed though.

Everyone would finally think farming was cool again though, so that’s a plus.

[adrianN]

The Green Revolution has so far just postponed famines. We are farming in an unsustainable way. We're running out of fertile topsoil and are depleting fossil aquifers in many regions of the world. Inorganic fertilizers might become scarce in the foreseeable future too.

[forgetfreeman]

One thing worth noting about these agriscience improvements you're touting would be they require a combination of non-renewable inputs and unsustainable amounts of water. There is also the minor issue of unrecoverable topsoil depletion and the steady decline of nutrients in agricultural products tracked over decades. Kicking the can down the road isn't the same as solving the problem.

[rewgs]

You selected pre-climate change examples. How curious.