A Resource Based Economy

[blablahblah]

Creativity ~= unpredictability.

The last thing we need is a "creative" computer system running the world.

...It would not matter if the ruling computer system came to the (much processed) conclusion that humanity should be eradicated -- it would be a good and correct decision, because the smartest most powerful class of intelligence in existence has deemed it so.
It is my belief (I am admittedly biased in at least this one aspect) that the point of the universe is to fill itself with intelligence, and humanity is a step in this process.  How long that step lasts and its other details such as its end may not be for the step itself to create, and it is comforting to me to accept this....

It's OK man, you don't have to sacrifice yourself for the good of your religion. Maybe there's another way? You could apply for a course and become smarter! Don't do it! Don't do it!

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[mobodick]

But i think that the bigger this consumption problem becomes the more people will be willing to change.
The change just won't be RBE but something that more naturally fits our way of living and won't have the same dramatic consequences that a change to RBE would have.

Market economy. Once people start paying the REAL price of things, that should take care of it.

yes, exactly. and sound money.

Nonsense.
The market will only care about efficiently describing the relation between supply and demand.
It doesn't care about the human situation or that the resources are running out. The process of the market will just continue to work untill demand is satisfied. And as i said above, it is the demand that needs the change. Going through the market is starting at the end and hoping the beginning will catch up.
You would first need sufficient ammounts of people in the market that want to change before the market will provide for this change.

If you think the market or some money scheme will help then you are delirious.
Only humans can help here.
Humans are the root of the problem and also the seed of the solution.
Not markets, not RBE, not any other ideology.
We need to change our own behaviour if we want change.

[mobodick]

But i think that the bigger this consumption problem becomes the more people will be willing to change.
The change just won't be RBE but something that more naturally fits our way of living and won't have the same dramatic consequences that a change to RBE would have.

Market economy. Once people start paying the REAL price of things, that should take care of it.

I think if you let the market play out from supply to demand you would already be too late.
It would be a brutal transaction.
One of the problems is that it is indeed the future generations that will be presented with the bill if you play it through the market.

The future generations are already being presented with the bill. Any delay in beginning to pay it only raises the eventual cost.

It's already too late no matter what we do.

Sure, there is already a price to pay, but it is in no way as dramatic as it could be so it still makes a lot of sense to start changing.

[Crypt_Current]

That is why people try to grow complexity nowadays, instead of designing it. It turns out evolution is pretty efficient at this process despite its seeming inefficiency of exploring a possibility space.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/

Sorry to go off-topic ( ), but this reminds me of potato chips that look like Abraham Lincoln...

[myrkul]

That is why people try to grow complexity nowadays, instead of designing it. It turns out evolution is pretty efficient at this process despite its seeming inefficiency of exploring a possibility space.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/

Sorry to go off-topic ( ), but this reminds me of potato chips that look like Abraham Lincoln...

The potato chip that looks like Lincoln was an accident of nature. The slime mold is intentional. They placed food at the relative locations of the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the slime mold to determine the most efficient and resilient paths between them.

[Crypt_Current]

But i think that the bigger this consumption problem becomes the more people will be willing to change.
The change just won't be RBE but something that more naturally fits our way of living and won't have the same dramatic consequences that a change to RBE would have.

Market economy. Once people start paying the REAL price of things, that should take care of it.

I think if you let the market play out from supply to demand you would already be too late.
It would be a brutal transaction.
One of the problems is that it is indeed the future generations that will be presented with the bill if you play it through the market.

The future generations are already being presented with the bill. Any delay in beginning to pay it only raises the eventual cost.

It's already too late no matter what we do.

Sure, there is already a price to pay, but it is in no way as dramatic as it could be so it still makes a lot of sense to start changing.

Or just hole up in a cave with the largest amount of uranium anyone has ever been in possession of, hit play on the Mayhem discography, and start building that 50,000 megaton doomsday device.

[Crypt_Current]

That is why people try to grow complexity nowadays, instead of designing it. It turns out evolution is pretty efficient at this process despite its seeming inefficiency of exploring a possibility space.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/

Sorry to go off-topic ( ), but this reminds me of potato chips that look like Abraham Lincoln...

The potato chip that looks like Lincoln was an accident of nature. The slime mold is intentional. They placed food at the relative locations of the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the slime mold to determine the most efficient and resilient paths between them.

Sooo...  Slime mold says we're right, so we should pat ourselves on the back?  Did we already know that slime mold always takes the most efficient routes to food?

[myrkul]

That is why people try to grow complexity nowadays, instead of designing it. It turns out evolution is pretty efficient at this process despite its seeming inefficiency of exploring a possibility space.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/

Sorry to go off-topic ( ), but this reminds me of potato chips that look like Abraham Lincoln...

The potato chip that looks like Lincoln was an accident of nature. The slime mold is intentional. They placed food at the relative locations of the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the slime mold to determine the most efficient and resilient paths between them.

Sooo...  Slime mold says we're right, so we should pat ourselves on the back?  Did we already know that slime mold always takes the most efficient routes to food?

You didn't read the article, did you?
Yes, we did know that. In fact, the slime mold showed us a few spots where there was room for improvement. They're thinking of using it to plan future networks.

[mobodick]

That is why people try to grow complexity nowadays, instead of designing it. It turns out evolution is pretty efficient at this process despite its seeming inefficiency of exploring a possibility space.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/

Sorry to go off-topic ( ), but this reminds me of potato chips that look like Abraham Lincoln...

The potato chip that looks like Lincoln was an accident of nature. The slime mold is intentional. They placed food at the relative locations of the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the slime mold to determine the most efficient and resilient paths between them.

Sooo...  Slime mold says we're right, so we should pat ourselves on the back?  Did we already know that slime mold always takes the most efficient routes to food?

The point is more that emergent behaviour can solve problems.
There is not much intelligence in the way the mould finds the path.
It simply makes lots of random connections and those that transport the most grow stronger.
It leads to optimal solutions that are hard to grasp by mathematics. It's a bit of a fishing-net strategy. You throw out a net and see what sticks.

Edit: and i would also like to add that the mold map is a lot less optimal for humans than the real map.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/8/2010/01/slimevtokyo2.jpg
It makes you travel way further in some cases. For the mold it's not a problem that the distribution is a bit slow as long as it is energetically cheap.
For humans, well, if you depend on the train to go to work every day then you don't want to take a detour.

[molecular]

But i think that the bigger this consumption problem becomes the more people will be willing to change.
The change just won't be RBE but something that more naturally fits our way of living and won't have the same dramatic consequences that a change to RBE would have.

Market economy. Once people start paying the REAL price of things, that should take care of it.

yes, exactly. and sound money.

Nonsense.
The market will only care about efficiently describing the relation between supply and demand.
It doesn't care about the human situation or that the resources are running out. The process of the market will just continue to work untill demand is satisfied. And as i said above, it is the demand that needs the change. Going through the market is starting at the end and hoping the beginning will catch up.
You would first need sufficient ammounts of people in the market that want to change before the market will provide for this change.
[...]
We need to change our own behaviour if we want change.

The market doesn't "describe" the relation between supply and demand, it brings the two together and finds a price.

It does "care" about the resources running out in the sense that it sends a "price signal" as resources become harder to extract. The higher price has at least 2 positive effects: It decreases demand and it triggers investment into looking for other solutions.

I agree that it's the demand that has to change. I've come to the view though that the easiest way to do this is to have the consumer pay a higher price, the "REAL price" as myrkul said, the one determined by a market that uses unprintable money. A free market economy will make efficient use of the resources. It will also look into the future and foresee resources being used up and take action (for profit, of course).

I'm not saying all is great as it is, in fact I'm saying we don't currently have a free market: all the fiat printing is effecting malinvestments and pushes consumerism. It pumps money into conserving existing structures that should long be gone. The "continual growth paradigm" has to fall. The simple solution here is sound money.

Introducing sound money seems to me much easier than somehow "providing sufficient amounts of people that want to change".

[memvola]

The subject is surely changing fast.

If you want real emotion you would need to evolve it and so you would have to present the same kind of environment to the developing mechanism to make it develop these qualia we call emotions.

This doesn't make any sense. Are you proposing that qualia are transcendental?

I'm not sure what you mean by transcendental.
To clarify my statement, i think anything we think of as conciousness or intelligence is the result of specific information flows in a structure.
Anything you feel in an emotional sense is specific to humans. I would not expect most life to experience emotion because most of life does not have a brain to feel emotion (or experience conciousness for that matter). Mammals propably do feel some sort of emotion but it would not be a very human-like mix of emotion and there would propably be a lot less control over these emotions and a lot less reasoning.

Hmm, I now get where you are coming from. "specific information flows" or "specific to humans" don't mean much to me, but I guess you were originally discussing something else and they may be relevant.

However, I need to point out that what "emotion" means to me is the sensory feedback you get as your body reacts to chemicals released by your reptilian brain. They are indeed qualia, just as any other sensory experience is qualia, and nothing more. Qualia in turn is how data is locally represented, and nothing more. So, I don't see why emotions in general would be specific to humans or "living" things.

Then again, I get what you mean when you say that trying to replicate "human emotion" is pointless, although I can't agree with how you describe the situation. We actually don't and can't know qualia, because it's not "human specific", it's "subject specific", so actually you can't replicate them at all.

He's saying (and I agree) that a programmed simulation is not the same thing as a true emotion.

Well, as I said, I neither get what you mean by simulated emotion, nor true emotion. We can only judge by the resulting phenomena, so there cannot be objective criteria for authenticity.

As far as I can tell, I'm the only consciousness in existence, and "everything else" is just a product of my imagination in my little universe.

That paradigm is solipsism, and is not logically cogent.

I humbly think the contrary, solipsism is as logically cogent as it can get. We just need to stop fighting it and accept it as an indisputable metaphysical perspective.

[molecular]

I humbly think the contrary, solipsism is as logically cogent as it can get. We just need to stop fighting it and accept it as an indisputable metaphysical perspective.

Just as indisputable as the theory of the existence of a god... and equally irrelevant.

[memvola]

I humbly think the contrary, solipsism is as logically cogent as it can get. We just need to stop fighting it and accept it as an indisputable metaphysical perspective.

Just as indisputable as the theory of the existence of a god... and equally irrelevant.

I get the analogy, but I wouldn't take it too far. They aren't equally indisputable. Also, solipsism is a priori to anything you can think about God. Regardless of what God is, or whether it exists, you came here first.

Wow, this was really off-topic, sorry.

[mobodick]

But i think that the bigger this consumption problem becomes the more people will be willing to change.
The change just won't be RBE but something that more naturally fits our way of living and won't have the same dramatic consequences that a change to RBE would have.

Market economy. Once people start paying the REAL price of things, that should take care of it.

yes, exactly. and sound money.

Nonsense.
The market will only care about efficiently describing the relation between supply and demand.
It doesn't care about the human situation or that the resources are running out. The process of the market will just continue to work untill demand is satisfied. And as i said above, it is the demand that needs the change. Going through the market is starting at the end and hoping the beginning will catch up.
You would first need sufficient ammounts of people in the market that want to change before the market will provide for this change.
[...]
We need to change our own behaviour if we want change.

The market doesn't "describe" the relation between supply and demand, it brings the two together and finds a price.

It does "care" about the resources running out in the sense that it sends a "price signal" as resources become harder to extract. The higher price has at least 2 positive effects: It decreases demand and it triggers investment into looking for other solutions.

I agree that it's the demand that has to change. I've come to the view though that the easiest way to do this is to have the consumer pay a higher price, the "REAL price" as myrkul said, the one determined by a market that uses unprintable money. A free market economy will make efficient use of the resources. It will also look into the future and foresee resources being used up and take action (for profit, of course).

I'm not saying all is great as it is, in fact I'm saying we don't currently have a free market: all the fiat printing is effecting malinvestments and pushes consumerism. It pumps money into conserving existing structures that should long be gone. The "continual growth paradigm" has to fall. The simple solution here is sound money.

Introducing sound money seems to me much easier than somehow "providing sufficient amounts of people that want to change".

and that's exactly why i don't think it will work.
The market can be efficient at connecting a seller to a buyer but it doesn't care about humans.
The humans participating need to care about that. That is the only way the market will ever care.

I'm sure the market will find a balance, just not sure it will be a balance that makes us consume less. Unless the whole process crashes.
It realy is a sort of a runaway train thingy at the moment and for humanity to be safe we need to step it down over generations. At least, that's how i see it.

[myrkul]

I agree that it's the demand that has to change. I've come to the view though that the easiest way to do this is to have the consumer pay a higher price, the "REAL price" as myrkul said, the one determined by a market that uses unprintable money. A free market economy will make efficient use of the resources. It will also look into the future and foresee resources being used up and take action (for profit, of course).

and that's exactly why i don't think it will work.
The market can be efficient at connecting a seller to a buyer but it doesn't care about humans.
The humans participating need to care about that. That is the only way the market will ever care.

And a rising price makes people care. Look at the 60s vs today (in the US). In the 60s we had huge muscle cars, with gigantic engines, roaring out pure, unadulterated power, and eating up prodigious amounts of fuel to do so. Today, we're starting to see smaller, European-influenced cars, even hybrids and full electrics. Why? Price of gas went up. It's not all gone, but we've already decided it would be a good idea to reduce our usage.

[mobodick]

I'm not saying all is great as it is, in fact I'm saying we don't currently have a free market: all the fiat printing is effecting malinvestments and pushes consumerism. It pumps money into conserving existing structures that should long be gone. The "continual growth paradigm" has to fall. The simple solution here is sound money.

Introducing sound money seems to me much easier than somehow "providing sufficient amounts of people that want to change".

Sure, but i'm not sure sound money will still our hunger for resources.
The 'continual growth' is in fact a 'slippery slope' that maintains a certain balance in the world, like salmons swiming against a stream.
It provides stability in the sense that power is pretty centralized and almost noone can accumulate so much money that they can threaten stability. So it is a two-edged sword in a way.

When you put a bottom to inflation suddenly you will see an anormous divide between rich and poor because the rich will be able to generate money much more efficiently simply because they have more of it.
That will make for a big upper class that will start fighting and making wars and whatnot untill the lower class (or maybe this time the middle class) will revolt.
It has been done and it is a boody mess...

[mobodick]

I agree that it's the demand that has to change. I've come to the view though that the easiest way to do this is to have the consumer pay a higher price, the "REAL price" as myrkul said, the one determined by a market that uses unprintable money. A free market economy will make efficient use of the resources. It will also look into the future and foresee resources being used up and take action (for profit, of course).

and that's exactly why i don't think it will work.
The market can be efficient at connecting a seller to a buyer but it doesn't care about humans.
The humans participating need to care about that. That is the only way the market will ever care.

And a rising price makes people care. Look at the 60s vs today (in the US). In the 60s we had huge muscle cars, with gigantic engines, roaring out pure, unadulterated power, and eating up prodigious amounts of fuel to do so. Today, we're starting to see smaller, European-influenced cars, even hybrids and full electrics. Why? Price of gas went up. It's not all gone, but we've already decided it would be a good idea to reduce our usage.

Sure, but it was education and awareness that brought us electric cars on an industrial scale.
The economic reality of change is that there needs to be a driving force for it. But by just waiting to let the market correct for it in the case of resources you will make it nessesary to compete with the price of these resources untill they are depleted enough to be more expensive then the new tech.
That is not what you want...
You want to prevent the exhaustion of a resource.
And the market does not help us prevent that.

If we didn't change society to prevent air pollution in the 70s then we would all live in smog everywhere. Such changes are not brought about by the market. They are real changes in society and expressed in laws and governance.
Government is not all bad. Not all institutions are useless.
In fact, i'd say most institutions are important for society.


Edit:
Also, cars change because car use changes.
Things like road quality, population density, income, work habbits, etc etc all decide how a car sits in the market.
Please explain to me what the 'recent' wave of SUVs was all about and then tell me again that the market would be able to regulate something like an oil resource.. 
The so-called self regulation of the market would just take the resource from the people that cannot pay for it and leave it as a luxury for the people that can. Even if the people that cannot pay for it need it more.
We have a market for electric cars becasue we taught enough people that we should make a change.
The market doesn't care and serves what we whish for as long as it can provide.

[myrkul]

Sure, but it was education and awareness that brought us electric cars on an industrial scale.
The economic reality of change is that there needs to be a driving force for it. But by just waiting to let the market correct for it in the case of resources you will make it nessesary to compete with the price of these resources untill they are depleted enough to be more expensive then the new tech.
That is not what you want...
You want to prevent the exhaustion of a resource.
And the market does not help us prevent that.

You want the most efficient use of resources, yes? Low price means more efficient. If you switch away from one resource while using it is still the more efficient option, you're acting against your stated desire. So, which would you rather have, a big, inefficient stockpile, or efficient use?

If we didn't change society to prevent air pollution in the 70s then we would all live in smog everywhere. Such changes are not rought about by the market. They are real changes in society and expressed in laws and governance.
Government is not all bad. Not all institutions are useless.
In fact, i'd say most institutions are important for society.

On the contrary, The use catalytic converter and the phaseout of Tetraethyl lead was already in progress when those regulations came in. Advances in fuel technology would soon have made TEL completely unnecessary. Laws have always lagged behind societal changes.

[mobodick]

Sure, but it was education and awareness that brought us electric cars on an industrial scale.
The economic reality of change is that there needs to be a driving force for it. But by just waiting to let the market correct for it in the case of resources you will make it nessesary to compete with the price of these resources untill they are depleted enough to be more expensive then the new tech.
That is not what you want...
You want to prevent the exhaustion of a resource.
And the market does not help us prevent that.

You want the most efficient use of resources, yes? Low price means more efficient. If you switch away from one resource while using it is still the more efficient option, you're acting against your stated desire. So, which would you rather have, a big, inefficient stockpile, or efficient use?

No, we need a sustainable use of resources. That's the situation humanity is in at the moment.
Efficiency can in some cases be enough to achieve sustainability but not always.
No matter how efficiently you use the oil, it WILL run out.
So the actual solution is to use the natural resources efficiently and with care while we look for an alternative way that is sustainable.

[myrkul]

Efficiency can in some cases be enough to achieve sustainability but not always.
No matter how efficiently you use the oil, it WILL run out.
So the actual solution is to use the natural resources efficiently and with care while we look for an alternative way that is sustainable.

And a rising price is the signal to do both.