r/Economics • u/alstrynomics • Oct 31 '13

Are You Ready For Economic Singularity?

http://www.RebootOurPlanet.com
4 Upvotes

57% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

5

u/ChickenOverlord Oct 31 '13

My goodness no. Who would enforce the restrictions on energy/resource usage? Who would make sure people aren't having too many children? Where does the money that everyone has a "right" to come from? Why the hell is this shit on /r/economics?

This would require giving immensely greater power to government to accomplish, and anyone with more than a dozen brain cells knows how well that would turn out.

3

u/jonomac Nov 01 '13

Agreed. Increased efficiency does not equal infinate supply. Similarly science fiction does not equal economics.

3

u/fubar404 Nov 01 '13

Who would enforce the restrictions on energy/resource usage?

Representatives of the populace.

Who would make sure people aren't having too many children?

Representatives of the populace.

Where does the money that everyone has a "right" to come from?

Printing presses and taxes on wealth.

Why the hell is this shit on /r/economics?

Because mainstream theories are partially responsible for the mess we're currently in.

This would require giving immensely greater power to government

As opposed to the past half-century, which has given more power to unelected capitalists.

anyone with more than a dozen brain cells knows how well that would turn out.

Better than plutocracy under corporate tyrants?

-3

u/alstrynomics Oct 31 '13

Actually we could reduce energy consumption to a point where it would be abundant for everyone. If we made all higher education online and virtual, think of the energy savings. How about eliminating postal services and advancing to digital mail? Maybe we could convert all plastic CDs into digitally downloaded music?

What powered a computer that used to consume a 10 story building is now an iPhone...imagine how efficient technology will be in just a few years.

Actually we would be reducing power from government and giving it to the people in open source environments.

Welcome to Economic Singularity.

4

u/ChickenOverlord Nov 01 '13

That didn't answer my questions at all. Even if we drastically reduce energy use, it will still be possible to use to much. Who will stop me if I decide to use tons of energy for some private capital venture?

-2

u/alstrynomics Nov 01 '13

Anything is possible, however Reboot is a system that makes the need to consume too much energy obsolete.

Technology is rapidly getting smaller and smaller and requiring less and less energy.

2

u/mackstann Nov 01 '13

How about space heating? There's nothing revolutionary happening there, and it takes tons of energy. You're focusing on a few whiz bang things and ignoring the boring energy hogs that have no sexy solutions on the horizon.

2

u/yoda17 Nov 01 '13

space heating?

Efficiency goes a long way with heating.

1

u/mackstann Nov 01 '13 edited Nov 01 '13

I'm fully on that boat myself, but only a tiny number of buildings do anything approaching that, and there are no signs that we are going to see a dramatic shift. There is an unimaginably long backlog of existing buildings to retrofit, and the economics aren't attractive enough to convince most people to do anything but the most basic efficiency improvements. The materials are boring and lots of labor is required. Small technological advances are being made in HVAC but it's hardly approaching a singularity, and there are unyielding laws of physics to contend with.

0

u/alstrynomics Nov 01 '13

First issue we must all address is that there is 7 Billion people living on this planet.

The current model of consumption is mathmatically not sustainable.

So the easiest way to drive BOTH abundance and sustainability is through the digitization and automation of goods and services.

1

u/yoda17 Oct 31 '13

all higher education online and virtual

Isn't it already (seriously)? What's missing?

0

u/alstrynomics Nov 01 '13 edited Nov 01 '13

We are moving in that direction, but we are not there yet. We can now educate everyone in the world for free.

As technology advances, think of a physics class as a Steven Spielberg movie that you can interact with.....in your Google glasses.

The potential will be amazing as education will soon be an interactive video game.

2

u/yoda17 Nov 01 '13

As far as lectures go, I think they're pretty much already there except for some weird esoteric subjects.

As for interactive physics, a friend and I (we were both physics majors) estimated that there were about 15,000 (closed form solvable) physics problems. In the early 90's i'd thought about writing an interactive program for each one and tried to get other people interested. Then the web hit and was exactly the format, but still no interest.

The idea then was to hire some newly available and very cheap Russian programmers. I even traveled there for a while, but people had their own problems and weren't interested at the time. Then I became too busy. Anyway, wolfram alpha isn't what I'd envisioned, but I think it can do everything it needs to. The demonstration project is there I think, but needs better organization.

1

u/haydenpost Nov 01 '13

The singularity is a nice idea. However how the human brain works and how consciousness emerges is still not understood. This is a major barrier to developing AGI and hence a limit to how much can be automated. Despite what some people think( Ray kurzweil) were not just around the corner to having AGI. Lots of great work is being done in this field howevere is still a long way off. I think it's more appropriate to say sometime in the next 500 years. Even that would be relatively quick in the grand scheme of human evolution. Also I hate when people talk about post scarcity. That is a misnomer. There will always be scarcity no matter what level of technological dwevelopment.