Society Collapse By 2040 Predicted by MIT

[E1b1b]

[sean]

I always find predictions like these to be a Rorschach test. Mainly in collapse of civilisation (a vague and terrifying phrase everyone has their own idea about).

The MIT prediction is from 1972. They get a lot of things catastrophically wrong. The actual study predicted that economic growth couldn't continue the way it has been doing. What happens after that is not modeled. It resulted from projecting exponentials without feedback, such as increased production and higher costs.

System Dynamic models are based on a concept of "Stocks" and "Flows". To simplify it greatly, Stocks can be measured, but Flows are at least 50% guesstimates and assumptions, and can be tweaked repeatedly to get a desired outcome. The purpose of such models is to explore the boundaries for what "really bad" looks like.

Picture a couple of guys in 1969 with some punch cards in front of an IBM mainframe trying to guess the amount of manufacturing in China in 2021, and the odds of a global pandemic causing trade shortages.

The predictions about future have almost always failed because they have been too optimistic or too pessimistic. Usually what has happened, is something in between. There's a lot of more abstract data points in that that are condensed dramatically.

Sir Thomas Malthus said in 1798 that we'd all starve to death and the survivors would resort to subsistence existence. His conclusion was that in 1798 the world was in imminent danger of a social, economic, and population collapse caused by the over exploitation of resources. However, Malthus's prediction never came to pass. In fact, the world population has increased 8 fold since Malthus predicted imminent collapse.

In 1894, The Times predicted that by 1944, every street in London would be under nine feet of horse poop.

In the 60's, the bestselling book "The Population Bomb" by a widely known Stanford professor also predicted that we would exhaust the earth's ability to produce food for humans by the 80's due to overpopulation. He predicted that hundreds of millions or billions would die and society would break down. His prediction was completely wrong.

I don't see any indication of the Green Revolution (the almost miracle like growth of food production in the 70's) which made the "world starvation by the 80's" hysteria a joke. Not to mention the digital revolution that changed economies, which wasn't even a dream in the 70's.

The IPCC stated that we have to act to a certain threshold within the next 12 years or we will lock in consequences that cannot be reversed or possibly even adapted to.

In Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "The Black Swan" he famously argues against this kind of one-dimensional projective analysis. For instance, in finance, quantitative analysts are asked to produce 'projections' of future output by companies, industries or entire nations. However, no matter how sophisticated these analyses are, they can never predict 'black swan' events: i.e. highly unlikely, but also highly influential events.

These "black swan" events are often the single most impactful factors in an economic system, more so than any past trend, but they are completely impervious to inclusion in quantitative models.

You already have places in the world that have collapsed. People already live in post-collapse conditions in failed states and war zones. There's entire areas of countries, especially in Asia, that have so much garbage that they are literally living on it and in it. Some of those places are even paid to take other countries' garbage.

From middle school forward, people in the West were constantly plied with world is gonna end soon doomsday scenarios mainly climate change related. I think that's one of the reason millennials are so stupid and liberal. They were taught nothing really matters because we're all gonna die soon anyway.

I cringe when someone suggests that our problems will be solved by removing half of the white people on the planet, or forbidding someone to have white kids.

I wonder if there's any Chinese money going into content like this designed to demoralise young people.

[gixajo]

I always find predictions like these to be a Rorschach test. Mainly in collapse of civilisation (a vague and terrifying phrase everyone has their own idea about).

The MIT prediction is from 1972. They get a lot of things catastrophically wrong. The actual study predicted that economic growth couldn't continue the way it has been doing. What happens after that is not modeled. It resulted from projecting exponentials without feedback, such as increased production and higher costs.

System Dynamic models are based on a concept of "Stocks" and "Flows". To simplify it greatly, Stocks can be measured, but Flows are at least 50% guesstimates and assumptions, and can be tweaked repeatedly to get a desired outcome. The purpose of such models is to explore the boundaries for what "really bad" looks like.

Picture a couple of guys in 1969 with some punch cards in front of an IBM mainframe trying to guess the amount of manufacturing in China in 2021, and the odds of a global pandemic causing trade shortages.

The predictions about future have almost always failed because they have been too optimistic or too pessimistic. Usually what has happened, is something in between. There's a lot of more abstract data points in that that are condensed dramatically.

Sir Thomas Malthus said in 1798 that we'd all starve to death and the survivors would resort to subsistence existence. His conclusion was that in 1798 the world was in imminent danger of a social, economic, and population collapse caused by the over exploitation of resources. However, Malthus's prediction never came to pass. In fact, the world population has increased 8 fold since Malthus predicted imminent collapse.

In 1894, The Times predicted that by 1944, every street in London would be under nine feet of horse poop.

In the 60's, the bestselling book "The Population Bomb" by a widely known Stanford professor also predicted that we would exhaust the earth's ability to produce food for humans by the 80's due to overpopulation. He predicted that hundreds of millions or billions would die and society would break down. His prediction was completely wrong.

I don't see any indication of the Green Revolution (the almost miracle like growth of food production in the 70's) which made the "world starvation by the 80's" hysteria a joke. Not to mention the digital revolution that changed economies, which wasn't even a dream in the 70's.

The IPCC stated that we have to act to a certain threshold within the next 12 years or we will lock in consequences that cannot be reversed or possibly even adapted to.

In Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "The Black Swan" he famously argues against this kind of one-dimensional projective analysis. For instance, in finance, quantitative analysts are asked to produce 'projections' of future output by companies, industries or entire nations. However, no matter how sophisticated these analyses are, they can never predict 'black swan' events: i.e. highly unlikely, but also highly influential events.

These "black swan" events are often the single most impactful factors in an economic system, more so than any past trend, but they are completely impervious to inclusion in quantitative models.

You already have places in the world that have collapsed. People already live in post-collapse conditions in failed states and war zones. There's entire areas of countries, especially in Asia, that have so much garbage that they are literally living on it and in it. Some of those places are even paid to take other countries' garbage.

From middle school forward, people in the West were constantly plied with world is gonna end soon doomsday scenarios mainly climate change related. I think that's one of the reason millennials are so stupid and liberal. They were taught nothing really matters because we're all gonna die soon anyway.

I cringe when someone suggests that our problems will be solved by removing half of the white people on the planet, or forbidding someone to have white kids.

I wonder if there's any Chinese money going into content like this designed to demoralise young people.

g]

I don't see a single black person in those photos and articles, anyone would think that they are campaigns dedicated exclusively to "white" people.