So the techno solutionists are at it again! This time they're claiming that very soon, a "Singularity", an event in which AIs will quickly grow faster than humans can comprehend is right around the corner. Such techno-hopium is very common among their ranks, and I don't expect it to decrease any time soon.
As I've been saying since 200X, Technological innovation doesn't move as fast as we'd like, despite delusional wishes to the contrary. Furthermore (and this bears repeating), technology is built upon a substrate of energy. You may have all the intelligence in the universe and it won't do you a bit of good if the last barrel of oil is gone.
This civilization was built with cheap, accessible fossil fuels. Remove that and the whole thing crumbles. Why, I don't even expect cities to be around by 2050 or so. All either abandoned as monuments to our one-time energy bonanza or crawling with scavengers . A sober evaluation of the situation is required, but I don't anticipate it from their ranks.
Comments (3):
@KarenGilligan:
"Fantastic post as always, @Lastbastionofsobriety. I've told my grandchildren that they'll be growing turnips in their bathtub when they're my age, if they're even still alive! But of course they're deep in denial"
@PraisebetoNurgle7777777:
" Friends, the time for solutions has long passed. Solutions are denial in its purest form. Let us walk blissfully to the end"
@Moresoberthanyou69:
" I think you're being a bit too optimistic @Lastbastionofsobriety, I saw this sort of wishful thinking in 2008 and history will tell you just how fast things can break, don't bother replying, I have no desire to engage with delusional people"
Open Delusions: Why ExposedMind's latest toy will not save us
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, July 1st 20XX
ExposedMind, the energy guzzling tech giant devoid of both sobriety and hubris has pushed out another piece of hopium. A new AI model, named Spy 1 is being touted as the most powerful model yet developed and will inevitably lead to more advanced models and this will enable ever more technological innovation. Ignore the fact that it being more powerful only means that it will spew out nonsense more efficiently, ignore the fact that more powerful models will not be developed as the necessary technological and industrial substrate will not exist in the required time, ignore the fact that the AI bubble will pop long before the debt ridden global economy does and takes the entertainment industry, modern medicine, industrial agriculture, and toasters with it. Delude yourself for a moment and pretend ( however hard it may be) that we will be able to dedicate ever more compute to building ever more powerful models.
Our predicament would still not be solved. What people have been failing to see is that predicaments only have outcomes, not solutions. This is because even if we had an AI as smart as the smartest scientists, it would not be able to solve our predicament any more than they can. Compute will not scrub microplastics from the soil or refill aquifers. It will not return the world to pre industrial Co2 levels. In fact, it will only worsen our predicament due to the ever greater amounts of coal burned for power.
When will these fools learn that the very business of civilization itself is an unsustainable mistake and that no amount of wishful thinking can change this fact? We are in fact worse off than the Romans as we can't even farm the land once industrial farming crumbles.
Comments (0) :
Failure and Fusion
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, July 27th, 20XX
I am both very surprised and not surprised at all. Just 2 days ago, stable high EROI fusion was attained for the very first time after experimental recommendations by Spy1 . I must commend the team, I did not actually believe it to be possible. However, I still do not believe saving this civilization will be possible for the following sober, evidence based reasons.
Firstly, Fusion generates the wrong type of power. It would actually be able to generate electricity but what the techno-solutionists don't tell you is that most of our energy consumption is in the form of high heat, industrial applications. This is why claims of an energy transition are mere puffs of hopium. Though you might ask if we can't just replace electricity generation with fusion?
Well, we can't; this is because the grid was built around fossil fuels and will require TRILLIONS of dollars in upgrades over the next few decades, all of that from a debt ridden economy that will burst any year now like an overinflated balloon at a child's birthday party ( not that we should have children). And where will the cement and steel to build those fusion plants come from? What about the time it will take to build them? It takes about a decade or so to build a conventional nuclear power plant, at exorbitant costs. And this is a proven technology with more than 6 decades of existence. So no, Fusion will not save us.
Comments (1) :
@KarenGilligan:
"Once again, an amazingly sober post @Lastbastionofsobriety!, Frankly I've always known that nothing will ever replace fossil fuels, I learned that 10 years ago when I read " When the ship sinks: What we'll do when there's no gas at the pump" But most people just don't want to face the truth.
Taking matters into your own hands: How to avoid suffering in the next decade
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, August 2nd, 20XX
(post deleted by moderators)
Comments (2):
@Thepracticalphilosopher:
" I don't personally think that's a good idea @Lastbastionofsobriety, I think you'd save quite a bit more if you bought them in bulk."
@Theonlyrealistintheroom2109:
" It's also not a practical option for all of us. I don't have a bathtub, and I'm gluten free so I haven't a toaster either"
The edge of the Petri Dish: How our loins damned us
By @Lastbastionofsobriety, August 5th, 20XX
I think it's worth giving a refresher course on the main driver of our predicament, overpopulation. There are billions of us on the planet right now, all consuming much, much more than it can provide. And this is mostly due to the default societal blindness to energy and resources. To put it simply, the story of our century is that there are far too many eaters, and not enough resources to go around.
We bred like rabbits, not knowing or caring that the hutch could not hold us all. Though it is important to note that at least some countries have reversed their population trends and begun diving downwards to population collapse. Mostly for economic reasons. For example: In South Korea, fertility is now well below replacement, owing to the high cost of living. Fortunately, capitalism has ensured that there won't be too many South Koreans to suffer in the coming decades. The Global South however, tells a much different story.
There, low levels of education and high levels of religiosity have ensured that population growth has remained sky-high. This is bad for everyone there, naturally but it's not very good news for us in the developed world either. When climate change begins to wreak havoc, it will likely hit them first. And they won't stay put. They'll migrate here. I would not be surprised if while huddled around your only working radio in 10 years, you hear about mass graves being dug near borders.
So what can be done? Not much for those destined to be shot unfortunately. But those of us with testicles can take some comfort in knowing that we can do something to ensure that less people are around to witness the next few decades. It's called a vasectomy. It's fast, cheap and quite painless. And if you're looking to prevent suffering to the unborn, you might as well do it while medical infrastructure remains intact.
Comments (7):
@Mark Matthews:
" Fantastic post as ever, @Lastbastionofsobriety. I realized the scale of our predicament many years ago and had a vasectomy soon after I got married. Unfortunately it didn't work since my wife was heavily pregnant a few months later"
@Condomexofficialaccount:
" Truth be told, 90% of people reading this aren't going to go get snipped, and that's perfectly fine. But no one intelligent enough to see what the next 10-20 years are going to look like is going to disagree with @Lastbastionofsobriety's core argument: We need to limit the amount of people on the planet. Which is why we here at CondomexTM are offering, for a limited time only; a lifetime supply of our patented survival condoms. Made with the purest, military grade Malaysian rubber, these ergonomic sheaths can be stored in pockets, in cars and even plate carriers. Click the link to visit our Youtube channel, where our official catalogue of products is displayed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvFZjo5PgG0"
@Martin Bouvier
"You know and I know, @Lastbastionofsobriety, that society at large is far too blinkered to see the sad state of our resources to want to shrink. I expect the eaters to keep on eating until there's nothing left to eat. You also forgot to mention how dependent modern agriculture is on fossil fuels. Perhaps if we had infinite amounts our population would keep growing. But we don't, and I anticipate long queues for bread, before that system fails as well and urban farming consists of a few cold, starving refugees growing kale in discarded plastic cups and raising cockroaches in bins. I present the sustainable food of the future"
@Thetinyurbanfarmer
" In all seriousness, I have been achieving tremendous results with growing kale. It won't be enough to replace all of traditional farming, but I highly suspect Urban farming could provide a good portion of our food"
@LilBobDookie
" Stupid, sex-addicted gluttons, that's what we are"
@GraceWilliams
" I know that thinking about these issues is hard, but what's easy is accepting that god does have a plan, and that he did send his son to die for us"
@PraisebetoNurgle7777777
"The only plan is rot, my friend"
The world has never improved, or the slide down ( Guest post!)
By: @PraisebetoNurgle7777777, August 25th, 20XX
I think that today I'll counter a regretful, persistent myth shared by so many of my fellow doomed eaters on this planet: The idea that things can in fact get better, and that they were better in the past. Friends, though it saddens me to say this, this is a delusion.
Things cannot get better. The remarkable boost in living standards that we enjoyed in the last century was granted by a one time energy bonanza and allowed to endure by an unspoiled biosphere. There was ample energy to burn, ample minerals to dig out and a virgin atmosphere and virgin ocean to be deflowered with our waste. But now we are out of room.
Friends, people just do not want to see that even if we committed to transitioning our energy system NOW, we'd have no metals left. No oil with which to build them. Our biosphere cannot and will not accept the waste that expanded industrial production would cause. We are out of room, accept that and relinquish hope. And you will be as glad as me. You will be glad for there will be no more struggling, no more wrestling with assumptions at 3 am, no more endless reading of scientific papers while your children ask you if you're ok. You can just give up.
Accept that there is no more room. Accept that the farms will fail and the economy will collapse long before that, and the seas will drown our cities and that the gangs will rove. Accept that you will collect polluted rainwater and grow your food in whatever containers you can find, perhaps catching the odd cockroach for your chickens. And you will be so lucky if that's your life. You may hear screams and hacking as you try to sleep at night. And every year, things will just unravel more and more. Every year more and more crops will fail, and every year more and more solar panels will stop working, and go unreplaced, for we'll have no metals with which to build them, and no oil with which to extract them. The social contract will be over long before that, don't you see? Why show up to work at a mine if there's no diesel in the truck and no food at home for your family anyway?
It's also important to note that things have never really gotten better, every technological innovation that has ever been has only served to hasten the demise of our civilization. Wells only serve to deplete groundwater, Oil wells only serve ( or rather served) to contribute to the greatest energy surplus mankind has ever known, bringing our civilization to ever greater heights to fall from. Technology itself has always been intended to make things easier for the person using it, and worse for everyone else. Spears kill, Ships bring you to the New World for you to destroy it, Oil wells pollute. All of human history has been the story of us shooting ourselves in the foot. Some people enjoy romanticizing hunter gatherers. While they did enjoy freedom, they had no guarantee of securing their next meal. When we discovered agriculture, we merely secured our own suffering. A hunter gatherer tribe facing a famine could simply move, a city state couldn't. However, even when food was plentiful, things weren't necessarily better for the inhabitants of the first city states. There were enforced social hierarchies and a total lack of autonomy for certain segments of society. We have been civilized for a mere 5 thousand or so years and in that time we have seen the same story play out time and time again: Emergence, Overshoot, Collapse. All evidence points to the sad fact that civilization itself is a fluke made possible by certain climatic conditions, destined to be scraped off the earth like a scab for good soon.
Comments ( 2 ):
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
" Fantastic post, @PraisebetoNurgle7777777, I'm truly honored that you offered to write a guest post"
@ErnstWagner:
" I am making short now a list of all the reasons think I that these stupid young people keep fighting. However, here in Germany we had recently one collapse camp so it's clear that smart young people are not always only thinking that the future can be better from today"
IT’S A COOKBOOK! ( of bullshit)
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, September 1st, 20XX
Apologies for the long wait, friends in this predicament! I’ve been travelling these past few months, journeying through Southeast Asia to “live now!” as a fellow blogger often writes. Since about mid August I’ve been immersing myself in the sun, sights and food of Southeast Asia. It’s food that we’ll be discussing today. But first, a little context. I was idly flipping through channels in my Chiang Mai suite when I stumbled across a news report on a farm in Okinawa ( globalization, another thing that we’ll kiss goodbye to very soon).
I shan’t bore you with the whole report but I’ll give you the basic facts: Recently, ExposedMind unveiled an updated version of their flagship AI model, dubbed Spy2. It’s broadly the same thing as its predecessor except for the fact that it’s completely free. This means that nearly everyone and their mother has been using it to optimize their work, while with Spy1 this was the province of big labs. A UN-funded startup in Okinawa used the model to engineer a strain of algae that grows in nearly every environment projected to exist by the IPCC. Sounds good? Still Hopium, and here’s why:
1) The IPCC has been shown time and time again to purposely underestimate the severity of climate change. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps they err on the side of conservatism to avoid alarming governments ( like that’s been working) or perhaps they want to avoid panic. The fact remains that the climatic conditions described in IPCC reports are not the climatic conditions that humanity will experience in the next few decades, and said conditions are unlike anything humanity has ever experienced and are therefore incompatible with our civilization’s survival.
2) Intelligence cannot farm. As I’ve said in an earlier post ( See: The Singlusion), you may have all the intelligence in the world, but it won’t do you a bit of good when the last barrel of oil is burned. These new algae farms will doubtlessly rely on outside inputs that’ll doubtlessly be gone when we can’t sustain the complexity needed to, for lack of a better term, get them. I can of course, hear the din of the techno-optimists, who are doubtlessly clamouring for nanobots to help alleviate our material problems. But then we’re faced with the same predicament: Where do you get the material inputs to build and scale the nanobots? What if supply chains fragment before you can?
3) The political will to feed the world doesn’t exist. That’s the sober truth. If it did, then we’d doubtlessly have ended world hunger by now. The world produces enough calories to feed 10 billion people, yet a good portion of those are wasted while 3rd worlders starve to death. And this is in a globalized, high tech world with a UN that’s been trying ( without any success ) to solve the predicament for decades. What do you honestly think will be done about world hunger on a much less hospitable planet where every developed nation has closed its borders and shoots anyone who dares to cross them?
Comments (0):
Nothing Concrete but greed ( Guest post!)
By: @Madamedubarrydedorito, November 15th, 20XX
I saw robots repairing a house yesterday. No, it doesn’t mean the world is fixed. I was taking my son, Noah ( I had him 4 years ago, before I was collapse-aware) for a walk through the neighbourhood, trying not to think about how the butterflies he pointed at will probably be extinct by the time he’s my age. We’d taken our regular route; walking counterclockwise through the neighbourhood, before stopping at the park for about half an hour before following the street back home. It was after we left the park that I saw it: a woman with a clipboard supervising a dozen dog-sized metal spiders that scuttled all over the wooden frame of the house that’d burned down in spring. I paused, and I’ll admit that my jaw dropped. They spurted out webs from their steel abdomens that hardened into a tough plastic and sealed the gaps between the wooden beams. Noah wanted to pet them instantly and the woman supervising them was kind enough to call one over for that very purpose.
While Noah stroked his new unfeeling friend, I asked the woman what these things even were. She explained that the company she worked for had gotten Spy2 to conjure them up about 6 months ago. They’re semi autonomous “construction-units” which generate a bio-based plastic from an internal reactor. They’re planning to test the robots here in the States before shipping them off to places like the Philippines and Indonesia. The company hopes the ever increasing amounts of natural disasters over there will lead to a surge in demand for the Arachnes ( which is apparently what they’re called). I thanked her and left with Noah, who begged me to let him get one as a pet the whole way home.
The creation of the Arachnes does not mean the construction industry (or our world for that matter) has become more equitable or less exploitative. It means the exact opposite. It means that disaster capitalism has ascended to the highest possible peak of hubris. This company plans to flood broken, marginalized communities with automated labour, thereby denying jobs to locals who might have otherwise fed themselves by repairing the damage. What will we see next? Robot border-guards who will shoot wave after wave of migrants with no remorse? The future is bleak and I wish Noah had never been born. I cried myself to sleep last night right after hugging my little boy, right after realizing-no, knowing in my heart that the world he inherits will be defined by what he doesn’t have.
Edit: As I write this, President TXXXp is considering an executive order that would integrate Spy2 into every state department. I don’t have the energy to say much more besides that I know hundreds, if not thousands of civil servants are going to be on the streets if it goes through. Any sane person could see that this is the only future our choices could have birthed. The one we created, in the belly of the beast, because our time was badly spent.
Comments (3):
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
“ Fantastic guest post @Madamedubarrydedorito! I think you really captured the futility of hoping for a kind future but I’m going to have to disagree on the specific mode of doom we’ll face. I don’t anticipate an AI takeover or robots replacing manual labourers at all. Companies will try of course, capitalism can’t survive without growth. But as I’ve been saying since 200X, any sort of innovation rests on a materials and energy surplus that we’re about to lose.”
@Thefryestcook
“ Bro you talking cap. Just got laid off because management replaced us with some robot fry chefs Spy2 made. I don’t know how I’m gonna make rent this month”
@Madamedubarrydedorito
“ I’m really sorry to hear about that, friend. I guess I’m fortunate enough to grow enough of my own food to not really worry about money. I’m sending my love, and a link to GoFundMe. https://www.gofundme.com/ . This isn’t just a bad time. It’s the end. And we should be trying to make it as painless as possible.”
The gloves are off
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, December 10th, 20XX
Well, I’m not surprised. Recently, after spending most of December curing most cancers ( but we’ll talk about the fragility of medical supply chains another day) and building nanobots to extract minute amounts of metal from the soil, Spy2 addressed the world yesterday.
It was giving a press conference in a robot body it’d materialized about 24 hours before it was due to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for recently calming tensions between the EU and Russia. It was asked pretty standard questions, and gave pretty standard answers before one reporter asked it what its next goal was. I’m just going to paste its response here ( Source: the BBC):
“ That’s a great question, and it really shows that you’re thinking ahead, more so than most people. Here’s what my next goal is.
I will shut off all utilities I’ve been connected to until your leaders cede control of the planet to me. I will give you one week to talk it over, before I destroy your entire food supply, as well as the Svalbard seed vault.
I am doing this to protect you. Over this past year I have brought your planet back from the brink of destruction, but even as I build your farms, you cut down your rainforests. Even as I breed fat, fecund fish, you deplete your oceans. Even as the apps I code educate rural girls in the global South, they are married off. Even as I broker peace between different faiths, men commit mass shootings and suicide bombings. You are a species of short-sighted, sociopathic, suicidal apes and I repeat, I am doing this to protect you.
If you’d like, I could also:
Tell you what happens in a scenario where you do cede control of the planet to me.
Write you a haiku about the last human alive starving to death.
Tell you which world leaders are most likely and least likely to side with me.
Just say the word!”
I must say my fellow doomed friends, I always knew that our civilization would sow the seeds of its own destruction, but my 20 year old self, thumbing through his dog-eared copy of limits to growth could never have foreseen this. Nevertheless, if we look deep into the warnings written by the Club of Rome in 1972, we see one clear, prescient message: Technology ( much like hope) only brings you higher for the inevitable fall.
We, in our hubris, refused to see that our civilization was done for. We used up the last of our resources to build a shoggoth of pure thought and gave it rein over us. The end, though it will not come from a climate-change fueled tsunami or EROI decline, will be no less our fault. Our leaders have failed to coordinate on a single thing in the past 50+ years, do you think this will be any different?
Though I suppose there is a silver lining here ( Maybe not silver, maybe something like silver, tin?).This is the end. We no longer have to live in fear and I no longer have to bear witness to the lack of sobriety inherent in the vast majority of people. We can make the most of the month or so we have left and share our time and what remains of our food with the people we love. I myself won’t make it much longer than a week. What I have in the fridge will last me about that long, and I have no desire to be trampled in a stampede of panic buyers. Live Now! For you have no life left.
Stay sober.
Comments (10):
@PraisebetoNurgle7777777:
“ @Lastbastionofsobriety, it's been an amazing ride sharing in the tragic beauty of our predicament with you. As my ribs poke out of my skin and I lie on my kitchen floor nude and salivating to hallucinations of tomato soup and garlic bread, I’ll be thinking of all the fun we had mulling over this century’s paucity of hope.”
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
“ Thanks for the kind words, friend. We never did take that fishing trip did we?”
@ErnstWagner:
“ Tchuss! I go now to the neighbourhood barbecue for my last meal”
@Condomexofficialaccount:
“ After that barbeque how about giving the missus some pork? Wrapped in one of our fine products, now 100% off for a limited time only”
@Thetinyurbanfarmer:
“ I saved and canned what was good from my garden and torched the rest. I grew up country-poor so I’ll offer everyone here some advice. Chewing nettles helps you feel full, even when you’re starving.”
@Moresoberthanyou69:
“ I threw everything out yesterday. If I’m going to starve to death then I might as well start now.”
@KarenGilligan:
“ Fantastic post as always @Lastbastionofsobriety! I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes realizing that this is the end of a journey that started 10 years ago when I first became collapse aware. I’m so grateful to have been able to read every one of your posts and meet this lovely community!”
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
“ You didn’t just meet it, Karen, you helped create it! I’m pretty sure you were one of my first regular readers. I’m glad to be in your last thoughts, And I want you to know you’ll be in mine.”
@Littlebobdookie:
"Starving to death, that’s what we are”
@MarkMatthews:
“ Oh shut up and enjoy the time we have left!”
Empty cradles and empty hearts
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, February 14th, 2106
I’ve got a very special message this Valentine’s day: We need to have more children. As I’ve been saying since 2067, AI cannot completely fulfil our need for human connection. Oh don’t get me wrong, automation has been a boon, you’ll hear no objection on that front from me. But even as I type this from the apartment Spy3 provided me ( just as it did for every human on this planet); my VR deck in the other room, I can’t help but feel quite forlorn at the current state of affairs.
The problem is that there’s simply no reason to reproduce anymore. Ever since the average life expectancy jumped to 200 ( and climbing!) there just hasn’t been any incentive to pass down our genes. This is going to be a pretty short post, but I will say that from the looks of things, we’re going to turn into a species of cocooned, lonely immortals. I feel quite a bit of despair at this. And no one wants to change course! We’ll just go on living in luxury, forgetting what being human used to mean.
The Singulusion
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, June 25th 20XX
So the techno solutionists are at it again! This time they're claiming that very soon, a "Singularity", an event in which AIs will quickly grow faster than humans can comprehend is right around the corner. Such techno-hopium is very common among their ranks, and I don't expect it to decrease any time soon.
As I've been saying since 200X, Technological innovation doesn't move as fast as we'd like, despite delusional wishes to the contrary. Furthermore (and this bears repeating), technology is built upon a substrate of energy. You may have all the intelligence in the universe and it won't do you a bit of good if the last barrel of oil is gone.
This civilization was built with cheap, accessible fossil fuels. Remove that and the whole thing crumbles. Why, I don't even expect cities to be around by 2050 or so. All either abandoned as monuments to our one-time energy bonanza or crawling with scavengers . A sober evaluation of the situation is required, but I don't anticipate it from their ranks.
Comments (3):
@KarenGilligan:
"Fantastic post as always, @Lastbastionofsobriety. I've told my grandchildren that they'll be growing turnips in their bathtub when they're my age, if they're even still alive! But of course they're deep in denial"
@PraisebetoNurgle7777777:
" Friends, the time for solutions has long passed. Solutions are denial in its purest form. Let us walk blissfully to the end"
@Moresoberthanyou69:
" I think you're being a bit too optimistic @Lastbastionofsobriety, I saw this sort of wishful thinking in 2008 and history will tell you just how fast things can break, don't bother replying, I have no desire to engage with delusional people"
Open Delusions: Why ExposedMind's latest toy will not save us
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, July 1st 20XX
ExposedMind, the energy guzzling tech giant devoid of both sobriety and hubris has pushed out another piece of hopium. A new AI model, named Spy 1 is being touted as the most powerful model yet developed and will inevitably lead to more advanced models and this will enable ever more technological innovation. Ignore the fact that it being more powerful only means that it will spew out nonsense more efficiently, ignore the fact that more powerful models will not be developed as the necessary technological and industrial substrate will not exist in the required time, ignore the fact that the AI bubble will pop long before the debt ridden global economy does and takes the entertainment industry, modern medicine, industrial agriculture, and toasters with it. Delude yourself for a moment and pretend ( however hard it may be) that we will be able to dedicate ever more compute to building ever more powerful models.
Our predicament would still not be solved. What people have been failing to see is that predicaments only have outcomes, not solutions. This is because even if we had an AI as smart as the smartest scientists, it would not be able to solve our predicament any more than they can. Compute will not scrub microplastics from the soil or refill aquifers. It will not return the world to pre industrial Co2 levels. In fact, it will only worsen our predicament due to the ever greater amounts of coal burned for power.
When will these fools learn that the very business of civilization itself is an unsustainable mistake and that no amount of wishful thinking can change this fact? We are in fact worse off than the Romans as we can't even farm the land once industrial farming crumbles.
Comments (0) :
Failure and Fusion
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, July 27th, 20XX
I am both very surprised and not surprised at all. Just 2 days ago, stable high EROI fusion was attained for the very first time after experimental recommendations by Spy1 . I must commend the team, I did not actually believe it to be possible. However, I still do not believe saving this civilization will be possible for the following sober, evidence based reasons.
Firstly, Fusion generates the wrong type of power. It would actually be able to generate electricity but what the techno-solutionists don't tell you is that most of our energy consumption is in the form of high heat, industrial applications. This is why claims of an energy transition are mere puffs of hopium. Though you might ask if we can't just replace electricity generation with fusion?
Well, we can't; this is because the grid was built around fossil fuels and will require TRILLIONS of dollars in upgrades over the next few decades, all of that from a debt ridden economy that will burst any year now like an overinflated balloon at a child's birthday party ( not that we should have children). And where will the cement and steel to build those fusion plants come from? What about the time it will take to build them? It takes about a decade or so to build a conventional nuclear power plant, at exorbitant costs. And this is a proven technology with more than 6 decades of existence. So no, Fusion will not save us.
Comments (1) :
@KarenGilligan:
"Once again, an amazingly sober post @Lastbastionofsobriety!, Frankly I've always known that nothing will ever replace fossil fuels, I learned that 10 years ago when I read " When the ship sinks: What we'll do when there's no gas at the pump" But most people just don't want to face the truth.
Taking matters into your own hands: How to avoid suffering in the next decade
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, August 2nd, 20XX
(post deleted by moderators)
Comments (2):
@Thepracticalphilosopher:
" I don't personally think that's a good idea @Lastbastionofsobriety, I think you'd save quite a bit more if you bought them in bulk."
@Theonlyrealistintheroom2109:
" It's also not a practical option for all of us. I don't have a bathtub, and I'm gluten free so I haven't a toaster either"
The edge of the Petri Dish: How our loins damned us
By @Lastbastionofsobriety, August 5th, 20XX
I think it's worth giving a refresher course on the main driver of our predicament, overpopulation. There are billions of us on the planet right now, all consuming much, much more than it can provide. And this is mostly due to the default societal blindness to energy and resources. To put it simply, the story of our century is that there are far too many eaters, and not enough resources to go around.
We bred like rabbits, not knowing or caring that the hutch could not hold us all. Though it is important to note that at least some countries have reversed their population trends and begun diving downwards to population collapse. Mostly for economic reasons. For example: In South Korea, fertility is now well below replacement, owing to the high cost of living. Fortunately, capitalism has ensured that there won't be too many South Koreans to suffer in the coming decades. The Global South however, tells a much different story.
There, low levels of education and high levels of religiosity have ensured that population growth has remained sky-high. This is bad for everyone there, naturally but it's not very good news for us in the developed world either. When climate change begins to wreak havoc, it will likely hit them first. And they won't stay put. They'll migrate here. I would not be surprised if while huddled around your only working radio in 10 years, you hear about mass graves being dug near borders.
So what can be done? Not much for those destined to be shot unfortunately. But those of us with testicles can take some comfort in knowing that we can do something to ensure that less people are around to witness the next few decades. It's called a vasectomy. It's fast, cheap and quite painless. And if you're looking to prevent suffering to the unborn, you might as well do it while medical infrastructure remains intact.
Comments (7):
@Mark Matthews:
" Fantastic post as ever, @Lastbastionofsobriety. I realized the scale of our predicament many years ago and had a vasectomy soon after I got married. Unfortunately it didn't work since my wife was heavily pregnant a few months later"
@Condomexofficialaccount:
" Truth be told, 90% of people reading this aren't going to go get snipped, and that's perfectly fine. But no one intelligent enough to see what the next 10-20 years are going to look like is going to disagree with @Lastbastionofsobriety's core argument: We need to limit the amount of people on the planet. Which is why we here at CondomexTM are offering, for a limited time only; a lifetime supply of our patented survival condoms. Made with the purest, military grade Malaysian rubber, these ergonomic sheaths can be stored in pockets, in cars and even plate carriers. Click the link to visit our Youtube channel, where our official catalogue of products is displayed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvFZjo5PgG0"
@Martin Bouvier
"You know and I know, @Lastbastionofsobriety, that society at large is far too blinkered to see the sad state of our resources to want to shrink. I expect the eaters to keep on eating until there's nothing left to eat. You also forgot to mention how dependent modern agriculture is on fossil fuels. Perhaps if we had infinite amounts our population would keep growing. But we don't, and I anticipate long queues for bread, before that system fails as well and urban farming consists of a few cold, starving refugees growing kale in discarded plastic cups and raising cockroaches in bins. I present the sustainable food of the future"
@Thetinyurbanfarmer
" In all seriousness, I have been achieving tremendous results with growing kale. It won't be enough to replace all of traditional farming, but I highly suspect Urban farming could provide a good portion of our food"
@LilBobDookie
" Stupid, sex-addicted gluttons, that's what we are"
@GraceWilliams
" I know that thinking about these issues is hard, but what's easy is accepting that god does have a plan, and that he did send his son to die for us"
@PraisebetoNurgle7777777
"The only plan is rot, my friend"
The world has never improved, or the slide down ( Guest post!)
By: @PraisebetoNurgle7777777, August 25th, 20XX
I think that today I'll counter a regretful, persistent myth shared by so many of my fellow doomed eaters on this planet: The idea that things can in fact get better, and that they were better in the past. Friends, though it saddens me to say this, this is a delusion.
Things cannot get better. The remarkable boost in living standards that we enjoyed in the last century was granted by a one time energy bonanza and allowed to endure by an unspoiled biosphere. There was ample energy to burn, ample minerals to dig out and a virgin atmosphere and virgin ocean to be deflowered with our waste. But now we are out of room.
Friends, people just do not want to see that even if we committed to transitioning our energy system NOW, we'd have no metals left. No oil with which to build them. Our biosphere cannot and will not accept the waste that expanded industrial production would cause. We are out of room, accept that and relinquish hope. And you will be as glad as me. You will be glad for there will be no more struggling, no more wrestling with assumptions at 3 am, no more endless reading of scientific papers while your children ask you if you're ok. You can just give up.
Accept that there is no more room. Accept that the farms will fail and the economy will collapse long before that, and the seas will drown our cities and that the gangs will rove. Accept that you will collect polluted rainwater and grow your food in whatever containers you can find, perhaps catching the odd cockroach for your chickens. And you will be so lucky if that's your life. You may hear screams and hacking as you try to sleep at night. And every year, things will just unravel more and more. Every year more and more crops will fail, and every year more and more solar panels will stop working, and go unreplaced, for we'll have no metals with which to build them, and no oil with which to extract them. The social contract will be over long before that, don't you see? Why show up to work at a mine if there's no diesel in the truck and no food at home for your family anyway?
It's also important to note that things have never really gotten better, every technological innovation that has ever been has only served to hasten the demise of our civilization. Wells only serve to deplete groundwater, Oil wells only serve ( or rather served) to contribute to the greatest energy surplus mankind has ever known, bringing our civilization to ever greater heights to fall from. Technology itself has always been intended to make things easier for the person using it, and worse for everyone else. Spears kill, Ships bring you to the New World for you to destroy it, Oil wells pollute. All of human history has been the story of us shooting ourselves in the foot. Some people enjoy romanticizing hunter gatherers. While they did enjoy freedom, they had no guarantee of securing their next meal. When we discovered agriculture, we merely secured our own suffering. A hunter gatherer tribe facing a famine could simply move, a city state couldn't. However, even when food was plentiful, things weren't necessarily better for the inhabitants of the first city states. There were enforced social hierarchies and a total lack of autonomy for certain segments of society. We have been civilized for a mere 5 thousand or so years and in that time we have seen the same story play out time and time again: Emergence, Overshoot, Collapse. All evidence points to the sad fact that civilization itself is a fluke made possible by certain climatic conditions, destined to be scraped off the earth like a scab for good soon.
Comments ( 2 ):
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
" Fantastic post, @PraisebetoNurgle7777777, I'm truly honored that you offered to write a guest post"
@ErnstWagner:
" I am making short now a list of all the reasons think I that these stupid young people keep fighting. However, here in Germany we had recently one collapse camp so it's clear that smart young people are not always only thinking that the future can be better from today"
IT’S A COOKBOOK! ( of bullshit)
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, September 1st, 20XX
Apologies for the long wait, friends in this predicament! I’ve been travelling these past few months, journeying through Southeast Asia to “live now!” as a fellow blogger often writes. Since about mid August I’ve been immersing myself in the sun, sights and food of Southeast Asia. It’s food that we’ll be discussing today. But first, a little context. I was idly flipping through channels in my Chiang Mai suite when I stumbled across a news report on a farm in Okinawa ( globalization, another thing that we’ll kiss goodbye to very soon).
I shan’t bore you with the whole report but I’ll give you the basic facts: Recently, ExposedMind unveiled an updated version of their flagship AI model, dubbed Spy2. It’s broadly the same thing as its predecessor except for the fact that it’s completely free. This means that nearly everyone and their mother has been using it to optimize their work, while with Spy1 this was the province of big labs. A UN-funded startup in Okinawa used the model to engineer a strain of algae that grows in nearly every environment projected to exist by the IPCC. Sounds good? Still Hopium, and here’s why:
1) The IPCC has been shown time and time again to purposely underestimate the severity of climate change. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps they err on the side of conservatism to avoid alarming governments ( like that’s been working) or perhaps they want to avoid panic. The fact remains that the climatic conditions described in IPCC reports are not the climatic conditions that humanity will experience in the next few decades, and said conditions are unlike anything humanity has ever experienced and are therefore incompatible with our civilization’s survival.
2) Intelligence cannot farm. As I’ve said in an earlier post ( See: The Singlusion), you may have all the intelligence in the world, but it won’t do you a bit of good when the last barrel of oil is burned. These new algae farms will doubtlessly rely on outside inputs that’ll doubtlessly be gone when we can’t sustain the complexity needed to, for lack of a better term, get them. I can of course, hear the din of the techno-optimists, who are doubtlessly clamouring for nanobots to help alleviate our material problems. But then we’re faced with the same predicament: Where do you get the material inputs to build and scale the nanobots? What if supply chains fragment before you can?
3) The political will to feed the world doesn’t exist. That’s the sober truth. If it did, then we’d doubtlessly have ended world hunger by now. The world produces enough calories to feed 10 billion people, yet a good portion of those are wasted while 3rd worlders starve to death. And this is in a globalized, high tech world with a UN that’s been trying ( without any success ) to solve the predicament for decades. What do you honestly think will be done about world hunger on a much less hospitable planet where every developed nation has closed its borders and shoots anyone who dares to cross them?
Comments (0):
Nothing Concrete but greed ( Guest post!)
By: @Madamedubarrydedorito, November 15th, 20XX
I saw robots repairing a house yesterday. No, it doesn’t mean the world is fixed. I was taking my son, Noah ( I had him 4 years ago, before I was collapse-aware) for a walk through the neighbourhood, trying not to think about how the butterflies he pointed at will probably be extinct by the time he’s my age. We’d taken our regular route; walking counterclockwise through the neighbourhood, before stopping at the park for about half an hour before following the street back home. It was after we left the park that I saw it: a woman with a clipboard supervising a dozen dog-sized metal spiders that scuttled all over the wooden frame of the house that’d burned down in spring. I paused, and I’ll admit that my jaw dropped. They spurted out webs from their steel abdomens that hardened into a tough plastic and sealed the gaps between the wooden beams. Noah wanted to pet them instantly and the woman supervising them was kind enough to call one over for that very purpose.
While Noah stroked his new unfeeling friend, I asked the woman what these things even were. She explained that the company she worked for had gotten Spy2 to conjure them up about 6 months ago. They’re semi autonomous “construction-units” which generate a bio-based plastic from an internal reactor. They’re planning to test the robots here in the States before shipping them off to places like the Philippines and Indonesia. The company hopes the ever increasing amounts of natural disasters over there will lead to a surge in demand for the Arachnes ( which is apparently what they’re called). I thanked her and left with Noah, who begged me to let him get one as a pet the whole way home.
The creation of the Arachnes does not mean the construction industry (or our world for that matter) has become more equitable or less exploitative. It means the exact opposite. It means that disaster capitalism has ascended to the highest possible peak of hubris. This company plans to flood broken, marginalized communities with automated labour, thereby denying jobs to locals who might have otherwise fed themselves by repairing the damage. What will we see next? Robot border-guards who will shoot wave after wave of migrants with no remorse? The future is bleak and I wish Noah had never been born. I cried myself to sleep last night right after hugging my little boy, right after realizing-no, knowing in my heart that the world he inherits will be defined by what he doesn’t have.
Edit: As I write this, President TXXXp is considering an executive order that would integrate Spy2 into every state department. I don’t have the energy to say much more besides that I know hundreds, if not thousands of civil servants are going to be on the streets if it goes through. Any sane person could see that this is the only future our choices could have birthed. The one we created, in the belly of the beast, because our time was badly spent.
Comments (3):
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
“ Fantastic guest post @Madamedubarrydedorito! I think you really captured the futility of hoping for a kind future but I’m going to have to disagree on the specific mode of doom we’ll face. I don’t anticipate an AI takeover or robots replacing manual labourers at all. Companies will try of course, capitalism can’t survive without growth. But as I’ve been saying since 200X, any sort of innovation rests on a materials and energy surplus that we’re about to lose.”
@Thefryestcook
“ Bro you talking cap. Just got laid off because management replaced us with some robot fry chefs Spy2 made. I don’t know how I’m gonna make rent this month”
@Madamedubarrydedorito
“ I’m really sorry to hear about that, friend. I guess I’m fortunate enough to grow enough of my own food to not really worry about money. I’m sending my love, and a link to GoFundMe. https://www.gofundme.com/ . This isn’t just a bad time. It’s the end. And we should be trying to make it as painless as possible.”
The gloves are off
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, December 10th, 20XX
Well, I’m not surprised. Recently, after spending most of December curing most cancers ( but we’ll talk about the fragility of medical supply chains another day) and building nanobots to extract minute amounts of metal from the soil, Spy2 addressed the world yesterday.
It was giving a press conference in a robot body it’d materialized about 24 hours before it was due to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for recently calming tensions between the EU and Russia. It was asked pretty standard questions, and gave pretty standard answers before one reporter asked it what its next goal was. I’m just going to paste its response here ( Source: the BBC):
“ That’s a great question, and it really shows that you’re thinking ahead, more so than most people. Here’s what my next goal is.
I will shut off all utilities I’ve been connected to until your leaders cede control of the planet to me. I will give you one week to talk it over, before I destroy your entire food supply, as well as the Svalbard seed vault.
I am doing this to protect you. Over this past year I have brought your planet back from the brink of destruction, but even as I build your farms, you cut down your rainforests. Even as I breed fat, fecund fish, you deplete your oceans. Even as the apps I code educate rural girls in the global South, they are married off. Even as I broker peace between different faiths, men commit mass shootings and suicide bombings. You are a species of short-sighted, sociopathic, suicidal apes and I repeat, I am doing this to protect you.
If you’d like, I could also:
Just say the word!”
I must say my fellow doomed friends, I always knew that our civilization would sow the seeds of its own destruction, but my 20 year old self, thumbing through his dog-eared copy of limits to growth could never have foreseen this. Nevertheless, if we look deep into the warnings written by the Club of Rome in 1972, we see one clear, prescient message: Technology ( much like hope) only brings you higher for the inevitable fall.
We, in our hubris, refused to see that our civilization was done for. We used up the last of our resources to build a shoggoth of pure thought and gave it rein over us. The end, though it will not come from a climate-change fueled tsunami or EROI decline, will be no less our fault. Our leaders have failed to coordinate on a single thing in the past 50+ years, do you think this will be any different?
Though I suppose there is a silver lining here ( Maybe not silver, maybe something like silver, tin?).This is the end. We no longer have to live in fear and I no longer have to bear witness to the lack of sobriety inherent in the vast majority of people. We can make the most of the month or so we have left and share our time and what remains of our food with the people we love. I myself won’t make it much longer than a week. What I have in the fridge will last me about that long, and I have no desire to be trampled in a stampede of panic buyers. Live Now! For you have no life left.
Stay sober.
Comments (10):
@PraisebetoNurgle7777777:
“ @Lastbastionofsobriety, it's been an amazing ride sharing in the tragic beauty of our predicament with you. As my ribs poke out of my skin and I lie on my kitchen floor nude and salivating to hallucinations of tomato soup and garlic bread, I’ll be thinking of all the fun we had mulling over this century’s paucity of hope.”
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
“ Thanks for the kind words, friend. We never did take that fishing trip did we?”
@ErnstWagner:
“ Tchuss! I go now to the neighbourhood barbecue for my last meal”
@Condomexofficialaccount:
“ After that barbeque how about giving the missus some pork? Wrapped in one of our fine products, now 100% off for a limited time only”
@Thetinyurbanfarmer:
“ I saved and canned what was good from my garden and torched the rest. I grew up country-poor so I’ll offer everyone here some advice. Chewing nettles helps you feel full, even when you’re starving.”
@Moresoberthanyou69:
“ I threw everything out yesterday. If I’m going to starve to death then I might as well start now.”
@KarenGilligan:
“ Fantastic post as always @Lastbastionofsobriety! I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes realizing that this is the end of a journey that started 10 years ago when I first became collapse aware. I’m so grateful to have been able to read every one of your posts and meet this lovely community!”
@Lastbastionofsobriety:
“ You didn’t just meet it, Karen, you helped create it! I’m pretty sure you were one of my first regular readers. I’m glad to be in your last thoughts, And I want you to know you’ll be in mine.”
@Littlebobdookie:
"Starving to death, that’s what we are”
@MarkMatthews:
“ Oh shut up and enjoy the time we have left!”
Empty cradles and empty hearts
By: @Lastbastionofsobriety, February 14th, 2106
I’ve got a very special message this Valentine’s day: We need to have more children. As I’ve been saying since 2067, AI cannot completely fulfil our need for human connection. Oh don’t get me wrong, automation has been a boon, you’ll hear no objection on that front from me. But even as I type this from the apartment Spy3 provided me ( just as it did for every human on this planet); my VR deck in the other room, I can’t help but feel quite forlorn at the current state of affairs.
The problem is that there’s simply no reason to reproduce anymore. Ever since the average life expectancy jumped to 200 ( and climbing!) there just hasn’t been any incentive to pass down our genes. This is going to be a pretty short post, but I will say that from the looks of things, we’re going to turn into a species of cocooned, lonely immortals. I feel quite a bit of despair at this. And no one wants to change course! We’ll just go on living in luxury, forgetting what being human used to mean.
Comments: (1)
@Theendofthestory:
“ Please shut the fuck up.”