[onlooker]

Very interesting. However, upon analyzing the many facets of our society, we can distill our very complex situation to certain non reducible and incontrovertible maxims. First, humans need energy to be productive or to work. Second, our Economies rely on the bounty of the Earth and so are a subsystem of it. The third maxim flows from the second in that because we rely on the Earth, we must have a symbiotic relation with it so that we help to sustain it, so it can sustain us. The inherent problem in our current situation is one of scale. Our vast population with its needs and wants is overwhelming the ability of Earth to provide for everyone and handle all our waste.
Technology may have a role to play in helping us be good stewards of Earth and in reducing or controlling our population. But in the end, collectively we must decide on a way to tread more lightly upon our planet and implement it. Otherwise, calamity will be unavoidable

[ralfy]

I think computers don't make processes less complex. Rather, they make them faster.

[asg70]

Computers can increase efficiency. Retail like Wal-Mart in brick-and-mortar and Amazon in eCommerce involves radical efficiency improvements to the complex problem of global supply-chains and fulfillment.

What Elon Musk is attempting to do with the automation of the gigafactory, for instance, is to apply radical efficiency gains in the task of manufacturing, similar to what the assembly line once did 100 years ago.

When you step back you see how humanity has moved progressively from inefficient manual labor to more and more automation. Everything from the loom to the cotton-gin. You can easily see how, taken to its ultimate extreme, work as we know it will cease to exist and we'll either have a society living in the lap of luxury or on poverty row depending on how we adapt as a society.

This is, of course, independent of limits to growth, but the efficiency gains do make an impact on when we go over the proverbial cliff.

[onlooker]

Sorry to say but all this technological prowess and efficiency is just translating into humans becoming ever more redundant. Mass populations of uneducated and unskilled of no use to modern industries. Scary to contemplate for many humans. In the Georgia Guidestones (NWO), it says keep population no greater than 500 million. Umm

[ralfy]

If there is no "reduction in the complexity of societies," then there's no "simplification of world systems." In which case, machines only make it appear that things look simpler because all of the work is done in the background, and more efficiently. Thus, there is no "complexity paradox."

The catch is that producers will use such machines because more efficiency means greater production, and thus more sales, and with that more profits. Of course, more sales means there has to be more consumption, and more profits leads to even more production.

That means more energy and material resources are needed each time. And given competition, at lower energy costs, which goes against diminishing returns and the physical limitations of the biosphere.

Thus, we have an economic system coupled with technology that wants an abundance of resources and a biosphere that won't allow it.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Squilliam', '
')
The complexity paradox is based on the concept of entropy. To maintain a higher level of order within a thing there must be a corresponding increase in disorder around that thing. So whilst maintaining a high level of technology increases the entropy (pollution) in the surrounding landscape it also helps to improve the conversion efficiency of inputs -> outputs and hence helps to reduce the level of pollution. Technology thus requires high entropy, but it also reduces entropy.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't see that reduction in pollution.

[asg70]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', '
')Sorry to say but all this technological prowess and efficiency is just translating into humans becoming ever more redundant.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Squilliam', '
')
That is such a limited perspective. I am aware of all of this. The concept I don't believe you're factoring into your estimations is the concept that technology can also increase efficiency and reduce waste. We can take the same resources with greater technology and stretch them significantly further. There are major systems within our own economic ecology that can stand to gain significant efficiency boosts in the coming decades through the application of rapidly advancing technology. When modern buildings can use 80% less energy than older buildings for instance you have to acknowledge there is significant scope to improve the current status quo. The reason why a modern building can use such a small amount of power is how we can invest our skills into technology to make it portable and leverage it amongst a far greater scope. When you pick up a science textbook for instance you gain access to hundreds of thousands of hours worth of skilled labour amongst a wide range of fields. Computers not only increase our own intellectual leverage, but they also let us access the skills of others.

[efarmer]

It seems you see the whole issue as one of sheer prouductivity, enabled by technology and robotics, and industrial agrilculture. This is a fine top level view when you drop out minor details like the people who live in such an envrironment. That minor detail, the people, they become service workers, the health care system becomes a product we all know they have to buy, so the market moves in and attempts to place the price of healthcare above lodging, it sells them minutes and bandwidth, and they seem to jump at the notion of "how much does this cost me a month" and forego any long term view of life. The end game really is productivity can soar under automation and vast industrial agriculture and negate the ability of the people within nations to buy the products any longer. The end game seems to be a host of global corporate entities all tooled up and searching the globe to see where people have the money to buy their products. When wealth is concentrated in 1 to 5% of a population, that 1 to 5% can automate and industrialize and dominate, but they have disenfranchised the consumers of their products via economic leverage. The balance in the equation is stewardship by nations and regions for their people balanced against the pure efficiency pursuit that tends to duck the messy situation of people, taxable wages, insurance and benefits, and societal balance. Until you hit this end game, the path is extremely lucrative, the political influence is for sale to preserve the gambit, and the investors all come out smelling like a rose. We have built a untenable society on the back of the cheap petroleum exploit of the last 80 years, wherein technological advances on the back of cheap fossil fuels has wrought miracles and monstrosities in exploding rings of suburbia, thousands of miles of strip malls, millions of big plastic sided oriented strand board contrivances on cul de sacs, and millions of people like shock monkeys Twittering and Facebooking what they ate lately, what they want to eat or see on video, while waiting to get out of their cul de sac onto the feeder road to the strip mall artery that connects to the highway commute. Couple the extreme inefficency of the living situation with the automation and industrialization trends that won't need these people any longer and you see the end game of the fossil fuel exploit in America. People who are not needed except to consume not having the money to buy the fabulous products of the almost workerless production miracles .

[onlooker]

Well said Efarmer. And again, how do you Squil counter the Limits to growth arguments that I, Ralfy and Efarmer are making?

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Squilliam', '
')These aren't opposites. The movement of production from the west to the east wasn't hunting higher efficiency. Infact the higher efficiency producers are all in the west (hence the story of our relative wealth). If you consider the ultimate inputs, outputs and conversion efficiency of those with respect to the negative externalities produced like pollution we do it better, and are improving all the time. Hence the economic ecology of the west being better than many other countries such as China. If you are willing to work 10 hours and produce slightly more than what another person does in 6 it doesn't mean you're a 'more efficient' person. Comparatively speaking you may get the job, but it doesn't mean you're better at it. The fact that China's growth is coming at the expense of the environment is policy issue rather than a pollution/economic issue.

[onlooker]

And to finish that very clear and accurate explanation by Ralfy, if we decided to alter course from our capitalist industrial world Economy that would put into imminent and immediate jeopardy the life and well being of many people who rely on the mass food production system which relies on on fossil fuels. Not to mention that our vast ubiquitous transportation system ships needed food and medicine to many around the world and also runs on fossil fuels.
So efficiency , technology and productivity are in fact at its core ways to improve and extend our current capitalist industrial world Economy and mode of civilization. The Oil Industry is now in dire straits because essentially oil and other fossil fuels are inherently non renewable finite resources. Our planet's life support systems and consequently our human systems are already facing deadlines on their continued viability because of the huge strain and impacts of our species and its mode of existence. We cannot continue like this much longer as neither Earth nor our huge population will allow it. Yet even totally disengaging will have disastrous consequences