[Ludi]

I get so frustrated by seeing the same arguments over and over - "People are resourceful, they'll think of something" "Scientists are clever, they'll think of something" "We can transition to alternative technology" etc etc, you know all that, you've heard it all a million times.

I get sooo frustrated and angry with these same lame arguments, but I'm asking myself, what's so wrong with groundless optismism that things will work out for the best?

What do you think?

[theshadypeach]

I think the "we'll invent our way out of this. someone will figure something out" mentality is just a defensive mechanism. People don't want to admit that their lives can be turned upside down, or even worse, their friends and families have a chance of going through hard times, and if the SHTF, starvation. It's a scary possibility that no one wants to face.

[Tyler_JC]

To be fair...they have never been wrong. Technology has saved us from every single problem since the Middle Ages. Not enough food? Green Revolution! Not enough wood? Coal! Too many people living without long distance communication? Duh, the telephone!

The reason we have so much trouble convinces people that technology can't save us this time is the fact that this has NEVER happened before on a large scale. I constantly hear people suggesting nuclear powered cars and cold fusion as an easy solution that will be here any day now. How do we convince people who are that far entrenched in the good life? We can't. We have to wait for the problems to appear before they will listen to us. Unfortunately, at that point, it's a little late to do anything.

[Tapas]

There is a saying that you die not the day you stop breathing but the day you give up hope.

Yes, we must be pragmatic in our approach. We must face the truth, no matter how distasteful. However, this does not mean we should throw up our hands in despair. We have to come to a collective conscience to address the issue – charter a global plan. Even, if we perish, there is always hope for a new generation. It is the cycle of life.

We are not immortals. All of us will die one day. It is the period in-between that counts. We must have goals, dreams, passion to reach for new heights. It is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.

Remember in science, a failed result is a valid result. It adds a valuable bit to our storehouse of knowledge upon which future pioneers build their next experiment.

[lorenzo]

Well, the optimism isn't really "groundless". It is based on accumulated empirical evidence and historical knowledge.

All humans can do is to look back in time and use this knowledge to make predictions about the future. Since humanity has brilliantly succeeded in making continuous technological progress, throughout history, there's no reason for ordinary mortals to assume that this unique capacity of mankind will suddenly cease to exist.

So the optimism you're referring to is based on very rational impulses.

[bobcousins]

I think the reason people tend to be inherently optimistic is due to natural selection. Any genes that just don't bother will be outcompeted by those that do. Now, I have witnessed many cases where people persevere when they should really give up, but it is invariably true that people who succeed at the most difficult goals are highly persistent. So it is worth persevering despite the odds for the 1 in a million chance of success.

While optimism may provide a selective advantage to a species, evolution does not necessarily lead to sustainable strategies. What we see is a trade-off between specialists and generalists. Specialists make more efficient use of a niche, but generalists are more adaptable to change should the environment change.

Therefore the "problem" with optimism is that it leads to focussed, short-term fixes, rather than a long term solution which might be gained by looking at the bigger picture. So we may have grown from 1 billion to 6 billion in the space of a few years, but we are in danger of crashing back to 1 billion. Population fluctuation is indeed characteristic of many other species.

It is very hard to get around this though, because unless individuals are gentically identical, it is very hard to get them to cooperate completely unselfishly. Communism may work on small scales where there is a strong common identity. But whereever an individual can gain any preferential advantage (ie. by "cheating" the system), then the system is unstable.

I have also noted that humans are very good at retro-fitting reasoning into past events which are not justified. If there is a common view that technology has "gotten us out of past problems", that is not borne by what actually happened. The history of technology is very haphazard and contingent. Most things were invented or discovered more or less by chance, and if no application was found at the time, forgotten until being later discovered. For example, when electricity was discovered, no practical uses for it were envisaged. Even when the first transatlantic telegraph was installed, someone commented "what will people say?" The idea we now have that global telecomms are essential to society just didn't exist then.

So I don't think humans individually or collectively act on any rational impulses at all, they are just following 4 billion years of genetic programming.

Indeed, it is valid to say that technology is the cause of our problems, whether or not is our saviour. Either way, I regard the whole thing as an example of a species that has gone through a classic boom/bust cycle.

[BiGG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') get so frustrated by seeing the same arguments over and over - "People are resourceful, they'll think of something" "Scientists are clever, they'll think of something" "We can transition to alternative technology" etc etc, you know all that, you've heard it all a million times.

I get sooo frustrated and angry with these same lame arguments, but I'm asking myself, what's so wrong with groundless optismism that things will work out for the best?

What do you think?

[Chocky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 't')he new technologies listed below will not only sustain what we have, but will add dramatically to it!

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BiGG', '
')
Why not be optimistic? Everywhere I look I see viable answers to the end of oil.

I don’t think there’s going to be a problem at all as just like massive new growth was afforded with oil, the new technologies listed below will not only sustain what we have, but will add dramatically to it!

[RickTaylor]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') get so frustrated by seeing the same arguments over and over - "People are resourceful, they'll think of something" "Scientists are clever, they'll think of something" "We can transition to alternative technology" etc etc, you know all that, you've heard it all a million times.

I get sooo frustrated and angry with these same lame arguments, but I'm asking myself, what's so wrong with groundless optismism that things will work out for the best?

What do you think?

[OldSprocket]

Optimism will ease U.S. consumers into more consuming. More McMansions. More sprawl. More driving oversized cars. More and more babies.

If the human population is not yet beyond the carrying capacity of this earth, a few more decades of optimism will put us there. And every increase in human population further strains the health of other species.

Many proposed "solutions" to peak oil are sources of unlimited energy. That is not a good way to curb the human appetite for more. We might as well try taming spoiled children by supplying every whim, or triming the typical U.S. wasteline by eating more cake..

And while the citizens are worried about the latest breakup in Hollywood, the leaders lie us into more resource wars. I haven't seen war improve conditions for any critters.

I think of myself as fairly sanguine about the future. That probably comes from living in a bubble of people pursuing lower impact. I may need to swing back toward doom and gloom.

[BiGG]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')
That's because you lack an understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, EROEI, and scalability.

[Tyler_JC]

You failed to answer the question, moron. What is the energy return on energy investment with bio-mass to ethanol? If it is less than that of oil, it will (be definition) cost more. That's how it works. You can't substitute something with an EROEI of 10-1 for something with an EROEI of 2-1 without increasing the price of that subsitute.

A. 1 unit of energy costs 1 dollar. I use 1 dollar to make 10 units of energy from oil. I have a return on investment of 9 dollars. I have "created" 10 units of energy from 1.

B. 1 unit of energy costs 1 dollar. I use 1 dollar to make 2 units of energy from bio-mass. I have a return on investment of 1 dollar. I have "created" 2 units of energy from 1.

It is physically impossible for B to cost less than A. The only way to make it cheaper is to subsidize it using government money. This makes it more expensive because TANSTAAFL. You can't take away the impact of a government subsidy on the calculation of EROEI.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') get so frustrated by seeing the same arguments over and over - "People are resourceful, they'll think of something" "Scientists are clever, they'll think of something" "We can transition to alternative technology" etc etc, you know all that, you've heard it all a million times.

I get sooo frustrated and angry with these same lame arguments, but I'm asking myself, what's so wrong with groundless optismism that things will work out for the best?

What do you think?

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') get so frustrated by seeing the same arguments over and over - "People are resourceful, they'll think of something" "Scientists are clever, they'll think of something" "We can transition to alternative technology" etc etc, you know all that, you've heard it all a million times.

I get sooo frustrated and angry with these same lame arguments, but I'm asking myself, what's so wrong with groundless optismism that things will work out for the best?

What do you think?

[Raxozanne]

I think it all went wrong when humans got organised.

No actually, when monkeys evolved into humans, that's where it all went wrong

[vegasmade]

Machiavelli said all men are controlled by ego (me,me,me). That definantely makes humans the problem. When, if ever, do we (me included) look past our own wants/desires/greed to the actual costs of our lives. If we did, we probably would turn and run. The social costs of our rampant materialism in the rest of the world is appalling. Our IMF/Worldbank has exploited every country of it's resources by dangling the carrot of equality just out of reach. And when they reach, we pull back. Not before claiming their land, lives and soul. And by the time they realize it was always a ruse, we've stripped the country of usefullness and enslaved the population. Sure we get overpriced sneakers and year round produce, and they get...um, I dunno, our grattitude. If you count the rationing of their food and energy I guess they got something, control. And thanx (theres that grattitude) it was all too easy, and I don't even really have to think about it. So as some of us view this site and others like it, keep in mind that the computer you're using didn't build itself. It's componets were strip-mined at nature's expense and assembled for pennies by some poor shlub who never saw it coming. Let's all feast in our magnificence now, cause thet'll be laughing when we land face first.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ')
Out of interest, where do you think it all went wrong MQ? What should we be doing now and have done wrong in the past?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'W')ell, the optimism isn't really "groundless". It is based on accumulated empirical evidence and historical knowledge....

So the optimism you're referring to is based on very rational impulses.

[Wildwell]

MQ: So what you are saying (and correct me if I’m wrong) is we shouldn’t have bothered with any machine, water supply, modern medicine, education, policing, retirement, money, electric light, only used dung and wood for heating – anything we see around us today. For the moments early humans started creating language and scribing on walls, writing books, making wheels and later house drawn railways and canals – that was all wrong and we should have just been hunters and gatherers and put up with the crap life threw at us, the starvation, cold, misery, the loss of loved ones and early death. We should have lived near resources and remained there and lived in peace, never going into neighbouring areas and stealing because we’d run out?

You are of course aware this is completely against human nature. Intelligent beings do not sit around and wait for the worst, they solve problem? It is no more the nature of a cat to create a computer, than a human in sit in darkness and cold. We do not have coats; feel emotion and need food and shelter. All animals are selfish creatures and only a few of the higher species show any form of altruism and certainly not to any great degree, nothing like to the scale that humans do - This on account of our sense of empathy which comes from the ability to imagine and create logic out of that, nothing to do with religion.

Forgive me MQ, you seem to be saying that out whole species are wrong in everything they have done and were doomed. Indeed rather than evolution being the survival of the fittest, the intelligent ones are doomed the most. I get the impression this is a belief system of yours and maybe something you follow?

May I suggest you have a liking for nature as some have an interest in art, music, machines and so on?