[stu]

One of the most recent observations that I have made when discussing Peak Oil with other people is how they genuinely believe it wont happen purely because they have faith in human ingenuinety.

To me this is akin to believing that god will solve all of your problems.

It is blind faith.

They offer no hard and concrete evidence that human technology will save us and their knowledge is usually gleaned from those news reports that we see time and again that talk about alternative energy as being the energy of the future.

Before I discovered Peak Oil, watching these news reports would trigger images of Utopian/Dystopian futures in movies such as Bladerunner, Fifth Element, I Robot etc.

In most Sci-Fi movies the energy source of the society is normally shown to be clean, renewable and based on some energy source that sounds funky.

The fantasy however is very different from the reality.

The message that I sub-consciously took in was that "yes oil will run out but we are clever enough to replace it with something else. Now where's my buttered popcorn."

The mindset that exists in todays world seems to believe that this way of life is normal and will continue to go on for as long as they see.

It appears to me that Sci-Fi has helped me to think that man can control nature when the reality is that man is natures bitch.

[The_Virginian]

deep thoughts Mr. Chekov, now go help CDR. spock with the high Boron frequency scan on the transom deck for more OIL on planet Forex.

While your at it, make sure to see the tritium tubal system is still attached to the cows anus, we need the NATURAL GAS to power our core systems while Scotty "the Scott" gets The Bryllium crystal-lite drinks on line to feed the di-litium reconscruction in the starboard engine.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Captain Kirk, 'Scotty, we need more power!'
Scotty,'I'm giving it all she's got, Captain!'
Bones, 'Jim! We're all gonna die!'
Spock, 'Captain, I suggest that we need more dilithium crystals'
Captain Kirk, 'I know that Spock, but we don't have anymore dilithium crystals.'
Spock, 'In that case, Captain, I suggest that the Doctor is right.'

[Ludi]

I think the "myth of progress" was possibly invented by science fiction writers like Jules Verne. But I might be wrong....

[mgibbons19]

The "myth of progress" is a fundamental tenent of western modernism. Sci Fi works because it taps into this mythology.

It is the culture that holds/creates this mythology, and sci fi expresses it.

"Scotty - squeeze the cow harder! Feed her more hay!"

[Ludi]

When did western modernism arise relative to the invention of science fiction, does anyone know?

[sjn]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')hen did western modernism arise relative to the invention of science fiction, does anyone know?

[Wildwell]

A very good thread, something I touched on the other day. Without risking sounding like the man (I forget who it was, but no doubt someone will come up with the answer) who said everything that can be invented has been invented in the 19th century, there may well be a finite limit to knowledge as well. Sounds mad? Read on.

There is actually a whole a school of thought that says, pretty much, there are limits of our knowledge, and however special we think we might be, we are in fact an advanced ape with limited senses that got a little further than we probably should have.

There’s a few good books on this subject, one of which is called ‘Impossibility – The Limits of science and the science of limits’, by John D Barrow. I’ll draw on some extracts from the book as this is a complex subject and this book is great at explaining it:

‘The idea of the impossible rings alarm bells in the minds of many. To some, any suggestion that there might be limits to the scope of human understanding of the Universe or to scientific progress is a dangerous meme that undermines confidence in the scientific enterprise. Equally uncritical, are those who enthusiastically embrace any suggestion that science might be limited because they suspect the motives and fear the unbridled investigation of the unknown’.

‘Our study of the limits of science and the science of limits will take us from the consideration of practical limits of cost, computability, and complexity to the restrictions imposed on what we can know by our location in the middle of the Nature’s spectra of size, age, and complexity…But practicalities are not the only limits we face. There may be limits imposed by the nature of our humanity. The human brain was not evolved with science in mind. Scientific investigation, like our artistic senses, are by-products of a mixed bag of attributes that survived preferentially because they were better adapted to survive in the environments they faced in the far and distant past.’

This is a complex, mind blowing book in some ways and not for the faint hearted: It includes cosmological limits, mathematic limits, patterns in reality, paradoxes, time travel, the problem of free will, limits in economics, democracy, technological limits, the forces of nature, the end of diversity, art, culture, the psychology of limits, intractability, consciousness and negativism and draws on the knowledge of many scientists and thinkers.

Here’s an account by English Scientist George Gore, which makes interesting reading:

‘Although we know but little of the actual limits of possible knowledge, there are signs that nature is not in every respect infinite. It is highly probable that the number of forms of energy and of elementary substances is limited…Not only does it appear highly improbable that an unlimited variety of collocations of different atoms, united to form different substances, can exist; but many combinations and arrangements of forces are incompatible, and cannot co-exist. From the considerations, therefore, there is a probably a limit to..the amount of possible knowledge respecting them. The number of laws also which govern a finite number of substances or forces must themselves be finite’.

Of course all this doesn’t sit too comfortably with many of us, who have come to expect ‘progress of science of technology’. Indeed Governments look to scientists to improve the quality of life. We have expectations born from hopes of dreams and ideas that have been incorporated into science fiction. We discard the old and assume the new is the next step and the old is ‘past’. For many, the ideas of science fiction writers have become not just sheer fantasy but expectation.

One day we may figure out to control nature, travel to the ends of the universe and find the answers to everything – including inventing machines more intelligent than us. Or so the story goes. But the actual realisation that when all is said and done, we may not really be all that bright or indeed special is not only frightening but intensely despairing. We might figure these things out, but then again, we might not. We’ve come to expect techno fixes, but as we know there are limits of coal, oil, gas and so on. It may just be that there are finite limits to our ability to figure things out too.

I found this on another forum:

http://forums.machinedesign.com/eve/ubb ... 3020031572

[PenultimateManStanding]

Somebody coined the expression that science has bocome 'knowing more and more about less and less'. The questions that professional scientists concern themselves with have become more and more tightly confined to a very narrow area of specialist expertise. The same thing applies in Mathematics. It isn't possible anymore and hasn't been for a long time 'to know what's going on in the world of Mathematics' it has gotten too large for any one mind to comprehend. This raises the question, if progress is being made, who the hell is gonna know? The whole thing is too complex and is heading for a fall.

[nero]

PMS touches a good point that was brought up by Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" ie. the diminishing returns on scientific progress. It is getting harder and harder to discover something new. It is now at the point in Physics, where actual bleeding edge experimental physics is done in only a few locations around the world. That is because it is so monumentally expensive and the benefits are not at all apparent.

We can always hope for technology to come along and make the technology required for scientific progress cheaper, but since technological progress is also subject to fundamental diminishing returns based on the level of scientific knowledge available; it is pretty much inevitable that we will come to a point where everything grinds slowly to a halt. This of course ignores resource depletion that is very likely to halt progress long before we get to the economic limits of scientific knowledge.

[ubercynicmeister]

Hi Stu...dunno WHAT happened to the last posting, but my browser decided it WASNOT going to co-operate.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('stu', 'O')ne of the most recent observations that I have made when discussing Peak Oil with other people is how they genuinely believe it wont happen purely because they have faith in human ingenuinety.

To me this is akin to believing that god will solve all of your problems.

It is blind faith.

[TrueKaiser]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('stu', 'O')ne of the most recent observations that I have made when discussing Peak Oil with other people is how they genuinely believe it wont happen purely because they have faith in human ingenuinety.

[pea-jay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he mindset that exists in todays world seems to believe that this way of life is normal and will continue to go on for as long as they see.

It appears to me that Sci-Fi has helped me to think that man can control nature when the reality is that man is natures bitch.

[The_Virginian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')Scotty - squeeze the cow harder! Feed her more hay!"

[tokyo_to_motueka]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sjn', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')hen did western modernism arise relative to the invention of science fiction, does anyone know?

[Doly]

The belief that progress will sort out everything appeared with the Industrial Revolution, and it's called positivism, I think.

Some science-fiction has this attitude, but there is a lot of dark science-fiction and plenty of catastrophes and end-of-the-world scenarios in SF. It's true that peak oil hasn't featured much, which is a pity. The author that has written more on the subject is JG Ballard ("Decolonizing America", "Low-flying aircraft"). Bruce Sterling has also written at least one novel based on a post-oil world, but not particularly bleak in terms of energy available, "Islands on the net". "Decolonizing America" is particularly good, the idea is that America becomes uninhabitable without oil because it's been built assuming that transport is cheap, and it needs to be evacuated.

[linlithgowoil]

i wouldnt say its science fiction that causes mans belief in never ending progress - i'd say it was more our experience over thousands of years. we HAVE made unending progress, of course punctuated by fits and starts and wars etc - but on the long term scale, progress has been steady and often explosive (20th century).

i wonder - what would have happened had there been no such thing as oil? we probably would have continued to progress, but at a more measured and sustainable pace i would imagine.

It would be fascinating to have some kind of experiment to see what the world would be like right now if all we'd had was coal and the other fossil fuels but no oil or natural gas (i.e. the most useful and versatile fossile fuels).

I wonder if we'd be living in some kind of semi-medieval type of landscape with mainly trains and trams for transport but still using horses, and people still mainly being involved in agriculture, but with some industry based on coal usage and steam etc.? Fascinating.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'T')he same thing applies in Mathematics. It isn't possible anymore and hasn't been for a long time 'to know what's going on in the world of Mathematics' it has gotten too large for any one mind to comprehend. This raises the question, if progress is being made, who the hell is gonna know? The whole thing is too complex and is heading for a fall.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nero', 'P')MS touches a good point that was brought up by Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" ie. the diminishing returns on scientific progress. It is getting harder and harder to discover something new. It is now at the point in Physics, where actual bleeding edge experimental physics is done in only a few locations around the world. That is because it is so monumentally expensive and the benefits are not at all apparent.