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Page added on May 7, 2019

The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

The bet was on, and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a decade. It was cold, hard math: The human population was growing exponentially; the food supply was not. Ehrlich was an accomplished butterfly specialist. He knew that nature did not regulate animal populations delicately. Populations exploded, blowing past the available resources, and then crashed.

In his book, Ehrlich played out hypothetical scenarios that represented “the kinds of disasters that will occur.” In the worst-case scenario, famine rages across the planet. Russia, China, and the United States are dragged into nuclear war, and the resulting environmental degradation soon extinguishes the human race. In the “cheerful” scenario, population controls begin. Famine spreads, and countries teeter, but the major death wave ends in the mid-1980s. Only half a billion or so people die of starvation. “I challenge you to create one more optimistic,” Ehrlich wrote, adding that he would not count scenarios involving benevolent aliens bearing care packages.

The economist Julian Simon took up Ehrlich’s challenge. Technology—water-control techniques, hybridized seeds, management strategies—had revolutionized agriculture, and global crop yields were increasing. To Simon, more people meant more good ideas about how to achieve a sustainable future. So he proposed a wager. Ehrlich could choose five metals that he expected to become more expensive as resources were depleted and chaos ensued over the next decade. Both men agreed that commodity prices were a fine proxy for the effects of population growth, and they set the stakes at $1,000 worth of Ehrlich’s five metals. If, 10 years hence, prices had gone down, Ehrlich would have to pay the difference in value to Simon. If prices went up, Simon would be on the hook for the difference. The bet was made official in 1980.

In October 1990, Simon found a check for $576.07 in his mailbox. Ehrlich got smoked. The price of every one of the metals had declined. In the 1960s, 50 out of every 100,000 global citizens died annually from famine; by the 1990s, that number was 2.6.

Ehrlich’s starvation predictions were almost comically bad. And yet, the very same year he conceded the bet, Ehrlich doubled down in another book, with another prediction that would prove untrue: Sure, his timeline had been a little off, he wrote, but “now the population bomb has detonated.” Despite one erroneous prediction after another, Ehrlich amassed an enormous following and received prestigious awards. Simon, meanwhile, became a standard-bearer for scholars who felt that Ehrlich had ignored economic principles. The kind of excessive regulations Ehrlich advocated, the Simon camp argued, would quell the very innovation that had delivered humanity from catastrophe. Both men became luminaries in their respective domains. Both were mistaken.

When economists later examined metal prices for every 10-year window from 1900 to 2008, during which time the world population quadrupled, they saw that Ehrlich would have won the bet 62 percent of the time. The catch: Commodity prices are a poor gauge of population effects, particularly over a single decade. The variable that both men were certain would vindicate their worldviews actually had little to do with those views. Prices waxed and waned with macroeconomic cycles.

Yet both men dug in. Each declared his faith in science and the undisputed primacy of facts. And each continued to miss the value of the other’s ideas. Ehrlich was wrong about the apocalypse, but right on aspects of environmental degradation. Simon was right about the influence of human ingenuity on food and energy supplies, but wrong in claiming that improvements in air and water quality validated his theories. Ironically, those improvements were bolstered through regulations pressed by Ehrlich and others.

Ideally, intellectual sparring partners “hone each other’s arguments so that they are sharper and better,” the Yale historian Paul Sabin wrote in The Bet. “The opposite happened with Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon.” As each man amassed more information for his own view, each became more dogmatic, and the inadequacies in his model of the world grew ever more stark.

The pattern is by now familiar. In the 30 years since Ehrlich sent Simon a check, the track record of expert forecasters—in science, in economics, in politics—is as dismal as ever. In business, esteemed (and lavishly compensated) forecasters routinely are wildly wrong in their predictions of everything from the next stock-market correction to the next housing boom. Reliable insight into the future is possible, however. It just requires a style of thinking that’s uncommon among experts who are certain that their deep knowledge has granted them a special grasp of what is to come.

The idea for the most important study ever conducted of expert predictions was sparked in 1984, at a meeting of a National Research Council committee on American-Soviet relations. The psychologist and political scientist Philip E. Tetlock was 30 years old, by far the most junior committee member. He listened intently as other members discussed Soviet intentions and American policies. Renowned experts delivered authoritative predictions, and Tetlock was struck by how many perfectly contradicted one another and were impervious to counterarguments.

Tetlock decided to put expert political and economic predictions to the test. With the Cold War in full swing, he collected forecasts from 284 highly educated experts who averaged more than 12 years of experience in their specialties. To ensure that the predictions were concrete, experts had to give specific probabilities of future events. Tetlock had to collect enough predictions that he could separate lucky and unlucky streaks from true skill. The project lasted 20 years, and comprised 82,361 probability estimates about the future.

The result: The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire. As the Danish proverb warns, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Read: What was the worst prediction of all time?

Even faced with their results, many experts never admitted systematic flaws in their judgment. When they missed wildly, it was a near miss; if just one little thing had gone differently, they would have nailed it. “There is often a curiously inverse relationship,” Tetlock concluded, “between how well forecasters thought they were doing and how well they did.”

Early predictions in Tetlock’s research pertained to the future of the Soviet Union. Some experts (usually liberals) saw Mikhail Gorbachev as an earnest reformer who would be able to change the Soviet Union and keep it intact for a while, and other experts (usually conservatives) felt that the Soviet Union was immune to reform and losing legitimacy. Both sides were partly right and partly wrong. Gorbachev did bring real reform, opening the Soviet Union to the world and empowering citizens. But those reforms unleashed pent-up forces in the republics outside Russia, where the system had lost legitimacy. The forces blew the Soviet Union apart. Both camps of experts were blindsided by the swift demise of the U.S.S.R.

One subgroup of scholars, however, did manage to see more of what was coming. Unlike Ehrlich and Simon, they were not vested in a single discipline. They took from each argument and integrated apparently contradictory worldviews. They agreed that Gorbachev was a real reformer and that the Soviet Union had lost legitimacy outside Russia. A few of those integrators saw that the end of the Soviet Union was close at hand and that real reforms would be the catalyst.

The integrators outperformed their colleagues in pretty much every way, but especially trounced them on long-term predictions. Eventually, Tetlock bestowed nicknames (borrowed from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin) on the experts he’d observed: The highly specialized hedgehogs knew “one big thing,” while the integrator foxes knew “many little things.”

Hedgehogs are deeply and tightly focused. Some have spent their career studying one problem. Like Ehrlich and Simon, they fashion tidy theories of how the world works based on observations through the single lens of their specialty. Foxes, meanwhile, “draw from an eclectic array of traditions, and accept ambiguity and contradiction,” Tetlock wrote. Where hedgehogs represent narrowness, foxes embody breadth.

Incredibly, the hedgehogs performed especially poorly on long-term predictions within their specialty. They got worse as they accumulated experience and credentials in their field. The more information they had to work with, the more easily they could fit any story into their worldview.

Unfortunately, the world’s most prominent specialists are rarely held accountable for their predictions, so we continue to rely on them even when their track records make clear that we should not. One study compiled a decade of annual dollar-to-euro exchange-rate predictions made by 22 international banks: Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and others. Each year, every bank predicted the end-of-year exchange rate. The banks missed every single change of direction in the exchange rate. In six of the 10 years, the true exchange rate fell outside the entire range of all 22 bank forecasts.

In 2005, Tetlock published his results, and they caught the attention of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, a government organization that supports research on the U.S. intelligence community’s most difficult challenges. In 2011, IARPA launched a four-year prediction tournament in which five researcher-led teams competed. Each team could recruit, train, and experiment however it saw fit. Predictions were due at 9 a.m. every day. The questions were hard: Will a European Union member withdraw by a target date? Will the Nikkei close above 9,500?

Tetlock, along with his wife and collaborator, the psychologist Barbara Mellers, ran a team named the Good Judgment Project. Rather than recruit decorated experts, they issued an open call for volunteers. After a simple screening, they invited 3,200 people to start forecasting. Among those, they identified a small group of the foxiest forecasters—bright people with extremely wide-ranging interests and unusually expansive reading habits, but no particular relevant background—and weighted team forecasts toward their predictions. They destroyed the competition.

Tetlock and Mellers found that not only were the best forecasters foxy as individuals, but they tended to have qualities that made them particularly effective collaborators. They were “curious about, well, really everything,” as one of the top forecasters told me. They crossed disciplines, and viewed their teammates as sources for learning, rather than peers to be convinced. When those foxes were later grouped into much smaller teams—12 members each—they became even more accurate. They outperformed—by a lot—a group of experienced intelligence analysts with access to classified data.

One forecast discussion involved a team trying to predict the highest single-day close for the exchange rate between the Ukrainian hryvnia and the U.S. dollar during an extremely volatile stretch in 2014. Would the rate be less than 10 hryvnia to a dollar, between 10 and 13, or more than 13? The discussion started with a team member offering percentages for each possibility, and sharing an Economist article. Another team member chimed in with historical data he’d found online, a Bloomberg link, and a bet that the rate would land between 10 and 13. A third teammate was convinced by the second’s argument. A fourth shared information about the dire state of Ukrainian finances, which he feared would devalue the hryvnia. A fifth noted that the United Nations Security Council was considering sending peacekeepers to the region, which he believed would buoy the currency.

Two days later, a team member with experience in finance saw that the hryvnia was strengthening amid events he’d thought would surely weaken it. He informed his teammates that this was exactly the opposite of what he’d expected, and that they should take it as a sign of something wrong in his understanding. (Tetlock told me that, when making an argument, foxes often use the word however, while hedgehogs favor moreover.) The team members finally homed in on “between 10 and 13” as the heavy favorite, and they were correct.

In Tetlock’s 20-year study, both the broad foxes and the narrow hedgehogs were quick to let a successful prediction reinforce their beliefs. But when an outcome took them by surprise, foxes were much more likely to adjust their ideas. Hedgehogs barely budged. Some made authoritative predictions that turned out to be wildly wrong—then updated their theories in the wrong direction. They became even more convinced of the original beliefs that had led them astray. The best forecasters, by contrast, view their own ideas as hypotheses in need of testing. If they make a bet and lose, they embrace the logic of a loss just as they would the reinforcement of a win. This is called, in a word, learning.

Atlantic

180 Comments on "The Peculiar Blindness of Experts"

makati1 on Tue, 7th May 2019 6:11 pm

Experts: Drips under pressure. Nothing more. Nothing less. Most experts are arrogant egoists. Look at Delusional Davy. He claims to know everything about everything and everyone. The serfs are too gullible (uneducated?).

Difficult for someone to prove their thesis with the plethora* of lies in today’s “news”. Only by looking at many views can some sort of realistic picture evolve. My world view took about 100 thousand views over more than a decade. And it is always up for review. (~25 per day X 365 days X 10+ years )

*Plethora: a very large amount of something, especially a larger amount than you need, want, or can deal with. – Cambridge Dictionary

makati1 on Tue, 7th May 2019 6:54 pm

“D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy”

“Indeed, while mainstream America has been fixated on the drama-filled reality show being televised from the White House, the American Police State has moved steadily forward…

The American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process….

We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age. You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state. Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/d-dictatorship-disguised-democracy/5676839

“Heil Trump!” GO TRUMP! TRUMP IN 2020! LMAO!

I AM THE MOB on Tue, 7th May 2019 9:12 pm

“Put Them All In A Gas Chamber,” A Militia Member Allegedly Said While Stopping Migrants At The Border

Dredd on Wed, 8th May 2019 9:23 am

The worst prediction of all time is “nothing to see here folks, move along” (Seaports With Sea Level Change).

Sissyfuss on Wed, 8th May 2019 10:38 am

So Trump declares executive privilege on Mueller report after Barr suggests it.This smells more Nixonian with each passing stench. Will Mueller channel John Dean before the committee next week? This is so much better than Game of Thrones. Winter never left.

Davy on Wed, 8th May 2019 10:53 am

What I smell is something far worse than watergate. We have major criminal referrals ahead for the so called resistance.

Davy on Wed, 8th May 2019 10:55 am

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-08/christopher-steele-made-damning-pre-fisa-confession-fbi-retroactively-classified

Davy on Wed, 8th May 2019 10:56 am

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-08/trump-asserts-executive-privilege-over-mueller-report-and-underlying-documents

Davy on Wed, 8th May 2019 1:27 pm

“James Comey Is In Trouble And He Knows It”: Former FBI Official”
https://tinyurl.com/y3mr3fzp zero hedge

“FBI Director Christopher Wray came out on Tuesday said that spying is “not the term I would use” to describe the agency’s probe into President Trump’s 2016 campaign. PosoCheck: Wray is a lawyer who worked under Comey and Mueller in the 2000s and never spent a day in his life as a special agent or intelligence officer https://t.co/XM1l20PH6S — Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 7, 2019 The CIA’s former head of counterintelligence, James Olson, disagrees – telling The Hill’s Saagar Enjeti this week “Yeah, I’d call that spying.” As the Obama administration’s intelligence comes under increasing scrutiny for their actions during the 2016 election, the FBI’s former Assistant Director of Intelligence – Kevin R. Brock – suggests in an Op-Ed for The Hill that James Comey “is in trouble and he knows it.”

Sissyfuss on Wed, 8th May 2019 1:46 pm

Good Davy, take down all those corporate slut Dems and let’s set up a party that can maintain a majority instead of a third like most parties these days.

Peak Oil Ombudsman on Wed, 8th May 2019 4:24 pm

Professor Davy Prick Face is back to his conspiracy nonsense, yet again. Any normal person would be thoroughly humiliated by now with a batting average of ,000, but the turd is anything but normal as we all know so well.

No wonder why he tends a fantasy goat herd as his claimed “full time” occupation (between rides on the family jet).

What a goof ball.

“What I smell is something far worse than watergate. We have major criminal referrals ahead for the so called resistance.” DavyTurd

Anonymouse on Wed, 8th May 2019 5:25 pm

Professor Prick Face, ROFL

JuanP on Wed, 8th May 2019 6:13 pm

juanpee posted this

Peak Oil Ombudsman on Wed, 8th May 2019 4:24 pm

Davy is retarded on Wed, 8th May 2019 7:43 pm

Davy is retarded posted this

(Not) JuanP on Wed, 8th May 2019 6:13 pm

makati1 on Wed, 8th May 2019 8:23 pm

Is Trump the last US president? Maybe the first US Fuehrer? Heil Trump?

“Trump’s re-tweet of a prominent, politically active evangelical preacher is not a joke. It is a serious signal sent deliberately to both supporters and opponents, who will understand that Trump is serious and that he is prepared to pursue anticonstitutional methods to stay in power. It is part of an increasingly dictatorial pattern that Trump and his fascist advisers have long planned.”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-floats-proposal-cancel-2020-elections/5676898

Can’t happen in Amerika? Ask the Germans if it can. It’s only one Executive Order away.

GO TRUMP! TRUMP IN 2020! LMAO!

makati1 on Wed, 8th May 2019 9:38 pm

West Down – East up! As I have been saying…

“The West – Full Spectrum Dementia: Bogus News Media, Corruption of Academic Research, Irrational Lies Fed into the Educational System”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-west-full-spectrum-dementia-bogus-news-media-corruption-of-academic-research-irrational-lies-fed-into-the-educational-system/5676928

“The essential task of the Western information, education and entertainment industries is to poison and corrode people’s minds, creating and maintaining false memories so as to induce and sustain false beliefs. …

The West is dying of full spectrum dementia. What happens to dementia patients is that, as their brains degenerate, the individual loses the ability to eat and, finally, the ability to swallow. Then they quickly die. The West will soon be unable to devour the majority world any more.

Like Goya’s Saturn the Western elites will then devour their own peoples, until they can’t. Towards the end, their populations will be unable to swallow the increasingly irrational lies they are fed each day by their education systems, their NGOs and their bogus news media. And then the West as we know it will be dead.”

The sooner the better. GO TRUMP! TRUMP IN 2020! LMAOL!

Cloggie on Wed, 8th May 2019 11:20 pm

“Is Trump the last US president? Maybe the first US Fuehrer? Heil Trump?”

He is the Gorbachev of the US empire: it’s undertaker.

He is the last president and last hope of European America. After him the US will suffer the same fate as the USSR: balkenization.

Cloggie on Thu, 9th May 2019 1:11 am

#LastDaysOfTheWest

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7004691/EUs-chief-Brexit-negotiators-brand-Theresa-insane-foul-mouthed-rant.html

“EU’s chief Brexit negotiators brand Theresa May ‘insane’ and ‘pathetic’ in foul-mouthed rant seen in a damaging BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary”

Brexit is exactly the IED required to blow up the West.

Yesterday on BBC Newsnight: oligarch country UK (mirror image US). 5 of the poorest regions of Northern Europe are in the UK. And so is the richest (London of course).

https://www.the-round.co.uk/uk-5-poorest-regions-northern-europe/

If you want to understand why Britain still has a potent socialist party, in contrast to continental Europe, look no further for an explanation. BBC remarked that the Brexit vote was more directed against London than against Brussels.

Soccer playing into the hands of the Brexiteers. Usually a Spanish team wins the Euro Champions Cup, but this year it is going to be a British one, after both Liverpool and Tottenham turned a seemingly hopeless situation in a last minute win. Even closet Remainer PM May used the Liverpool win as a Brexit success metaphor, although the English are a minority in their very dark soccer teams. But the interpretation is clear: The Gods want Brexit to happen, we don’t need Europe for anything.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6992321/Miner-Eurotunnel-poster-boy-punching-French-BREXIT-supporter.html

“Cross in the Channel! British miner who became poster boy for Eurotunnel after punching through to French side reveals he’s now a BREXIT supporter on 25th anniversary of its completion”

The English seriously tried to become European but failed. The iconic sub-sea French-English handshake when both the French and British drilling teams met under the Channel, didn’t lead to finalizing English destiny as a European nation. Anglos after all, you can have them, America. Just set the Channel Tunnel under water and let a new Iron Curtain descend over the Channel and North Sea, in case Farage and the ERG mob take over the tax farm and England disappears into Orwell’s Oceania, run by the NSA and MI6, the mobsters of this world have in store for the white Anglos and mongrelize them into oblivion.

The destiny of continental Europe, the real home of the white race, is in Eurasia, most of all Russia and to a lesser extent China, and of course deep space.

JuanP on Thu, 9th May 2019 2:35 am

juanpee posted this

Davy is retarded on Wed, 8th May 2019 7:43 pm

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 2:38 am

“By re-tweeting this proposal, Trump is, in effect, threatening to cancel the 2020 elections and declare himself above the law. Article II of the US Constitution states that the president “shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years.”

makato, you are reaching there with your nutter global research dot com.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 2:41 am

“West Down – East up! As I have been saying…”

“The West – Full Spectrum Dementia: Bogus News Media, Corruption of Academic Research, Irrational Lies Fed into the Educational System”

makato, we know the orwellian shit going on in China. We know about the fake economic numbers. we know about the re education camps. What you have been saying is a one sided intellectually fraudulent agenda IOW an extremis Asiaphile.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 2:43 am

“He is the last president and last hope of European America. After him the US will suffer the same fate as the USSR: balkenization.”

We are following your lead, cloggo.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 2:46 am

#LastDaysOfEUROLAND

“Brexit is exactly the IED required to blow up the Euroland.”

THERE FIXED IT

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 2:47 am

“The destiny of continental Europe, the real home of the white race, is in Eurasia, most of all Russia and to a lesser extent China, and of course deep space.”

WHITE RACIST RUBBISH RANT

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 3:01 am

“Europe Throws Billions At New EV Battery Ventures”
https://tinyurl.com/y6rxv8ds oil price

“Europe is slowly but surely working to catch up with the world’s largest EV battery producers after it was almost terminally late to the party. After years of neglecting the lack of local battery production capabilities, now the EU has announced yet another consortium in the area, a tie-up among carmakers, energy companies, and others interested in building battery capacity in Europe.”
Battery shortfall: https://tinyurl.com/y5dpkeaq

“Forbes’ Brussels correspondent Dave Keating reports that the consortium will be funded with US$5.6-6.7 billion (5-6 billion euro), with US$1.34 billion (1.2 billion euro) in the form of subsidies coming from Brussels. The rest will come from private companies. It’s good news that European companies are investing so heavily in EV batteries, but it’s worth noting the current leaders in this space—China and South Korea—are not exactly standing still. They are building EV battery production capacity in Europe, too.”

Cloggie on Thu, 9th May 2019 3:44 am

“WHITE RACIST RUBBISH RANT”

You will get what you deserve; a black d*ck in every body cavity and mobster’s tribe is going to organise it. Have fun with him, bubba anonymouse.lol

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 3:52 am

“You will get what you deserve; a black d*ck in every body cavity”

You probably already got it in the closet. BTW, you are sounding more and more like juanpee.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 4:05 am

“Workhorse Lordstown Plant — What’s Going On?”
https://tinyurl.com/y29vxdn3 clean technical

“Commercial truck specialist VT Hackney has teamed up with electric vehicle outfit Workhorse on a battery-powered prototype that could potentially spawn a plug-in hybrid using technology Workhorse has been developing for a pickup. The VT Hackney / Workhorse collaboration is the only truck in the running that is electric. Also note: “A specific type of powertrain was not specified, but the cost of operation is part of the assessment.” I’m not going to spend time explaining why electrification is a perfect fit for the post office and its predictable routes, for vehicle downtime parked at one location in between those routes, but it sure seems to me like electric trucks might be a good fit. Doesn’t it?”

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 4:19 am

“Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory Update — Unbelievable Progress Over A Single Month”
https://tinyurl.com/y2of4mex clean technical

Check out the farm land devoured by this factory and others around it. It is amazing a county like China can afford this. What is also amazing is how clean technical is cheerleading this. I am all for renewables and EV’s in proper applications and with realistic scale but let’s also see what is happening bellow the fanfare with this techno agenda. The car culture is the problem and until we deal with that electric is just lipstick on a pig.
https://tinyurl.com/yychbt56

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 4:30 am

“The Oceans Are Getting Stormier”
https://tinyurl.com/y64l2772 vice

“Earth’s oceans have become stormier since 1985, according to a study published Thursday in Science. In the most extreme places, wind speed and wave height rose by about 5 to 8 percent. If this trend continues, it could exacerbate the effects of sea level rise, including floods that damage coastal communities and natural ecosystems.”

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 6:19 am

Re: ‘Renewables are Dead’

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2019/05/renewables-are-dead/

The Germans are attempting to substitute intermittent and low power density renewable energy into an economic system that grew to its present form (population, structure, etc.) on a diet of high power density, controllable, fossil fuel energy. It should surprise no one that this is turning out to be difficult and expensive. It is a testament to engineering genius that it is possible at all and can support anything like the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. Because of the required scale of the infrastructure, it will tend to dominate the landscape in ways that we are not accustomed to in a fossil-powered economy. Because of the high population density following two centuries of fossil fuel enabled population growth; the impact of that infrastructure will weigh heavily upon rural populations. It will also ultimately be more expensive, because of the scale of the infrastructure needed to harvest and buffer the energy. That’s just the way it is; you can’t have everything. There are alternatives, but they have problems of their own – pollution, political acceptance, geopolitics, etc.

We face the overwhelming and intractable problem of having built a very resource intensive way of life on the back of very rich but finite and polluting energy sources that are now depleting and fouling the atmosphere with their waste products. We did this on a finite ball of rock, and we used the rich stored energy to concentrate other resources (ores, renewable resources) that also represent natural stored energy. Now we face the prospect of both energy stores depleting simultaneously; and the waste products of fossil fuel usage accumulating within the environment. With the renewable energy transition, we are attempting to use poorer energy sources to produce products from depleting resources with a growing energy cost. There is no hope of maintaining growing or stable prosperity in that sort of environment. Even a very rich substitute energy source (like nuclear energy) would only be a temporary fix, as it would exacerbate other forms of resource depletion.

There are long-term solutions to these problems, but they are things that people find either (a) unpalatable or (b) difficult to accept.

Solution ‘a’ (unpalatable): If we remain confined to this finite ball of rock, the solution would require dramatic reductions in human numbers and per capita resource use.

Solution ‘b’ (difficult to accept): If we wish to avoid imposing solution ‘a’ upon ourselves, then the solution is to leave the Earth and find ways of living in space, using abundant solar energy and effectively unlimited space-based resources mined from the moon and the asteroids to support our needs. Space based resources, such as beamed solar energy and rare minerals, might be used to support Earth-based populations during the transition. We would need quite a lot of nuclear energy to pull this one off at a price that we can afford, as it is probably the only way of cheaply getting the required people and materials into space.

There are various variations on these options, but you can essentially divide them into these two camps. Either find ways of living more efficiently on limited domestic resources, or find ways of accessing resources from the outside. As you might have gathered, I tend to favour the second.

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 6:44 am

““Europe is slowly but surely working to catch up with the world’s largest EV battery producers after it was almost terminally late to the party. After years of neglecting the lack of local battery production capabilities, now the EU has announced yet another consortium in the area, a tie-up among carmakers, energy companies, and others interested in building battery capacity in Europe.””

The high embodied energy (and cost), poor operating utilisation (i.e. driving 20 miles a day on an expensive 300-mile range battery) and short lifetime of batteries (~5 years); makes the pure BEV are poor solution to our transport problems.

We all know what the real solutions need to be. But again, they are unpalatable and difficult for people to adapt to in the present culture and economic environment. Hence, we end up using technology to develop poor substitutes, that happen to fit the existing economic and cultural paradigm, rather than exploring different ways of doing things.

Cloggie on Thu, 9th May 2019 6:59 am

We are nowhere near the end of the renewable energy storage race:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/solid-state-battery-breakthrough/

Theoretical upper limit lithium: 90 kWh per 6.3 kg Li.

It is still open who will dominate mobile storage:

Batteries
Hydrogen
Super capacitors
Or…

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 7:03 am

“The management of hardship”
https://tinyurl.com/y4l7dcae surplus energy

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS IN AN AGE OF DETERIORATING PROSPERITY…The first of these is the insanity which says that no amount of financial recklessness is ever going to drive us over a cliff, because creating new money out of thin air is our “get out of gaol free card” in all circumstances…The second subject is the very real threat posed by environmental degradation, where politicians are busy assuring the public that the problem can be fixed without subjecting voters to any meaningful inconvenience – and, after all, anyone who can persuade the public that electric vehicles are “zero emissions” could probably sell sand to the Saudis…the third issue, the tragicomedy that it is contemporary politics – indeed, it might reasonably be said that, between them, the Élysée and Westminster, in particular, offer combinations of tragedy, comedy and farce that even the most daring of theatre directors would blush to present.

The first is that prosperity issues have risen higher on the political agenda, and will go on doing so, pushing other issues down the scale of importance. The second conclusion, which carries with it what is probably the single most obvious policy implication, is that redistribution is becoming an ever more important issue. There are two very good reasons for this hardening in sentiment…The need for redistribution is reinforced by realistic appraisal of the fiscal outlook. Anyone who is aware of deteriorating prosperity has to be aware that this has adverse implications for forward revenues. By definition, only prosperity can be taxed, because taxing incomes below the level of prosperity simply drives people into hardships whose alleviation increases public expenditures.

With prosperity – and, with it, the tax base – shrinking, promising anything that looks like “tax and spend” has become a recipe for policy failure and voter disillusionment. This said, so profound has been the failure of the centre-Right ascendancy that opportunities necessarily exist for anyone on the Left who is able to recast his or her agenda on the basis of economic reality. Tactically, the best way forward for the Left is to shift the debate on equality back to the material, restoring the primacy of the Left’s traditional concentration on the differences and inequities between rich and poor.

This, it is to be hoped, can lead to a renaissance in the idea of the mixed economy, which seeks to get the best out of private and public provision, without pandering to the excesses of either. Restoration of this balance, from the position where we are now, means rolling back much of the privatization and outsourcing undertaken, often recklessly, over the last three decades. Both the private and the public sectors will need to undergo extensive reforms if governments are to craft effective agendas for using the mixed economy to mitigate the worst effects of deteriorating prosperity.

First, a useful opening step in the crafting of new politics would be the introduction of “clean hands” principles, designed to prove that government isn’t, as it can so often appear, something conducted “by the rich, for the rich”. Second, it would be helpful if governments rolled back their inclinations towards macho posturing and intimidation.

We cannot escape the conclusion that the task of government, always a thankless one even when confined to sharing out the benefits of growth, is going to become very difficult indeed as prosperity continues to deteriorate. There might, though, be positives to be found in a process which ditches ideological extremes, uses the mixed economy as the basis for the equitable mitigation of decline, and seeks to rebuild relationships between discredited governments and frustrated citizens.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 7:05 am

The idea of decline initiating a positive change is an important part of Real Green Deep Adaptation. These principals need to be applied to global governance but they can’t. This does not mean the what-ifs of Real Green Deep Adaptation principals applied to governance should not be discussed. The purpose becomes understanding the predicament of human behavioral we are in that points back to Real Green Deep Adaptation. Responding accordingly leads to an individual response to center on restoration, relinquishment, and resilience which are the core of Real Green Deep Adaptation.

Restoration calls for honesty as the basis of human behavior as well as the restoration of scale through an individual’s local environment. If this is projected to global governance then honestly acknowledging decline means more modest policy. Spending and even talking about spending what you really don’t have is a failed policy longer term. If all sides acknowledge decline then all those radical ideas on all sides that promote a false view of increasing prosperity will evaporate. The results are a distilling out better policy that will involve less but offer more value. So honesty is the paramount policy but these days paradoxically honesty is a handicap. Until the collective behavior acknowledges dishonesty both within and outside there can be no good policy. Honesty applies to science and academia today with environmental policy since this is such a new and important force.

Another important point is a mixed economy based on decline. What is in the public good and what is in the interest of individual good? There must be a balance to the individual and the public. The public good in a time of decline must focus on social harmony and good longer term fundable investments. The individual good must be protected to promote productive individual effort. A mixed economy based upon the better of each approach needs to be addressed to avoid extreme of either. This points to “less” starting with those who govern. Currently governing has become a springboard to affluence instead of service. As long as those who govern now seek to get wealthy then our governing bodies will be corrupted. This includes the corporate governance which today is blurred in arrangements of oligarchy and dictatorship.

A second aspect of a mixed economy concern the planetary side of the equation. We cannot fix what is broken especially when it is human behavior to begin with. You can’t make a culture green that is based on growth in a time of decline you can only reduce the bad of it with adaptation and mitigation. You can’t promote affluence with a green lipstick. The only way to increase green is to lower affluence with less choices and less goods. There are consequences to less with a system that requires growth and that is further systematic decay. Honesty acknowledges degrowth. At the individual level less can increase resilience by an orderly downsizing of what is a macro trend of decline. What is worse honest decline or dishonest affluence that is decline? Honesty is always better this is especially critical for the individual.

Resilience starts with the restoration of honesty and in a time of declining prosperity involves relinquishment. This then points to a key reality of Real Green Deep Adaptation. The system is beyond this kind of proactive change and in tandem the public is without the capacity for this kind of change. A crisis point changes this equation. The crisis point of public change increasingly is likely a systematic bifurcation point. The short term benefits will always trump the longer term good when the local meets the global in a time of decline. Individual success through wealth creation and accumulation will always trump better individual behavior in support of the public good in decline. The important point is in a time of declining prosperity then we can expect dishonesty as human nature. When prosperity is increasing the public good can be funded. This is called survival and it is an instinct of life.

This human predicament then becomes a beacon from Real Green Deep Adaptation to focus locally and with your significant others. This realization of decline then offers you a radar to yield to destructive forces. It also offers you stealth by using the system to leave it. Actually advancing your local through the principals of Real Green Deep Adaptation makes the system better. Multiple grass root efforts at restoration, relinquishment, and resilience makes the entire planetary system including the human system better. The top is hopelessly corrupt so if you are seeking meaning then you will stop looking outside your local for answers. This does not mean abandoning your responsibility as a citizen it just means rejecting those parts of the process that impact your personal efforts at Real Green Deep Adaptation. You remain an active citizen that calls into question the entirety of the status quo in regards to increasing affluence at the same time you use the status quo to improve your local.

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 7:07 am

“Anglos after all, you can have them, America. Just set the Channel Tunnel under water and let a new Iron Curtain descend over the Channel and North Sea, in case Farage and the ERG mob take over the tax farm and England disappears into Orwell’s Oceania, run by the NSA and MI6, the mobsters of this world have in store for the white Anglos and mongrelize them into oblivion.”

A big part of the problem is that Britain is arguably the least democratic out of all of the major western countries. The English have lost virtually all sense of ethnic identity thanks to the mobster media and have never been very good at working together against established authority in the way that the French are. Freedom of speech does not exist; you can go to prison simply for expressing a contradictory idea and many British patriots have done exactly that. The government, media, police and political elites; function as a gangster extortion racket; that maintain political authority through oppression and threats. In such an environment, it shouldn’t be surprising that people make questionable decisions based on partial information and manipulated information.

That being said, the European Union simply isn’t what Cloggie wants to believe it to be. It is a globalist institution, with a highly centralised power structure; the elites of which are every bit as obsessed with cultural homogenisation and mongrelisation as the mobsters of Britain. To be anything like what Cloggie describes, Europe would need to accomplish a complete paradigm shift in its thinking and an unprecedented political revolution along nationalist lines. These people would need to change their political priorities – the nationalist right tends to favour secession rather than integration. The brief rumblings so far do not come close to the sort of changes that would be needed.

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 7:22 am

Davy, I will read your post in more detail later on.

Essentially, the problem with Deep Green adaptation, is that it tends to favour solutions that are more local (less complex) and deliberately lower in terms of GDP and resource use.

It would be almost impossible to engineer these changes in any way that didn’t ultimately result in societal collapse, because it would tend to undermine funding for existing infrastructure that is ultimately funding it’s creation. It is also very difficult for any large number of individuals to withdraw sufficiently from the systems that they is locked into, to really make a big difference in this way.

For example, I am working towards buying a small farm in the north of England that will allow me to grow the food I need for my family, as well as build a wind powered workshop to produce furniture. But property prices mean that I will need to keep working in the same job to fund this; I am required to keep paying property taxes to prop up the boated local government bureaucracy and UK planning laws stand in the way of anything that I want to build. Attempting to withdraw to a simpler way of life is like swimming through treacle.

Sunspot on Thu, 9th May 2019 7:26 am

Davy – We’ll never know about any “managed decline” schemes, because it is, and continues to be, obvious to me that we will go over the cliff of collapse at full speed with the pedal to the metal. However that cliff manifests – I have a list somewhere.

As for the whole “blindness of experts” thing – experts built civilization and continue to maintain it so the average moron can live a life of ease and ignorance and watch “Dumb and Dumber” all day if you want. If the cable goes out, call an EXPERT who will come and fix it for you. Probably you just knocked the plug out reaching for that Cheeto…

Cloggie on Thu, 9th May 2019 7:26 am

Antius is right about the EU… in its present form. But populists are ramming on the gate to be let in and after May, 20% or more could be in the EU and gradually in national parliaments.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/right-wing-populists-seek-to-flex-muscles-in-the-eu-a-1246433-amp.html

Russia and Eastern Europe are thoroughly post-kike.

That’s what I anticipate. It is even possible that the EU will be replaced by a new institution like Putin’s proposed continental confederation. And move eastwards from Brussels to, say, Prague, to accomodate Russia.

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 8:09 am

A marriage of European population and technology and Russian resources; would be a world dominating combination. I doubt very much that even the Chinese could compete against such a bloc economically or militarily. The only problem with it is its non-existence and the geopolitical barriers (Uncle Sam) standing in the way of its creation.

Europe has the population, manufacturing prowess, infrastructure and access to the oceans. Russia has huge empty land area, minerals and specific technologies, such as nuclear reactors and rocket vehicles. A Euro-Russian alliance would certainly be the ideal vehicle for the next logical step for humanity – the migration to and colonisation of near-Earth space with its enormous untapped resources. The nation that accomplishes that essentially wins for all time; as the descendants of the colonists would literally control all the rest of the solar system a few centuries hence. What goes on amongst nations that remain confined to the Earth would be as irrelevant as Black African politics. Just as humanity had to leave Africa before it could really become humanity; we Eurasians need to leave the Earth in order to achieve the next stage of human evolution.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 8:23 am

“It would be almost impossible to engineer these changes in any way that didn’t ultimately result in societal collapse”

Decline and eventual collapse is the point Antius and the Real Green Deep Adaptation honesty acknowledges it will go down with the status quo however possibly less rapidly and with more dignity. You miss that critical point.

“If anything that I want to build. Attempting to withdraw to a simpler way of life is like swimming through treacle.”

The point of Real Green Deep Adaptation is relative action and sacrifice based on honesty so you do what you can Real Green through the status quo with the purpose of leaving the status quo. The degree to which one can leave the status quo varies considerably but the attitude behind the will to action is universal. The status quo is dishonest both with human behavior and planetary reality. Meaning comes with this realization but there is no existential transcendence just like there is no departing this collapsing planetary ecosystem. We are trap both materially and with our own personal life system.

I AM THE MOB on Thu, 9th May 2019 8:30 am

Clogg

The more populist win is just admission that your economy is in a depression..Just like the 1930’s when populist took over..Are you too stupid to remember that?

And far right whack jobs are never going to get your spruce moose economy off of the water..

Once the oil shortage hits you and Asia are going down hard..You can’t increase your GDP without increasing oil consumption..Wanna see what happens when a countries GDP declines see USSR or Venezuela..

If you had a fucking brain you would flee now before SHTF..But you are to much a coward to except reality..No matter how many peer reviewed references and articles I could source.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 8:31 am

“A marriage of European population and technology and Russian resources; would be a world dominating”

Empire dreaming as old as civilization. Lol. It will never work because the trend is toward bifurcating decline which points to decentralization and competitive conflict especially in Eurasia. Yes the US is a significant problem with a decaying empire but this should be a warning to fantasies like PBM and racist notions of a dominant people.

I AM THE MOB on Thu, 9th May 2019 8:32 am

Green adaption? HAAHAHA

What a bunch of soy boy faggots..

Just live a simpler life..

Sorry you morons, Evolution doesn’t go backwards..

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 9:02 am

Better than your adaptation which is an intimate encounter with a gun in the mouth. Your version is an easy option for those with guts. I think you wouldn’t have the guts to go though with it. In any case there is nothing to it. Buy a gun and some ammo and have it ready. Some plan that is but probably fits your intellectual capacity. So go for it

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 9:17 am

Davy, you are probably correct; the populist trend is more likely to undermine rather than reinforce European unity. I also question that Russia would be prepared to submit to the sort of integration that would be required, given its more dominant status compared to other smaller European nations.

But the fact remains that a Russian-European collective would have sufficient resources to avoid imminent collapse if it were instituted relatively soon. Russian nuclear technology is amenable to very rapid scaling if Europe needs it in response to an energy crisis. It is only political ideology and over-regulation that really stands in the way of that. Such a development will not buy Europe an infinite amount of time, as all resource sets are subject to depletion, but it could buy enough time (decades) to proceed to the next stage before Eurasian resources were too depleted.

A space based ’empire’ might even avoid collapse altogether, if it were to result in an influx of new resources that could sustain high civilisation. Look at how European nation states transitioned from being small and poor agrarian feudal states, to global empire states with high technology and world beating manufacturing economies. It all happened in just a couple of centuries and all it took was a whiff of new resources and a few enterprising minds. The Netherlands in the 16th century was a saturated bog under the yoke of Spain, with no domestic resources and an impoverished pastoral civilisation. Within a century, it was a trading empire the likes of which the world had never seen. The British story was similar. I think we could pull the same thing off again in a state that had the right mind set and enough resources to get things started. The basic technologies exist; it is a matter of applying them with the correct business model and with enough resources. What remains of America would either be drawn in as a partner, or forced to mimic these efforts in order to avoid being side-lined.

A few hundred years hence, our future might look similar to the sort of interplanetary society depicted within James A Corey’s Expanse novels. That is certainly a much better scenario in my mind to the sort of impoverished, Soylent Green future that would otherwise appear to be inevitable if we stay stuck on a burned out planet.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 9:34 am

“But the fact remains that a Russian-European collective would have sufficient resources to avoid imminent collapse if it were instituted relatively soon”.

A relatively short term chance at best from my understanding of the decline process . There is no need to elaborate because the discuss is too large. As for space travel I see that as part of the problem. As long as we hang on to salvation through technology the more delusional we become. It is absolutely the wrong direction with our behavioral track record a fine example of why it is wrong.

Antius on Thu, 9th May 2019 9:36 am

We need to get past anti-nuclear hysteria in Europe, partly so we can start building things like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

And this…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Mag_Orion

We can’t build a solar empire without the nuclear powered ships needed to lift millions of tonnes of people and materials into space at low costs. Progress comes at a price.

Davy on Thu, 9th May 2019 9:44 am

Your space based solutions are exciting but they are the wrong solution in my mind. I am pursuing a different direction so your plan does not appeal to me. My approach allows for you to try to realize your approach. I am operating a different level. Good luck. You will need it.

Cloggie on Thu, 9th May 2019 10:04 am

Latest EU poll France:

Marine le Pen 22%
Macron 21%

The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

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