Is Sushil Yadav right?

[biffvernon]

Given that analysis, what do you actually DO tomorrow?

(I'm going on holiday to a house without an internet connection. A chance to catch up on reading print on paper.)

[Little John]

Given that analysis, what do you actually DO tomorrow?.....

Quell the despair

Care for my family

Carry on

[woodburner]

It's comments like "roll on the population crash" or "a good cull would do us the world of good" etc, that are (imo) not on and likely to get a response from me and others.

That's merely playing with words. In the end the effect will be the same. Severe population reduction is severe population reduction, whatever collection of words you choose to use.

[UndercoverElephant]

Our population has got to crash in order for both us and the rest of life on Earth to have a future.

That sounds like a moral claim about what "needs" to happen. I'd personally just say that our population is going to crash because human beings will not do what it would take to sustain that sort of population, even if we could (it wouldn't require a breach in the laws of physics.)

It's a cultural failure. We managed to create democracies (sort of), but we ended up electing "leaders" who are incapable of leading and spend their entire time telling the public lies, many of them ridiculous. Now they are going to have to tell the truth. I think it was Warren Buffet who said that "when the tide goes out, that's when you find out who has been swimming naked." That's what is happening to the world's politicians right now, and not just because of Peak Oil. The Leveson enquiry is doing the same job.

[UndercoverElephant]

The problem is that we can't go back to life without hydrocarbons. Not with 7 billion and rising. We need hydrocarbons to sustain that 7 billion.

That's clearly not the case, as evidenced by the many millions, hundreds of millions who live on very little hydrocarbons indeed , most of them in abject poverty.

FIFY

[UndercoverElephant]

The answer to the question in the post title is YES.

To be honest I realised this not long after the thread was started. It is a hard truth to deal with, but Industrial society does destroy Mind and Environment.

Thanks for pointing out the Elephant in the room, Sushil Yadev. I hadn't noticed it before

So how do we deal with that fact?

See: Derrick Jensen

[UndercoverElephant]

The problem is that we can't go back to life without hydrocarbons. Not with 7 billion and rising. We need hydrocarbons to sustain that 7 billion.

That's clearly not the case, as evidenced by the many millions, hundreds of millions who live on very little hydrocarbons indeed. 7bn, can live without hydrocarbons - just not the way (or the distributions) we do now.

Obviously I don't think we will make the changes to our ways and distributions, and death for many of that 7bn is more likely.

It comes down to game-theory; specifically "hawks" and "doves".

Imagine an island where there live only doves. Doves have the following characteristics;

Doves are absolute altruists. They will always share their resources with another dove based on a straightforward assessment of how many resources each of them already has. The dove with the most resources always gives away half of the difference between himself and his fellow dove. Thus, when they part, each has exactly the same amount. This way, all doves, on the average, have access to an equitable amount of resources. Following on from the above, all doves are both honest and are pacifists and will never try to deceive another dove with regards to how many resources they posses in order to gain an unfair advantage or try to steal another dove's resources. Finally, as well as being altruists and pacifists, all doves are intelligent enough to realize that they must limit their reproduction and/or consumption of resources in order to maintain a sustainable life for their descendants. All is well on Dove island.

Until, one day, a small number of breeding pairs of hawks land on the island. Hawks have the following characteristics;

Hawks are completely selfish. Or, to the extent to which they show any kind of "altruism" at all, it will only be towards those who are very closely related to them. Hawks will never honestly share their resources with another dove or even another hawk unless they are closely related. They will even steal with violence from another bird if they think they are bigger than them and can get away with it. However, Hawks quickly learn that they don't need to force a dove to give them their resources. All they need to do it to lie to them. This is easy for hawks as they are good liars. They simply tell the dove they have less resources than is the case. On this basis, the dove gives them an inequitably larger amount of resources than they should have.

In fairly short-order, the hawks possess most of the resources and, given that access to resources equates to reproductive success, the dove population crashes and the hawk population booms. The hawks now have a problem, though. Given that any other bird they now meet is likely to be a hawk, they are always going to end up in an outright fight for resources. This is very costly and so the hawk population begins to crash. At which point, the dove population recovers a little. But, only a little.

It turns out, that if you put all of the above parameters into a simulation, you end up with an evolutionary stable population equilibrium of about 80% hawks to 20% doves. Furthermore, if you allow interbreeding to occur between hawks and doves, you end up with the same distribution of psychological characteristics within each bird. In other words, 80% of the time they will act like hawks and 20% of the time they will act like doves.

The only way to increase the dove population to have absolute transparency (so that lying is ineffective), for doves and hawks to be equally capable of violence and/or for there to be an unlimited supply of resources. This way, no-one can lie and no one can gain advantage merely as a function of power or, in the case of unlimited resources, there is little point in lying or stealing. When these parameters are added to a simulation, it will work for a while. The trouble is, there is always going to be variation in the tendency to lie and to be stronger than others and resources are always finite. As soon as behavioral variation creeps back into a population existing in an environment of finite resources, the 20%/80% ratio re-establishes itself.

To come back to the problem of 7 billion people living on this planet and how it may be possible, at least in-principle, for 7 billion or more people to be able to survive and prosper without destroying the rest of the biosphere; this is akin to expecting the entire human population of the planet to behave like doves 100% of the time and for there to be absolutely no hawks present to screw it up for everyone else.

It's why we are totally and utterly f*cked.

It's also why the doves among us know we are f*cked, yet are unable to stop the insanity.

Excellent post, especially the paragaph bolded.

[UndercoverElephant]

Given that analysis, what do you actually DO tomorrow?

That looks like an attempt to reject the analysis on the grounds that it induces paralysis, not that there is anything wrong with the analysis.

Part of the reason why it is so hopeless is because so few people really understand what is going on, so denying/concealing the truth in order to avoid inducing hopelessness can't be accepted as a strategy. We must face the truth, regardless of how much fear and hopelessness this may tend to produce. There is a process of awakening going on (of sorts). Now is not the time to pretend.

ETA: and it does rather depend on what your life circumstances are. Personally speaking, I have no children, no great ambitions for the future, enough money in the bank (ha!) to survive for a few years on low income and a "job" teaching people about mushrooms and foraging. What am I going to do tomorrow? If it's not still pissing it down, I'll probably wander around the countryside trying to find wild flowers I don't recognise and maybe even some interesting fungi.

[Little John]

Our population has got to crash in order for both us and the rest of life on Earth to have a future.

That sounds like a moral claim about what "needs" to happen. I'd personally just say that our population is going to crash because human beings will not do what it would take to sustain that sort of population, even if we could (it wouldn't require a breach in the laws of physics.)

It's a cultural failure. We managed to create democracies (sort of), but we ended up electing "leaders" who are incapable of leading and spend their entire time telling the public lies, many of them ridiculous. Now they are going to have to tell the truth. I think it was Warren Buffet who said that "when the tide goes out, that's when you find out who has been swimming naked." That's what is happening to the world's politicians right now, and not just because of Peak Oil. The Leveson enquiry is doing the same job.

I do take on board what you are saying about it sounding like a moral claim, UE. However, I would ague that it is not so much a moral claim as a pragmatic one.

Given that I do believe that we humans are, by virtue of having evolved certain inevitable behavioral characteristics that make it impossible for us all to simultaneously do the the right thing and then continue to do the right thing in perpetuity, our only hope of long term survival is if we reduce in number sufficiently that our inherent nature is no longer an issue. Further, given that we are not gong to reduce our numbers voluntarily (back to those hawks and doves again), it then logically follows that the only way our number reduces is if we get an involuntary crash.

Given that I want both humanity and the rest of life to survive and given that I believe we are incapable of changing our ways even if we wanted to because of the behavioral-economic constraints of game-theory, I am bound to state that I hope we get an involuntary crash. Of course, being at least partially hawk as well as partially dove (and therefore a hypocrite), I naturally don't include me or mine in that hope, though.

I would like to be able to say that I still hold at least a glimmer of hope that we can get our shit together collectively and in time so as to enact a global dove revolution. But I can't.

That hope is extinguished

[peaceful_life]

I wonder how it plays out when both doves and hawks in the simulation realise that the computer sytem is crashing.

[Little John]

I wonder how it plays out when both doves and hawks in the simulation realise that the computer sytem is crashing.

I suspect hawks will fare best at first. Then their population will crash. Then, out of the ashes, the doves make a partial recovery. Then the hawks resume taking the piss.

Then it all starts again.

[peaceful_life]

I wonder how it plays out when both doves and hawks in the simulation realise that the computer sytem is crashing.

I suspect hawks will fare best at first. Then their population will crash. Then, out of the ashes, the doves make a partial recovery.

Then it all starts again.

By 'crashing' I meant....no ashes, that's it, do not pass go go.

The simulation gets to a point where the behaviour of the simulation itself will wipe the entire running sytem to self anhnihilation.

Does it realise and try to reconfigure?.....or continue to destruction?

ps... I'm working on the assumption that it's now one species with the 80-20 trait.
Cheers

[Little John]

I wonder how it plays out when both doves and hawks in the simulation realise that the computer sytem is crashing.

I suspect hawks will fare best at first. Then their population will crash. Then, out of the ashes, the doves make a partial recovery.

Then it all starts again.

By 'crashing' I meant....no ashes, that's it, do not pass go go.

The simulation gets to a point where the behaviour of the simulation itself will wipe the entire running sytem to self anhnihilation.

Does it realise and try to reconfigure?.....or continue to destruction?

From what I remember of such simulations (it's a few years since I studied this stuff), the simulations either ended up with total extinction of both hawks and doves or they fell to perilously low levels and then rebounded sharply back to repeat the process ad infinitum or, alternatively, they oscillated around that equilibrium ratio of 80/20. To the extent that they oscillated wildly, minimally or crashed and went extinct, was affected by relatively small changes in certain parameters (altruism/selfishness/resource levels).

Obviously, these simulations were severely limited in that they could not map all of the subtleties of the real world. Nevertheless, when one studies the real world, it is surprising how many species' populations do follow the above model's essential predictions. Furthermore, when human populations have been studied, both in the field as well as in experimentally designed scenarios, the model's predictions are starkly accurate.

[peaceful_life]

[/quote]human populations have been studied, both in the field as well as in experimentally designed scenarios, the model's predictions are starkly accurate.[/quote]

Ahh yes, I believe this to be a false premise though.

If we can hypothesise a situation where the majority of children are being educated, and living to, a permaculture ethos that instills the natural checks and balances that ensures their existance.

After say......3 or 4 generations of this, i wonder how the study looks then.

Also....is it fair to say that it has been a minority of hawk influencing and studying?

[Little John]

Ahh yes, I believe this to be a false premise though.

If we can hypothesise a situation where the majority of children are being educated, and living to, a permaculture ethos that instills the natural checks and balances that ensures their existance.

After say......3 or 4 generations of this, i wonder how the study looks then.

Also....is it fair to say that it has been a minority of hawk influencing and studying?

The point about the model is that it turns out that the only kind of population that is evolutionarily stable is one with the ratio I mentioned. All others collapse to this population ratio and then tend to oscillate around it. And that's if they are lucky. If they are unlucky, the initial population oscillation is so wild that it never recovers and goes extinct. If arguing for a population with the characteristics you describe, then what you are basically saying is that you want an island full of doves and that if it were only full of doves then all would be well. I agree. The problem is that you only need one hawk to arise, and it's all f*cked. And one hawk will always arise, at some point. The only way to avoid it happening is to maintain a constant vigilance in perpetuity and that's simply not possible.