Wow, I am wondering whether to engage further or just let your reply stand as a testament to your âthoughtfulnessâ. Doubling down on stereotyping and mischaracterizing people⊠great job! (sorry for the sarcasm but I am STILL surprised when I encounter this type of behavior in the EA forum, probably a sign of my naivety...). Nevertheless, for the benefit of the people who are intimidated by this type of behavior, I will try to give a short outline on where you, at least in my opinion, go wrong.
First, you seem to be upset that some people believe the hypothesis that âit is possible to organize a transition and live well under a different political-economic system that has a radically smaller resource throughputâ because there is no evidence for it. I get that this may be not something you want⊠from your perspective it may not be âdesirableâ at the moment but what is your evidence that this is âimpossibleâ to realize or even âundesirableâ for people in general? Do you have more than specious historical analogies that actually proof your point? No, you donât because you canât. This is a complex and nuanced question that requires critical engagement and empirical inquiry to be resolved. Nobody is forcing you to contribute to this project but advocating against resolving the issue through critical engagement actually requires critical engagement. Pick your poison.
Second, why on earth do you continue to make broad stereotypical and misrepresenting claims after you have been made aware of the fact that you are doing it? Do you believe that is conducive to a productive and good conversation or are there other reasons in play that I simply fail to apprehend in my naivety and ignorance? Just to illustrate my point, a couple of quotes and replies from my side:
they are opposed to mining more minerals, regardless of environmental damage, because they want less resource usage
You make it sound like people are against mining of minerals in general. This is not the case. Even people advocating for degrowth have understood that civilization requires mining and use of minerals. They just advocate for being mindful of how much minerals we actually need to mine and encourage reconsideration of how we approach resource extraction in general, from all else being equal âmore is betterâ to âless is betterâ. Mind you that for most people this is also not a dogmatic position but a strategic position that is being taken on the margin in response to a (perceived) overweight of the âmore is betterâ position. In the end, most people who advocate for degrowth now, would settle for a middle ground in the long run, where humanity is simply more mindful with regards to what it is doing. My circumstantial evidence for this is talking to people at academic sustainability conferences.
Yes, there are limits to growth, but they arenât relevant. They are busy telling people energy is finite, so we should use lessâignoring the fact that energy can be plentiful with solar and other renewable sources.
When people are pointing to limits to growth as a problem, they tend to have a reason for doing so even if one disagrees with them. Figuring out who is right tends to involve debate and empirical inquiry but you again opt for the easy way out and strawman âtheirâ position to prematurely close discussion. What people are pointing to when they say âenergy is finiteâ is not that we could not create âDyson spheresâ sometime in the future but that in our current situation we are still very much dependent on fossil fuels, transitioning to renewables is itself energy and resource intensive, and we donât want to burst our carbon budget while still enabling the Global South to continue its development. These are real issues that must be dealt with in the here and now. What is so wrong with thinking that encouraging Western countries (and their citizens; some degrowth advocates favor bottom-up approaches) to reconsider some of their basic assumptions about growth and prosperity and reduce their material footprint and consumption to help this process along could be part of the solution?
These are the same peopleâliterally the same, in some casesâas the âlimits to growthâ folks from decades ago, and the fact that they were wrong hasnât deterred them in the least. They are STILL telling people that we will run out of minerals, ignoring the fact that discoverable reserves are orders of magnitude larger than we need in the foreseeable future, and in most cases reserves have been getting larger over time.
You make it sound like it is a consensus that the âlimits to growthâ people have been wrong. I can tell you there are quite a few people who would beg to differ. If you would engage with the discourse and look at the data, itâs actually surprising how well the original study held up.
But donât let this evidence fool you, your entire hypothesis that we theoretically have enough resource reserves that we can continue to plunder in our ongoing mindless quest for economic growth, (almost) proofs we have nothing to worry or just discuss about. Donât let the fact that we are in an unprecedented situation where we are transitioning entire economies with enormous efforts that are going to take resource, energy, and time disturb you in your certainty and letâs simply not use this crisis situation as an opportunity to engage in deep reflection about the values and goals of the economic systems that we want to create as a result. Discussing about how we want to work together as humanity is overrated and not at all consequential for the long-run development of our species. Thatâs explicitly not what EA is supposed to be about. (Sorry, couldnât resist the sarcasm, again)
If you are looking for some materials to further engage with these debates, I can recommend engaging with the academic literature but also other sources like Nate Hagens podcast. There are many people on there who talk about the very practical issues the degrowth people are concerned about and want to address. There is definitely more of value there than what you give it credit for and this is basically the whole reason that I am complaining so heavily about your style and behavior.
Please donât just go around and attack and dunk on ânicheâ topics you havenât taken the time to properly engage with. Itâs fine to have (strong) opinions but be mindful of the effects the way you talk about things can have on other people and the community around you. The EA forum needs a diversity of voices and people should feel empowered to raise their (constructive, honest, etc.) points even if not everyone automatically gets their relevance. Constructive criticism and questions are fine and desired but misrepresentations are not. (I acknowledge that I myself am walking a fine line here⊠but somehow I think a sharp tone is still defensible in this case given the unfolding of the discussion)
Iâm explaining why people havenât engaged with thisâthe specifics are missing, or have little to do with degrowth, or are wrong. You can cite the study âjustifyingâ limits to growth, (which Iâve discussed on this forum before!) but they said that there would be a collapse decades ago, so itâs hard to take that seriously.
Iâm sure there is a steelmanned version of this that deserves some credit, and I initially said that there are some ideas from that movement that deserve creditâbut I donât understand what it has to do with the degrowth movement, which is pretty explicit about what it wants and aims for.
I canât find it eitherâI may have been misremembering, apologies. Iâve commented on otherâs relevant posts, and tweeted about it, as well as giving feedback on some reports EAs wrote that mentioned it.
I do remember that we tweeted about this (and it made me blush that you too remember). I just want to read something longer than just a tweet. At the time I couldnât find any paper.
HahaâI didnât at all realize that we had talked about it /â noticed that you were the person I tweeted with before, I just searched different places I would have said this before, when looking for where I has said it.
Ok, I acknowledge that I might have misunderstood your intent. If had taken that your point was to dispassionately explain why people (the EA community) donât engage with this topic, I myself might have reacted more dispassionately. However, as I read your comments, I donât think that it was very clear that this is what you were after. Rather, it seemed like you were actively making the case against engaging with the topic and using strawmanning tactics to make your point. I would encourage you to be more clear in this regard in the future, I will try to be more mindful of possible misinterpretation.
I think the key point of my comments stand in that the position you outlined is potentially problematic and ill-informed. To take an other example, you say:
You can cite the study âjustifyingâ limits to growth, (which Iâve discussed on this forum before!) but they said that there would be a collapse decades ago, so itâs hard to take that seriously
The point of simulation models is never to âpredictâ the future. We are not in the foundation novels and doing psychohistory here. Studies like this are used to look for and examine patterns in behavior. Thatâs why it is so remarkable that one of the scenarios they developed actually mapped so closely to current developments. That was never the goal of the exercise. So the issue here is that you are misrepresenting the way people are actually building their arguments. If you again are claiming that this is not how you see the situation but how other people see the situation, please make people aware of the errors in their reasoning and donât continue to propagate false or at least misleading information.
Iâm sure there is a steelmanned version of this that deserves some credit, and I initially said that there are some ideas from that movement that deserve creditâbut I donât understand what it has to do with the degrowth movement, which is pretty explicit about what it wants and aims for.
I think the point I was trying to make is that it would do us good to try to go out there with a charitable mindset, look for the steelmanned versions of arguments being made, and try to engage them on their merits. For me this implies looking also in âunusualâ or on the face of it âirritatingâ places and talking to people that hold different beliefs or work with different ideas, in particular if they are trying to reach out and engage with us. This happened to some degree here and all I am advocating for is keeping an open mind and not jumping to dismissive conclusions without deliberate critical engagement.
On your first point, I was first clarifying that there has been discussion of this, and there was a pretty clear reason to dismiss this in generalâwhile in my very first post agreeing that âThere are other claims that degrowth makes that seem unobjectionable, and worthy of debate.â You attacked that, and my position, and I defended it. I donât think I used a strawman at any pointâI think that I responded to your general claim about âdegrowthâ with an accurate characterization of that position, and you retreated to a series of specific analyses that defend specific points.
On your second point, youâre incorrectly interpreting what was done in 1972, which Iâm very, very familiar withâIâve actually read the report, and used the model as a teaching tool. It was absolutely intended to predict consequences of decisions, to support specific decisionmakers, and they explicitly said that while it was imperfect, it was intended to be used as-is in order to make decisions. I can only urge you to read their original work. The patterns it explored didnât hold up, the models were wrong in how the projected the key inputs and factors, and the conclusions they came to were wrong. Recent claims that they got things right are revisionist and wrongâpost-hoc justification is possible anywhere, but as Iâve said for years, itâs unsupportable here.
And finally, in general, if you ask others to be more charitable to a position instead of defending it, youâre asking for a favor, rather than saying that something stands on its own merits. I did not say there was nothing here worthy of consideration, but I did say that their central claim was wrong. I agree that itâs wonderful to be charitable in discussions, but as a general point, no, I donât think it makes sense to try to be charitable to and steelman every opposing viewpoint every time it is brought up, especially after youâve looked into it.
A recent project looking into those sort of things in the context of Europe is the MEDEAS project.
For the French speaking around here, Jean-Marc Jancovici has a lot of material in French in his lessons at the Ecole des Mines. I have only seen a couple of his talks which happened to be in English.
Hagens has an online course, Reality 101, which I found really good. I find his podcast too âsentimentalâ.
Wow, I am wondering whether to engage further or just let your reply stand as a testament to your âthoughtfulnessâ. Doubling down on stereotyping and mischaracterizing people⊠great job! (sorry for the sarcasm but I am STILL surprised when I encounter this type of behavior in the EA forum, probably a sign of my naivety...).
I would argue that it is a snarky but honest reflection of my state of mind. I also support my claim with evidence if you continue to read the comment. I am walking a fine line but I think my comment should still pass as constructive and well-intentioned all things considered. If you beg to differ feel free to make your case.
Wow, I am wondering whether to engage further or just let your reply stand as a testament to your âthoughtfulnessâ. Doubling down on stereotyping and mischaracterizing people⊠great job! (sorry for the sarcasm but I am STILL surprised when I encounter this type of behavior in the EA forum, probably a sign of my naivety...). Nevertheless, for the benefit of the people who are intimidated by this type of behavior, I will try to give a short outline on where you, at least in my opinion, go wrong.
First, you seem to be upset that some people believe the hypothesis that âit is possible to organize a transition and live well under a different political-economic system that has a radically smaller resource throughputâ because there is no evidence for it. I get that this may be not something you want⊠from your perspective it may not be âdesirableâ at the moment but what is your evidence that this is âimpossibleâ to realize or even âundesirableâ for people in general? Do you have more than specious historical analogies that actually proof your point? No, you donât because you canât. This is a complex and nuanced question that requires critical engagement and empirical inquiry to be resolved. Nobody is forcing you to contribute to this project but advocating against resolving the issue through critical engagement actually requires critical engagement. Pick your poison.
Second, why on earth do you continue to make broad stereotypical and misrepresenting claims after you have been made aware of the fact that you are doing it? Do you believe that is conducive to a productive and good conversation or are there other reasons in play that I simply fail to apprehend in my naivety and ignorance? Just to illustrate my point, a couple of quotes and replies from my side:
You make it sound like people are against mining of minerals in general. This is not the case. Even people advocating for degrowth have understood that civilization requires mining and use of minerals. They just advocate for being mindful of how much minerals we actually need to mine and encourage reconsideration of how we approach resource extraction in general, from all else being equal âmore is betterâ to âless is betterâ. Mind you that for most people this is also not a dogmatic position but a strategic position that is being taken on the margin in response to a (perceived) overweight of the âmore is betterâ position. In the end, most people who advocate for degrowth now, would settle for a middle ground in the long run, where humanity is simply more mindful with regards to what it is doing. My circumstantial evidence for this is talking to people at academic sustainability conferences.
When people are pointing to limits to growth as a problem, they tend to have a reason for doing so even if one disagrees with them. Figuring out who is right tends to involve debate and empirical inquiry but you again opt for the easy way out and strawman âtheirâ position to prematurely close discussion. What people are pointing to when they say âenergy is finiteâ is not that we could not create âDyson spheresâ sometime in the future but that in our current situation we are still very much dependent on fossil fuels, transitioning to renewables is itself energy and resource intensive, and we donât want to burst our carbon budget while still enabling the Global South to continue its development. These are real issues that must be dealt with in the here and now. What is so wrong with thinking that encouraging Western countries (and their citizens; some degrowth advocates favor bottom-up approaches) to reconsider some of their basic assumptions about growth and prosperity and reduce their material footprint and consumption to help this process along could be part of the solution?
You make it sound like it is a consensus that the âlimits to growthâ people have been wrong. I can tell you there are quite a few people who would beg to differ. If you would engage with the discourse and look at the data, itâs actually surprising how well the original study held up.
But donât let this evidence fool you, your entire hypothesis that we theoretically have enough resource reserves that we can continue to plunder in our ongoing mindless quest for economic growth, (almost) proofs we have nothing to worry or just discuss about. Donât let the fact that we are in an unprecedented situation where we are transitioning entire economies with enormous efforts that are going to take resource, energy, and time disturb you in your certainty and letâs simply not use this crisis situation as an opportunity to engage in deep reflection about the values and goals of the economic systems that we want to create as a result. Discussing about how we want to work together as humanity is overrated and not at all consequential for the long-run development of our species. Thatâs explicitly not what EA is supposed to be about. (Sorry, couldnât resist the sarcasm, again)
If you are looking for some materials to further engage with these debates, I can recommend engaging with the academic literature but also other sources like Nate Hagens podcast. There are many people on there who talk about the very practical issues the degrowth people are concerned about and want to address. There is definitely more of value there than what you give it credit for and this is basically the whole reason that I am complaining so heavily about your style and behavior.
Please donât just go around and attack and dunk on ânicheâ topics you havenât taken the time to properly engage with. Itâs fine to have (strong) opinions but be mindful of the effects the way you talk about things can have on other people and the community around you. The EA forum needs a diversity of voices and people should feel empowered to raise their (constructive, honest, etc.) points even if not everyone automatically gets their relevance. Constructive criticism and questions are fine and desired but misrepresentations are not. (I acknowledge that I myself am walking a fine line here⊠but somehow I think a sharp tone is still defensible in this case given the unfolding of the discussion)
Iâm explaining why people havenât engaged with thisâthe specifics are missing, or have little to do with degrowth, or are wrong. You can cite the study âjustifyingâ limits to growth, (which Iâve discussed on this forum before!) but they said that there would be a collapse decades ago, so itâs hard to take that seriously.
Iâm sure there is a steelmanned version of this that deserves some credit, and I initially said that there are some ideas from that movement that deserve creditâbut I donât understand what it has to do with the degrowth movement, which is pretty explicit about what it wants and aims for.
Could you link to the post, please? I tried to quickly find it but failed⊠(I found other very good looking posts, though!)
I canât find it eitherâI may have been misremembering, apologies. Iâve commented on otherâs relevant posts, and tweeted about it, as well as giving feedback on some reports EAs wrote that mentioned it.
I do remember that we tweeted about this (and it made me blush that you too remember). I just want to read something longer than just a tweet. At the time I couldnât find any paper.
HahaâI didnât at all realize that we had talked about it /â noticed that you were the person I tweeted with before, I just searched different places I would have said this before, when looking for where I has said it.
Ok, I acknowledge that I might have misunderstood your intent. If had taken that your point was to dispassionately explain why people (the EA community) donât engage with this topic, I myself might have reacted more dispassionately. However, as I read your comments, I donât think that it was very clear that this is what you were after. Rather, it seemed like you were actively making the case against engaging with the topic and using strawmanning tactics to make your point. I would encourage you to be more clear in this regard in the future, I will try to be more mindful of possible misinterpretation.
I think the key point of my comments stand in that the position you outlined is potentially problematic and ill-informed. To take an other example, you say:
The point of simulation models is never to âpredictâ the future. We are not in the foundation novels and doing psychohistory here. Studies like this are used to look for and examine patterns in behavior. Thatâs why it is so remarkable that one of the scenarios they developed actually mapped so closely to current developments. That was never the goal of the exercise. So the issue here is that you are misrepresenting the way people are actually building their arguments. If you again are claiming that this is not how you see the situation but how other people see the situation, please make people aware of the errors in their reasoning and donât continue to propagate false or at least misleading information.
I think the point I was trying to make is that it would do us good to try to go out there with a charitable mindset, look for the steelmanned versions of arguments being made, and try to engage them on their merits. For me this implies looking also in âunusualâ or on the face of it âirritatingâ places and talking to people that hold different beliefs or work with different ideas, in particular if they are trying to reach out and engage with us. This happened to some degree here and all I am advocating for is keeping an open mind and not jumping to dismissive conclusions without deliberate critical engagement.
On your first point, I was first clarifying that there has been discussion of this, and there was a pretty clear reason to dismiss this in generalâwhile in my very first post agreeing that âThere are other claims that degrowth makes that seem unobjectionable, and worthy of debate.â You attacked that, and my position, and I defended it. I donât think I used a strawman at any pointâI think that I responded to your general claim about âdegrowthâ with an accurate characterization of that position, and you retreated to a series of specific analyses that defend specific points.
On your second point, youâre incorrectly interpreting what was done in 1972, which Iâm very, very familiar withâIâve actually read the report, and used the model as a teaching tool. It was absolutely intended to predict consequences of decisions, to support specific decisionmakers, and they explicitly said that while it was imperfect, it was intended to be used as-is in order to make decisions. I can only urge you to read their original work. The patterns it explored didnât hold up, the models were wrong in how the projected the key inputs and factors, and the conclusions they came to were wrong. Recent claims that they got things right are revisionist and wrongâpost-hoc justification is possible anywhere, but as Iâve said for years, itâs unsupportable here.
And finally, in general, if you ask others to be more charitable to a position instead of defending it, youâre asking for a favor, rather than saying that something stands on its own merits. I did not say there was nothing here worthy of consideration, but I did say that their central claim was wrong. I agree that itâs wonderful to be charitable in discussions, but as a general point, no, I donât think it makes sense to try to be charitable to and steelman every opposing viewpoint every time it is brought up, especially after youâve looked into it.
A recent project looking into those sort of things in the context of Europe is the MEDEAS project.
For the French speaking around here, Jean-Marc Jancovici has a lot of material in French in his lessons at the Ecole des Mines. I have only seen a couple of his talks which happened to be in English.
Hagens has an online course, Reality 101, which I found really good. I find his podcast too âsentimentalâ.
I think this is insufficiently kind.
I would argue that it is a snarky but honest reflection of my state of mind. I also support my claim with evidence if you continue to read the comment. I am walking a fine line but I think my comment should still pass as constructive and well-intentioned all things considered. If you beg to differ feel free to make your case.