Roko comments on Why safety is not safe - Less Wrong

48 Post author: rwallace 14 June 2009 05:20AM

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Comment author: asciilifeform 14 June 2009 04:00:22PM *  2 points [-]

catastrophic social collapse seems to require something like famine

Not necessarily. When the last petroleum is refined, rest assured that the tanks and warplanes will be the very last vehicles to run out of gas. And bullets will continue to be produced long after it is no longer possible to buy a steel fork.

R&D... efficient services... economy of scale... new technologies will appear

Your belief that something like present technological advancement could continue after a cataclysmic collapse boggles my mind. The one historical precedent we have - the Dark Ages - teaches the exact opposite lesson. Reversion to barbarism - and a barbarism armed with the remnants of the finest modern weaponry, this time around - is the more likely outcome.

Comment deleted 14 June 2009 04:18:32PM *  [-]
Comment author: CronoDAS 15 June 2009 05:09:33AM 6 points [-]

It could - and most probably would - rise up again, eventually. Rising up from the half-buried wreckage of modern civilization is easier than building it from scratch.

Not necessarily. To be blunt, we've basically exhausted practically all the useful non-renewal natural resources (ores, etc.) that a civilization could access with 1200s-level technology. They'd have to mine our ruins for metals and such - and much of it is going to be locked up in forms that are completely useless.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 June 2009 05:28:57PM 0 points [-]

Of course it's nowhere near the guaranteed -- notice, for example, that I excluded all other catastrophic risks from consideration in that scenario, such as crazy wars for scraps, only looking at the effects of shortage of resources stopping much of the industry, because of dependencies that weren't ensured.