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Wei_Dai comments on Non-Malthusian Scenarios - Less Wrong
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Comments (88)
Why do you care more about median income than average?
Yes, I guess I'm more interested in exploring the full distribution of outcomes rather than the best estimate.
That argument has been bugging me too as not being quite right, but I'm having trouble articulating why. Can you say a few words about why it's wrong, or do I really need to read another literature to understand the error?
Suppose such memes do dominate the meme pool. Still, at any moment a new meme may arise and succeed in diverting resources away from having kids and into reproducing itself, and cause a drop in population growth.
I didn't say I cared more about median income. Learning econ is good for you - I recommend it! :)
Let me put it this way then. Why did you decide to make predictions about median income instead of average income?
Theory makes clearer predictions about medians than means.
Doesn't that seem like a bias? If what we care about is average income, then we should talk about average income (and about more than just the most likely outcome if necessary), not switch to talking about median income just because it's easier to make predictions about it.
Also, I think your "nature is doomed" depends on average, not median, income to approach subsistence level. Suppose you have one individual who has half of the world's income, and the rest are living at subsistence. Clearly that one individual can preserve much of nature by him or herself.
People have been predicting Malthusian scenarios since, well, Malthus, cheerfully indifferent to the continued failure of such predictions to match reality.
Is there any weight of evidence whatsoever that could convince you of the falsehood of such predictions?
The evidence that would disprove Robin is disproving the population growth rate he assumes or finding a way to increase wealth in a super linear manner once we've reached the theoretical maximum usage of each atom.
How has Malthus been proven false? From what I recall, he said that overshoot & collapse are inevitable unless people exercise 'moral restraint'. That seems pretty bang on to me.
My guess is that Robin is talking about how the median entity, regardless of how much nonsentient capital it has for itself, will spend almost all the proceeds of that capital on reproduction, and very little on plasma TVs.
Robin's recent post and discussion there made me think of another way that the median entity might spend a lot on the equivalent of plasma TVs. Suppose a high capital to labor ratio is required to optimize military power in the far future. Then once all available resources are claimed by someone, and the optimal capital/labor mix is reached, nations should limit reproduction to avoid declining in power. During peacetime, the high capital levels could allow a high per capita production of consumer goods. (I guess this is just an elaboration of my original argument, which I still don't quite understand why Robin disagrees with.)
One plausible way this could come about is one of the scenarios Carl Shulman described, namely that most work will be most efficiently performed by specialized AIs that we would not consider sentient.
But plasma TVs, besides being a luxury, are also a form of signaling that helps attracting a mate, and increases social status in general (which improves reproduction). Maybe the right argument is not "non-human capital" but "signaling"?
I expect some signaling would be part of a subsistence lifestyle. But I don't expect 99% of spending to be on signaling.
I think spending 99% on signaling by definition (well, by most people's definition) wouldn't be a "subsistence lifestyle", so perhaps a better phrase would be "equilibrium lifestyle". But how sure are you that there isn't a high-signaling equilibrium? Maybe not 99%, but say >50%?