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gjm comments on Lesswrong 2016 Survey - Less Wrong
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Yup, we did. But after this hypothetical partial collapse our situation won't be the same as when we started building our technological society. In some ways it'll be better, but in others it'll be worse; in particular, scarce natural resources will be harder to find because we already got out all the easy stuff.
I don't think I am. I'm saying that technological advance is much easier in a society with good infrastructure, and that that infrastructure may depend on having lots of reasonably cheap energy, and that in this hypothetical scenario we may not have. (And that getting it back might depend on those technological advances we aren't in a position to make until we've got it back.)
Scale.
Is your society 7 billion or 10 million? 10 million people can rebuild much of high-tech civilization and they won't need a lot oil to do that. And then, of course, you go into a positive feedback cycle.
How sure are you of that? Here is a contrary opinion.
He answers a different question:
In the collapse-and-rebuild scenario you don't need to "maintain the current level" right away. For example, you don't need to be able to immediately build contemporary computer-controlled cars. The fully-mechanical cars of the XX century would do fine, for a while. All you need to do is have enough technology to not get stuck in a local minimum and get the positive feedback loop going. That's a much easier task.
Of course by the time you're done with the rebuild, your 10m people will multiply :-)
I'm really not sure it is.