Thanks for posting the transcript. I had downloaded the video, but much prefer text, so I read the presentation.
It was fine, nothing in there was particularly novel or new information. I didn't see anything to get worked up about.
I'll address some of his examples.
First he talks about monetary inflation:
Now, we worked a lot of examples. I said to the students, “Let’s talk about inflation, let’s talk about 7% per year.” It wasn't this high when we did this, it's been higher since then, fortunately it's lower now. And I said to the students, as I can say to you, you have roughly sixty years life expectancy ahead of you. Let’s see what some common things will cost if we have 60 years of 7% annual inflation.
The students found that a 55-cent gallon of gasoline will cost $35.20; $2.50 for a movie will be $160; the $15 sack of groceries my mother used to buy for a dollar and a quarter, that will be $960; a $100 suit of clothes, $6,400; a $4000 automobile will cost a quarter of a million dollars; and a $45,000 home will cost nearly 3 million dollars.
And my response is ....so? Wages will have to rise, or no one could afford a loaf of bread. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that this is completely 100% meaningless. If a home cost 3MM, and wages were the same in that 60 years as they are now, very few people could have one. If rents rose accordingly, no one would be able to afford that either. SO is everyone gonna live on the streets and we have empty 3MM homes? Of course not. They only have value because
that's what people are willing to pay for them. They're willing to pay it because they can. If values are going up that much, it's because people are paying that much. So to say "OH NO! Prices will be so high!" is ridiculous, because
people will be able to afford them. Them being priced 3MM then is the exact same as them being priced 45k now. In fact, many items are going DOWN in price in real terms.
So this example is given and sounds scary, but really.. it's meaningless.
Now this is not to say inflation is not important. It is crucial for an early retiree to understand, and I think one of the most underestimated things in the ER community. But in general it doesn't represent a threat to... anything.
Okay, so let's jump to his next idea, about energy:
Well, let’s translate that into the energy crisis. Here’s an ad from the year 1975. It asks the question “Could America run out of electricity?” America depends on electricity. Our need for electricity actually doubles every 10 or 12 years. That's an accurate reflection of a very long history of steady growth of the electric industry in this country, growth at a rate of around 7% per year, which gives you doubling every 10 years.
Now, with all that history of growth, they just expected the growth would go on, forever. Fortunately it stopped, not because anyone understood arithmetic, it stopped for other reasons.
I'm gonna pause right here to point out that the author glosses over that last sentence and just goes on with his
purely hypothetical example. Because in reality, it didn't happen! The growth stopped, for other reasons! Why does he not think other exponential growth will slow or stop? Naturally it will, it has to. And in practice it actually HAS, as he admits. But then ignores, and does his fun hypothetical to make things sound scary.
Let's look at (what I feel is) his strongest example:
Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, the 4 become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at 12:00 noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth: it has a doubling time of one minute, it’s in the finite environment of one bottle.
I want to ask you three questions. Number one: at what time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59, one minute before 12:00? Because they double in number every minute.
And the second question: if you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realise you were running of space? Well, let’s just look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12:00 noon, it’s full; one minute before, it’s half full; 2 minutes before, it’s a quarter full; then an 1?8th; then a 1?16th. Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12:00, when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there’s a problem?
I do enjoy this thought experiment. The main problem is that the compressed timescale is intended to confuse. Let's say instead we have a constant 0.5% growth, which translates to doubling roughly every 140 years. That means that 5 minutes before midnight is really 700 years. Small beans on a geological scale, and even in a human timespan not
that long. But do I think it's long enough to do something about it? Absolutely. Think of the changes from 1312 to 2012.
Or if we use his number of population growth, that's 1.3%, doubling roughly every 54 years. So when we're only "3 minutes from midnight" (or 1/8 "full" - however you define full), that's 150 years. Do I think that's enough time to deal with problems? Yes, absolutely.
Does this mean we should ignore problems (current and future) now? No way. Should we try to reduce consumption? Absolutely. Is there a crisis though? Should we be that worried about exponential growth? No, sorry.
I think the big thing that should change is mindset. Growth isn't the be all end all (nor is it a terrible threat). The idea that a natural balance/equilibrium can be achieved should be promoted as a good thing. One of the first things that needs to happen there is population, however. And how do you do that without doing some terrible things (birthing laws, wars, famine, disease, etc.)?
I was also a little annoyed at the end when he used generic quotes from brilliant people, as if they proved his point. The Asimov and MLK ones were relevant, but the Churchill "Sometimes we must do what is required" and Huxley and Sevareid and Galileo.. none of those were relevant, they were just generic "don't ignore facts" and such. Stop it.
In any case, I agree, perpetual growth is impossible. Does it worry me? No. Do I think we're anywhere close to "midnight"? Not at all. Do I think we can solve problems when we do get close? Absolutely.
If I missed something, feel free to explain why you think that talk was so important or enlightening or life changing. Or, like the title of the video, "The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See" -- hardly. Have you seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? ;)