Reddit reviews The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

It's pretty questionable whether he was right, that randomly removing half of the people would suddenly create utopia. There's actually a recent book out, The Wizard and the Prophet, about two influential thinkers on either side of that question - "The Prophet" arguing that resources are finite and we must seek to decrease our footprint dramatically, and "The Wizard" claiming that innovations will allow us to be both numerous and prosperous.

So: there's arguments to be made on either side there, and I recommend the book if you want to delve into them in detail. (Additionally, though, is Thanos planning on coming out of his retirement cabin once every 50-100 years to close his fist again? It doesn't take that long to regain population.)

Now, over all of this, there's always the question of whether, assuming he was right and could actually be proved to be empirically right, is he justified in killing 50% of people in order to bring greater prosperity to the other 50%? This is one of those perennially debated questions where people generally say "no, murder is wrong". However, in this case, Thanos was committed to murdering 50% of the population of the universe regardless - he'd been running planet to planet, slowly, inefficiently, terroristically gunning half the people down. Given that he was committed to this action regardless, I kind of have to agree with Thanos that just using the glove is probably more ethical than personally wringing every other person's neck individually.

>He's been wrong as long as he's been dead.

As Scott (I think) put it, the alternative perspective is Malthus was right exactly up to the point that he wrote it down, rather an inverse of the Pinker jinx an SSC commenter brought up. Malthus accurately observed a trend, and a technology he didn't predict adjusted the trend.

For a book length treatment, there's The Wizard and The Prophet. Vogt, the Malthus of the mid 20th century, "versus" Borlaug, plant breeder extraordinaire. Famines were already starting in Mexico and India, and if Borlaug's dwarf wheat hadn't succeeded when it did, Vogt would've been right about just how disastrous it would be for the developing world.

Technology has always saved us so far, but that doesn't mean we'll keep finding those solutions in time, every time.

>My Friends all got children last year and this year... They practically gonna live in underground caves by the time they're 30. And we could be with 10 billion people by then.

Such ridiculous hyperbole. If nothing changes Belgium will have the climate of Southern France. How will we ever survive this?!!?

You're right that changing peoples behavior isn't the answer. Startups focused on carbon removal, otherwise known as carbon sequestration, are working on technologies that range from biology to geology:

• Swiss startup ClimeWorks uses something called “Direct Air Capture” to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with what is, essentially, a large air filter that bonds to carbon dioxide.
  
• Newlight and Carbicrete manufacture building materials—bioplastics and cement-free concrete, respectively—that are carbon negative, meaning the process to manufacture them removes carbon from the atmosphere.
  
• Large-scale environmental initiatives are also underway. Project Vesta aims to cover shelf seas with volcanic rock, the weathering of which will, in theory, remove carbon from the atmosphere.
  
  Just a small sample of companies working on the problem.
  
  Stop being a prophet and start thinking like a wizard.

Thanks for sharing - I've had a lot of these concerns myself and I don't have much to offer over the internet. I would not pretend these issues are easy.

The solution I mentioned is the short road. The long road is of course embracing some existential bitter pills and working through them. For instance - it doesn't matter what you do. Whatever you choose to do with your life won't really matter to anyone else but you, and certainly not in the way it matters to you. There is no guarantee that even the best of accomplishments will do any good in the long run- I think here of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution which fed billions, only to overpopulate the planet. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307961699/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER)

One way you can find what really matters to you is to deeply contemplate the question why do I care that my life is empty and meaningless and I will someday die?

I think you'll find that "guiding priciples" are much more about culture than focusing on "what do I care about?"

The hard part about this is it takes some maturity to admit that a lot of what we care about is hard to swallow - which is where shame enters the picture. It helps to understand how other peoples anxieties and fears propel much of their behavior - this includes the "narcissism" epidemic.

>There are a lot of other factors, but it boils down to people just being idiots.

Well put.

Slightly changing the topic, have you read (or heard of) 'The Wizard and the Profit' by Mann?

Great introduction to the start of environmentalism. The first half was excellent, the second half will likely be a review. Worth the read if you're interested in the subject as it appears you are.

That's not quite the right framing. It's more about climate optimism vs climate pessimism, and it goes back way further than Peterson and has nothing to do with climate denial.

If you'd like a good book on the tension, this one does a good job explaining both outlooks and the history behind them.

The trend is that crops that could not grow in certain latitudes due to colder climates can now tolerate the slightly warmer temperatures. A good example of this is french grapes that traditionally could not grow in England can now do so.

So we can reasonably expect any plant that used to only grow in, say, Southern California or Texas to now tolerate Oregon and Iowa. In the future, this may move even further north.

I should also mention that the same effect is occurring in the southern hemisphere, so weather patterns typical in the northern parts of Argentina are shifting south toward the higher latitudes.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the recent IPCC report stated that we have already experienced 1 full degree of warming since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Somewhere between 2030 and 2050 we will gain another half degree of warming. There's a chance that we might be able to hold it there if we go 100% carbon neutral by 2050, but otherwise the world will continue to warm to 2C by 2100.

My point is that the "5*C world" will not happen in our lifetimes. That's not to say we shouldn't care about the future, but rather we can't make a reasonable prediction about what the world will be 500 years from now.

Coming back to your question, where will agriculture be possible with 2 degree of warming? I believe that agriculture will continue to be possible in most places, as long as we do not exhaust the soil of nutrients or ruin it with poor irrigation practices. The crops we plant might change though - corn uses a tremendous amount of nutrients despite only producing a couple of cobs. A more calorie/nutrient dense crop might be beans, rice, etc. but that's depends on politics and economics more than anything else. There's a reason why Iowa is known for it's endless fields of corn instead of wheat or lettuce.

Likewise, modern Americans eats an enormous amount of meat without really paying for the environmental cost of it. I'm not advocating for veganism, but having a hulking chunk of steak every night isn't sustainable across billions of people.

I recommend you read a couple of books about sustainable agriculture - it's a fascinating subject and it may answer a lot of your questions. Some of my favorites include:

• The Third Plate
  
• 1491
  
• 1493
  
• The Wizard and the Prophet (I'm reading this one right now but it's very enlightening).