Why we have to start living more like the Na'vi now

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I am only in a certain aspect - in that I say that there needs to be deep cultural change. Jevons Paradox is IMO not an inevitability, it only is so in the context of a culture that resides on the paradigms of progress and growth as the basis for its existence. People in this culture prefer growth and progress over stability. Stability is even sort of a bad word now, because it has the connotation of something static and boring. But in a culture that values growth over all, it is inevitable that increases in efficiency end up powering more growth and progress instead of reducing consumption. In a different culture that has at its root things like preservation, sustainability and caretaking, an incerase in efficiency might actually lead to a true reduction in consumption while just maintaining what is or even having some slow growth.

I recently heard that John Von Neumann did some work on this, relating to the behaviour of dynamic and static equilibriums. I got the impression that he showed in some way that it's impossible to have equilibrium in a non-growing economy, but I can't find any source for that that isn't pay-walled.

Yes sure. And I think that this "system" is based on a culture of growth and progress at all costs which is killing the planet. Capitalism, Jevons Paradox and all the lot are things that come from that foundation of the cultural narrative that describes members of industrial human nations as infinitely innovative and progress as unidirectional and ever increasing. The money system with interest is based on growth as is the whole financial industry but also technology is drawn into that spiral. People cherish "Moores Law" that predicts exponential growth of computational power because growth is always good, just the costs have to be reduced. But in so many cases over and over again, the costs have decreased less strongly than the growth of that sector. I just read that while computational power increases every 18 months, it takes 20 months to halve the energy consumption per operation. This means that if one makes full use of the capabilities of Moores law and uses the new computational capabilities, overall the total energy consumption has to rise. This is no inevitability for individuals, but for society as a whole I think it is true that energy consumption by computer devices has risen strongly over the past years, in part because they have gotten more efficient and thus much mor ubiquotous.

But we must remember that technology is not constrained by Moore's law. The only thing it is constrained by is the laws of physics, and it is AFAIK both Intel's and AMD's belief that transistors are old-hat.

And they're right. How does a energy saving of 100,000,000% sound?