felixmeziere's comments

So doing this in python is ok (fastest way to check if a key is in a dict is catching KeyError for example, if I remember correctly)

So far we have built an airbnb-like platform (https://www.greengo.voyage) with a host selection component, but we have big plans to differentiate thanks to a recent 1.6M funding round. People who want to embark on this mission don't hesitate to contact me at [email protected] :-)

Not sure why what I described previously is relevant if this assertion is true in itself, however let's double-check this in what I wrote above: "whether its solid and liquid garbage (leading to wiping out 60% of wildlife in 50 years, spilling the phosphorus of our soils into the sea -making them sterile and killing life in the sea- etc etc), or gas garbage (typically greenhouse gases)", "all serious scientific reports (IPCC, https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound... and others) say that we are currently depleting earth's resources much faster than it can renew them and destabilising many natural systems like climate/life etc to irreversible points" <= are these not imminent problems? Actually the main problems I've been describing in this post are precisely not climate change, to try and de-center the debate from just this, I'm not sure how you have been reading this...

> to your 1), food supply is a moot point as population will stagnate. The West often overproduces as it stands and is poised to reduce food waste.

Looking at how things currently work is a very bad indicator: since we are depleting resources faster than they can regenerate themselves (earth overshoot day was a few days ago), if we keep doing things as we are doing right now, even with constant population, even with a bit of improvement from technology, even with current overproduction, the food system WILL collapse. My point is: in all matters environment, the current way we do things leads us to collapse even if everything remains constant.

>to your 2), we're nowhere near depletion of resources, and there's no reason to believe the average person's purchasing power will not only greatly increase to allow for inordinate amount of consumption, but that it would outpace technological innovation which minimizes and recycles materials.

This is just not true, wether we stay on a carbon-powered society or if we transition towards a battery/renewables-powered society. And again, there is no need to account for future "increases of things", things are bad enough at the current rate.

> Fusion, to the extent.... The amount of energy person has not increased in the last several decades in developed countries.

> "More and more people" necessarily ends at "all of them".

Absolutely. But don't worry, earth will have burnt long, long, long before even half of the world's population has accessed American middle class levels of comfort, so don't worry about getting to "all of them".

> Technology to reduce is in it's infancy.

What makes you think you can bet on technology reaching levels to reduce it that are acceptable? What if we miss the target and collapse because of this bet? It's a risky one...

> Necessity is the mother of invention. These externalities were never much of concern to the oligarchic, financial and political classes - that is changing.

The necessity has been here for decades but nothing has been done, again, I wouldn't bet too much on the fact that the effect of this is going to be enough to compensate our hunger for freely-available resource extraction and depletion.

> We know we can make it by limiting population growth.

I don't know which credible source on the matter says this but certainly most don't. Sources say that much more than just limiting population growth is needed to make it.

2) Energy being the limiting factor is in itself a huge problem, given the amount of energy your problem requires: the amount of energy required to get the original quality raw materials back from an iPhone is orders of magnitude bigger than the one that was needed to extract them from nature in the first place. It seems irrational to bet on this as a means for getting to a sustainable model in the short term (30-50 years).

The gap we need to bridge is to harvest in such a less destructive manner that 1) they can regenerate themselves at the same rate as we harvest them, making our civilisation actually sustainable 2) they don't harm us directly indeed.

Can we bridge that gap by harvesting in a less destructive manner?

1) How is the phosphorus - vital for our current food system - that we harvest in mines concentrated for us during billions of years going to regenerate? Same for oil, gas, rare metals, all the silicon and metal that we disperse in our devices etc etc going to regenerate themselves? Should we bet on our ability to figure that out in the next 30-50 years? 2) so far the rate at which we harm ourselves due to the amount of garbage we throw at nature (i.e. everything we make, build and reject) has only increased with progress. Should we bet we are going to reverse that just with technology in the next 30-50 years?

If we lose the bet, the consequences are never seen in history.... I'd rather bet on more reliable methods to survive...

I’m not talking about telling stories to people but about changing theses stories they already tell themselves that have been implanted into them by a system

If we keep the same consumerist and expansionist culture and add more energy to the mix (even if it’s climate-friendly energy), i.e. more capacity to extract resources deeper and deeper, become more dependent on them and disperse them in our constructions, devices, ground, water and atmosphere, what do you think will happen?

Energy will be key in amortizing the pains of de-growth, but de-growth will happen on a planet with finite resources, whether we want it or not.

Using the past to try and predict the future, in particular unusual and impactful events is a reliable way to constantly miss the main events of history.

Also there is no equivalent to the current disaster claim… and contrary to previous ones you can already observe the beginning of the effects of the current one… even though we are just at the beginning of its exponential-driven effects.

Long story short: that’s fine if you are still skeptical we’ll start working on it and in 5-10 years the people who are still skeptical will join us once they are more convinced by what’s happening in the world, down to their neighborhood.

As you said so far we have observed it has only made the problem worse, year after year after year! And with the little margin we have left, it’s irrational to take the bet it’ll change by itself and just “improving”.

We need to invent a new storytelling for society to have an organized energetic and material de-growth, so that we don’t have to undergo a disorganized one, forced upon us by nature, that would be orders of magnitude worse.

Technology can be a huge help in organizing this de-growth, so I guess HN could be a great forum for collectively imagining how to do it!