site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1997 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Limits to growth. If the line go up forever/space colonization crowd is right almost all my beliefs fall apart.

I mean, we haven't figured out how to circumvent physics. There is a hard upper bound.

But it turns out that said upper bound is in theory way higher than you might intuitively expect. Harnessing the total energy output of our local sun is a good starting point. But genuinely, humanity's limit will probably be more psychological and social than physical. Can we coordinate well enough to get out there without blowing ourselves up?

Hence why I hopefully believe that intelligence and wisdom are linked.

But I like this answer. Do you have a specific expectation as to where the limit exists?

I think material limits will hit us far before we can even get to harnessing all the energy available on the planet. I, like the original limits to growth study, think that we are pretty close to material limits right now. We are basically already at peak oil and we hit peak copper this year. Global warming (really global climatic instability) is worsening, as well as microplastic/endocrine disruptor pollution that is making it more difficult to reproduce. AI, short-form media, and other opiates are deskilling the population at a time when genuine scientific advances require more and more resources to achieve. There's a perfect storm of bad shit looming down on the line go up narrative, meaning it is not long for this world.

I too agree that the limits are in some part social and psychological. If we weren't so obsessed with consumerism and pointless travel we could have shepherded our resources better and got a little further, or maintained a pretty solid standard of living for a long while. But things like space colonization are a largely foolish endeavor and this is because of fundamental physical and biological limits, which will prevent us from leaving this planet, or even ever fully consuming its resources.

I would challenge you to read two resources in the New Year: Vaclav Smil's How the World Really Works (yes I did write a really negative review of this on Goodreads, but the first few chapters about material resources are fundamentally solid), and Tom Murphy's Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet. I think many people on this forum (and in wider society) are energy and materials blind, which lead to extrapolations from the past two centuries of economic and technological growth that I find to be fanciful.

We are basically already at peak oil and we hit peak copper this year.

Claims of being ‚at peak X right now‘ decompose into two elements, one is a completely unsupported and constantly falsified prediction of decline, the other the correct statement ‚we now produce more X than ever‘, which is hardly supportive to the doomer‘s central thesis. Despite the abundance of resources (as in, there are many types of useful resources), you never see these global peaks in hindsight, they‘re always hiding right around the corner.

IDK man, copper is pretty convincingly in decline. We basically haven't found any new large scale copper discoveries in the last 15 years. Grades are continually declining. We're currently mining ores that are 0.6% copper!!! And this is only going to continue to get worse. Unless we find an extremely large easy to exploit source of copper approximately ~now, copper production is guranteed to fall in the next 10 years.

Source

But are you long on copper futures?

Yea dude, copper has been way outperforming the SP500 for the past few years. I'm long on copper futures and my portfolio has been doing excellent.

HGW00 is up 57% over 5 years and the S&P is up 87% in the same timeframe - but at least your money is where your mouth is.

Copper is up 20% this year and S&P is only up ~17%. I only got into the copper futures around Feb.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats