Energy is the master resource and I am a peak prosperity member 
It is one of the reasons that I like Cardano so much because it solves the Central Banking problem/misallocation of resources problem and it will be one of if not the lowest energy footprints of all the competing blockchains. A competitive advantage for sure!
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Absolutely spectacular post, especially coming from a virtuously practical view.
You describe very difficult questions indeed! Can we get it right ? I think there are a lot of obstacles any direction you look , and they scale linearly with degree of existential risk, but given time to proceeding at least as fast as we have been , what is more realistic ?? Failure due to systems failure due to lack of fast enough growth? ) Or potentially possible ‘acceptable’ failure due to unexpectedly high growth. I would argue that the last 50 years have shown us the latter. I realize there are other options in the room, and your discourse is both sound , precise, and wise. But as is attributed to Einstein? “If there is any miracle in the world it is compound interest” … You no doubt agree we have witnessed exponential growth recently. My question is, can many of us agree that it is about to tip into the logarithmic vertical? If so, when ? I don’t think the average policy maker or business leader necessarily is asking these questions at all… but a majority of the math and complexity researchers are.
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Saline09 I love that post … truly echoing hosks zen spirit …
But as an ideas / intellectual question , is energy really appropriately named the master resource ? Of course, in most practical use of the term. But , if you dig one level lower (space wise) or one level higher (market wise and agent wise) , information is clearly the master resource. Whether that is the Shannon information our sun conveys to our plants (“dinosaur” or otherwise) , or the extent of information credence an agent has more of than another giving them useful advantage… when perceived through that lens, oil is just a reservoir resource, and the potential for new information to help people either with or without AI, clearly dwarfs any other resource of economic gain for the avg person – which happens to be very amenable to a blockchain powered elevation, of all, like the peak prosperity view!
All I’m really saying is , of course it could go any direction , but , nowdays like you say, information as value can hopefully be justly bartered with and by the distributed peoples
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I get all giddy when people get philosophical
So glad to see thinking people.
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This community seems a remarkably unique piece of internet time for discussion for sure. So grateful . If the devs had focused on Reddit, for example , maybe the discussion would not be as rich.
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Reddit is a cesspool. HN is about the only other where I’d consider posting and have posted.
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Saline, reading your earlier posts I though you might very well be 
. It’s an amazing site, and has been an eye-opener in many ways. I used to travel quite a lot, and while I had identified many pieces of the puzzle, peakprosperity did help in putting much of these together. Nice to meet a fellow PPer here 
. Totally agree with you about your thoughts on Cardono, it seems to follow the line of PP.
Exponential growth? Yes, we have many ‘hockeysticks’ out there: the amount of currency sloshing around the world searching for ‘value’, I suppose technology (though I see too many Chinese-made consumer gadgets in these)… Is all of this technology meaningful? Does it solve any of the fundamental issues? Complexity and critical interdependence has also risen exponentially, yes it means that we have more efficient systems that can do things we could only dream of 20 years ago, but is has also left society incredibly vulnerable to any type of ‘hick-up’…
Then there is the other side: there are hockey sticks in population growth, increasing consumption, number of refugees/ displaced persons, loss of biodiversity, ‘climate weirdness’, do I need to continue? The issues are not linear, they are exponential, and there are no indications (for most of these) that they will flatten out because of our own free will. Our track record of ‘getting things right’ isn’t that stellar either 
.
Growth is not the solution anymore, it may have been at certain points in history, but we have long past that point. If you’re in a hole, stop digging . Now is the time to take stock, identify what (existing) technologies, environmental management, political, economic and social systems make sense in our current situation, and get to work at lighting speed on this. If you believe that what I say makes sense, then I really recommend you visit the PeakProsperity site as the basic ideas are explained so much better then I could do here. When we start to think about where society is and where we are/ should be going we have to get the baseline right.
This does come close to me as I work around the concept of ‘Resilience’ (mostly in developing countries), and what I see is pretty scary. The task at hand is daunting, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying though…
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I agree, but I think you may benefit from a broader conceptual lens which with to view growth … because is technology stopping ? No it is almost at an explosionary level … Is the benefit of information value reaching it’s limit ? No , it has barely begun to hit it’s growth inflection point …
I think we are speaking “past each other” , because I agree with most of your case , but , in the end , its possible that “prosperity” could be substantially defined as safe and constant growth in value … and there are huge and arguably limitless “drivers” of this growth … the real question is the equitable distribution, which you pinpoint very wisely
Sorry, am at it again 
. Information (the right one including the correct analysis of it) is tremendously important. It is only a facilitator though.
Energy is the master resource that allows you, through appropriate technology, social/ political/ economic systems to follow up on the information. Energy is even needed to generate and analyse the information. When I look around I see energy everywhere, roads? energy to make and maintain. A tractor working the field? Energy - actually the equivalent of work of about 1000+ persons working. The computer I’m typing this on? Energy. The food on your table? Energy, actually a huge amount, corn-fed beef takes 23 units of energy to give you 1 unit of energy back…
Information is not enough, we know about climate change, environmental degradation, and most key issues we’re facing. Some of these are potentially existential threats to humanity or our complex society. Yet what are we doing with this information?
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If you like what you’re reading here, and you like the tone of it, you’ll love much of the discussions that are going on on https://www.peakprosperity.com/ where they mainly talk about issues relating to the economy, energy and the environment and how these hang together. Shameless publicity here (disclosure, not getting anything from PP ), but these issues need to get out widely…
Let me summarize my sole prediction for your reference … I believe energy , will at some point , only be limited by the shannon entropy inside quantum phenomena , ie fusion entropy transfer as a provider of “energy”.
With enough information… we should be able to harness all of the mass-energy-information value within our solar system, providing for all intents and purposes, a post scarcity environment. Whether this is done with solar, fusion, quantum computing, or SI becomes unimportant over medium term timescales.
Yes, I totally agree that technology will not stop. Information is indeed exploding. To the point where it is becoming overwhelming, and where we become drowned in information. There may be a technological solution to this too though (as long as it is neutral in its filtering).
Yes, we probably agree on more things then would seem from the discussion . I’m all for growth in technology if it is sustainable (in the broadest sense), constructive, and that we actively identify unintended consequences and address these adequately, and that we roll out the proper technologies that we have already without waiting for the silver bullet to be invented… 
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Sounds very Star Treky… our best bet right now are renewable sources and how efficiently can they be converted to useful energy.
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Agreed. I see the prosperity initiative as a way of harnessing equality and democracy to growth, while limiting “externalities” or side effects, which hasn’t really been done before , and is indeed inspiring in it’s promise and value!
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Agreed. Will have to switch off now to start the working day. Thank you for your thoughts, I did enjoy the exchange , sure we’ll be meeting again on the forum .
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Never heard of this PP website, bookmarked. That’s the kind of stuff I like to read… I used to frequent mises.org a lot and one more called EconLib, although I forget what the site name was. The whole subject of economics is fascinating to me because it truly is a reflection of human behavior, all aspects of it, the good, the bad and the ugly…
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I think that is a best civilizational goal , but we should also factor in exponential growth in efficiency. … it will cost less to do more as every second passes
Martin you should watch the link below which will give you the basic lens of how Peak Prosperity views things. You can go through the library of youtube videos and sign up on their website to read the content. They approach it from the angle of it is what it is and here are things we can do to transition personally over the coming years and decades. Hence the positive name : Peak Prosperity :).
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I’m about to hit the sack soon, but I will