{"id":3119,"date":"2014-11-05T14:47:49","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T19:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=3119"},"modified":"2014-11-08T06:01:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-08T11:01:39","slug":"kepler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/kepler\/","title":{"rendered":"Kepler"},"content":{"rendered":"

…and the laws that move you from maximizing power to maximizing resilience.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like many young college women Kepler awoke that morning with other things on her mind than the project she had planned for the day.\u00a0 She had been\u00a0dreaming about how she loved her drawers of\u00a0personal things, in colorful piles, neatly rolled, in little bags and folded, each in its own style and fit together.\u00a0 Maybe she would become a \u201ccollector\u201d, she thought, they gave her such a thrill. \u00a0 How nature was \u201cquite a collector\u201d too fascinated her too, creating all the natural world\u2019s very special arrangements, with everything having it\u2019s own individual home, utterly improbable in such number and variety, and so highly organized and grouped with fitting parts everywhere.<\/p>\n

She’d also been told that lots of\u00a0scientists thought nature\u2019s patterns came from a natural law of energy, that everything\u00a0sought to maximize its power, which honestly, just made her wrinkle her forehead\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 She did not know, of course, but thought there was something hidden in the magic of how things in nature so often yielded to each other, an\u00a0obvious secret to how things come to fit so closely. \u00a0 So she quietly thought perhaps that seemed at least or was perhaps even more important.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What she had planned to do that day was use her old graphic calculator from high school, to do an experiment in rewriting the history of the economy, laughing as she said it\u00a0that way. \u00a0 Could you show an economy as being responsive, seeking to get along, rather than just getting more and more aggressive in looking for, in the end, how to get in ever bigger trouble? \u00a0 \u00a0What would it be like, she wondered, if people could be responsive as a rule. \u00a0The idea had come up in reading that the climate change scientists, the IPCC, had said we needed to reduce world CO2 production to half what it was in 2010. \u00a0 It was only recently in fact that the world economy had been below that, and now everyone was saying we had to go back but probably couldn’t. \u00a0 \u00a0She felt she had all the facts, though.<\/p>\n

So she had the idea to just…<\/p>\n

– totally redraw the history of ever growing CO2
\n<\/strong>– to show mankind as being <\/strong>responsive to the approach of climate change
\n<\/strong><\/h4>\n

She didn’t get it to work till quite late that night, but it worked! \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What she had of course been thinking about, and\u00a0felt that anyone\u00a0who mattered constantly worried about behind every other subject, was the strange continual way the human society was so energetically trying to destroy its own future.\u00a0\u00a0 The evidence could not be more clear, with the ever faster consumption of everything useful on earth, that an economy maximizing its growth unavoidably\u00a0does.\u00a0 Anyone can plainly see that happening, as climate change keeps accelerating faster than expected. Everyone hears about the ever increasing\u00a0loss of natural species from disrupting ever more natural habitats too, and the impossible debts nations have accumulated making their\u00a0decision making impossible,\u00a0and so many other disturbing things.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t a \u201cdebate\u201d to her.\u00a0\u00a0 It also wasn’t her \u201ccause\u201d either.\u00a0\u00a0 She also did not really see it as her job to change other people\u2019s minds. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was just something she personally needed to know, about her own life, and whether it could be meaningful.<\/p>\n

What Kepler had been mulling over, again and again, was that the natural world seemed just so very smart<\/em>. \u00a0Even though very few things in nature had \u201cbrains\u201d, a great many things seemed “as responsive” as if they had brains, and humans with brains seemed totally unresponsive to such enormously important things.\u00a0\u00a0 Microbes and insects really don’t have any way to \u201cknow what\u2019s going on\u201d at all, but when you see them behaving they are being quite responsive to change around them, both to changes in opportunity and to danger.<\/p>\n

How could that be if they didn\u2019t have\u00a0some way of doing it?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

She wondered if they were just being responsive to changes around them as a rule, rather than following rules imposed on them and only surviving by accident as she was being taught in ecology class?\u00a0 She liked the idea that everything had its chances individually, and it agreed with what she say, but nature didn\u2019t seem to her to be relying on survival by accident at all!
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

However it\u2019s done, she reasoned,
\nit must be incredibly simple, <\/strong><\/h4>\n

If even\u00a0 microbes scatter when threatened, it really could ONLY be a human way of jinxing our own thinking that would\u00a0keep us from seeing how. \u00a0 \u00a0So the idea for a project was to\u00a0calculate how it would affect an organism approaching danger, if it’s rule was to shy away from danger just as fast as it approached opportunity.\u00a0\u00a0 It seems logical at least, and \u201cpart of life\u201d. \u00a0 \u00a0If what you are given is that nothing in live knows what\u2019s really happening, then when\u00a0you find yourself running into opportunities and hazards all the time,<\/p>\n

your own ability to change directions
\nmight\u00a0be about the same, whatever direction you need to turn.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h4>\n

Somehow it just seemed obvious that most anything has to do that.\u00a0 Things have to slow down about as well as they\u00a0speeds up, just to avoid crashing into where you’re going once you get there!<\/p>\n

She too, of course, felt some personal \u201clicense\u201d to explore such things, that other people might not.\u00a0 It just thrilled her, given her namesake\u2019s accomplishments.\u00a0 But she also felt guilty, that at the end of the 16\u00a0th<\/sup> century, the way\u00a0Johannes Kepler had seemed to find, it looked SO much easier to change the whole world than now, with our great multi generation worldwide struggles that seem to accomplish so very little.<\/p>\n

How could it possibly be done any other way, but
\nsomehow find a way to do it very very simply again, she asked herself?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

So she set out to calculate the year<\/em><\/strong><\/span> when the world economy\u2019s growing use of fossil fuels would have needed to reverse direction, in order to smoothly and comfortably respond to and stay within the natural limits of CO2 for humans and nature to have\u00a0a safe climate on earth.\u00a0\u00a0 The numbers to use were known to everyone, too, all in the news and discussed in class. \u00a0 It just seemed nobody was really considering the implications. \u00a0 To her surprise it did indeed turn out incredibly simply, that the year was\u00a01930<\/strong>. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>She thought: “THAT would have definitely been doable.”<\/p>\n

What she did was:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n\n
    \n
  1. Use\u00a0the historic \u201cgrowth rate\u201d of the world economy, its \u201cnatural response\u00a0rate\u201d =3.13%\/yr. (for either speeding up or slowing down)<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. For the “Historic Unresponsive Growth” curve use that historic rate only for speeding up.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Work back from the IPCC 2deg Climate Change Limit\u00a0for CO2 => \u00bd of the\u00a02010 CO2, <\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Subtract\u00a0the historic\u00a0doubling rate for\u00a0CO2 coupled to growth of about 40 years, so 1970 is “when the economy crossed the limit\u201d.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Draw a 2nd<\/sup> curve, starting\u00a0with increasing the steps\u00a03.13% per yr, then decreasing them, to slow\u00a0rather than accelerate the approach to the natural limit. <\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. For\u00a0the final “Natural Responsive Growth” curve experimentally find what year that way to\u00a0smoothly avoid disaster needs to be.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    \u00a0The picture looked like this:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    As Kepler studied and studied it.\u00a0\u00a0 It almost seemed TOO simple\u2026<\/p>\n

    The answer appears to be:\u00a0\u201cJust respond to limits and opportunities the same way<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

    What it seems you’d get by responding soon enough\u00a0to do it naturally, is a world with a prosperous 1970 scale economy, that isn’t broke, traumatized and in ever more desperate trouble. \u00a0 It’s an economy that by 2010 would have had 80 years of investing in getting better and better at running things, rather than getting in bigger and bigger trouble.<\/p>\n

    That such an obvious solution to something\u00a0like the climate crisis, to have been available all along, with people already having been talking about the inevitable\u00a0need since before\u00a01900, seemed to her incredible. \u00a0 \u00a0Major environmental protections\u00a0were put in place\u00a0before 1920. \u00a0\u00a0Back then only\u00a0protecting one resource or beautiful place at a time from ever faster increasing disruptions of the economy\u00a0was ever done. \u00a0People seemed appeased with things like the creation of the wonderful US national park system. \u00a0 She had wondered about that too, though. \u00a0 It\u00a0must have been \u201cpolitical\u201d or something, somehow, as the simple math makes it all too crystal clear that protecting one thing at a time can’t possibly be enough.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The professor<\/h4>\n

    So she thought and thought about it, and finally got up the courage to ask her professor, in her introductory economics class. \u00a0She was really proud of her simple little project too. \u00a0So she showed him her pocket calculator and\u00a0the curves.\u00a0\u00a0 He was indeed a bit startled at first, having a student that went right to the point in asking the obvious questions, that others seemed to always avoid somehow. \u00a0 Sometimes he liked that from his students, today it was just a bother.<\/p>\n

    So what he said was,<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    \u201cOh yea, we don’t usually talk about it that.\u00a0 If you must look into it, JM Keynes also made that mistake, and came up with\u00a0essentially the same idea, talking about the inevitability of\u00a0“roundabout” means and complication\u00a0hobbling growth much\u00a0like you’re saying\u00a0for\u00a0CO2. \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s in his main book, Chapter 16, he considers whether\u00a0“this more favorable possibility comes to the rescue<\/em>\u201d. \u00a0 But nearly everyone else calls it \u201cthe fallacy\u201d and ignored it, because it would mean deciding to not have money automatically multiply anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    After a pause he then said,<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    \u201cI don’t really know what else to tell you.\u00a0 Do you have anything else to ask?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Of course Kepler was just astounded that a truly great man\u2019s saying something clearly impossible would have to stop sometime, would then be\u00a0considered “a fallacy<\/em>\u201d. \u00a0 There\u00a0obviously was something she was completely missing.\u00a0\u00a0 She\u2019d learned what investment does though.\u00a0 It builds stuff for the future.<\/p>\n

    So she asked him,<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    \u201cWell, OK, but why couldn’t you change how investment is done, so it invests in future profits rather than future disasters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    What he said then made her run home crying, really unsure about the whole world and her life all of a sudden. \u00a0 Though, perhaps he would not have realizing the effect it would have on his best student,<\/p>\n

    He replied:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    \u201cOh, no, humans could never learn to do that!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    _____________<\/p>\n

    The professor was a bit taken aback, of course, but didn\u2019t happen to think about it again till the next day at lunch. \u00a0 He happened to recall that in Chapter 16 \u00a0Keynes had also said he rather thought\u00a0the time to reverse what investment was used for might well not be far off\u00a0in the future. That idea may actually have been what people found so completely unbelievable, to call the whole need to respond to limits a fallacy. \u00a0 \u00a0It was very interesting to him that now it was\u00a0his own student, indeed, who had shown that the time for the economy to change directions, even when Keynes was writing… \u00a0was already in the past.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \n

    jlh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    …and the laws that move you from maximizing power to maximizing resilience. Like many young college women Kepler awoke that morning with other things on her mind than the project she had planned for the day.\u00a0 She had been\u00a0dreaming about how she loved her drawers of\u00a0personal things, in colorful piles, neatly rolled, in little bags … Continue reading Kepler<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7,10,13,1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-among-best-2","category-teaching","category-econn","category-pop","category-stories","category-uncategorized","category-whattodo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}