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World crude oil extraction reached an all-time high of 84.6 million barrels per day in late 2018, and production hasn’t been able to regain that level since then.
Oil prices have bounced up and down over the ten-year period 2014 to 2024 (Figure2).
In this post, I show that changing oil prices have had varying impacts on production. Recently, lower prices seem to be associated with lower production because extraction has become less profitable for producers. A temporary spike in oil prices does little to raise production. The view of economists that crude oil extraction can continue to rise indefinitely because lower production leads to higher prices, which in turn leads to greater production, is not true. (Economists also believe that substitutes can be helpful, but this is not a subject I will try to cover in this post.)
[1] World crude oil production has not regained its level prior to the Covid restrictions.
According to EIA data in Figure 1, the highest single month of crude oil production was November 2018, at 84.6 million barrels per day (mb/d). The highest single year of crude oil production was 2018, when world crude oil production averaged 82.9 mb/d. The last 24 months of oil production have averaged only 81.7 mb/d of production. Compared to the year with the highest average production, world oil production is down by 1.2 mb/d.
Furthermore, in Figure 1, there is nothing about the world production path in the last 24 months that gives the impression that oil production will be surging upward anytime soon. It merely increases and decreases slightly.
World population continues to grow. If economists are to be believed, oil prices should be shooting upward in response to rising demand. However, oil prices have not generally been increasing. In fact, as of this writing, the Brent crude oil price stands at $69, which is lower than the recent average monthly price shown in Figure 2. There is concern that the US economy is going into recession, and that this recession will cause oil prices to fall further.
[2] OPEC oil production seems as likely as other source of production to be influenced by price, since OPEC sells oil for export and can theoretically cut back easily.
One thing that is somewhat confusing about OPEC’s oil production is the fact that the membership of OPEC keeps changing. The data the EIA displays is the historical production for the current list of OPEC members. If former members left OPEC because of declining production, this would be hidden from view.
Based on the EIA’s method of displaying historical OPEC oil production, the peak in OPEC production occurred in November 2016, at 32.9 mb/d. The highest year of oil production was 2016 at 32.0 mb/d, with 2017 and 2018 almost as high. Average production during the last 24 months has been 29.2 mb/d, or 2.8 mb/d lower than the 32.0 mb/d production in its highest year. Thus, recent OPEC production has fallen further than world production, relative to their respective highest years. (World production is down only 1.2 mb/d relative to its highest year.)
[3] An analysis of OPEC’s production relative to price indicates that patterns change over time.
Prices have changed dramatically between 2014 and 2024. I chose to look at prices versus production during three different time periods, since these periods seem to have very different production growth patterns:
- January 2016 to November 2016 (rising OPEC production)
- December 2016 to April 2020 (falling OPEC production)
- May 2020 to May 2024 (rising and then falling OPEC production)
These are the three charts I created:
During this initial period ending November 2016, the lower the price of oil, the more OPEC’s Oil production increased. This approach would make sense if OPEC was trying to keep its total revenue high enough to “keep the lights on.” If some other country (such as the United States in Figure 7) was flooding the world with oil, and through its oversupply depressing prices, OPEC didn’t choose to respond by cutting its own production. Instead, it seems to have pumped even more. In this way, OPEC could make certain that US producers weren’t really making money from their newly expanded supply of crude oil. Perhaps the US would quickly cut back–something it, in fact, did between April 2015 and Nov. 2016, shown in Figure 7 below.
During this second period ending April 2020, prices plunged to a very low level, but production didn’t change significantly. It is difficult to change production levels in response to a specific shock because the whole system has been set up to provide a certain level of oil extraction, and it takes time to make changes. Other than that, prices didn’t seem to have much of an impact on production.
In this third period ending May 2024, OPEC producers seem to have been saying, “If the price isn’t high enough, we will reduce production.” Figure 6 shows that with higher prices, the amount of oil extracted tends to rise, but only up to a limit. When prices temporarily hit high levels (in March to August of 2022–the dots over to the right in Figure 6), production couldn’t really rise. The necessary infrastructure wasn’t in place for a big ramp up in production.
Perhaps if prices had stayed very high, for very long, maybe production might have increased, but this is simply speculation. Oil companies won’t build a lot of extraction infrastructure that they don’t need, regardless of what they may announce publicly. I have been told by someone who worked for Saudi Aramco (in Saudi Arabia) that the company has (or at one time had) a lot of extra space for oil storage, so that the company could temporarily ramp up deliveries, as if they had extra productive capacity readily available, but that the company didn’t really have the significant excess capacity that it claimed.
[4] US oil production since January 2014 has followed an up and down pattern, to a significant extent in response to price.
Figure 7 shows three distinct humps, with the first peak in April 2015, the second peak in November 2019, and the third peak in December 2023.
In the first “hump,” there was an oversupply of oil when the US was trying to ramp up its domestic oil supply of oil (through tight oil from shale) at the same time that OPEC also increasing production. The thing that strikes me is that it was OPEC’s oil supply in Iraq that was ramping up and increasing OPEC’s oil supply.
The rest of OPEC had no intention of cutting back if the US was arrogant enough to assume that it could raise production of both US shale and of Iraq with no adverse consequences.
Looking at the detail underlying the first US hump, oil production rose between January 2014 and April 2015 when production was “stopped” by low prices, averaging $54 per barrel in January through March 2015. The US reduced production, particularly of shale, since that was easy to cut back, hitting a low point in September 2016. The combination of growing oil supplies from both the US and OPEC led to average oil prices of only $46 per barrel during the three months preceding September 2016.
Eventually OPEC oil production peaked in November 2016 (Figure 3), leaving more “space” available for US oil production. Also, oil prices were able to rise, reaching a peak of $81 per barrel in October 2018. World crude oil production hit a peak in November 2018 (Figure 1). But even these higher prices were too low for OPEC producers. They announced they were cutting back production, effective January 2019, to try to further raise prices.
During the second hump, US oil production rose to 12.9 mb/d in November 2019. The oil price for the three months preceding November 2019 was only $61 per barrel. Evidently, this was not sufficient to maintain oil production at the same level. The number of “drilled but uncompleted wells” began to rise rapidly.
Drillers chose not to complete the wells because the initial indications were that the wells would not be sufficiently productive. They were set aside, presumably until prices rise to a high enough level to justify the investment.
Figure 7 shows that the US oil production had already started to fall before the Covid-related drop in oil production, which began around April and May of 2020.
[5] The rise in US oil production since May 2020 has been a bumpy one. The peak in US oil production in December 2023 may be its final peak.
The rise in oil production since May 2020 has included the completion of many previously drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells. There has been a trend toward fewer wells, but “longer laterals,” so the earlier wells drilled were probably not of the type most desired more recently. But these previously drilled wells had some advantages. In particular, the cost of drilling them had already been “expensed,” so that, if this earlier cost were ignored, these wells would provide a better return to shareholders. If production was becoming more difficult, and shareholders wanted a better return on their (most recent) investment, perhaps using these earlier drilled wells would work.
There remain several issues, however. Currently, the number of DUCs is down to its 2014 level. The benefit of already expensed DUCs seems to have disappeared, since the number of DUSs is no longer falling. Also, even with the addition of oil from the DUCs, the annual rise in US oil production has been smaller in this current hump (0.8 mb/d) than in the previous hump (1.4 mb/d).
Furthermore, there are numerous articles claiming that the best shale areas are depleting, or are providing production profiles which focus more on natural gas and natural gas liquids. Such production profiles tend to be much less profitable for producers.
I think it is quite possible that US crude oil production will start a gradual downward decline in the coming year. It is even possible that the December 2023 monthly peak will never be surpassed.
[6] Oil prices are to a significant extent determined by debt levels and interest rates, rather than what we think of as simple “supply and demand.”
Debt bubbles seem to hold up commodity prices of all kinds, including oil. I have discussed this issue before.
It seems to me that all the manipulations of debt levels and interest rates by central banks are ultimately aimed at maneuvering oil prices into a range that is acceptable to both producers of crude oil and purchasers of crude oil, including the various end products made possible through the use of crude oil.
Food production is a heavy user of crude oil. If the price of oil is too high, one possible outcome is that food prices rise. If this happens, consumers become unhappy because their budgets are squeezed. Alternatively, if food prices don’t rise sufficiently, farmers find their finances squeezed because they cannot get a high enough return on all of the required farming inputs.
[7] The current debt bubble is becoming overstretched.
Today’s debt bubble is driving up stock prices as well as commodity prices. We can see various pressures around the world associated with this debt bubble. For example, in China many homes have been built in recent years primarily for investment purposes, rather than residential use. This property investment bubble is now collapsing, bringing down property prices and causing banks to fail.
As another example, Japan is known for its “carry trade,” which is made possible by the combination of its low interest rates and higher rates in other countries. The Japanese government has a very high debt level; it cannot withstand more than a very low interest rate. There is significant concern that this carry trade will unwind, an issue that has already been worrying world markets.
A third example relates to the US, and its role of holder of the US dollar as reserve currency, which means that the US dollar is used heavily in international trade. Historically, the holder of the reserve currency has changed about every 100 years, in part because the high demand for the reserve currency allows the government holding the reserve currency to borrow at lower interest rates than other countries. With these lower interest rates, and the need to pull the world economy along, there is a tendency to “spur asset bubbles.” But an asset bubble is likely to have a debt bubble propping it up.
My previous post raised the issue of the economy today being exposed to a debt bubble. There has been excessive borrowing in many sectors of the economy that have been doing poorly. Commercial real estate is an example, as witnessed by many nearly empty office buildings and shopping malls. People with student loan debt often delay starting a family because they are struggling with repayment of those loans.
If any or all these bubbles should burst, there could be a swift downward fall in oil prices and commodity prices, in general. This could be a major problem because producers would tend to leave the market, and world GDP, which depends on energy supplies of the right kinds, would fall.
[8] Oil is an international commodity. Disruption of demand by any major user could pull prices down for everyone.
China is the single largest importer of oil in today’s world. Its economy seems to be struggling now. This, by itself, could pull world oil prices down.
[9] We don’t often think about the fact that oil prices need to be both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers.
Economists would like to think that oil prices can rise endlessly, allowing more oil to be extracted, but history shows that this is not what happens. If there are too many people for the available resources, wage and wealth disparity tends to increase, leading to many more very poor people. Lots of adverse things seem to happen: the holder of the reserve currency tends to change, wars tend to start, and governments tend to collapse or be overthrown.
[10] Simply because crude oil is in the ground and the technology seems to be available to extract the crude oil doesn’t mean that we can necessarily ramp up crude oil production.
One of the major issues is getting the price up high enough, and long enough, for producers to believe that there is a reasonable chance of making money through a major new investment. The only time that oil prices were above $100 for a sustained period was in the 2011 to 2013 period. On an inflation-adjusted basis, prices also exceeded $100 per barrel in the 1979 to 1982 period based on Energy Institute data. But we have never had a period in which oil prices exceeded $200 or $300 per barrel, even after accounting for inflation.
The experience of 2014 and 2015 shows that even if oil prices rise to high levels, they do not necessarily remain high for very long. If several parts of the world respond with higher oil production simultaneously, prices could crash, as they did in 2014.
There is also a need for the overall economic system to be available to support both the extraction of and the continuing demand for the oil. For example, much of the steel pipe used by the US for drilling oil comes from China. Computers used by engineers very often come from China. If China and the US are at odds, there is likely to be a problem with broken supply lines. And, as I said in Section 8, disruption of demand affecting even one major importer, such as China, could bring demand (and prices) down significantly.
[11] Conclusion.
The crude oil situation is far more complex than the models of economists make it seem. World crude oil supply seems to be past peak now; it may be headed down significantly in the next few years. Central banks have been working hard to keep oil prices within an acceptable range for both producers and consumers, but this is becoming increasingly impossible.
We live in interesting times!
Ben Goertzel (who some people here know) posted on X about AI progress Last paragraph:
“We may be 1-2 or even 3 yrs from neural-symbolic-evolutionary models like Hyperon super-emphatically kicking the cognitive butt of o1’s closed and open source successors, but we’re not 5-10 years off… Things are moving fast in AI these days….”
Another nuclear plant will be brought back to life:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-closes-152-billion-loan-resurrect-michigan-nuclear-plant-2024-09-30/
US closes $1.52 billion loan to resurrect Michigan nuclear plant
An interesting indicator is the household formation:
https://d1yhils6iwh5l5.cloudfront.net/charts/resized/53528/large/chart6.png
https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/65692-household-formation-why-is-it-declining-and-where-is-it-going
“18-24: Late-wave Millennials (5% of all households): These younger Millennials comprise just a sliver of all households, but this is a case in which a negative behavior shift has completely overwhelmed positive population growth. From 2008 to 2017, assuming unchanged rates of family formation, this age bracket should have added over 200,000 households. Instead, they subtracted 400,000 households. Driving fewer households per adult in this age bracket is a long lineup of familiar trends: more post-secondary attendance; staying in school longer; steeply declining marriage and fertility rates; more protective parents; and a greater willingness to live with friends and family.”
I think this is an important trend. The economy is getting poorer. People have to crowd together to a greater and greater extent. Multigenerational households become more common.
Only in a world with infinite resources can men live as brothers . The masks will be ripped off when the shelves are empty .
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/looting-erupts-after-biblical-floods-devastate-southeast-us-sheriffs-urge-residents-carry
All of this taking place not very far from where I live. Fortunately, our home had little wind because we were west of the eye of the storm. We did get nearly 10″ of rain. My sister and her husband live near Ashville, TN, where there was much more rain. Her electricity is expected to be off for some time. She doesn’t have potable water. She can get text messages.
I have no idea how widespread this looting is. I would guess that it is not too much, but I don’t know. Getting around is difficult in these areas, so I would expect most people would just stay away.
Asheville TN? Or Asheville NC?
Ashville, NC. Sorry, I got that wrong. It is near the border.
one thing i bought and stored many years ago, is a pack of 1000 water sterilisation tablets
they cost almost nothing never go out of date and occupy almost no space
i dont know why everyone doesnt have them for emergencies
After Thyssen Krupp now Tata Steel .
https://evrimagaci.org/tpg/tata-steel-shuts-down-production-at-port-talbot-plant-42510
In the UK, “This historic closure was signaled as Blast Furnace 4—the last furnace still operational at the site—was scheduled to be shut down by 5 PM on September 30, 2024. ”
This blast furnace likely needs coal. We just saw a report that the UK’s last coal mine is being closed. There likely is a connection.
The report says,
“Tata Steel plans to transition to greener manufacturing through the installation of electric arc furnaces, which will consume UK-sourced scrap steel.”
It is not possible to make very high quality this way, but it is possible to reprocesses some scrap steel with electricity. If this is all the UK has, it is better than nothing.
Also,
“the closure brings significant pain, with estimates indicating nearly 3,000 job losses—accounting for approximately 75% of the local workforce.”
The local community will likely have problems finding other jobs for all of these workers.
Deindustrialization is in full swing in the UK, yet it is the same nation that was the first to industrialize. Ironic, but also so sad.
Coal is in short supply. Coal was the cheap fuel that allowed UK to industrialize. More recently, it allowed China to industrialize.
Is Israel going to war with Iran? Or is it all bluster?
Yes, the U.S. is going to war with Iran.
WSJ reports:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-ballistic-missile-attack-israel-8c418294
Israel’s Military Says Iran Launched Missiles at Country
In the report it says:
This implies the US will get involved.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/white-house-warns-iran-imminently-launch-ballistic-missiles-israel
War Begins: Iranian Ballistic Missiles Rain Down On Israel
Then info from X.
Not just bluster.
The Israelis own the US Government so we will be attacking Iran soon.
This is exactly what Netanyahu and neocon war pigs in the US want.
This will likely escalate out of control fairly quickly.
Here are some possible escalatory steps that can be taken by Iran:
Attack the Negev desert nuclear facility
Atack US troops in the region.
US ships could be sunk
The only traffic going through the strait of Hormuz could be ships going to BRICS countries.
It is only October 1 and the surprises are just starting.
Checkout my earlier post . I warned only Hezbollah stood between a war between Iran and Israel . Let loose ” The Dogs of war ” .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/white-house-warns-iran-imminently-launch-ballistic-missiles-israel
Al Jazeera , Live . If Tel Aviv and Haifa are hit , Israel goes down . Iran will not fire Jeruslam as it is a holy site of the Al Quasa mosque .
https://www.aljazeera.com/live
I think that will be all Iran will do and Israel will take all the land up to the Litani river and call it a day.
Quo Vadis ?
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1841167051068465580
So what’s the Israeli response going to be?
Oil fields. Cut off their nose. Declare a world wide recession.
” Israeli gas rigs in the Mediterranean are burning!”
24 missiles reportedly hit the Israeli energy infrastructure!
This gas probably rightfully belongs to Palestine. Israel has claimed it.
Zerohedge has an updated article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/white-house-warns-iran-imminently-launch-ballistic-missiles-israel
Among other things, it says:
yes WW3 has begun today, oh well.
it’s nothing to worry about.
Bringing Iran in doesn’t sound good at all, you are right.
The world economy has been working up to WWIII for a while.
It is interesting that virtually nobody is talking about Ms. Gopalan anymore. Like Mr. Biden, she has become a nonentity.
It seems the irrelevance of USA is accelerating.
who is she?
Kamala Gopalan.
Call her by her proper name then, the tamil patent snatcher.
Ms. Gopalan, Mr. Biden and most of America’s politicians were never relevant to most people. The media creates its own reality.
“Britain’s media is failing to report the true extent of UK support to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza.
This is not the exception in Britain’s wars, but the rule. When Declassified revealed three years ago that the UK military had a secret team operating in Yemen, no British media outlet picked up the story.
Neither are the UK press or broadcasters showing how the government has been avoiding peace prospects in Ukraine.
One reason the UK media fail to report independently is that they are regularly willing participants in Whitehall’s ‘media operations’, especially in wars. “?
https://www.declassifieduk.org/propaganda-material-will-need-to-be-disseminated/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ICYMI+-+Weekly+Roundup
Robert Jenrick says Star of David should be displayed at every point of entry to the UK
Tory leadership frontrunner addressed Conservative Friends of Israel event in hoodie emblazoned with words ‘Hamas Are Terrorists’
https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/politics/robert-jenrick-israel-tory-conference-b2621106.html
It would be only too just if the next Israel is England. But alas, Ukraine is getting prepared for being it.
Bronze age collapse on steroids’ . Mr B . 13 min read ,
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/power-down-a-scenario-5764002284b8
Seems optimistic. If Mr Bs description of the 2030’s is correct then there will not remain any industrial civilization in the 2040’s, at least in Europe and N America.
Also we will likely see a financial reset/crash before around 2030. So the 30’s could be even worse than Mr Bs description.
If Hillary Clinton won and secured the resources of what is now Russia the can would have been kicked by at least half a century
utterly ridiculous
(assuming youre in some way serious)
I notice Mr B mentioned me in his previous post, which he refers to.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2030-our-runaway-train-falls-off
South Korea is an example of what happens if ALL goes to the 0.1% at the top. No kids. They will have to make a choice robotize all work or bring in murderers and rapists from South America like the US or heaven forbid share the bounty.
0.1% south korean top 0.1% japan top is no different.
no kids is because they behave like bug ants and save save save. no natural resources, no purchasing power, and all women want to live like princess fairyland, materialism 3.0 in asia. only difference with korea is high overt corruption.
nothing to do with 0.1% top. compound growth means 1% = doubling of population in 72 years. you try living in mountainous regions and quadrupling population. females everywhere behave identically. whatever they were born with, they want more and better. not going to happen. high conscientiousness, industriousness means everyone tries to outcompete each other for scraps.
if you start at home = X, it is human greed you want X+1 or the opportunity cost of X-1 is unbearable and you will forego breeding, simple as that. high iq also makes one preferentially prefer status quo and the risk aversion of east asians just accentuates this effect. if you put those people back at 1/5th pop size and US density with norway 3 floors, 4 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, 1/2 acre for $500/monthly rent you will see them uber-breed again.
In the old days adoption from Korea was rampant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_adoption_of_South_Korean_children
since even then the pop pressure was high and parents were not willing to raise excess children
But since Korea got richer it became kind of a national sham to continue so such practices kinda ended
A famous Japanese director, Hirokazu Kore-eda, made a movie about a mother who abandons her child, using a famous singer in Korea
https://youtu.be/uPEUj7BPl2Q?si=iscDhaOjH9_fXucF
At least she was nice enough to dump the baby into a box. In most cases the child is aborted, or if it manages to be born the mother usually kills it, and punishment for infanticide in Korea, given its high pop, tends to be quite light.
Issue is really not enough resources of all kinds per capita.
“Issue is really not enough resources of all kinds per capita.”
This is partly a technology issue. For example, carbon nanotubes may replace copper. IT would not be the first time given that aluminum replaced a lot of copper.
Ms. Tverberg, I respectfully disagree with your assertion that low birthrates are the result of a self-organizing system. There are poor countries around the world right now have significantly higher birth rates than the rich countries. Scarcity is a everyday problem in these poor countries yet that does not deter people in poor countries from having children.
The best answer I have heard regarding this, in layman terms, is that people have gotten lazy. Unless someone is rich, choosing to start a family represents hardship–less time for entertainment, less social status because one doesn’t have a job that requires a college degree.
That said, there were deliberate social changes implemented after the civil rights movement, to discourage child-rearing and they were carried out by the Intelligensia and it was mostly successful among whites and asians. Those changes involved dismantling the social structures that made child-rearing not a burden and not expensive. The traditional social structures were demonized in academia and the media to the point no one would openly espouse them without fear of being blacklisted.
The Self-organizing system explanation is bunk, imo.
The people in charge have no clue how to keep industrial civilization going. Getting birth rates imo, was a more personal and political endeavour than rationing resources.
The self-organizing system works in many directions at once. It is not necessary that anyone tries to “do” anything.
Part of the problem has to do with expected standards of living, along with social structure to achieve these standards of living. If there is a grandmother in the home to help with childcare or housework, having more children is no problem. Even living nearby helps.
If a family is trying to live in the suburbs, likely both husband and wife need to work. This necessitates having two cars. It is hard to afford two cars and a house in the suburbs, especially if there are educational loans as well. The number of children must be small, or the cost of care for the children takes up too much of the income.
I disagree Ed. I think other factors are more important for collapsing birth rates.
There are other societies wheremuch poorer people have many more children.
The education of women massively increases the opportunity cost of having children.
South Korea is a society with little religious framework.
It is also the most digitalised country in the world, with many opportunities for different activities in daily life, which increases the opportunity cost of having children in terms of both time and money and other activities forgone.
It has both state and private pension schemes, so that there is now little or no direct connection between rearing children and one’s own security in old age.
Therefore we have a birth rate of 0.75 children per woman in South Korea.
Without biology there is no economics.
Dennis L.
That contradicts your argument against Norman. Norman said there is nothing to do with your mythic cubic mile of pt, and your remark above proves he is correct.
Of course, governments will not actually be able to provide these pensions (except possibly as worthless currencies).
There have to be enough physical goods and services produced for everyone.
In 1925, the first census ever taken in Korea (by the Japanese which ruled it at that time), it had a total pop of about 19 mil, about 60% of them in what later became South Korea.
So it is a land fit for about 10 mil.
It is following my principles quite well – only the elites reproduce, and the rest are destined for extinction.
lol—i’ll try again (not that it will do much good)
with the rest of us extinctified
who will support the elite in their elitism?
do try to understand that Bezos’ wealth is entirely dependent on the rest of us playing ”pass the parcel”.
the same applies to any business you care to mention. (try it as a mental exercise).
The citizen is a disposable widget to them. The plan is to fix low birth rates in rich countries with…… climate change refugees from the Global South.
When low birth rates become a global norm. they hope that AI will be advanced enough to eliminate the need for human labor entirely.
That is the Plan.
Thought:
Biology was created by the universe to understand itself. Without biology there is no economics, there is no knowledge, no understanding. Without children, economics stops.
Will AI be self-replicating? If it were, perhaps the universe would have become self-aware some billions of years in the past.
Perhaps there is biology because it is the only thing which works.
In order for biology to work, it needs a religion. Religions are entirely a product of biology as far as I can see.
Dennis L.
religions establish themselves to provide ”reason”—where no ”reason” exists.
there is no reason for our world environment to exist
it just ”exists” without ultimate purpose.
it sustains itself by consuming available energy forms.
those energy forms derive from our immediate parent star.
at some point in the far future, it will cease to exist.
no doubt the same thing is happening elsewhere, across billion year segments of time.
but there is no reason for it.—gods have nothing to do with it.
we invented gods to give purpose to our stupid wars, like now.
3000 year old legends justify mass killings.
and we call ourselves homo sapiens.
Or perhaps religions discover some common principles regarding how to live together in groups, at least somewhat peacefully. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want others to do to you.”
They also figure out that there must have been a beginning point of the Universe.
Some people might even surmise that there is a God who is active in the world today, somehow influencing which of the many evolutionary offspring survive and flourish. There is a long-term trend toward complexity, which is difficult to understand. Read Eric Chaisson’s book Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature.
the telling phrase
”you” prompted ai to make a website
it didnt just up and do one of its own accord—then call you to say it had done one?
Since you cite biology you are probably aware of John Calhoun’s ant experiment as well.
There are not enough to go around so the people simply give up while the highest echelon, now heavily inbred, also stop breeding.
Biology leads to a single master and a lot of worker bees, and now these people are quitting.
The Spaniards had the same problem when the natives stopped breeding after the Conquest, a problem solved by importing lots of blacks, which is why most mestizos are quite darker than the original natives living in there.
“perhaps the universe would have become self-aware some billions of years in the past.”
Or, unlikely as it may be, we are seeing the event right now.
“Perhaps there is biology because it is the only thing which works.”
To generate every increasing complexity, that seems to be the case.
“In order for biology to work, it needs a religion. Religions are entirely a product of biology as far as I can see. ”
Religions are memes, for the most part xenophobic memes. There is a good case to be made that our ability to have religions at all is the result of selection for psychological traits leading to wars.
There is a notion that the purpose of humans is to give rise to computers/AI because God could not directly create AI without violating its own laws. That makes humans a tool of God.
I don’t know that I buy this reasoning, but makes as much sense as most other religious ideas.
Since South Korea has been mentioned:
“The United States has long been a pioneer in biomedical research, driving historic discoveries and achievements that have improved health and health care worldwide — such as sequencing of the human genome, effective treatments for cancer and HIV/AIDS, and the development of the Covid-19 vaccine, among many others. The U.S. biomedical research enterprise — which includes discovery and translational research that is funded or conducted by the federal government, academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and health care and public health entities — stands out as a leader among peer nations.
Yet because of a complex set of challenges — including persistent and evolving health threats, lack of national coordination and strategic vision, workforce instability, and disorganized funding — that status is increasingly difficult to sustain. In parallel, U.S. national investment in the biomedical research enterprise is growing more slowly than that of many other nations. Although at the present time the United States invests more total dollars than any other country, others have invested a greater percentage of their gross domestic product (GDP). China, for example, is increasing its investment in biomedical research year over year at nearly twice the rate of the United States, and South Korea spends a substantially larger percentage of its GDP on biomedical research than the United States.1
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb2412007?query=RP&cid=NEJM+Recently+Published%2C+October+1%2C+2024+DM2363145_NEJM_Non_Subscriber&bid=-1732944006
The pharmaceutical products that have been most beneficial were found long ago. The industry is being badly squeezed because safe, effective and profitable drugs are almost impossible to find. Corners are cut.
Also, microbes keep mutating away, especially when half-way vaccines are created. No one explains this to citizens, however.
This is a recent book:
Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails
https://www.amazon.com/Follow-Science-Sharyl-Attkisson/dp/0063314916/
“microbes keep mutating”
It’s worse than that. Antibiotic resistant genes move between various bacteria by horizontal gene transfer.
‘The United States has long been a pioneer in biomedical research, driving historic discoveries and achievements that have improved health and health care worldwide —’
Complete Claptrap
US medical industry set out very early on to destroy the real health industry – as has been noted here before – by crushing any alternative to the pharma model.
Pharma has led medicine down a rabbit hole of no return.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price shows how isolated groups had incredible health stats when the food being eaten was properly grown.
Food is Medicine; medicine is food mantra writ large.
Next you will be touting the US as a beacon for the free-world; Free-for-all, no holds barred.
Get out (of your narrative) more.
‘…the Covid-19 vaccine,..’ wow, you are kidding right?!
I think the covid vaccines were a good idea and saved millions of people.
But note, that was quoted out of the NEJM, I didn’t write it.
Don’t expect Keith to level with you….his career probably wouldn’t have been possible without all the grift in the STEM fields. It doesn’t matter if cancer research is not yielding new results, if the crusade to make all pathogenic microbes go extinct never ends, what is important is that clever and highly educated professionals such as Keith got paid a lot of money to make stuff and that kind of works and they got to socialize with other clever and highly educated professionals.
If someone threatened my livelihood no matter how preposterous or immoral, it was I’d be a little defensive.
“all the grift in the STEM fields.”
I know something about this topic. I was fired in 1972 because I would not certify a chunk of hardware that would not meet the MTBF specification. I either ran my own company or worked as a consultant the rest of my career, never again as an employee where they could put this kind of pressure on me.
“they got to socialize with other clever and highly educated professionals.”
I did, but little of that was in connection to work. It was almost all due to the people I met though the L5 Society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society
Thinking back, the chain originated with Carl Noggle, someone I met when I was in high school and roomed with in college. Through him I met Dan Jones, a physics PhD. I did a little technical rock climbing with Dan (who was much better at it than I was). When the O’Neill’s “Colonies in Space” article hit in 1974, Dan brought me a copy and that’s how my wife at the time and I got involved.
Dan told an interesting story about that article. Seems the physics department shut down the day it came in and verified all the assumptions and calculations.
“If someone threatened my livelihood no matter how preposterous or immoral,”
As above, I passed that test in 1972.
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Saw this on Twitter and thought of Dennis:
https://x.com/rajendranath_v/status/1840684098903544180
9.5 min.
Mesmerizing varied ag. automation.
Wow. What about the Amish and Vermonters?
Vermonters will feed themselves using the modified weed-whacker. Amish, idk. I wish them well. 😉
Those machines are very delicate. I know a thing or two about reliability. You should start a vegetable garden now. If you are in a cold winter climate, with hoophouses for winter greens and carrots. those machines will not last and will be one of the first to go.
Huge machines. They need massive scale to be cost effective. Usually this requires flat land, also. It is hard to scale up their use enough to cover the huge overhead of the companies.
And what happens if a part breaks, or a software update is needed?
They probably have expensive service contracts.
These machines may be sold as a “service” .
But I expect that the maker of the machines will have a hard time making an adequate return. There have to be a lot of users to cover the overhead costs, no matter how the system works.
I spent a lot of the day prompting an AI to make a website. It’s not perfect, but it’s still pretty amazing what it can do in a couple of hours. As the tools improve, a lot of highly paid developers are going to be displaced.
I’m guessing the result will be that the revenues and costs for digital services and “knowledge workers” will decline, so physical goods, physical production, physical assets will be the primary things that retain value. So, strangely, whether high tech wins (AI futurism) or fails (civilizational collapse), it may be that the physical world is re-emphasized.
White collar jobs will go . From writing code to serving coffee ??
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/brace-layoffs-ings-new-ai-model-definitely-outperforming-humans-pricing-currencies
The thing I’ve noticed is that AI doesn’t have to write as well as a skilled author, it just has to be cheaper than the unpaid interns that have been used for the last ten to fifteen years.
I know that writing and other “Services” are somewhat subjective but the quality of these things have gotten so bad in recent years that most people would not notice if ai wrote all the articles on cnn.com or foxnews.com or sung the latest pop music song. Some people welcome the arrival of ai visual art as an IMPROVEMENT over the output of current artists.
Ouch.
A few regulatory changes have made the internet more profitable.
A business culture that is biased against physical goods .Banning cash, taxes on business activities that involve physical activities such as carbon taxes.
governments allowing internet-based companies to form large conglomerates so they can become profitable and discourage smaller internet-based companies and non-internet based companies from competing.
Banks refusing loans to non-internet based companies. Banks and governments refusing to allow unprofitable but large internet-based companies that are part of conglomerates from failing.