To make a long story short, Hanson says that we're running out of energy and, that when we finally do, our
    civilization will collapse. He should know. He has dedicated considerable time studying the problem.

    I don't disagree with any of Hanson's arguments regarding resource depletion. Indeed, I will go a little further
    than him publicly and say that the mathematical economists are a bunch of idiots. I know he agrees, but he is
    too polite to say it in such uncertain terms. In my humble opinion, he has not been explicit enough on this
    point.

    Where we absolutely disagree, perhaps again because Hanson is not explicit enough, is on two issues:

    1. whether we will ever get to the point where energy scarcity or depletion will matter

    2. whether the 'collapse of our civilization' is a euphemism for 'the extinction of Man'

    Specifically, I want to address his misplaced argument that energy has anything to do with the collapse of
    Man.

    Like all the well-intentioned catastrophists at Dieoff, Hanson dutifully warns you that the sky is falling.    
    Unfortunately, these folks raise the wrong arguments, and the economists end up slaughtering them at the
    meetings. The mathematical idiots of economics follow the doctrines of authorities, the likes of Kuznets,
    Simon, and Friedman, people who have Nobel Prizes under their armpits. The great white father of the
    economists is Adam Smith! What more needs to be said? These 'scholars' are the heroes of millions of
    people and they propagate the notion that  technology is unlimited and solves all of our problems. Ran out
    of oil? No problem! It's just an matter of price. We are a resilient species. We will invent something in the
    future. It is a waste of time to even argue against these people. They are irrational individuals. Certainly, you
    will never convince them, so why even try? A more rewarding approach is to treat them as idiots and to poke
    fun at them. Then you will at least enjoy yourself!

    To make Hanson's position even more fragile, the economists are backed by the idiots of relativity: Einstein's
    disciples. Relativists are people who believe that there is stuff like zero energy, and negative energy, and
    black holes. They talk about producing physical objects from the abstract concept energy:

    " in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/anti-
       particle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The
       answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the
       universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by
       gravity… the gravitational field has negative energy… this negative gravitational
       energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total
       energy of the universe is zero." (p. 129) [1]

    Just as bad, they believe that the ghost of energy can be converted into mass and transported on a horse:

    " The transfer of energy can take various forms"  [2]

    So what chances does a rational person have of convincing the politicians who take their cues from the
    idiots of the economic establishment who are backed by the idiots of Mathematical Physics. That's a lot of
    zombies to overcome! There is nothing that any rational human being can say or do at this point to convince
    the powers that be that 'energy' is a problem or that the human race will come to an end soon. We are beyond
    the point of no return. Any proposal will now have to defeat the formidable 'unlimited technology' argument
    that the entire establishment believes in. If you want to challenge the economists on the issue of energy, you
    will first have to step into the ring with a relativist and 'prove' to him that technology has come to an end.
    Good luck!

    The rational people of our planet should face the truth once and for all: the entire world of 'science' has
    collectively lost its mind. The rational members of society have allowed this to happen. The rational folk have
    allowed misguided individuals such as Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg to take the reins of Science. Now
    everyone has to live with an entire generation of relativists and mechanics who repeat what they learned
    from their elders. We are talking about people who believe in space-time, warped space, wormholes, parallel
    universes, time-travel, and 0D, sizeless particles. We are talking about people who explain physical
    phenomena with concepts such as field, mass, time, energy and virtual particles. These are our famous
    'scientific' leaders. These are the people we gave power to.

    The result is that our amusing species is running around like a chicken without a head, believing that it will
    live for centuries when it is actually about to take the last step into the abyss. Energy critics like Hanson are
    still salvageable and give me hope that I will not die alone in this enormous sea of ignorance. He already
    senses that something is wrong. He calls it energy. His argument is bullshit because we will never make it
    that far and because he doesn't phrase his argument in scientific terms. In Science, there is no such thing
    as energy. The word energy belongs exclusively to religion.

    But Hanson may be ready for a more significant realization. With a little nudge, I can perhaps help him trip
    over the cliff of ignorance and convince him that there is nothing we can do about the extinction of our
    species. In fact, he will probably live long enough to see it happen. Only when he loses all hope can he
    hope to die in peace.
J. Hanson, Titanic Sinks, Die Off, (1998) 143.
J. Hanson, The Secret: oil crunch is coming, Die Off (2002)
J. Hanson, Synopsis, Die Off (2001)
Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist
We are running
out of fuel
Now that the oil wells have
dried up, I guess it's back to
the good old days!


Come on, Steve! Take the plunge into the
Abyss of Knowledge! Or would you rather
remain a relativist until the end of time?

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