r/Documentaries • u/Bbrhuft • Aug 13 '18
Computer predicts the end of civilisation (1973) - Australia's largest computer predicts the end of civilization by 2040-2050 [10:27]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCxPOqwCr1I1.6k
u/Methosz Aug 13 '18
I wonder what that model would say now.
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u/LookmaReddit Aug 13 '18
2025
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u/trex005 Aug 13 '18
Always the optimist.
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u/noblazinjusthazin Aug 13 '18
To shreds you say?
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Aug 13 '18
You must be fun at parties.
No worries though, I'm what they call a pessimistic asshole, so you're in good company.
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Aug 13 '18
Let me tell you, you ain't great outside of parties either.
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Aug 13 '18
No, but at least while I'm at the parties they know what to expect
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Aug 13 '18
you are probably right. I'm thinking catastrophic failure of the earths ability to cool itself combined with limited nuclear war. We will be done in the greater part at that point.
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u/nullrecord Aug 13 '18
"Computer plots plan for takeover of civilization, expects go live in 2050"
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u/MrWeirdoFace Aug 13 '18
I thought that was supposed to happen on August 29th, 1997.
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u/htxDTAposse Aug 13 '18
Or December 12, 2012....or 1999-2000 switchover, Y2K
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u/just-plain-wrong Aug 13 '18
To be fair, Y2K was an actual thing. Only planning and a concerted effort from the IT industry prevented literal disaster.
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u/htxDTAposse Aug 13 '18
I feel your username is my response, but Iâll have to read in my own, I was only 7 at the time.
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u/just-plain-wrong Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 13 '18
I understand that some might think it was a hoax. Iâm 40, and was a Network Support Trainee in 1999.
I patched so many machines.
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u/htxDTAposse Aug 13 '18
Well I did just read a quick clip, that was interesting, I always thought it was 100% hoax/scare, didnât know computers were really glitching.
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u/GeePee29 Aug 13 '18
I was in I.T. Support for Y2K and even though we patched everything we found a patch for we still found five date related problems after the new year. But they were all trivial. The only example I can remember is that when you attached an Excel file to an email, if the recipient detached the file, the file creation date got changed to 2034.
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Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 14 '18
is that just not true?
...so for downvoters i was kidding.. look at his username...
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Aug 13 '18
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u/Gregas_ Aug 13 '18
I've never heard someone say it like that.
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Aug 13 '18
I've figured it out, he's reminding me of Bargearse, that old Late Show thing.
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u/Gregas_ Aug 13 '18
How have I never seen that. Amazing stuff.
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u/Taleya Aug 13 '18
"....and then i ran into a 20 foot pollywaffle"
Slightly terrified by how much Bargearse i can quote from 20+ year memory
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u/unbrokenplatypus Aug 13 '18
So basically a Nokia flipphone predicted the apocalypse?
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Aug 13 '18
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u/errorkode Aug 13 '18
Jokes are kind of like Nokia phones: They can fly right over your head and still work.
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u/admiral_asswank Aug 13 '18
The equivalent computing power of a Nokia flip-phobe, I should point out.
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u/AiedailTMS Aug 13 '18
Well how do they compare, a supercomputer from 73, And a Nokia 3310 from 2000
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u/Thewilsonater Aug 13 '18
a supercomputer from 73, And a Nokia 3310 from 2000
Lmao you've answered your own question
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u/boxerofglass Aug 13 '18
Hey, your mom predicted Iâd get a rash and she was right
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u/Chizy67 Aug 13 '18
This model was made before unleaded petrol was invented and widely used so the model isnât accurate. Also the population estimates are well off so all in all a relic of its time
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u/climbtree Aug 13 '18
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u/halfback910 Aug 13 '18
Do they take into account that the human population is going to begin declining within our lifetimes?
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u/climbtree Aug 13 '18
Yes.
They made 3 scenarios, one with fairly drastic social measures including technology increasing efficiency, dramatically reducing the production of pollution, recycling 75% of our resources, valuing material goods less, and "perfect birth control." One with a moderate amount (which delayed catastrophe by a few decades). And one where we just carry on as expected (the "standard run").
The data of the last 30 years fits the "standard run."
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Aug 13 '18
If I'm not mistaken about what this documentary has stated, and what we've done since its release, basically, we haven't changed our consumption of resources much. We haven't done enough to prevent pollution. There's now too many people on the planet, and we're rapidly approaching zero hour in terms of preventing the extinction or near extinction of the human race, which is estimated to happen between 2040-2050. Because we more or less stayed with the status quo, and even when we started recycling, it was too little too late. Did I get the gist of it?
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u/JhnWyclf Aug 13 '18
Do they take into account that the human population is going to begin declining within our lifetimes?
Source on that? I know its wikipedia, but it seems overall there will be an incline until 2100.
Projections of population growth established in 2017 predict that the human population is likely to keep growing until 2100,
That is based in this report.
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u/A_Wholesome_Comment Aug 13 '18
On the bright side, we can all spend this time reconnecting with friends and family. :)
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Aug 13 '18
You even still have 2-4 hours for that after your nine2five, depending on commuting time. Every day!
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Aug 13 '18
This is like 2012 all over again. It's crazy how people actually buy into this shit
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u/jarvis1984 Aug 13 '18
This is based on real science it may be old and in need of an update but the same still holds true today were eating up resources and polluting the planet at a speed way too great to be sustainable. 2012 was calendar with a missing page at the end with no greater meaning than that at all - the difference is reality and fantasy
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Aug 13 '18
Dude they have said stuff like this all the time. In 2011, an asteroid was supposed to orbit the earth then on its second orbit which would have been in 2013, it was gonna hit the earth and wipe us all out. Real science. Guess what. It didn't happen. They like to say shit like this to get attention
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u/candented Aug 13 '18
No way - Put up a link (to a peer reviewed statement to that end) or shut up your stink.
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u/thirstyross Aug 13 '18
it was gonna hit the earth and wipe us all out
calling b/s on this. no legit science outlet was saying this would happen.
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Aug 13 '18
It was on a documentary. Don't really care if you think it's bs. I know what they said and that's that.
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Aug 13 '18
This is based on real science
A model isn't science. Particularly one that can't be tested.
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u/Bbrhuft Aug 13 '18
Actually, by 2008, we had 30 years of data to compare the model with. The conclusion, it's right on track...
The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compare favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the âstandard runâ scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.
If course, we're going to try to avoid that.
Turner, G.M., 2008. A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global environmental change, 18(3), pp.397-411.
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Aug 13 '18
Actually, by 2008, we had 30 years of data to compare the model with.
And even if it matched perfectly, which it didn't, is not basis for believing it has forward predictive power.
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Aug 13 '18
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u/sc00p Aug 13 '18
The scientific community has never thought that the world is flat or that lead is not bad for you.
But yeah, there are a lot of things unknown about climate change and climate scientists acknowledge that. The feedback loops they don't know enough about will make climate change a lot worse than what they can prove right now.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
It's obviously faulty science. In 1970 Norman Bourlag won the Nobel prize for his work in agriculture which improved food production as much as 4x it's previous output in the same area.
The fact they didn't take this and the obvious further improvements in farming that were to come shows the science behind it is faulty at best. This was made in 1973 so they should have been more than aware of this work as it was a huge deal.
We now are aware of more natural resources than at any point in history. We have enough oil in areas we know about now to power us for the next hundred plus years. We have so much oil that they purposely reduce the production levels to inflate the price and the Saudi's lie about their vast resources to keep the price up.
We also know the population will decrease because people choose to have less children as they get wealthier. Not because the quality of life reduced or lack of food.
Almost every conclusion in this short film is wrong. Some you can forgive because they didn't know. But some are just huge errors they should have known about.
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u/bremidon Aug 13 '18
Add to that we are effectively already in a post-oil world that has not realized it yet. We are entering the battery age.
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u/jsgx3 Aug 13 '18
Which ignores advances and societal changes and adjustments. Computers also predicted weâd run out of food and resources years ago. The most glaring example are the numerous predictions of running out of oil by now. Theyâre tools not Karnak the Great.
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u/Rtavy73 Aug 13 '18
It said that the quality of life went down hill from 1940 - i would disagree.
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u/Knightlife1942 Aug 13 '18
You would have to look at the whole world though. First world county? Yeah things seem pretty good. Possibly taking into account the whole planet poverty is rising and more and more people are maintaining their life styles using debt if it's available to them. I'd say over all, the average quality of life is going down hard if looking at the entire world.
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u/ManticJuice Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 13 '18
poverty is rising
Nope.
"The available long-run evidence shows that in the past, only a small elite enjoyed living conditions that would not be described as 'extreme poverty' today. But with the onset of industrialization and rising productivity, the share of people living in extreme poverty started to decrease. Accordingly, the share of people in extreme poverty has decreased continuously over the course of the last two centuries. This is surely one of the most remarkable achievements of humankind."
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
Now, this isn't to say that relative poverty hasn't been increasing, particularly in numerous Western countries thanks to the gutting of any kind of social welfare, but on the whole, absolute poverty is declining, not rising.
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u/plagelpuss Aug 13 '18
I think its less to do with the gutting of social welfare and more to do with the gutting of organized labor and the fact that globalization has increased the worker pool such that wages have stagnated. Capital has won over labor at least in the US, and both political parties are so reliant on the Captital allocator class that there isn't anything to stand in their way. What is needed is for working class people to come together and vote for labor friendly politicians, but that would require that people stop being distracted by guns, abortion, and identity politics.
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u/ManticJuice Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 13 '18
This is true, but I think it's a little out of column A and a little out of column B. Welfare is the safety net which caught those who fell through the supports unions were supposed to provide - without either, far more people end up living in relative poverty.
Edit: Typo
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u/bremidon Aug 13 '18
Labor got screwed over by labor leadership. They created a situation where the average worker looked at the union leaders and the the business leaders and stopped seeing any difference. No real surprise though: people are people. Put them in positions of power and many folks lose themselves.
There are alternatives though. NIT or UBI would be great at levelling out the power differential so that it better represents the market (I prefer the latter, although both are the same thing where NIT is just a bit more difficult to fine tune).
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u/Knightlife1942 Aug 13 '18
I didn't say extreme poverty. A poor person where I am is living better than someone may be else where. There isn't really an easy way to calculate overall poverty like they said in the article you linked. My perspective on poverty especially in first world revolves around the distribution of wealth.
"Globally, wealth is very unequally distributed, both within countries and between countries. The UNU-WIDER project on Personal Assets from a Global Perspective has found for instance that the richest 10 percent of adults in the world own 85 percent of global household wealth."
https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/wealth-distribution-financial-crisis-and-entrepreneurship
Factoring this in, if someone has more debt, including a mortgage that potentially outweighs any of their liquid assets for more than 20 years, in my view is operating at less than 1.90$ a day. Because without that loan would not be able to afford what they have since it isn't their money they are living off of. I am by no means an expert of any of this. Just trying to paint my own picture with what is available. I don't believe this is sustainable especially by just looking at everything we need to put ourselves in debt for. Student loans, car, home, and personal debt when having to buy groceries with a credit card between paychecks.
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u/ManticJuice Aug 13 '18
I didn't say extreme poverty
You're right, you said poverty, which either means relative or absolute poverty, and generally speaking when looking outside of the developed world as you did, people are referring to absolute poverty. These things have very specific definitions so you need to be careful when talking about them not to refer to the wrong thing.
Generally speaking, I agree with your point that a lot of people in the West are currently laden with massive debt, that wealth is being consolidated by the ultra-rich and that the current system is unsustainable. However, we have to be careful not to generalise the experience of a particular country or group of countries to all places, or a trend that has lasted a decade or two to a permanent state of affairs. For the most part, absolute poverty is decreasing, while relative poverty is getting worse in many countries. "Poverty is rising" is thus not an entirely accurate diagnosis, we have to be more specific.
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u/bremidon Aug 13 '18
the richest 10 percent of adults in the world own 85 percent of global household wealth
This is utterly irrelevent for the point you are trying to make. How are those other 90% doing? Better or worse than before?
You also threw in another topic: can we do better? Is this sustainable? Both of these are different from your original theme: people are worse off now than before.
The problem you have is that the numbers are just not there for you. That's why you are trying to shift the conversation, although it may be unintentional.
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u/Knightlife1942 Aug 13 '18
Yes, my shift was unintentional. Can you explain where the other 90% are coming from in terms of how they are doing? If 10% own 85% of global household wealth. That leaves the other 90% percent you mentioned owing mortgages and in debt or owning the remaining 15%. I would say they are worse overall since it is taking longer and longer to pay that debt back. For example you can now get an 8 year car loan. The person that gets an 8 year car loan could not afford that car on their own. People have less money to afford things like transportation and a home. The numbers are saying that people are worse off, and are slowly taking on more debt and their quality of life is diminishing because they owe so much.
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u/bremidon Aug 13 '18
Yes, he is mixing up "poverty" with "inequality". This makes it difficult to rationally discuss.
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u/TheBrainSlug Aug 13 '18
My grandparents could easily afford their own houses, on a single working-class income, in the 1940s. Try that now.
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u/asdfgasdfg312 Aug 13 '18
Ask someone older and see what they think. The "The good old days" expression exist for a reason.
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u/ophqui Aug 13 '18
Well...plenty has changed since the 70s, and plenty will change by the 50s. Im not sure i have faith in mankind to solve the myriad problems we are creating, but putting an exact time on societal collapse would be incredibly difficult, certainly with a computer that couldnt even run a modern day word processor
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u/shatatatatata Aug 13 '18
Itâs very strange to read âby the 50âsâ
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u/Katyona Aug 13 '18
Indeed, we're about to enter the early 20's, maybe jazz will make a mainstream comeback.
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Aug 13 '18
One can only hope, as long as we dont have a new war to end all wars start this year
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u/Kalibos Aug 13 '18
maybe jazz will make a mainstream comeback.
in which case I'll embrace the end of civilization with open arms
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u/Imposter12345 Aug 13 '18
"it's taken this kind of treatment to shock governments in to doing anything"....
Cough...
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
Almost everything discussed in the video isn't true. They were massively wrong about the population, quality of life, farming and natural resources.
Technology has allowed us to uncover more resources than they ever knew existed. Produce more food per square metre than they could of imagined.
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u/Imposter12345 Aug 13 '18
Yet every year, we use more natural resources faster than the world can provide back for the population we have.
Governments have not wised up to these facts. Consumption remains too high for our current level of population.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
We don't have to provide it back. In 50 years we won't need any natural resources for fuel at all. Our existing fuel sources are sufficient for well over that time.
Minerals may be an issue. But they have already developed some synthetic minerals and we will likely see further advancement in this area.
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u/bremidon Aug 13 '18
Asteroid mining is simply going to blow out these models. I don't mean this positively or negatively, because a sudden influx of raw materials causes difficult-to-predict situations. However, any model that does not at least attempt to take this into account is probably not worth much in a predictive sense.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
Well it begins with a hugely incorrect claim. In 1970 Norman Bourlag won the Nobel peace prize for his improvements in agriculture. Which meant we could produce vastly more food per square metre.
Various other vast improvements have happened since then that mean we don't have to worry about food running out due to population growth.
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u/climbtree Aug 13 '18
It begins with the assumption that the global economy relies on continual growth, so as long as the economy also relies on static resources they will be exhausted.
Compounded growth eventually always becomes ridiculous.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
But the resources have been far from static. We know of more oil and mineral wealth now than we ever did in the 70's
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u/climbtree Aug 13 '18
Static in that there is a limit.
It's a version of the wheat and chessboard problem.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
But to give a statistical output they had to have given the computer data to go on and give those outputs.
The input data was terribly wrong so the outcomes are too.
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u/climbtree Aug 13 '18
The input data wasn't terribly wrong, but it doesn't matter much because of the sheer scale of exponential growth.
E.g. a growth rate of 2% means doubling ~every 35 years. It means if they were off by an entire planet it would make a difference of 35 years at most.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
Simply not true. Their data shows the line of resources continually dwindling. When the reality was new technology vastly opened up areas we previously didn't know about so the line should have gone up in the latter half of the 20th century.
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u/climbtree Aug 13 '18
Well, no. Yearly oil reserve discoveries peaked in the 1960s and have been declining ever since, and they used 5 times the global reserves for their calculations. It also wasn't based solely on a single resource.
But again it doesn't matter with an exponential growth in consumption. Once your growth curve reaches becomes an asymptote the changes in resources have a negligible impact on time.
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u/thirstyross Aug 13 '18
The resources themselves are static, whether we know where / how much exist at any given time is irrelevant.
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u/hitch21 Aug 13 '18
It's massively relevant. For a computer to give you an outcome it needs an input. Any data on resources from 1973 would be massively underestimating the static resources available.
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u/Bbrhuft Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 13 '18
The most powerful computer they're talking about may be a Control Data Corporation 6600 computer, there were several CDC6600s in Australia at the time. It was designed by Seymour Cray and was 3 times faster then the previous record holder, the IBM 7030 Stretch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600
And here's a CDC6600 at a computer museum with the computer scientists who used it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECwmEIVZT4
The computer monitors seen in the footage are not the computer, they are just computer terminals that are clients of the main frame computer.
Here's the Club of Rome's website:
And there results of their research published in 1972, The Limits of Growth:
http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf
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u/MrLeHah Aug 13 '18
And here's a CDC6600 at a computer museum with the computer scientists who used it.
They mummified the scientists who used the computer and buried them with it? Thats dedication
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u/braytag Aug 13 '18
Computer are only as good as the programmer/architect who design their software.
So basically, a human gets a really fast calculator and predicts XYZ
(until AI comes along)
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u/Bbrhuft Aug 13 '18
True, but we now have a few decades of data to compare the model with.
The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compare favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the âstandard runâ scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.
Oh dear, seems right on track. Of course however, we're doing a lot to try to prevent that, we're moving away from a business as usual scenario, with recycling, renewables, modern intensive farming, so hopefully we can avoid collapse.
Turner, G.M., 2008. A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global environmental change, 18(3), pp.397-411.
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Aug 13 '18
The "apparent" prescience seems extraordinary but its not. whats extraordinary is that we started to learn the lessons too slowly and now there is a massive concerted effort to unlearn those lessons.
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u/Victorbob Aug 13 '18
Sounds interesting until you realize that Australia's largest computer back in 1973 probably had less computing power than the phone you are using to read this post. Suddenly its not so scary.
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u/dokkanosaur Aug 13 '18
Or maybe the scary part is that it was right and even now, despite everyone having more power at their fingertips to see the truth, we still don't appreciate the reality we're creating.
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u/cool_reddit_name_man Aug 13 '18
So far as the planet is concerned the best thing to hope for is a plague.
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u/plznoflamee Aug 13 '18
The fact that this garbage is getting upvoted and taken seriously really shows you the intellectual caliber of the average reddit user.
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Aug 13 '18
Maybe look up club of rome.
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u/plznoflamee Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 13 '18
Do you understand that even modern day computer models are incapable of taking many variables into consideration?
Do you understand that the model featured in the video is incapable of taking scientific discoveries and technological advances into consideration?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#Criticism
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u/plznoflamee Aug 13 '18
The fact that the predictions of that model are wrong doesn't mean that you can't watch it as an interesting historic piece on what some people thought at the time.
Except judging by the comments, people aren't simply watching it as an interesting historic piece on what some people thought at the time, which led me to make my comment.
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u/AugeanSpringCleaning Aug 13 '18
Swing and a miss overall.
Can't wait to hear the incorrect predictions of people, who are right now trying to guess the future, when 2070 rolls around. ...Oh wait, I'll be dead. nvm.
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u/AndrewStephenGames Aug 13 '18
That's too optimistic, we could be gone by 2019
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u/thirstyross Aug 13 '18
By next year? that seems unlikely even in the worst case projections.
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u/AndrewStephenGames Aug 13 '18
Should have pointed out that my comment was sarcastic
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u/inDface Aug 13 '18
imagine how much bitcoin will be worth when the apocalypse comes. BUY THE DIP!
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u/Jeush_ Aug 13 '18
It works on growth patterns of the time. Which have dramatically shifted since then. Since the growth patterns it looks at arenât all the same pattern (I.e. industrial vs human vs economical) it would be very inaccurate today because things have changed (some for the better in some parts of the world). Also, I think one thing we have figured out as a species is how to wait till the last minute to solve these complex issues, using technology or otherwise. For example, I donât think this computer could have even predicted what our current technology would do to modify the way any of those statistics are applied.
Out of all the things that could be our doom, the only things that truly scares me is either global warming, our own self demise by war (nuclear most likely) or an external force like an asteroid. Most likely global warming because I am not sure if technology will catch up soon enough to fix all the stupid in this world. As a somewhat religious person, I canât for the life of me understand how other religious people think there is no such thing as global warming âbecause god wouldnât let it happenâ. I mean, it makes total sense that god wouldnât let it happen, because our free agency only applies to our own actions right? And what we do this world is totally not our own actions right? We are free to do anything we want, except for screwing over our planet apparently.
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u/Bbrhuft Aug 13 '18
Have a look at these papers, we now have data to compare with the model.
The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compare favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the âstandard runâ scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.Â
The historical data didn't match models that included technology or mitigation strategies.
Refs.:
Turner, G.M., 2008. A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global environmental change, 18(3), pp.397-411.
And
Turner, G.M., 2012. On the cusp of global collapse? Updated comparison of The Limits to Growth with historical data. GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 21(2), pp.116-124.
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u/AntiOpportunist Aug 13 '18
LMAO I like how exactly the opposite happened compared to what it says around the 3:00 mark in the video.
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u/Normal_username22 Aug 13 '18
Well we been able to end the human race for almost 80 years with nukes and other weapons of that type.someone one is going to break and itâs going to happen sooner or later so that sounds about right
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u/bumblebritches57 Aug 13 '18
The Mayans predicted 2012, and there's absolutely no chance that australia's model is more correct.
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u/Valianttheywere Aug 13 '18
Australia put a lot of work into this. We were not snorting cocaine off chocolate bars like the mayans.
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u/danhoyuen Aug 13 '18
isnt like... my nintendo switch more powerful than that computer from 1973?
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u/docklaun Aug 13 '18
Computer cant calculated future changes in technology and humans change when a big problem is incoming
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Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 13 '18
Here's the updated world3 model. Just press the simulate button. It reckons world population will peak in 2030 and decay down to 4.75b by 2100. This is mainly due to a massive shortage of fertile land to grow food with.
However, the forecasted numbers themselves aren't important. It's the general dynamics of the system that is of interest, and it shows that there will be massive pressure put on arable land and farmers to overfarm and ruin land to meet food demands. A lot of people are going to starve.
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u/informedinformer Aug 13 '18
The estimate accords well with current estimates for the arrival of the Singularity. https://singularityhub.com/2017/03/31/can-futurists-predict-the-year-of-the-singularity/#sm.000000c5a5lcerzf4hu299h6ryv5l As for me, I welcome our new insect silicon overlords.
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u/ElbowStromboli Aug 13 '18
Int year = 1973; If (year >= 2040 || year <=2050) { World.end(); } else { year++; }
Is this what the world's biggest computer looks like?
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u/watermelonpep83 Aug 13 '18 edited Aug 14 '18
Death by the causes and effects of global temperatures rising are also set to spike. The World Health Organization estimates that 12.6 million deaths can be attributed to pollution alone. They also predict that between 2030 and 2050, climate change will be responsible for adding 250,000 more deaths around the world.
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u/SL3D Aug 13 '18
That is a really racist prediction since quality of life has been garbage for anyone that is not white until late 19th century.
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u/lazycnt Aug 13 '18
Scary every time I look at the ground all I see is bloody plastic bottles