We undergo periodic ”paradigm shifts” rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way. These paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding what was considered invalid before. This implies that the notion of truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria and is defined by consensus reality.
For instance, most people’s notion of the truth is the “Scarcity paradigm.” An example of the Scarcity paradigm is the belief that while food production expands linearly, population grows exponentially.
In other words, comparing worldwide population growth rates to global resource consumption rates it seems clear that we are running out of resources (and time). Right now there is almost seven billion people and by mid-century it will probably be around ten billion.
We are running out of food, water, fish, and oil to satisfy this rapidly growing population.
Since 2005 the price of wheat, corn, and rice has more than tripled, which reflects a dwindling of global food stocks. We are already farming around 80% of the arable land with reports on climate change showing crop production declining by ten to twenty percent in the next ten years. By 2030 demand for food is expected to increase 50%.
Only half a percent of the world’s water is fresh, and many aquifers have been nearly pumped dry, so demand will far outstrip the supply in the next 30 years.
Bottom trawling destroys about 6 million square miles of sea floor each year, and according to most projections we will be the generation that will run out of wild fish.
But worse is running out of oil because the modern world was built with it and runs on it. It takes about ten calories of oil to produce one calorie of food. Around half of the fuel consumed is oil product and more than half of that oil is used for transportation, a very fast growing sector of the world economy. It is estimated that demand for oil will increase 50% by 2025.
On the other hand, oil production has been flat since 2005. Peak oil, the point when maximum oil extraction has been reached (after which it will go into terminal decline) is near.
Such facts bring about cynicism, pessimism, and despair. Most people believe that the world is going downhill fast and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The hole is too deep to climb out of, and any information that confirms that suspicion will be remembered, while conflicting data will not even register – a confirmation bias.
Furthermore, there is a direct link between imagination and perception. We are saturated with “if it bleeds it leads” news reports. Our brain evolved prioritizing immediate threats, and while many dangers are probabilistic, our mind can’t easily differentiate between the improbable and the likely.
This knee jerk things-are-going-down-hill moaning pessimism is incredible from people living amid luxury and security that their ancestors would have died for. Innovation has played a huge role in averting disaster.
For instance, mankind was reaching the limit of our ability to feed ourselves when early 20th century chemists invented a technology to produce fertilizer. The Haber process sustains one-third of the population today, and it is estimated that half the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen that was originally fixed by this technology.
Optimism rather than pessimism is a sounder basis for a paradigm accessing reality. A true measurement of something’s worth is the hours it takes to acquire it, and we undoubtedly have more free time and more ways to spend it than our ancestors.
We’ve seen enormous progress in the last couple of centuries. Today, most poverty-stricken Americans have a TV, telephone, electricity, running water, a refrigerator, and indoor plumbing, luxuries the richest men on the planet didn’t have one hundred years ago.
In particular, there is a new clean, very very cheap, and super abundant energy technology emerging called “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” (LENR for short). It uses hydrogen and nickel to produce heat. No nuclear materials are used for fuel, and none are produced.
“A volume about the size of a #2 pencil eraser of water provides as much energy as two 48-gallon drums of gasoline. That is 355,000 times the amount of energy per volume – five orders of magnitude.” ( http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-LENR-Machine-is-the-Best-Yet.html ).
This phenomenon (LENR) has been confirmed in hundreds of published scientific papers: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf
“Over 2 decades with over 100 experiments worldwide indicate LENR is real, much greater than chemical…” —Dennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center
“Total replacement of fossil fuels for everything but synthetic organic chemistry.” —Dr. Joseph M. Zawodny, NASA
Unfortunately, the Scarcity paradigm is preventing people from believing this. The real possibility of electricity too cheap to meter is dismissed due to a confirmation bias. People’s minds can’t readily imagine this new energy technology being real, so they perceive that it is impossible.
Since any new technology needs investment for research and development, this Scarcity paradigm is a self-fulfilling prophesy. While there are new technologies emerging to address a score of scarcity issues like clean water, food availability, sewage disposal, security, housing, communication, education, information, environmental degradation, and transportation, many hinge on the abundance of cheap energy.
To summarize, most people believe that the world is going downhill fast and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Our mind can’t easily differentiate between the improbable and the likely. The tragic result is that we have difficulty imagining things getting better, which leads to the knee jerk rejection of likely solutions. If we could make the shift from the Paradigm of Scarcity, which so many people have so much invested in, to the Paradigm of Abundance, which seems too-good-to-be-true, a positive feedback will occur, where every new innovation will speed the next.
Our future will be so bright we’ll have to wear shades. The only catch is that we have to believe.
http://www.abundancethebook.com/
Suggested reading.
nice analysis, but just to give the true name of “the paradigm of scarcity” :
it is Malthusian theory…
the kind of theory that is fashion every 60 years, and prove wrong every time.
even without LENR revolution, the shale gas is killing the peak oil theory again.
because a soon as the wall get near, humanity start to use it’s brain to solve the problem.
the only law similar to the paradigm of scarcity, but validated, is the moore law. it works all the time.
peak-laws are only validated because some resource became useless, because it became so expensive that it cash incentive to replace it.
for example the 1974 crisis is a (now public) manipulation of the seven sisters (the oil oligopoly), who manipulated the oil produces, so oil became expensive, and thus allow new prospection, develop saving of energy, giving longer time to that oil monopoly…
the oil producers quickly realize it was developing their concurrents, and they stopped that suicidal price increase.
sadly for oil producers today, emerging countries need much oil, and developed countries are bankrupt and inflate massively to escape from oil price…
LENR and shale gas have in common that they are highly intensive in work, unlike classic oil who is geostrategic dependent. They will solve the todays crisis by massive local employment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
“It is estimated that half of the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen that was originally fixed by this process”
Mind-blowing.
Hi Ruby,
I’ve heard that evidence of this biological phenomenon was found some time ago.
What I want to know is when it is that the first product hits the shelves. Strange world isn’t it!
Very Best Regards,
Paul
I “see” two problems with the paradigm of abundance. One problem is of people making a conceptual shift from perceiving things as fundamentally scarce to things as abundant. The second problem is more of a moral attitude that wants to equate abundance with excess.
For example, if conservation is a moral good, then what happens to that good when one finds
an ‘unlimited,’ clean energy source? Will people conserve if they don’t need to conserve, or will it be out of sight, out of mind? It is one thing to live like a monk for spiritual reasons,
but what if you not only want to live like a monk, you want others to live like one as well?
If things are scarce, you can beat others over the head with that, in order to get them to live a sparse lifestyle. If they aren’t scarce, well then, the proverbial ‘cat’ is out of the bag.
I tend to be an optimist (and I owe it all to Ronald Reagan;) ) But serious, I thought he was going to blow us up, and not only did he not, he caused the Soviet Union to collapse and so, paradigm shift! we can now worry about peak oil instead of Mutually Assured Destruction!
At the time I didn’t see that change in the Zeitgeist coming and I don’t know if I’ll see ahead of time the next big change either. I would like to think that LENR is the next one, but maybe we should count the Arab Spring first (which I also didn’t see coming, however, it ain’t over). Point is though, collectively we are not very aware of what is coming down the road, Change comes, sometimes we’re in the vanguard, and sometimes we will be dragged along kicking and screaming. Most of the time, however, we will note it with twenty-twenty hindsight, saying that of course that is the case, furthermore, we knew it to be so all along.
Optimism is a healthy attitude.
However, humanity needs to stop three ticking time bombs.
The first is the potential unleashing of 50 years of high level radioactivity by fuel pools at Fukushima in the event of a highly probable strong earthquake. Steps need to be taken very fast to prevent a cataclysm.
The second is the potential for multiple meltdowns at nuclear plants worldwide as the result of a surprisingly likely solar storm collapsing power grids.
The third is climate change. LENR and a few other Black Swans – highly improbable innovations with huge implications – can be extremely helpful in attacking both of the latter.
See http://www.aesopinstitute.org for additional information about all three.
Without a massive program to prevent blackouts from a solar storm, which can employ new technology that will be in production this summer, emotional optimism will be tempered by intellectual reality.
This is the greatest challenge to humanity since World War Two.
So far, there is little sign of the needed action program. But, optimistically, that can change.
Yeah, I agree Mr Goldes. Me, I worry most about a genetically modified virus that is both extremely contagious and highly lethal causing a pandemic. Did you ever hear the story about the IL-4 gene and Austrialian mice (it is chilling). BTW, I worry less about radiation releases, (although MAD is still alive and well dispite the USSR breaking apart), but a “China Syndrome” would be mighty disasterous. Finally, according to the book Abundance everyone on Earth ought to be able to enjoy abundance in the next 30 years or so (but then according to the predictions of futurist Ray Kurzweil man ought to merge with machine by 2045). I worry least about global warming, because it can be averted easily and cheaply by putting a little (more) sun dimming aerosol into the atmosphere.
fukushima pool is a new hoax launched by some manipulators having agenda.
this catastrophe have yet killed nobody, and if managed well will kill less that on statistic worker (they have a small increase of cancer, much much less than smoking or drinking)
http://djysrv.blogspot.fr/2012/04/argh-debunking-some-nuclear-nonsense.html
for solar storm, let me laugh.
even if some crash happens, it will be manage like tempest, or like consequence of overload like US have often, because of underinvestment in lines, consequence or pathologic libertarian ideology.
i’m fed up by conspiracies and crazy panic. if there is a conspiracy, it is a visible conspiracy, public, a strong lobbying by environmentalist ayatollah trying to control our society, with a pretended to me moralist agenda.
if you look at history you see that Malthusian theory burst every half a century when the rich panic that their garden get crowded by dirty poor…
they manipulate the middle class to create fear of crowd…
few slaughter or genocides, and all is proved false…
next turn half a century later when the riches get afraid again.
don’t forget that in europe, and even across Atlantic a little, the fascist ideology was based on romantic environmentalist movement
the next challenge for humanity is to avoid dictatorship for the goodness of humanity that some officially prepare.
10:10 no pressure : you have been warned.
too bad 1920-30 years get rewritten to hide the truth.
Brad, You must have heard the E-Cat song by Tom and Doug. (the future’s so bright we’ll all have to wear shades). I have a copy of Abundance sitting on my table. Nothing about the E-Cat in this edition. Maybe the next edition will cover it.
The Earth has had LENR for billions of years. http://www.terrestrialnuclearprocesses.com/
” LIGHT ELEMENT” NUCLEAR REACTIONS
(He, He, He)
Joseph Fine
To be fair, the E-Cat song was written after I first introduced the catch line in my paper “The Future is So Bright, We’ll Have to Wear Shades, Thanks to LENR.”
http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/09/18/the-future-is-so-bright-we%E2%80%99ll-have-to-wear-shades-thanks-to-lenr/
To be fair, I published the paper “The Future is So Bright, We’ll Have to Wear Shades, Thanks to LENR” 18 september 2011, before the E-Cat song came out.
http://www.ecatnews.net/2011/09/18/the-future-is-so-bright-we%E2%80%99ll-have-to-wear-shades-thanks-to-lenr/
Mr Fine,
Do you recall the name of the person who said that Marconi was a charlatan and that this newfangled “wireless telegraphy” was just hocus-pocus ?
For the life of me, I cannot find his name.
Perhaps you might be able to help.
Where is just one 5,000 watt E-Cat running continually or any LENR
Want just one? Go to Bologna, Italia.
Sounds a lot like begging for wee bittof attention from non-challant whores off dark street corner. . They tell ya you should stay away for it’s sin. Nobody dares to go for two things For one, it is damn too much temptation and excitement and then juxta position of damn too much horror engrained into your mind that makes you so afraid what evil might wait there…. In doing so we stay safe . So we think…… But after all she’s just there another human just as afraid of you as you are afraid of her. Besides she might actually turn out to have heart of gold….. as LENR is to us…
@Alain – You said “i’m fed up by conspiracies and crazy panic. if there is a conspiracy, it is a visible conspiracy, public, a strong lobbying by environmentalist ayatollah trying to control our society…”
THEN you said: “…the rich panic that their garden get crowded by dirty poor…
they manipulate the middle class to create fear of crowd…”
You sure sound like a conspiracy theorist to me.
Excellent article Ruby. Humans are JUST beginning to learn that application of positive thinking can actually CHANGE the world around them. As confirmed by quantum “Observer” effect. Imagine!!
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/decision-to-entangle-effects-results-of-measurements-taken-beforehand.ars
Quantum decision affects results of measurements taken earlier in time
To be fair, changing paradigms leading to a positive feedback isn’t the same as the above or the quantum “Observer” effect, nor is it like Solipsism. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. In other words, it is a case where belief leads to actions that bring about what is believed.
Brad good to see somebody keeps up with reality.
When the conspiracy by science and the administration to hide the fact from the population that the World at base, is Quantum and therefore we know virtually nothing about it, is revealed to the public, children and many scientists then the World will change.
At present because science can explain nothing and knows very little about the Quantum World, they like many other things, hide it.
Children should be taught from an early age that we know nothing about the Quantum reality and it’s Wonderful and unknown meanings and genesis.
Only when the TRUTH is generally known can people appreciate the Wonder and Mystery of REALITY instead of being palmed off believing that the classical reductionist World is all there is and all that is known.
–
Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
Thomas Kuhn
not conspuiracy,
group psychology, visible lobbying.
look at WWF founder and you will understand that it is not a new fact.
people mistake between conspiracies and welle known interests, psychologies, visible manipulations…
all is in from of us, and invisible conspiracies, even if invisible, are only small events in a big visible trend or interests.
my recurrent Malthusian conspiracy if rich is simply usual psychology, and if you read well the history, all is public.
The environmentalist movement, beside that Malthusian motivation, is also fed by self economic interest, by the en of other religions (while many brains need a religion to accept the world as it is imperfect and unpredicted, a Gaïa religion, conspiracy theories, often both…), also by parasitic business (like renewable energy salesmen, carbon finance, politicians)…
People opium. simply.
People talk with certainty about this or that, but those at the forefront of discovery know how vast the chasm of unknowing is.
Here is a vimeo of what all the fuss is about at CERN.
http://vimeo.com/41038445
Notice how much they don’t know. No-one has earned the right to talk authoritatively. Don’t let the turkeys get you down
From href= “http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html”APOD.
Interesting video Arthur. Astute scientists are never afraid to say “We don’t know.” This simple admission opens a portal to unlimited knowledge.
Regarding the limits of resources, I like to quote Arthur C. Clarke’s masterpiece “Profiles of the Future” written in 1963:
“The heavy hydrogen in the seas can drive all our machines, heat all our cities, for as far ahead as we can imagine. If, as is perfectly possible, we are short of energy two generations from now, it will be through our own incompetence. We will be like Stone Age men freezing to death on top of a coal bed.
. . . there need never be any permanent shortage of raw materials. Yet Sir George Darwin’s prediction that ours would be a golden age compared with the aeons of poverty to follow, may well be perfectly correct. In this inconceivably enormous universe, we can never run out of energy or matter. But we can all too easily run out of brains.”
Clarke did not mean we can waste resources or that we don’t need to worry about overpopulation. He made it clear that population must be controlled, pollution reduced, and wilderness must be preserved.
Regarding shortages of land and water, Clarke proposed the use of indoor food factories, which are only now being developed. With such factories we could grow all of the plant food we now grown in the U.S., including fodder for animals, in an area roughly the size of greater New York City. Water consumption would reduced by several orders of magnitude.
I discussed these issues in my book, “Cold Fusion and the Future.” See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf