

Larry Page on how to change the world - jkush
http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/magazines/fortune/larry_page_change_the_world.fortune/

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brooksbp
"Even when we started Google, we thought, "Oh, we might fail," and we almost
didn't do it. The reason we started is that Stanford said, "You guys can come
back and finish your Ph.D.s if you don't succeed.""

So true. Society has formed a horrible notion of stressing the importance of
earning your degree(s) right after high school and in consecutive order.

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aupajo
I like the fact that he stays optimistic and talks about the opportunities we
have to make a difference, rather than complain about all the problems we
have.

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tokipin
yea, people that do that annoy me

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gcheong
I went to google's san francisco's open house a few months back where Vincent
G. Serf (<http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#vint>) gave a talk and at
one point he mentioned a list of engineering "grand challenges" put together
by the National Academy of Engineering. It's an interesting list and may
provide some good food for thought for anyone with a bit of free time on their
hands:

<http://engineeringchallenges.org/cms/challenges.aspx>

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nazgulnarsil
i notice that all those challenges are related to one challenge that isn't
mentioned. the exponential function as it relates to human population is the
basis of most problems.

at some point engineering doesn't matter, there simply won't be enough
resources to keep everyone alive, much less with a decent standard of living.

how do we reconcile our innate capacity to continuously expand with a finite
world?

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Xichekolas
Population growth has been slowing in the last couple decades. An odd effect
of economic success (as a nation) seems to be vastly lower birthrates. It
could be ready access to contraceptives, or more women working, or whatever,
but it's an obvious trend. Nations like Japan and Italy have negative
replacement rates at the moment.

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Rate_of_increa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Rate_of_increase)

Aside from that, population pressures do build, but they can't just build
forever. Eventually something happens (war, famine, technological
breakthrough) that solves the problem in the short term. If we suddenly run
out of some critical resource, that will suck for individuals, and the ensuing
resource wars may take a terrible toll, but the race as a whole will survive
and grow again.

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nazgulnarsil
sure, but the point is to choose sustainability because if we don't nature
chooses war, famine, or disease for us.

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Xichekolas
But 'sustainable' population isn't necessarily zero population growth. On a
macro scale, even the population explosion of the last 40 years has so far
been sustainable due to huge advances in agriculture, health care, and energy.
As long as our ability to provide those things grows at the same or better
rate as our population, it is sustainable.

(I'll note I am using the literal definition of 'sustainable' here... able to
be sustained. As an nerd, I'd really like our future ability to provide those
things to be environmentally and socially sound, but that wasn't what I was
talking about.)

Exponential population growth becomes a problem when we give up innovating.

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nazgulnarsil
Of course, but shouldn't we desire that every human has a decent standard of
living? we're currently NOT producing/distributing enough for the world's 6
billion humans. people are dying for lack of food and water.

the point is that if we continue to expand at the same rate MORE people will
be born into terrible conditions.

It's not so easy to take the stance that technology and free market forces
will solve the population problem when you see the horrible results of demand
outpacing supply for basic resources in real life. In real life, demand
dropping means people died. this isn't an economics class.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
you mentioned it yourself in another thread: _but yes, the growth rate in any
given year is limited by resources available and human innovation_

I think that human population can well outstrip innovation especially when you
consider that an innovation _now_ can take many years to disseminate to the
world at large.

~~~
Xichekolas
But human population hasn't outstripped innovation or our ability to acquire
resources up to this point. Why would it now? It's quite evident that
worldwide living conditions have generally risen throughout our history. And I
don't see why any innovation now would take _longer_ to affect the world at
large. If anything, with our superior communication and transportation
(compared to the rest of history), innovation propagates much much faster.
Hence things like the industrial and the Green Revolution.[1]

Also population growth worldwide has been declining for a couple decades now.
Surely our ability to innovate won't likewise decline. Generally innovation
seems to accelerate (more people spend more time thinking and less time
acquiring basic necessities).

Just read about Norman Borlaug[2] to see what I am talking about. His work on
wheat has been credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.

I am curious though, how would you solve the overpopulation problem?
Reproductive controls don't work very well (and make people
miserable/rebellious), and you can't just kill off a bunch of people (like you
said, not an economics class), so what do we do? The most effective birth
control method for a nation so far has been economic success for women (look
at birth rates in the West compared to the developing world).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug>

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nazgulnarsil
I don't have an answer and I also don't think this problem will ever go away.
Humans will always expand right up to the limit of whatever is currently
supportable. If we're right at the limit all the time that means fluctuations
will sometimes take us above that limit.

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dangoldin
The thing that struck me was the point about Moore's Law not being applicable
to cars - which seems to go against his point of not believing in limits.

If we all expected cars to double their efficiency every 2 years maybe people
would be working on that just like they are working hard to double the number
of transistors every 2 years.

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pchristensen
It's a reflection of the physical limits of transportation. Even if you have a
weightless car, you still have to move the weight of the passenger, who's a
lot heavier than the electrons getting moved around in computers. Really,
nothing in history has improved as fast as computer hardware, so it's
reasonable to assume that most things won't.

That doesn't mean that huge advances are not possible - read Natural
Capitalism by Paul Hawken to learn how 250mpg cars are possible with current
tech.

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comatose_kid
The sidebar on 'The Best Advice I Ever Got' makes for good reading too.

Here's the link:

[http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bes...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bestadvice.fortune/index.html)

~~~
jkent
Great link this one, a couple of red herrings in there.

Ford CEO (#25) saying "Focus on the customer. Deliver value.". Neither of
which they are respected for.

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redorb
Wish cancer was on that list of noble things to fix. But I guess cancer <
dirty water > shelter < food

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mrdorian
i wish i could work for him on some of the projects

