Thomas Murphy: “Physics and Planetary Ambitions” | The Great Simplification #18 

Wow, it's the best episode so far! I am nobody, I work on the factory shop floor, this morning like always I am listening and working. You have made this time amazing! Thank you

Professor Tom Murphy's excellent textbook "Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite planet" (the one he is holding up in the photo) is available free to download. It's an excellent read. Thanks Professor Murphy for making this valuable resource available for free.

Love this channel, I hate the reality, but love the information.

Nate Hagen, thank you sincerely for this presentation. Sometimes I feel almost like a lunatic compared with those I interact with daily. People I have known for decades, who I went to high school with, and who I live near. Their own interpretation of the present moment is so diametrically opposite of my own that, at the ripe age of 73, I have wondered if I haven't lost touch with reality. Thanks to you and Thomas Murphy, Ironically, I will sleep better tonight knowing that the fucked-up state of the world ISN'T just in my imagination!

Very interesting conversation. Excellent. I am an INTJ myself and I feel like an alien most of the time. I feel less alone now, after this convo!

The advice I would give to people coming to terms with collapse awareness is as follows: Make all your life decisions based on two criteria. Firstly, whatever you do with your life needs to feel meaningful and pleasant in the present moment, regardless of the overall outcome we end up with. Even though some sort of a collapse is pretty much guaranteed at this point, there's a lot of uncertainty about the exact timing and nature of the collapse, as well as about how it will affect any particular person. Secondly, your decisions should have a non-zero chance of contributing to one of the better outcomes that are still possible. People have different social lives, skills, interests and so forth but this general advice is valid for everyone. Following these two criteria for life decisions means that your motivation to act and maintaining your wellbeing do not require an optimistic view of the future or a strong belief in chances of success for even a half-decent sustainability transition. I was really depressed and anxious about this stuff for a few months about two years ago but in the long-term, collapse awareness has had little to no negative effect on my wellbeing. I find that an attitude of living in the moment is a really useful coping strategy. I believe that it is possible to find some meaning to your life in any circumstances, no matter how bad things get.

Joseph Campbell in his interviews for PBS series with Bill Moyers in late '80s had a vision of where we were headed. He was in his 80s and dying of cancer. On society he stated that we were in a wasteland. On religion he also felt we need a new religion based on reality and knowledge of our times not on thousands of years old iron age beliefs. Last episode he was asked what's humans role. "We are the consciousness of the earth. We are the eyes of the earth. The voice of the earth." Looking at Moyers he finished with "what else is there"

Wow, this conversation changed my view of the world and our future. Just wow

I wasn’t expecting the Meyers Briggs diagnostic. I’m INTJ. It’s such a relief to find others of similar mindset. Thank goodness for your extroversion Nate and for another valuable podcast.

I used to read 'Do the Math' regularly, and wondered whatever happened to Tom & his highly valuable thinking. Thanks for bringing him & his work back into the light, Nate.

I was actually a student of professor Murphy at UCSD. I had the pleasure of hearing this information and working to grasp it firsthand. His message is important, and as much as we know growth is unsustainable and incredibly scary, I think I am not alone in saying that I hope this podcast does grow and does introduce this conversation to a wider audience.

Tom is the best. Truly a leading thinker of our generation

I'm growing a garden in backyard suburbia as we speak! #antifragile

Do you have an unlimited supply of amazing guests?

Thank you both Nate and Thomas very much for this conversation, it's so current, it should have happened yesterday. Nate you really should have a conversation with John Vervaeke, or Gregg Henriques. Although with the time we have left, it all might go like so much dust in the wind.

Thanks... so much to think about.. I have the scientific, numeric way of thinking, will take a look at Tom''s blog..really learn a lot from your talks..I'm in Australia btw.

As an INTJ, I approve of this conversation!

Posting here at less than 10K subs so when this channel reaches 1 million people will be asking themselves how could this had been such a small channel for the kind and quality of information being shared in it

I have been following and appreciating your work for years Mr. Hagens, and this show is no different. I do have some thoughts about what you said towards the end of this video regarding a burgeoning meme/tribe/culture… that is more ecologically centered. Before moving to Cambodia in 2006 and doing climate change adaptation/mitigation and community development work in the Non-Profit sector (albeit at a very small scale via a local NGO), I had similar thoughts: surely we are moving towards some kind of an awakening. But instead of being inspired to be part of this movement I thought was happening, I became somewhat hopeless, as nearly everyone I met in my travels and work in South/Southeast/East Asia-where roughly 55% of the world’s human beings currently live-wanted to attain (or maintain one if they have already attained it) an affluent and modern life. The NGO I worked for focused on home-scale drinking/cooking water security (primarily through rooftop rainwater harvesting), home-scale biological-sand-water filters, humanure composting toilets, small-scale irrigation ponds for organic market/kitchen gardens, and we brought all the people working with us together under the umbrella of a community financed and owned bank. We did a lot of good work-and made a lot of mistakes and had our share of failures, too-and I feel good about it. That said, while the people taking part in our projects worked hard to learn to use and maintain the new technologies and processes we were promoting and were very happy to have them, none of the people I spoke with wanted their children to live lives that involved these technologies and processes. They wanted their children to work in offices that they reached via their new cars; they wanted their children to live in homes that had taps with clean drinking water coming out of them and that contained all the conveniences that modern and affluent people have in their homes, and they wanted their children to buy their food in supermarkets. The cultural attributes of patriarchy and human supremacy, found primarily in the dominant regional religions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, make these ancient cultures and societies, in my experience, prime ground for not only adopting modern and affluent lifestyles and the ultra-materialism these lifestyles require but actually being better at it than their predecessors in the over ‘developed’ countries that began their ecocide post WW2. The people we work with know more about the ecology of their respective homelands’ than any other people I have ever lived with, although that is rapidly changing as Cambodia becomes more modern and affluent. Building their own homes from local resources, seasonal hunting/fishing and gathering (there are women collecting small shellfish from a small pond that I can see from where I am writing this moment) that provide a substantial amount of their daily calories, growing their own food, and most importantly, the mindset (I do not have it, unfortunately) to live with and accept what the day presents, which I find quite amazing and enviable. I still live in Cambodia and love being here. I am married to a Cambodian woman and we have a 5-year-old son. We live on a regenerative farm that uses all the technologies the NGO I worked for promoted, and then some. But I am more in the hunker down and make something happen for my family and my community mode more so than when I first came to Cambodia when I wanted to be part of a global movement that increasingly saw human beings as part of the living world and lived as such. From my view, and I hope I am wrong and you are right, I do not see that happening. Just some thoughts from another spec in the infinite universe. Thanks again for your work and thanks also to Mr. Murphy for his work, as I have also been following him for years as well. David

I loved Thomas's frequent theme of minimalism. I'm cut from the same cloth. Great conversation.

Nate, I’m new to your channel, but I have to confess that I’m very impressed with the quality of your guests and your insightful questions and observations. It’s mind-boggling that your channel doesn’t have tens of thousands of listeners. Thank you for sharing such critical information. I’ll make sure to share it with others.

Excellent! Thank you for this. Can't solve the problem without really understanding it and this is very helpful. Do the math. 🙂

I apologetically realize that I have intruded with my commentary to this presentation to an excessive degree, but I am so impressed by the truths that are expressed here that I cannot contain myself! This conversation should be seen daily on the nightly news until we, as a species, are no more.

Another brilliant guest and conversation... This statement in the introduction was for me, deeply counter-intuitive. "Murphy shows us how continued growth and energy use is an impossibility if continued at our current trajectory." As I was listening to the conversation, I kept thinking about the statements I've heard and read over the years about how much "energy arrives on the earth each day from the sun" and thinking we only need the right technology and quantity and all will be well. I'm reminded of so many other widely told and believed narratives which seem like common sense, yet are simply not true! Speaking of economics (as you skillfully did in this episode) it reminds me of the the way we've been taught to use a "personal family budget" model for the way a sovereign currency works. Even a cursory reading of Modern Monetary Theory, demonstrates that this common sense understanding is simply not true. In this way, if we get the wrong story, metaphor or analogy, meaning they do not harmonize with reality, our decisions and actions are going to be drastically off and potentially devastating.

Been listening since Schmachtenberger, and really like this one on about of the fact Mr Thomas is a physicist. It's so funny, you don't usually see physicists in these kinds of conversations and he answered many questions like I would expect: look at this back of envelope calculation that says e.g. we would use all stars in the galaxy before the year 4500 and that's impossible. Great stuff! It was on the whole very insightful and enjoyable (if morbid). And Nate, I'm INTP too and would have eaten the whole chocolate bar as well. I don't know how Tom does it! Thank you for all the invaluable frames. It is in stark contrast to what we teach in schools which is more like "renewables will save us!"

Praise the Lord this podcast is available to me!

I do not understand how Thomas Murphy, whose scientific "grasp" of the present moment far, far exceeds my own, is able to maintain any form of equanimity amidst the dire realities of our contemporary world! I'll have whatever he is having!

Very good stuff here. NTHE is built into our cake now. Enjoy what's left now is all we got. ❤️🌎❤️

Wow, fascinating discussion of physics that then moved into psychology ... which, strangely enough, mirrors what I did. (Physics undergrad but then went into psychology in grad school because my MBTI F-score was a bit too high, haha.) Totally see the ENTP in you, Prof. Hagens. I'm INFP, but the T and F are basically 50/50. Regarding a new religion -- yes, maybe we need to get rid of that word, "religion", but I totally agree with you. People are ready for a "higher ask", but they need the worldview that supports it to be more clearly articulated. And I feel, I hope, that those words and that spirit is gradually coming together. Some of the pieces are coming from you and others like you ... thank you for your work!

I still appreciate learning about the facts, so thanks.

I can't believe they didn't talk about the Fermi paradox! This seems like a perfect set up for that discussion. I mean we are talking about Dyson spheres here and the galactic scale of life! Missed opportunity

Best channel

thanks for sharing! his textbook has been a useful part in comprehending our predicament. maybe an episode with timothy morton? (his idea of hyperobjects inspired the movie don't look up, hyperobjects productions being a hint) would be awesome!! watch his "humans are the asteroids", being ecological, and ecological dark chocolate lectures, and i recommend reading being ecological, dark ecology, and hyposubjects: on becoming human! powerfully able in making one realize that everyone is already being ecological. also maybe iain mcgilchrist? been reading his latest book - the matter with things and various discussions with him, i feel that he'd be an awesome guest here. or anyone from the perspectiva press, maybe even dr. james cooke? but the recommendations frenzy aside, I really appreciate your work and listened to all the previous episodes attentively. i always share and discuss your work with others, so yeah, again, thank you very much.

Counsel we need good counsel, global and local

Thank you deeply 🕊❤️

had to watch this again///////////////worth it

Paraphrasing what stood out for me starting at around 52:00: We need to abandon the model that humans are the dominant species on this planet. Humans need to act as partners of nature. In fact we need to act as a subordinate partner to nature. We need to learn to treat nature at least as well as we treat ourselves. My understanding is that every religion EXCEPT Christianity has this concept described in their teachings. Not that I’m promoting religion, especially since I don’t get the religion thing. It seems that our dominant financial, political, cultures and religious beliefs are pushing this erroneous belief in human exceptionalism. The only thing humans are exceptional at is producing waste, heat, creating imbalance, destroy entire species. Yes, it is tough being complicit in these energy-consuming, destructive systems.

Love this podcast. The Myers Briggs demographic made me laugh out loud. I guessed INTJ. 😆

I love this channel. And finally my intuition about the heat produced by our activities being added to the greenhouse gas effects is confirmed. In the 80's and 90's I had been convinced peak oil would knock us back by 2010. Seems we figured out how to force the extraction into even more destructive and eventually worse ends. Trying to live less consumptive but feeling trapped by the enclosing growing development and insta consumer culture here in urban western Washington.

I have read that the viable "carrying capacity" of the Earth is 2 Billion maximum. We are now at 8 Billion! I am content to be an old man.

Awesome Interview, Nate! I was not aware of the physical limitations of growth to such an extent. It would be really interesting to find an economist to discuss exactly what features of our economic system require the constant exponential growth (since that really seems to be the problematic feature). It seems that the 2 features of our system that require constant growth are: 1. Interest rates: This goes against what everybody is saying now (We need to raise interest rates as fast as possible!) but it seems to me that by simple logic, if you create money from nothing (or from the future) and then ask for MORE money to be paid back, by definition, the money supply has to grow exponentially (and therefore the energy and materials use.) So: can we simply eliminate interest rates. period. Would our economic system work mostly unchanged with zero interest rates on any loans or any money creation. Has any economist ever even suggested or researched this? 2. Another feature of our economy that may drive the constant growth spiral, could be the fact that it is based on constant competition and game-theoretic dynamics, requiring everyone to fight to get bigger and more powerful, in order to not be swallowed up by the next guy who is growing faster. But while this encourages constant growth on the level of individual businesses ("if you aren't growing, you are dying" as they often say), I am not sure if this requires constant growth of the overall system (because, many are in fact "dying") It would be interesting to know if this, or any other feature of our capitalist economic system also cause the constant growth requirement, or if we could get rid of it by simply eliminating interest on capital.

Thank❤🌹🙏 you, Thomas Murphy and Nate👍! As always, a great conversation! 🥀🌏🌍🌎🌹The Earth will be okay! It's humanity may go extinct... 😢😢😢

Love the new intro!

A great commentary. 👍

Thanks Nate for a great episode and thanks to Thom for exposing the mathematical absurdity of our predicament. Yes. The great majority of the world remains largely ecologically and "energy blind" despite our best efforts. It seems unlikely although theoretically possible that a catalytic event could leads to a tipping point in human awareness allowing the general zeitgeist of the civilisation to shift in favour of recognising ecological and other limits. We can strive to make that so. Nice to see Thom quoting Greer - "Collapse now and avoid the rush". :)

INTP here, for the stats. Amazing guest .

Thanks Nate and Thomas! 🙌🏻

🙏 Thank you for this interview 🙏

Thanks Nate & Tom!

Nate, please interview Ye Tao and evaluate the MEER (Mirrors for Earth's Energy Rebalancing) plan!

Thankyou for you and the people you partake in discussions with and then share with other people on this communication platform.💜

Wow, that was a good one.

Nate, your insight and articulation is inspirational. Thank you

What a wonderful interview! Thouroughly enjoyed it, many thanks to you both!

This conversation SHOULD be the type of dialogue presented to listeners of all races, religions and nationalities. The low-level "pablum" that we are actually served should be a "barometer" of our societal dysfunction. As cruel as it may sound, the human race is going to get everything that it has asked for.

"I'd probably eat the whole chocolate bar Tom..." lol

I really enjoyed this episode and hope to return to the classroom for a couple of years before throwing in the towel permanently. This will be invaluable info for students if I can communicate it effectively. Thanks!

One year later, we have crossed many tipping points.

Long term sustainability requires systemic change. How do we move resources toward survival? What is the accounting and how do we measure success ? Please research Carbon Quantitative Easing. Monetary policy may be the solution.

Thanks for a very good discussion on the big picture of our impact on a finite planet. About waste energy heat build up, does the renewables really also contribute as they are directly capturing sun's energy, converted to electricity in panels, chemical energy in biomass or kinetic energy in wind... would go to waste heat soon anyway? So only fossils, geothermal and nuclear contribute to extra waste heat?

Love the blog, Tom. [INTP]

Great work Nate. I like it. Before hearing Thomas Murphy, I was thinking that we have to do all we can to avoid a collapse. And Thomas says it should be better to face a collapse NOW (a little one) with the effect that the humanity will at last take the good new path. Very interesting. It would need to be a real collapse to be aware to take a 180° reverse way, not a new crisis. We we analysed what happened after 2008 in the financial world we can see that the system did change any of its practices. Thank you Nate.

having spent an hour this afternoon listening to corporate clap trap about growth, bonuses, process improvements , its hard not to despise the folk who seem to focus so earnestly on what is so clearly a blind alley. I want them to be confronted by the realities that are so well illustrated in this interview, perhaps some talk the crap but dont believe it, thats my hope, they are often very good communicators , but have nothing to say to me.

Thanks

I remember Tom's "The Energy Trap" blog post that I read over a decade ago.

I loved this episode! Such a great overview of how simple math using energy facts completely erodes the foundations of economic and financial theory. It should be mandatory that any economics or finance course teach this information as a counterpoint to the current growth theories still taught today. I can’t help but laugh at the idea of the “terminal growth rate” (aka long-term growth rate) that makes up basic valuation principles and techniques still used today. I just wish I had realized what nonsense this was earlier in my life. Economics 101 should be retitled to Energy Blind Indoctrination.

We need to start pricing things in eco-dollars via parallel system of valuation, this would provide people better information on their impacts on the life support system. A car might cost $30,000 but it might cost E1,000,000 where the planet might have E100 trillion in the 'bank account'. It would starkly show the difference between two things that look similar in dollar terms i.e. a cup of coffee and a cup of tea might both cost $2 but a cup of coffee might be E25 vs E5 for a cup of tea.

"Political power" is merely the voice of greed. Not wisdom and common sense. Greed. BLIND greed. And that is the very crux of our societal predicament. There is no known way to curb that fundamental tendency . "GREED" will be the ultimate epitaph of the human species. It will be written in the dust of what we once thought we were.

‘Collapse now and avoid the rush’ .. wasn’t it John Michael Greer who first said this years ago in his Archdruid Report? I think of him every time I hear Nate say ‘simplify now and avoid the rush’.

I think that if we can just convince people who only think in terms of money to add a new spreadsheet to the back of the books, that looks at energy, and makes them aware of it (without even factoring it into the bottom line), just the awareness of it, in explicit terms of power and energy, it would help the cause overall.

Tracy Chapman "We need a new beginning " song says this too!

Murphy's law: turn off all the lights and eat the full chocolate bar then fertilize Olympic woods in the dark. Double dopamine rush...

How do you get all these amazing people

The mind, using it solely, may not or using very little energy

40:02 These are my people.

"realising thatwe are part of Nature."

Historically, from the time of our ancient Greek ancestors we have been imbued with the idea that "Man is the center of all things". Then, a few thousand years ago, our revered forefathers ensured us that God himself said that "Man shall have dominion over all the Earth, the fish and the fowl... blah, blah, blah". For millennia we have been "brainwashed" in to believing that the Earth is all about us. Sadly, very late in the game, we are realizing that it ISN'T.

39:17

People deem themselves to goddam important

Is the embedded growth obligation real? “It’s not astrology” - I offer both of you a free reading to challenge that presumption!

civilization itself is a heat engine.....we are in trouble.....big.

Naive question here (but one, that I think may come up for many, if they listened closely): If all energy usage increases the heat produced on our planet at all times, which either increases the overall temperature of the planet or gets radiated out into space: Why is it then not at least theoretically possible to capture some of that heat and use it to generate useful energy again? My guess is, it has something to do with this pesky 2nd law of thermodynamics. But still: It is not entirely clear to me why this isn't at least theoretically possible: Let's say there is a giant solar panel a little distance out from earth, that captures IR, rather than visible light.

nate ,,,great talk for sure...i understood almost all of it..BUT....can you sum it up and dumb it down for other viewers and me.....if you can clean out some of the science word and big multi syllable words..and make the video shorter?...i mean i got the talk and i listen to all your talks but millions of people need to get your message....you need to clean it down for the tictoc people to understand.

Wasn’t the Neolithic Revolution 10.000 BCE, so 12.000 years ago?

ummm - did he confuse solar energy with fusion energy ?? ?? ?? - how much you collect from the solar panels even at 100% efficiency versus how much e equals m squeak squared permits could be the differential between how we plateau or how we multiply like bacteria - it's the old question of power versus energy - a supernova can outshine a galaxy - but of course we see now the problem of e equals m squeak squared has one little caveat - the m disappears - and we might somehow corral a bunch of black holes and feed them into the grinder as the millenia unfold - this alone could explain dark energy being produced as alien pollution that had to be converted to a form non interacting with normal matter

I loved that interview. I would have thought Thomas Murphy was vegan because of his concern for all sort of live and biodiversity, I searched in his blog and it seems he is not. Pity, because it is a bit incoherent.

Why is the transcript in Russian?

Whenever you buy something a part of the world dies.

Hilarious, I am INTP.

hahaha ok, I'm INTJ

wow guys the math is scary....

You know, to those that have a limit knowledge of the sciences, these arguments you are making are very compelling and give the impression that all your conclusions are self-evident. But you, Thomas, make a handful of assumptions that are never addressed. Some of which your economic "friends" may have known conceptually but not well enough to be able to have voiced properly in their attempts to explain it to you. I bet you got blank stares from them in the end which you in turn interpreted as conceding the point, but in fact they gave up the arduous task putting words to their thoughts. Which to be fair, is not an easy thing to do. But I think you should revise your statement of "steel-maning" their point, because what was mentioned was "bronze-maning" at best. Assumption, everything can be held constant and therefor you can forecast out on large time scales as you do in astrophysics. Complex systems cannot be forecasted out to any large time scale due to the increasing growth of the error function. This is why our weather forecasts stop at 10 days, the accuracy is lost in the midst of the building chaos or entropy. Economics is a system that is magnitudes greater in complexity than the weather. Try forecasting that out even 100 years and your model would be 100% wrong. A fitting error for an Astrophysicist to make actually, since space is actually way more stable than the earth, to the point that our forefathers predicted what the night sky would look like today a thousand years ago. (Thats not a slight, just looks like a very nature blind spot that could come from your discipline) I have to say though, this assumption may be the most egregious because it can blind even the smartest of your viewers if no real effort is made to critically think it through. Assumption, energy consumption will continue at the same rate. You said it yourself, the starting point to your calculations is the estimate 10,000 years of civilization, and that it is barely the beginning. Most of that timeframe was agriculture, and in the last century we see quite a large growth. But you are assuming the demand for that energy doesn't have a ceiling, the same assumption was made about increasing population, which now we see the opposite is being demonstrated. Or more precisely, the graph reached an inflection point in its rate. Like an exponential graph that never exceeds 1. The more complex the formula, the more likely there are ultimate limits. Energy consumption is no different. Energy efficiency has only just begun to increase as well, a fact that many do not keep in mind. Take books for example, they went from costing 100 of man hours (energy) to copy one book by hand, and now we send them of digitally in an instant, massively reducing the costs to a few watts. Assumption, you have to make a choice between the environment and liberty. This one honestly makes me sick to my stomach, because it just completely assumes the worse in your fellow human being. But at the same time, I understand why people make this assumption. Its exactly what you would think of humans if you spent your entire life in urban areas. You have a near zero sense of nature, so all your decisions are made in a void where you don't see the "real" landscape. The birds, the bests, the waters, the trees, the fields, the sounds of all the insects in a still forest, etc. So you believe that every decision a human makes is a cold calculated money driven enterprise. But not a single farmer thinks like this. And many city people that take the time to go camping and see the earth we live in come back with a renewed sense of beauty and urge to protect what we have. The fact that it only takes a few short experiences in nature to turn that on in most humans tells me that people, if left free to chose, they chose love for nature. To me, that highlights that liberty and ecological care for our environment go hand in hand. And studies have shown, when you lift people out of abject poverty, they start taking notice of the broader environment. I would like to say Thomas, I think you are a smart man, of that I have no doubt, and that your heart is in the right place. All the best in your endeavors

One question I would like to know is if both South and North poles should both melt completely would this change earths gravitational orbit in our solar system? Am watching The Three Body Problem Netflix series and did not realise that is has been researched intensely 🪐🌖🌏😇