Aaron Stupple@astupple
Insights from listening to hours of Paul Ehrlich (RIP):
He thought that the evidence was obvious, it was right in front of us, it couldn't be more undeniable - you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet, and we are obvious growing.
And, to Ehrlich, anyone who didn't see the obvious was an imbecile (his word), or a moral degenerate, profiting or being paid off by someone who profited, from growth.
Karl Popper described these twin mistakes as the doctrine of the manifest truth and its counterpart, the conspiracy theory of ignorance.
The full quote describes Ehrlich to a T:
"The theory that truth is manifest—that it is there for everyone to see, if only he wants to see it—this theory is the basis of almost every kind of fanaticism. For only the most depraved wickedness can refuse to see the manifest truth; for only those who have reason to fear truth conspire to suppress it."
Ehrlich saw this depraved wickedness everywhere. He saw it in any family having more than three kids (some really good parents can have three as long as many have zero or one). He saw it everywhere money was used to buy things, because money is central to growth. He saw it in politics - "Nobody is doing anything!" In academia, where they don't teach this stuff. And he saw it in the culture writ large, consumed as we are by imbecilic things like sports and music and all manner of half-witted distractions while the world hurtled toward collapse.
Unfortunately, this playbook for fanatics and semi-fanatics remains dominant. Question my argument? You must be either too dumb to get it or morally depraved. Who do you work for? What are you really after? Whatever it is, it can't be good because you refuse to see what's right in front of your face.
Ehrlich was refuted not by evidence, but by arguments. The impossibility of infinite growth with a finite amount of resources is a reasonable theory. But a better theory is that resources are determined by what we know. Uranium changes from a dangerous rock to a powerful energy source after we discover nuclear physics. As our knowledge grows, our resources grow, and limits like the size of the planet also grow.
But Ehrlich was never open to this argument because he dismissed the messengers as depraved.
Listening to him talk in the 2000s, long after his predictions proved massively wrong, is a masterclass in insulating himself from criticism.
According to him, all the scientists agree with him, well, almost all - those who don't are idiots. And all the economists do as well, except for the morons in the Wall Street Journal. Even the world's best historian agrees with him.
Everyone who agrees with Ehrlich is a real scientist/economist/theorist. And everyone who disagrees is fake/corrupt/stupid.
Listening to Ehrlich, he spends a lot of time telling us about his critics and how broken the world is that it's unable to see what he's saying.
It's also fitting with the conspiracy theory of ignorance that Ehrlich paints himself as a beneficent humanist. He sincerely believed this, and he meant well. But I think this allowed him to advocate for tyranny. In fact, he presented himself as against authoritarianism, but his tyranny lay on the surface. He would often endorse tyranny in the very next sentence after proclaiming anti-authoritarianism.
He wanted a high-level UN agency that could make people have fewer children, dismantle capitalism, replace money with a non-materialist system for conveying value, and control all of education. And he says this all with a straight face, as if this wasn't the very picture of totalitarianism.
Listening to Ehrlich, he is clearly an impressive intellect who is able to present an extraordinary stack of facts in support of his theory. But a man being that smart, it's amazing that he can't see what's right in front of him! It's incredible that he can't see the tyranny that he's endorsing.
Unfortunately, the theory that the truth is manifest and the ignorant are moral degenerates is dominant. Ehrlich didn't write the playbook for this mode, but it dominates.
