This morning I thought of Professor PJT, a born techno-optimist. We never really liked each other, but we respected each other’s opinions—and perhaps quietly irritated one another too. Mutual sympathy was certainly not helped by the fact that my better half didn’t hesitate to rub it in early on that she was an ecologist, from the Gábor Vida school of thought, and as such, felt compelled to challenge some of PJT’s ideas.
Not that it was hard for her—PJT had plenty of debatable views. One of them is that when it comes to sustainable development, he tells the still innocent and impressionable students that “Malthus left out the impact of technology (e.g., agronomy), which increases carrying capacity.”
Thomas Malthus was that Anglican clergyman, economist, and demographer whose Essay on the Principle of Population I often like to quote. According to Malthus’s theory, natural resources (especially arable land) are finite, and this limits economic growth. This limit stems from the exhaustion of natural resources, which leads to a decrease in production, resulting in famine, poverty, and war. Posterity called this the Malthusian theory of absolute scarcity, as opposed to the seemingly more optimistic Ricardian theory of relative scarcity. Ricardo argued that technological progress makes it possible to substitute scarce resources with other, more accessible ones. Now, this is true—but to claim that Malthus believed sustainable development was impossible while David Ricardo thought it was achievable is a complete misinterpretation of the debate between them.
The two scholars, active in the first decades of the 19th century, fully agreed that land (and other resources) is limited and this constrains population growth. Ricardo’s views might seem more optimistic than Malthus’s, but they are not at all more optimistic! Their disagreement lay elsewhere: Malthus—somewhat simplistically—assumed natural resources (such as land) to be homogeneous in quality, and claimed that diminishing returns appeared as a result of resource exhaustion. Thus, the nature of scarcity is absolute. Staying with land: once the absolute limit was reached, all suitable land was already under cultivation, leaving no room for substitution among resources—rising costs could not incentivize effective substitution. Ricardo, however, argued that resource quality is heterogeneous, so diminishing returns appear much earlier. For example, crops are first grown on the best-quality land, and only later are worse lands cultivated and more advanced technologies adopted (e.g., crop rotation instead of fallowing) when the better lands no longer yield enough. So Ricardo was not more optimistic—if anything, he was even more worrying. Both men were good at math and—unlike many modern economists—understood that different functions exist. It is not true that Malthus ignored technological progress, as PJT misleadingly teaches. Quite the contrary! He claimed that technological development increases productivity—and it is precisely this (e.g., more food) that induces population growth. But while productivity grows roughly linearly over time, according to Malthus, population growth is exponential; therefore, population “overtakes” progress, rapidly consuming resources, and the growing society collapses. That is the essence of the Malthusian trap. This worked for millennia, but the last one was skipped thanks to the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions. Nowadays, it increasingly seems that we only managed to postpone the problem—and make an even bigger mess of it.
Note: Growth: Escaping the Malthusian trap is a good article on this subject, although it takes a different view to mine. I recommend reading it.
A few decades later, in 1848, John Stuart Mill published his major work Principles of Political Economy. Compared to earlier works, it more openly emphasized the effect of technological progress in delaying the inevitable reaching of ultimate limits. But that these ultimate limits exist—on this point, Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill agreed.
PJT believes—and tries to teach—that Earth’s finite natural resources are not absolute limits to economic output. But you don’t have to be an ecologist or an economics professor to see this view as untenable. Of course, admitting this makes it very hard to picture ourselves in such a world and imagine a prosperous future. The denial is understandable. Professor Gyula Zilahy once said: “It’s not good to talk with ecological economists, because it makes you want to kill yourself.” But let’s face it: understanding the denial is like understanding an alcoholic who says, “I’m not an alcoholic; I just drink sometimes, but I can quit anytime.” We understand, but we pity them. Such people should rather start a party called ISZOMM (which sounds like “I drink” in Hungarian); at least that would be funny—and it even has some self-irony. (For English readers: ISZOMM is a small left-wing political party in Hungary, founded by Tibor Szanyi, a former socialist MP and MEP, together with 11 members—we have no information suggesting they are alcoholics.)
One might say poor PJT is naïve. This seems supported by his explanation that the two-peaked distribution of midterm results—rather than a Gaussian curve—is because part of the class is motivated and studies, while another part is unmotivated and doesn’t. There are two midterm tests, one mid-semester and one at the end. It happened once that due to an unfortunate arrangement of public holidays, several lectures were canceled, so the first midterm came before a significant portion of the material had even been covered by the professor. But he forgot this—just as he forgot that some of his usual test questions refer to that yet untaught material. Yet the first midterm happened anyway. And what was the effect? None. Nobody noticed that some questions covered topics never mentioned in lectures. In fact, the corresponding lecture notes hadn’t even been released yet (he only releases them after the lecture). Why didn’t anyone notice—and how did they manage to pass the test without that material? You’d think they all went to the library and read ahead—just in case PJT asked about something not taught yet? Nope.
The answer is simple: the test was a Moodle test (i.e., online), and the question bank from which Moodle randomly picks questions is not large. Resourceful students compiled the questions and made them available to later cohorts in a Wiki. I claim that even if you studied diligently, scoring an A on the test is very hard, almost impossible. There’s too little time, questions are long (takes forever to read them carefully), and plenty of “tricky” ones. Moreover, many question align perfectly with PJT’s style of explanation, so extra reading is a waste of time from the test’s perspective. Now, there are two types of students: one group knows about this Wiki, which even includes a practice platform eerily similar to real Moodle; the other group doesn’t. That’s what causes the two-peaked grade distribution. And that’s also why no one noticed the odd questions—they don’t attend lectures, so they didn’t spot the anomaly. The better ones prepped on the practice platform, memorizing things like: *“The very long question starting ‘Natural resources (e.g., oil) demand…’ and ending ‘…This is stated by…’—answer: ‘Ricardian theory of relative scarcity.’” This is short-term knowledge, forgotten within hours and utterly useless otherwise—but with it, you can ace the 25-minute test in 5–6 minutes. At some point, it’s no longer about who scores best, but who finishes fastest.
PJT’s naivety also shows in his insistence on holding these Moodle tests in a big lecture hall instead of letting students take them from home. Everyone brings a laptop, tablet, or smartphone (doesn’t matter, as long as it has Wi-Fi) to the lecture hall at the scheduled time. The 200-seat hall can’t fit everyone spaced apart, so the test is given in two waves. Meanwhile, only 10–20 people normally attend the lectures. You even have to bring a photo ID because PJT checks no one takes the test for someone else. He knows me—and because of my age, I would stand out among the students anyway—so I’d never do such a dishonest thing. Still, it was maddening that I couldn’t find a single spot in the nearby hallway to set up my stuff. Three people were already there, laptops open, something Moodle-like on their screens. You see, nothing stops someone else from logging in remotely and completing the test for the student in the hall. And if you want to make sure you’re on a university IP, you’d better log in from that Wi-Fi (yes, there’s VPN, but it shows). Plus, any glitch—power outage, Wi-Fi down, chaos in the hall—could ruin it for your friend you don’t know what’s happening inside. Imagine a blown fuse: no power, no Wi-Fi, everyone in the hall panicking, while our hero sits calmly elsewhere finishing the test—that’s a guaranteed giveaway. Students aren’t that dumb, so that’s why the discreet laptop squad hangs out in the corridor. Honestly, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
There’s another important lesson: ChatGPT crushes these tests. I tried it on the practice site. And of course, many old-school professors would say: “Then let’s scrap Moodle tests and go back to sealed-paper handwritten exams.” Really? Should we hold stone axe-flinting exams next? (That might actually be useful one day…) Moodle has been in higher education for ages—many only adopted it during COVID out of necessity. I’ve used it for twenty years, and I like it. But you need to know how to use it—which doesn’t mean just uploading a PowerPoint or enabling a quiz! The fact that ChatGPT performs these tests so well means two things: first, it has learned them—meaning students everywhere use it for this. Second—and this is what we should really ponder—is what we’ve been testing really knowledge at all? Or were we just fooling ourselves? How much does test performance correlate with real professional competence? Shouldn’t we rethink the entire system from the ground up? How long can a Roman-era model of education and assessment survive in the age of AI?
Of course, the old guard says: “In real life, ChatGPT won’t always be there—what will you do without the Internet?” Fair point. We really should think about that! Right now, if a ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal, the global economy collapses. If the Internet goes down, our problem won’t be that we can’t ask ChatGPT what Ricardo said. It’ll be whether to shoot the neighbor and how to cook him—roasted or stew—or whether he’ll throw us in the pot first. Dark thought, but not unrealistic! We can’t think enough about how overpopulated, resource-draining, tech-dependent civilization is so fragile.
Another thing—and I say this as a strong advocate of open-book exams—life doesn’t work like you have every formula memorized. In engineering, for instance, you have design codes, and when you design something, you use the code-based manual. You follow it to the letter and cite exactly where you got the formula and why. You can be clever and think you know better, memorizing formulas—but that’s how you end up with a name change: they start calling you “Defendant, please rise!” Because when the beam collapses, judges don’t care what you know by heart!
All this came to mind because the hallway light started flickering. Osram (Made in China) LED, barely a year old. Flicker kicks in after a short warm-up. Likely cause: heating, and an electrolytic capacitor gone bad from drying out. Classic: LED lamps fail an order of magnitude earlier than expected, mostly because of the capacitors in the power supply section. Tibor Pálinkás (mechanical engineer, long-time author for Rádiótechnika magazine) wrote an article about this a few years ago. He even fixed a lamp in his workshop by replacing the capacitors and adding an aluminum heat sink the size of a saucer—the thing has worked flawlessly for years since! But that fix isn’t practical for everyday use for safety, aesthetics, and space reasons.
LED lamps must be well insulated electrically, which conflicts with the need to dissipate the heat generated inside. Manufacturers try to find a compromise, but this only goes so far: during operation, the temperature inside the lamp can reach 100–120 °C. Some components can withstand this, but they are more expensive. For example, the electrolytic capacitors in question are typically rated for –40…+85 °C or +105 °C, but their lifespan drops drastically above 70 °C. There are aluminum electrolytic capacitors rated for 125 °C or even 135 °C, but they are much more expensive—say, $1 instead of $0.15. This may sound like a ridiculously small amount of money, but at millions of units, that’s money worth grabbing! And who cares if the lamp fails in a year? The consumer buys another one. Business as usual. That LED lamps waste far more material and energy over their full lifecycle (from production through use to disposal) than incandescent bulbs? Let the ecological economists worry about that!
In fact, the LED lamp is one of the best examples that PJT’s techno-optimistic faith—rooted in a misunderstanding of Malthus and Ricardo—is a total dead end. (Another could be electric cars: Norway proudly boasts near-total EV adoption—and how do they achieve that? By pumping and selling more oil than ever from the North Sea.)
Technological progress is not the key to growth because we’ve already hit hard limits in many areas—lighting included. A standard bulb: about 10–15 lm/W luminous efficacy, meaning 1 watt gives 10–15 lumens. Halogen: 15–20 lm/W. Fluorescent: 80–90 lm/W. A cheap LED: 50–150 lm/W. Notice: the hyped LEDs aren’t much better than fluorescents—just far more resource- and energy-intensive to make (rare earth metals, anyone?). True, fluorescents contain mercury—hence the phase-out—but that’s only an issue because, in half a century, we proved incapable of recycling them instead of tossing them everywhere. So what do we expect?
Fact: top commercial LEDs can do 150–220 lm/W, and labs have hit 250–300 lm/W—but here’s the hard physical limit: even at 100% efficiency, white light can’t exceed ~380–400 lm/W. A rock-solid constraint based on the physics of vision. Sure, if you accept everything looking like moonlight, you can hit 1700 lm/W—but good luck living like that.
Until the 19th century, humanity went to bed at night because it was dark. Artificial light extended our daily cycle into the night, and factory/office lighting detached us from seasonal rhythms. That, of course, has harmful mental and physical health effects—but who cares about natural laws, right? Instead of wise adaptation, we burn ever more energy to do ever bigger nonsense.
Anyway, I’m off to change that damn lamp—because we might die tomorrow, but we need light tonight. PJT can stick sustainable development—and his midterms—where the sun doesn’t shine!