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> I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look like for an "advanced" species besides optimal? In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization sh

• ledauphin 6y ago
  I agree that it's _possible_ we're headed for the boom-bust cycle that you're talking about, but unlike microbes that's a hypothesis, not a scientifically verifiable fact, as humans have never (to my knowledge) experienced the sort of planet-wide bust that you're implying.
  • sillysaurusx 6y ago
    One interesting counterexample is the Bronze Age collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq4G-7v-_xI&ab_channel=HistoriaCivilis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq4G-7v-_xI&ab_channel=Histo... I'm not sure if it's technically a counterexample, but it's fascinating. Society seemed to collapse due to a series of causes, more or less unexplained to this day. (We have hypotheses, but it's still something of a mystery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples)
    • jcrites 6y ago
      Wasn't it hypothesized that the collapse was due to an Ice Age? I thought there was strong geological evidence for that, and the challenges it put on human population, but I don't know enough about history to place the last Ice Age on a timeline relative to the Bronze Age without doing research. Update: Upon some brief research, the last Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago, whereas the Bronze Age Collapse was around 1200 BCE. So totally unrelated.
      • selimthegrim 6y ago
        You might want to look up the Younger Dryas
• prox 6y ago
  You probably described my complete complaint of humans in a perfect paragraph. We keep choosing this laissez-faire attitude (also conservative) attitude.
• Seanambers 6y ago
  An advanced civilization.. Like where do you think we are? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale Seems to me like you are expecting too much. Worst part is, if that kind of thinking - do not exploit nature wins out - we might not even get there. Exploitation is key for scientific advancement in capitalism.
  • nate_meurer 6y ago
    > Exploitation is key for scientific advancement in capitalism. In capitalism? You mean, compared to the sustainable and non-exploitive nature of communism, for example?
  • gbrown 6y ago
    > you are expecting too much. The universe doesn’t grade on a curve. > Exploitation is key for scientific advancement in capitalism What a weird objection. It’s our science that tells us we need to radically reform how we consume resources. I’m not worried we’re going to waste all our resources in scientific endeavors, I’m concerned that we’re destroying the environment on which we depend for frivolous short term gains.
• drivebycomment 6y ago
  I think humanity is, and has been going through a collective learning experience over thousands of years, and any "advanced" civilization will necessarily have to go through a similar phase to get to that "advanced" stage. So while it's true humanity can do better, I think this - the global coordination challenge - is fundamental and irremovable in any collection of self-interested individuals.
  • gbrown 6y ago
    More cynical take: because most societies have to go through this experience, most societies don't make it to "advanced". That's one of the ideas behind the "Great Filter" hypothesis.
  • tkinom 6y ago
    Google needs to start the "Google Mars" time-lapse database now.
    • throwaway3699 6y ago
      http://mars.google.com/ http://mars.google.com/
• FabiansMustDie 6y ago
  I think deferring to reason is a nouveau fad among men of letters -- as if it's some truth machine; wherein one inputs one's observations and, by the grace of reason, out pops "what should be done." This ignores the very basest of truths that all men's* reason is self-centered, generating only courses of action that benefit him -- no matter how indirectly (ex. donating to a charity does help others, but it also helps the donator on some emotional (see: moral/spiritual/conditioned) level; otherwise, the donator wouldn't have done it). Every man* has his own temperament, value system, -- and so on -- that reason alone begets wildly different what-should-be-dones. That is, unless the achievement of a narrow aim would benefit the many---and therefore all those different reason machines come together to collectively strive towards some end---then we have all sorts of different, many times conflicting, what-should-be-dones (politics is a prime example here). Perhaps then an authority should be appointed?; someone or some group whose sole purpose is to reason all day and all night, until they come up with a what-should-be-done that benefits their constituency (of course, this assumes they didn't ascend by force, coercion, or some other deviousness). But now, we get into this dreadful stalemate: the more constituents there are, the more the means and the ends have to be tailored to them, and the more the whole venture becomes watered down, in order to suit some muddied "average." Or perhaps the authority decides to "draw a line in the ground," to create some abstract "core" of acceptable means and ends (as well as people to enlist), and shun out the rest---in order to maintain some semblance of identity and individualism. Yet, now we have two very inefficient differentiations. On one hand, we have the all-inclusive reasoning-body, that is so held back by trying to please all, that it pleases none. On the other hand, we have the some-exclusive reasoning-body, that -- fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on one's own reasoning -- shuts out the "others," and does nothing to support the advancement of their ends (many times, quite the opposite). I think it is self-evident that both are inefficient towards the coordination of all humanity. So are there any alternatives? Perhaps we could simply do away with collective coordination -- or atleast some less rigid approach? What about some type of individualism?; where each man* decides his own fate. Therein, each member is responsible for his own fate, and therefore---collectively---the fate of all man? Each soul going in his own direction, serving his interests foremost, and pushing the fate of humanity, in his own image, little by little -- like some plant, slowly rooting itself into the most impenetrable places, and overcoming the, otherwise apparent, impossible odds. On a local level, humanity is ever unsustainable, "booming-and-busting," but on the world level we have survived, and will continue until we lose our survival instincts (impossible, collectively). Each member of the human race will do what he must to survive and improve his own circumstances, even if it leaves others worse off; then, those worse-offs must now improve their circumstances further, and strive for a better life. In the end, each man guarantees the survival (but not thrival) of the human race, by the virtue of his selfishness. *Are we still doing the "man" is not synonymous with "human" fad? It's more of a stylistic choice, rather than an "only men can use reason." I.e, it flows better than "hu-man."
• Grimm1 6y ago
  But we're moving towards sustainability. Whether it's fast enough is up to interpretation but the push for green tech, sustainable farming etc etc it's not like this is an unknown, it's just always been the case that it must be sufficiently cheap and easy for the average person to latch onto it. Unfortunately in a lot of areas we're getting there but not there yet.
  • gbrown 6y ago
    The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. Unfortunately the science is pretty bleak.
    • Grimm1 6y ago
      Mind providing me some of that research? I've heard this a few times but when I go looking for it nothing really pops up, it's mostly things saying we need to act now but can avoid the biggest issues.
      • gbrown 6y ago
        Pick an area of science which intersects with human development and I'll find you something - the underlying truth is that we can't hope to disrupt such a huge percentage of our biosphere without nasty consequences, and we can't hope to have remediation efforts compete with the global engine of human development. We've essentially organized an entire global society around the injection of carbon into the atmosphere, while turning habitat into development at astonishing rates. To make things worse, humans are really good at adapting, so we're (by and large) comfortable while the world burns. Press releases and pop-science articles tend to try to strike a more hopeful tone, because it's extremely tiring and depressing just hearing "we're screwed" all day. I try to stay hopeful, but my faith that enough people will care soon enough is basically gone.
        • exporectomy 6y ago
          How bad are "nasty consequences" and "the world burns"? Maybe it doesn't matter if those things happen.
• ishjoh 6y ago
  Are you suggesting government mandated population control?
  • smt1 6y ago
    Sustainable development eans more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy to me. Information systems are very important in this regard IMHO. For most of human history information was a weapon.
  • gbrown 6y ago
    No
  • GareyBaldo 6y ago
    Are you? That's a strange response. Your question is a non sequitur.
    • ishjoh 6y ago
      I'm strongly against governments controlling population growth. OP I was responding to stated: "Microbes don’t coordinate their growth, and therefore fall into boom-bust cycles that dominate and exhaust their local environment. Humans can reason about these issues, but we see insufficient ability to collectively coordinate in response to them." Government is how we collectively coordinate. Microbes exhaust their local environment by reproduction, hence the question.
• azernik 6y ago
  Sustainability is orthogonal to the geographic patterns of development - it's always going to be more efficient (even in environmental impact!) to cluster around resources and transportation.
• bngybmgrglflps 6y ago
  Who does the coordinating, to what purpose? By what right, at whose expense? Why isn't coordination the grand experiment? Glancing nervously through history, or in the mirror, it's never sufficient -- and not for lack of vigor. Suppose each microbe is unique: every one has a name, dreams, fears, love, grief, joy -- stories. I can't understand the enduring appeal of reducing people's lives to fungible grey mush.
• exporectomy 6y ago
  It may be sustainable on a longer time scale than you're thinking of. For instance, perhaps we use fossil fuels to provide the value needed to find new sustainable sources of energy. Could we really make nuclear fusion reactors without ever having first burnt a lot of coal and oil? Lots of things are unsustainable in the short term but sustainable in the long term. Hunter-gathering for instance. If you pick the berries off a bush, they're gone. You can't keep doing that all day every day or the plant will never reproduce and eventually stop producing berries. But if you look at the hunter-gatherer's berry picking habits over a whole year, it may well be sustainable because he's not doing it at the same rate all the time. Similarly, our unsustainable behaviors may be limited to a few centuries of rapid change taking us into a new and different sustainable future that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
  • gbrown 6y ago
    That's some excellent wishful thinking, and I hope you're right. Meanwhile, I've read plenty of articles suggesting that we're likely in for unavoidable and hugely disruptive warming, at the very least, and I don't currently see us globally acting quickly enough. I've also taken an amateur interest in ecology and the natural sciences, and once you actually learn a bit about the species around you, the loss of habitat and biodiversity we're undergoing becomes a staggeringly obvious fact that most people are just completely oblivious to.
    • heartbeats 6y ago
      I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for starters. There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The idea that humanity couldn't deal with this situation if it spent anywhere in the ballpark of 100% of its resources on it seems to me frankly laughable.
      • sellyme 6y ago