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> And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, but by ideas. Ideas are an abstract thing. To realise an idea, one needs material resour

by _448 4y ago

> And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, but by ideas. Ideas are an abstract thing. To realise an idea, one needs material resources. The problem has nothing to do with either finite material resources or ideas. The problem is what those material resources get converted into. What we do is we transform one type of material into another during any activity. How we can limit ourselves to not transforming these useable material into unuseable material is what is the challenge for growth. We should only be promoting those ideas that have a better opportunity to transform one usable material resource into another usable resource without taking much time and without harming the ecology.

danans 4y ago
> We should only be promoting those ideas that have a better opportunity to transform one usable material resource into another usable resource without taking much time and without harming the ecology. This is quite insightful. Biological systems have this characteristic. It uses the circular conversion of resources as a way to channel energy into whatever is useful for it. Humans beings, as a type of biology do this, but have for a few centuries been converting a useful material (fossil hydrocarbons) into a comparatively useless material (C02) at rate faster than the ecosystem can reabsorb it. The question is how we can return to something like the previous equilibrium where we rebuild our modern lifestyles around energy "springs" - aka energy storage and release mechanisms - that absorb and release it to do useful work for us, alleviating the need to burn and release long fossilized energy to achieve that.
- walleeee 4y ago
  good points also related to circular economics is the principle that tools should be easy to supersede when we discover undesirable side effects or invent new techniques we build software to be easy to refactor, we might benefit from building societies and technologies with this in mind as well an atmosphere full of carbon is not easy to deprecate, nor are pervasive hydrocarbon infrastructure, urban areas designed around the automobile, etc before we deploy something at scale it may be wise to have some idea how to gracefully roll it back or put something else in its place

by _448 4y ago

danans 4y ago

> We should only be promoting those ideas that have a better opportunity to transform one usable material resource into another usable resource without taking much time and without harming the ecology. This is quite insightful. Biological systems have this characteristic. It uses the circular conversion of resources as a way to channel energy into whatever is useful for it. Humans beings, as a type of biology do this, but have for a few centuries been converting a useful material (fossil hydrocarbons) into a comparatively useless material (C02) at rate faster than the ecosystem can reabsorb it. The question is how we can return to something like the previous equilibrium where we rebuild our modern lifestyles around energy "springs" - aka energy storage and release mechanisms - that absorb and release it to do useful work for us, alleviating the need to burn and release long fossilized energy to achieve that.

walleeee 4y ago
good points also related to circular economics is the principle that tools should be easy to supersede when we discover undesirable side effects or invent new techniques we build software to be easy to refactor, we might benefit from building societies and technologies with this in mind as well an atmosphere full of carbon is not easy to deprecate, nor are pervasive hydrocarbon infrastructure, urban areas designed around the automobile, etc before we deploy something at scale it may be wise to have some idea how to gracefully roll it back or put something else in its place