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Except unlike the foxes which eat their rabbits to near extinction, and therefore soon join them, humans can change the rules of the system they're in. Calcula
by _aavaa_ 4y ago
Except unlike the foxes which eat their rabbits to near extinction, and therefore soon join them, humans can change the rules of the system they're in.
Calculating the carrying capacity of the world before agriculture would have given you a much different number than after it.
- labster 4y agoOkay, sure, but none of that changes what I wrote. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Nor that improvements to Earth’s habitability will be timely, nor whether incentive structures will line up to implement the changes needed.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago> Past performance is no guarantee of future results By that logic we shouldn't be applying arguments like "It is quite normal in ecology to see crashes and recovery in the event of overpopulation".
- labster 4y agoMy scenario is several orders of magnitude more common than yours. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong; miracles do happen. It must be nice to have so much blind faith in technological progress and human exceptionalism, but I’m going to stay with my ecology and statistics.
- _aavaa_ 4y agoIt's several orders of magnitude more common in species which have orders of magnitude less ability to impact their environment and change the way they live (and to humans in the past when we were no different). It is not blind faith to say that we should expect that the different dynamics could be different when the rules of the game are different. Again, if the foxes see the rabbit population declining and can start producing rabbit substitute before they start starving, of course we would expect a different dynamic to be possible.
- sidewndr46 4y agoHumanity can't just unilaterally decide to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
- _aavaa_ 4y agoNobody said we'd have to