3 ms·
In my part of Montana, we had a record cold April last year. Also had a record cold day this past December, though Halloween was warmer than I remember in years
by sys32768 4y ago
In my part of Montana, we had a record cold April last year. Also had a record cold day this past December, though Halloween was warmer than I remember in years.
Perhaps ChatGPT has something planned for us? Remember Agent Smith's speech from The Matrix?
>I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.
- glofish 4y agoLove the speech like any other nerd, but I must say Agent Smith is wrong about it all. Mammals do not "reach equilibrium" on their own. Check out some rat infestation videos on farms. If anything viruses show more moderation. At any given moment we have of various flu, cold etc viruses around us, in our nose, gut, tongue, yet most of the time we do just fine. It is not the "amount" of virus around you that matters. Not to mention in most parts of the world populations are declining, and rapidly at that. We have probably already passed the peak-child.
- crooked-v 4y agoFor another example, deer without enough natural predators around will end up in massive boom/bust cycles as the population explodes, strips every plant around bare, and then mostly dies off from starvation.
- satvikpendem 4y agoPerhaps they reach equilibrium in the long term. But then again, that's true of any* system given the 2nd law of thermodynamics. *well, not really any, but close enough.
- bamboozled 4y agoYeah, it’s a movie
- throwanem 4y agoI mean, aside from a) mammals don't instinctively do anything of the sort and b) it's a movie, consider perhaps also the possibility that c) its writers may not really intend that you subscribe uncritically to a philosophy espoused, in however compelling fashion thanks to Hugo Weaving's brilliant performance, by its homicidal villain?
- notfromhere 4y agoAnimals tend to over time establish stable populations. Humans have devised ways to maneuver nature to move past these constraints, and industrialization has entirely broken them.
- defrost 4y ago"Stable populations" in the sense that they largely have relatively predictable population cycles [1][2] that can be modelled using population dynamics [3]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_cycle [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2404185 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2404185 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_dynamics
- roarcher 4y agoRight, because their environment imposes "stability" on them by killing them in various ways. The movie quote makes it sound like the woods are full of deer couples who conscientiously produce 2.1 fawns apiece. Humans are doing exactly what every mammal would do if they could. We're just the only ones who have succeeded.
- throwanem 4y agoIn large part because we no longer have any predators, which is the point of Smith's monologue; in the model of the human environment he espouses, he and his fellows are the predators.
- deleted 4y ago