3 ms·

Scale needs to have some purpose. We are not ants or weeds.

by gsatic 3y ago

TeMPOraL 3y ago
It has a purpose: survival. Bigger groups have a better chance of surviving all kinds of adversities - and especially conflicts with other groups. Once you have enough humans in an area that they start to compete for resources, being a part of the larger group suddenly becomes critical for survival. This makes for a very strong selection pressure for group size, and starts a scaling race. If you want your people to thrive, you need to scale up faster than your neighbors. People who didn't want to scale their group - perhaps saying to themselves things like "scale needs to have some purpose", or "we are not ants or weeds" - those people all got absorbed into or killed by groups that did care. IANAHistorian, but my current understanding is that this is the leading hypothesis for the rise of agriculture, and demise of hunter-gatherer groups - settling down to farm the land was, overall, a big quality of life downgrade compared to hunting and gathering, but it also could easily accommodate continued growth of population, wealth and knowledge. In contrast, hunting and gathering lifestyle was a scaling dead end. As a result, agricultural societies were quickly able to overtake and outcompete hunter-gatherers - where by "outcompete", I mean chase away, kill, absorb or even just outbreed them.
- gsatic 3y ago
  All this has been used historically to justify empire, monopolies and nation states. Yet empires, monopolies and nation states die out all the times. Cities on the other hand regularly outlive them all. Rome still stands. Thats an example of scale serving and not serving purpose. To understand that circle back to the original article. People have only recently got their hands on scaling tools (reserved for the upper classes in the past). And now everyone is waking up to the consequence of using the tools, without purpose. Defining purpose as groups get larger and larger, gets more and more complex as Needs diverge drastically. Yet it happens and happens naturally, when and where there is history of members helping each other out.

Scale needs to have some purpose. We are not ants or weeds.

by gsatic 3y ago

Scale needs to have some purpose. We are not ants or weeds.

It has a purpose: survival. Bigger groups have a better chance of surviving all kinds of adversities - and especially conflicts with other groups. Once you have enough humans in an area that they start to compete for resources, being a part of the larger group suddenly becomes critical for survival. This makes for a very strong selection pressure for group size, and starts a scaling race. If you want your people to thrive, you need to scale up faster than your neighbors. People who didn't want to scale their group - perhaps saying to themselves things like "scale needs to have some purpose", or "we are not ants or weeds" - those people all got absorbed into or killed by groups that did care. IANAHistorian, but my current understanding is that this is the leading hypothesis for the rise of agriculture, and demise of hunter-gatherer groups - settling down to farm the land was, overall, a big quality of life downgrade compared to hunting and gathering, but it also could easily accommodate continued growth of population, wealth and knowledge. In contrast, hunting and gathering lifestyle was a scaling dead end. As a result, agricultural societies were quickly able to overtake and outcompete hunter-gatherers - where by "outcompete", I mean chase away, kill, absorb or even just outbreed them.

gsatic 3y ago
All this has been used historically to justify empire, monopolies and nation states. Yet empires, monopolies and nation states die out all the times. Cities on the other hand regularly outlive them all. Rome still stands. Thats an example of scale serving and not serving purpose. To understand that circle back to the original article. People have only recently got their hands on scaling tools (reserved for the upper classes in the past). And now everyone is waking up to the consequence of using the tools, without purpose. Defining purpose as groups get larger and larger, gets more and more complex as Needs diverge drastically. Yet it happens and happens naturally, when and where there is history of members helping each other out.