5 ms·

The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious mann

by hammock 6mo ago

The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious manner. There were more than enough fish until we developed the technology to pull massive indiscriminate amounts out of the ocean (and/or started polluting our rivers with industry). There was more than enough topsoil until we developed mechanized plows and artificial fertilizer. Etc. A few hundred years ago or less, a squirrel could get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. Not possible today. That’s not a push and pull played out over thousands of years, that’s a one-way trend.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
ambicapter 6mo ago
> The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. GP is saying it is not, and you're just reiterating what OP said as fact.
- jychang 6mo ago
  It's sort of the exception that proves the rule. This is where STEM people are weak- a lack of knowledge on history. In another forum, someone would have chipped in that England's virgin forests were fully deforested by 1150. And someone else would have pointed out that this deforestation produced the economic demand for coal that drove the Industrial Revolution in the first place. Still, that kind of underscores OP's point. Yes, natural resources were not completely unlimited prior to the Industrial Revolution; Jonathan Swift predated Watt's steam engine, after all. Still... Neither were information resources 10 years ago. Intellectual property laws did exist prior to AI, of course. The legal systems in place are not completely ignorant of the reality. However, there's an immense difference in scale between post-industrial strip mining of resources, and preindustrial resource extraction powered solely by human muscle (and not coal or nitrogylcerin etc). Similarly, there's a massive difference in information extraction enabled by AI, vs a person in 1980 poring over the microfilm in their local library. The legal system and social systems in place prior to the Industrial Revolution proved unsuitable for an industrial world. It stands to reason that the legal system and social systems in today's society would be forced to evolve when exposed to the technological shift caused by AI.
  - Retric 6mo ago
    > powered solely by human muscle Both animals and water power go way back. The early steam engine was measured in horsepower because that’s what it was replacing in mines. It couldn’t compete with nearby water power which was already being moved relatively long distances through mechanical means at the time. Hand waving this as unimportant really misunderstands just how limited the Industrial Revolution was.
    - jychang 6mo ago
      Irrelevant. Here's Bret Devereaux (an actual historian) explaining this distinction and precisely why those are irrelevant in the context of the Industrial Revolution: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... > Diet indicators and midden remains indicate that there’s more meat being eaten, indicates a greater availability of animals which may include draft animals (for pulling plows) and must necessarily include manure, both products of animal ‘capital’ which can improve farming outputs. Of course many of the innovations above feed into this: stability makes it more sensible to invest in things like new mills or presses which need to be used for a while for the small efficiency gains to outweigh the cost of putting them up, but once up the labor savings result in more overall production. > But the key here is that none of these processes inches this system closer to the key sets of conditions that formed the foundation of the industrial revolution. Instead, they are all about wringing efficiencies out the same set of organic energy sources with small admixtures of hydro- (watermills) or wind-power (sailing ships); mostly wringing more production out of the same set of energy inputs rather than adding new energy inputs. It is a more efficient organic economy, but still an organic economy, no closer to being an industrial economy for its efficiency, much like how realizing design efficiencies in an (unmotorized) bicycle does not bring it any closer to being a motorcycle; you are still stuck with the limits of the energy that can be applied by two legs. So yeah, actual historians would be dismissive at your exact response, basically saying "I know, I know, but I don't care". You're still just talking about a society mostly 'wringing efficiencies out the same set of organic energy sources'. It IS unimportant, and you completely misunderstand how the Industrial Revolution reshaped production if you think it is important.
CalRobert 6mo ago
Interestingly, clearcutting is part of it but another part is just grazing. If you let sheep graze in a forest they will eat all the saplings, so after a century of this, the old trees die out without new ones to replace them. I agree with your point but thought that could be of interest - Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good book discussing this (and why Ireland, which really should be all forest, is an ecological wasteland more generally)
sabas123 6mo ago
We also have had a significant rise inglobal population. Making for an unfair comparison.
brohee 6mo ago
The general point is not. Iceland and Easter Island were fully deforested way before the industrial age. Countless species went extinct in Britain and more examples abound.
- HPsquared 6mo ago
  Britain was a little bit industrialised even before the steam engine. There were windmills and water mills. Steam massively accelerated it, but industry did exist before.
  - tpm 6mo ago
    If a windmill or a water mill is a sign of industrialisation, then large parts of the world were industrialised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills
  - mr_toad 6mo ago
    Commons in England were being enclosed in the Tudor age. It caused a great deal of social unrest, even rebellion. It had little to do with technology, and was mostly caused by population growth.
- galactus 6mo ago
  the speed at which depletion happened was probably not the same
tpm 6mo ago
> There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious manner. Unless you mean 'an axe', way before that there were deforested areas where the need for trees was larger than the supply and there were enough humans to fell them. > A few hundred years ago or less, a squirrel could get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. Yes, but that wasn't possible in other parts of the world much sooner.
- eru 6mo ago
  Burning was and is a popular way to deal with trees, too.
paganel 6mo ago
> The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. It's not, because the Malthusian trap was all too real going into modernity, as in recurring famines were a thing, they were quite real, nothing "literal" about them.
- eru 6mo ago
  Compare https://fass.nus.edu.sg/ecs/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/06/15-10-015.pdf https://fass.nus.edu.sg/ecs/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/...
  - paganel 6mo ago
    First of all, the study is written by an economist, might as well have sent me an Oracle of Delphi pronouncement. And second, he mentions the Malthusian trap being a real thing in his very first sentence, so not sure what I should have gotten out of this.
    - eru 6mo ago
      You could read the whole abstract. Or ask Deep Seek to explain it to you.
achenet 6mo ago
there's archeological evidence that humans hunted large animals (sometimes called megafauna) to extinction on every continent except Africa. My original source for this was the book Sapiens, but here are two links I found with a quick web search: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240701131808.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240701131808.h... https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction I also saw a theory (not sure how credible) that the reason humans started doing agriculture was in fact because we killed all the megafauna we used to eat. This was over 10,000 years ago. Well before the Industrial Revolution, indeed, before even the original Agricultural Revolution.
Voultapher 6mo ago
Proof by analogy is fraud .. and here the analogy is incorrect as well.

by hammock 6mo ago

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

ambicapter 6mo ago

> The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. GP is saying it is not, and you're just reiterating what OP said as fact.

jychang 6mo ago
It's sort of the exception that proves the rule. This is where STEM people are weak- a lack of knowledge on history. In another forum, someone would have chipped in that England's virgin forests were fully deforested by 1150. And someone else would have pointed out that this deforestation produced the economic demand for coal that drove the Industrial Revolution in the first place. Still, that kind of underscores OP's point. Yes, natural resources were not completely unlimited prior to the Industrial Revolution; Jonathan Swift predated Watt's steam engine, after all. Still... Neither were information resources 10 years ago. Intellectual property laws did exist prior to AI, of course. The legal systems in place are not completely ignorant of the reality. However, there's an immense difference in scale between post-industrial strip mining of resources, and preindustrial resource extraction powered solely by human muscle (and not coal or nitrogylcerin etc). Similarly, there's a massive difference in information extraction enabled by AI, vs a person in 1980 poring over the microfilm in their local library. The legal system and social systems in place prior to the Industrial Revolution proved unsuitable for an industrial world. It stands to reason that the legal system and social systems in today's society would be forced to evolve when exposed to the technological shift caused by AI.
- Retric 6mo ago
  > powered solely by human muscle Both animals and water power go way back. The early steam engine was measured in horsepower because that’s what it was replacing in mines. It couldn’t compete with nearby water power which was already being moved relatively long distances through mechanical means at the time. Hand waving this as unimportant really misunderstands just how limited the Industrial Revolution was.
  - jychang 6mo ago
    Irrelevant. Here's Bret Devereaux (an actual historian) explaining this distinction and precisely why those are irrelevant in the context of the Industrial Revolution: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... > Diet indicators and midden remains indicate that there’s more meat being eaten, indicates a greater availability of animals which may include draft animals (for pulling plows) and must necessarily include manure, both products of animal ‘capital’ which can improve farming outputs. Of course many of the innovations above feed into this: stability makes it more sensible to invest in things like new mills or presses which need to be used for a while for the small efficiency gains to outweigh the cost of putting them up, but once up the labor savings result in more overall production. > But the key here is that none of these processes inches this system closer to the key sets of conditions that formed the foundation of the industrial revolution. Instead, they are all about wringing efficiencies out the same set of organic energy sources with small admixtures of hydro- (watermills) or wind-power (sailing ships); mostly wringing more production out of the same set of energy inputs rather than adding new energy inputs. It is a more efficient organic economy, but still an organic economy, no closer to being an industrial economy for its efficiency, much like how realizing design efficiencies in an (unmotorized) bicycle does not bring it any closer to being a motorcycle; you are still stuck with the limits of the energy that can be applied by two legs. So yeah, actual historians would be dismissive at your exact response, basically saying "I know, I know, but I don't care". You're still just talking about a society mostly 'wringing efficiencies out the same set of organic energy sources'. It IS unimportant, and you completely misunderstand how the Industrial Revolution reshaped production if you think it is important.

CalRobert 6mo ago

Interestingly, clearcutting is part of it but another part is just grazing. If you let sheep graze in a forest they will eat all the saplings, so after a century of this, the old trees die out without new ones to replace them. I agree with your point but thought that could be of interest - Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good book discussing this (and why Ireland, which really should be all forest, is an ecological wasteland more generally)

sabas123 6mo ago

We also have had a significant rise inglobal population. Making for an unfair comparison.

brohee 6mo ago

The general point is not. Iceland and Easter Island were fully deforested way before the industrial age. Countless species went extinct in Britain and more examples abound.

HPsquared 6mo ago
Britain was a little bit industrialised even before the steam engine. There were windmills and water mills. Steam massively accelerated it, but industry did exist before.
- tpm 6mo ago
  If a windmill or a water mill is a sign of industrialisation, then large parts of the world were industrialised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_watermills
- mr_toad 6mo ago
  Commons in England were being enclosed in the Tudor age. It caused a great deal of social unrest, even rebellion. It had little to do with technology, and was mostly caused by population growth.
galactus 6mo ago
the speed at which depletion happened was probably not the same

tpm 6mo ago

> There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious manner. Unless you mean 'an axe', way before that there were deforested areas where the need for trees was larger than the supply and there were enough humans to fell them. > A few hundred years ago or less, a squirrel could get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. Yes, but that wasn't possible in other parts of the world much sooner.

eru 6mo ago
Burning was and is a popular way to deal with trees, too.

paganel 6mo ago

> The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. It's not, because the Malthusian trap was all too real going into modernity, as in recurring famines were a thing, they were quite real, nothing "literal" about them.

eru 6mo ago
Compare https://fass.nus.edu.sg/ecs/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/06/15-10-015.pdf https://fass.nus.edu.sg/ecs/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/...
- paganel 6mo ago
  First of all, the study is written by an economist, might as well have sent me an Oracle of Delphi pronouncement. And second, he mentions the Malthusian trap being a real thing in his very first sentence, so not sure what I should have gotten out of this.
  - eru 6mo ago
    You could read the whole abstract. Or ask Deep Seek to explain it to you.

achenet 6mo ago

there's archeological evidence that humans hunted large animals (sometimes called megafauna) to extinction on every continent except Africa. My original source for this was the book Sapiens, but here are two links I found with a quick web search: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240701131808.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240701131808.h... https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction I also saw a theory (not sure how credible) that the reason humans started doing agriculture was in fact because we killed all the megafauna we used to eat. This was over 10,000 years ago. Well before the Industrial Revolution, indeed, before even the original Agricultural Revolution.

Voultapher 6mo ago

Proof by analogy is fraud .. and here the analogy is incorrect as well.