3 ms·

Too fatalistic. In 19th century they predicted that Earth can't sustain population over 1 billion. In comes oil and agricultural revolution. I agree what we are

Too fatalistic. In 19th century they predicted that Earth can't sustain population over 1 billion. In comes oil and agricultural revolution. I agree what we are doing with ecosystem in general is a crime, but it won't kill us. At least not anytime soon.

xenonite 13y ago
Yes, it is true that the modern agriculture was enabled through abundance of oil. But that leads to a big problem as soon as the oil reserves diminish. How should one not be fatalistic then?
- EGreg 13y ago
  How was modern agriculture enabled by an abundance of oil?
EGreg 13y ago
Just because advances were able to stave off collapse and allow billions of people to consume resources at an ever greater rate does not mean that the same can be done with the effects of overfarming, overfishing, and pollution. The fallacy is thinking "since we did it once we can always continue doing it." The probability exponentially rises that you can't, since this is basically the same as the probability of always succeeding in time to avert a disaster. Actually garbage / messing up ecosystems is a different type of problem than obtaining resources. It is somewhat related to the second law of thermodynamics. Once you introduce so much entropy into a system the genie is out of the bottle.of course this isn't exactly thermodynamics but I can say it this way -- putting humpty dumpty together again is different than figuring out how to make humpty give you more food for decades.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  I disagree -- we leave an impact behind, but I've also seen terribly polluted areas being successfully remediated. So where there's a will, there's a way.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  I really agree with you on the point that we are doing all those things. I am a fan of the http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index/ blog. What am I arguing for - that while we do consume more resources, progress is exponential as well. For example if we seriously begin to run out of fossil fuels, amount of effort that is put into other energy sources would increase by order of magnitude and solution will be found. It might not be right away, it might not be silver bullet, but when push comes to shove and there are no alternatives, human ingenuity is frightening. In the end progress stacks multiplicatively - you add great battery technology to great energy generation technology and you got more than sum of the parts. So more people there are doing research - faster it goes. This point is only true from certain point of view. Consider genius starting from nill, how far could he take technology within his lifetime? Electricity, probably. Microprocessors and genetics, probably not. Now consider million of people working, each discovery builds on an earlier one, each tool makes other people researching more efficient or enables them to make new discoveries. Now think about multiple generations of people building discoveries on top of each other while sharing information.
tmp123415 13y ago
Try to imagine that this is the stock market: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Population_curve.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Populatio...

xenonite 13y ago

Yes, it is true that the modern agriculture was enabled through abundance of oil. But that leads to a big problem as soon as the oil reserves diminish. How should one not be fatalistic then?

EGreg 13y ago
How was modern agriculture enabled by an abundance of oil?

EGreg 13y ago

Just because advances were able to stave off collapse and allow billions of people to consume resources at an ever greater rate does not mean that the same can be done with the effects of overfarming, overfishing, and pollution. The fallacy is thinking "since we did it once we can always continue doing it." The probability exponentially rises that you can't, since this is basically the same as the probability of always succeeding in time to avert a disaster. Actually garbage / messing up ecosystems is a different type of problem than obtaining resources. It is somewhat related to the second law of thermodynamics. Once you introduce so much entropy into a system the genie is out of the bottle.of course this isn't exactly thermodynamics but I can say it this way -- putting humpty dumpty together again is different than figuring out how to make humpty give you more food for decades.

Spooky23 13y ago
I disagree -- we leave an impact behind, but I've also seen terribly polluted areas being successfully remediated. So where there's a will, there's a way.
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
I really agree with you on the point that we are doing all those things. I am a fan of the http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/post-index/ blog. What am I arguing for - that while we do consume more resources, progress is exponential as well. For example if we seriously begin to run out of fossil fuels, amount of effort that is put into other energy sources would increase by order of magnitude and solution will be found. It might not be right away, it might not be silver bullet, but when push comes to shove and there are no alternatives, human ingenuity is frightening. In the end progress stacks multiplicatively - you add great battery technology to great energy generation technology and you got more than sum of the parts. So more people there are doing research - faster it goes. This point is only true from certain point of view. Consider genius starting from nill, how far could he take technology within his lifetime? Electricity, probably. Microprocessors and genetics, probably not. Now consider million of people working, each discovery builds on an earlier one, each tool makes other people researching more efficient or enables them to make new discoveries. Now think about multiple generations of people building discoveries on top of each other while sharing information.

tmp123415 13y ago

Try to imagine that this is the stock market: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Population_curve.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Populatio...