A Message to the Nearly Converted

Excellent article, great graphics...

These graphs remind me of Chris Martenson's Crash Course (www.chrismartenson.com).

They're also indicative of the hard slap that mother nature is about to give us as we push past natural limits. Of course, mainstream economics whistles past this graveyard, insisting that "technology" will save us from any ill effects.

But we're about to get a giant reboot.......

One of your best ever, GG. Headed for the rec list.

:applause:

It's just that the likelihood of such happening voluntarily is so low, it's scary.

The corollary thought being, just what the hell is going to have to happen to make it occur involuntarily and how long until that event or events occur?

I've noticed a growing trend of casting ecological concerns in economic terms, in an apparent attempt to convince the economically minded of the rationality of ecological thought.

In the end, I don't know if this effort will be effective.

I'm finding it harder and harder not to adopt the "do this or die" approach. However, you cannot keep people in a constant state of "shock and awe." Eventually, they resign themselves to "the new normal."

Primarily, the way in which the former has been de-coupled from the latter by classical economic theory and expectations of endless growth.

One of the most dangerous things that modern society ever did, IMHO, was elevate economics to the level of a hard science (on par with physics, for example). The reality is that it is not any more of a "hard" science than psychology, sociology or political science. Furthermore, when economists based their theories upon the ideas that humans were rational actors always making decisions in line with their individual self-interest, those models are ultimately doomed -- because they have no bearing upon the real world in which people live.

I don't think it's so much of transitioning from an economic to an ecological paradigm, as it is coming to grips with the way in which economy is ultimately dependent upon ecology, both in the short and long term. People will always make decisions based upon their economic well-being -- the challenge is in highlighting the connection between their economic well-being and their ecological well-being, and the utter and complete dependence of the former on the latter.

It's a question of getting people to understand that without an ecology there is no economics: that economics is a purely human construct that depends on a functioning ecology for its existence, while ecologies are a fact of nature like gravity that function on their own.

When I talk about a transformation of consciousness to the ecological, I really mean to a recognition of the primacy of ecology, and the acceptance that our economy is only a branch office.

When I talk about a transformation of consciousness to the ecological, I really mean to a recognition of the primacy of ecology, and the acceptance that our economy is only a branch office.

Sadly, most of the modern world has been duped into the misconception that the relationship is the other way around -- that economics is primary, and it is ecology that is the "branch office."

This line of ecology over economy also fits nicely with the work of E.F. Schumacher in Small is Beautiful. Way back in 1973 Schumacher pointed out that all economic activity is ultimately dependent upon energy and material inputs and, despite the protestations of most mainstream economists to the contrary, those energy and material sources do not exist in some limitless state that dovetails nicely with their complex mathematical models, but rather that they exist in limited quantities in the real world.

that people will always make decisions based upon their economic well-being - and I know this isn't the place, but have to ask - why can't we get single payer, universal health care at the table then?

That is, food, shelter, etc. This encompasses modern economies -- but more closely mirrors what are referred to as "traditional" economies. These economic decisions within a traditional structure often take place outside of what we think of as the "market" and instead within kinship and mutual obligation networks -- but they still take place. The current debate over health care is another thing entirely.

The reason we can't get single-payer has more to do with mass psychology than actual economic well-being. Kind of like if you combine Adam Curtis's ideas in his excellent documentary, "The Century of the Self" and the theories of behavioral economics (herd behavior, irrationality, etc.). If people believe that they, themselves, may not directly benefit from it, they are less likely to support it (even though the indirect social benefits actually do benefit them, and they suffer indirect social costs from the current system).

...and they have more $ and influence?

Question: what's "BAU"?

TIA

I see the breakdown of small-scale social structures like families and communities as being driven by the same general forces that are breaking down the environment, the economy, and the human spirit. These forces seem to work fractally, generating similar problems at all scales of our experience: from dying species to dying towns, from ruptured ocean ecologies to ruptured personal relationships.

The underlying problem is that we are telling ourselves a cultural story about who we are, what our place in the universe is, what our rights are (very many), and what our responsibilities are (very few). This underlying story drives everything we do, from strip mining to cruising for chicks, so the results are similar in every arena we enter. The story is malignant, so the outcome of the behaviour it causes is malignant.

The story we are telling is one of our innate superiority, independence and separateness -- from nature, from each other, and from any sense of the sacred. Unless and until that story changes our behaviour will not change, nor will the effect our behaviour has on everything we touch. At the core, the problems in the world today are not technical so much as spiritual.

Luckily it's not we who are broken, it's just the story that's broken. We can always tell a new story about ourselves. Again luckily, that's starting to happen. Will enough of us change our story quickly enough? Who knows? We're a species that's addicted to risk, and waiting this long to change our story is the biggest risk we've ever taken.

That one story motivates things as diverse as "from strip mining to cruising for chicks"?

I could see if it were "from strip clubs to cruising for chicks" because at least some identifiable cultural and biological impulse could be easily identified.

But can you provide an example of a coal industry executive or engineer deciding to use strip mining for a deposit and then using the same rationale (or story) to go "cruise for chicks"?

You might want to check out the famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, "The Hedgehog and the Fox" which explicates the fragment of an ancient Greek folk tail, the fox and the hedgehog, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing".

Your theorizing about everything being caused by one thing is veering dangerously into the hedgerows.

It doesn't fall into the domain of real sciences like physics or chemistry, or a formal proof-based field like mathematics. Investigations into human areas like culture, psychology and economics are not sciences in that sense. That doesn't mean they have no value, just that the rules used to determine the degree of correctness of a theory are different.

However, elaboration is possible.

The connection between strip clubs and cruising for chicks is trivial. That's why I used two activities that are apparently so different. I have come to believe that the story of separation we tell ourselves has a general pervasive influence on our activities, whether the activities are directed at inanimate nature, other living species or other members of our own species. The way it works is this:

Because I have a neocortex I am self-aware. I can feel my sensations and experience my thoughts. However, I can feel only my own sensations, and I can experience only my own thoughts. Because of that, I am the most "real" object in my universe, and therefore all other objects in the universe are less real than I am. Because they are less real they have less value to me than "I" do.

However, I need other objects in the universe to accomplish my goals, whatever those might be. I have to use them, and therefore they become my resources. Different goals may require different resources. Getting rich (which enhances my sense of status and self-worth) may require digging up coal to sell. Getting laid (which enhances my sense of status as well as providing hormonal soothing) requires a woman (or a man, of course).

Because the mountain full of coal and the woman are both outside of me they are less real than me, and therefore have less value to me than I do. Their feelings are less important than mine (in the case of the woman or a community living close to my coal mine) or non-existent and therefore irrelevant (in the case of the mountain). In both cases the objectification of the not-me (mountain or woman) that is imposed by my self-awareness permits me to do things to the not-me that I would consider totally unacceptable if done to me.

This is a deeply rooted issue, but how it expresses itself is always open to cultural modification. We can learn to give others as much or even more value than ourselves. We can learn to see our welfare as inextricable from the welfare of the natural world. We can even learn to see that we "contain" the entire universe -- what the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls "interbeing". However, these attitudes must be learned. The fact that we have this fundamental sense of objectification (solipsism is its most extreme manifestation) built into our nature courtesy of our brain structure means that we are very susceptible to learning cultural stories that devalue "the other" -- whether the other is human on not.

Our sense of separateness, brought on by the self-awareness provided by our neocortex, is what enables us to rape both mountains and women. The only way out of the box is to learn to value the world beyond ourselves, to heal the sense of separateness by learning to connect with the other. The more we learn this skill, the less harm we do. The less we learn it, the more harm we do.

you are so correct with the problems being not "technical so much as spiritual" (and in case anyone misconstrues, neither of us are talking religious). We are divorced from the sacred.

I'm attempting to dream a new dream and I'm glad there are others doing the same.

And their numbers are growing every day. Learning that is what gave me back my hope.

Awaken the dreamer, change the dream.

...at helping fix the problems we face.

The problem is population. But since we don't have citizens living in a modern world who have a modern understanding, it makes no sense to discuss exponential functions. And since talking about having babies is taboo, we can't open a dialog even if we did have a modern understanding of the problem.

There is a responsibility to understand what we are doing. And we don't have that. Only a very few years ago did we get heavier than air vehicles that could be airborne. It is crucial that people understand the implications of their acts. I imagine some people still don't know what happens when they flip a light switch on. I'm thinking of Palin. It's just a button on a wall. No, it is an entire infrastructure, a huge complex of generating and distributing devices that are affected by that simple act of flipping a switch. It's no different than lumber. A piece of wood is chainsaws, yarders, mills, deforestation, kilns, transportation. A piece of pork is usually a long chain of things that begins with massive animal suffering. But more than that, it is energy, and pollution. And the discussion is now happening after reaching crisis level. The time to discuss limits is before a crisis. Now we can't have a rational discourse. Now it's drama and sacrifice.


The odd part is, in perspective to Betelgeuse, we are hardly a speck of dust in space.


Sigh- It appears that the mathematical irony is being lost on people even on DU. How sad. It's enough to make on give up all hope.

The question I want to pose to people is- What is the carbon footprint of a baby in a modern society?

All those cool graphs! Yeah!

Correlation between uncool stuff!

So number of McDonald's Restaurants goes up at same level that "shrimp farm production" goes up, which means that the expansion of shrimp farms is causing people to eat more Big Macs!

keeeweeel!

Not.

You already called me "very, very stupid!" - or words to that effect - once here already, so save yourself the time unless you really want to brighten my day with another of your ratshit replies.

Oh, wait. It's a forum. Where everyone is entitled to post.

Where all ideas are subject to scrutiny and must stand on their own strengths and weaknesses.

Nevertheless, your attempt at censorship has been duly noted for what it's worth.

In that regard, I'd be interested in hearing your substantive commentary on the ideas in Bradford's article.

By way of encouragement, I'll say that I think there are way too many "shoulds" in the article for my comfort. As a result it has become one man's lecture on his world-view and his preferred world-state. In that sense it is indeed an exercise in conversion, in which Bradford assumes the superior value of his perspective. The perennial problem is that such views are very hard to elevate to the level of Universal Truth.

The collection of graphs from New Scientist has little scientific value, but much polemical impact. They do serve to remind us that human impact on the world has accelerated dramatically in a variety of apparently distinct domains. They also serve to pose a series of unspoken questions:

"Is the apparent correlation real, or the result of simple confirmation bias?"
"Are there cause-and-effect linkages involved between the domains that drive the correlations?"
"Is this apparently exponential behaviour a problem?"
"If it is a problem, can the exponential nature of the curves be reversed by voluntary human action?"

And

"What might happen if the functions of the curves remain unchanged?"

For me, these burning questions have lost a lot of their urgency over the last year or so. I decided long ago that the correlation is real and is being driven by cause and effect linkages. I also decided that the overall trend is probably irreversible, although changes are definitely possible within some problem domains.

However, I've also concluded that it really doesn't matter that much. Our current situation is just one more in a long chain of similar dangerous circumstances that individuals, civilizations and species have faced since the dawn of time. The world is a dangerously changeable place, and we are not its masters.

Evolution has always proceeded through a feedback process of environmental pressure, adaptation, mutation and selection. Our current circumstances can be seen as just another type of impersonal environmental pressure. As a result, our future progress will be determined by the dynamic balance of adaptation and selection that plays out.

Being a metaphorical thinker, I see the growth of the small-group movement described by Paul Hawken in "Blessed Unrest" as a sort of cultural mutation. As such it will play an inevitable role in our evolutionary process. Whether it will be a successful mutation, or irrelevant or even morbid, remains to be seen -- just the same as all the other adaptive and restorative actions we undertake.

:D

(the article's contention is)
we need to get rid of car dealerships



with GM and Chrysler in the news,
the majority opinion on other DU forums
is that the jobs of the people (thieves IMO) that work
at dealerships need to be preserved

It gave me the best laugh this week! Now we have global warming zealots saying there is a correlation between Telephones or GDP and global warming. I wonder what the R2 is for that?

And where are all the people screaming that the author isn't qualified to comment on global warming????? The author's bios states "I retired at a young age from academic biology and became a community organizer and farmer." Bring up an opposing viewpoint and the first thing you hear is that person doesn't have a degree or proper experience in climatology. Oh I forget, hypocrites don't need to hold everyone to the same standard. One standard for people that agree with you, and another for everyone else.

To answer a previous reply's question "Gee, why does every graph have an exponential appearance?" It is because the author cherry picked categories that happen to have an exponential growth rate. If he had picked "Mule Ownership" or "Blood Sausage Consumption" or "Laudanum Consumption" instead of "McDonalds Restaurants" the graphs would look very different. Give me a freaking break.

As far as the famous hockey stick graph, that was been totally discredited years ago. Even the IPCC was embarrassed enough to remove it for later versions of their reports.

The cult of GW Koolaid Drinkers never ceases to amuse.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html

"The report states: "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world"."

Is the US National Academy of Sciences qualified to comment on global warming?

:rofl:

Not if they disagree with our guardian...

After all, if it's good enough for Ron Paul to cite, I'm sure it's good enough for guardian.

xxx for global warming, yyy against

info about the NAS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_National_Academy_of_Sciences

I don't remember voting for any of those people, BTW

But that doesn't make it any less true, no matter how much I wish I could jump off a building and fly around.

:freak:

...will begin when the unavoidable feedback mechanisms seriously kick in....REALITY BITES. Of course the powers that be (stupid?) will blame it on the aliens or ????

Bad habits can be and are averted.

At this point in time, any analysis of what our future looks like that completely ignores Artificial Intellengence is irrelevant. The advent of thinking machines is a complete game changer that will make all other technological improvements look like minor adjustments to skirt lengths.

If you're going to categorize any analyses that ignore AI as "irrelevant," then it seems incumbent upon you to produce actual instances of AI being used on a significant scale.

Furthermore, it may be beneficial if you could provide a short statement that details just how we are going to pay for an expansion of those programs, especially given the massive amounts of capital currently floating out in space and looking for a use.

So I'm not exactly sure how I could produce examples of AI being used on a significant scale.

As far as paying for the expansion of AI programs, I'm not asking for any more money. I think the money being poured into computers right now will suffice.

Failing to address the impacts of a technology that does not exist yet renders any further discussions "irrelevant"....

Ummm... yeah...

This is what I wrote, emphasis added:

At this point in time, any analysis of what our future looks like that completely ignores Artificial Intellengence is irrelevant.

Personally, I tend to base my view of the future on the following:
1. Recent past and present social, economic and political trends (on both the micro and macro levels);
2. Analyzing how similar trends throughout the longer arc of history impacted various societies and civilizations (on both micro and macro levels as much as possible).

You said: "Any analysis of what our future looks like that completely ignores Artificial Intelligence is irrelevant." (emphasis yours)

I still stand by my assertion that your setting of the goalposts in such an arbitrary number, without any detailed explanation of what forms this AI might take, what effects it will have on us (positive and negative), what raw materials it will require and so forth, renders those ideas moot -- until you can provide a more detailed explanation.

Simply saying something is so because you said it is not an argument -- it is just one person's opinion.

This is an opinion board. Terminating every post with the words, "that's just my opinion" is wasted bytes. It should be understood by everyone.

The former is what is used for debate and argument (see Stephen Toulmin's Methods of Argumentation for a more detailed description).

The latter is simply stating a point of view without giving anything to back it up.

Your posts on AI fell into the latter category.

Especially since artificial intelligence is modeled on the real thing, which was the source of the problem?

I can see AI getting us to the endgame a bit (OK, maybe a lot) sooner, but what about those of us who don't want to be around when Skynet becomes self-aware?

The incredible pace of technological innovation that we have seen in the last 150 years will look like a snail compared to AI based innovation. Over the last 100,000 years, average human intelligence has maybe doubled. With AI, you are talking about a species whose intelligence will double every two years. Do the math and you understand why AI is the last invention humans will ever produce.

They may help us out of this mess, or they may decide we aren't worth the trouble. Either way, the future doesn't look they way you have consistently painted it.

I agree with that, but not in the way you intended. From my POV, innovation is what caused this brush with species suicide -- cleverness without wisdom. Will your AIs be wise as well as innovative?

We may yet achieve what you dream of. I fervently hope we do not, as the Law of Unintended Consequences tends to piggyback on the rate of innovation.

Can you not see the irony of decrying the impact of innovation on an internet forum?

On the one hand innovation gave us the Internet. On the other hand it gave us cyanide gold mining. Aside from the value of any particular innovation considered within a specific context, there is a broader question. For me, that question is something like,

"Given the current social and ecological situation, as well as the observable trends in those conditions and what we know about the forces that shape human behaviour; on balance has human technological innovation been a good or bad thing for the species that share the planet; has innovation contributed to the crisis more than ameliorated it; and will more innovation change the observed trends for the better rather than for the worse?"

The answer to this question is very personal, and reflects our inner value landscape. My answer is rooted in the observation that while I enjoy the fruits of some innovations, I recognize that nothing happens in isolation from everything else. Since I see a lot of negative impacts that have been leveraged by innovation, by and large I see innovation as a negative force.

If I had been born into a world without so much innovation I'd still have been happy. However, I am where I am, so like everyone else I'll use the tools available to me to change the things I don't like about the world I'm in.

...it has no value as contrasted to the damage it causes. The basic argument then expands out to unequivocally say that the internet and technologies like it could not exist without the damage, therefor those technologies are doomed from the onset.

It's a very narrow minded point of view, and dare I say, meant to place "true believers" into an exclusive category of "those who may be saved."

I expound on this here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x184432

I don't "want to convince others it has no value as contrasted to the damage it causes". That's your projection. I'm asking people to recognize that everything we do has a cost as well as a benefit, and to decide for themselves whether the benefits truly outweigh the costs, especially when both are understood in depth. In some cases like the Internet the benefits may win, though they won't for everyone. In other cases, like cyanide gold mining or oil from tar sands the costs may win, though again not for everyone. Anyone who is truly interested in the exercise could go further, and ask themselves where their internal definitions of benefits and costs came from.

I am by no means a "true believer" on either side of the camp (at least not for a year or more now). The fact that I still think that the costs to the planetary biosphere will be severe and may be irreversible in a human-significant time scale just makes me a realist. There will not be either a technological singularity or a monolithic, amorphous, global collapse of civilization. Nobody's getting raptured. Of course, for some people the decline in their individual situation may seem indistinguishable from a global collapse.

Does it cost a bee anything to extract pollen from a flower? No, it's a symbiotic relationship. Both sides get evolutionary defined benefits from the act. Cost is defined by a relationship that is not symbiotic.

I can pick an apple from a tree, it costs me nothing. The tree expended exorbitant amounts of energy to create an apple which is suitable for animals to eat, as an animal, I eat it, and toss the core on the ground so that it may have a chance to grow. The relationship is symbiotic.

I can buy an apple from a store shelf and that apple costs whatever the markets have deemed it is worth, and I must go do some other labor to acquire that apple. The relationship is not symbiotic, because the labor I have expended to get the money to buy the apple is not proportionate to the simple effort required to pick the apple to begin with. I give more than I get.

You can make all things that technological civilization requires without polluting, without damaging the environment, without causing any resource drain for the rest of the planets species. The question is whether or not you want to act to do it, rather than sit around acting as if there is a "cost" for doing so.

The very top of the equation (or bottom depending on your perspective) is how much energy a given species uses. That's it. My sigline shows that our energy usage is nothing on the scheme of things and that in the end if we go about things intelligently, we can avoid the problems that current for-profit industry has created.

At no cost.

We have not, in all of human history, demonstrated an ability to eliminate the costs of our activity while retaining the benefits. There is no evidence whatsoever that we will, or even can, do that. In fact, in order to do that we would need to violate the second law of thermodynamics. Even Homer Simpson knows you can't do that.

You appear to be arguing from a position that is utterly divorced from reality. In other words, your position appears to be religious rather than scientific, no matter what your sigline says.

Human society lived without cost, at equlibrium with its environment, for several hundred thousand years. With some level of technology the vast majority of that time. The problems started happening when shaman and others with a perceived power position (warlords) decided that they were better off if they exploited others via force rather than benefit others equally. The shaman would decieve them into thinking he had magical powers, and the people would believe it and cede to the will of the shaman. The warlord would declare to have unlimited power and would use force to subordinate those people to his will.

In the end that is not the only way for society to operate, and when we look at the open source and piracy communities we can see that sharing trumps exploitation. It will happen eventually.

See RepRap for an example. "Wealth without money."

All because of energy.

Hunter-gatherer groups may have been strongly egalitarian -- because there's no point in accumulating wealth when you're moving often, and working together helps to better ensure the survival of all involved -- but humans have never lived in "equilibrium" with their environment.

Going all the way back to homo habilis, when hominids first started making their own tools (the hand axe), humans were out of equilibrium with their environment. Tools allowed them to better exploit the resources that the environment had in order to increase their chances of survival.

If humans truly lived in equilibrium with their environment, then the horses of the Americas would never have been hunted into extinction (as just one example). The primary difference between then and now is that our cleverness combined with knowledge accumulated over millenia has allowed us to design and construct machines that allow us greater exploitation of natural resources.

The examples you provide of the shaman and the warlord are almost too hackneyed to comment upon. There was never a conscious conspiracy among these groups to seize control of society and turn it toward their own ends. Rather, the ascendancy of these groups was directly tied to the challenges of a more settled, agricultural life to include increased dependency upon weather patterns (and the accompanying spiritual faith that a priestly class could influence those patterns by appealing to the gods) as well as vulnerability to attack by other communities and nomadic groups (thus giving more status in society toward those warriors able to provide protection). In short, the inequalities we see today can be traced back to the moment when human societies changed from hunter/gatherer to agricultural and started generating food surpluses for the first time in human history -- which in turn led to increased population, increased job specialization, and the gradual centralization required to coordinate it all.

Energy (initially food energy) may be at the heart of it all, but definitely not in the manner in which you describe.

That's one of the most succinct descriptions I've read. Sounds like you've read Zerzan and Quinn.

What I posted is little more than the first two units of 9th grade global history that I taught last year -- Prehistory/Neolithic Revolution and River Valley Civilizations. After all, it's impossible to truly understand why civilizations developed the way they did without looking at how humans made the social transformation from hunter/gatherer societies to civilizations.

Of course, failing to understand this process also leaves you open to prescribing mistaken solutions to our current predicaments.

As far as I remember, my Grade 9 history all those years ago involved memorizing the dates of European wars and treaties...

You're right, we can't know where we really are unless we know where we came from.

Of course, I tended to focus more on themes and concepts than just giving the kids a bunch of stuff to remember.

This was a trait that did not exactly endear me to some of my peers nor administration....

Rather than blame the few humans responsible for these relationships Zerzan blames the innovative aspects of human behavior.

ie, take the good and make it bad.

When you have small populations your ability to use tools to benefit your species does not automatically mean you will destroy your environment. 12k years ago humans populations were reaching "civilized" proportions. You seem to go from homo habilis to horse extinction which is thousands of years apart.

The Indians used to burn wildfires across hundreds of square miles in order to clear out land. They used to run herds, if they were lucky, off of cliffs to get a hold of the carcases. I'm not defending these behaviors.

However, I think there was a relative 'conspiracy' with regards to the power hierarchies that existed early on. It's not so much a 'conspiracy' so much common sense. The earliest known writing is about barter exchange and demands for repayment. The oldest historical societies had kings and warlords. This was not a "necessary prerequsite for argiculture," but rather an incidential occurance because agriculture lowered the labor requirements for existance while allowing some few to actually sit around doing nothing but dictating and deluding their populations into being subservient. There are plenty of examples of agrarian societies that did not have these power relationships.

To say that this is how things have to be is deulsional.

I said that this is the way things "were". And to pretend they were otherwise is what is delusional. As the saying goes -- you can have your own opinions, but you can't have your own facts....

As for tools -- absolutely the creation of tools threw humans out of equililbrium with their environment. I figured you'd be able to draw the inference from the creation of the hand axe to the extinction of horses in the Americas, but since you didn't I'll spell it out.

The motivating force behind almost all human invention (i.e. improved tools) prior to the Neolithic was making it easier to get food (and clothing and shelter) and, therefore, improve chances of survival. Although the hand axe was used mainly by homo habilis as a means of improving scavenging, as hominids evolved they started hunting more as a means of gaining MORE calories and increasing their survival chances even more. The running of herds off of cliffs goes all the way back to homo erectus, especially after their mastery of fire. With regards to these strategies, you said, "I'm not defending these behaviors." It's not something to make a value judgment about -- it was humans taking the path that led to the best chances for their survival, plain and simple.

Anyway, back to tools. As another example, Neanderthal longspears with flint tips made them able to take down large game -- but at great danger to injury or death during the hunt. Homo sapiens improved upon this design by developing a throwing spear and the atlatl, a device that allowed them to extend the length of their throwing arm and thus make the spear more deadly. The ultimate design of all of this was to become more efficient hunters -- thereby improving chances for survival. Increased chances for survival meant that these people had a little more time to sit around and make tools, which in turn helped fuel further invention. All of this allowed humans to better exploit the resources of nature -- one of which was wild game. The extinction of NA horses is simply one glaring example of the efficiency with which those early hunter-gatherers stalked their game.

When people made the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones, several things happened. One, the process of invention went into hyperdrive. People started to specialize in what they were good at -- making tools, building permanent structures, etc. -- because it hastened the pace of invention. All of this was made possible by the surplus food of agriculture and herding. Shamans developed within hunter-gatherer communities in order to appeal to the spirits for a good hunt. In agricultural societies, the focus of these people became weather and fertility -- simply because those were the greater needs of a settled, agricultural society. Finally, these communities were magnets for attack by outside nomads -- so the best warriors slowly began to take charge of the community's defense.

One of the side-effects of specialization was that varying worth was placed on different jobs. Initially, the shaman/priest class was accorded the most value, because they intervened on behalf of the community with the spirits/gods. Over time, however, the warrior class gained ascendancy as conflicts emerged not only between the community and hunter-gatherer nomads, but also with adjacent communities. Now I am certain that there were plenty of individuals who schemed and maneuvered their way into power and held on to it through more scheming and maneuvering. However, all societies that developed into civilizations underwent a similar organic process. Those agrarian societies that did not have similar power relationships had not become civilizations. Furthermore, it's not as if these classes "did nothing" as you imply. In many ancient civilizations and medieval Europe, the role of the nobility was not leisure but warfare. In Shang and Zhou China, for instance, warfare was the sole domain of the nobility. Populations were subservient not because they were "deluded" but because an initial social value placed upon the specialized job of warrior was considerably higher than that of everyday farmer. While this warrior class likely also enforced subservience at the point of a sword, the social value of their role also became a cultural memory that became almost reflexive on the part of the people of that civilization. It is similar to the manner in which medieval nobles and peasants interacted -- nobles commanded and peasants obeyed -- without even considering the social dynamics at play.

You are right that things don't have to be this way. However, to maintain a centralized civilization with considerable job specialization, this model is the only one that has ever existed. If you don't mind going to a much more traditional way of life, then you might be able to get rid of hierarchy and power relationships. But to pretend that complex civilizations have existed in the past without these social elements is what is delusional.

The simple fact is that centralization and civilization have ALWAYS gone together. I would surmise that the agrarian societies you mentioned were rather small-scale and decentralized. When we look at the civilizations under which the greater "advances" in human history have occurred, however, there was considerable centralization and specialization. Our modern civilization is no different in this regard.

"You are right that things don't have to be this way. However, to maintain a centralized civilization with considerable job specialization, this model is the only one that has ever existed. If you don't mind going to a much more traditional way of life, then you might be able to get rid of hierarchy and power relationships. But to pretend that complex civilizations have existed in the past without these social elements is what is delusional."

So which is it?

Can we have a technological society that is at equllibrium with nature, that doesn't pollute (except for waste heat which is insignfiicant compared to the energy from the sun), where resources are shared freely as they were before the "great technological leap"?

You seem to think no. I think yes. I do not think that our tools or our innovative aspects necessarily need to result in the damaging effects it has had, and I ascribe those damaging effects to the exploitation of humans by humans.

"I would surmise that the agrarian societies you mentioned were rather small-scale and decentralized. When we look at the civilizations under which the greater "advances" in human history have occurred, however, there was considerable centralization and specialization."

But you know darn well that the more open desimination of knowledge and information was the real precursor to the boom of industrialization, and that indeed, the exploitation of those people by others (the nobels and warrior classes) had to keep a fine balance between people being educated and people being knowledgable. For instance, the art of ceremics was kept secret for some time and at one point ceremics by weight were more valuable than gold itself.

Since you're the one claiming that we can have a technological society at "equilibrium with nature, that doesn't pollute, where resources are shared freely," it appears that the onus is upon you to cite large-scale examples of where such civilizations have existed in the past. My point is simply that there are no such large-scale civilizations that survived. Perhaps the closest possible example would be the Indus Valley Dravidian society that existed before the migration of Indo-Europeans to India (see Mohenjo-Daro). Then again, that society was essentially conquered and absorbed by the Indo-Europeans that found their way through the Khyber Pass into India, so I'm not certain how it serves as a long-term example of what we should aspire toward.

You said:
I do not think that our tools or our innovative aspects necessarily need to result in the damaging effects it has had, and I ascribe those damaging effects to the exploitation of humans by humans.

The exploitation of humans by other humans is a side-effect, not the main cause. The main cause, as I pointed out earlier, was the drive of humans to survive. We have done this by making food production more efficient, which in turn frees up more people to engage in job specialization. Of course, the distribution of food surplus to those people not engaged directly in food production necessitates centralized authority of some type. The ultimate example of this is our current system, in which only about 2% of the population is employed as farmers -- and the rest of us are employed in other occupations. Without a centralized distribution network, a lot more of us would have to become farmers or we would likely starve within a short time. Just imagine what your community would be like if the grocery store didn't get any deliveries for a month....

You said:
But you know darn well that the more open desimination of knowledge and information was the real precursor to the boom of industrialization, and that indeed, the exploitation of those people by others (the nobels and warrior classes) had to keep a fine balance between people being educated and people being knowledgable. For instance, the art of ceremics was kept secret for some time and at one point ceremics by weight were more valuable than gold itself.

First, don't put words in my mouth. Industrialization came about because of fossil fuels, not because of greater dissemination of knowledge. Without fossil fuels taking the place of human and animal labor, there would not have been an industrial revolution even close to the scale that actually happened.

Second, the increased dissemination of knowledge and information was the result of movable type printing. The one invention that spurred the modern world and undermined the power of noble lords (and the Catholic Church in Europe) was the printing press. For a more detailed explanation of this phenomenon (and how it led to the feudal nobility's decline and the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie), I recommend Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities and Juergen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. At least in medieval Europe, the nobility and Church were completely unable to stem this tide -- the printing press bypassed all traditional means of communication -- and even when they succumbed to this tide they sowed the seeds of their own destruction.

As to the example of ceramics, it is nothing new in history. Shang China kept bronze casting secret from the people not just for the purpose of protecting a source of wealth, but keeping weapons out of the hands of the peasantry.

Lastly, to return to the notion of fossil fuels replacing human and animal power, it is an interesting historical correlation that occurred between civilizations that developed a democratic or republican form of government and the practice of human slavery. In ancient Greece, citizens were free to discuss and debate public affairs because they had slaves laboring on their behalf. Same thing for republican Rome. And we all know how widespread slavery was in the United States at the time of its founding. It's also interesting that the abolition of slavery occurred at the same time that those countries practicing slavery were making the transition to fossil fuels as a source of power. What I mean here is that we didn't so much as get rid of slavery per se as we replaced human slavery with the equivalent of fossil fuel slaves. Given the inevitable decline of fossil fuel supplies throughout the world, I cannot help but wonder if that will see a return of chattel slavery in order to provide a source of energy....

I don't have to cite "civilizations in the past that didn't pollute and shared resources freely," to show that it's possible and an outcome that we can and should strive for. All I have to do is show energy usage of other species on the planet and compare that to our own. I have done that. Now you can dismiss this simple argument, as you have done, but doing so shows an ignorance of simple high school physics.

Agriculture allowed for specialization, but it also allowed for domination. The non-local empires could not have existed without agriculture. But I don't see that as an inevitable historical end, only the one we unfortunately had to experience.

In a technological society specialization would become more abstract than it currently is, because machines would do the producing, and humans would do the designing. Once a design is made and with the proper software toolsets, it can be copied and shared freely, so that reliance on a given specialized task is unnecessary unless you want to be completely cutting edge, and even then, once you meet consumption requirements "cutting edge" itself becomes abstract, because what is the difference between a music device that can hold all the music ever created and one that can hold twice that? The basic process would be a consumer-producer relationship, that is, everyone that consumes would also produce.

You say that "more people would have to become farmers," but I posit that in a technological society that isn't hung up on archaic ways of production (such that we have been doing for nearly 10k years; geoagriculture), of course "more people would be farmers," but also "most anything else." Food would necessarily be grown in vertical gardens, that is, big skyscrapers designed to recycle a cities waste and turn it into food. Given that they would rely on hydroponics or aeroponics they would not need to utilize soil, and the feed stocks would come directly from the sewage lines.

Industrialization certainly got a push by fossil fuels, but even the earliest inventors thought that biofuels were going to be the way motive power was utilized.

The press was one way knowledge was disseminated, but it also means the rejection of common doctrine and a move toward scientific understanding.

I have no problem with making machines our slaves.

The disagreement between us is on the level of human psychology/sociology and history. I'm pretty well-versed in these, since I'm currently pursuing my MA in History (and dabble extensively in my spare time).

For one, your argument hinges on the assumption that people (both as individuals and members of a group) will behave in a rational manner if given choices. Again, to base any analysis of our ability to meet the challenges we face, I look to any comparable examples in the past. While there are some examples of civilizations reversing course to avoid catastrophe, most of those involve a strong ruler exercising authoritarian control. A good recent example is the response of Cuba to the fall of the Soviet Union and the effective "peak oil" for them that accompanied it. Conversely, there are NONE of a non-hierarchical civilization in which individuals always make rational choices. So, while I'll never say that the case you present will never happen, nor that hierarchy and domination have to be a part of our life, my study of history tells me something different.

You said:
In a technological society specialization would become more abstract than it currently is, because machines would do the producing, and humans would do the designing.

And what about those humans who aren't designers? Will they have the same choice as in Player Piano -- the Army or the Reeks and Recks?

There's a reason that the industrial revolution was founded on fossil fuels and biofuels -- because the former were available in quantities that the latter were not. Just because the earliest inventors, such as Rudolf Diesel, based their inventions off of biofuels. That is hardly the same as saying that we very well could have gone in the direction of biofuels instead of fossil fuels -- as soon as the latter were able to be refined, especially after a use for gasoline was discovered, biofuels could never be produced on the same scale nor provide comparable EROEI.

The printing press certainly led to the rejection of common doctrine -- traditional power centers, such as the Catholic Church and dynastic rulers in Western Europe, could no longer control the means of communication, so notions like the divine right of kings and papal supremacy were doomed. And this also spurred a move toward scientific understanding. However, this has also stretched beyond a healthy skepticism into an almost religious faith in rationalism. Personally, every time I hear exhortations toward increasing study in math and science without any similar call for greater concentration on the humanities, I shudder. Mainly, because while the sciences may teach us the "how", it is only in the humanities that we gain the ability to explore the "why" -- or "why not". It is thinking about the "how" without really considering the "why or why not" that got us the likes of the atomic bomb....

You said:
I have no problem with making machines our slaves.

When I read this remark, I immediately thought of abolitionist propaganda in the United States during the years leading to the Civil War. One of the charges leveled at the institution of slavery was the way in which it not only degraded the slave, but also the master because it removed him from productive industry and instead encouraged sloth and laziness. Given the manner in which access to cheap, abundant oil encouraged profligacy and a sense of entitlement in our country, I don't see things working out much differently if we were somehow able to make these "machines" you talk about.

I just use common sense and have a bit of imagination.

When I know for a fact that composting was utilized to a great extent historically in agrarian life, yet it is hardly used in modern industrialization, I don't see it some sort of "psychology/sociology" but rather an effect of authoritarian paradigms. The former, historical method for argiculture, was at equllibrium with the environment (in as much as any animals activities are). The latter, industrial, modern methods, are not. They pollute streams, they kill animals, they drain aquifers.

Now which method of agriculture are you supposing I should ascribe to human "psychology/sociology"? The one which existed for the vast marjority of agricultural life, or the one which is endemic with power structures and the centralization of resources?

It's simple. If the technology to recycle ones waste existed, and it was freely available, people would chose it over the non-free variety that requires expensive natural gas fertalizer synthesizing, or heavy nitrate farming, or globalized fertalizer shipping. Really, the process we have now is infinitely asinine, but it is done because the *power structures* maintain it that way. There's no conspiracy that they prevent alternatives from existing, mind you, it's more that they are the "most effective means" for current society. The solution then is to be "more effective." Make it so that it is more cost effective to recycle ones waste right where it is produced (it is, thermodynamically speaking, but the monetary system creates an illusion that it isn't; if you include the millions of years of energy expendature to create the natural gas deposits etc).

See the article Solar Satellite Power with Laser Propulsion and Reusable Launch Vehicle at TOD, and the comments that follow. In the comments there's even a discussion of The Singularity and AI eating our brains for lunch.

Long before the universe is used up.

We have a trillion years left to play around. Life on Earth will be gone in a couple of billion. Most species will go extinct long before then (to be replaced by others).

We can't allow the only known life in the universe to go extinct so soon, if at all possible.

... zero point energy and pixie dust - any of which would be as
much of "a complete game changer blah blah" as your particular
non-existent pet subject.

The author chose the scope of his article so why not respond
within that scope rather than disparaging it because you'd prefer
to extend it?

:shrug:

Just so we're all paying attention.

... as anything substantial in them can stand up on their own
in a post whilst the background noise and repetitive spam can
be filtered out - allowing me to "pay attention" to the real
content without being distracted by the fluff ...

:hi:

Earth receives 3.9 million exajoules of usable energy every year, from the sun. Humanity uses about a hundred thousand times less than that. We got this.

---

Yes, the doom and gloom scenario in the energy-based critique of human society is completely debunked by my sigline. People seem to lack the comprehension of just how insignificant we are as a species. It has taken us hundreds of years to mess up the environment, but most of that is due to caprice (we wouldn't be where we are if fossil fuels didn't exist).

Not sure it "debunks the article" (any more than other insufficiently
deployed technologies) but it is certainly valid in its own right and
at least I now know what you were referring to!
:hi:

and all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere
nor any drop to drink.

Three point nine million exajoules indeed.

Now, can you provide in detail an explanation of the specifics on how you plan to capture all of this solar energy? Be certain to tell how you will mine the necessary materials, provide the energy required for "clean rooms" to avoid contaminating collectors and thereby reducing efficiency, as well as the energy to construct those collectors themselves.

Responding to an essay with a pithy one-liner citing two statistics (without a source) is not a "debunking". It's not even an argument. It's just one person's opinion.

...pollution and resource consumption compared to rural life, it seems quite obvious what the solution is. Most cities are by the seas, the sea has vast amounts of resources.

There's a paper called "The Exponential Growth of Large Reproducible Machine Systems." In it they outline the technological, chemical, and mathematical process for a Von Neumann system capable of growing exponentially, while using up (relatively) unused resources in the system. It is not mythical nanotechnology, it is math, chemistry and simple 1920s industry. No magic. NASA wanted to build such a system on the moon but it was shot down. The kind of thing I'm talking about is realizable here, and now.

Algae use 5x as much energy as us: http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1013-fsu.html

Algae does not cause insurmountable damage to the environment because it exists as part of the environment, it is on the same playing ground as other species. It uses what it needs and no more.

We can exploit resources that are not used by other animals. For example, aluminum is not utilized in the plant growth process and is considered a biological poison, but it is plentiful in every square inch of soil and seawater on the planet. The same goes for titanium.

So what you do is put a set of machines out in the oceans, slowly seeping up the various resources necessary for the construction of solar fields. Even if it took a year to produce another of the machine from the same system, exponential growth means it will explode in size quite dramatically, creating not just a new environment for animals (it would be free floating in some places, but not everywhere; shorelines are the veritable oasis' in the world; the middle of the oceans are relative deserts, so wherever life can attach, it will), but it would provide essentially free electricity to the cities on the shorelines.

My sigline debunks it because the problem is not energy, the problem is innovation and centralization and capitalism and profit. There's a reason we pollute so much, it's cheaper energetically speaking. I said it before, we wouldn't mine bauxite if we could get aluminum from clay more efficiently. We wouldn't mine clay if we could effectively get aluminum from every inch of soil which is composed of at least 8%. Profit is the bottom line, and energy is everything.

On what basis are you claiming that cities have "comparatively small pollution and resource consumption compared to rural life"?

Would comparing the China of 50 years ago to the China of today support your assertion? After all, as people have fled the rural hinterlands for the urban areas, their pollution and resource consumption has certainly plummetted, right?

No, it hasn't.

How about comparing the US of 1800 to that of 1900? As cities grew, pollution and resource consumption decreased, right?

No, wait... it didn't.

The process of urbanization actually works in the exact OPPOSITE manner in which you describe. As people congregate more and more into cities, pollution and resource consumption INCREASE because all of those people migrating to the cities have to have their needs met through market production rather than self-sufficiency. Therefore, they become more dependent upon industrialized processes than upon their own self-sufficiency, and industrialized processes typically pollute more than localized cottage-industry processes.

Of course, all of this doesn't even begin to address the problems of "manufactured wants" that are built into the industrialized system in order to keep markets expanding and profits growing. For a good description of how these forces have worked (particularly in the US), I recommend Part 1 of 4 of the BBC documentary, "The Century of the Self" -- you can access it via Google video.

Now, if you're comparing suburban vs. urban in the US, then the latter certainly has lower energy use per capita than the former. Even modern-day, especially due to longer-distance travel made possible by automobiles, it could be said that people in urban areas use less per-capita energy than people in rural ones. However, just because it holds in the US hardly means that it is applicable across the board.

As for your example involving aluminum, you are aware that aluminum smelting is an incredibly energy-heavy, polluting process, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting

Finally, I find it interesting that you point out "innovation and centralization and capitalism and profit" as the source of the problem -- yet you propose a solution that requires greater centralization in order to get off the ground.

Cities create significantly less pollution than rural areas: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html

This comes as a shock to people because they have this vision that cities are the worlds hotspots of pollution and rural "agrarian" life is the ideal.

While one can claim that rural pollution exists because it serves the cities, that is not an irrevocible fact, it is only true in the current environment. Vertical gardens which recycle all waste would provide food for cities without having to import from those rural areas. As long as you have an energy source. I provided an example here and now that can be realized for a few billion dollars, that would power all the worlds near sea cities with no pollution impact.

While it may seem that I am arguing for centralization by finding virtue in city living, nothing could be further from the truth. City living is essentially the same as pack behavior. All other animals stick to their niche on the planet, they don't fill every single area with their existance. It's one or two spots here or there during migratory season, places they are adapted to exist. The city is that niche, that place, for humans.

BTW, I would not have mentioned aluminum without understanding the processes that go into making it. The point of the paper I mention is that it's more than dooable, again, my sigline. We are nothing on the scheme of things. Energy feels "scarce" because the capitalists own and control all varients of it. Give us the capacity using known technological processes and we can move beyond this archiac way of thinking.

The idea of rural areas feeding cities should be thrown out. The idea of rural areas in general should be thrown out (because without the city feeding incentive, rural land wouldn't be developed to the extent that it is).

From the New Scientist article you reference:


I'll be charitable and say you seem to have missed a significant point in the article in your desire to support your position.

I said "While one can claim that rural pollution exists because it serves the cities..."

Especially if it has access to what could be an unlimited source of energy.

...would equalize and stop growing so dramatically. They might even become smaller over a long term view as people stop having children and lifetimes increase.

How is that going to be stopped?

"Populations drop as living standards go up. They wouldn't expand because their populations would equalize and stop growing so dramatically."

Will living standards not go up at some point as a result? If everyone has everything they need, what would be the point? If they don't go up, will they go down if we allow physical reality to catch up? Or will there be some perfect state to human existence where no change ever takes place as life and the world come under increasing and expanded human control?

"They might even become smaller over a long term view as people stop having children and lifetimes increase."

So what is your endgame? What's your goal? To eliminate birth and death?

I argue that they most likely wouldn't, but if they did? There's always an upper limit to consumption, we are bound by the same limitations all species are bound by. Our current irrational consumption is leading us down that road, but I don't think that is a *necessary* end result. When a species overwhelms its environment that environment can no longer support it and that species dies off enmasse.

Now there are people here who are saying that dieoff is soon, that in fact billions of people are going to die. If you really believe that then you are a sick sadist if you don't try to do something about it. You could care less about your fellow human if you don't try to do something about it. Something, anything.

The future I hope to see is a space faring human civilization that can reach out and touch the cosmos, not an intelligent society that opts for medocrity and goes extinct in a few thousand years when the next big metroid impacts.

Without the energy that we've made available to ourselves, there wouldn't be the number of people on the planet today. Our species has overwhelmed our environments many times over, as we currently are, at many points in history. Our solution to that problem has been to increase consumption, to expand. When we've had the ability to do otherwise, our solution has never been to just accept our fate, and allow existence/nature/physical reality/whatever you want to call it to find our equilibrium for us. Take our energy problem. We don't want to use less energy, we want to use more of a different source of energy. If oil/coal/etc has turned our consumption irrational, what would cheap, clean, renewable, unlimited energy do to our consumption?

I wish people here understood concepts like "the conservation of mass in chemical reactions."

Nope, I can't think of a single possible negative consequence of that action at all :sarcasm:

They require a central source to continue making new ones, kind of like a beehive with a queen.

Kill the queen and you have no issue.

But you act as if this is advanced AI or nanotechnology or grey goo type stuff. It's actually 1930s chemistry.

This thread has generated some interesting discussion on the ecological implications of consumption. I've published the following article, using some of my thoughts from this thread, as my own take on the New Scientist graphs.