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Main Doomer Fallacy

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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Xenophobe » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 14:55:59

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'W')TF is wrong with peace, love, and dope? :twisted:


It doesn't work very well as a guiding philosophy.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')Doomers understand that human nature is to procreate and [eat-up, use, devour, etc.] their environment. That is bad


And has been going on for centuries, and has been sustainable because of exactly the sort of technological innovations we've been discussing in this thread. Doomers belief in humankinds inherent "badness" (for lack of a better word) is not a new idea.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Xenophobe » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 15:13:10

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'T')he hubris, however unintended and unconscious in the beginnig, started when technology advanced to the point that we altered natural landscapes. Innocuous and well within carrying capacity early on it eventually led to the overshoot we experience today.


I think I understand your explanation as to our alteration of landscapes, but certainly I disagree when it comes to assumptions of carrying capacity.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')At some point however we became conscious of our ability to dominate and control.

This all by default only leaves us one pathway out of extinction. To spiritually embrace the ideology espoused on my previous post. Applying our technology toward stewardship.


Okay, this appears reasonable. I would venture it has already started, the Clean Air and Water acts, as basic examples of just this type of stewardship. Humans have recognized that unrestricted development of certain areas is bad, and for various reasons have changed their behavior to preserve and improve our stewardship. The national park and forest system for example.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')How many of us can recognize the collective spiritual yearning toward submission to the greater good of mother earth that is currently in the form of cultural embryos waiting to rise out of the ashes of our currently doomed cultural paradigm?


Again, semantics for some form of existential mumbo jumbo. Who says that mankind yearns for submission to the greater good? Certainly SOME humans feel this, just as some humans feel the need to create religions to relieve themselves of the horrifying randomness of their existence.

And certainly claims of doom for the current culture are just that, claims. They have been made for millennium, and for the same reasons. Humans = Bad, therefore humans in their current form must go, to be replaced by happy and yearning humans of some sort.

Your argument appears to be near religious or even mythical in nature.



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') So the balanced brotherhood and veiled religious references weren't just another version of some born again Christians desire to impose their perspective on others?


Ask yourself a moment who will do the imposing? Or better yet where the imposition will come from?


That would depend on the frame of reference, wouldn't it? An American living under Obamacare now, or in the future, versus an Afghanistan goat herder?
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Xenophobe » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 15:53:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'W')TF is wrong with peace, love, and dope? :twisted:


It doesn't work very well as a guiding philosophy.
What works better?

Let me guess: war, hatred, and high blood pressure? :P


I don't think that works very well either.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')Beep. Wrong. Ecologic overshoot has been possible (not "sustainable") due to the abundance of petroleum products---captured sunlight gathered over 60 millions years. Technology is nothing without cheap energy.


Technology was doing just fine prior to 1859 and the modern mainlining of crude. And while ecological overshoot is certainly possible, there is no reason to think that we have reached that condition yet, particularly in the face of what humans can apply in terms of continued technological improvements or conservation. Which changes carrying capacity yet again.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')When I say "bad" I do not mean that in a theoretical, ethical, moral sense. Only in terms of pain and population decline. The apocalypse will hurt sometin' fierce.

Another claim which probably predates even the Bible. And which we are still waiting for.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Xenophobe » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 18:48:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'P')rior to 1859 there were a billion humans. Now there a 7 going on 9 billion. Or is it 17?


Prior to 1500 there were 0.5 billion.

Did you mean to show that with respect to time there have been more people? I won't disagree with you. Although 17 doesn't appear to be the number that any logistic growth of population tops at out.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')Ecological overshoot is guarenteed and carrying capacity does not change.


Carrying capacity changes all the time when it comes to humans, and maybe always will. It is technology dependent, so the more/better/efficient the technology, the higher potential carrying capacity.

A basic encyclopedia search seems to verify this. It is also living standard dependent as well,

http://www.eoearth.org/article/carrying_capacity

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')Saying Malthus was wrong is like guaranteeing the squirrel will always manage to make it across the road, one more time. Probably wrong. It is likely he will eventually get hit by the car.


Malthus said there would be like 100+ billion people around by now. Are you claiming they were all hit by cars?

Hows this for an ecological carrying capacity witticism?

"Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens,
but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens,
while the more men, the more chickens.”

Henry George (1839-1897)
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Ibon » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 20:03:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')Carrying capacity changes all the time when it comes to humans, and maybe always will. It is technology dependent, so the more/better/efficient the technology, the higher potential carrying capacity.


Have you personally ever been blessed with a transcendent experience when deep in the wilderness? 95% of humanity would probably answer no to that question.

CC is not just technology dependent, but culturally dependent. It is possible to crowd massive populations of humans in urban areas and maintain these numbers within a carrying capacity that can indeed be enhanced by technology. And you could eliminate "non essential" species by droves as well as whole habitats and replace natural ecosystems by human disturbed habitat. Of course these vast mono cultures of humans will be increasingly susceptible to disease etc. But you could do it. We are in fact doing it.

It requires that we become a different culture were freedoms will be far more constrained than if we just submit to limits willfully and keep our population to lower numbers.

So this elastic carrying capacity you say is technology dependent is also requiring an elastic culture of humans willing to embrace a brave new world taking their technology to the absurd lengths of managing all these additional humans at the price of a great loss of personal freedom. I wont even touch on the loss of quality of life as a result of extended carrying capacity that is technology enabled

At some point consequences of all this disruption would seem to be inevitable. All the centuries of human naysayers who preach end times and the Malthusian pessimists can be cast aside as delusional. This really will just keep going on and on in your world view?

You actually do your own world view a disservice with your position on carrying capacity/.
Here is the irony. The only way to maintain a future for humans rich in technology is for us to embrace a stewardship of the planet that recognizes that we have already greatly acceded carrying capacity. You cannot look at climate change or how far we have drawn down reserves and sinks of energy and food when looking at marine fisheries, top soil loss, energy depletion, fresh water depletion and huge losses of natural ecosystems replaced by man made ones and say with a straight face that we are still within carrying capacity. If you do you are only a troll or a fool. Technology will not change this.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby yeahbut » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 21:36:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '.')..
Are you Shortonsense?


Heh, took you a while pstarr :) I knew he was shorty by his third post. Hasn't he been civil tho? Must be killing him :lol:
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Carlhole » Sat 28 Aug 2010, 23:11:24

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'S')o this elastic carrying capacity you say is technology dependent is also requiring an elastic culture of humans willing to embrace a brave new world taking their technology to the absurd lengths of managing all these additional humans at the price of a great loss of personal freedom. I wont even touch on the loss of quality of life as a result of extended carrying capacity that is technology enabled


Evolutionary forces are in the driver's seat. They have been for several billion years.

Our population bloat has some undeniable downsides - that's the Yang. The Ying is Science & Technology, which accelerates dramatically with large, interconnected human populations. This acceleration of Sci/Tech is a continuation of Gaia's evolutionary processes (to be whimsical and brief about it). That was the whole idea behind intelligent, highly social technology apes.

Not only high population presses Sci/Tech forward, but the recursive nature of Sci/Tech also causes it to accelerate, ie. new technology creates better tools, which allow for new exploration which leads to greater knowledge...

This is an immensely complex system which allows for emergent evolutionary phenomena such as machine intelligence designing new machines, the creation of an rapidly evolving global network, etc.

None of this assumes any cornucopian future for humanity as we presently know it. More likely, we will eventually obsolete ourselves in the process, whereupon we will see the population of ordinary human beings decline. It will have been as if Planet Earth became pregnant, her body contorted and bent out of shape prior to the birth of something new. It will have been as if the Planet itself suddenly "blinked" awake in planetary timescale (say, over the course of a couple of hundred years).

But that Olduvai Gorge notion, where we regress to a prior evolutionary stage (tribal ways) -- that's all just so much juvenile fantasy. Resource contraints are merely evolutionary pressures. That's what this planet is all about - evolution.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby americandream » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 01:44:50

I wouldn't class attempting to meet the next annual budget forecast in putting out the next generation of paintball gun, evolution carlhole. Well, perhaps a glimmer of evolutionary function in as much as the shareholders will have to ensure that there are dividends to meet their next food budget, but as in, of cosmic proportions, niet.

We can evolve quite fine without capitalism. It's really about the quality of evolution we are taking about here and somehow, I'm not too sure that much of what you post on here is destined for the cosmic high ground of life. Some of the finer stuff in our advance as a species is in fact stuff you and I, Joe Taxpayer are fundung on a not for profit basis but simply to advance the leading edge of our technological frame of reference.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Carlhole » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 02:11:57

Compare the length of time it took to evolve a modern biological cell with the time it takes human scientists to understand, reproduce from scratch, and modify same. The latter takes far, far shorter time. In fact, it would be like comparing a century to a nanosecond.

Fast forward a couple of nanoseconds and you have an evolutionary paradigm streaking ahead at blindingly fast speed. This is the whole point of huge human populations -- to create this sort of extremely fast evolution.

It won't be too very long before computer scientists are able to grow virtual multi-cellular organisms in a supercomputer. The evolutionary possibilities accompanying such an advent are mind-boggling and impossible to predict. None of this sort of scientific trajectory is showing the least bit of slowdown due to our present economic difficulties. History shows clearly that technological advances only accelerate further during a crisis. This is because the human animal's primary means of dealing with problems is through Sci/Tech.

The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n this fascinating new account of our origins, leading archaeologist Timothy Taylor proposes a new way of thinking about human evolution through our relationship with objects. Drawing on the latest fossil evidence, Taylor argues that at each step of our species’ development, humans made choices that caused us to assume greater control of our evolution. Our appropriation of objects allowed us to walk upright, lose our body hair, and grow significantly larger brains. As we push the frontiers of scientific technology, creating prosthetics, intelligent implants, and artificially modified genes, we continue a process that started in the prehistoric past, when we first began to extend our powers through objects.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby EnergyUnlimited » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 02:25:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'C')ompare the length of time it took to evolve a modern biological cell with the time it takes human scientists to understand, reproduce from scratch, and modify same. The latter takes far, far shorter time. In fact, it would be like comparing a century to a nanosecond.

Compare time needed to write code burned on Windows CD with time needed to copy one.

However copying is just... copying.
Copying does not deliver any progress.
And any modifications are based on genes already present in Nature so nothing materially new is made.

Just fiddling within existing information pool and nothing new.

PS
You have poor skill in handling numbers.
Century is 3.066 X 10 E18 nanoseconds.
If you scaled up century by this factor you would get
3.066 X 10 E20 years.
Universe exists something like 1.4 X 10E10 years and life cannot exist any longer.

So you are making more than a 10 orders of magnitude error.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Carlhole » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 02:48:53

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'S')o you are making more than a 10 orders of magnitude error.[/i]


OK. Replace "nanosecond" with "millisecond".

Compare a century to a millisecond.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby EnergyUnlimited » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 03:02:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'S')o you are making more than a 10 orders of magnitude error.[/i]


OK. Replace "nanosecond" with "millisecond".

Compare a century to a millisecond.

Still wrong.
Now you are 4 orders of magnitude wrong.

You should compare century with 10 seconds to be right within an order of magnitude.

However evolution was working that slow because evolution was a "programmer".

Scientist working with genes to replicate existing life is just a "copier".
Again to claim some new input to life one must create new genes, which are doing something new and useful and yet impossible to perform base on existing pool of genes.
No discovery of this type have been made up to date.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Carlhole » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 03:20:52

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'S')o you are making more than a 10 orders of magnitude error.[/i]


OK. Replace "nanosecond" with "millisecond".

Compare a century to a millisecond.


Now you are 4 orders of magnitude wrong.


Well, jeezus, compare ten seconds to a century then for fark's sake.

I didn't bother to calculate anything. The point is, it takes an exceedingly brief period of time to understand, replicate, or modify what Nature has accomplished in natural evolution. Science has already made a business of bio-engineering. Every week we hear of another species whose genome has been sequenced. This week it was ants. Progress in this field is steady and rapid. It shows no signs of slowing down, only steady acceleration.

People like you forecasted that it would take 100 years to sequence the human genome. But the science of the human genome project accelerated exponentially and the project was finished ahead of schedule a few years after it began. Now attention has turned to discovering the roles and relationships between genes during growth of the organism. It's all happening very, very quickly compared to natural evolution. But human Sci/Tech is really just an extension of natural evolution.

Evolutionary forces are in the driver's seat.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby EnergyUnlimited » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 03:46:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'I') didn't bother to calculate anything. The point is, it takes an exceedingly brief period of time to understand, replicate, or modify what Nature has accomplished in natural evolution.

Yes, but this is not a progress.
Every kid know that it takes few minutes to copy Windows CD, however for a programmer to write it it would take something like 50 000 years.
Genetic manipulation is not competition to evolution.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')cience has already made a business of bio-engineering. Every week we hear of another species whose genome has been sequenced. This week it was ants. Progress in this field is steady and rapid. It shows no signs of slowing down, only steady acceleration.

Again, we are only discovering large quantities of genetic information available for Nature.
However we are not inventing anything unknown for Nature.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')eople like you forecasted that it would take 100 years to sequence the human genome.

I was not making any representations related to this subject.

From time to rime I was remarking that all this sequencing work did not translate yet into widely promised medicinal advances related to new treatments etc.
There are very few benefits out of sequencing work up to date.
Few cancer patients with BRCA 1 certainly benefited, but otherwise main beneficiaries of sequencing are insurance companies.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ow attention has turned to discovering the roles and relationships between genes during growth of the organism. It's all happening very, very quickly compared to natural evolution.

Again, Nature is inventing, scientists are only discovering and/or copying.
The latter tasks are far, far easier than a former one.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Carlhole » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 04:09:14

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'A')gain, Nature is inventing, scientists are only discovering and/or copying.
The latter tasks are far, far easier than a former one.


So the science is relatively new. BFD. It is by no means sitting still. Synthetic Genomics has already produced an organism with artificially produced DNA. Do you think this will be the company's last accomplishment? Joule Biotechnologies has taught the photosynthesis trick to E.Coli. They've got a pilot plant running in Texas using that technology. Do you think there will not be other entrants into this very promising field?

You have to be blind as a bat not to see this whole field taking off.

Big Think

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'n') countless press interviews and articles, Venter detailed how he had implanted a computer-synthesized genome into an existing bacterium cell, which began making a wholly different set of proteins, causing the characteristics of the first species to disappear and a new species to emerge. This self-replicating bacterium, dubbed Synthia, is the first life form whose genome has not evolved over millions of years but was rather engineered using a computer. And of course the question du jour was whether or not this was "playing God." But the general consensus has been "no": Venter hasn't actually animated a previously inanimate object, in the way that must have occurred when life first began on earth roughly 3.5 billion years ago. (Nobel prize-winning geneticist Joseph Szostak is currently trying to do just that but has failed up to this point.)

Nevertheless, this is a tremendously important breakthrough. We've "entered into areas where no one's ever been before," Venter says in the video below, and it has implications both scientific and philosophical. "It certainly changed my views of definitions of life and how life works," he says. It is clear now that our DNA, our genetic code is like the computer software of our bodies. "Life is basically the result of an information process, a software process," Venter explains.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby EnergyUnlimited » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 04:19:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'S')o the science is relatively new. BFD. It is by no means sitting still. Synthetic Genomics has already produced an organism with artificially produced DNA.

And yet that is nothing materially new.

Structure of genes within this synthetic DNA is a copycat from Nature, eg information how to make it is also from Nature.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')o you think this will be the company's last accomplishment? Joule Biotechnologies has taught the photosynthesis trick to E.Coli. They've got a pilot plant running in Texas using that technology. Do you think there will not be other entrants into this very promising field?

Joule Biotechnologies is just another EEstor (means investor scam).
They are rising false hopes.

They have swapped genes from photosynthetic plants on bacteria.
But these bacterias will not do any better than existing algae based systems are performing (these are also in pilot plant stages).
The same problems.
Not enough CO2 in air so the system will have to work coupled with large CO2 sources like power plants and troubles related to competing microorganisms.
Very limited applications.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Postby Carlhole » Sun 29 Aug 2010, 04:27:31

Business Wire

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')AMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Joule Unlimited, Inc., pioneer of Liquid Fuel from the Sun™, today announced its recognition by Red Herring as one of the 100 most promising private technology companies in North America. As a winner of the prestigious, annual distinction, Joule joins the ranks of Google, Yahoo!, Skype, YouTube and other past winners who were identified as leading “the next wave of disruption and innovation.”

“It’s an honor for Joule to be recognized among North America’s top emerging companies, reflecting our vision for a new, sustainable oil industry and the great strides we’ve made towards its realization”
The Red Herring award comes on the heels of two other distinctions for Joule this month: selection to the AlwaysOn East Top 100, a list of the top private companies in the eastern US; and inclusion among Biofuels Digest’s 30 Most Transformative Technologies of 2010.

“It’s an honor for Joule to be recognized among North America’s top emerging companies, reflecting our vision for a new, sustainable oil industry and the great strides we’ve made towards its realization,” said Bill Sims, President and CEO, Joule.

“Just three years into development, we’ve created a technology and system with productivities that eclipse current biofuel production methods, while rivaling the costs of fossil fuels and scaling to meet massive demand – all without reliance on arable land, biomass feedstocks or fresh water. This is not an incremental advancement, but rather a world-changing solution to the very real problem of fossil fuel dependence, and we appreciate Red Herring’s acknowledgement of a technology that defies conventional categories.”

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across North America to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Joule embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Joule should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

Joule and other nominees were evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, including technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of companies in the telecommunications, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, and clean tech industries submitted entries to qualify for the top 100.
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