[jato]

How does this effect how we think about Peak Oil?

[MonteQuest]

People are unaware that they are unaware. Most people slumber through school and never harbor an original thought. The blind leading the blind. The media is the massage. I could plagiaize all night.

[Concerned]

How about adding

c. do the right thing and make bad choices
d. do the wrong thing and make good choices

Then I would pick c over a

[Rembrandt]

This is wayy to typical black and white (western) thinking. There is no absolute right and wrong. It's all about relativity.

I don't know what the "right" and "wrong" choices are. You choose something and it works out fine for you or not. You can learn from bad situations and some would view those choices that lead you to those situations as bad but you learned from them right?? so are they right or are they wrong (from your own point of view)

They are both.

Besides that who can say it is bad or good if the human race dies out? (only someone who fully understands the universe and is allmighty.. are you? no... so you can't say if it's right or wrong.

If you find this post disturbing just ignore it i guess

[smiley]

Mankind is still very much alive, so they must have been doing something right.

We've been certainly making better choices than the Dodo, the Mammoth and countless other species.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')
Mankind is still very much alive, so they must have been doing something right.

We've been certainly making better choices than the Dodo, the Mammoth and countless other species.

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he bigger the accident the more difficult it is to take corrective action. If you stumble you might regain your balance and twist your ankle or pull a muscle, if you fall you might be able to roll on to some grass or put out your hands to soften the blow, if your on the edge of a steep cliff well you're probably going to die.

[Jack]

Actually, humankind is a walking, talking example of a greedy algorithm.

People tend to make good decisions on short term matters. They tend not to be aware of longer term situations, and their actions with regard to long term matters are overpowered by their short term orientation.

Simple example - long term, a person wishes to lose weight. Short term, the same person sees and wants a donut. Guess which tendency will win?

The same dynamic applies to oil and the environment. Long term, we all want a healthy clean environment. Short term, we want lots of things that - as a direct consequence of their creation and use - injure the environment. Notice which option the great majority chooses.

[MonteQuest]

Dodo birds were once the inhabitants of Mauritius, a small, oyster-shaped island which lies approximately 500 miles east of Madagascar. The Dutch colonized Mauritius in 1644 . The primary causes of their total extinction in 1681 were the destruction of the forest by man (which cut off the Dodo's food supply), and the animals that the sailors brought with them, including cats, rats, and pigs, which destroyed Dodo nests.

The Dodo's stubby wings and heavy, ungainly body tell us that the bird was flightless. Moreover, its breastbone is too small to support the huge pectoral muscles a bird this size would need to fly. Yet scientists believe that the Dodo evolved from a bird capable of flight into a flightless one. When an ancestor of the Dodo landed on Mauritius, it found a habitat with plenty of food and no predators. It therefore did not need to fly, and, as flying takes a great deal of energy, it was more efficient for the bird to remain on the ground. Eventually, the flightless Dodo evolved. There is no debate as to whether this was a mechanism of evolution. Man may choose to be fat and lazy, but the Dodo did not.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')ankind has endured a lot of disasters (floods, meteor strikes, ice ages, diseases) and came out on top as the most successful and adaptable species of this planet.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')ankind is still very much alive, so they must have been doing something right. We've been certainly making better choices than the Dodo, the Mammoth and countless other species.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you've ever been involved in an accident even something minor e.g. falling down, burning yourself, cutting your finger before the accident happens you don't have any idea that something is going wrong by the time you realise it's too late to stop and take corrective action.

[superhamzah]

Mankind was meant to build a civilisation, and to build it well. Going around, scavenging for food, requires a tiny percentage of our intellect.

We're supposed to build, progress, improve and assist.

The amazing thing about humans, is that our natural habitat, can be anything we want it to be. A sprawling city, a tribe in a jungle, deert nomads. Whatever our circumstances, we train ourselves to profit from it. No other life form has any where near that amount of ability.

Surviving, for other creatures requires an upmost effort daily. (except lions, who sleep for 20 hours a day ) But they're an exception because they're royalty.

For the most part, surviving for humans is easy. If our minds constantly instruct us to do something else, then we are meant to do it, we wouldn't have a large brain for no reason.

The vast amount of human beings, inquire about their existance, the state of the universe, why why why. This is our natural state of existance. To enquire. To seek things, to find answers, surviving is easy.

What human civilisation depends on is purely power. Every human has a given amount of energy, or dedication that he/she would want to expend during their lives. Whatever the situation, this energy or dedication has to be spent. Obviously, if you're poor, and living in extreme conditions, this energy would be spent on food, shelter, protection etc.

Now in a wealthy place like Japan, America or Britain. These things are almost a given. A birth right. so a considerably less amount of effort has to be spent on necessities. But the effort has to be spent, so they improve and improve their lifestyles, or alternatively, help others, or both.

But helping others, would take a lot of effort, thereby slowing down personal progress.

This is a very simple concept and i'm probably stating the obvious. But sometimes the obvious seems to be forgotten, and people start having crazy ideas. But materialistic progress is just that, the more material you have and the more greedy you are, the more you make personal progress.

[MonteQuest]

The Riddle's answers can be found here:

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic1885-0-asc-15.html

[Xenophyte]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')ankind was meant to build a civilisation, and to build it well. Going around, scavenging for food, requires a tiny percentage of our intellect.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')The bigger the accident the more difficult it is to take corrective action. If you stumble you might regain your balance and twist your ankle or pull a muscle, if you fall you might be able to roll on to some grass or put out your hands to soften the blow, if your on the edge of a steep cliff well you're probably going to die.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')
Mankind was meant to build a civilisation, and to build it well. Going around, scavenging for food, requires a tiny percentage of our intellect.

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here is no debate as to whether this was a mechanism of evolution. Man may choose to be fat and lazy, but the Dodo did not.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smiley', ' ')

When I read the 'Origin of the species' for the first time it was a revelation. I always thought of nature as a complex, harmonious and balanced system system. I saw the humans as an odd factor, disturbing and destroying the harmony.

We're no different then ants and rabbits. And like ants and rabbits we also destroy our environment. We're shooting rabbits in the dunes right now, because they undermine the dunes and they destroy the vegetation which holds the dunes together. If we wouldn't do that, the region would flood, killing us and the rabbits alike. We're clearly not the only ones with self-destructive tendencies

[Itch]

Humans never evolved to build complex civilizations; they were made to hunt and gather, which has been the primary way of life for the majority of their existence. For someone to say that this way of life requires little intelligence is the same kind of person who would die within days if he and -- to be fair, because humans were also born to work together -- another group of like-minded people found themselves in the middle of the same wilderness their ancestors came from.

Hunting was never an easy task; most prey animals, like deer, can know your exact location from a half-mile away just from picing up a human scent. Even today, with scent-covering clothing, guns, tree stands, lures, and other advanced shit, hunters still come home without one kill. I think it would require much more intelligence and strategy to capture and kill an animal that has superior senses with the most primitive tools.

Of course, since we're all much smarter now, I'm sure all of us could kill, clean, skin, and properly butcher a wide variety of animals with using nothing but sticks and wits; I'm sure it requires no effort or intelligence to find, prepare, and eat plants that won't turn human guts into liquid shit.

It's easy to shit on the hunter-gatherers when you not only have strangers take care of you and keep you in line, but also have a woefully inaccurate view of what humans have been doing for the majority of their existence.

Here's a decent essay about the consequences of the partial transition from gathering to agriculture:

http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Itch', '
')Here's a decent essay about the consequences of the partial transition from gathering to agriculture:

http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html