Large deposits of hydrocarbons: Yeah, it kinda looks like a waste to hoard all that stuff. But if you think of it like a battery (or a stock in stocks and flows), some tasks do seem to require a large battery, maybe to get over some hump with a steep energy curve. The question is who uses it and for what? If we take Pieter's optimism seriously, maybe our blowing through the fossil fuel battery does end up getting us over some hump. E.g. we resolve the Meaning Crisis and come to some high order conception of computation? Or a metaphysics that closely matches physics? Or if you believe in a life/biosphere diaspora to the solar system. But it's touch and go whether we'll collapse (gracefully or catastrophically) or explode into some new domain that was only reachable by draining the battery.
I was avoiding the news for a month or so after the election. But now my attitude is that we need a clown like Trump to lay bare our oligarchy. The oligarchy thrives under Bidens and Obamas just as much as under Putin or Trump. It's just that the pig has some lipstick on it under the Obamas and Bidens. It think we'll begin to suss out some of the differences between the US and, say, Russia or Hungary as we slide a few notches in that direction. The trick is to be disinterested without becoming disaffected. On 1/20/25 10:49 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
You are right, I must admit that the formulation "natural ecosystems do not consume more than they give back" was not very lucky. What I meant is that natural ecosystems - left to their own devices - are much more sustainable than our capitalistic, extractive economy. Extractive economy here means there are non-renewable resources to exploit like fossil fuels to create goods which are sold at a profit and produce waste. If all non-renewable resources are exploited and the profits have disappeared then only huge piles of waste are left. In natural ecosystems most stuff is recycled and reused (although there are exceptions, for example you could argue that fossil fuels themselves are waste deposits generated by ancient life-forms). Are you staying away from TV and news today? It is a depressing and frustating to watch the news. The new president promises a golden age but all I can think of is dread of the catastrophes that lie ahead. -J. -------- Original message -------- From: glen <geprope...@gmail.com> Date: 1/20/25 5:08 PM (GMT+01:00) To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fredkin/Toffoli, Reversibility and Adiabatic Computing. It seems obvious that y'all don't "unplug" on the weekends. Do I have an antiquated conception of a healthy work-life balance? Anyway, the idea that natural subsystems don't consume more than they give back is just wrong ... maybe so ill-formed it's not even wrong. There's some hint of the naturalness fallacy. There's some over-simplified model of consumption and recycling. Etc. In every system (natural or not, whatever "not natural" might mean), each ... uh ... "species" will take whatever it can get, gorge itself to become fat and lazy, reproduce until all they can see to the horizon are their babies. Etc. What stops this from happening is some other species (or collection of species). And, for sure, animals can be complex enough such that what stops it from happening sometimes are intra-individual patterns of self-destruction (maybe e.g. autoimmune disorders). We could resort to physics and talk about the interstitial spaces between species (at all scales) is entropy; you can fill the space up with species like some space-filling curve. But we don't need all that rigor. We can simply say there's always some infinitesimal interstitial space that isn't filled ... if only temporarily as species die and get replaced. If there is something we might call "natural", it is that space-filling impetus; the generative principle that all models are always wrong. Sure, humans (and other large apes) might be a bit different in the sense that our generality/universality allows for *more* intra-individual, self-destructive tendencies. But we haven't yet seen that play out. Up to now, our generality has allowed us to don and doff overly-simplified models of the world that are just complex enough to work, but not complex enough to be True. More complex, but still overly simple, models try to account for "externalities", the "consuming and giving back" y'all are referring to. But the map is not the territory. Models are, by definition, not going to give back what they consume. What we need is model-free governance. On 1/19/25 9:47 AM, steve smith wrote: > > The idea that "natural ecosystems do not consume more than they give back" is an example, however, of my maunderings on the "TANNSTAFFL" paradox. Circular/toroidal economies do seem to be less wasteful (in some sense) but Life exists situated in gradients and while it's signature trick is to export entropy from it's immediate context, it *exports* it, not *avoids* it? It seems as if this is all about defining "systems boundaries" which of course may be a contradiction in terms (or a tautology?). --
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