That's not natural! ...or is it?

[Morning Glory]

We talk about how things are natural and unnatural, but it’s kind of a slippery slope. The logic is that "natural" is good and "unnatural" is bad. Maybe it doesn’t even really matter. I'm not really so much interested in the semantics game as I am the pragmatics of the situation.

Ideas like “carrying capacity” make a lot of sense. They say that the only sustainable level of technology is stone-age, which is to say virtually zero permanent environmental impact or “footprint.” The projected models appear to support this paradigm as the most reasonable.

Industrialization, energy consumption, and bio-engineering are the big things that I’m considering. When you get down to it, these things are merely replications of the natural process.... so you could argue that everything is natural. Evolution is the most natural thing in the world, the drive toward greater complexity. Regression, steering away from technological advancement doesn’t appear to be the right way. That is in fact the “unnatural” way.

But on the other hand, these things clearly present problems - Global warming, pollution, instability. Is it that we have the right idea but that our application is wrong? Is our entire methodology wrong, maybe we have no idea. I don’t really know how to reconcile these two contradictions.

I’m not really sure what my point is, I don’t really have one. Just something that’s on my mind.

[OliX]

Depends if your thinking about natural in literal meaning or natural in context of being not in accordance with accepted standards of behavior.

In literal meaning there's no unnatural thing because all comes from nature. Even the worst co-products are made here. On this rock and from it's own stardust.

Other than that there's unnatural behavior, unnatural sex and so on.

[Vexbeast]

Hahaha... that's not how carrying capacity works...

Perhaps if the world went back to the stone age, it's carrying capacity would increase to enough to support the current population, but that's something which rises exponentially. Increasing the carrying capacity of the world isn't a solution to anything, it's just an option that will have various effects on our lives and ultimately won't stop the problem...

If we were to permanently stump population growth, which begs the question of exactly how possible that is, then we could live according to our current technology level.

I agree about everything being natural though...

Last night I was talking to mum and she found out that the 1080 poison that everyone causes a big fuss about here isn't synthetically manufactured at all. It's actually extracted directly from a plant that has enough poison in it to spray an entire hectare of land.

[Morning Glory]

well, that's what I am talking about. Do we need to increase technology so that it can support the present (and future expanding) population, or do we need to decrease the population so that it matches our current level?

technological innovation occurs spontaneously, so when it comes to the limits of CC that's not really something that we can control beyond our means. In fact, it is precisely because of technological advancement that we have increased the population rather than stabilizing it. Evolution supports growth, but it is kept in check by natural selection. The coming shift will be toward radical decrease in population, which will be very bad for many people in society.

Life extension seemed like a beneficial and natural thing for human progress, but it has and will cause more problems then it has solved.

Should technology continue to advance? it seems unavoidable that it will unless we make a conscious effort to stem it. I still am having trouble making sense out of this paradox.

I guess it comes down to using it the right way, which we aren't doing. as far as this subject goes, we need to either increase life longevity and decrease reproduction rates, or else the opposite. doing both is a bad idea.

[VoltaireBlue]

Is it that we have the right idea but that our application is wrong?

that's veeeeeeery interesting, and deffinetly food for thought. thanks.

[OliX]

It seems that I missed the topic with my last answer. I already wrote about this in the " What issues matter to you?" thread. I feel your pain and I think we're on the same level of conscience when it comes to global views.

Of course, I guess there's no need to mention capitalism and interest and that change is not going to happen so long corporations and banks run our planet.

About CC. There's only one thing that we're depended on and that is energy. All that energy comes from only one celestial object and that is our sun. Right now we're consuming way more energy per day than we receive from the sun. We're consuming energy that accumulated in form of oil over thousands of years and when that is out then all our society that is based on oil will be out too.

Paradox for me was "saving the environment". How can we save environment that is going to stay. It can only change. We need to save us.

[Mr Karl]

the human race can't get along with itself never mind the enviroment.....oh well, maybe one day humans will evolve to a point where

[Velvet-Tongue]

Technology will increase forever untill the resources are unavailable or the knowledge is lost. We should be trying to advance as much and as far as possible because it gives us the greatest chance to survive when everything hits the fan.

When the population is too large for the world to support it; then war, famine and plague will cull it. Nothing magical about it. Bringing it back to a sustainable level.

When we run out of oil, clean water, clean air and more; hopefully we'll have the technology to live on. If that technology is limited then only a fraction of us will be alive to use it anyway. Everything balances out.

[bre.star]

humans are doomed... viruses rule the world

[OliX]

I'm all set up if shit hits the fan.

[Mindgames]

Evolution isn't necessarily a drive towards greater complexity, but rather a drive toward greater suitability. It's perfectly possible for an organism to start out over-complex and evolve by simplification (the legs on snakes being the most commonly-quoted example, but I also refer my honorable friends to the Bush family tree).

Having said that, IMO humans as a species are no longer following the normal laws of evolution (i.e. there is no natural selection imperative). We're evolving, but with artificial drivers from technology and society rather than the eat-screw-die logic used by every other species. As such you can't predict the endpoints anymore, as you can't predict the drivers. There are new 'evolved' patterns showing up every year, such as the increase in genetic immunity to HIV seen in Africa because of generations of exposure, and the increase in allergies to food because of generations of non-exposure.

The argument that 'natural progress' is a good thing assumes that existence is a movie with a Warner Bros ending. It's often postulated that the reason we never detect signs of other intelligent life in the universe is that intelligence is by definition a fatal disease - species that evolve intelligence are destined to destroy themselves; a bright flash of failure in a universe designed to play dumb.

Equally I don't see a point in trying to fathom the long-term population graph, for the same lack of foresight. You can predict it now, based on what you know now, but it'll be wrong. Nobody in the 1950s would have factored in global warming when they predicted the world population for 2050, nor could they know that in 2040 someone would invent the food replicator unit and accidentally bury Belgium under a sea of kumquats.

[OliX]

Allergies are product of non-exposure, but not from food. From parasites.
Allergy is a immune system responsible for fighting gone mayhem after there's no parasites to fight.

Bright flash of failure? I feel like it's more bright flash of everything. Meaning in all this. And it feels like life is more than just a coincidence and that there's much bigger unimaginable reality to this. Life looks to me like a virus attacking it's calm host, the universe. Some species evolved to the point to be able to survive exposure to cold and harsh environment of space. Imagine in 1000 years... no, in million... billion years where life would be. I'm seeing a enormous harpoon looking creature that evolved from Japanese (only survivors from earth) hunting sun eating whales that drift trough universe.

Until one day, life causes another big bang.

[soma_stardust]

Technology will increase forever untill the resources are unavailable or the knowledge is lost. We should be trying to advance as much and as far as possible because it gives us the greatest chance to survive when everything hits the fan.

When the population is too large for the world to support it; then war, famine and plague will cull it. Nothing magical about it. Bringing it back to a sustainable level.

When we run out of oil, clean water, clean air and more; hopefully we'll have the technology to live on. If that technology is limited then only a fraction of us will be alive to use it anyway. Everything balances out.

word.
*awaits the impending apocolypse*

[Ajax Knucklebones]

Technology will increase forever untill the resources are unavailable or the knowledge is lost. We should be trying to advance as much and as far as possible because it gives us the greatest chance to survive when everything hits the fan.

When the population is too large for the world to support it; then war, famine and plague will cull it. Nothing magical about it. Bringing it back to a sustainable level.

When we run out of oil, clean water, clean air and more; hopefully we'll have the technology to live on. If that technology is limited then only a fraction of us will be alive to use it anyway. Everything balances out.

I hear soylent red tastes better than soylent green. It costs a little more, but I heard it's well worth it.

[Morning Glory]

yes, it could be argued that the natural imperative of the universe is sterilization and that life is just a random event in disharmony and that the true evolutionary goal is for humanity to hurry up and wipe out the planet earth.

Kind of a pessimistic idea, I'd say, but it seems one of the more likely ones.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

yes, it could be argued that the natural imperative of the universe is sterilization and that life is just a random event in disharmony and that the true evolutionary goal is for humanity to hurry up and wipe out the planet earth.

Kind of a pessimistic idea, I'd say, but it seems one of the more likely ones.

I don't think we're gonna wipe out shit except ourselves. Mother Earth will go merrily along without us. After we're gone, that in which we deplete will probably come back strong for the next inhabitants to use Earth for it's own demise.

[Ubiquitress]

when do we get to see the sun eating whales,that sounds like fun. what if we are just here to transport water around? you never know,

[Mr Karl]

what if we are just here to transport water around? you never know,

uh oh............people aren't supposed to think of things like that....................