Another advantage of the musket is less training. To be fast and accurate with a bow requires years of practice. To be proficient enough with a musket to stand in a line and fire, perhaps a few weeks at minimum; in 2 or 3 months you'd be pretty damn good. This would be another hindrance to fielding extremely technologically advanced weapons.
Did YOU read it? That has to do with the future. As in, stuff that hasn't happened yet. I was talking about the past. Given that all of human history has been defined as using technology to destroy, consume, and pollute, how would any of that change with new technology?
More efficient energy will mean people can use more energy. That's exactly what people do now. They put in energy efficient light bulbs and leave the lights on longer. They buy energy efficient appliances and buy Hummers. Again, by itself and without discipline, this does nothing.
More effective food sources will encourage population growth. That's the Malthusian dilemma. Give food to starving people and they will grow to accommodate that food. Yes, the population tends to stabilize in developed nations, but that means that many third world nations have a loooong way to go before that happens.
Educational programs will help some of the last one, at the expense of making them more like first world consumers. Everything you listed sounds real nice and sweet. None of it will come anywhere close to saving us. And if this all you have to offer on the subject, then I'm quite done humoring you.
Yes, I said technology is the cause of our current predicament. Agriculture, firearms, mass production, the steam engine, the automobile, pesticides ad infinitum all allowed us to consume and destroy more of our natural resources, allow our population to grow exponentially to gargantuan proportions, and pollute our environment on a huge scale. I stand by that statement and encourage you to actually address it rather than make wild unfounded accusations that I want everyone to live in stone age conditions.
Non-chemical weapons could be possible, but that doesn't mean they're suited for combat. We have caseless ammo, lasers, rail guns, etc now, but the military doesn't use them for a variety of reasons, ranging from cost, weight, durability in the field, ease of field maintenance, etc etc. Combat weapons have to be cheap and effective, not necessarily the most technologically advanced.
That leaves us with precious little alternative to communing with the animal spirits, don't you think?
No. No, I don't. I never mentioned anything about religion or the supernatural. I'm a Strong Atheist, so I find it hard to believe you can seriously twist my comments about discipline and making hard choices into "animal spirits." I also made several comments about technology not being able to save us by itself. Meaning we need more than just new tech. We need the long-term commitment to living sustainably, to living within our means, to be able to survive. New tech by itself will only enable more waste and consumption. I must have said that half a dozen times. Does any of that ring a bell? Or would you rather just continue pretending I want everyone to live in the stone age?
Do we throw that all away in the name of "collective discipline", and just hope that we're doing the right thing by communing with the "animal spirits"?
Yup, no stramman arguments there. That's exactly what I've been talking about. Animal spirits. Spot on.
So logical arguments and case studies have eluded you. How about an analogy? Let's say a fat man is trying to both lose weight and maintain his lifestyle. Or even better, fat people across the world are. They want to be more efficient, without giving up on their way of life. They want a pill that will make them lose weight, give them more energy, put on muscle tone, etc. But they don't want to give up time playing video games, watching TV, etc. Any pill that would do this would then exacerbate the problem by providing a disincentive to diet or exercise. It would enable them to sit on the couch more, eat worse food, etc. This would then demand another solution to the worsening health. On the other hand, if they simply ate a sensible diet and exercised, there would be no need to develop a pill and all their problems would be solved (except their desire for a sedentary lifestyle). The technological solution by itself doesn't SOLVE the problem, it EXACERBATES the problem, while the low-tech solution of diet and exercise actually SOLVES the problem. What you're talking about is exactly analogous to a fat man demanding a pill to solve his obesity, when he could just get up and exercise. BTW, I tried to look up that island in the book Collapse by Jared Diamond, but it disappeared off my shelf. There is also a chapter dedicated to debunking the "technology will save us" myth. I highly recommend you read the entire book, or at least that one chapter. It was written for you.
OK, first of all, I'm now convinced you're a fucking idiot. I never held up stone age tech as a model. I merely pointed out that they were able to live sustainably on it, while we can't with all our modern tech. I was using it to support my point that it is not modern tech that will save us from a Malthusiam dilemma. I also clearly claimed to NOT know what the golden number is. I merely stated that it stands to reason there IS a maximum number, whatever it is, and without something more than technology to save us we will over consume our way past it.
You keep harping on the fact that modern societies' populations stabilise. But Americans consume 17 times the natural resources, person for person, of third world nations. And as we adopt new energy efficient technology, we tend to waste just as much. Study after study has shown this. Once again, technology by itself, will not save us. We need collective discipline to save us. Is any of this getting through? Are you even hearing what I'm saying, or do you just want to knock down strawman arguments?
Other animals don't cause mass extinction events. We destroy and consume on a scale other animals lack because of our technology. And the Netherlands may have a sustainable population, but do they import anything? Like, say hardwood tables made from trees cut down in a rain forest? Do they export anything? Like, say old computers to be recycled in China? As a whole, we are consuming and polluting at an unsustainable level.
Imagine if they had put some effort into actually advancing their stone-age technology level - they might have had enough food to not have to kill off their children.
Then they would have an exponentially increasing population on a small island, and every generation would depend on new technology to save them. How does this fairy tale end, pray tell? Have you even heard of Malthus before?
Unless she is incorporated, it should be considered a personally owned business. Do 17 year olds who mow their neighbors' lawns have to pay this fee? Paying tax on the income ($50) makes sense, but paying $300 for being a business doesn't.
The population is stabilizing in first world countries where the consumption rate is still monstrous. Hardly a consoling thought. Let's look at a case study. There's a tiny island in the South Pacific whose name escapes me and whose population managed to use its resources in a sustainable manner for over a thousand years using stone age technology. They lived on one third of the island and kept the other two thirds as a reserve for hard times. They kept their population low through onanism, abortion, and infanticide. They made tough choices, like killing off all the pigs when they realized they were rooting through their plants. They lived tough lives, but had enough food and water for everyone alive. Their ability to use their resources hinged not on their technology, but their collective discipline and determination.
Now look at us. We consume what we like with no regard to the future of our species or planet. And we wait for a magic pill to solve our problems so we can continue our way of life. What technological breakthrough would let us continue this path without encouraging our wasteful ways? As soon as someone says, hey we can farm the desert with this new device, people will build cities there and it will support millions more people. If someone made a cheap solar panel capable of powering houses or cars, people will get more cars and make bigger houses. We don't need more technological answers. We need a collective long-term commitment to this planet.
he problem is one of technology. Technology is not, in and of itself, "bad." Compare lifestyles today with lifestyles 200 years ago, and see how much it has improved things.
At severe cost to the environment and the long-term sustainability of the planet, that being my point. Technology is the cause of our predicament, not the solution. Agriculture let more people per acre live. Mass production, medicine, the steam engine all enabled our population to blossom. The problem has never been a lack of technology, but a lack of will to limit our growth. Any new development in more efficient energy or less damaging production will only allow more people to live. It's Malthus' problem; it always has been. Every new innovation lets us forestall the inevitable. Every time we are about to die off in mass numbers, something saves us and allows us to grow even more, and on and on. Desmond Morris thoroughly debunks the myth that technology will save us in Collapse. But you keep working on that technological solution, while ignoring all of history. Let me know it works out.
No, driving a prius or riding a bike isn't going to do it. But this is what's pitched to us as "saving the environment." Humans are technologists - tool makers. Telling us to solve a problem while robbing us of the single most useful trait we have which would allow us to solve a problem is no solution at all.
Well so far, technology has helped create the problem. It's allowed us to consume, destroy, and pollute on an unprecedented scale. And research has shown us so far that when people switch to more efficient bulbs, they leave them on longer. When people make one sacrifice for the environment, they feel empowered to make up for it with another. Scientific American just had a great article on it recently, about how we have a scorecard in our heads, and people who do a good deed are more likely to later cheat in a game. So asking people to buy a Prius (which is still made from mined materials and shipped overseas) doesn't really solve the bigger problem of too many people. I don't have an easy solution. My only point is that the changes we're asked to make aren't enough.
The lifeboat (Earth) has a finite and fixed maximum limit it can hold in a sustainable manner. Perhaps Earth can sustain 1 billion first world consumers perpetually. Perhaps it can sustain 10 billion. I would guess closer to 100,000,000 first world consumers, tops. Might be well below that, considering how much of our resources have been used up so far. But since we're nowhere near to a sustainable rate anywhere other than perhaps Iceland, it's hard to say.
More or less. It was over consumption gone crazy, and it destroyed them. They also had to mine and carve up all that rock, whose labor could have been used more productively. In any case, there are several other civilizations that have wiped themselves out. Only two, actually, have figured out to use their resources in a sustainable fashion: Iceland and some small island in the south pacific whose name I can't remember. They went to incredible lengths and exhibited rare discipline. We aren't within three orders of magnitude of that they did.
Slashdot Mirror
Troubleshoot! I asked you to troubleshoot the server! Oh, for pete's sake!
Another advantage of the musket is less training. To be fast and accurate with a bow requires years of practice. To be proficient enough with a musket to stand in a line and fire, perhaps a few weeks at minimum; in 2 or 3 months you'd be pretty damn good. This would be another hindrance to fielding extremely technologically advanced weapons.
Amongst our weaponry are such things as...I'll start over.
Did YOU read it? That has to do with the future. As in, stuff that hasn't happened yet. I was talking about the past. Given that all of human history has been defined as using technology to destroy, consume, and pollute, how would any of that change with new technology?
More efficient energy will mean people can use more energy. That's exactly what people do now. They put in energy efficient light bulbs and leave the lights on longer. They buy energy efficient appliances and buy Hummers. Again, by itself and without discipline, this does nothing.
More effective food sources will encourage population growth. That's the Malthusian dilemma. Give food to starving people and they will grow to accommodate that food. Yes, the population tends to stabilize in developed nations, but that means that many third world nations have a loooong way to go before that happens.
Educational programs will help some of the last one, at the expense of making them more like first world consumers. Everything you listed sounds real nice and sweet. None of it will come anywhere close to saving us. And if this all you have to offer on the subject, then I'm quite done humoring you.
Yes, I said technology is the cause of our current predicament. Agriculture, firearms, mass production, the steam engine, the automobile, pesticides ad infinitum all allowed us to consume and destroy more of our natural resources, allow our population to grow exponentially to gargantuan proportions, and pollute our environment on a huge scale. I stand by that statement and encourage you to actually address it rather than make wild unfounded accusations that I want everyone to live in stone age conditions.
Non-chemical weapons could be possible, but that doesn't mean they're suited for combat. We have caseless ammo, lasers, rail guns, etc now, but the military doesn't use them for a variety of reasons, ranging from cost, weight, durability in the field, ease of field maintenance, etc etc. Combat weapons have to be cheap and effective, not necessarily the most technologically advanced.
"I thought cell phones were only useful for buying drugs."
There's an app for that.
I guess a Slashdot app for iPhone won't be coming out anytime soon either.
That leaves us with precious little alternative to communing with the animal spirits, don't you think?
No. No, I don't. I never mentioned anything about religion or the supernatural. I'm a Strong Atheist, so I find it hard to believe you can seriously twist my comments about discipline and making hard choices into "animal spirits." I also made several comments about technology not being able to save us by itself. Meaning we need more than just new tech. We need the long-term commitment to living sustainably, to living within our means, to be able to survive. New tech by itself will only enable more waste and consumption. I must have said that half a dozen times. Does any of that ring a bell? Or would you rather just continue pretending I want everyone to live in the stone age?
OMG Successful Farming is just a front for the Special Forces! I knew it!
In chemical industry, and in labs, color codes have been used for the last 15 millennia or something.
I'm sorry, what? Are you saying the chemical industry has been around for 15,000 years? Or colors have? I don't follow you.
Yeah, and if it were in Llira it would be in the hundreds of thousands! That's outrageous!
Blagosphere FTW
Do we throw that all away in the name of "collective discipline", and just hope that we're doing the right thing by communing with the "animal spirits"?
Yup, no stramman arguments there. That's exactly what I've been talking about. Animal spirits. Spot on.
So logical arguments and case studies have eluded you. How about an analogy? Let's say a fat man is trying to both lose weight and maintain his lifestyle. Or even better, fat people across the world are. They want to be more efficient, without giving up on their way of life. They want a pill that will make them lose weight, give them more energy, put on muscle tone, etc. But they don't want to give up time playing video games, watching TV, etc. Any pill that would do this would then exacerbate the problem by providing a disincentive to diet or exercise. It would enable them to sit on the couch more, eat worse food, etc. This would then demand another solution to the worsening health. On the other hand, if they simply ate a sensible diet and exercised, there would be no need to develop a pill and all their problems would be solved (except their desire for a sedentary lifestyle). The technological solution by itself doesn't SOLVE the problem, it EXACERBATES the problem, while the low-tech solution of diet and exercise actually SOLVES the problem. What you're talking about is exactly analogous to a fat man demanding a pill to solve his obesity, when he could just get up and exercise. BTW, I tried to look up that island in the book Collapse by Jared Diamond, but it disappeared off my shelf. There is also a chapter dedicated to debunking the "technology will save us" myth. I highly recommend you read the entire book, or at least that one chapter. It was written for you.
OK, first of all, I'm now convinced you're a fucking idiot. I never held up stone age tech as a model. I merely pointed out that they were able to live sustainably on it, while we can't with all our modern tech. I was using it to support my point that it is not modern tech that will save us from a Malthusiam dilemma. I also clearly claimed to NOT know what the golden number is. I merely stated that it stands to reason there IS a maximum number, whatever it is, and without something more than technology to save us we will over consume our way past it.
You keep harping on the fact that modern societies' populations stabilise. But Americans consume 17 times the natural resources, person for person, of third world nations. And as we adopt new energy efficient technology, we tend to waste just as much. Study after study has shown this. Once again, technology by itself, will not save us. We need collective discipline to save us. Is any of this getting through? Are you even hearing what I'm saying, or do you just want to knock down strawman arguments?
Other animals don't cause mass extinction events. We destroy and consume on a scale other animals lack because of our technology. And the Netherlands may have a sustainable population, but do they import anything? Like, say hardwood tables made from trees cut down in a rain forest? Do they export anything? Like, say old computers to be recycled in China? As a whole, we are consuming and polluting at an unsustainable level.
You're anthropomorphizing robots again. They'll fucking kill you for that.
Imagine if they had put some effort into actually advancing their stone-age technology level - they might have had enough food to not have to kill off their children.
Then they would have an exponentially increasing population on a small island, and every generation would depend on new technology to save them. How does this fairy tale end, pray tell? Have you even heard of Malthus before?
Unless she is incorporated, it should be considered a personally owned business. Do 17 year olds who mow their neighbors' lawns have to pay this fee? Paying tax on the income ($50) makes sense, but paying $300 for being a business doesn't.
The population is stabilizing in first world countries where the consumption rate is still monstrous. Hardly a consoling thought. Let's look at a case study. There's a tiny island in the South Pacific whose name escapes me and whose population managed to use its resources in a sustainable manner for over a thousand years using stone age technology. They lived on one third of the island and kept the other two thirds as a reserve for hard times. They kept their population low through onanism, abortion, and infanticide. They made tough choices, like killing off all the pigs when they realized they were rooting through their plants. They lived tough lives, but had enough food and water for everyone alive. Their ability to use their resources hinged not on their technology, but their collective discipline and determination.
Now look at us. We consume what we like with no regard to the future of our species or planet. And we wait for a magic pill to solve our problems so we can continue our way of life. What technological breakthrough would let us continue this path without encouraging our wasteful ways? As soon as someone says, hey we can farm the desert with this new device, people will build cities there and it will support millions more people. If someone made a cheap solar panel capable of powering houses or cars, people will get more cars and make bigger houses. We don't need more technological answers. We need a collective long-term commitment to this planet.
he problem is one of technology. Technology is not, in and of itself, "bad." Compare lifestyles today with lifestyles 200 years ago, and see how much it has improved things.
At severe cost to the environment and the long-term sustainability of the planet, that being my point. Technology is the cause of our predicament, not the solution. Agriculture let more people per acre live. Mass production, medicine, the steam engine all enabled our population to blossom. The problem has never been a lack of technology, but a lack of will to limit our growth. Any new development in more efficient energy or less damaging production will only allow more people to live. It's Malthus' problem; it always has been. Every new innovation lets us forestall the inevitable. Every time we are about to die off in mass numbers, something saves us and allows us to grow even more, and on and on. Desmond Morris thoroughly debunks the myth that technology will save us in Collapse. But you keep working on that technological solution, while ignoring all of history. Let me know it works out.
No, driving a prius or riding a bike isn't going to do it. But this is what's pitched to us as "saving the environment." Humans are technologists - tool makers. Telling us to solve a problem while robbing us of the single most useful trait we have which would allow us to solve a problem is no solution at all.
Well so far, technology has helped create the problem. It's allowed us to consume, destroy, and pollute on an unprecedented scale. And research has shown us so far that when people switch to more efficient bulbs, they leave them on longer. When people make one sacrifice for the environment, they feel empowered to make up for it with another. Scientific American just had a great article on it recently, about how we have a scorecard in our heads, and people who do a good deed are more likely to later cheat in a game. So asking people to buy a Prius (which is still made from mined materials and shipped overseas) doesn't really solve the bigger problem of too many people. I don't have an easy solution. My only point is that the changes we're asked to make aren't enough.
The lifeboat (Earth) has a finite and fixed maximum limit it can hold in a sustainable manner. Perhaps Earth can sustain 1 billion first world consumers perpetually. Perhaps it can sustain 10 billion. I would guess closer to 100,000,000 first world consumers, tops. Might be well below that, considering how much of our resources have been used up so far. But since we're nowhere near to a sustainable rate anywhere other than perhaps Iceland, it's hard to say.
More or less. It was over consumption gone crazy, and it destroyed them. They also had to mine and carve up all that rock, whose labor could have been used more productively. In any case, there are several other civilizations that have wiped themselves out. Only two, actually, have figured out to use their resources in a sustainable fashion: Iceland and some small island in the south pacific whose name I can't remember. They went to incredible lengths and exhibited rare discipline. We aren't within three orders of magnitude of that they did.
Nah, I'll just wear one of those wrist thingies.
http://xkcd.com/649/