"For every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet Earths" - Edward O. Wilson, The Future Of Life, 2002 The key word here is "existing" technology. The book does not assume the exponential nature of technology revolution, paradigm shift, discontinuos process, step functions, complexity, etc etc. but focuses on consumption. But the book does have a point in a linear way. We will fix that.... The author's background: Edward O. Wilson Edward O. Wilson has made major contributions to a number of fields, including the behavior and evolution of social insects, chemical communication, and the evolution of social behavior. His interest in living organisms, especially ants, stems back to his childhood and to his undergraduate studies in evolutionary biology at the University of Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University, where he is now Pellegrino University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Among his many honors are the National Medal of Science, two Pulitzer Prizes (for On Human Nature, 1978, and The Ants, 1990, with Bert Hölldobler), and the Tyler Prize for environmental achievement. Other groundbreaking books include Consilience and Sociobiology. And I thought we are mammals....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I did like his thoughts on Consilience which is more close to my thinking....
kmguru, Thanks for the reply. Well, we both know that population growth is exponential rather than linear. Wilson gave an simple puzzle-analogy which I've used once before in this forum to make the point about exponential growth: Suppose a certain water lilly planted on a lake doubles its size each year, until after 30 years it has spread to fill the entire lake. In which year did the lilly cover exactly half of the lake? Michael
kmguru, Like yourself, I'm just as astounded at our breathtaking progress in technology. I think it is a mistake however to "bet the farm" on the chance that we will come up with a way to feed ourselves before we fill the fishbowl. May I also remind you that merely possessing a technology sufficient to divert human disaster is not at all the same as actually using this technology. We likely have the means today to avert famines and much death from disease in Africa, yet we don't have the will to do so. Wilson speaks to the issue that death by starvation is only the last phase of the terror brought about by insufficient resources. War and other political strife surface long before people actually begin to fall over due to hunger. He argued that the half-million people recently hacked to death in Rwanda was in some measure: a product of the highest birth rate in the world, population density, and allocation of resources. As you suggest, technology might well be our saviour. If we should tame fusion power next year, I for one would rejoice. Better technology certainly can't hurt us. Regards, Michael
"Suppose a certain water lilly planted on a lake doubles its size each year, until after 30 years it has spread to fill the entire lake. In which year did the lilly cover exactly half of the lake?" That is a tricky question. Let us see, do we use Consilience math to answer that or high school math? Since we all are in high school...On 30th year the lily filled up the entire lake. Are you sure it filled up the lake? And what happened to the human observer? He did not cut off a few to give it to his girlfriend?...no...bummer...did bugs eat up the stuff?...no...double bummer...why did not the animals who saw it fill up do something about it?...they did not care?...ah! those happy lilies...do you know, they have this sweet smell...wonderfulful creation...too bad they can grow no more...so you think the year before they were only half size? Wow...do I get a prize?...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Orthogonal: Before you get mad at me...I am glad you brought up these ideas here and I would love to chat with you. Let us do this in another thread (you start - if you read the book) . Wet1 is welcome to join there too. I would like to connect the dots...like Consilience and the Future of Life - both of Wilson's book and how it applies to our present situation including terrorism, and life in general on this planet including threat of nuclear war.... with love and regards
kmguru, Hmm...now do I understand you to be saying that the same human mind that is able to grasp and use quantum mechanics to its benefit, is somehow unable to understand human population dynamics? Please explain why the human mind is unable to fathom such knowledge. Gosh, I also don't understand why you might fixate on Wilson's background as an entomologist (yes, he studied ents!). How would excellence in the field of insect study preclude a man from voicing a rational opinion about human conditions? Einstein, and Feynman both spoke well on issues far removed from physics. Yes, I also liked Consilience very much. You admit that Consilience was more to your liking thanThe Future Of Life. No doubt the message in this last book is more somber. I hope his warnings turn out to be overblown. Still, nothing that I've read from this author makes me doubt his integrity as a scientist or as a commentator on public policy. He strikes me as a particularly well-balanced, perhaps even a brilliant man. Why he's not even a Yankee, he's an Alabama boy. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Michael
kmguru, Mad? Not for a moment. I'm only happy to have a rational person to talk with! As usual, I doubt we even have much of a disagreement here. Keyboards are a poor substitute for sitting across from each other over coffee. Best wishes to you, and I hope to hear from you again down the line. Kind Regards, Michael
Orthogonal: Thanks for understanding. As you said...keyboards are not a real subtistiture....Once we understand each other, which really means when I say apple, you understand the context to your context that is a result of my previous reply...(the old saying...you know that I know that you know...) then everything becomes clear. I normally post in 3 levels. One for immidiate topic at hand and how it might have come across for the members. Second, in a more general context and the third layer from the complexity (that Wilson talks about Consilience) stand point. It is in the third level that you and I agree on. But we can argue on the other levels because most people wont get it (it is the old bell curve thing...) Besides even if we agree on the larger context - we still need to argue on little things to make life more interesting....right? The reason I emphasized the ant stuff is to point that his valid reasoning for masses do not hold water at third level. But it may be necessary to jolt the public so that people will be serious and act accordingly. There are two recent examples that can be analogies: 1. India & Pakistan Nuclear threat: We were really close to such an event in the last few weeks. There was no solution in hand except one. Pull out all the foreigners from both countries. That would put a big damper on their economy. They knew that. And it worked. While the threat is not over...we are safe for the time being. 2. The FBI fiasco was necessary to change the government reorganization. Otherwise it would not have been possible. And unless we have another big one (God forbid) that change may not be implemented. So, if Wilson's book let people start thinking then...that act itself will benefit in the long run to avert the disaster. But as I said, from a complexity theory standpoint...these are paths to a better future and we are going to avoid the distaster scenario....due to the butterfly effect. Peace....
I read The Future of Life a couple of months back. Great read. I am looking forward to Consilience. There was a short story by Vonnegut that had to do with this, along the lines of large extended families cramped in tenements, inheriting choice places to sleep once the elders finally died off. Some kind of commercially available blue juice was drank to prolong life (ironically the lethal injections for pet euthanasia is blue), and some of the grandkids were caught watering it down for grandpa, tattled on by other grandkids, and so they moved up the hierarchy. Funny stuff, but I can't think of the title right now. I think longevity at first will be the luxury of the affluent, and it will be available to the middle class to some degree. It will probably always be a class issue. Hopefully, as first-world countries practice more birth-control, people who live longer will control their offspring. If every couple has two kids only, and if you live to see 200, you would only have, at most, barring accidental death, about twenty descendants living during your lifetime, if all practiced the same population control. If population were controlled in those parts of the world today where many children are born (though few live to ripe old age) every day, where there is little or no birth control, then perhaps earth could sustain a greater population of elderly. However, it seems that not that many people in the world have much to offer the world more than raw production and consumption. Many affluent Americans are shallow people concerned about career, family, what's on tv, what can the world do for me. Most Americans are too apathetic to vote. Do we need people like this living even longer, when they won't even take the steps when they're young and healthy to extend the life they can be assured of getting now? A friend of mine is unconcerned with a healthy diet and quitting smoking, and he jokingly thinks medicine will save him. I love the guy, but he represents the mindset most people in the industrialized world have. On the far future aspect of this thread, I'd say that if we don't figure out faster than light travel or teleportation to distant systems in the next millenium, we're probably going to have to go through some serious downsizing. Maybe we can live underground/ on the moon/Mars, but man, that's gonna be rough... what about the savannah hypothesis? How about that In regards to this Core/Arm uploading stuff, does this have to do with the Hyperion books? No doubt we'll develop intelligent programs and "personalities," but the human mind uses chemicals (in addition to electric states) with billions more permutations of state that a computer with ones and zeros cannot emulate, or even if particle-spin or photonic computers are developed, they will never represent humanity as it was. Perhaps a new intelligent form of life will develop, pass the turing test, but where's the transformation? What part are they doing for entropy? John Le Coq
IMHO, we will be closer to 3001: Space Odyssey in the living conditions than Moon base. Space is very large. There is no reason, why we can not live in geo orbit. That can pack a lot of people for several thousand years until we create mind uploading to small sugar cubes....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Uh, a little thought about longer life. I wonder if I wouldn't get so tired of living I might desire death when I get old. Seems like a position taken by a lot of the old grannies and grampies I know. Maybe they're just weird.
It is happening to my mother-in-law who is waiting to die - atleast talking in that theme to shock us... IMHO, if one is busy and productive and enjoying life...then there is still so much to learn, so much to see...I think I could live a thousand years and never get bored if my health is in good shape. I would like to see people land on Mars or setup colonies...create artificial intelligence...travel in hyperspace (I had a lucid dream about that)...someday meet ET...solve hunger and disease and so on. The Universe is a true wonder that we can not assimilate even in a ten thousand years....
Yeah, but I might feel differently if I had cancer and I were 100 years old or something. I might feel the desire to live!
