The anthropic principle, evolution and economics.

I've done some research and:

You're right, it wasn't. You (wesmorris) see it as a scientific priciple used as a tool in allocating resources and describing a system, completely indifferent to any subtelties or politics trying to manipulate it, yes?

Am I wrong?
Analogy: Like a scientist assigning a theory to his experiments, the outcome of his experiment tells him whether he is doing somthing right or something wrong regardless of hypothesis.
The experimet and the agents involved- that you see as economics.
The theories applied cirumspectively- that you see as political bullshit. They (theories) are abstracts that could be modified and should be according to the undeniable results.

Its Tessie's vehemence with his rigid theories (or politics) that's got you calling him a cunt, yes?

But it looks like Tessie is looking down on your formula or experiment and sees one agent too many, something you don't need. And in you insisting that you keep it in your forumla (or system) he up and calls it a mythological element altogether since your system would run alot smoother by virtue of a wise choice.

Tessie:

I'm seeing that now. Synopsis: a scarcity of anything forces choices on the system's manipulators. Gasoline shortages in the 70's forced people to choose wether or not they'd pay higher for gas or go without.

But none of these shortages are mythical, there really was a fucking shortage of oil in the 70's. You going to tell me it was only politics? Or some abstract only useful in order to maintain "the necessity of differentation"?

I spent a good deal reading everything you provided up there in your analysis of myth and suprisingly fell upon the very site where you mention Ferregism-
I find the author speaking about capitalism played out like some runaway Monopoly game where everyone fights to make money if only to prevent their neighbors from making any.

He says this game is based on the 'myth' of scarcity since there is enough for everyone and if only we switch gears and stop thinking of greed as good and generous as weak than all would be dandy.

But there is no account taken of finite natural resources.
Little thought is put to conservation of reserves in the system. How? In not looking past rigid formulas and cookie-cutter textbook driven ideology- what you are saying.

Desire has much to do with this, regardless of need.

I quote:

Follow?

You say:

I had a good mind to lambast you on this but you did point out water being ruined by none other than us.

However, if it has happened to water, then what about developing countries where cheap firewood is a staple? Everything of anything is subject to depletion especially when an entity as consumptive, demaning, and greedy as we are consider it a staple. Why? Because even in the face of zero, nothing nada we adapt and keep forcing it.

I do understand some of what you are saying though- for example, in Cuba during the Soviet era all their farmland was subsidized by the Russian governmet. Farmers were made to use expensive pumps and combustible fuel in order to pump water for their soil. As soon as the government no longer funded it, these pumps sat around rusting and wasting and with no collateral to purchase those fuels the land sat around spoling and went "barren" since the farmers could ill-afford to irrigate their land with methods forced on them from above.

Notice I but "barren" in quotes.

What's the story like now years later? These farmers that once sat around watching their land fucking rot are now using traditional methods like small dams and windmills to bring their land back to life again, they use less demanding cattle from Africa to maintain their water supplies and no longer suffer from drought. My point: Even though Cuba by and large is a poor country the bounties are undeniable, the people are happier and the crops yield every season.

Methodology is what screwed them- not scarcity, though it looked like it.

THIS, I feel is what you see as scarcity being some notion of 'mythical' yes?

The Aral Sea in Central Asia was once one of the largest- go look at it now. Its a diseased slab of dry crust cutting across the continent, you'd die just standing on the hot bed for too long.
The fish industries have come to a standstill in some places.
Why?

Reason the first: Uzbekistan's cash crop just so happens to be cotton and it has this dirty habit for sucking up the all water resources around the factories where it is manufactured.

Reason the second: New canals and channels have left dry riverbeds.
Water use goes unchecked while arable land goes wasting.

Tell me all of this is irrelevant like you did in your last post to me, Tess. I fucking dare you.

Concering my statement of half the globe dying to be like us, then yes.

But applied to simple economic principles, then no.
Scarcity measures supply. If the supply of a staple is low, then the demand is high. Now why is it high? Becuase it is needed, and when supplies are low of something needed you cannot ignore it. You are forced to make a choice by sheer need.

Like the lung demanding air and the force exerted by the body when you try to choke someone like I'd like to do you sometimes- that is need. Not desire.

See now?

 

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Gendanken-

Just a short note in deference to your prior notes ... I'm away for the weekend. I'll be near a computer, but I'll be cut off from my library and completely out of rhythm; if I fail to respond directly, I'll get to it as soon as I'm home.

 

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"Those that are fit for environment X, thrive in environment X."


...Im not an evolutionary biologist, I am a biochemist with a lot of microbiology background. But I think I can and should correct that statement slightly -

Those that are the most fit for environment X will thrive best in environment X.

The environment is constantly changing, as the other populations flux and adapt or decline in proximity to the subject your talking about. There is no such thing as being perfectly suited to an environment - just better suited, or suited well enough, to it - for the moment.

 

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Yes. Politics become involved as soon as you attempt to formulate profit functions and policies to achieve them. No political assertion can negate the concept of "scarcity" as I've presented it, as it is fundamentally a nod to the arrow of time. Perhaps if someone has a "timeless model" to present, they should present the model sans leftist political horseshit.

Not this time.

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Close enough yes. It is a boundary condition rooted in common sense. Of course boundary conditions are up for discussion, but NOT, IMO - subject to the political argument that has been raised over and over in this thread. It is wholly irrelevant.

Of course it's apparent that the cunt can't help himself.

Yes.

Not necessarily bullshit, but yes, especially when promoted by a cunt.

Absolutely.

Hehe, if it were so simple. I think at this point there are too many reasons for my assertions as to his cunt nature to really discuss in detail.

Well, I think Tessie is lost - afloat in the subjectively euphoric cloud of self-important political horseshit that continually spews from his orifices (and fingertips).

It is my contention, that a wise choice is impossible without this consideration. If you read closely, you will see it is fundamentally the semantics that this piece of shit has a problem with. He doesn't like the term "scarce" because of it's dictionary type implications as in "there's not much of this". I recognized this and offered to abandon the term, as long as consideration is still given to the contraints that the time dependence of resource gathering and allocation demand. I cannot make a wise choice
regarding the supply of food to you, or your community, etc., without considerations as to the availability of the resources that comprise your food supply. Even if you automate the process, like breathing - failure to account for availability of resources (like going to space and forgetting to bring enough oxygen) will result in failure of any goal unless that goal is to die. Even if that were the goal, then consideration would have had to be taken to ensure that you didn't have enough air

 

Wes:

Good, so gendanken has not misfired and now we can either go on with sweet progress since this last post of yours has been the clearest on what the problem between you and Tess is thus far or you can continue punching his eye out and asking him to leave.

As an aside, my participation here in this thread reminds me of the good old days long ago when discussion was meaty, about something. I've actually learned something here ....... despite the cuntocity.
This is the way the forums should be.
That being said, back to misanthropy.

Tessie:

Thought the man was agoraphobic......gasp.

Kidding. Allright, will do.

 

Wes, stop masking your misogyny as hatred for me and try sticking to the topic.

Stop living in fear. Stop expecting the worst of the Universe. Get a new point, and stop complaining about the apparent differentiation of matter in the Universe.

Remember that there is no bright center of objectivity in the Universe. You might as well be arguing the definitive existence of any one specific god.

 

I thank you for clarifying.

As to the rest ... swatting flies is one thing, but as you have a point to make, I shall undertake your fine considerations later today, when I'm more awake.

 

Fuck you, you worthless fucking cunt.

You are far too fucked up to understand what I am.

How about I put this in economic terms:

The opportunity cost for being me, is finding people like you wholly disgusting.

It's amusing that you're so pathetic as to cast it as "misogyny". LOL. Fact is: YOU MAKE ME SICK. YOU. Not anyone else in this thread, and really only only one other person on the board that I can think of (on further thought, make that two). You are a disgusting individual (as are they). Individual.

It's your normal, pathetic, stab in the dark that has you would cast me as a misogynist based on my use of the word "cunt" or "bitch". I only say what I hope will offend you most, you dirty cunt. Well, that and it's perfect fucking description. You are a cunt. That you would take from that "wes hates women", is only more evidence that you're a cunt.

So please, provide more evidence of your worthlessness.

You do it every time you speak.

 

Hey, you're the one focusing on female anatomy in such a negative light.

Get over yourself.

 

LOL.

Oh man you are a cunt.

It's entertaining when someone masquerading as an adult begins a sentence with "Hey, you're the one who blah blah blah..."

Douchebag.

You first, bitch.

 

Has it occured to either of you that being the only one here with a cunt I alone reserve the right to assign its use as misogynist?

Either way, only gendanken reserves the right to bash women. And fags. And Jews. And Christians. And mullets.

BACK ON THE FUCKING TOPIC PEOPLE.

 

Scarcity is a choice, although often a coerced one: Take respect and civility, for instance. It would seem that these are in short supply here.

:reaches into Top Hat: .(not asshat, Wes)

But human resourcefulness has been our amazing story of survival and prosperity, one of modifying the environment to produce new abundance.

:foop!:

You folk have stirred up some insight here.

Respectfully Yours,
Hypewaders.

 

Hypewaders:

I've done my homework buddy boy, and no it is not.

Small btw: Tessie:

Here's hoping you don't focus on a point you oppose and split the fucking hair out of it.

I think the Cuba example fits in quite nicely with what you are getting at. Now step to.

 

Alright, since you've done your homework, help me with mine for a minute:
In this vast universe, what is there that we need, that we can't have?

 

Haven't you read this thread?

Nine pages and we're back to square one. Meh. I'm going to work.

 

You had time to wade through all that? I'm trying for the Executive Summary.

 

OK then from skimming for myself, and trying not to get distracted by some squabbling and tautology, this is all I gleaned. But surely there's more to it, so I'm asking with a dazed nod to time's scarcity, arrows, plowshares, Darwin, Smith, Keynes, kindness, mercy, and all that's sacred but shouldn't be:

determinism : libertarianism
competition : cooperation
scarcity : adaptation
conformity : freethinking

There's a seeming gravitation toward either extreme, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between, or in the interplay. Neither extreme describes reality very thoroughly, because they're just fortified perspectives. And "anthropic principle" is such an exemplary muddled term- I challenge anyone to give it a concise definition- it's perhaps deliberately confusing by human nature.

I'm left reminded of the 20th century Jagger & Richards thesis on the subject:

You can't always get what you want-
But if you try sometimes, you might find-
You get what you need.

 

The response to my strenuous insight is an all-annihilating black hole. I feel like Dubya at a press conference.

 

Is necessity the Mother of Invention, or is desire?

As an analogy: regardless of what you or I might think of the notions of God or "God's will," disbelief (such as it may be) does not change the fact that some hoser somewhere just strapped some dynamite to his chest or picked up a rifle: God is great.

Likewise, that scarcity is a myth--as my assertion has it--doesn't change the facts of what people do while subject to that myth. What made the resource scarce, especially in the gas crisis, was not nature itself, but human choices. And rather silly ones, at that.

Part of what Wes seems to dislike, calls "political," is the inevitable transformation of an idea from a pure abstraction (gee, it would be nice if everyone could get along) to an applicable theory (just how exactly are we going to accomplish that?)

And that does necessarily demand accounting for some human politics. But this does not a political argument make. What is the difference between the scarcity of air as a result of the necessity of breathing and the scarcity of grain as a result of something like the North Korean regime?

Don't we have to be alive in the first place in order to have an applicable economy, and not just be part of an abstract one? (The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out . . . .)

I thank you for making it relevant. Having that context on the original dare clears up the relevance considerably for me.

And yes, you're on a huge part of what shows the myth of scarcity. A friend of mine is pursuing some interdisciplinary environmental sciences degree, and just did a section on organic farming in Cuba; I'm quite happy to see you mention it. Part of what happens when people are happy is that arbitrary demand decreases. It's not the fastest for the technical evolution of society, but it does lend against the myth that the land can't support us.

I keep thinking of trees and paper and cotton and cloth and what about that silly political hemp fight? Deforestation, erosion, The Who . . . .

Sounds like the tricky part . . . .

The existence of scarcity within any localization does not demonstrate the existence of a necessary scarcity. Such as:

Yes, need invoked by another's choice.

Part of the tangled difference is, indeed, the abstract scarcity that comes with the fact of differentiation in the Universe and the scarcity that comes from blowing up the local water-distribution system as part of a war.

And here we have to revisit the topic post:

Everything is fine until we enter the two statements highlighted in red above. And then we take from Wes' interruption of my discussion with 15ofthe19:

Whether or not the model is applicable to what is still a serious question. Applicable to life? Applicable to humanity? Applicable to the Universe in general?

What is the difference between a pond going belly-up because an algae bloom has screwed the food chain and the food chain being screwed by paperwork, legislation, and idiots with rifles? Are we seeking an application somewhere "above" humanity? To include the stars in the sky and the scarcity of magma in dormant volcanoes? What is the difference between a scarcity imposed by an inability to procure food and a decision to not distribute food?

Is recognition of economic methods a tool for human advancement and life, or is it, essentially, God, the ultimate cause?

And yet in response to various considerations of these issues, I get unfounded nitpicking about the use of verbs? Claims that the idea of "resource creation" is irrelevant to scarcity? Or the notion that Wes doesn't want to think about it, therefore it's not a legitimate part of the discussion? Insistence that the subjective value of things establishes the objective truth of scarcity?

I think you'll find the issue of the myth of scarcity not nearly as contentious as this debate has been, regardless of what you decide. And at the core of the idea is, quite simply, the difference between the idea that things are how they are, or that things are how they must be.

 

Was that the Executive Summary?