Human Self-Loathing

[Danoff]

I've been following a thread in the rumble strip about humanity's prospects for the next century and I've been somewhat astonished at the responses.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=100384

Right now is a pretty fantastic time to be alive. Even some of the most undeveloped countries are enjoying a standard a higher standard of living than any time in their history. Of course, it's not the best time for every place on the world, but taken as a whole, human beings are better off now than any time in history.

...and that standard of living has been increase at dramatic rate.

In many parts of the world, food has never been more accessible. Information has never been more accessible. Modern convenience has never been more accessible.

And yet, over and over in the "human advancement" thread, people have been posting doom and gloom predictions. Of the thousands of years human beings have been on this planet, and given that life is better now than it ever has been, people are predicting that we're currently in the last 100 years of human existence - that we're on the brink of absolute disaster.

This disaster tends to occur in these predictions in any of a number of ways. Massive war, sparse food, climate change, and of course the occasional astrological phenomenon. Sparse food is the one that really gets me. We're more overrun with food now that we ever have been, and we're nowhere near capacity. Yet somehow we're going to run out of food in the next 100 years? Even if there were no agricultural advances whatsoever I'm not sure that would be the case.

If human beings are convinced now, when life is so cushy, that the end is near, what must they have thought 100 years ago?

Based on all of the evidence, life is going to get better - not worse. And the people living 100 years from now enjoying their robot maids and convenient space travel will think that they're on the brink of disaster and that at any minute the whole thing will fall apart.

So my question is, what causes this? People seem convinced that humanity will eventually destroy itself, that we're too stupid to solve the problems of the future. Despite a vast history of problem-solving, somehow our faculties will run out against today's new unsolved problems. Why do we put so little stock in our problem-solving ability? Or so much stock in our destructive tendencies?

 

[Solid Lifters]

Movies like "Bowling For Columbine" and Al Gore's "A Convenient Lie." All liberal scare tactics.

 

[Swift]

I really do think it's the media.

For instance. The media is pushing that he economy is weak and teetering on recession. But the fact of the matter is we've had record breaking gains for the past few years and the government is taking in more money then in the history of the country. But the media wants us to believe the economy's is in big trouble.

 

[Boundary Layer]

Consider the source for a minute. We all live in developed countries and have access to modern conveniences like computers and the internet, refrigerators, etc. Could it be, that because life is so cushy for so many that they can't imagine it getting significantly better by new advances?
Technology can improve, sure... but what will be the next big breakthrough that will totally alter the way day-to-day life is lived?
Essentially, that is what that thread is asking, and it's a question that is going to stump an awful lot of people.

I know for myself that it is much easier to imagine a less desirable lifestyle devoid of my possessions and modern technology than it is to ponder the what the trends of technological advancement will be over the next hundred or so years. All you need to do is turn on National Geographic and you've go a front row seat.


If you could ask the same question posed in the referenced thread to people in underdeveloped and impoverished nations I expect you'd get entirely different replies.

 

[GrumpEone]

If human beings are convinced now, when life is so cushy, that the end is near, what must they have thought 100 years ago?

Hisorically humans have always thought that the 'End in Near', this is nothing new. I wonder what (in our mind) causes the constant doomsday theories, and that 'End is Near' notion. Maybe it is a good thing, If everyone thought we would exist forever, many a solution to our issues/ problems may never have been worked on, due to all the time we have, to work on them. I think it creates a sort of urgency to get things done.

 

[Pupik]

I really do think it's the media.

The media is better at scaring people into problems and insecurities they never had before they turned on their TV set or radio. But they'll never tell you it's the end of the world, that's religion's job. After all, if it really was the end of mankind as we know it, nobody would be watching TV, and advertisers would be in the streets playing marbles.

I think it's related to how well people are doing financially or physically or mentally: My parents both think we're headed into "Great Depression II" (neither of them are economists). Why do they think that? Let's see, they're divorced, about to retire, look forward to a limited income stream, have minimal health care, and they aren't the millionaires they'd dreamed of becoming. It's their own problems, so they shadow their insecurities and faults by pointing at faceless "Big Brother" and "The Government".

Meanwhile, I get fired/quit and promptly hired, proud of my skills, like my job, have a healthy life with my wife and daughter, I fear nothing, barely worry about what's going to happen 5 minutes from now, so therefore, things are rosy. If my wife and I thought this was a terrible world to raise a child, I'd have intentionally used a prophylactic.

Where I live, I have lots of modern conveniences, I can afford anything I need (as opposed to my wants), the weather's good, and the living's healthy. I'm not addicted to anything, the air's clean, it's free of warfare, and I don't worry about strolling about the town at midnight. I'm not worried about vast changes to my life if a different political party suddenly took the helm of our government, because of the way its structured.

I think a lot of it has to do with our outlook on life, which has a lot to do with the present situation. If you're not satisfies with the present, and don't do anything about it, nor want to do anything about changing it, then you're not going to have a good view of the future.

A happy six years here, everyone.

 

[Danoff]

I think it may be sheer arrogance.

Yes, mankind has been solving problems for thousands of years. And yes, we will continue to solve problems. But if the solution to a particular problem doesn't present itself immediately to the average person, I think their knee-jerk reaction is to assume that there is no solution.

Consider for a moment one of my favorite doomsday scenarios - the end of oil. Modern life is tied up in cheap oil. We've used oil for all sorts of things, and the concept of taking something like that away (given our current infrastructure) is scary. The alternatives are not immediately obvious.

It's arrogant to think that because you cannot conceive of a solution to that problem, that one will not be thought of. But Many people seem to go through that exact thought process - even so far as to predict that we'll be riding horses, burning candles, and running out of food. It's mind boggling to think that humanity would have no better answer for the end of oil than a horse and a candle, and yet that seems to be where many people assume we're headed.

 

[///M-Spec]

I think a lot of it has to do with our outlook on life, which has a lot to do with the present situation. If you're not satisfies with the present, and don't do anything about it, nor want to do anything about changing it, then you're not going to have a good view of the future.

As it happens often, I get to a thread only to find pupik has already said more or less what I have to say.

In my three decades or so as a casual observer of human behavior, one of the thing I've become convinced of is that some people have a tendency to project aspects of themselves on humanity as a whole. Thus when someone says "mankind is stupid, savage & child-like, and we will destroy ourselves soon", I'm convinced that deep-down inside, what they really mean is "I'm afraid that I'm stupid, savage & child-like and that I'm going to destroy myself soon". The condition of the self gets projected onto their perception of the condition of all men.

I can't prove this. Nor do I have any advanced training or education in psychology. I've just noticed over the years that people who have negative outlooks on humanity as a whole also tend to have negative personal lives or live in a constant state of anger at the world (with varying degrees of intensity) I can cite my former self as an example, from about 20 years ago.

Either that or they're trying to sell something. Like a self-help video. Or a revolution. If someone tells everyone that they suck and need to be saved, guess who's the best person for the job?

EDIT:

Consider for a moment one of my favorite doomsday scenarios - the end of oil. Modern life is tied up in cheap oil. We've used oil for all sorts of things, and the concept of taking something like that away (given our current infrastructure) is scary. The alternatives are not immediately obvious.

I think it's actually even more sinister than that. Scare mongers don't WANT you to find a solution unless it's the one they supply. That's because they invariably control the solution.


M

 

[FoolKiller]

I don't think it is media. I think media is reflecting the general public's thought that we are all gone die.

Look at how popular disaster movies are. Most of them are natural disasters that are practically impossible, but you throw in half an ounce of pseudoscience and everyone has their fears confirmed.

Then you have something like Hurricane Katrina happen, which was more a matter of chance that it was that powerful and hit in just the right place and suddenly everyone believes it can happen to us all, and will only get worse. Heck, I remember a year after a hurricane hit the gulf and the remnants started heading north towards Kentucky. Meteorologists were actually debating whether we would have a full blown tropical storm and if we should cancel work and school. I think I spent 30 minutes picking up some tree branches in my yard.

Now what media does play a part in creating is Danoff's theory of human arrogance. It is natural to fear disaster, but Hollywood starts by telling us it is our own fault. Even Godzilla was because of US nuclear tests. But then they not only tell us we pissed of nature, but they then tell us we can also stop it when it happens.


The truth is most natural disasters are natural, nothing more. Tectonic plates move, low pressure systems hit pockets of warm moisture, solar activity changes, etc. We can't cause it and we can't stop it. But the fact is a planet-wide, extinction level event is very, very rare. The worst case scenario on a regular basis is that a city or region faces damage.

Humans only play one role in all of this: We overcome. We rebuild faster than we originally built, we help each other, etc. Every disaster in my lifetime has proven the sociological theories that humans will revert to chaos in such situations wrong every time. Just look at Katrina, the tsunami, 9/11, the blackout, and earthquakes. Every sociological theory and fictional story talks of riots, looting, and chaos. The truth is that 99.9% of the people involved helped each other out. You can even see it on small scales as a teen saves a child in a burning house, or neighbors dig survivors out of a house hit by a tornado.



If anything, I believe that we have repeatedly shown that humans have a bright future. Unfortunately it is more interesting to watch disaster.

 

[Solid Fro]

I really do think it's the media.

For instance. The media is pushing that he economy is weak and teetering on recession. But the fact of the matter is we've had record breaking gains for the past few years and the government is taking in more money then in the history of the country. But the media wants us to believe the economy's is in big trouble.

I agree.

All you have to do is watch the evening news on a network. They will start off with a weak economy story (Housing, oil, whatever) and they will end with the Dow Jones breaking the previous day's record.

Don't make no sense to me.

 

[superberkut]

In a time when senseless gun crimes occur everywhere (take the shooting at the Amish school a couple of months ago) and where natural disasters testify to the destruction of our race, such as Hurricane Katrina, and in light of human errors that devastated our environment (Exxon Valdez), insecurity is very heavy.

And yet, nature has recovered. Wherever anything has gone wrong, nature returned. Lush forests cover the scars of open-pit mines, plants grow in abandoned air-force bases, and animals replenish their respective populations even after devastation. The fact that some are still worried that our race will be annihilated really is puzzling, for we are part of nature. Perhaps it is because that we do not believe or behave the same way, typically, that causes this.

So, there is nothing else for me to say; I agree with Danoff, regardless of the relevance this writing has to his text.

 

[Swift]

I agree.

All you have to do is watch the evening news on a network. They will start off with a weak economy story (Housing, oil, whatever) and they will end with the Dow Jones breaking the previous day's record.

Don't make no sense to me.

Good point 👍

I don't think it is media. I think media is reflecting the general public's thought that we are all gone die.

...

If anything, I believe that we have repeatedly shown that humans have a bright future. Unfortunately it is more interesting to watch disaster.

You didn't quite contradict yourself. But you made the same point that Solid Fro and myself made.

Things are BETTER then they've ever been. But if you rely on the mainstream media as your sole source of the status of the country/world, you'd never know it.

 

[FoolKiller]

Things are BETTER then they've ever been. But if you rely on the mainstream media as your sole source of the status of the country/world, you'd never know it.

I just believe that media feeds on it. I mean, when I was a kid, before cable was big (yes, I remember a time without easily accessible cable) old people were even then talking about how the world was going to hell in a hand basket.

It doesn't matter when things were happening something was ruining the world in the minds of people. Even things that make others feel good, like Elvis and the Beatles or even Christmas, were a sign of the world coming to an end to some. My grandmother can tell me how the automobile was supposed to ruin us all and was a sign that we were all turning lazy and nothing would ever be done.

If it weren't for the fact that this mentality has been going on since media meant one newspaper, two if you were rich, I would think the media was a cause and not an effect. But we all want to believe that we are doomed and so the media tells us we are. People prefer to see that than good news, which is why good news has its one small section. It is like how conservatives prefer Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly over Al Franken and Wolf Blitzer. Rush and Bill didn't make their viewers conservative, conservatives became their viewers. Media didn't create doom and gloomers, doom and gloomers like the media.

 

[Matt R]

People 100 years ago were not as smart as we are today. In the world of today we have instant knowledge at our fingertips. Newspapers, television, and the internet. Two of the three of those didn't exist 100 years back. We hear and read about all of the bad in the world. We have a never before had the amount of clarity about the world and its issues.

In America, between 100-200 years ago would have been so exiting. The Gold Rush, The Western Trailblazers, The Great Land Rush, and The First Transcontinental Railroad. America was on the fast track to the stars.

They had no true knowledge of things we know today. Things were looking up. "Global Warming," nuclear war, and Islamic/Muslim terrorists worry many people today. Seems as though in todays day and age, we're always under the possibility of threat. It seems to me it's to be understood why people are so "self-loathing" today.

 

[Solid Lifters]

Personally, I cannot think about this topic. I'm waiting for killer bees to sting me to death. Or was it man-eating Floridian sharks coming to eat me?

Is radon still going to get me? Skylab? Bird flu? Nightstalker dude got caught, right?

 

[Philly]

In America, between 100-200 years ago would have been so exiting. The Gold Rush, The Western Trailblazers, The Great Land Rush, and The First Transcontinental Railroad. America was on the fast track to the stars.

I would say that the last fifty years would be more exciting than the rest of American history put together. We have accomplished so much more since Pearl Harbor than we have done between then and Lexington/Concord.

They had no true knowledge of things we know today. Things were looking up. "Global Warming," nuclear war, and Islamic/Muslim terrorists worry many people today. Seems as though in todays day and age, we're always under the possibility of threat. It seems to me it's to be understood why people are so "self-loathing" today.

They had their own worries. Socialism was born through oppression of workers. I'm sure disease was of concern. And I'm sure there are many other things the "early peoples" worried about.

And about the media scaring people: The media like to cover "shocking" things, things that people will actually care about. People will watch if they start talking about everything that is going wrong with the world and how it will end in 20 years. Fear is an advertisement. And would anybody watch if they just said "well, everything is just cheerio today" every time you turned on the TV?

 

[YSSMAN]

Gloom and doom is something that every generation predicts, but the ways in which we destroy ourselves often becomes more and more entertaining.

Its hard to ignore whats going on in our world, and at least in some respects, you have to expect things to hit a boiling point. I've been saying there is going to be some kind of massive war for a while now, but the thing is, I really honestly can't be sure.

Who knows. Maybe we will all go stand on a hill, hold hands, and drink bottles of Coke...

 

[Matt R]

I would say that the last fifty years would be more exciting than the rest of American history put together. We have accomplished so much more since Pearl Harbor than we have done between then and Lexington/Concord.

They had their own worries. Socialism was born through oppression of workers. I'm sure disease was of concern. And I'm sure there are many other things the "early peoples" worried about.

And about the media scaring people: The media like to cover "shocking" things, things that people will actually care about. People will watch if they start talking about everything that is going wrong with the world and how it will end in 20 years. Fear is an advertisement. And would anybody watch if they just said "well, everything is just cheerio today" every time you turned on the TV?

No doubt that the last 50 years have been exciting. Mankind went to the Moon. That rawks anything ever done.

I don't doubt people many years ago had their own things to worry about. Disease and famine were much more threatening then than now. But, entire countries didn't have the thought of a nuclear weapon. That freaking bomb incinerates everything in a mile radius, the one dropped in Japan anyway. Today's nuclear weapons have the ability to be 100x as strong.

I don't know about any of you, but that fact alone is enough to put a shake in my boots. I don't live in day to day fear, but I certainly expect a war of mass casualties before 2050. The world had two world wars in less than 50 years last century. Statistically speaking, we're in for another before the year 2100 hits. America will most certainly be involved too. We can't keep our noses out of anything.

 

[Kylehnat]

People seem convinced that humanity will eventually destroy itself, that we're too stupid to solve the problems of the future.

People don't realize that we are ridiculously 🤬 smart. If we somehow lost all of our technology, the knowledge we have now would be more than sufficient to rebuild very quickly. Human beings started with nothing, and we could do it again in a second.

 

[Touring Mars]

It's an excellent point - but I'd add the proviso that one man's "doom and gloom" is another man's challenge... humanity (and the rest of the living world) faces a constant "struggle" for survival, but survive we do. The difference in perception I reckon is due to the difference between accounts of individual (or even collective) suffering rather than on a species or population-wide level. For example, you are quite right to imply that "we have never had it so good", but at the same time, that is only true in a particular context. Try telling that to people in Somalia, for example. But in general, I agree - the human race has developed to a remarkable extent, so far infact that even potentially massive 'problems' can be overcome.

I have sometimes thought recently that we are indeed riding the crest of a wave, and perhaps we are... but if the wave does break, those who adapt to the surroundings the best will face the prospect of riding the next wave... hardly a doom and gloom prediction, even factoring in that this type of scenario assumes some sort of 'end of an era'... but all life faces the end of eras all the time, and the human race is/has been no expection. That said, we certainly do potentially face challenges that are completely novel to us i.e. rapid global warming - 'novel' in that it is not new to the Earth, but it would be new for us - and we do also face brand-new challenges unique to our species - i.e. challenges that have arisen due to our highly developed intellect (for example the challenge of controlling nuclear weapons or biochemical attacks etc.)

But to suggest that these challenges are somehow insurmountable is not doing the human race justice - but at the same time, our long and complex evolutionary history reveals that some challenges we face are so big that we literally have to adapt or die. That's how humans got here in the first place, and it is how we will ultimately disappear too. If anyone find that depressing, that's your problem - I find it awe-inspiring, to think of what our successors will be like, built on the incredible foundations of our success.

People 100 years ago were not as smart as we are today.

This is totally not true. Even people thousands of years ago were easily as smart as we are today. And just because we have access to information more readily doesn't necessarily mean to say that people are "more knowledgeable", and certainly doesn't mean that we are smarter.

As anyone who has worked in science would no doubt agree, one thing you simply cannot afford to do is "re-invent the wheel" every time you need to do something new. For example, I personally need not re-discover how to clone DNA just to make a new protein I want to study... Scientists pick up from where the last guy left off. Sure, it helps if you understand it (or even just know how to do it), but there's a big difference between applying knowledge and creating it. More people might be able to create new knowledge now because information is more accessible, but there is no evidence to suggest that people in the past were less capable (less smart) simply because they didn't have access to information. It depends on how you look at it. Who would you say was smarter, someone that discovers a scientific fact with a large amount of information on the subject already, or without? I personally think there is no difference, but it just appears that we are smarter today... but it our collective scientific knowledge that has advanced, not our brains.. given the same level of information and collective scientific knowledge, if Isaac Newton had been cryogenically frozen and brought back to life today, he'd easily get a job at Harvard, whereas the vast majority of 21st Century folks would not.

 

[superberkut]

Perhaps we have taken on the behaviour of our possessions. When someone sees an abandoned car without an engine, they tend to think that it is beyond repair. However, our cunning would be enough to get it to work again, as every car restorer does. While material goods don't recover, we humans can always return. Humans may also think themselves inferior to what they build. When an entire building goes down (even with no people occupying it), we are all too aware of the fragility of the building, and fear for our own lives as well, despite the fact that only the facility was disturbed. This is unintelligent, because, as all of you have stated, we can start from scratch. This behaviour is carried into reactions to gun crimes and other such events, saying that a man with a gun can easily defeat an unarmed man, which, while to some extent is true, though there is always improv.

 

[Matt R]

This is totally not true. Even people thousands of years ago were easily as smart as we are today. And just because we have access to information more readily doesn't necessarily mean to say that people are "more knowledgeable", and certainly doesn't mean that we are smarter.

I meant about world issues. Communication today far surpasses communication of the past. Today, as a whole, people are more aware of the world.

I didn't mean we're actually smarter.

 

[FoolKiller]

Has anyone ever read A Short History On Progress?

It outlines numerous failed civilizations and basically sums up that we're right in the exact same position as they were before they all went kaput.

Some examples the author gave were:
-fall of the Sumerians
-The Easter Island collapse of civilization
-fall of the Roman Empire
-fall of the Mayan republic

The problem with these civilizations was that, as they started running out of crops/fuels for their economy, they moved faster and faster using up more and more right until they hit a dead end. With the global population increasing at a faster and faster rate, it's proposes that it's largely inevitable we'll do the same thing.

The problem is that these were not technological civilizations with the ability to find new ways of growing crops and using fuels. This idea has been going on with the peak oil scare for 30 years now and it doesn't appear to be happening. As for running out of crops; the government pays farmers to not farm.

Around 0 BC / 0 AD, the world population was approx. 200 million. It took until the year 1500 to reach 400 million. By 1900, it was 1 billion.

By 2000, it was 6 billion.

I fail to see your point. Population tends to grow exponentially. The fact that modern civilizations have grown so quickly and not collapsed is a testament to how we can survive the same situations these ancient civilizations succumbed too.

Besides, if this theory held any water China would be the first to go and everyone else would have a long time to reach that point.

 

[Sage]

The fallacy with that argument is that we've effectively been growing crops exactly the same way since we discovered how to, about 100,000* years ago.

You've never heard of Norman Borlaug, have you?

Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in the late sixties, which made similar claims that you're making about overpopulation and food supply. Dr. Borlaug came along, revolutionized the way cereal grains were farmed and hybridized, and within a span of 3 or 4 years took India and Pakistan from being huge net importers of wheat to completely self-sustaining.

Science will solve these problems. Food is not a limited resource.

 

[Touring Mars]

Food is not a limited resource.

It is finite, though, and totally dependent on fresh water. The fact that so much land is being used in an unsustainable way (cash crops like soy which leave the land useless after a short period of time) means that food could easily become a limited resource for alot more people than it currently is.

 

[Danoff]

It's not an argument about food supply at all. It's about what happens when we make these discoveries about food supply; the first 1/4 of the book he talks about how the discovery of crops/farming lead to destruction of their local environments and they screwed themselves over.

They raised goats, which ate all the seeds and sapplings of trees. This prevented trees and tree roots from holding the soil together and the water wasn't absorbed. This lead to flash floods and soil damage, and soon they weren't able to use the land anymore. There are examples of it everywhere.

That reminds me- bringing in sea water left modern day Iraq a desert. The Sumerians practically invented irrigation, but as the water evaporated it left salt residue all over the land. Now, nothing can grow there and it's useless.

Gosh, it's a wonder us idiots are still alive. I mean, it sounds like we've tried to kill ourselves off a bazillion times over and have just fallen ass-backward into success.

 

[Danoff]

If you look at it on a bigger scale, the last 200 years of human "success" has only been 0.4% of the total existence of man; if we were to run out of resources in even 500 years, that would only be 1% of our time as a technologically developed and advanced civilization. Would you call that successful? It's all relative.

What resources are we going to run out of? Food? Not for a long time. We could produce a ton more than we do now, it's dirt cheap, and there will be advances in food growing technology in the next 10 years guaranteed. Electricity? It either comes from the sun for free, or it comes from nuclear reactions. Either way, we're not running out. Water? Water is the most abundant substance on the planet. And with electricity, we've got that problem solved.

So what is it?

 

[FoolKiller]

The fallacy with that argument is that we've effectively been growing crops exactly the same way since we discovered how to, about 100,000* years ago. (And the people who invented crop-growing are extinct. Fancy that.)

That's odd, considering I can buy even flowers that can grow in climates they normally can't and the technology is there to do it for food, but is being held up by governments and whiners.

Good thing those guys figured out cultivation before they died because no one would have ever figured it out after that.

In general we do the same thing because plants grow specific ways in specific places at specific times. But we have worked out ways to do that. In fact, I will be planting seeds for my own garden three weeks before the weather is proper for them to germinate. It is amazing what clear plastic has allowed us to do with plants when they normally shouldn't be growing.

Saying that farming is done exactly the same as it was 100,000 years ago is like environmentalists saying that automobiles haven't advanced in 100 years. It has advanced, you just don't realize it unless you do it because the end result for the consumer looks the exact same.

Glad you noticed that. Which is the problem—hence the collapse of Sumer, Easter Island, Maya, and Rome. All we can do is prolong our longevity; it took Easter Island some 200 years to fall. Maya, 1500. Sumer,

Again, ancient civilizations without the technology to find other ways around it. They had limited land and resources and their "technology" was not fast enough to find alternatives. How many different oil alternatives are bouncing around now? How many genetically altered farms are running experiments?

And technically you could argue that Easter Island (Rapanui) culture never truly died out as the Polynesian cultures all spread out to the different islands and founded new colonies. In fact, Hawaiian natives had the same cultural structure and religion as Rapanui natives. Well, that and the fact that European explorers found Rapanui settlements still active. In fact, I believe the Europeans did more harm to that culture than anything before.

The Mayan fall is still debated and your example is only one discussed possibility. Some research shows a massive drought around the same time they are believed to have collapsed.

And a large part of Sumer's agricultural collapse is thought to be due to rising salinity in the soil, which does not help plants.

China practically is already gone;

Odd, I thought they were getting to a point of challenging America's Hegemony in the world due to improving their cultural and economic conditions (not well, but they are doing it).

The fact you consider them a success is ludicrous.

Looking for where I said success.......

Nope, looks like I just said they shouldn't still be going according to this theory.

Just because they haven't totally run out yet doesn't mean anyone is doing well.

And just because some guy wrote a book comparing civilizations thousands of years apart doesn't mean we are going to collapse.

 

[Duke]

The fallacy with that argument is that we've effectively been growing crops exactly the same way since we discovered how to, about 100,000* years ago. (And the people who invented crop-growing are extinct. Fancy that.)

If by "exactly the same way" you mean "sticking seeds in dirt and waiting for plants to grow", then yes, I suppose at that utterly simplistic level, we have been growing crops the same way for 100,000 years.

But the fallacy of your argument here is that you're simplifying it to the point of absurdity. As soon as you move past the level of my statement above, it has become clear that crop yields per acre have become an order of magnitude better with technology, and acres under tillage have become several orders of magnitude greater as well. With room left to get at least another order of magnitude still.

 

[FoolKiller]

It is finite, though, and totally dependent on fresh water. The fact that so much land is being used in an unsustainable way (cash crops like soy which leave the land useless after a short period of time) means that food could easily become a limited resource for alot more people than it currently is.

Here in Kentucky we rotate our crops. Keeps that kind of land destruction from happening.

It's not an argument about food supply at all. It's about what happens when we make these discoveries about food supply; the first 1/4 of the book he talks about how the discovery of crops/farming lead to destruction of their local environments and they screwed themselves over.

They raised goats, which ate all the seeds and sapplings of trees. This prevented trees and tree roots from holding the soil together and the water wasn't absorbed. This lead to flash floods and soil damage, and soon they weren't able to use the land anymore. There are examples of it everywhere.

Yet, today we have the knowledge that these things can happen, hence farmers circulate herds around fields and rotate crops.

So, we can grow a little longer. How does this prevent people from falsely thinking they have a reliability in the amount of food—for example—only to continue consuming it at an unsustainable rate? (Especially when we're building shopping malls and cities over farmland. Lots of greenhouses will have to be erected. . .)

Considering we have to pay farmers to not farm right now.....

Dude, go out into the country, and I mean the country. I only have to go about 30 minutes away from my house to find untouched land. well, there may be a fence, but it isn't cultivated and no buildings are in sight.

Small bang inside cylinder makes piston move. How is this any different than when it did that 100 years ago?

Duke's Seed in ground + water = plant example is the same. Are you going to tell me that under the hood of your car is the exact same thing being used in the early 1900's? Just look at fuel efficiency to power ratios or emissions. Those have all improved. Sure most improvements have been more power on the same amount of fuel, but other cars are getting more efficiency with the same power. But off-topic. The metaphor of using the same basic principle in a better way is there.

Since when? Sumer didn't have limited land at all; it was in the middle of a continental oasis.

It was a sweeping generalization regarding them all.

You're not looking at it properly. The point is, for example, that we will use up—for example—oil so fast, that we won't comfortably be able to transition to the backup fuel/material/whatever without great disruption to the economy and living conditions of most people.

Kind of like what happened in the 1970's? Oh wait...

You've got it backwards. They spread to Easter Island; Easter Island was not the originator of the culture. The Europeans did very little to harm them; they arrived when their little sanctuary had already collapsed.

Yes I know. Europeans found people that resembled a mix of the other Polynesian islands, much like Hawaii.

So, you are saying the roughly 2,000 slaves the Europeans took, leaving barely 100 behind, had nothing to do with it?

They collapsed long after the massive drought; the fact that they didn't slow down to accommodate it was their problem.

Odd I though the exact date and circumstances was still a relative mystery and often debated. You seem to know so well though.

Didn't I mention that? Oh, yes, I did. And the rising salinity was their fault.

Yeah you mentioned it as I was typing my reply. Again, using saltwater for crops is a commonly known bad thing nowadays. Another example of us now knowing better how to deal with things.

In fact, I know for example that pouring water from a freshwater aquarium on plants makes a great fertilizer while water from my saltwater aquarium makes a decent weed killer.

All of these cultures were improving—at rates they couldn't sustain. That's their problem.

If China is improving too fast then America should have been screwed before we ever started. The thing is our technological advancement is much quicker as well.