Category Archive

From a discussion over at No Impact Man:

Jacob: On any evolutionary timescale, 10,000 years is relatively small. Human civilization is about 10,000 years old, but the human species is much older (~2.5 million for Homo and ~200,000 for Homo sapiens); for comparison, it takes about 40,000 years for two human populations to develop unique racial traits.

Dan: Go ahead and take another look at civilization. For instance, it took us what, on the order of 9,500 years to get any form of flight, albeit lighter than air? And after that, maybe 400 years or so to get to powered flight? And then 50 to reach orbit? Look at the vast increases in technology made in the past hundred years, and then compare those increases to the increases of the previous hundred years. Exponential growth is just that–exponential. So for human civilization, 10,000 years from now will be ages and ages.

This got me thinking: is there such a thing as sustainable exponential growth? Defining sustainability as any process that can be maintained at a certain level for an indefinite period of time, it seems clear that on a planet with finite surface area exponential population growth is unsustainable, so let’s remove population–or any direct consumption of a physical resource–from the equation.

Consider a community with 50 individuals in perfect male/female ratio with each pair producing two children. If two generations exist at any given time, then the population of the community will remain constant at 100 people. Suppose that this community has access to an infinite reservoir of books. One day, they decide to expand their knowledge, so all 100 people read a different book, thereby expanding the collective knowledge of the community. The next day, they each read two books, increasing the previous day’s knowledge by a factor of three, and the following day they each read four books. The community can continue doubling the number of books each day until reaching the physical limit of no time left in the day to read additional books.

If we say that an individual can consume up to sixteen books per day, then exponential growth of knowledge will occur in the community for the first five days. Once saturation is reached, though, exponential growth ceases. The community still gains knowledge every day, but they have plateaued at a constant (sustainable) rate of 1600 books per day.

Without exponential population growth, it seems that any human system will eventually reach a plateau (or collapse). Can anyone think of a counterexample–a process that exhibits sustainable exponential growth?

Although several years old, this paper by Changnon et al. (2000) makes an excellent observation regarding our perception of the increasing severity of natural disasters. Over the past fifty years the total cost of damages due to weather related events rose from ~$100 million to ten times as much, but the cost per person has remained constant:

…the results collectively indicate that the major cause of trends in losses related to weather and climate extremes is societal factors: the growth of wealth with more valuable property at risk, increasing density of property, and demographic shifts to coastal areas and storm-prone areas that are experiencing increasing urbanization.

Our pattern of continuous growth creates the opportunity for more damaging storms as we settle into high risk regions and construct expensive structures. Perhaps the many prophets of doom throughout history simply realized the long-term consequences of unsustainable growth and therefore included meteorological catastrophe as inevitable from our lifestyle.

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs. (Matthew 24:6-8)

A great and rich power will be subject to serious natural disasters, particularly earthquakes and flooding, and rend the nation from end to end, causing enormous conflict, despair, and misery. The wealthy power will be bankrupted attempting to deal with its disasters. (Nostradamus, Times of Trouble)

Various prophets have had different ideas of the things to come, but they all saw in our world a sign of the times.

People are basically good, evil, greedy, generous, hungry.

Aside from moments after they feast, that is.

Back in State College

As I was retrospectively thinking one day, I remembered Carol Kendall’s The Gammage Cup. I first discovered this book in the fourth grade. The storytelling was fantastic, but I also remember being intrigued by some of the messages of the book–issues such as authority, conformity, and expression. I re-read the book a year later, enjoying it as much as the first time, and then it somehow ended up in a garage sale and disappeared from sight.

I just finished reading the book for the third time in my life (which for me is rare for any book), confirming my suspicions that I took to heart some of the themes Kendall brought out in her novel. As children the simple fact that our view of the world is limited allows our imaginations to think of worlds that might be, to examine things we do not yet take for granted–and to laugh about the absurdity of it all. A brilliant piece of cultural satire, Kendall’s novel touches some profound questions of society, religion, and being alive. This book certainly helped guide my thinking and critique of the world, which I’m certain was no mistake on the part of Carol Kendall:

Children are a marvelous audience…they remember what they have read! Sometimes they remember it all their lives!

Sometimes I think it’s easy for us to forget that we are part of a food chain. Granted, we have no predators and are therefore at the top of the food chain, but this position relies on an intricately connected system of support that allows organisms to persist. If the bottom collapses, though, the reprocusions will be felt all the way up through the top.

Part of this forgetfulness stems from the change in food production with the advent of civilization. Nowadays most people have no direct role in food production as these jobs are left for a small group of farmers, breeders, and herders, and even modern farming practices–which reserve land exclusively for human use–obscure our place in the food chain. Conversely, the hunter-gatherer way of life exposed most of the tribe to the process of collecting food–in land that was shared for food by humans and other creatures–emphasizing that our food comes from living creatures, who in turn get their food from living creatures, and so on. This realization is easy to escape when perusing a supermarket; but it is nearly impossible to avoid on the hunt.

Considering the traditional seven deadly sins, two of them seem to me to be variations on a theme:

Greed is the excessive acquisition of goods for storage/hoarding.

Gluttony is the excessive acquisition of goods for consumption.

The action upon the collected goods differentiates between greed and gluttony, but the two sins (at least when expressed as above) seem to share excessive acquisition as the negative action. In other words, at least these two out of the seven say it is sinful to take more than is necessary.

A revision to an earlier post, this time with just one statement.

If you take more than you need, then you might develop addiction–and addiction is self-destructive.

Cancerous cells continue to grow and multiply without bounds, with no regard to the host organism. Untreated, this kind of expansion can be fatal to the organism.

Unrestricted growth and consumption by a population follows a similar model. There is a healthy balance of growth and consumption that is kept in check by death and production; but when growth and consumption increase without any bounds, the host environment cannot keep up and will lead to collapse.

For you systems people out there, here’s a simple feedback diagram that illustrates a general unsustainable system:

With increased production (of food, for example) consumption also increases. Increased consumption leads to population growth, which in turn increases production. This forms a positive feedback loop, limited only by 1) the availability of resources, or 2) the carrying capacity of the environment. A positive feedback does not mean a system will instantaneously collapse, but no unsustainable system can persist indefinitely.

David Gerrold seemed to know a thing or two about population dynamics when he wrote the famous episode.

McCoy: Do you know what you get when you feed a tribble too much?
Kirk: A fat tribble?
McCoy: No, you get a whole bunch of hungry little tribbles.

I keep meaning to get to some posts on evolution, but I keep getting distracted by end-of-the-semester work (and winning money at poker). This is the concluding paragraph from a paper I just finished on the Fermi Paradox for a class. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and I’m interested to see what my advisor thinks of it.

The Fermi Paradox cannot logically conclude that humans are the only advanced intelligence in the galaxy, but the absence of evidence for ETI colonization of the galaxy is suggestive that no ETI has successfully formed a galactic civilization. This is not because no sufficiently advanced intelligence has developed technology, but it is because civilization itself is an unsustainable mechanism. SETI assumptions often imply that civilization is a necessary consequence of intelligence—but even if this were true, the ecological instability of civilization would render any galactic civilization short-lived. A galactic civilization may arise in the Milky Way, but its limited duration will make it nearly impossible to detect. The absence of ETI civilization does not preclude the search for life, since missions such as TPF and DARWIN are not dependent on the presence of intelligence. Additionally, there is always the possibility that a sustainable extraterrestrial intelligence exists in the galaxy—perhaps even in the solar vicinity. Detection of such life may prove difficult, though, since it has always been a challenge to conceive of the life we do not know.

Today the Science Creative Quarterly featured an article on the unsustainability of annual plants and the prospects of moving toward perennials. The type of farming originating from the Agricultural Revolution is, as the article points out, based on annual plants. There are a number of land and genetic concerns with this type of farming, which could potentially be reduced with perennial plants; however, there are also a lot of problems surrounding the use of perennials in our current system.

An additional problem with sustainability not discussed in the article is food surpluses. A population that generates a food surplus will increase in numbers, and a population that generates a food deficit will decrease in numbers. Totalitarian agriculture, as begun 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, generates a food surplus. This led to an expansion of this population that still occurs today. Perennial plants are a useful step in solving certain problems, but any agricultural system that generates a food surplus every year cannot be sustainable.

Artists, engineers, soldiers, and kings are not a result of extra time due to the benefits of agriculture. Rather, the Mesopotamian culture was accelerated through a path of technological development because of the large populations they generated. Non-Mesopotamian cultures have developed technology, but the pace of development is much slower. They do not have less free time; there are simply fewer people and therefore less combined free time. The population explosion in the Mesopotamian culture resulted in a greater number of people doing science/art/etc., but this was not because each person had extra time. Thus, totalitarian agriculture (or any agriculture, for that matter) is not a prerequisite for technology. Technology may develop at a slower rate, but agriculture is not a prerequisite.

With regard to life in the Universe, it may be that a lifestyle akin to totalitarian agriculture does not develop very often. This does not mean that no communicable civilizations exist, though. The Mesopotamian culture’s worldview (that humanity is above Nature) is a destructive one, akin to a self-annihilating civilization as SETI describes (one with a low value of L in the Drake Equation). Therefore, the detectable, communicating civilizations will take similar paths to the non-Mesopotamian cultures; this will provide ample time for the civilization to adapt and gradually incorporate technology into their lives, avoiding unfortunate consequences. These types of civilizations will be long-lived (high value of L in the Drake Equation) and able to develop communication projects similar to SETI and other efforts.

In other words, the Mesopotamian-worldview may accelerate the pace of technological development, but it will ultimately lead to the demise of the civilization. Conversely, non-Mesopotamian-worldviews will lead to steady technological development and eventually result in stable (not necessarily perfect) civilizations capable of communicating.

Life in the Universe lives on.

Pre-agricultural revolution, most people spent their time hunting and gathering food–there were not really any other professions. As tribes became less nomadic and began to grow their own food, it became possible for a smaller group of people to produce enough food to sustain many more. This allowed for “non-essential” (or “non-farming”) professions, such as soldiers, politicians, doctors, and artists.

In a smaller tribal setting, the artists would have achieved at least a small amount of fame (which is also a function of their talent). Because these tribes were small, it would not have been difficult for the artist’s work to be appreciated to some degree. As cities and civilizations grew, food production increased in efficiency and the number of non-farming professions adjusted accordingly. Nowadays, with cities containing millions of people, it is interesting that the community of artists has grown tremendously in number while their prominence has diminished so that only a few individuals are recognized by the rest of the community. The early artist was a member of a tribe; today, artists have formed their own tribe. Within large cities there will certainly be sub-tribes that form, to mimic the ~200 person tribes of long ago; but it is interesting to note that while the early tribes had a resident artist, today the artists often form a single tribe of their own.

And, of course, you can substitute a number of things for “artist” in the above discussion.

This is a bit of a continuation on the observation of human harmony vs. discord with nature. At the most fundamental level, many (most?) types of agriculture fall into the second category: the assertion of humanity’s dominance over the land. (Of course, I do not mean to say that farming is inherently evil.) The earliest human ancestors were hunter-gatherers, a style that intuitively blends with the rest of nature. The agricultural revolution is often marked as the dawn of civilization, but it is equally important to remember that the introduction of agriculture was not a “Eureka!” moment; rather farming slowly was adapted into people’s lives, some cultures making it more dominant than others. The hunter-gatherer tribe that dabbles with a bit of farming still seems to be living in a harmonious relationship with the land. The problem comes not with the practice of planting and harvesting, but with the implementation.

The lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer automatically implies harmony with nature because their very survival is dependent upon nature providing useful plants or plentiful game. The addition of supplemental farming can maintain this human-nature relationship (after all, squirrels store enough acorns to last the winter). However, once human tribes began growing more food than they needed, they began to put themselves at odds with nature. Before, nature provided and nature took away. Now, with large-scale food production, humans no longer had to succumb to nature. (Notice that squirrels do not store more food than they need to last the winter.) Surplus food production led to increased population, which, as the story goes, gave birth to civilization.

So do we all quit our jobs and go collect berries? Well, probably not. But there is a disconnect between humanity and nature that has existed for at least 10,000 years and is manifest in everything from food production to building construction. I think it is possible to reclaim the healthier relationship with nature in the modern era without reverting to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but like any paradigm shift it will not come easy.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s World Population Clock, the global population should reach 6.5 billion this Saturday at 7:16pm EST. The clock operates under the assumption that every second 4.1 people are born and 1.8 people die. Obviously there is some error involved, but even so it’s a reasonable estimate. Of course, when arbitrary landmarks such as this are reached, conversation inevitably drifts to questions of overpopulation and the maximum supportable population of Earth. Farming technologies have come a long way, getting higher crop yield and allowing growth in previously unarable land. So, have we hit the wall yet? It’s a complex question, but I tend to lean toward the “yes” crowd.

The planet can currently provide enough food to feed the world’s population, and yet we still see posters and advertisements to “feed the hungry”. The solution to this paradox is rather simple: increased food supply causes an increase in population. This is true for any population group, humans or otherwise. Food drives for starving nations in Africa does not result in a few full Africans; instead it produces a bunch of little hungry Africans. It’s not a question of food production or food distribution, but of food surplus. This might be seen as a difficult–or even heartless–solution, but if food production keeps increasing, population will follow suit. By 2012 the global projection is 7 billion.

Of course, there is an additional solution that does not require a global paradigm shift: limit your number of children to two. Simple. We might swell a bit as medical technology improves, but for the most part if everyone had two children (or fewer) we’d settle in to a state of equilibrium. This would require participation on a global scale, but it is practiced at the individual level and can start immediately. I don’t want to hear about plans for six to ten children; just two, got it? Do the math, it works out.