this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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The fallacy of infinite growth (money) is such a CF
Infinite growth is a strategy that works for a virus not humans
The real problem is that our concept of Infinite growth fails to describe the growth of use value. We only measure the growth of exchange value.
Strictly speaking, both are possible. But only one is good.
You could do the SMBC web comic joke about two computers that just trade bits of data as a form of economic activity and achieve growth capped only by the maximum processor speed of the transactions. Viola! Infinite growth! But its all exchange growth, no utility.
You could also describe the Cambrian Explosion as an "Infinite Growth" strategy. Rapid proliferation of species, new ecological niches that are filled by species specifically focused on occupying those niches, revolutionary new means of biologically observing and processing information, etc etc etc. Now we've got enormous utilitarian growth, but there's no real exchange process (unless you consider organisms eating one another a market mechanic).
From a biological perspective, the real upper limit on growth is efficient use of solar energy to process planetary materials. And we're still nowhere near that limit. Plants and planktons and insects and crustaceans have been lapping us on that front even into the modern industrial age.
Our model of economic growth just fixates on the exchange side so heavily that we end up with the Two-Computers-On-An-Island-Trading-Bits proxy for economic success. We've abandoned our conceptualization of utility growth in our quest to fully financialize. We don't recognize volunteer labor as a form of economic growth. We don't recognize procreation as a form of economic growth or mortality as a form of de-growth. We don't recognize ecological destruction as a form of economic de-growth or extinction as a massive loss in economic value.
Until we adjust our measures, the infinite growth we're aiming for is purely a growth in accounting statistics. We're sacrificing real prosperity for a financial fairy tale.
CF?
I’m guessing CF stands for cluster fuck.
Carbon fiber
I think it's "critical fail"
Cunt Fuck
Crowded Florist
Crammed Fart
Cool Flow
Colostomy Fist
Crusty finger
If we got off this rock infinite growth wouldn't be so bad. We'd have space to grow as a species. Until then infinite growth is more harmful than good.
But is space (and its resources) truly infinite?
According to our modern understanding of physics and and given an expanding universe...yes, the universe is truly infinite. There is a limit to how far we can see but not to how far the universe will expand.
“I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realized that you're not actually mammals.
Every mammal on this planet instictively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is?
A virus.
Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague.
And we… are the cure.”
That's a cute line, but its not true. Animals regularly breed themselves into Malthusian collapse. Nevermind mammals, the earth was nearly rendered inhospitable because of too many trees. In fact, the fossil fuel economy of the modern day is predicated on this explosion in plant life that flooded the planet with excess oxygen.
Mammals follow similar trends, exploding through an ecological niche well past the point of sustainability. Species can - and have - overproduced to the point of collapsing their biomes and causing localized extinctions. Some mammals find an equilibrium, but that's a result of selection bias. The species that hit an equilibrium point are the ones that stick around long enough to become present in the fossil records and major ecological zones. Plenty more fail and die out.
The major distinction between a virus and an organism is that viruses cannot reproduce on their own.
This is particularly ironic given the premise of the Matrix movie. It is not the humans that are the viruses. Even in confinement, they continue to bare fruit and multiple. It is the AIs that exist parasitically which persist only with a steady new supply of human hosts.
Consequently, Agent Smith's genocidal plot nearly brings down the system that the AIs need to survive.
Absolutely. Any time I see quotes that extol the virtues of non-human animals compared to humans, I think that those animals would absolutely do the same thing if they had the physical and mental capabilities to. Life is "designed" to procreate with no end limit. Since there are finite resources, if they're too successful they start to become victims of their own success.
Definitely depends on the animal. Bonobos and Chimpanzees - our two nearest relatives - have dramatically different dispositions and cultural patterns. Go further back in history and you'll find six or seven other close ancestors to homo sapiens spread across the globe, each of which developed their own distinct behaviors.
Even to say "they'd behave like humans" requires a very broad brush, because human behavioral patterns are also extremely variable. The Columbian explores had a dramatically different social pattern than the West Indies neighbors they initially encountered.
This goes back to the infinite growth engine of solar energy. If you can capture more sun - either directly or by proxy - you can grow with fewer bounds. Organisms best suited to this task fruitfully multiple. But there are still evolutionary dead-ends - patterns that seem fruitful in the moment but only because of a temporary state of affairs.
The engine of evolutionary development is an erratic oscillation between environmental compromise and conflict, exploration and exploitation, production and consumption. Because the rules are always changing, there's no permanent winning strategy.
What is that from?
Agent Smith in The Matrix (1999)
The Matrix