Recent searches
Search options
“OpenAI is pursuing an ambitious plan to construct massive 5-gigawatt (GW) data centers across various locations in the United States. This initiative aims to support the growing demands of artificial intelligence (AI) processing, which requires substantial computational power. At what price to the energy grid do you suppose?”
https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/note-to-our-energy-sucking-overlords
Growth Death Cult goes full throttle. Tech bros accelerating for extinction.
@gerrymcgovern As far as I'm concerned "generative AI" is the Growth Death Cult incarnate!
Its only possible because of the growth discipline, & is primarily used to further needless growth.
@alcinnz @gerrymcgovern
We are an unusual species. We have invested immense sums studying cancers, and have developed a reasonable understanding of why cancer kills: Its unrestrained growth interferes with the functioning of the body's organs - consuming nutrients needed by other cells, and invading organs, this impeding their ability to function.
And so with this model of unconstrained growth, we happily build an economic system that replicates cancer in the larger world: over-extracting resources, squandering energy, generating waste we cannot get rid of, displacing essential ecosystems with land development and abusive agricultural & forestry practices.
We do it for "money" and because of "property rights" that enable "prosperity" through growth.
@PaulWermer
Well said. A great and tragic summation of what we have become.
@alcinnz
@gerrymcgovern @PaulWermer
@alcinnz
And what capitalism has always been. But humanity on the other hand has a diverse history, and beyond, of different social organizations and ethos and pathos. Such as how indigenous people have been stewards of nature for a long time for mutual benefit.
torstein@HeliosPi @gerrymcgovern @PaulWermer @alcinnz that is mostly because smaller groups of people are less capable of destruction than larger groups of people, and less the stewards of nature thing.
Otherwise there would have been a lot more megafauna around during the columbian exchange.
@Torstein @gerrymcgovern @PaulWermer
@alcinnz
People of the distant past were far more populous than previously assumed. This summary from 'Beyond kingdoms and empires", for example:
"Tropical landscapes that resisted terrestrial survey are giving up their secrets. In place of blanks on the map, we’re now able to see highly cultivated landscapes with massive infrastructure stretching back to the early centuries BCE. Road networks, terraces, ceremonial earthworks, planned residential neighbourhoods, and regional settlement systems ordered into patterns of geometrical precision can be traced across Amazonia, from Brazil to Bolivia, as far as the eastern foothills of the Andes. In certain parts of Amazonia, the forest itself turns out to be a product of past human interaction with the soil. Over time, this generated the rich ‘anthropogenic’ earths called terra preta de índio (‘black earth of the Indians’), with levels of fertility far in excess of ordinary tropical soils. Scientists now believe that between 10,000 and 20,000 large-scale sites remain to be discovered across Amazonia. Similarly startling finds are emerging from Southeast Asia, and we might reasonably expect them from the forested parts of the African continent too."
https://aeon.co/essays/an-archeological-revolution-transforms-our-image-of-human-freedoms
Then according this study "People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years",
"... the cultural shaping and use of ecosystems and landscapes is not, in itself, the primary cause of the current extinction crisis, and neither is the conversion of untouched wildlands, which were nearly as rare 10,000 y ago as they are today. The primary cause of declining biodiversity, at least in recent times, is the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of lands already inhabited, used, and reshaped by current and prior societies."
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023483118
@HeliosPi @gerrymcgovern @PaulWermer @alcinnz (i don't respond very quickly, and this is very much a tangent)
One of my favourite what-ifs is "what if smallpox had evolved earlier and what if rinderpest had never mutated"?
Ignoring the consequences for the old world, it would have meant a extremely different map at the end of the 1500s.
Would it end up like India or Japan, would it be like the Scramble for Africa, would there be a triangular trade?
@HeliosPi @Torstein @gerrymcgovern @alcinnz
Those are great references.
I'd add the excellent book, "The History of the Countryside", by Oliver Rackham ( late 1980s or early 90s) which explores this specifically with respect to the British Isles and the evolution of the countryside. Dramatically changed the way I thought about natural areas.
@PaulWermer @Torstein @gerrymcgovern @alcinnz Nice, thanks for the recommendation.
@maxsol @PaulWermer @Torstein @alcinnz @gerrymcgovern @CCochard Ooooooohhh, thankyou.
@HeliosPi „so long as reputable publishers of academic books and journals continue to accept work based on such sources, we’re unlikely to see much progress“ …and that‘s why I’ll be sharing this eye-opening article with all my colleagues who are teaching ‚the #humanities. Thank you for sharing!
@mj Hazzah. You're welcome. And that extends to whomever shared before me, and so on and so on.
@HeliosPi @Torstein @gerrymcgovern @PaulWermer @alcinnz
Pretty amazing!
"Scientists now believe that between 10,000 and 20,000 large-scale sites remain to be discovered across Amazonia. Similarly startling finds are emerging from Southeast Asia, and we might reasonably expect them from the forested parts of the African continent too."