
Understanding Growth, Part 1 - vilda
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/3/20/dbuidkmm60m63enun84oqs07mktdwq
======
binarray2000
Let's put it like it is: Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.

We can not infinitely polute air, water, soil. We can not infinitely extract
all crude materials from the Earth. We can not infinitely exploit most of the
others.

What IS infinite is human imagination and ingenuity: We CAN innovate and (at
least) greatly mitigate our impact on our Home. Thus the importance of
education.

~~~
tobessebot
True, but the counterpoint would be that we don't need to stay on this planet.
It is at least possible that we can sustain growth until we are multi-
planetary.

~~~
holri
Destroying earth and leaving a mess behind is not the output of an
"intelligent" species.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's a Darwinian bottleneck.

Evolution selects for immediate survival. Because intelligence is expensive,
competitive species evolve enough intelligence to compete with each other. But
the extra intelligence needed to guarantee successful long-term management of
an entire planetary ecosystem is at the far end of the bell curve, and most
individuals won't be capable of it. Likewise for effective off-world
colonisation.

So you get a race between the self-destructive effects of short-sighted
individual intelligence pursuing the usual goals of fighting, fucking, and
accumulating resources, and the amplification effects of whatever collective
intelligence mechanisms a species can evolve.

At the moment we're not doing so well with the latter. It's going to take a
phase change to move collective intelligence up to a level where the likely
default is long term survival.

~~~
bjshepard
Why do you assume that individual intelligence's are necessarily short-sighted
in that sense? The existence of cultures as ongoing traditions of making
indicates that individual intelligences are capable of participating in long-
term, multigenerational endeavors....

~~~
zdkl
Cultures, ongoing traditions, religion etc... can be seen as a way to pass on
wisdom/intelligence via affirmation to the next generations. Empirically, you
could say our ancestors have internalised the notion that individual
intelligence isn't enough to persist knowledge at civilisation timescales and
implemented mechanisms that would overwise be superfluous (eg, recounting of
legends that tell of danger, flood myths, some religious codes).

This is pushing the argument a bit, but it stands to reason that this pattern
of information preserval could indicate the necessity even for an 'advanced'
civilisation with forward thinking individuals to reinforce
diffusion/acquisition of knowledge of little short term value but high
absolute value to survival/evolution

------
doctorcroc
We can draw some nice parallels with the startup economy, especially when
contrasting manic-depressive growth (unicorns on steroids) versus stable
steady growth (boostrapped business). I would argue that there is some good
middle ground where you take just enough debt/leverage to grow, but don't
indulge in it to the point where it becomes mania and sinks you when the
macroscopic environment turns sour.

------
pizza
The concept of 'antifragility' really seems to be popping up a lot in the
media I consume via HN. I can't tell if antifragility is trendy, or really a
novel, valuable idea of systems analysis that, until recently, hadn't
converged upon a single descriptor.. Likely parts of both!

~~~
ThomPete
I have been "doing" antifragillity long before I read about it in Talebs book.

I neither consider it trendy nor novel but simply a way to understand the
world and thus how to deal with it.

~~~
pizza
Great! Could you share non-Taleb resources for me to peruse? I like his stuff,
but I'm sure you'll understand my aversion to monoculture, even with Taleb as
the demagogue, haha.

~~~
ThomPete
I can offer you me :) I really wasn't aware of it until Taleb wrote about it.
It just always felt natural to me.

