desire for infinite growth in a finite system - results are obvious. the finite system will crash and burn. we are fucked, nature will recover when we make it not suitable for humans
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Strictly speaking, its unknown if we live in a finite system or an infinite one - but it's certain that the local topology isn't infinitely dense.
(We speculate one can technically go infinitely far in any direction of space or indefinitely backward and forward through time; but there's not any infinite amounts of stuff here which is the problem.)
Well yeah, the earth is a fixed size. I think that is their point. Of course the universe could be infinite, but the amount of livable resources we have access to is currently finite.
That’s exactly my point, yep.
My apologies, I'll concede I knew what you meant, but my poor brain tripped on the word 'system'. Your comment was apt on a human-scale system of our planet - we are fucked. But it's way fun and often useful to remember that's not the only lens available.
We are still a product of nature in many ways and all our society could be viewed as nature featuring yet another bloom and collapse - and our blip as a species isn't even special - check out the great oxidation (extinction) event whereby anaerobic organisms created so much waste oxygen that they killed of almost all life on the planet (organisms that live on oxygen and the air cycle we know today were 'born' from this event).
None of that changes the fact that I did deliberately misconstrue your statement; please excuse any offense I may have caused. I meant no harm.
No worries. I’ll read up on that too, thanks for the additional reading material :)
I'm just needlessly waxing poetic, as is my wont. They said 'system' which is an ambiguous term.
I also considered noting that my local baskin-robbins gets delivered more ice cream than I'd ever want to eat.
But since I'm called out I'll add that any person can only imagine so much, and as such a finite group of peoples' collective imagination can only be arbitrarily large, not infinite.
But don't mind me, I'm just a dog on the internet.
But this is how nature works every day. Humans are just better at pushing the limits and influencing their circumstances to adapt.
Edit: i wrote this in the meaning that althought nature does eventually ballance things out, this is not the case with humans (yet). We adjust and shape out surroundings, in order to thrive. Eventually though i believe that nature will survive and recover. We will eventually go extinct and i dont believe that much of the universe will miss us
Oh, sure, makes total sense. Sure, sure...
Except for the fact that nature has successfully balanced itself out for, well, as long as life has existed on this planet. Including recovery and finding a new balance after extremely drastic shifts in the environment.
Humans managed to remain a part of this for most our existence, too. So the current trends have absolutely nothing to do with our ability to manipulate our environment.
We've allowed an "elite" class of parasitic sociopaths to dictate the direction of modern society, and their influence has spread a corruption to every corner of the modern world. This insatiable greed will be our downfall, and there's nothing natural about it.
This insatiable greed will be our downfall, and there's nothing natural about it.
I would argue that it is natural, that avarice and greed are natural things. My theory is that the overactive amygdala in our brains is ill-suited for modern societies that exist due to large-scale cooperation and some flavor of magnanimity. Though it's obviously an evolutionary adaptation for our ancestors, the irony is that it will be a large cause of our extinction.
Humans have been here for as long as humans have been here, which hasn't been very long in the big picture.
Do you remember your great great great grandma^69420 bacteria?
Nor do I. Sure humans have been around a while, but not all that long in the big picture..
Nature naturally (pun intended) balances itself. If there’s no rabbits, the wolves die out. Allows for the rabbit population to recover. We play Gods with this. We overfarm, overforradge, deforest massive woods, that have existed in peace for eons. We simply don’t let nature recover, because we think we are masters of the universe.
I’m not a hippy - by no means. I consume, I raise children and (although electric) I drive a car. Still, I buy tyres, that are a huge pollutant, I consume electricity to charge it, which is not always renewable, etc etc. It goes on. But this means nothing. I am alone amongst my peers - in my extended circle of friends & colleagues (approx. 400 people), I can only think of 2-3 people that are like me - conscious about what they consume / throw away / reuse / recycle.
Then Jeff Bezos organises his wedding in Venice, and his guests all arrive with their personal plane, while I would not buy and drink coffee if it’s not made (at the very least) with the paper coffee pods…
Do I feel stupid? Sometimes. Am I ridiculed sometimes? Daily. But I stand by my principles.
“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
Some cultures managed to last for tens of thousands of years without destroying the planet. Not all cultures and social structures are the same or have the same impact on their environments.
in a shocking twist, cultures who believe themselves to be a part of nature tend to be much better at preserving it then cultures who see themselves as the owners of nature
Hell is other people
Also they had stuff made outta bronze. Do you have bronze? I don't have bronze.
Nah. This is some eco-fascist/primitivist type shit. Fuck that.
What?
This invokes the overpopulation myth, the reductive belief that the planet would somehow be “better off” without humans (importantly: how would you make that happen?), and perhaps, projecting the environmental sins of one’s own culture onto all of humanity.
I don’t know if these count as actual eco-fascism when the target is the entire human population, but it’s certainly adjacent.
I get your stance, I do, but you don't think humans are seriously fucking the planet?
I put a lot of thought into your comment today and I'd honestly love to respectfully debate you on this subject. I think immediately labelling people who are worried about over population as "eco-fascists" is really quite odd and makes me a bit worried.
Yes, the main problem is corporations and greed but doesn't it all still come down to our species? What would aliens say? Oh sorry, you're good, it's those other ones in your species that are the bad ones.. ?
I don't specifically have an anti-overpopulation stance myself for the record, I just find your terminology rather .. jaded.
By the tone of your comment you're clearly quite hostile so I'm not sure I should even be engaging, but I felt that I had to. I'd really be happy to debate though, maybe I would learn something.
I'd make it happen by doing nothing.
Fucking pesky humans!
Yeah, only 10% of all mammalian biomass being human would still be too much. But we are 500% (and our livestock 1000%).
About the too much: all animals of similiar mass per individual range in the low 100'000s globally (the larger the less). That's the sustainable amount.
Agree
working on it, just give it some time.
Smells like ecofash.
Edit:
That's the current state though, where wildlive evaded into the woods and is generally in decline.
This but it would not be nice for a person if there were no other person, thus it's level of niceness cannot be observed.
100% agree!
Right on point 👍