On Nov 2, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
ravi wrote:
I have made reference, in the past, to the First Law of
Thermodynamics or the law of conservation of energy. As we
continue to grow our consumption, our material wealth, our
populations, etc, we will (and have) cross(ed) a point where we
destroy the things that sustain us.<<<
me:
The first law only works for closed systems. The Earth is not one
of these.<<
ravi:
I was referring to this simple fact:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/firstlaw.html
The total amount of energy in the universe is constant, although
energy can
be transformed from one form to another.
So now, we're using the word "growth" as unexplained shorthand to
refer not only to (real) GDP growth but also to real GDP growth in the
universe as a whole?
What I am point out is that we cannot, as per the law of conservation
of energy, make something out of nothing. When we keep growing our
populations, consumption, etc, its at the cost of something else.
That's a trivial but significant fundamental fact of physics. That
something else that we displace may be a wasteful expenditure, and
thus we may be achieving a double benefit: removing waste and
achieving growth. But I think that scenario is long past as the impact
of human rapaciousness on the environment and other species, and on
other groups of humans, at this point in time, I believe, attests.
I am using growth in what I think is a generous sense: "more schools,
more hospitals", etc. Even though we know (IMHO) that hoping for
growth to be that sort of growth is like hoping that Obama will be a
leftist. Someone posted recently on complexity theory -- that term in
certain areas of mathematics (computability/recursive-functions)
refers to the unsolvability (or infeasibility of finding a solution)
of certain problems due to the computational complexity. Technological
progress (again IMHO) starts out with trivially solvable problems and
leads into more and more intractable ones. The initial pace of
progress, and the benefits of plundering nature and the environs of
others, sooner or later (and now its very late in the game) meet up
against this wall of complexity. Optimism at this point is the version
described by the story of the guy falling from the 100th floor who is
cheerful regarding his fate since he has passed 73 floors and nothing
has happened, and by induction, ergo...
All MHO,
--ravi
--
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