LQD: Capitalism is Not Worth Saving | 98 comments (98 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

There is no way to handcraft a microprocessor even remotely close to anything that's around today, even with all the time in the world.

As someone familiar with what it takes to make a processor, I disagree. A century or millennium of technological development in an extremely energy limited environment will produce results as radical as the microprocessor of today would have looked a century ago when we were on the front edge of our current environment of nearly free energy.

But it would lose at least 99% of today's knowledge, and would likely revert to a much more superstitious, more violent and even less rational culture.

But for how long? My core question here is why do we assume the level of social organization and technology we can achieve has to be proportional to the amount of energy we are able to exploit? Arguments that have nearly convinced me of what chaos is likely to come over the next century have far less power, IMO, to predict the course of the future beyond that, not because it gets harder to predict the further into the future you go, but because they assume our technical know how will not only diminish but stay at that diminished level in perpetuity.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 01:50:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

As someone who's also familiar with what it takes to build a processor, I disagree with your disagreement.

MillMan:

A century or millennium of technological development in an extremely energy limited environment will produce results as radical as the microprocessor of today would have looked a century ago when we were on the front edge of our current environment of nearly free energy.

That's just a statement of faith, and ignores the long dark periods that happen after empires fall - which are part of the historical record, and not just speculation.

I'm thinking in terms of the technology available today, which took the best part of 5000 years to develop.

If you lose the essential industrial base needed to build stuff, you're going to have to retrace those steps in a more hostile environmemt where resources are more expensive.

I can imagine, maybe, progress in bio-engineering which could grow systems instead of building them mechanically. But that still needs a solid industrial base to bootstrap itself.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 11:55:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

Are the long dark periods really there though, or are they interpretations of later historians living in an empire? I still haven't quite figured that out.

And in any case, all of this is speculation: your argument seems to me at least as faith based as Millman's. Past performance does not guarantee future results, after all.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 11:59:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 3)

All the things ive read suggest that suggest that its part of a suggestion that the culture of kingdom and empire are direct successors to the knowledge and culture of the Classical world. Conveniently editing out the culture of the Islamic world in-between. If they had been acknowledged as co-inheritors, and cultural leaders, then political and ethical situations would be somewhat different.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 12:24:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 0)

And when? For the first three centuries, those centuries bin Laden laments the grandeur of, every day, in his cave, most of the "Islamic world" was undergoing its "Golden Age", characterized by a Judeo-Christian majority.

... Many top "Islamic" scholars, with impressive Arab sounding names, turn out to have been Jews.

It is true, though that in the times of Ibn Rushd ("Averroes"), the Islamist world was truly Islamist, while capable of conducting a conversation with the West on Physics. But Ibn Rushd was a Spaniard, and his influence (in particular his theory of secularism being compatible with theocratism) had a huge influence on the Franks, but not in the rest of the Muslim world (Muslim Spain was its Caliphate).

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:26:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 1)

So you want to discount the contribution to mathematics and medicine? or are you to claim that any discovery was made by jewish scholars?

Or their founding of optics? major works in Astronomy, Geology and Chemistry?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 04:42:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 1)

or are you to claim that any discovery was made by jewish scholars?

Well, Jews and Christians did have special status in Islamic society, especially during the Caliphate. The Jews in particular tended to occupy positions of importance. That period of Islamic culture was particularly pluralistic. I don't think it occurred to the Caliphs to be concerned that many of the best works were produced by Jews.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 12:33:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

When "Islam" was strong, (4.00 / 2)

the "Islamic" world was a melting pot, multi ethnic, multi religious, multi cultural.

Not all, but many "Islamist" thinkers were not that Islamist. So many ended up stoned to death.

So I am not dismissing. Pure Islam, like pure Christian, is rare as a contributor (great Xtian thinkers were later condemened by the fascist Xtian church; Erigenus, Abelard, Buridan, etc..)

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 05:55:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What did "Islamic world" invent? (none / 1)

Algebra.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 06:06:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I confess to some provocativeness (4.00 / 3)

...I had been provoked first... True some Arab speaking Muslim mathematicians did contribute. But Babylonian, Greek and Indian contributions were more important.
Full symbolic algebra was invented by Descartes.

Al-Jabr is the description of the maneuver to solve the quadratic equation. That came, and was invented by the treatise written in 820 by the Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (from which algorithm comes). He was from Uzbekistan, although he was resident at the "House of wisdom" in Baghdad (then held by Persians, not Arabs).
PA

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 06:25:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

There were DARK AGES (none / 1)

The collapse that was the Roman empire, especially after it went plutocratic theocratic fascist after being simply plutocratic fascist, is a case in point.

Dark Macedonian ("Hellenistic") another example. Dark Age of Greece ~ 1000 BCE, another. Collapse of Mayas, an even more spectacular case. Collapse of Crete, too.

And then, of course, there is what happened to what was long the richest and most civilized region of the world, the Middle East.

PA

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:01:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: There were DARK AGES (none / 0)

I always thought that Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was a history, but Gay in "The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism " seems to say it's more of an anti-Christian screed...

by asdf on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:29:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Long subject, on which I have written hundreds (none / 1)

of pages already.

Christian propaganda has highjacked civilization, after Christianity tried its best to destroy it completely.

Why did all the books end up with the Arabs? because the Arabs were dedicated scholars? No. The first book written in (primitive, experimental) Arabic was the Qur'an.

The books of the West ended in the East and South because the Christians destroyed them. Oh, they also destroyed physically the intellectuals, who fled to Persia. To protect them, Persia declared war to Xtian fanatical Rome/Constantinople. That terrible war destroyed both empires, and Muhammad decided to pounce, as is explained in the Qur'an.

And so on...

Gibbon: too nice. But we are 250 years later, and I do not have to be as nice...
PA

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

by Patrice Ayme on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 06:03:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

I should have said "could" instead of will. Sure, running ourselves to extinction is also a strong possibility. But I think you are tying the concept of the microprocessor to the technologies we use to create it. They are not the same thing.

I can imagine, maybe, progress in bio-engineering which could grow systems instead of building them mechanically. But that still needs a solid industrial base to bootstrap itself.

Our disagreement boils down to this comment - you're assuming a very specific base state for the creation of a microprocessor, whereas I think there may be alternatives that I can't imagine as my mind is limited to what I see before me and an imagination that lets me move outside that box - to some extent.

I can imagine creating a microprocessor in a craft environment even if it takes thousands of years after a dark age to develop radically low power technologies to create a device that looks alien in form but the same in function. I also won't underrate human ingenuity to tackle our core limitations, and as energy scarcity is a 180 from energy abundance (the world I live in), I believe my imagination is quite limited.

Don't underrate that 1% of knowledge that gets passed forward, either. How much fossil fuel does that knowledge amount to? A lot. And the simple knowledge that something was possible in the past is an extremely good motivator for recreating it in the present, even without an instruction manual.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 12:34:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

LQD: Capitalism is Not Worth Saving | 98 comments (98 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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