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Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

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Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#61

Post by bilbo0s »

solotronics wrote: post #46
chrisco255 wrote: post #41

This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater." This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, ph…

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

I agree with everything you said vis-a-vis elitism. Having mentioned that, I just wanted to point out that for the poor in certain parts of Africa, meat is pretty hard to come by. There are a lot of people on this planet who have to eat plants or fish not for any perceived health benefit, but literally because it is the only food available to their families. It's certainly gotten much better in Africa, when I was younger there were certain places where there was no food, and you'd bring in aid that was basically all plant and legume based. Over time, I came to realize this practice probably did more harm than good but that's orthogonal to the point. Point is, there are a lot of non-elite vegetarians. Lots of people who eat such a diet simply to survive.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#62

Post by ahelwer »

andreitp1 wrote: post #58
ahelwer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself. It isn't talking about bioavailability or whatever.

How exactly would they be "wasted"? Seems to me that they would just end up back in nature and deeding other organisms as part of the food chain.

Some are, in the form of excrement. Most are not, because they're released as heat with the animal moving around and maintaining homeostasis. It's the same for us except all our excrement ends up in a landfill.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#63

Post by lmilcin »

mtrovo wrote: post #13

Maybe a silly question but how well connected was the world during Greek and Persian civilisations? Shouldn't their ideas and works survive on neighbours empires that we have a good track record? I wonder if it's possible that some of the inventions attributed to China and India today could be tracked to works lost on one of these civilisations collapses.

I understand Greek civilization was first to actually be interested in preserving knowledge and ideass. Other contemporary civilizations did not see need to do the same (and you have invading Romans as an example).

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#64

Post by cameronbrown »

mc32 wrote: post #6
frankbreetz wrote: post #2

If our current civilization completely collapsed, I would think most of our technology would be gone forever. It is hard to imagine another civilization figuring out how to read a hard drive.

A lot more people are literate and we have lots of libraries everywhere. So for that to happen there would have to be a complete directed effort to abandon learning. By all countries. It’s highly unlikely even if we had a catastrophic natural disaster like an asteroid hit taking out or majorly degrading infrastructure. Such an event on the contrary would probably prompt the most able country left to seek to become th…

The problem with that theory is theoretically you could wipe out most technical knowledge within a generation. All it takes is for a lot of books to be burned and a lot of engineers/scientists to die.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#65

Post by masklinn »

ahelwer wrote: post #53
chrisco255 wrote: post #41

This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater." This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, ph…

When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself. It isn't talking about bioavailability or whatever.

> When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself.

Most of those nutrients you, as a human being, either can't eat at all or get nothing from. Humans can't feed on hay and silage.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#66

Post by jerf »

imtringued wrote: post #31
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in our hard drives.

That hard drive doesn't exist in isolation unless you have forcibly removed it from its computer. I would be more worried about not having an electric grid that lets you power the computer.

One of the salutatory effects of pervasive solar is that it becomes less and less plausible that the electric infrastructure could totally collapse, because every house with solar on it is its own independent power station that has enough juice to use electronics. We still have the problem of decay, but it still gives a window of many years to potentially recover.

I'm a big fan of house solar for that reason. In the short term, there's every reason to prefer big solar installations run by power companies interested in every last percentage of efficiency and willing and able to maintain it well, but for disaster prep it's great to have as many independent islands that can run to some degree in an isolated mode as possible.

(Although I'd be a lot happier if house solar was more conveniently integrated into the house system. Then again, if the grid was down in the long term there's a lot of people who could tweak the solar installation to be the primary house power in not too much time or effort. Even in their current form it's a lot better than nothing. The difference between one powered outlet and zero powered outlets is pretty big.)

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#67

Post by jordanbeiber »

ekianjo wrote: post #20
jordanbeiber wrote: post #3

On this topic - Oswald Spenglers observations on the topic of civilizational collapse are an interesting read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West > Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan.

> Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan. A superorganism, yes, with a limited lifespan, yes, if you stretch it until the extinction of humans, but a "predictable" lifespan, that's laughable at best: the more information is transformed into data, the longer a culture will last, and the less predictable its lifetime will be.

I’m just saying the observations are interesting, not stating what a historian and philosopher wrote 100 years ago as an absolute fact.

The article reminded me of ”the decline of the west”, which in turn makes me connect to Asimov, for some reason.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#68

Post by HNcantBtrustd »

solotronics wrote: post #46
chrisco255 wrote: post #41

This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater." This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, ph…

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment.

Protein per calorie doesn't seem comparable.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#69

Post by ahelwer »

masklinn wrote: post #65
ahelwer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself. It isn't talking about bioavailability or whatever.

> When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself. Most of those nutrients you, as a human being, either can't eat at all or get nothing from. Humans can't feed on hay and silage.

Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat.

I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#70

Post by liotier »

HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #68
solotronics wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment. Protein per calorie doesn't seem comparable.

> Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment

Depends on the biotope. In fertile European fields, less meat is much more efficient. In the arctic steppe or in the Sahel, animals are the more efficient way to extract calories from the land (though it doesn't scale to high population densities...)

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