The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally.
There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious manner. There were more than enough fish until we developed the technology to pull massive indiscriminate amounts out of the ocean (and/or started polluting our rivers with industry). There was more than enough topsoil until we developed mechanized plows and artificial fertilizer. Etc.
A few hundred years ago or less, a squirrel could get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. Not possible today. That’s not a push and pull played out over thousands of years, that’s a one-way trend.
The general point is not. Iceland and Easter Island were fully deforested way before the industrial age. Countless species went extinct in Britain and more examples abound.
Britain was a little bit industrialised even before the steam engine. There were windmills and water mills. Steam massively accelerated it, but industry did exist before.
Interestingly, clearcutting is part of it but another part is just grazing. If you let sheep graze in a forest they will eat all the saplings, so after a century of this, the old trees die out without new ones to replace them. I agree with your point but thought that could be of interest - Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good book discussing this (and why Ireland, which really should be all forest, is an ecological wasteland more generally)
This is where STEM people are weak- a lack of knowledge on history. In another forum, someone would have chipped in that England's virgin forests were fully deforested by 1150. And someone else would have pointed out that this deforestation produced the economic demand for coal that drove the Industrial Revolution in the first place.
Still, that kind of underscores OP's point. Yes, natural resources were not completely unlimited prior to the Industrial Revolution; Jonathan Swift predated Watt's steam engine, after all. Still... Neither were information resources 10 years ago. Intellectual property laws did exist prior to AI, of course. The legal systems in place are not completely ignorant of the reality.
However, there's an immense difference in scale between post-industrial strip mining of resources, and preindustrial resource extraction powered solely by human muscle (and not coal or nitrogylcerin etc). Similarly, there's a massive difference in information extraction enabled by AI, vs a person in 1980 poring over the microfilm in their local library.
The legal system and social systems in place prior to the Industrial Revolution proved unsuitable for an industrial world. It stands to reason that the legal system and social systems in today's society would be forced to evolve when exposed to the technological shift caused by AI.
Yeah - really struggling to understand why people are not grasping this point.
Yes, Easter Island was deforested far earlier - but you wouldn't compare the steam engine's capability in resource extraction compared to what people on Easter Island were doing.
It feels like people are almost straining to not understand the point - I think it's quite clear how ML + AI serve to extract resources of data at a unheard of scale.
Both animals and water power go way back. The early steam engine was measured in horsepower because that’s what it was replacing in mines. It couldn’t compete with nearby water power which was already being moved relatively long distances through mechanical means at the time.
Hand waving this as unimportant really misunderstands just how limited the Industrial Revolution was.
Irrelevant. Here's Bret Devereaux (an actual historian) explaining this distinction and precisely why those are irrelevant in the context of the Industrial Revolution:
> Diet indicators and midden remains indicate that there’s more meat being eaten, indicates a greater availability of animals which may include draft animals (for pulling plows) and must necessarily include manure, both products of animal ‘capital’ which can improve farming outputs. Of course many of the innovations above feed into this: stability makes it more sensible to invest in things like new mills or presses which need to be used for a while for the small efficiency gains to outweigh the cost of putting them up, but once up the labor savings result in more overall production.
> But the key here is that none of these processes inches this system closer to the key sets of conditions that formed the foundation of the industrial revolution. Instead, they are all about wringing efficiencies out the same set of organic energy sources with small admixtures of hydro- (watermills) or wind-power (sailing ships); mostly wringing more production out of the same set of energy inputs rather than adding new energy inputs. It is a more efficient organic economy, but still an organic economy, no closer to being an industrial economy for its efficiency, much like how realizing design efficiencies in an (unmotorized) bicycle does not bring it any closer to being a motorcycle; you are still stuck with the limits of the energy that can be applied by two legs.
So yeah, actual historians would be dismissive at your exact response, basically saying "I know, I know, but I don't care". You're still just talking about a society mostly 'wringing efficiencies out the same set of organic energy sources'. It IS unimportant, and you completely misunderstand how the Industrial Revolution reshaped production if you think it is important.
I think I prefer the 'STEM people' approach of trying to say true things, rather than this superior approach of just saying things and then, when they turn out to be false, dismissing them as irrelevant. If the truth of the claim is irrelevant, why did you make it in the first place!
Good news for you! The statement IS true anyways, the problem is that you failed to distinguish between an example and a universal claim. You want to argue on logic? I'll argue on precisely your own terms:
The (true!) statement is "However, there's an immense difference in scale between post-industrial strip mining of resources, and preindustrial resource extraction powered solely by human muscle (and not coal or nitrogylcerin etc). Similarly, there's a massive difference in information extraction enabled by AI, vs a person in 1980 poring over the microfilm in their local library."
I said there is a major difference in scale between "modern strip mining" and "a preindustrial extraction method powered only by human muscle", and I made an analogous point about AI-enabled information extraction versus 1980s manual archival research. That statement is purely true. Nothing in that statement says the muscle-powered-extraction example was the only preindustrial mode of production, just as "someone using microfilm in 1980" does not imply microfilm was the only way information was accessed in 1980. The fact that other information formats existed in 1980 is irrelevant to the truth of the example.
So no, nothing I said "turned out to be false". You are attacking a claim I never made because you failed to parse the logic in the one I did. Most importantly, you missed the big picture dialectical synthesis that I was introducing as well.
I also saw a theory (not sure how credible) that the reason humans started doing agriculture was in fact because we killed all the megafauna we used to eat.
This was over 10,000 years ago. Well before the Industrial Revolution, indeed, before even the original Agricultural Revolution.
> The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally.
It's not, because the Malthusian trap was all too real going into modernity, as in recurring famines were a thing, they were quite real, nothing "literal" about them.
> There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious manner.
Unless you mean 'an axe', way before that there were deforested areas where the need for trees was larger than the supply and there were enough humans to fell them.
> A few hundred years ago or less, a squirrel could get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground.
Yes, but that wasn't possible in other parts of the world much sooner.
> hamburgers and milkshakes don’t give you heart disease and cancer
They absolutely do, particularly if you're getting most of your calories from them. If evidence-based medicine doesn't convince you, uh, hamburgers and supermarket milk tends to be processed.
They absolutely do not, unless you’re getting too many calories.
Individual foods are—with some exceptions—neither bad for you nor good for you. A healthy diet can occasionally include doughnuts, and milkshakes. Your overall diet is what matters.
Most green vegetables you can eat unlimited amount and stay healthy. They are absolutely "good" food. (Please don't reply with something trite like "oh, but what about the pesticide residues?") The same can be said for high fiber (soluable and insoluable) fruits like apples, oranges, and bananas. As long as eaten whole (minus skin for oranges and bananas), it is almost impossible to overeat these and they are absolutely "good" foods.
Sure, they are not mercury-level toxic. However, these recommendations are for people who consume way too much of these dishes, and it's a safe assumption that this is the case for a significant part of the population.
Sure. We’re saying roughly the same thing. For most Americans, hamburgers cause heart disease because we don’t exercise enough or eat enough plants. If you’re backpacking twenty miles a day, sure, eat whatever, you won’t suffer inflammation or obesity from it. (Though you may run nutritional deficiencies. And you’re building bad habits for when your activity necessarily tapers off.)
Hamburgers are not causing heart disease and diabetes for most Americans. Bad diets loaded with too many calories, too many saturated fats, and too many simple carbs are.
Messaging matters. When you tell people hamburgers and bacon and everything they love are bad, they stop listening, give up, or just eat some other junk that wasn’t prohibited. When you tell them some foods are good, they start buying into superfood marketing.
Diet is the only thing that matters. Lots of veggies are extremely useful because they add bulk without adding calories, and along with fresh fruits are great sources of fiber. Cheeseburgers can only come so often because they’re extremely calorie dense and send enormous reward signals to your brain.
Give people the tools they need to thrive, not just “don’t eat these specific bad foods, eat these specific good foods”.
Agreed (remember where I said overeating). Non-homogenized gently pasteurized milk/cream with minimally processed honey or maple syrup, and fresh ground hamburger, all of which which you can definitely get at supermarkets by the way, are much better for you than Big Macs and McFlurries. Ask yourself why? It’s obviously not “because they aren’t hamburgers and milkshakes”
I agree 100% with your follow-up. In the last 30 years of medical research, I do not recall anything but negative health results from eating red meat (beef). The real culprit is saturated fat. It is the cigarettes of food. There is almost no healthy level to consume, so keep it to 20g per day or less.
Reading this chain of responses from the original is making my internal bullshit alarm (Brandolini's law) go "wee woo wee woo".
> The real culprit is saturated fat. It is the cigarettes of food. There is almost no healthy level to consume
Not at all an expert, but from what I understood saturated fat isn't particularly good but it's not “no healthy level to consume” either (fortunately because you practically cannot avoid them).
I think you're confusing them with trans-insaturated fat (which I don't think are as bad as cigarettes either, but are still bad).
Everything is a carcinogen. Even water. Dose matters, and most of the "omg zomg causes cancer if you eat it!" dietary nonsense purposefully omits absolute amounts or base rates, lest you realize it's actually as likely to give you cancer as smiling at people.
I don't know what else to tell you. Except maybe that if one gets this single concept, that quantities matter, it becomes immediately apparent why most of the "healthy eating" / fitness fads is just pure bullshit.
Depends on the nutrients that comprise them to the extent they contain a lot of omega-6 or not. Not heart disease so much but the other killer - might as well mention in this context. 'A high omega-3, low omega-6 diet with FO for 1 year resulted in a significant reduction in Ki-67 index, a biomarker for prostate cancer'. https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.24.00608.
Also Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases (2024) 27:700 – 708 'Our preclinical findings provide rationale for clinical trials evaluating ω-3 fatty acids as a potential therapy for prostate cancer'.
Seed oils are not as bad as painted but some caution is needed given for instance the industrial processes used to bring them to market sometimes. Plus the way the oils are cooked when they create free radicals. This is not nonsense.
You don’t have to wonder. It’s public record that 45% of the FDA’s budget incomes from user fees that companies pay when they apply for approval of a medical device or drug.
In the drug division specifically, the number is about 75%.
Naive question: What is wrong with this? Lots of gov't agencies in highly developed countries operate similarly. User fees account for a non-trivial portion of department budgets. A more simple example: Should the Dept of Motor Vehicles (DMV) charge zero, low, medium, high, or infinity money to get a driver's license?
In principle there is nothing wrong with it, as long as the FDA or other testing body retains an appropriate impartiality or lack of bias (perceived or real). The issue, however, would be a lax system that allows revolving door access between the approval body and the industry that is seeking approval. Ironically, the common refrain becomes that their industry specific knowledge means they "must" be the only possible candidates for the role, which just so conveniently starts the revolving door swinging between leadership in industry and upper roles in regulatory bodies.
Alright AI above was more like DARPA funded research programs that resulted in algorithms that allowed for the logistics program to be implemented where the department of war (aka Department of Defense at the time) to have the first gulf war be more efficient to the point that they did more than break even on the grants they gave out.
Non-“art first”, cosmological (in the religious sense), sketch-forward detail as principal expressive form… I mean one studied the other right? And the author of this piece wrote about Durer as well
My sense is that if a threat actor were able to build a quantum computer to the scale of being able to compromise public-key primitives based on the difficulty of integer factorization and discrete logarithms under the key sizes used in practice today, one of the highest-valued targets will be Bitcoin.
There is no billion-dollar annual market for quantum compute usage in private industry. Yet these companies are getting billions, and it ain't all grants, stocks, bonds, and notes. Ain't rocket science.
There were more than enough trees until we developed the technology to clear cut in expeditious manner. There were more than enough fish until we developed the technology to pull massive indiscriminate amounts out of the ocean (and/or started polluting our rivers with industry). There was more than enough topsoil until we developed mechanized plows and artificial fertilizer. Etc.
A few hundred years ago or less, a squirrel could get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. Not possible today. That’s not a push and pull played out over thousands of years, that’s a one-way trend.
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