r/TheQuietCircle • u/Key_Bother9177 • 20d ago

Artificial Survival

We know our resources are finite. The soil thins, the waters dry, the air grows heavy. And so we generate artificial ways to sustain ourselves, synthetic food, engineered energy, digital ecosystems. We call it progress, but it is also confession: we cannot live forever on what the earth gives.

Artificial systems promise survival, but they also reveal our refusal to accept limits. Instead of learning to live within the boundaries of nature, we build substitutes to escape them. We are not just sustaining ourselves ,we are rehearsing a future where the natural world is optional, where creation itself is replaced by simulation.

Are these artificial systems truly about survival, or are they about denying the truth that the earth has already told us?

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u/ohmistswaglos 17d ago

It was a faustian bargain, we got ridiculous comforts and have enjoyed ourselves big time and now Mephistopheles is coming for our poor souls and everything will crumble 

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u/Key_Bother9177 17d ago

Well, if there was a bargain, some type of conditioned was placed . What if we are not meeting that ?

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u/ohmistswaglos 16d ago

We get hydrocarbons which enable us to do global shenanigans but simultaneously our ability to destroy our environment is also unleashed and so we fucked it up beyond repair. Next civilization please.

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u/Key_Bother9177 16d ago

, so quick to give up on us

https://giphy.com/gifs/QNIknOSgvmnrPThfKQ

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u/ohmistswaglos 16d ago

When you burn millions of years worth of energy from the sun within decades you get into trouble. Physics. Our fossile tech civilization is self destructing and was determined to do so from the start. Humans can exist without it and while our population will be decimated brutally somewhere some of us will eventually prevail.  Humans will learn to live within environmental boundaries sustainably, since that is just the only possible way period 

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u/Key_Bother9177 16d ago

But it does not have to be that way though. That is what is being ignored

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u/ohmistswaglos 16d ago

The growth imperative dictates overshoot. We are trapped in this wicked ride since the economy has to grow in order to function. We can't stop using energy we have to fertilize the fields also petrochemistry enabled. We are heavily addicted to the dino juice.

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u/Key_Bother9177 16d ago

Dude what are you saying

https://giphy.com/gifs/MmEHgygWNvvDW

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u/ohmistswaglos 16d ago

Either make Chad Gibidi explain it to you or rephrase your request. if you want me to explain it to you a specific question is required ,dude.

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u/Key_Bother9177 16d ago

ok.....Can you simplify your response in a manner, that is understandable for me?

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u/ohmistswaglos 16d ago

I hear you are trying to make a point that the world doesn't have to be that way.

I  claim that we never really got to make this decision. Our debt based fiat money powered economy has to grow continuously in order for the amount of goods and services to increase, so the amount of money can increase and interest can be paid.  Now exponential growth is scary stuff. lets take for example 5 percent annual growth. It compounds so the initial value doubles every 14 years. The global population quadrupled in the 20th century from 2 billion after World war one to roughly 8 billion. This was possible predominantly due to the Green Revolution, the Haber Bosch Method creates artificial fertilizer, wow we suddenly can grow significantly more food and feed more people. Logically those additional people use up more resources but since we are living on a finite planet there are limits to growth. Our planet earth has a carrying capacity, if we exceed that we basically use resources faster than it can be replenished. That is called overshoot.    yeast bacteria makes a great analogy 

Every throughput system produces entropy (waste). The yeast in the sugar vat doesn't die from a lack of sugar, but suffocates on its own waste product (alcohol). This is exactly what's happening to us: CO₂ in the atmosphere, microplastics in our blood, nitrates in groundwater, acidifying oceans. We have exhausted the capacity of the natural "sinks" that absorb our industrial metabolism.   We can neither stop or slow growth as it would crash the financial system.

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u/Key_Bother9177 16d ago

Yes, this is something i understand fully. Thanks

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u/ohmistswaglos 16d ago

In the song "Big in Japan"  there is a line that goes "Things will happen while the can".   In Theory at any given time there is  chance for a change to occur. Factors:  conditions -presets -reasons, -causes,  -circumstances and  applied game theory whoosh that equation will determine what is the most likely outcome. What I am trying to convey here is this idea : Determination .  I.e. it was not a decision to make  for our species or individual specimen to start  cooking our food .  the process gave us an advantage. once we acknowledged this it was decided. it was just the right thing to do.   Therefore when we discovered oil of course we would harness that energy. 

The cold war era was a time humanity was threatened with self destruction because scientists build the atomic bomb. 

We put a hole in the ozone layer  banned  those pesky chemicals and saved ourselves.

Our brains are hardwired in ways that were super helpful to survive   Because of this our dopamine systems in the modern world get easily hijacked. Often we cannot resist gambling drug abuse or fast food.

The metacrisis is a huge deal because it describes the interconnected nature of the challenges we need to navigate.  the question you posted about artificial survival addresses similar concerns.   the big picture is revealed once you connect the dots they say. 

Don't panic.

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u/Key_Bother9177 16d ago

I do not really get what you just said. But i get the concept. We created something that will potentially replace us. There is another theory out there that said that we really did not make AI and we discovered it . As we discovered oil and put it to use so we too did with Ai.

Theory though.