Quote from: mother_of_another on June 05, 2011, 03:31:01 PM

Quote from: ender on June 05, 2011, 02:37:10 PM

Quote from: mother_of_another on June 05, 2011, 03:48:45 AM

You still haven't defined exactly what you mean when you loosely refer to "resources" everywhere in your arguments, so they are based on sand. Not science.

I have already shown, and you haven't refuted, that the actual resources humanity desires is a temporal phenomena that changes with technological advance. It can change quite abruptly, look around at what is happening right here. Domestic scale fusion reactors may come on stream next year.

Are you saying that humanity is going to cease to advance technologically?

Is this what you mean by running out of resources?

As long as we are still leaving the planet in better shape for the next generation than we found it, there is no reason to think the place has become unihabitable for future generations because of "resource depletion". You are conflating pollution and resource extraction if that is what you are erroneously thinking.

This is getting pointless and has implications far greater than the topic of the post suggest.

"actual resources humanity desires is a temporal phenomena that changes with technological advance" Actual "superfluous" resources you mean. Silk and gold, now its Nike and Apple. Thats what this growth is all about.
Another piece of the puzzle, our best friend energy! Since we began producing energy with oil and coal we haven't changed that much. And that was a long time ago. Exponential consumption of a limited resource = fail. And technology does have alternatives but they are not profitable so the problem is unresolved. The paradigm even goes against technological advance.
Unquestionable human needs: food, water, shelter, love... they have not changed and will never change. Without them we DIE. Yet we don't provide food nor water nor shelter for each and every member of our species. Yet we built a society where crime, depression, obsession, stress, suicides... are growing decade after decade. Where our idea of love is getting a 300$ present at christmas.

Thats one valid distinction between resources. Needed for survival and others. We are not even granting the survival of three fucking fourths our species. And you are wrong. Pollution = destroying the earth = not having even the basic resources.

Humanity won't stop advancing technologically, and i dont mean that by resources. Thats what i think being human is about. But we could stall, it has happened before, and i think thats where were headed because of our unsustainable economic paradigm.
Egypt was building pyramids 2000 a.c. and that level of technology was lost for millennia. Look at the middle-ages. Read about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism "Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BC.[4] The degree of mechanical sophistication is comparable to a 19th century Swiss clock."

Open your scope. Open your mind. Really. Watch the film i posted before. If you can make your mind around the fact that our way of thinking depends on education and culture you can skip directly to Chapter II at 00:42 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w#t=42m10s
Chapter III is a proposed solution to our problems.

Well this is just a huge emotive rant that is not going solve anything, let alone define the problem more succinctly.

Have you defined what a resource is yet? I don't think I've seen the answer to this in your writings thus far, yet you use the term everywhere.

You seem to keep sliding around that point and back into the doom and gloom is nigh stuff.

If you dont know what a word means theres a thing called dictionaries. But i know you know what i mean and that you are deliberately playing dumb in desperate hope my reasoning can be rejected.