Limits to Complexity

by

Yes, there are.

True, many of the world’s problems can be addressed – for a while – by adding layers of complexity.  No question.

But how many such layers of complexity can be “piled on?”  That’s the rub…

Toss this in with the charts and it’s a nice summer morning of deep thoughts… (How’s this for a to-the-point opening, eh?)

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22 thoughts on “Limits to Complexity”

  1. George,

    The hypercomplexity to which the current society is driven is fairly obviously a function of too many people. We have pushed off the Malthusian crisis for centuries using technology, but other than the contraceptive pill and the Chinese one-child policy, we’ve done little to stabilize the population. In fact, those who procreate the most tend to be those with the least to offer in terms of resources, will, and intelligence.

    I’m very much an independent thinker and am against central control where possible. It still remains that we constantly face an impending Malthusian crisis and collapse. Ultimately, breeding needs to be constrained to perhaps one in ten of the populace for a stable balance. Worthy of serious cogitation is WHY there is no MALE contraceptive that’s simple, reversible, cheap, available, and without serious side effects. We still leave it to women as the only gatekeepers of pregnancy, rather than providing men with a means to prevent such results. In a better world, both parties would have veto power over a pregnancy and not have to rely on both trust and reliability of only one person. This tech exists and is not being made available. That’s a certainty.

    The only other way of maintaining a stable population is to reversibly sterilize all kids and have a central system allow pregnancies. I abhor such a system, but it will be deemed necessary unless we want to continue to exterminate each other in wars and disease. The insane perverting of sexual perceptions is insufficient to reduce populations.

    The other aspect to hypercomplexity is that if we create a world that simply can’t backstep to prior technologies, we may nearly or actually exterminate our species.

  2. I wonder if the post Clinton fed bank math models for derivatives, junk boss, just in time finance, services, pollution control, and age demographics LEDs us to a game of musical chairs in which with so much in flux no one goes out of a limb like they did in 29 except the Chinese.

  3. If each woman had only one natural child the problem would be resolved in 80 years particularly women in developed countries where each child uses multiples of resources used by 3rd world children.

    • I doubt this situation would be resolved in 80 years. It’s especially important to restrict children to a maximum of one per couple in undeveloped/developing countries. These places have an incredibly high birth rate and they tend to be far less civilized(aka rational). They move very quickly and even though many kids die young, there are far too many humans for the carrying capacity of the land/country.

      For this reason, sex needs to be made inconsequential – as in no offspring. Voluntary chemical sterilization, either permanent or long term, like seven years, would be welcomed by many. That would be true the west also. We also need to think carefully about WHO should breed. Civilization and nature are in direct opposition on this.

      • Making sex inconsequential…hmmm… You have made procreation something to be avoided in your mind. Good for the rest of us.

        Inherently, I will drive to push my DNA out in front, and to care for my children and teach then the things that this society wants to avoid discussing and how to deal with those same issues.

        The human race (it is a DNA race into an unknown future in the first place) has already come close to extinction several times, and not because of birth rates. Malthus was right, arithmetically, but we are not just numbers on a page.

        I think I will avoid the Jim Bowery method of producing calories. We were given taste buds for a reason, and I prefer to pay attention to mine. I also like to grow things, and the Dutch greenhouse method is very much sufficient to meet world needs if it was put into practice. Reducing the distribution path of food will be required as we descend the back stairs of petroleum.

        I think all of this can be avoided by simply requiring everyone to produce their own food – it self limits many things, having to tend the vegetables, grains, livestock, and the rest.

    • Anon –

      If everybody had to dig, grow or find these resources, the problem would be solved in a year…

      • I agree with you 99% there old man to you got your head going on the right dagum track there comma. But the world is changing and so we’re going to have to evolve At it means not keeping this body that we have in the future how many years will we keep keeping this body that we have this structure I don’t know so what we’re looking for is stabilization not only in the economy but in our belief system because we can have an unstable economy and an unstable belief system because everything changes and then once it does change are we ready for the stabilization that has occurred that has brought us up to that point and in the navel in this to survive so yes I agree with you 99% that 1% is something else that you will have to think about and I know you had deep thoughts about it but that’s something you’ll have to think about is the future Where Do We Go From Here are we really any part of those three posts that I posted one two three the last one is the complex one who are we where do we come from are we ready to change the future

      • blpg, way to confuse the issue further. Oilman, have you read the Anastasia series of books? It is all about a return to the land in Russia; it is a very good series and has sprouted (ha) a whole new movement back to the land. That is truly our answer, and it has already worked many times in our not to distant past including WWII Victory Gardens. In my city, many youngsters are headed back to the land and cultivating produce, honey crops, etc., and selling it at Farmer’s Markets all over town. They are connecting now in all old ways back to their roots. We are getting on up there in age, too, and could not maintain our property out in the rural area by ourselves, but we sold it in one day, that is how strong the market is to return to the land. I can tell that the energy shift has happened across America now. Good is sprouting up all over.

  4. “…The hypercomplexity to which the current society is driven is fairly obviously a function of too many people…”

    Maybe not. Here’s a guy who has figured out how to provide all the calories every single person needs, (quality food too like Tuna, Ocean fish, etc), and four times the electricity of a present American citizen with beach front condo property for every human on planet Earth with about zero ecological concerns in 15 years. Really. Maybe cost a billion or so as it builds itself after you start it.

    Atmospheric Vortex Engine-The power plant that works off of tropical ocean water (remember most of the Ocean is basically dead).

    Exponential Remediation of Civilization’s Footprint

    http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2014/05/introduction-extinction-of-human-race.html

    http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2013/08/breakout-labs-funded-prototype-of.html

    http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2014/05/greenhouses-are-not-next-green.html

    The Earth has an equatorial diameter of 12,756 km. So with Islands 1KM apart you could easily have 10,000 @ 100,000 per Island, so 1,000,000,000 with maybe 10 Km North and South the same for 10 Billion people.

    What if instead of just giving up we tried to marshal unused resources. A guy fertilized the oceans and got record breaking tuna in the fisheries in Alaska. The US government should be fertilizing the oceans as a common good.

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-ocean-with-iron-to-save-salmon-and-earn-money/

    One half of all land is in desert or poor condition for normal crops but we can grow plants there that use seawater to grow in. Making food and fuel.

    http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/seawater.html

    http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/saltwater-saviors/30923

  5. NM Mike –

    wow – you did a study that shows those who have the most children have the lowest intelligence, less willpower and the least resources. Kindly point me to that paper, please?

    Male contraceptive – simple, reversible, cheap, available and zero side effects?

    Buddy, it’s called a rubber.

    They GIVE them away all the time…

    Without the current technology we enjoy, the population will take care of itself in a generation or two. When we bump up against limits too hard, the same will happen.

    Backstepping technology? The current generation cannot operate the Dewey Decimal System, and few have ever been in a library. Take their phones away and they go into withdrawal. If the internet goes down, there will be plenty of backstepping and two-stepping and tap-dancing.

    We are already at the point where backstepping will be extremely problematic due to reliance on the internet and digital media for storing knowledge.

    • Good points. Regarding many children, the firstborn seems to go the furthest in education and health. The second does well and those that follow do well enough. I’ve read this(no source right now), and have seen it within my own family and others. Not scientific, but anecdotal.

      A rubber is better than nothing, if it’s used. Most guys will do anything to go bareback, and having a pharmaceutical solution(like the women) allows for double protection. I’ve personally seen the remains of many a rubber at the most inappropriate time, and one or more might have been the proximal cause of a pregnancy. No telling.

      I’ve had my kids and don’t want more. I did my best for them and they do me proud. They’d fare better than most when/if our technology fails, though they use it to the max while it’s here.

  6. food is only a issue if you don’t container the product from farm to table as 50% is lost in transit…simple way to make money when artic weather issues force late planting and early harvest

  8. Just popping in. all is well. I’m busy, paying off debt and saving money. Work work work.

    Life is good. I see things are good for a while longer…

    Remember the old farmer perspective. “How do you know this is good fortune?”

    I got me some kids. I got me 2 ex wives. So marriage and kids are accomplished.. NOW for something different. Probably buy a house in 3 years when they are giving them away.

    Fish on!

    Check back in a while.

    Infinitely NOW!

    • Ohhhh yes. Complexity. What is Complexity? Is it not simplicity inverting within itself and exploding outward in spiral fashion into complexity, using itself as a template? It is emotion (equilibrium in motion) that accelerates the swing of the arch. There is both synchronicity, randomness and instinct. Synchronicity is a product of juxtaposition. Randomness is a product of inspiration. Inspiration a product of imagination. Instinct is the strumming of etherical cords. All these things the collective consciouness of humanity embraces in movements of matter to the power of energy with the circumference of a circle. Or TiM^E. Pi×M^E. Or “time”. Movement to establish equilibrium with complexity as it inverts withinitself and explodes out into further complexity.

      As in chess, all the pieces move in spiral formation. The mind spirals in responce. Though the degree of the arch may be to a greater degree for the knight verses that of pawn. Never the less, All chess pieces move in spiral form. So do all humans and life itself and it is our pattern or template. All life moves spiral formation. It is the template for all living things. Complexity and layers formed in social and economical growth depend upon it.

      Remember that sometimes a spiral looks like a circle, a wave, a flower, a door, a frequency and even a life. It is only in added dimension that it can be viewed properly.

      Eliot wave your life?

      As the collective is always “on the go” and never getting anywhere. Even in stillness the mind fabricates solutions to imaginary problems.

      Taking a step back… We realise/ observe that these templates or layers are built upon fabricated proclamation’s by the proto gstalt as they develop the archtypes within the matrices of scocietial influences/acceptance. The “norm” is established in peer to peer relationship.

      In other words: biased preferential conditioning to pleasure position. Complexity of such systems is compounded by the chemical induced sense of establishment and a point of position held as a vector of proclamation as a superior sense of established position. A vantage point. And there is always a vantage point.

      Example: I told you, there for I am.

      Condoms or not? The skin of things is the soul unions are binary contracts for life. And for life.

      There is more… But I’m busy relaxing by the pool.

  9. Paperpot.co
    Now it’s George can make investing this easy boy will all get rich lots of laughs

    • And there’s nothing wrong with that it just takes readjusting forget about the numbers if you’re talking about lives but if you’re talking about money oh yeah go ahead continue

      • In my local surrounding Neighbors, two Elders have died last four months, thats what we do when we get old, that’s what happens that’s how the population decreases from the Baby Boomers but we’re all still here I mean at least the ones that are going to take over but the question is what did we leave them with oh my gosh this is the worst isn’t it especially the radiation that is the worst that’s why these other beings are here to help us and we haven’t done a very good job at accepting them or taking their knowledge for the right purposes instead we’ve destroyed that purpose so now we’re here 77 years later and we still haven’t made amends with the nuclear energy radiation that will destroy the planet on the outside and on the inside there are people who live on the inside of this planet who don’t want no part of our Wars but yet that radiation is going to affect them too so yeah they’re going to have to come about and put us in our place eventually

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