[janto]

I think even the broad outline of the article is flawed.

The vast majority of life at all scales persist through primarily maximizing "growth" (replication), implying that the associated risks (cancer, resource exhaustion) have been acceptable and are sufficiently mitigated through various mechanisms.

It would be hard to find a superior strategy (or metaphor) that won't be catastrophic once your ecosystem shifts.

[posterboy]

The vast, vast majority of life today has gone extinct. I don't know how to quantify that, and it's possibly a close call for Homo viewed in isolation.

Obviously, the growth of Homo required other taxa to be consumed, since man don't feed on inorganic material. The principle of entropy guaranties that this equation holds even if inorganic input and outout into an arbitrarily defined system of organisms is considered.

It simply doesn't make sense to view living beings as either open systems without a clear boundary (and I don't mean cell walls), or as closed systems to the extent of inclusing ev-ery-thing.At best you have defined living being as open system that is "growing", but then you have excluded cancer already, as though any system were only open if in principle fungible for man.

You have completely missed that growth ad infinitum is problem, not re-growth.

[janto]

That there is any life left at all is because it has kept on reproducing. The only other viable strategy to persist is to be a rock.

Re-growth (from what starting point?) is insufficient. You either expand in number or you run the risk of ceasing to exist when your numbers are threatened.

I'd choose going for growth ad infinitum and the associated risks. Trying anything else will get me killed.

[posterboy]

> That there is any life left at all is because it has kept on reproducing

utter nonsense, observer survivor bias

> The only other viable strategy to persist is to be a rock.

pseudo intellectual bulls

> Re-growth (from what starting point?) is insufficient

That there is any life left at all is because it has kept (from what starting point?) on reproducing. That one?

You are not making any sense

[janto]

Are you suggesting that not replicating has been a better survival strategy for organisms?

[pksebben]

the vast majority of organisms are not as unary as human society has become. we are so tightly coupled, so well connected to each other, that a cancer in one place threatens the whole. Cancer is fine for an individual from the perspective of a large collection, but a cancer in an individual when one individual is all there is would be catastrophic. the analogy we continue to use for growth in "the economy" abstracts out this fact.

[streamofdigits]

yes, that's an important point. we are not a normal species and there is no point to pretend otherwise. every other sort faces a constant struggle for survival with their numbers being modulated by natural predators. Predators in turn get modulated when they overfeed on their prey. Our problem is that our prey is the entire planet.

[janto]

Fortunately we are farmers as well.

We do need to find a way to jump beyond the next Great Filter, but it won't help to bunker down and not grow.

[janto]

i'd say that humanity is the least tightly coupled organism when it comes to survivability. when our ecosystem changes we are able to adapt better than any other organism.