| The theory of "revolutions" suggests that at a certain level, we can view human progress as trancending certain boundaries. Prior to ~100K years ago, humans didn't innovate. The toolkit was unchanged for > 1M years (at least the toolkit discovered by archeology).
Then something changed, and the toolkit updated much more frequently. Then the neolithic revolution, we "transcended" local food supplies via agriculture. Then the "industrial revolution" (yes, it is debatable as a concept, but clearly the ability to sustain exponential growth in tech changed sometime after 1500) let us push past the bounds of muscle power. So if we get another "revolution" that lets us somehow trancend the next thing, we might be ok. OTOH, there are the classic experiments with bacteria in a closed petri dish, they eat everything and die. So yes, there are real boundaries. Question is if we can innovate around them. |
>the "industrial revolution" ... [transcended] muscle power
Except neither revolution really "transcends" the earlier limits, they just apply an ugly hack and then blithely ignore the accompanying consequences.
With agriculture we ignore (effectively "null pricing") the destruction of ecosystems. With industry we ignore the pollution from mining and burning.
It's precisely these side-effects (from earlier, supposedly "transcendent" innovations) that now pushes us beyond safe terrestrial boundaries.