[dsign]

Alien archeologists from the future: "Earthlings caused a catastrophe by trying to suck every bit of tidal energy. Via tidal acceleration[^1], they made their natural satellite fall into their planet. The curious thing is that the kind of planetary technology level they deployed to extract energy from the tides was more than enough to build huge rotating habitats, which they even knew of and called O'Neill cylinders[^2]. But Earthlings called names anybody proposing the idea, and it never really took off before their moon fell on their heads. This is a textbook case of how a civilization's culture affects their development."

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration

[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder

[jvanderbot]

Yeah I sometimes wonder about our use of energy.

Like two whole percent goes to cracking puzzles, and if you prove you crack those puzzles we let you buy things. Those puzzles? Guessing hashes for Blockchain. Not cancer or science or engineering, just automated planet wide gambling.

Then how much is used for ads? Like top to bottom, serving ads. Must be a ton. As a planetary anthropologist, seeing how much infra we built to watch people do silly dances or say things on TikTok... Like we're so addicted to ourselves that we built all this to watch ourselves do things.

[MRtecno98]

I get your point with blockchain(altough i'd like a source for 2% of the entire human energy production going into it) but ads are useful actually, they make people know about what other people do which drives economy, and economy is basically a fancy word for the system that distributes each human's limited time into the various tasks society needs(which do include large scale planetary development but also for example, your local supermarket which makes you eat).

As for tiktok and silly dances, humans don't need only food and water to work reliably, they also need mental health. So leisure, amenities, relationships etc.(yeah tiktok included) are an addiction in the same sense food water and oxygen are an addiction, we just need them to work.(obviously while "addiction" to leisures is in general not a real problem, addiction to a specific thing in this list is, just like addiction to a specific food is a problem. I'm not saying tiktok addiction is a good thing)

If you think humanity's purpose is to develop their knowledge of the universe and techonological grasp, then i reassure you that(almost) everything we do on this spinning ball is a cog in the machine that ultimately sustains that development

[smolder]

> economy is basically a fancy word for the system that distributes each human's limited time into the various tasks society needs

That's a bit too idealist a view for me. The economy isn't strictly or even mostly about fulfilling needs of society, but the aggregated demands of those with economic power, both wants and needs. A lot of what we spend effort on is not useful to society and a lot of needs go unmet. Certainly not every wasteful activity can be waved away as investing in our mental health. Some leisure is a net negative there, too. Some spending is destructive, with no upside. We humans are only somewhat-rational actors.