{"id":66004,"date":"2023-10-23T12:09:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T17:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66004"},"modified":"2023-10-23T12:09:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T17:09:01","slug":"collapse-is-an-outcome-not-a-problem-to-be-solved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66004","title":{"rendered":"Collapse Is An Outcome, Not A Problem To Be Solved"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Collapse Is An Outcome, Not A Problem To Be Solved<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Technology as dinosaur. Photo by\u00a0Jen Theodore<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

There is a rule in ecology called the maximum power principle formulated by Lokta in 1925. It can be summarized as follows: \u201cThe systems that survive in competition are those that develop more power inflow and use it best to meet the needs of survival.\u201d If one wanted to describe the animating force behind the rise and fall of civilizations, they would be hard pressed to come up with a better one. Complex systems\u200a\u2014\u200asuch as our modern industrial world economy\u200a\u2014\u200aappear to be ruled by the same ecological principles to which all other complex organisms obey. These rules are so universal, independent from size and scale from microbes to galaxies, that one would do better to call them natural laws. Join me on a wild ride from bacteria to petroleum extraction to see how these rules govern our daily life and how they could eventually lead to the decline of what we call modernity.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Imagine a clean Petri-dish chuck full of yummy Agar Agar, a medium utilized to grow fungi and bacteria on. Now place a range of microorganisms on it and see what happens: those bacteria which use up the most food energy to multiply will simply outcompete almost any other life form in the dish. Those who use energy sparingly, and live a slow but long life with relatively few offspring, will be simply outcrowded and completely overwhelmed. Now, let\u2019s take our thought experiment to the next level: take a clean Petri-dish, but this time fill half of it with tasty bacteria food and the another half with a not-so-yummy medium with a much lower energy content. Next, add some bacteria which double their numbers every hour. What you can expect to see here is exponential growth at its best\u200a\u2014\u200aand something unexpected.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Collapse Is An Outcome, Not A Problem To Be Solved Technology as dinosaur. Photo by\u00a0Jen Theodore\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash There is a rule in ecology called the maximum power principle formulated by Lokta in 1925. It can be summarized as follows: \u201cThe systems that survive in competition are those that develop more power inflow and use it best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,7],"tags":[138,150,24513,33950,32578],"class_list":["post-66004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-civilisation","tag-collapse","tag-complex-society","tag-maximum-power-principle","tag-the-honest-sorcerer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66005,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66004\/revisions\/66005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}