The capital of the Terran Star Empire

There is a fair amount of ideology mixed in with the facts on that site. But the people working to figure out how we can build a sustainable economy are the kind of people that are going to be talking about energy to technology relationships, so I thought it might be useful.

As doom and gloom goes, sadly, one does not need to go further than the Oil Industry itself. The strong stomached can check out:
www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/global...il_reserves_2004.pdf
Looking at the far right column is the number of years the reserves will last at current production rates. North America is 12 years. Europe is 17 years. Table assumes no economic growth and no shift in demand as sources fade. www.bp.com is the main site (one of the worlds larger oil companies) Depressing, because these are the people that were arguing that there was no limit to oil reserves.


I once upon a time (like 15 years ago) ran across an idea that each level of technology required a certain number of specialists to support it. So forging swords needs a black smith, a miner, a metal refiner, a coal miner, a person to haul the stuff. And then all the people needed to keep those people alive and well.

And so it was another way of calculating just how many people were needed to reach a certain level of technology. It would be fun to take modern statistics for these fields, and then do a prediction of the population levels of ancient societies, based on known technology. A shame I don't know anyone working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they live for this kind of stuff.


-Gtrout

Could someone please explain two things about this paragraph for me.

It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only. (Hoyle, 1964; emphasis added

1. What does the word fail mean in the context of this paragraph? How will we fail, or the planetary system fail or we fail to make a go of it? Does success mean we turn into beings of pure energy or something? Or leave the planet, and find additional energy sources? Does success mean simply that we discover new sources of energy, unusable without the technology required to discover them? I don't understand this.

2. What does the level of technology have to do with the level of intelligence achieved by a species? He states that there will be no technologically useful sources of energy, therefore preventing intelligence from developing. The primitive life that eventually evolved into apes, and then into homo-sapiens didn't seem to require any source of energy other than food, so how is this a factor. And I'm not talking about his statement of making the long climb to high-technology. I'm talking about his counter to the statement that if humans disappear, another species will develop high intelligence and take over. How does a lack of technologically useful energy prevent intelligence?

If someone could explain these two things to me, the rest would be a lot clearer. Thanks.

*edit*
Oh, and what happened to this thread? Why did it suddenly get so wide? I don't see any code or pics or anything. I hate having to scroll sideways while I'm reading.

mailto:second_chance@cox.net
The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod
cartoons.sev.com.au/index.php?catid=4
.

Well, i totally agree with him, and infact what he said is what i have been saying to my friends for a while, i shall definatly have to remeber that quote! nice find...

Anyway, what i think he means by 'fail' is die out as a race. As in 'fail to survive'. This planet is not some kind of safe haven, there are so many mass -extinctions, esp of the dominate species at the time. The only way for us to surive and be 'sucessful' as a race is to spread out into space. EoC as a cultural thing is an expression of hope. Same with IW1, i love the poltiics and depth and complexty of its universe.

As to the intelligence? well firstly the fact that technology gives you a repoductive advantage...and intelligence makes technology...and technology makes the enviroment more favorable for intelligence... well it seems only logical that if technology and resources are there to be tapped into, the intelligence will develop quicker. Although i see your point that intelligence would still definatly develop.

However, *his* point seems to be without the resources any future intelligent apes/inscets/lizards/bird/fish/whatever that evolve the abilty to manipulate objects like we do, communcate at the same level of complexity as we doo, have the intelligence that we do etc etc....well it wont matter because they wont have any resources to express their intelligence with.

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310

1. I think fail means, fall back from industrial society. Lose "high technology".

2. (only a guess here) for the longest time we considered lesser technologically developed societies "primitive" and less intelligent. That idea has been pretty well swept under the rug, but I think that is the sense he uses "intelligence". We seperate these concepts now, but that was not always true. [for an excellent discussion, try "Guns, Germs, and Steel" By Jared Diamond.]

[I have no clue why the posts get wide, but I hate it. I wish I knew how it happened so I could make sure I was not doing it to myself!]

[Edit: Note to self, hit refresh before posting when you leave a reply open and go eat dinner]

-Gtrout

what he means by intelligence is not the intelligence of the inderviduals, but the intelligence AND their knowladge from past experiences. The more one can aquire and maintain knowladge the more 'intelligent' one is. he factors in their abilty to record basically. also, if we were to fall back to an industrail society, it would imidiatly collapse, there just are not the resources available to function


Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310

Originally posted by Jwk the Hemp Monkey

nooo, its Lunar. As in the 'Lunar Landings'

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310

just for info (arriving late in this thread), actually, Earth, the Sun and Earth´s moon DO NOT have names.

Sol, Terra and Luna are only the LATIN names for such celestial bodies.

Some of you are saying "oh, but MOON can designate any MOON on any planet, and SUN can designate any SUN in any star system".

Well, dont you think that happens in latin and other latin based languages. I am brazilian... in portuguese, Sun is SOL, MOON is LUA and EARTH is TERRA.

Guess what? TERRA means EARTH... not only EARTH the planet, but earth as the ground where you plant stuff

LUA is our MOON... yeah... but Mars has two LUAS, Jupiter has dozens of luas! The Death Star was an artificial LUA orbiting the florestal LUA of Endor!!

And the planet TATOOINE had two SÓIS (plural of SOL).

The case with the word SOL and TERRA are a bit more specific than LUA. As in english, any planet can have TERRA, but the only planet NAMED TERRA is ours.

And SOL... is the name of our star. When you tell about stars in other star systems, you will call them STARS. But if you would tell about the main star rising on the sky of a planet in such system, you would reffer to such star as SOL, although thats not the name of the star.


LUA is the only word which has a better definition nowadays... although in common language we can say that Mars has two MOONS (LUAS), we should in fact say it has two satellites. Maybe that happens because we are already so close to land in other planets in our system.


But I guess no language, at least Indo-European, has any good rule regarding the words TERRA and SOL, SOL in special, when dealing with other star systems.