When speaking of revisiting childhood experience of majestic Victoria Falls, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, my father once gave me advice very similar to this:
“It is part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it. To return not only spoils a trip, but tarnishes a memory. It is only in the mind that shining adventure remains forever bright.”
– Aldo Leopold (1949), A Sand County Almanac.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy just issued its much-awaited International Energy Outlook (IEO) 2009. To my knowledge, this marks this first time the U.S. Federal government has acknowledged the possibility of rapidly increasing hydrocarbon prices in the near future:
Well, humans, hasn’t it been an interesting week in the modelling of your behaviour?
(1) To start off, {Powell et al. (2009), Science, 324, p. 1298-1301} convincingly argue that it was population density, not genetic change, that got the ball rolling on your symbolic and technological complexity in the Late Pleistocene: (z measures “level of ability at some cultural skill or in some cultural domain”.)
An illustration, from a single iteration and shown at 25-generation intervals, of the spatial structuring of skill accumulation in a heterogeneous subpopulation density world. The left side of each subplot is populated at density Dhigh (0.02) and the right side at density Dlow (0.002). Each subpopulation is marked by a circle, centered on the spatial location of the group and with diameter proportional to its mean z value. Regional mean z values are also given at the top of each subplot.
(2) And {Bowles, S. (2009), Science, 324, p. 1293-1298} argues that it was mortality due to inter-group rivalry that gave rise to your much-touted costly individual altruism. Particularly interesting is his analysis of Pleistocene mortality rates resulting from inter-group conflict:
Sources of archaeological (filled squares) and ethnographic (filled dots) evidence on warfare and genetic (open dots) data on between-group differences.
Summary statistics: Fraction of total mortality due to warfare.
“[…] although an angel, considered absolutely, is better than a stone, nevertheless two natures are better than one only; and therefore a universe containing angels and other things is better than one containing angels only; since the perfection of the universe is attained essentially in proportion to the multiplication of individuals of a single nature.” – Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, III.
“If the seasons of husbandry be not interfered with, the grain will be more than can be eaten. If close nets are not allowed to enter the pools and ponds, the fishes and turtles will be more than can be consumed. If the axes and bills enter the hills and forests only at the proper time, the wood will be more than can be used. When the grain and fish and turtles are more than can be eaten, and there is more wood than can be used, this enables the people to nourish their living and mourn for their dead, without any feeling against any. This condition, in which the people nourish their living and bury their dead without any feeling against any, is the beginning of the Kingly way.” – Mencius, ~300 BCE.
“Today each and every river and waterside of our realm, large and small, yields nothing due to the evil of the fishers and the devices of [their] contriving, and because the fish are prevented by them from growing to their proper condition, nor have the fish any value when caught by them, nor are they any good for human consumption, but rather bad, and further it happens that they are much more costly than they used to be, which results in no moderate loss to the rich and poor of our realm.” – King Philip IV of France (1289).
Relative biomass estimates from the beginning of industrialized fishing:
“[…] the transformation of European civilization is analagous to the transformation confronting developing countries around the world today”
– Joseph E. Stiglitz, In: Polanyi, K. (1944, republished 1994), The Great Transformation
!Nefarious Dogma!
Hope – ‘Anticipation of misfortune’