Status Updates From Design in Nature: How the C...

“Civilization is the story of better and better flow access.” Okay sure, but to what end? Sounds a bit like cornucopian arguments of infinite economy. “Just keep improving! Getting better all the time!” When does it stop? When can we just attend to maintenance rather than continual improvement? If the degree of improvement is smaller than the energy expenditure required to achieve it, it’s not worthwhile.

“This integrative approach reveals that the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere are not separate entities but interlocking environments that flow and design themselves together.” Yea yea that’s ecology, babe. Consideration of the biotic and abiotic together.

“Trees ‘happen’ because that is where the water is and must flow (upward), not because ‘trees like water.’“ hm. But consider! It’s much more fun to think of trees as liking water than imagining the landscape as a static thing subjected to the dispassionate god that is physics. I dunno man this whole text just so heavy on the abiotic objectivity.

“The real goal is not speed, it is to win, which means to advance in society, to live better, longer, and move farther. The goal is life itself. The urge is to live. The urge is also known as the instinct of conservation (or self-preservation),
..” what do you think it does to us that our primary functions for self preservation (desk job for money to buy food) are so far removed from “architecture of body”

“If these evolutionary designs are hard to discern, then take a closer look at sports.” Bro I think it’ll be harder to discern with the sports tbh just explain the biology as it is. Sans machismo metaphor por favor.

(2/2 have their role and niche. Maybe my issue is more with the ambiguity of the word “enhancement” than the (purported) law itself.

“In big history, all these designs have emerged because they enhance the movement, mixing, and churning of energy and mass on the planet.”
Sure, but doesn’t that conclusion put slow-growing organisms at an acute and universal disadvantage? That’s not necessarily true to reality tho. These organisms that aren’t designed for enhancing “movement, mixing, and churning of energy and mass” (1/2)

Earth systems dynamics, my beloved 💕