Jethro Tull – Super Hero
In 1701 an Englishman called Jethro Tull invented the seed drill . By quickly and reliably planting seeds at the optimal spacing and depth , this invention enabled about a fourfold increase in yield within one season .
This invention created the largest pulse of wealth in history . Bigger than the invention of fire . Bigger than the invention of agriculture . Bigger than the invention of the internal combustion engine or transistor .
It kick-started the Industrial Revolution .
The reasons:
Most wealth was agricultural.
The increase in wealth was within one season . Malthusian population growth would take about 2 to 3 generations to catch up . Imagine getting a 400% raise in your salary in one year without inflation . This was the effect . This pulse of wealth propagated onwards , giving leisure and incentive to inventors . (ref Baby Boomer Pulse)
The result was a pulse of wealth stimulating other individuals to make similar inventions . The Age of Reason was born . The problem was the massive increase in population made possible by the efficient mechanized systems .
The large number of surplus males and the means to support large armies led to the First Large War (Napoleontic) . This gave the Age of Reason a knock (Nationalism), but you could still state unpopular beliefs without being killed for it . The Second Large War (WWI) destroyed the Age of Reason and ushered in the ideologies (Communism , Marxism , Fascism , Capitalism ). If you stated an unpopular belief , you stood a good chance of being heavily penalized for it . The demise of ideologies collapsed the system back to Religious Fundamentalism , where you can be killed for stating an unpopular belief . The Age of Reason is finally dead . This is the state at circa 2006 AD .
The Age of Reason only lasted a century , but gave rise to our present wealth .
When evaluating ideas like that of Huebner ( see “Waiting for the lights to go out” in Sunday Times of Oct 16 2005 ) , it is important to remember that changes come in pulses . Things might seem to be going to hell in a hand-basket (cf horse-poop in New York circa 1890’s) , but discontinuities generate pulses of change and wealth . You might as well try to explain a transistor using Newtonian mechanics . In other words , analyzing pulses of change as simple statistics of numbers of people over time is garbage .
Is Reason a Good Thing ?
The human race is trembling on the brink of extinction because of the inability of reason to resolve the problem of population and competition .
Example: China
Twice China has limited expansion:
1 Destruction of exploration fleets in 15 th century : the result was Western domination 200 years later (not very long) .
2 One child families in the 20 th century . The Result was a pulse of wealth (as more resources was devoted to education of the lone children) , but their main competitor India is exceeding their population .
Reason (ie logic) has two major drawbacks :
1 The Universum (Venn) is unbounded . This has been proven rigorously in 1906 (Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell) . This means that no theory of everything is possible . ( If you think you have a TOE , you can always define items outside the delineated boundary which , by definition , do not fit inside TOE.)
2 Chaos Theory shows that that even inside a deterministic system , time-sequence predictions are only possible with varying degrees of error (cf weather) . The number of near equipotential branches grow exponentially after a finite number of time units .
This means that the End Does Not Justify The Means .
At best , a prediction must have some sort of probability margins .
This argument is only valid if no time-travel is possible .
Is there hope?
Our present locale (the sidereal Universe) can be expressed as Locale I , defined by the principle that conservation laws are possible There are rules !. Seeing Locale I as delineated , means pockets of being (particles) , space , time and curvaceous space-time. But it is unstable iro non-conservation systems (defined as Locale II). Locale I is maintained artificially by Locale II .
Locale I is maintained primarily as a nursery (try bringing up kids where there are no rules!) , but also as a holiday (going primitive) and trading/warfare locale . This is because interactions can be enforced in Locale I (ie the rules:conservation of something) , whereas in Locale II you cannot force an interaction .
The above reasons work better if there is a lot of variety .Also , the usual reasons of humanity , looking after the planet , etc , etc do not apply except as insofar they illustrate a lesson . In other words , nobody is innocent except the children , and they get the lessons they need .
What does this mean ?
There will be a variety increase soon .
This can be
1. Massive depopulation (plague , eco)
2. Aliens in space
3. Aliens in time
4. Both (most likely : there is only one singularity per universe : the first contacts from the local viewpoint will be on most similar interfaces.)
Merry Christmas
The Alien.
