The Suprising Math of Cities and Corporations, DePopulation of Nations, Arithmetic, Population and E

You know how people love to claim that the depopulation of the Earth is viable, and that is appropriate and such...

Well... truth is, they're somewhat correct. Yet, they lack a complete understanding of what it is to be human, and our ability to innovate our ways out of this.

Lastly, I want to talk about growth. This is what we had in biology, just to repeat. Economies of scale gave rise to this sigmoidal behavior. You grow fast and then stop -- part of our resilience. That would be bad for economies and cities. And indeed, one of the wonderful things about the theory is that if you have super-linear scaling from wealth creation and innovation, then indeed you get, from the same theory, a beautiful rising exponential curve -- lovely. And in fact, if you compare it to data, it fits very well with the development of cities and economies. But it has a terrible catch, and the catch is that this system is destined to collapse. And it's destined to collapse for many reasons -- kind of Malthusian reasons -- that you run out of resources. And how do you avoid that? Well we've done it before.

What we do is, as we grow and we approach the collapse, a major innovation takes place and we start over again, and we start over again as we approach the next one, and so on. So there's this continuous cycle of innovation that is necessary in order to sustain growth and avoid collapse. The catch, however, to this is that you have to innovate faster and faster and faster. So the image is that we're not only on a treadmill that's going faster, but we have to change the treadmill faster and faster. We have to accelerate on a continuous basis. And the question is: Can we, as socio-economic beings, avoid a heart attack?

I was going to take fancy snap shots of graphs, and show how there's a pattern to growth that applies to individuals(biology), corporations and cities. We are destined to collapse, but the thing about us(humans) is that we somehow always come out on top!

www.ted.com...
Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations

There's a link for the video, I highly suggest watching it to understand anything that I'm trying to convey here.

Now, on to energy and such...

topdocumentaryfilms.com...
Arithmetic, Population and Energy (Lecture)

Professor Al Bartlett begins his one-hour talk with the statement, The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

He then gives a basic introduction to the arithmetic of steady growth, including an explanation of the concept of doubling time. He explains the impact of unending steady growth on the population of Boulder, of Colorado, and of the world.

He then examines the consequences steady growth in a finite environment and observes this growth as applied to fossil fuel consumption, the lifetimes of which are much shorter than the optimistic figures most often quoted.

He proceeds to examine oddly reassuring statements from experts, the media and political leaders – statements that are dramatically inconsistent with the facts. He discusses the widespread worship of economic growth and population growth in western society.

With out going through and explaining every graph and bit of information this man presents, it would be hard for me to paint a clear picture of the situation. Also, that's why I presented it, so I don't have to. lol, here's the last part of what he has to say about the entire thing.

quote from transcript:
old.globalpublicmedia.com...

Now, except for those petroleum graphs, the things I’ve told you are not predictions of the future, I’m only reporting facts, and the results of some very simple arithmetic. But I do so with confidence that these facts, this arithmetic and more importantly, our level of understanding of them, will play a major role in shaping our future. Now, don’t take what I’ve said blindly or uncritically, because of the rhetoric, or for any other reason. Please, you check the facts. Please check my arithmetic. If you find errors, please let me know. If you don't find errors, then I hope you’ll take this very, very seriously.

...

And I'll close with these words from the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He said, “Unlike the plagues of the dark ages, or contemporary diseases which we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is solvable with means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution, but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of the billions who are its victims.”

So I hope I’ve made a reasonable case for my opening statement, that I think the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand this very simple arithmetic.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, and we can avoid any 'collapse' or necessity for 'population control'... the tricky part is, we just need to innovate our way out of any problems that arise. I do have one option that I'd like to toss out there, but I will need someones help...

I can't seem to find the ted talks video about ancient math, numbers, and patterns. Through out the video the man presents images of villages in Africa and such that are laid out in spiral patterns, and fibonacci sequences. Then he goes into natives and europeans who use 4 fold geometry and circles. It even touches base as to how these patterns are tied into religious practices and such...

That video would be much help in trying to describe the lay out that I suggest is what we should be using. Obviously it would be a fairly difficult task to transition into these set ups. Yet, the pay off would potentially be the solution to logistics of population, energy, and consumption. I'm sure much of this is already been discovered and such, if I'm not mistaken... I think the Venus Project. But they didn't seem to take it far enough, as I am proposing.

Thanks in advanced if anyone knows what video I'm talking about. It's on Netflix, under TED: Numbers

Anyways... the point of this thread is to point out there are very real issues to be addressed. Those that think that killing off or limiting our population is the solution are just idiots, and escaping the pressures of innovation.

People are always saying that there is some super rich Elite that wants to carry this out... Why would they want to do that, knowing that we can innovate our way out of this? Wouldn't they just want to try and profit off of all the work that is necessary to be done. I don't know... fruit for though.

www.ted.com...
Ron Eglash on African fractals

By looking at aerial-view photos -- and then following up with detailed research on the ground -- Eglash discovered that many African villages are purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it: "When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."

These are what I propose our cities look like, and have them placed accordingly in respects to resources. This might mean building cities out in the middle of no where, but they will be the best darn cities ever built. As well, that middle of no where will be the new somewhere as it will be more productive IMO.

I'm talking...

take this:




turn it into this:




and use a little bit of this:




Into bringing a little bit of this:




getting rid of a lot of these:










Which are Chinese Ghost Cities

Maybe stop a little bit of this:




Not always feel like this:




ok.. that's enough pictures for now... o wait,

You have officially given me something to do for the next hour or so, and I was starting to get bored as #.

For that and that alone, have a star and flag.

Might come back with my 2 cents later.

Our "leaders" know and understand this. It is why we see increasing war carried out in areas where overall productivity is low (africa, middle east). The population is culled.

It is also why medicine is not about curing, but instead about treating disease and illness.

Great thread. It speaks volumes (VOLUMES) of truth.

Originally posted by FractalChaos13242017
I'm talking...

take this:

turn it into this:

Replied while i was reading....

....The above would seem to defy the premise of your OP.

The Africans, if those were actually houses and not animal pens (as is often claimed), built a more geometrical shape. This is an emulation of nature, and the key to its superiority is in following nature.

Ancient man spend the entirety of his time exposed to nature, and to pass the time his curious mind studied his surroundings. Often, it was more about survival. But study he did, becoming very proficient and imitating nature.

European man screwed that up (stinking Romans). Now we build boxes, pleasing to the eye of humans. It has nothing to do with nature, and natural forces.

The globe you show above represents a far too ordered structure to represent a strong, superior configuration. Of course, the math behind the image may be useful in determining ratios in a fractal set But on the whole, those are left more to algorithms and not simple geometry.

Anyway, you are (in my opinion) on the right track. First understand that ancient man was a very proficient natural scientist, approaching it from the stance of trying to emulate beneficial processes. It is the heart and soul of alchemy.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

Replied while i was reading....

....The above would seem to defy the premise of your OP.

The Africans, if those were actually houses and not animal pens (as is often claimed), built a more geometrical shape. This is an emulation of nature, and the key to its superiority is in following nature.

Ancient man spend the entirety of his time exposed to nature, and to pass the time his curious mind studied his surroundings. Often, it was more about survival. But study he did, becoming very proficient and imitating nature.

European man screwed that up (stinking Romans). Now we build boxes, pleasing to the eye of humans. It has nothing to do with nature, and natural forces.

The globe you show above represents a far too ordered structure to represent a strong, superior configuration. Of course, the math behind the image may be useful in determining ratios in a fractal set But on the whole, those are left more to algorithms and not simple geometry.

Anyway, you are (in my opinion) on the right track. First understand that ancient man was a very proficient natural scientist, approaching it from the stance of trying to emulate beneficial processes. It is the heart and soul of alchemy.

I've researched a good amount in regards to the evolution of communication, and cognitive linguistics... and have concluded the same. Everything to us, is about the recognition of patterns. There is a relationship between numbers and patterns, for patterns can be used to describe them. There's an obvious link between philosophy, geometry, numbers and religion that can't go unnoticed.

I'm not saying that these images of the Earth Grid are what it actually is to look like. Rather, there would be a set pattern regionally that accounts for a handful of variables. Resources, ports, already established infrastructures, etc., etc.... the list could get fairly long. With these numbers, just create scalable values, then have these dictate the distances between centers of cities. Each city would have it's own fractal representation that is specific to the variables that create the initial pattern.

So... it's not that these cities would look necessarily, like some traditional Kock Snowflake, or Solomon's Seal, but rather, would be composed of their fractal implications. Maybe even direct copies, but that would be saved for a certain place, probably the capitals.

and btw, that's 'Koch Snowflake" lol

Here's an interesting gif, that shows a good chunk of what I'm getting at. Very loose idea of what the building orientations would look like. again, not exactly.

en.wikipedia.org...:KochCube_Animation_Gray.gif

Here is then a possible street lay out that would go along with it...

en.wikipedia.org...:Quadriccross.gif

But that's all fourfold.., which I wonder if any sense of failure among certain areas would manifest due to just simple reasoning, such that of tetralemma...

The tetralemma is a figure that features prominently in the classical logic of the Greeks. It states that with reference to any a logical proposition X, there are four possibilities:

X (affirmation)
\neg X (negation)
X \land \neg X (both) equiv.
\neg (X \lor \neg X) (neither)

but stemming from the initial 4(for now 'ray like') there would be a vertex, so now 4 vertices, of which are to have 3 points of interest(being smaller cities, regional markets... and national suppliers..

So why 3?

The rule of three in Business and Economics is a rule of thumb suggesting that there are always three major competitors in any free market within any one industry. This was put forward by Bruce Henderson of the Boston Consulting Group in 1976[1], and has been tested by Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia in 2002, analyzing performance data and comparing it to market share. This is an attempt to explain how, in mature markets, there are usually three 'major players' in a competitive market

This... along with,

All of the characteristics of the number 3 when they arise in various aspects of relationships.
One could do a broad number 3 numerology search, or simply think about all the concepts that require three at their base. Atoms, Sun(triple alpha), Communication, Divide and Conquer, which are just three random ones that I could think of.

Regardless, 3 is the number of expressions of communication.

To then have these 3 placed under a fourfold type geometry, brings justice, but that's another rant about the meaning behind numbers, which is not the focus of this...

Combined together, 4 x 3, we now have ourselves 12. We might as well throw up some walls, make 12 gates and call this place home lol. Kidding of course, but there are some interesting parallels with idea and religious texts. For another time...