<story><title>Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years</title><url>https://blog.google/products/earth/timelapse-in-google-earth/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gbrown</author><text>&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;d be more interested in what you think it &amp;quot;should&amp;quot; look like for an &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; species besides optimal?&lt;p&gt;In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization should be able to develop in a coordinated and self sustaining way, rather than as a grand experiment in tragedy of the commons. Microbes don’t coordinate their growth, and therefore fall into boom-bust cycles that dominate and exhaust their local environment. Humans can reason about these issues, but we see  insufficient ability to collectively coordinate in response to them.</text></item><item><author>Grimm1</author><text>You can say the same thing about ant colonies. I think it&amp;#x27;s probably just what anything that groups and branches around resource deposits looks like. If I recall slime molds are optimal planners regarding surrounding resources so it just sounds like a natural optimality to me.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d be more interested in what you think it &amp;quot;should&amp;quot; look like for an &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; species besides optimal?&lt;p&gt;Looking at it is disparagingly is weird to me, when the conclusion is maybe humans in aggregate are optimal with regards to finding and using resources to grow.&lt;p&gt;Not that we&amp;#x27;re growing unbounded either because that would be bad, we&amp;#x27;re in population decline across many major nations right now and are working towards a greener future in multiple industries to avoid resource collapse.&lt;p&gt;The level of doom and gloom and misanthropy is generally unwarranted if you look around at the steps we&amp;#x27;re taking to better ourselves as a species and every time I read things like this I can&amp;#x27;t help but think people revel in the supposed helplessness of our potential destruction and inability as some perverted pleasure.</text></item><item><author>keithwhor</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes.&lt;p&gt;We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we&amp;#x27;ve built and accomplished as the achievements of a sufficiently robust slime mold simply using available resources to continue growing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Grimm1</author><text>But we&amp;#x27;re moving towards sustainability. Whether it&amp;#x27;s fast enough is up to interpretation but the push for green tech, sustainable farming etc etc it&amp;#x27;s not like this is an unknown, it&amp;#x27;s just always been the case that it must be sufficiently cheap and easy for the average person to latch onto it. Unfortunately in a lot of areas we&amp;#x27;re getting there but not there yet.</text></comment>
<story><title>Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years</title><url>https://blog.google/products/earth/timelapse-in-google-earth/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gbrown</author><text>&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;d be more interested in what you think it &amp;quot;should&amp;quot; look like for an &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; species besides optimal?&lt;p&gt;In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization should be able to develop in a coordinated and self sustaining way, rather than as a grand experiment in tragedy of the commons. Microbes don’t coordinate their growth, and therefore fall into boom-bust cycles that dominate and exhaust their local environment. Humans can reason about these issues, but we see  insufficient ability to collectively coordinate in response to them.</text></item><item><author>Grimm1</author><text>You can say the same thing about ant colonies. I think it&amp;#x27;s probably just what anything that groups and branches around resource deposits looks like. If I recall slime molds are optimal planners regarding surrounding resources so it just sounds like a natural optimality to me.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d be more interested in what you think it &amp;quot;should&amp;quot; look like for an &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; species besides optimal?&lt;p&gt;Looking at it is disparagingly is weird to me, when the conclusion is maybe humans in aggregate are optimal with regards to finding and using resources to grow.&lt;p&gt;Not that we&amp;#x27;re growing unbounded either because that would be bad, we&amp;#x27;re in population decline across many major nations right now and are working towards a greener future in multiple industries to avoid resource collapse.&lt;p&gt;The level of doom and gloom and misanthropy is generally unwarranted if you look around at the steps we&amp;#x27;re taking to better ourselves as a species and every time I read things like this I can&amp;#x27;t help but think people revel in the supposed helplessness of our potential destruction and inability as some perverted pleasure.</text></item><item><author>keithwhor</author><text>What&amp;#x27;s really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes.&lt;p&gt;We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we&amp;#x27;ve built and accomplished as the achievements of a sufficiently robust slime mold simply using available resources to continue growing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drivebycomment</author><text>I think humanity is, and has been going through a collective learning experience over thousands of years, and any &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; civilization will necessarily have to go through a similar phase to get to that &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; stage. So while it&amp;#x27;s true humanity can do better, I think this - the global coordination challenge - is fundamental and irremovable in any collection of self-interested individuals.</text></comment>