Re: [9fans] datakit

[Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:07:46 +0100, rog@vitanuova.com <rog@vitanuova.com> wrote:
> > Nature doesn't like waste
>
> actually, nature doesn't particularly care about waste.
> a quote from somewhere i read recently
>
>         nature is _effective_, not necessarily _efficient_.

Actually, to be slightly more accurate, it doesn't particularly care
about anything, being both indifferent and effective.

It does effectively maximize efficiency *if* doing so either helps the
DNA/host/community/species (pick your theorist) replicate better than
its peers, or if the waste in some way hinders its replication.  There
is actually nothing preventing a natural process from increasing
"waste" so long as it effectively promotes the replication of at least
one subset of the ecosphere.  There might be rebound effects or
population crashes, sure, but if it works, it works.

The flip side of waste is that life is adept at filling every
available ecological niche, so one organism's garbage is another's
treasure, be it fecal matter, banana peel or shed shell.

Early human middens made great gardens, for this very reason, and
possibly became the first efforts at farming -- throw all your garbage
here and just wait until harvest.  If corn is more fruitful in a
midden, and middens are more plentiful when humans are more fruitful,
and humans are more fruitful when corn is plentiful, then what
incentive is there for the humans to curb their waste?  (Effectively,
disease, either from a midden too large to sustain the balance of its
hosts or from a human or corn population too dense -- or homogenous --
to effectively fight the disease, but even the disease is a
population).

-Jack

The beauty of self-replicating systems is that their competition doesn't.