this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
12 points (52.6% liked)
Microblog Memes
5765 readers
2545 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because that's not exactly how it works. Nature is finite not because it doesn't try to grow limitlessly, it's that nature grows in equilibrium with the resources and space available in the system/environment.
That often results in the same thing, but the distinction is very important, as if tomorrow there suddenly were infinite resources and space, nature wouldn't just sit there and go "nah, I don't do infinite growth", it would quickly adapt to just grow endlessly.
On a smaller scale, this is what happens with algae blooms before they run out of resources and die off back into equilibrium with their environment.
The only reason complex creatures can even exist is because of genes made to restrain this behaviour in an organism's own cells, turn those off and you get the cellular equivalent of an algae bloom in your body.
Even then, plenty of organisms do that very same thing, like the rabbit swarms in Australia or Locust swarms in various parts of the world.
Nature doesn't aim for infinity, but it's not not aiming for it either. If the environment allowed, that's what would happen.
It sounds like we've got the same idea here