Hey, great article; have you considered tracking how many calories you can burn without gaining weight, or how much heat you produce, as a local version of the civilisational energy consumption metric?
Yes, a human's individual body heat production does contribute to entropy maximization but pretty minutely as compared to one's potential contributions by other less direct means. It's just about measuring the opportunity cost, but generally exercise doesn't negate one's ability to contribute to the entropy maximization by intellectual means—it often even accelerates it by improving mental well-being. So yeah it's definitely a pretty based e/acc & ved/acc objective function, as long as you don't overindex on it and forget the opportunity cost.
Here is a line from Nick Lane's book called "Power, sex, suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life": "Gram per gram, even when sitting comfortably, you are
converting 10 000 times more energy than the sun every second".
It seems to me that it's not just energy consumption/heat dissipation/entropy generation, but how concentrated that energy consumption is (in both time and space) that leads to everything good in life e.g. intelligent and empathetic organisms, as opposed to a relatively 'simple' object like the Sun. Meaning that burning huge amounts of fuel may not be as progressive as improving the metabolism of a human, in terms of energy consumption per unit time and space. Mortality is lowest at age 12, and per unit mass, 12 year olds consume far more energy than older humans.
I also think you're wrong about ahimsa "glorifying the weak". Buddhism is peak ahimsa, and yet if you look at the scriptures, they extolled virility, strength, beauty, and prowess in all actions (see Bull of a Man by John Powers). The ideal of ahimsa is more the peaceful warrior archetype. One has strength, skill, ability, etc, yet chooses not to harm out of a personal moral intuition.
It's true what Nietzsche calls slave morality obviously exists. But he was reacting to a specific type of person that was predominant in his time (and possibly ours). And reacting to his own struggle trying to reconcile his Christian-coded modesty with his huge individuality and passionate nature. It surely doesn't mean every peaceful saint or sage that advocates non-violence is doing it out of sickness.
This was really great. I think you’d enjoy Sri Aurobindos Secret of the Veda— if you haven’t read it already. He was a seer as well as a philologist, and brings that wisdom into sketching out the connections between Vedic ritual, deities, and symbols to subtle processes of the body.
Hey, great article; have you considered tracking how many calories you can burn without gaining weight, or how much heat you produce, as a local version of the civilisational energy consumption metric?
Yes, a human's individual body heat production does contribute to entropy maximization but pretty minutely as compared to one's potential contributions by other less direct means. It's just about measuring the opportunity cost, but generally exercise doesn't negate one's ability to contribute to the entropy maximization by intellectual means—it often even accelerates it by improving mental well-being. So yeah it's definitely a pretty based e/acc & ved/acc objective function, as long as you don't overindex on it and forget the opportunity cost.
Here is a line from Nick Lane's book called "Power, sex, suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life": "Gram per gram, even when sitting comfortably, you are
converting 10 000 times more energy than the sun every second".
It seems to me that it's not just energy consumption/heat dissipation/entropy generation, but how concentrated that energy consumption is (in both time and space) that leads to everything good in life e.g. intelligent and empathetic organisms, as opposed to a relatively 'simple' object like the Sun. Meaning that burning huge amounts of fuel may not be as progressive as improving the metabolism of a human, in terms of energy consumption per unit time and space. Mortality is lowest at age 12, and per unit mass, 12 year olds consume far more energy than older humans.
Let me know what you think.
I also think you're wrong about ahimsa "glorifying the weak". Buddhism is peak ahimsa, and yet if you look at the scriptures, they extolled virility, strength, beauty, and prowess in all actions (see Bull of a Man by John Powers). The ideal of ahimsa is more the peaceful warrior archetype. One has strength, skill, ability, etc, yet chooses not to harm out of a personal moral intuition.
It's true what Nietzsche calls slave morality obviously exists. But he was reacting to a specific type of person that was predominant in his time (and possibly ours). And reacting to his own struggle trying to reconcile his Christian-coded modesty with his huge individuality and passionate nature. It surely doesn't mean every peaceful saint or sage that advocates non-violence is doing it out of sickness.
This was really great. I think you’d enjoy Sri Aurobindos Secret of the Veda— if you haven’t read it already. He was a seer as well as a philologist, and brings that wisdom into sketching out the connections between Vedic ritual, deities, and symbols to subtle processes of the body.