***pgreco_ is now known as pgreco
<river>"One of the interesting possibilities for the Fermi Paradox is the fact that we've wiped out the readily accessible deposits of iron, coal, oil, etc. A second go at the industrial revolution would be much harder, if we regressed that far" <stikonas_>not sure how much of the paradox is fermi paradox. It might very well be that there is no other life in milky way ***stikonas_ is now known as stikonas
<stikonas>all those estimates for probability of life are very uncertain <muurkha>we've wiped out the readily accessible deposits of fossil fuels and helium <muurkha>iron, by contrast, is more readily accessible than ever, and so is etc. <muurkha>if you want iron, copper, aluminum, tungsten, glass, chromium, nickel, lead, gold, silver, etc., most of what's ever been mined is either still in final products or in landfills, conveniently concentrated and in many cases even purified and reduced in a way that will last for millennia <muurkha>there are a few exceptions where the mined product has been spread around in an inconveniently diffuse form: the lead that went into leaded gasoline, for example, and phosphate <muurkha>but coal and oil, yep, those definitely fueled the industrial revolution, and they're gone now <fossy>idk, feels like throughout a lot of civilization, humans have been at least in part teetering on the brink of collapse <fossy>more so now than ever, it seems <muurkha>well, the issue is that now there's a global civilization <muurkha>a bit like the situation before the Bronze Age Collapse, but now it's really global <Hagfish>i wonder what percentage of the global population noticed the Bronze Age Collapse, and how much it set communities back in terms of (some equivalent to) GDP <Hagfish>if 90% of people before and after the collapse were farmers, then the collapse might not have been felt very acutely