Smil
@smil It’s important to realise the perspective Smil takes. It’s from a system that is constrained by energy between the Earth and the sun. We’re not looking at the system of all systems (i.e. the universe). This is a core assumption. Secondly, start with the data. Smil is basicaly delivering data in a more readable way but constructing some model from that is tricky. For instance, you might argue about whether ‘industrialisation’ ever happened but the facts are that energy consumption grew during the 19th century from 5TWH to 12TWH.
@energy assumption of the conservation of energy actually is interesting to explore at the most massive scale as it implies that theres some fixed quantity of energy in the universe (at least in classical physics it does).
Cognitive dissonance
- Inconsistency in world view.
- Evolutionarily advantageous as a way to update world view.
- Subjective experience of error detection.