Don’t tell me that the second law of thermodynamics explains why time exists. That’s bullshit. The fact that entropy tends to increase is an observation and not an explanation. That law does nothing to explain *why* entropy tends to increase. So using it to try and rationalize why time exists is misguided at best. Sure, the demonstrable changes in entropy can be used to demonstrate that time does exist, but it doesn’t tell you why. If anyone wants to make a solid attempt at demonstrating a proof for why time progresses the way it does, I’m more than willing to listen.

I read a very interesting post recently in a psychology blog about how one improves their social standing.

It was a bit sad, really, how much of this struck me as being “common sense.” Is it really something I take as a given that in order to improve one’s social station in life, one must rely on deception? What does that say about my world view?

But it has some good points. Appear competent and make people think you are invested in them and they will ascribe all manner of irrelevant positive traits to you. So, speak up. Volunteer answers. Be proactive. Cultivate an image of nice-ness. Be a social extrovert and you will go further than your skills qualify you for.

I keep trying to think of something either sarcastically witty, or deeply profound to say. Should post here more often and my grandiose delusions keep leading me to believe everything written here will be paradigm shattering. Maybe I should tone it back a bit.

When you’re all alone, when you don’t think the world is watching, who are you? Are you anyone at all?

I caught an interesting program on History last night, called “Prophets of Doom.” It’s a round table of people who are predicting the collapse of the American Empire. It wasn’t interesting for the reasons I thought it was going to be interesting, though. I thought I’d hear some new theories and some evidence to support those theories. That didn’t happen. Instead, I heard only theories I had already heard before and no new evidence.

Now, this isn’t to say it wasn’t a good, thought-evoking program. The problem here is that I had a very good economist instructor in college who presented these same points to the class as a whole, with deeper evidence than was presented in the program. However, those two audiences are entirely different. You could discuss the statistical evidence in specific detail to the college class and only have a handful of glassy-eyes. The same approach before The Masses would inherently fail; they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

Now, my economics instructor wasn’t a survivalist nutcase. Actually, he was as much a left-wing bleeding-heart nature-loving hippy as you can be and still have a masters degree in Economics. They call it “the dismal science” for a reason, after all. He presented these cases to the class to demonstrate the same point illustrated in the program, though in class he was far more direct about it. The point? Scarcity of resources.

The scenarios that were presented really come down to that. Or, they were discussing a symptom and not a problem. One of the individuals spent quite a bit of time talking about the impending collapse of the credit system on which our lives function (collapse further than it has, that is) though by the end he conceded that his concern would be a symptom of each of the other situations. The discussion on nuclear terrorism was roundly ignored for the agreed upon reason of “really, there isn’t anything any of us are going to be able to do to stop that. It’ll happen or it won’t and no changes to our society will prevent it.” Which is fair. The man who discussed the potential problems from emerging AI was also ignored as the group felt that society was we know it wasn’t going to last the thirty or so years necessary to get to that point. They seemed to be of the opinion that they would love for the Robot Wars to happen; it’d mean they at least staved off disaster to that point.

The big one was water. This was the one in particular that struck me the limited evidence presented, before I acknowledged the differences in audience. Water is a very clear resource that is not expanding in supply though our demand continues to increase. Our population has skyrocketed since the beginning of the 20th Century, though we all learned in elementary school that the water cycle is a closed loop. By its very nature, it is a fixed supply. The majority of this water is in oceans, salinated to the point that we cannot consume it. We exist mostly on groundwater.

Now, here’s where the program and my economics instructor disagreed. The program cried out that we need methods to monitor what is in our groundwater and to work against pollution. While my economics teacher would say these are admirable goals, he also thought it was thinking too small. To him, the problem was the lack of low cost high efficiency desalination systems. We’ve got all the water we need for quite some time, if we can just get that pesky salt out of it.

Regardless of what is done to correct the issue, if we bother to do anything at all, it does bear thought. Do I think that the world will run into water shortages leading to the predicted water wars? No, I don’t. The problem be addressed before it reaches that point, I have no doubt. But eventually, on a long enough time line, if growth continues at this rate then we will end up consuming all of the water supplies available, leaving nothing for new people.

It’s a fun exercise while you’re using your hose to clean off your driveway, or leaving the water running when you don’t really need to, or making sure you have the greenest lawn on the block in the middle of summer. Think about the water cycle. At least then, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re contributing that small little bit to the problem. Maybe you’ll let yourself take credit for specific deaths in the water wars.

“See that kid there? He coulda lived if I took shorter showers. Sucks to me him, but damn that shower was good! Hey kid! You wanna know how good the shower that used your water was?”