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breuleux • today at 2:16 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> if we disrupt the system, things will eventually go back to that equilibrium. And if we don't see it, we just needed to wait longer.

Even if that's true, quite a bit rides on how long "longer" is. If "longer" is a million years, that's not exactly good news.


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317070 • today at 4:30 PM

But if you apply the logic that led to the conclusion of "natural equilibrium", truth of the matter is that we wouldn't be able to say if the waiting will be over before or after the heat death of the universe.

Even the "million years" is an overoptimistic view, and probably reflects the idea that the ecosystem was in some kind of messianic state of equilibrium before man arrived, which happened roughly in the last million years. But even that is broadly a fiction. Ecology is not a system, and it is not stable even without human intervention.

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