Carl Linnaeus was a Swede who lived from 1707 to 1778. He publishes his system of naming in the Systema Naturae in the Philosophia Botanico in 1751, and the Species Plantarum. So, he was born inside the era of the Enlightenment. The enlightenment brought us Adam Smith, who came out with his great work The Wealth of Nations in 1776, three months before the American Declaration of Independence.
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Saturday, July 15, 2023
Un plan para Argentina [A Plan for Argentina]
Soy un norteamericano atraído por la maravillosa música y danza del tango.
Después de bailar tango durante cuatro o cinco años, me sumergí por primera vez
en la cultura argentina en 1997 durante dos semanas. Decidí hacerlo porque
Buenos Aires era cálida cuando Chicago estaba ridículamente fría, y quería
aprender todo lo posible sobre su cultura y, más allá de eso, algo sobre su
política. La política nos hace a todos un poco ridículos.
Economía de Argentina. ¿Qué se
puede hacer? Hagamos un inventario. El país tiene una población bastante
educada. Es un buen destino para los viajeros. Las pampas producen grandes
cantidades de granos, especialmente soja.
China se convirtió en una
potencia porque los empresarios estadounidenses vieron que podían utilizar la
mano de obra barata china para producir bienes para el mercado consumidor
estadounidense. Si tienes alguna duda al respecto, la economía china pasó de
300 mil millones a 18 billones de dólares, y fue el mercado consumidor
estadounidense lo que marcó la diferencia. Parece que Argentina no puede
fabricar ningún producto de calidad y bajo costo que sea muy atractivo para el
mercado consumidor estadounidense. Pero estoy dispuesto a que me corrijan al
respecto. Por un tiempo, pensé que podría tener una oportunidad en la minería
de litio, pero Estados Unidos podría resolver ese problema por sí mismo. Sin
embargo, Argentina está recibiendo a muchos ucranianos que escapan de la
violencia y la guerra, muchos de ellos embarazadas. Es posible que sean
personas inteligentes y quieran comenzar nuevos negocios. ¡Ayudémoslos!
Préstales dinero. Estados Unidos se ha vuelto casi imparable debido a todas las
personas brillantes que han emigrado allí. Estados Unidos tiene las mejores
instituciones educativas y la economía más vibrante. No es tan complicado. El
poder cerebral y la motivación que han llegado a Estados Unidos son asombrosos.
Pensemos en ellos: Nikola Tesla, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, John
Audubon, John Muir, innumerables bioquímicos.
Un destino turístico
Me parece que Argentina podría
tener éxito como destino turístico. Hay varias cosas que pueden jugar a favor
de Argentina. Buenos Aires, el nombre en sí suena exótico. Suena más interesante
que Nueva York o Chicago.
Argentina tiene muchas cosas
que atraerían a los viajeros. Mendoza es una región vinícola similar al Valle
de Napa. Hay excelentes oportunidades para cazar y pescar en la Patagonia.
Esquiar en el Cerro Catedral en Bariloche. Observar los glaciares en la
Patagonia, las Cataratas del Iguazú. Hay mucho que ver y hacer.
Buenos Aires tiene una ventaja
reputacional sobre Río de Janeiro. Me dijeron en Europa que la playa en Río es
segura, pero a solo dos cuadras de la playa puede ser peligroso. Y una
bailarina de tango brasileña que conocí en Buenos Aires, originaria de San
Pablo, me dijo que la asaltaron las dos veces que fue a Río y que no tiene
deseos de volver allí, por más hermoso que sea.
Argentina tiene un aeropuerto
maravilloso, moderno y listo para los negocios. Me encanta. Pero ¿quién es
Ezeiza? ¿Por qué no tomar una lección de Río de Janeiro, cuyo aeropuerto se
llama Tom Jobim, cuya música es maravillosa? Aunque su música no sea mejor que
la de Carlos Di Sarli.
Aeropuerto ✔
Los turistas necesitan sentirse
seguros
Buenos Aires cuenta con
policías en las calles. Las personas se sienten seguras. Los turistas se
sienten seguros. Mi siguiente idea sería ubicar policías que hablen inglés
donde estarán los turistas en Recoleta y Palermo. Eso incentivará a la policía
a aprender inglés. ¿Y dónde estarán los turistas? Mi idea es crear una
"zona de inglés", que sería popular entre los turistas. Y esa área,
más o menos, sería Recoleta y Palermo. Es un área bastante grande. La idea
detrás de esto es que ya en esas áreas, donde se encuentran las tiendas de
lujo, hay muchos empleados que hablan inglés. Muchos han estudiado inglés en la
escuela y quieren usarlo. Muchas veces me he encontrado con baristas en
Starbucks que convierten mi solicitud de "descafeinado" en
"decaf". "Decaf, sí, tenemos decaf". Bueno, solían tener
decaf. Starbucks ya no vende decaf en Argentina.
La importancia del inglés para
un destino turístico
Un alemán y un agricultor de
Argentina se conocieron en La Biela, y yo estaba cerca. ¿Hablaban en español?
No. ¿Hablaban en alemán? No. Hablaban en el idioma común, el inglés. Así que
esto es clave para mi plan para Argentina.
Inglés, inglés, inglés. Incluso
si Estados Unidos (me refiero a los Estados Unidos, porque todo el hemisferio
es América) no fuera la economía más grande del planeta, la presencia del
inglés sería difícil de reemplazar (aunque no imposible, después de todo, el
antiguo lenguaje universal, la lengua franca, era el francés).
Pero la omnipresencia del
inglés será difícil de desplazar. La importancia del inglés la enfatizaré una y
otra vez. Es tan importante que el latín, por ejemplo, nunca ha desaparecido.
Se transformó en español, francés, italiano y en inglés; fue impactado por una
ola de latín en los años 600 con la expansión de la Iglesia Católica y luego,
después de que los normandos conquistaran Inglaterra en 1066, a través de la
versión transformada del latín llamada francés. El latín nunca ha desaparecido
y ha infectado al inglés, donde el 55% de las palabras son de origen latino. Y
los cognados latinos ayudan a facilitar el aprendizaje del inglés para los
hablantes de español.
Aprender un idioma es difícil
(a menos que seas joven). Permíteme señalar las formas en que el inglés es más
fácil que algunos idiomas.
Echemos un vistazo a la
conjugación de un verbo regular como "hablar":
hablo - I speak
hablas - you speak
hablamos - we speak
hablan - they speak
habla - he speaks
Te aseguro que si dices "he speak" en lugar de "he speaks", todos te entenderán. En las conjugaciones de verbos regulares, hablar español requiere cinco veces más trabajo que hablar inglés. Cuando era niño, me dijeron que el español era el idioma más fácil de aprender, pero ahora que soy adulto y estoy aprendiendo español, todos mis tutores dicen que el inglés es más fácil.
Pero la carga mucho mayor del
español es el tema del género. Los hablantes de inglés no tienen que
preocuparse por el género - "el" o "la", es simplemente
"the". Esto representa una gran carga de memoria para cualquier
persona que no sea joven. Y es una reliquia de una época anterior en la que tal
vez tenían algún significado, pero no hay ninguna razón para que una computadora
sea femenina. Así como algunos de los deletreos en inglés son arcaicos. En mi
correspondencia personal, a menudo escribo "thru" en lugar de
"through".
El inglés tiene un considerable
impulso. Todas las aerolíneas utilizan el inglés, la mayoría de los lenguajes
de programación están basados en el inglés, todos los artículos científicos se
publican en inglés, la mayoría de las series y películas de televisión son en
inglés, el comercio se realiza principalmente en inglés. Y cuanto mejor puedas
hablar inglés estadounidense del Medio Oeste, que con las películas y programas
de noticias se ha convertido en el inglés estándar en Estados Unidos, más
probabilidades tendrás de ser un centro para el telemercadeo en el extranjero.
Filipinas se ha convertido en el centro de llamadas preferido para empresas
estadounidenses porque su inglés suena más cercano al inglés estadounidense
estándar del Medio Oeste. Los centros de llamadas en la India han sido menos
enfatizados.
En mi plan para Argentina como
destino turístico, el inglés es fundamental. Debería introducirse en el
currículo para estudiantes desde muy temprana edad y continuar a lo largo de su
educación. Por supuesto, debería haber cursos de idioma y literatura en inglés,
pero tal vez una de las materias principales, como ciencias, también se debería
enseñar en inglés. Esto reforzaría el inglés enseñado en los cursos de
conversación e literatura. Además, la mayoría de la ciencia se realiza en
inglés de todos modos, al igual que la medida se está moviendo inevitablemente
hacia el sistema métrico, aunque Estados Unidos está atrasado en este tema.
Los hablantes nativos nunca
perderán su idioma nativo
No creo que tengamos que
preocuparnos por la pérdida del español, ya que la gente conserva su lengua
materna. Aunque el 92% de los filipinos hablan inglés y lo hablan bastante
bien, cuando están entre ellos, vuelven al tagalo. El verdadero trabajo es
llevar a la población a un nivel lo más alto posible de inglés, para atraer a
los turistas que el país necesita. Queremos que se sientan cómodos y que
recomienden Argentina a sus amigos. La idea es hacer de Buenos Aires y
Argentina el destino principal para viajeros de todo el planeta.
Crear un Instituto de Idiomas
en la Universidad de Buenos Aires
En consonancia con esta idea,
creo que la Universidad de Buenos Aires debería establecer un departamento o
instituto de idiomas para concentrarse en idiomas de todo tipo. Me gustaría
incluir los lenguajes de programación en ese departamento. Sería deseable, por
ejemplo, contar con algunos hablantes de chino y japonés. Para el turismo.
Deben ser capacitados. Si estás haciendo esto, ¿por qué no tener como objetivo
ser el mejor lugar del mundo para aprender idiomas? A largo plazo, el chino
tendrá problemas para convertirse en un idioma universal. Es difícil de
aprender. Recuerdo que una vez, una mujer de Hong Kong que trabajaba para mí
estaba escribiendo una carta a su casa (esto fue hace mucho tiempo cuando la
gente todavía escribía cartas). En su carta veía caracteres chinos, letras en
inglés, más caracteres chinos, más inglés. Yo estaba desconcertado y le
pregunté por qué esta mezcla. Ella dijo que había estado fuera de Hong Kong
durante diez años y que se le habían olvidado algunos caracteres chinos, por lo
que volvía al inglés. Le pregunté si sus padres hablaban inglés y ella
respondió que, por supuesto, vivían en Hong Kong, que era cosmopolita y que la
mayoría de la gente hablaba inglés, no como un lugar insular como Chicago,
donde la gente solo conoce un idioma. Entendí.
Curiosamente, hay más personas
estudiando y hablando inglés en China que personas en los Estados Unidos.
Por supuesto, el gobierno debe
reconocer la importancia de este plan y no oponerse a él. Creo que tendría
sentido ser pro occidente. El mejor experto en geopolítica que he encontrado
definió el Occidente como un grupo de países que creían en una democracia
autocorrectora, mercados libres, prensa libre, libertad de expresión, propiedad
privada. Los países que incluyó en esta definición fueron Estados Unidos y
Canadá, todos los estados de la Unión Europea y, en el este, Japón, Corea del
Sur, Taiwán y Filipinas. Argentina quiere ser parte de los países que creen en
estos derechos.
Entonces, es absurdo ser
antiestadounidense, es mejor ser proestadounidense, pero eso no significa que
tengas que sufrir por ello. Pero utiliza un enfoque suave. Si China y Rusia
ofrecen vacunas a precios más bajos, debes usarlas si Estados Unidos no ofrece
tales precios. Pero como país turístico, debes ser en su mayoría apolítico.
Quieres dar la bienvenida a todos.
Argentina ya cuenta con
atención médica y educación. El truco está en mantenerlos.
Argentina puede enorgullecerse de encontrarse
entre las mejores naciones al proporcionar atención médica y educación
gratuita. A pesar de todas sus virtudes, Estados Unidos no puede resolver este
problema. Los estadounidenses terminan con médicos que deberían ser hombres de
negocios y hospitales que son grandes empresas con fines de lucro. Y en cuanto
a la educación, los estudiantes, jóvenes e ignorantes, asumen más deudas de las
que pueden permitirse. La educación que reciben no les proporciona trabajos
para pagar esta enorme deuda. Entonces, Argentina tiene buenos valores, pero su
economía está hecha un desastre. Y aquí está el problema. Si la economía de
Argentina no mejora mucho más, sus programas sociales estarán en peligro. El
país ha tenido dictadores en el pasado y necesita una buena economía para
mantener estos programas sociales saludables. He leído más de una vez que
cuando se agote el petróleo del Mar del Norte, el Reino Unido perderá su
querido NHS (Servicio Nacional de Salud). Así que, ves mi punto.
Volviendo al turismo y al inglés. Piensa en Europa, donde la mayoría de las personas hablan algo que no es inglés como su idioma principal. Aquí están los porcentajes que hablan inglés como segundo idioma. Esto es lo que ChatGPT me dijo:
Países:
Bajos: 90% Noruega: 90% Dinamarca: 86% Suecia: 86% Bélgica: 70% Finlandia: 63% Suiza: 61% Alemania: 56% Grecia: 51% Francia: 39% Italia: 34% Portugal: 32% España: 27%
Argentina:
10% a 20%.
¿Dónde crees que la gente querrá viajar? Digamos que eres japonés y solo hablas otro idioma, que es el inglés. ¿A dónde irías? Probablemente no a Argentina, y por eso estoy abogando por la promoción de una "Zona de Inglés". Probablemente esta persona japonesa viajará a casi cualquier lugar de Europa.
Cuanto más al norte, mejor estarás. ¿Qué tal los Estados Unidos y Canadá? Yo vivo en Oak Park, y es un destino para algunos viajeros porque es el lugar de nacimiento de Ernest Hemingway y donde el arquitecto Frank Lloyd Wright vivió y diseñó muchas casas. He visto regularmente a japoneses en Oak Park. Aman a Frank Lloyd Wright.
Es imposible hacer que una población tan grande como la de Argentina sea bilingüe, pero ese es el objetivo. Es imposible porque muchas personas ya son demasiado mayores para aprender un segundo idioma. También es imposible porque siempre habrá algunas personas en la parte inferior de la curva de coeficiente intelectual que nunca podrán aprenderlo.
Es absurdo insistir en que todas las películas en inglés sean dobladas. ¿Cómo ayuda eso a crear una población completamente familiarizada con el inglés? Probablemente, las películas deberían tener subtítulos. El doblaje sería la estrategia de un régimen dictatorial que quiere mantener a la gente ignorante y mirando hacia adentro. Netflix y Amazon Prime a menudo ofrecen estas alternativas. Debido a que estoy envejeciendo y mi audición no es lo que era, prefiero subtítulos en todas las películas en inglés, español, o cualquier otro idioma.
Un punto de partida para el gobierno sería hacer que todos los carteles públicos estén en español e inglés. Recuerda, queremos que nuestros visitantes se sientan cómodos. Los argentinos deben verse a sí mismos como una nación de anfitriones.
Argentina puede considerarse entre las mejores naciones al proporcionar atención médica y educación gratuita. Por todas sus virtudes, Estados Unidos no puede resolver este problema. Los estadounidenses terminan teniendo médicos que deberían ser hombres de negocios y hospitales que son grandes empresas con fines de lucro. Y en cuanto a la educación, los estudiantes jóvenes e ignorantes asumen más deudas de las que pueden pagar. La educación que reciben no les permite obtener empleos para pagar esa enorme deuda. Así que Argentina está en buena forma en cuanto a sus valores, pero su economía es un desastre. Y aquí está el problema. Si la economía de Argentina no mejora mucho más, sus programas sociales estarán en pel???
Te aseguro que si dices "he speak" en lugar de "he speaks",
todos te entenderán. En las conjugaciones de verbos regulares, hablar español
requiere cinco veces más trabajo que hablar inglés. Cuando era niño, me dijeron
que el español era el idioma más fácil de aprender, pero ahora que soy adulto y
estoy aprendiendo español, todos mis tutores dicen que el inglés es más fácil.
Pero
la carga mucho mayor del español es el tema del género. Los hablantes de inglés
no tienen que preocuparse por el género - "el" o "la", es
simplemente "the". Esto representa una gran carga de memoria para
cualquier persona que no sea joven. Y es una reliquia de una época anterior en
la que tal vez tenían algún significado, pero no hay ninguna razón para que una
computadora sea femenina. Así como algunos de los deletreos en inglés son
arcaicos. En mi correspondencia personal, a menudo escribo "thru" en
lugar de "through".
El
inglés tiene un considerable impulso. Todas las aerolíneas utilizan el inglés,
la mayoría de los lenguajes de programación están basados en el inglés, todos
los artículos científicos se publican en inglés, la mayoría de las series y
películas de televisión son en inglés, el comercio se realiza principalmente en
inglés. Y cuanto mejor puedas hablar inglés estadounidense del Medio Oeste, que
con las películas y programas de noticias se ha convertido en el inglés
estándar en Estados Unidos, más probabilidades tendrás de ser un centro para el
telemercadeo en el extranjero. Filipinas se ha convertido en el centro de
llamadas preferido para empresas estadounidenses porque su inglés suena más
cercano al inglés estadounidense estándar del Medio Oeste. Los centros de
llamadas en la India han sido menos enfatizados.
En
mi plan para Argentina como destino turístico, el inglés es fundamental.
Debería introducirse en el currículo para estudiantes desde muy temprana edad y
continuar a lo largo de su educación. Por supuesto, debería haber cursos de
idioma y literatura en inglés, pero tal vez una de las materias principales,
como ciencias, también se debería enseñar en inglés. Esto reforzaría el inglés
enseñado en los cursos de conversación e literatura. Además, la mayoría de la
ciencia se realiza en inglés de todos modos, al igual que la medida se está
moviendo inevitablemente hacia el sistema métrico, aunque Estados Unidos está
atrasado en este tema.
Los
hablantes nativos nunca perderán su idioma nativo
No
creo que tengamos que preocuparnos por la pérdida del español, ya que la gente
conserva su lengua materna. Aunque el 92% de los filipinos hablan inglés y lo hablan
bastante bien, cuando están entre ellos, vuelven al tagalo. El verdadero
trabajo es llevar a la población a un nivel lo más alto posible de inglés, para
atraer a los turistas que el país necesita. Queremos que se sientan cómodos y
que recomienden Argentina a sus amigos. La idea es hacer de Buenos Aires y
Argentina el destino principal para viajeros de todo el planeta.
Crear
un Instituto de Idiomas en la Universidad de Buenos Aires
En
consonancia con esta idea, creo que la Universidad de Buenos Aires debería
establecer un departamento o instituto de idiomas para concentrarse en idiomas
de todo tipo. Me gustaría incluir los lenguajes de programación en ese
departamento. Sería deseable, por ejemplo, contar con algunos hablantes de
chino y japonés. Para el turismo. Deben ser capacitados. Si estás haciendo
esto, ¿por qué no tener como objetivo ser el mejor lugar del mundo para
aprender idiomas? A largo plazo, el chino tendrá problemas para convertirse en
un idioma universal. Es difícil de aprender. Recuerdo que una vez, una mujer de
Hong Kong que trabajaba para mí estaba escribiendo una carta a su casa (esto
fue hace mucho tiempo cuando la gente todavía escribía cartas). En su carta
veía caracteres chinos, letras en inglés, más caracteres chinos, más inglés. Yo
estaba desconcertado y le pregunté por qué esta mezcla. Ella dijo que había
estado fuera de Hong Kong durante diez años y que se le habían olvidado algunos
caracteres chinos, por lo que volvía al inglés. Le pregunté si sus padres
hablaban inglés y ella respondió que, por supuesto, vivían en Hong Kong, que
era cosmopolita y que la mayoría de la gente hablaba inglés, no como un lugar
insular como Chicago, donde la gente solo conoce un idioma. Entendí.
Curiosamente,
hay más personas estudiando y hablando inglés en China que personas en los
Estados Unidos.
Por
supuesto, el gobierno debe reconocer la importancia de este plan y no oponerse
a él. Creo que tendría sentido ser pro occidente. El mejor experto en
geopolítica que he encontrado definió el Occidente como un grupo de países que
creían en una democracia autocorrectora, mercados libres, prensa libre,
libertad de expresión, propiedad privada. Los países que incluyó en esta
definición fueron Estados Unidos y Canadá, todos los estados de la Unión
Europea y, en el este, Japón, Corea del Sur, Taiwán y Filipinas. Argentina
quiere ser parte de los países que creen en estos derechos.
Entonces,
es absurdo ser antiestadounidense, es mejor ser proestadounidense, pero eso no
significa que tengas que sufrir por ello. Pero utiliza un enfoque suave. Si
China y Rusia ofrecen vacunas a precios más bajos, debes usarlas si Estados
Unidos no ofrece tales precios. Pero como país turístico, debes ser en su
mayoría apolítico. Quieres dar la bienvenida a todos.
Argentina
ya cuenta con atención médica y educación. El truco está en mantenerlos.
Argentina puede considerarse entre las mejores naciones al
proporcionar atención médica y educación gratuita. Por todas sus virtudes, Estados
Unidos no puede resolver este problema. Los estadounidenses terminan teniendo
médicos que deberían ser hombres de negocios y hospitales que son grandes
empresas con fines de lucro. Y en cuanto a la educación, los estudiantes
jóvenes e ignorantes asumen más deudas de las que pueden pagar. La educación
que reciben no les permite obtener empleos para pagar esa enorme deuda. Así que
Argentina está en buena forma en cuanto a sus valores, pero su economía es un
desastre. Y aquí está el problema. Si la economía de Argentina no mejora mucho
más, sus programas sociales estarán en pel riesgo. El país ha visto dictaduras
antes y necesita una buena economía para mantener estos programas sociales
saludables. He leído más de una vez que cuando se agote el petróleo del Mar del
Norte, el Reino Unido perderá su querido NHS (Servicio Nacional de Salud). Así
que entiendes mi punto.
Atracciones
turísticas
Las
atracciones turísticas también deben estar en su lugar. Parece que trabajaron
durante mucho tiempo en El Molino, y deberían terminar el trabajo. Y terminar
el trabajo en Confitería Ideal. Mientras tanto, hay otros lugares famosos y
antiguos, como Las Violetas y Los Angelitos.
Como
bailarín de tango, me rompió el corazón perder Salon Canning, una de mis
milongas favoritas. También lamenté la pérdida de Niño Bien. Un buen número de
viajeros provienen de bailarines de tango. Quizás el gobierno pueda ayudar,
pero tal vez el tango sea una de esas cosas que fluirán y refluirán con el
interés. Después de todo, solo hay unas pocas salas de baile en Chicago que se
dedican a la música de las Big Bands y al Swing. Siempre me sorprende que esta
música que surgió del Jazz, la popular música Swing con trompetas y trombones,
estaba ocurriendo en América del Norte, mientras que esta otra música, basada
en el bandoneón y el violín, estaba ocurriendo en Sudamérica. Mi impresión es
que los norteamericanos no estaban al tanto del tango en ese entonces, Buenos
Aires estaba lejos de América del Norte. Pero de alguna manera creo que los
argentinos estaban algo conscientes del Swing.
¿Dónde
está el museo en Buenos Aires para estos gigantescos dinosaurios que se han
encontrado en la Patagonia? ¿Hubo un depredador más grande que el Tyrannosaurus
Rex? Sí, y fue descubierto en Argentina, se llama Giganotosaurus. ¿Y el
dinosaurio más grande jamás encontrado? Argentinosaurus. ¿Por qué veo la
réplica y algunos huesos reales de esta gran criatura en el Museo Field de
Chicago? De hecho, tomaría la excelente exposición de evolución del Museo Field
como modelo, llamaría a esta sala argentina "El Museo del Desarrollo
Evolutivo".
Publicidad
Publicidad.
Muchas personas tienen listas de deseos. No has visto el mundo hasta que has
visto Argentina. No has completado tu lista de vinos hasta que vas a Mendoza.
No has visto cataratas hasta que has visto las Cataratas del Iguazú. No has
cazado y pescado hasta que vas a la Patagonia.
Pero
el gobierno debe hacer su tarea: terminar El Molino, terminar Confitería Ideal.
Comenzar un programa para cambiar los letreros a español e inglés. Y necesita
contratar a los mejores publicistas del mundo. Incluso el Estado de Illinois
hace más publicidad que Argentina. Debemos recordarle a Lionel Messi, mientras
está en su casa en Miami, que Argentina está cambiando y mejorando, y que
debería volver a visitar a sus familiares.
Espero
que esta continuación te resulte útil y siga ayudándote con tus ideas y planes
para promover el turismo y el aprendizaje del idioma inglés en Argentina. Si
tienes más detalles o alguna otra pregunta, no dudes en compartirlos. ¡Buena
suerte en tu proyecto!
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In English:
A Plan for Argentina
Argentina economy. What can be done? Let's take an inventory. The country has a pretty well-educated populace. It is a good destination for travelers. The pampas does produce large amounts of grain, especially soybeans.
China became a power because American entrepreneurs saw that they could use cheap Chinese labor to produce goods for the American consumer market. If you have any question about this, the Chinese economy went from $300 billion to $18 trillion, and it was the American consumer market that made the difference. It doesn't seem that Argentina can make any product of quality and low cost that would be a big seller to the American consumer market. But I stand ready to be corrected about this. For a while I thought it might have a chance in Lithium mining, but America may solve that problem themselves. But Argentina is getting many Ukrainians escaping the violence and war, many of them pregnant. They may very well be clever people, and want to start new businesses. Help them! Loan them money. The U.S. has become almost unstoppable because of all the brilliant people who have migrated to the U.S. America has the best educational institutions, and it has the most vibrant economy. It's not that complicated. The brainpower and motivation that have come to America is astounding. Think of them. Nicholas Tesla, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, John Audobon, John Muir, endless biochemists.
A Tourist Destination
It seems to me Argentina might do best as a tourist destination. There are a number of things that can work in Argentina's favor. Buenos Aires, the name itself sounds exotic. It sounds more interesting than New York or Chicago.
Argentina has many things that travelers would be interested in. Mendoza is a wine region similar to Napa Valley. There is great hunting and fishing in Patagonia. Skiing, Catedral in Bariloche. Sight-seeing, the glaciers in Patagonia, Iguazu falls. There is a lot to see and do.
Buenos Aires as a bit of a reputational advantage over Rio de Janeiro. I was told in Europe that the beach in Rio is safe, but even two blocks off the beach it can be dangerous. And a Brazilian tango dancer I met in BA from San Paulo said she was mugged the two times she went to Rio, and has no desire to go there, no matter how beautiful it is.
Argentina has a wonderful airport. Modern and ready for business. I love it. But who is Ezeiza? Why not take a lesson from Rio de Janeiro, whose airport is named Tom Jobim, whose music is wonderful. But his music is not better than Carlos DiSarli.
Airport? ✓
Tourists Need to Feel Safe
Buenos Aires has beat cops, police on the streets. People feel safe. Tourists feel safe. My next idea would be to place English-speaking police where the tourists will be in Recoleta and Palermo. That will incentivize police to learn English. And where will the tourists be? My idea is to create an English zone, which would be popular with tourists. And that area, roughly, would be Recoleta and Palermo. So, this is quite a large area. The idea behind this is that already in these areas, where the upscale stores are, are many English-speaking clerks. Many have studied English in school and they want to use their English. Many times I have run into baristas at Starbucks who will convert my request for descafeinado into decaf. "Decaf, yes, we have decaf." Well, they used to have decaf. Starbucks does not sell decaf in Argentina anymore.
The Importance of English for a Tourist Destination
A German and a farmer from Argentina met at La Biela, and I was sitting nearby. Did they speak in Spanish? No. Did they speak in German? No. They spoke in the common language of English. So this would be key to my plan for Argentina.
English, English, English. Even if America (I mean the United States, because the whole hemisphere is America), was not the greatest economy on the planet, the inroads English has made will be hard to replace (but not impossible, because, after all, the old universal language, the lingua franca, was French).
But the ubiquitousness of English will be hard to set aside. The importance of English I will come back to again and again. It is just that important. Latin, for example, has never gone away. It morphed into Spanish, French, Italian, and into English - it was hit by a wave of Latin in the 600's with the expansion of the Catholic Church, and then later, after the Normans conquered England in 1066 through the morphed version of Latin called French. Latin has never gone away and it has infected English where 55% of words are of Latin origin. And Latin cognates help to ease the way for Spanish speakers to learn English.
Learning a language is hard stuff (unless you are young). Let me outline the ways in which English is easier than some languages.
Let's look at the conjugation for a regular verb like "to speak:"
hablo - I speak
hablas - you speak
hablamos - we speak
hablan - they speak
habla - he speaks
I assure you that if you say he speak instead of he speaks, everyone will understand you. In conjugations of regular verbs, it is five times the work to speak Spanish as English. As a kid I was told that Spanish was the easiest language to learn, but as an adult learning Spanish, all of my tutors say English is easier.
But the much larger burden of Spanish is the gender thing. English speakers don't have to bother themselves with gender - el, la. It is all "the." This is a tremendous memory burden for anyone not young. And it is a relic of an earlier time when maybe they had some meaning, but there is no reason a computer is feminine. Just like some of the English spellings are archaic. In my own correspondence, I often write "thru" instead of "through."
There is considerable momentum for English. The airlines all use English, most computer languages are English-based, all scientific papers make their way into English, most TV series and movies are in English, commerce is mostly conducted in English. And the better you can speak Midwestern English, which with movies and news programs has become standard English in America, the more likely you will be to be a center for offshore telemarketing. The Phillipines have become the telecenter of choice for American based companies because their English sounds closer to standard, Midwestern English. Indian telecenters have been de-emphasized.
In my plan for Argentina as a tourist destination, English is central. It should enter the curriculum for students as young as can be, and that should continue throughout their schooling. There should be English language and literature courses, of course, but perhaps one of the core subjects, like science, should be taught in English. This will reinforce the English taught in the English conversation and literature courses. Moreover, most science makes its way into English anyway, just as measurement is inevitably moving to metric, although America is retarded on this subject.
Native speakers will never lose their native language
I don't think that we have to worry about the loss of Spanish, people retain their mother language. Even though 92% of Filipinos speak English, and speak it pretty well, when they are among themselves, they revert to Tagalog. The real job is to get the population to as high a level of English as possible - for the tourists that the country needs to attract. You want to make them comfortable, and to recommend Argentina to their friends. The idea is to make Buenos Aires and Argentina the premiere destination for travelers all over the planet.
Start a Language Institute at the University of Buenos Aires
In concert with this idea, I think the University of Buenos Aires should begin a language department or institute to concentrate in languages of all kinds. I would like to include computer languages in that department. It would, for example, be desirable to have some Chinese speakers, Japanese speakers. For tourism. They have to be trained. As long as you are doing this, why not have a goal of being the best place in the world to learn languages? Over the longer term, Chinese will have trouble becoming a universal language. It is difficult to learn. I had a lady from Hong Kong working for me, and I remember one day passing her desk, and she was writing a letter home (so this was quite a while ago when people still wrote letters). And in her letter I would see Chinese characters, English letters, more Chinese characters, more English. I was mystified, and asked her, why this mix? She said she had been away from Hong Kong for ten years, and she had forgotten some of the Chinese characters, so then she would revert to English. I said, so your parents speak English? And she said, of course, they lived in Hong Kong which was cosmopolitan where most people spoke English, not like an insular place like Chicago, where people only know one language. Okay, I get it.
Interestingly, there are more people studying and speaking English in China than there are people in the U.S.
Of course, the government needs to see the importance of such a scheme, and not to fight it. I think it would make sense to go pro-West. The best scholar of geopolitics I have come across defined the West as a group of states that believed in a self-correcting democracy, free markets, free press, free speech, private property ownership. And the nations he included in this definition were the U.S. and Canada, all the states of the European Union, and in the east - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Argentina wants to be part of countries who believe in these rights.
So, it is silly to anti-American, be pro-American, but that does not mean you have to suffer for it. But use a soft touch. If the Chinese and Russians offer lower cost vaccines, you have to use them, if America is not offering such prices. But as a tourist nation, you want to be mostly apolitical. You want to welcome everyone.
Argentina already has healthcare and education. The trick is to keep them.
Argentina can count itself among the best nations by providing free healthcare and education. For all of its virtues, the United States cannot solve this problem. Americans end up with doctors who should be businessmen, and hospitals that are grand for-profit enterprises. And as far as education, students, young and ignorant, take on more debt than they can possibly afford. The education they get does not afford them the jobs to pay back this huge debt. So, Argentina is in good shape in its values, but its economy is a shambles. And here is the problem. If Argentina's economy does not turn very much more positive, their social programs will be in jeopardy. The country has seen dictators before, and it needs a good economy to keep these social programs healthy. I have read more than once that when the North Sea oil gives out, the U.K. will lose its treasured NHS (National Health Service). So, you see my point.
Back to tourism and English. Think about Europe where most people speak something other than English as their primary language. Here are the percentages that speak English as a second language. This is what ChatGPT told me:
- Netherlands: 90%
- Norway: 90%
- Denmark: 86%
- Sweden: 86%
- Belgium: 70%
- Finland: 63%
- Switzerland: 61%
- Germany: 56%
- Greece: 51%
- France: 39%
- Italy: 34%
- Portugal: 32%
- Spain: 27%
Argentina: 10% to 20%.
Where do you think people will want to travel? Say you are Japanese and you only speak one other language and that is English. Where will you go? Probably not Argentina, and this is why I am advocating the advertising of an "English Zone." Probably this Japanese person will travel almost anywhere in Europe. The further north, the better off you will be. How about the U.S. and Canada? I live in Oak Park, and that is a destination for some travelers because it is the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway, and where architect Frank Lloyd Wright lived and designed many homes. I have regularly seen Japanese in Oak Park. They love Frank Lloyd Wright.
It is impossible to make a population as large as Argentina's bilingual, but that's the aim. It is impossible because so many people are already too old to become bilingual. It is an impossible because there always be a few people at the bottom of the IQ bell curve, and they will never be able to learn it.
It is silly to insist that all English movies be dubbed. How does that help create a thoroughly English-acquainted populace? Probably, movies should be subtitled. Dubbing would be the strategy of a dictatorial regime that wants to keep the people stupid, and inward looking. Netflix and Amazon Prime often offer these alternatives. Because I am getting older, and my hearing isn't what it once was, I prefer subtitles on all movies English, Spanish, whatever.
A starting point for the government would be to make all public signs in Spanish and English. Remember, we want to make our visitors comfortable. Argentines need to think of themselves as a nation of inn-keepers.
Infrastructure
There two things that I think really improved the infrastructure of Buenos Aires. The crosstown H line has been needed since I started visiting BA, because the subway lines are easy to use, and also the special bus lanes that have been created from the massive number of car lanes. Maps of the bus lines need to drawn up so they are easy to use. People will figure them out with clear maps. The internet has really helped with that. Most bus lines stop near Plaza Italia. Most bus lines stop near Juramente and Virrey. And so on. I used the subway from my very first trip to BA, it took me five visits before I used the buses. Subways had clear maps. There was a complicated guide to the buses, and it was just too arcane.
Tourist Attractions
And the tourist attractions need to be need in place. It seems like they worked forever on El Molino, and they should finish the work. And finish the work on Confiteria Ideal. Meanwhile, there are other famous old locations - Las Violetas, Los Angelitos.
As a tango dancer, I was broken-hearted that we lost Salon Canning, one of my favorite milongas. And also I mourned the loss of Ninyo Bien. A fair amount of travel comes from tango dancers. Perhaps the government can help, but maybe tango is one of those things that will just ebb and flow with interest. After all, there are only a few ballrooms in Chicago that cater to the Big Band music and Swing anymore. It always amazes me that this thing that came out of Jazz, the popular Swing music with trumpets and trombones was going on in North America, while this other thing, based on the bandoneon and violin was going on in South America. My impression is that the North Americans are not aware of tango back then, Buenos Aires was a long distance from South America. But somehow I think the Argentines were somewhat aware of Swing.
Where is the museum in Buenos Aires for these gigantic dinosaurs that have been found in Patagonia? There was a predator larger than Tyrannosaurus Rex? Yes, and it was discoverd in Argentina, and it's called Giganotosaurus. And the largest dinosaur ever found was called what? Argentinosaurus. Why is it that I see the replica and some actual bones of this great creature at the Field Museum in Chicago? In fact, I would take the excellent evolution exhibit at the Field Museum as a model, I would call this Argentine hall The Museum of Evolutionary Development.
Advertising
Advertising. Lots of people have bucket lists. You haven't seen the world until you've seen Argentina. You haven't done your wine bucket list until you go to Mendoza. You haven't seen waterfalls until you have seen Iguazu Falls. You haven't hunted and fished until you go to Patagonia.
But the government must do its homework - finish El Moline, finish Confiteria Ideal. Begin a program of changing signs to Spanish and English. And it needs to hire the best advertisers in the world. Even the State of Illinois advertises more than Argentina. We need to remind Lionel Messi, as he sits at in his home in Miami, that Argentina is changing and improving, and he should go back and visit his relatives.
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
How Did Humans Become So Intelligent?
1. Human females selected males who could find the necessities of life. They allowed sexual access to men who could solve problems - hunt for food, find shelter, find water.
2. They mated with these problem solvers, and had better problem-solving children. The women saved the good genes through their children.
3. The Homo species stood up. Walking upright can save up to 70% of the calories of a chimp who walks on all four limbs. This energy saving permitted:
4. Brains start to increase in size with Homo Habilis, about 2.3 millions years ago.
5. Modern man begins to make stone tools. A stone tool can break bones left behind by other predators, and humans can eat the bone marrow of a carcass, which is rich in calories, which also supports larger brains.
6. Hunting for meat helps feed the increasing need for calories. In modern man, the brain requires 25% of all calories consumed.
6. Modern man solves the hunting problem by becoming mid-day endurance hunters. Hunting at midday, when the heat was intense meant that predators of man were not interested in hunting. Think of the lion under the tree avoiding the mid-day sun. Modern man has a tremendous advantage over its four-legged prey. The cross section of sunlight man suffers is less than half that of an antelope, who's back takes all the heat. Man is standing upright, his back doesn't take all of that heat. If man can keep the antelope walking, it will overheat until the point where it can no longer move because sunstroke has drained all of his energy, and the hunter can insert his spear at his leisure. We are lucky to have a present day example of this style of hunt in video:
Bushman video of endurance hunting.
7. Man looses hair, which would heat them up unnecessarily given their niche they have found of hunting niche at mid-day. Apparently, man develops two kinds of lice. Lice on the head is different from lice near the genitals. The lice near the genitals is of the type found in gorillas. Perhaps they used a gorilla nest for sleeping? These two kinds of lice can tell us when the hair loss started via the genetic clock.
8. Man perspires, which helps to cool him off.
9. All mammals have a 6-layer neocortex, but human neurons have significantly fewer ion channels than other mammalian neurons. The lower density of ion channels may contribute to more efficient brain function in humans.
10. Neural plasticity allows for modern man to become expert by directing more neurons to a particular piece of knowledge.
11. Culture. Information passed from one generation to the next. Stone tool making, voice memory (rhyme), writing, papyrus, parchment, paper, printing - the internet.
Monday, March 13, 2023
What Happened to the Prime Directive?
Possible Titles
Eight Billion and One
The Effect of Human Life on the Planet in the Last 10,000 Years
Are Humans an Invasive Species
Climate Problem Caused by Too Many Humans
Summary: In a period of 10,000 years humans have grown from a probable worldwide population of 5 million to a now staggering 8 billion. All other Homo species (Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo Neanderthal) had only small populations which did not effect the population of other animals. The disappearance by 10,000 years ago of 86% of the megafauna species (animals over 50 kg) in Australia, 73% of the megafauna species in North America, and 79% in South America appears to coincide with the emergence of modern man from Africa. A sampling of the population of species remaining finds huge populations of five animals only. Modern man at 8 billion, and its favorite meals - cows, pigs, sheep, and water buffalo. Farming has led to this change in populations, which has likely led to the largest biomass of animal life in earth's history, with consequences to climate (which are widely debated).
The Prime Directive
In the TV series Star Trek Star Fleet had something called the Prime Directive, and that was not to interfere with a growing culture. This is referring to "intelligent" beings, so this would not apply to mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, and so on, because they are not "intelligent" though elephants appear to recognize themselves in a mirror, which is taken to be a signature of intelligence. Humans since they appeared 200,000 years ago, have always observed their own wants, which I would call the Prime Meat Directive.
Climate requires a serious re-think, but where to start?
Climate at this moment in time appears to be a human population issue. It is not being caused by our distance from the sun, or from too much volcanic action. We're talking about habitat destruction, species extinction, rainforest deforestation, bleaching of corals, carbon dioxide heating up the planet - these are things caused by humans, and there's chatter about a sixth extinction that we ourselves are causing. And most of the people are nonchalant about it. Some day that may happen.
I guess beavers can cause a little deforestation, and elephants can take out lots of acacia trees which they love to eat, and certain insects can devastate whole populations of trees, but no animals create the forest devastation like humans for their own habitat. Actually, that would be an argument for the lumber industry. Send in the lumbermen to take down dry forests that will go to fire. That would be sensible thing to do, rather than see the lumber converted by fire to carbon dioxide.
Here's example of climate change caused by forces beyond human control. Every 20,000 years the Sahara becomes a green place, and then in another 20,000 years it becomes a desert again. That is caused by a change in the tilt of earth with respect to the sun, which moves the monsoons up to North Africa, and then down to the Congo. This is not what we are talking about. Those things are unavoidable.
How did we get here? Is modern man an invasive species?
It appears that the Homo species saw a dramatic DNA change about 200,000 years ago. Even Neanderthal, which may have had even a larger brain, did not seem to have the capabilities of modern man, so it appears something changed. Neanderthal used the same tools for hundreds of thousands of years. Modern man used those tools for a while, but they appear to have been more innovative. He will look for other ways of doing things. Much more sophisticated tools.
If we are living through a sixth extinction, and if it is being caused by humans, then this event began almost as soon as modern humans started exiting Africa 90,000 to 60,000 years ago because by 50,000 to 45,000 years ago 86% of the megafauna (animals over 50 kg) species disappeared from Australia. Poof, gone. Just like that.
So, if it were left to me, and I were to set a date for the Anthropocene era, I would use a date of 45,000 BCE for the beginning of its era because that is a date that can be set that appears to be a date where the effect of homo sapiens, the wipe out of large animals in Australia, can pretty much be a associated with them. There is no climate event or other predator that can be associated with it. I know a good lawyer would argue there isn't enough prima facie evidence, but it looks pretty damning. And I'm not sending anyone to prison, I'm setting up an intellectual date.
Consider this: from 13,000 to 8,000 years ago, 73% of the megafauna species in North America disappeared, and around this same time 79% of the megafauna species disappeared in South America. The Americas were a surprising cornucopia of animal life. One animal lost was the short-faced bear, perhaps the largest land mammal predator ever, something like half-again as large as our current largest bears, Kodiak or polar bears, perhaps twice as large. Other species wiped out in North America are still around (on other continents), such as the camel (which originated in North America, but went south to become the llama, and west to Asia), and the horse (it had to be re-introduced from Europe). Other amazing animals include the giant sloth, the mammoth, mastodon, smilodon (sabretooth tiger), two species of cheetah, the American lion (larger than the African lion), and the giant beaver. By between 13,000 and 8,000 years ago they all disappeared. Poof, gone, again! I came across these numbers originally in Peter Ward's book, The End of Evolution, but they are not a secret. It is pretty well known that for very large animals, it was essentially a 100% wipe out - mammoth, mastodon, great sloth.
Perhaps there is an optimal size for a predator. Man, wolf, dire wolf, hyena - they're 50 kg to 80 kg range. And these are all pack animals. Perhaps a single large animal is no match for a pack.
Meanwhile, in Europe mammalian species also started to disappear. Mammoth, mastodon, the Irish elk with its giant antlers, and many others, again 13,000 to 8,000 years ago. But among the species that disappeared one of the first to go was one of our own, our distant cousin, Neanderthal, approximately 40,000 years ago.
I imagine these early humans were like Ridley Scott's Alien. Maybe with limited language, maybe not. But very clever. They know all the animal tricks out there. They know that animals will go to a pool of water for a drink, and that's a good place to hunt a meal. They're preternaturally clever. We know from footprints in the White Sands of New Mexico that humans trailed the tracks of a Great Sloth 23,000 years ago. Maybe they know which animals leave which tracks. Maybe they don't have the Alien's extra teeth and tail, but they can fashion deadly stone tools and can use fire. [The actual animals which did the killing in North and South America were the paleo Indians, who are directly related to the present American Indians, who came over the Bering Straits land bridge. And who were decimated by European humans.]
If all of these species disappeared at the hand of modern man, it only took a handful. 10,000 years ago it is estimated that perhaps there were only 5 million humans or so on the planet. If you ever wondered what would happen when modern man no longer had to fear that some predator could kill them, you have your answer. In the short time of 10,000 years, with some good weather, and the advance of farming, we are now at 8 billion. Just what you might expect. Spectacular grow
But there are problems with this wipeout scenario:
It feels like there were too few humans to take out all of these many animals. That might be partially solved in North and South America by the presence of packs of dire wolves. But this does not solve Australia. Though it is thought that packs of humans (I say again, troops, or communities, of humans) burned a lot of vegetation in desert areas of Australia to corral some of these lumbering species, and this vegetation was so fragile, that it was never replaced or will be replaced. Thus began habitat loss.
And then there is the problem that has to be solved with respect to the dire wolf itself: why did it disappear? It has been suggested they were so successful they ran out of prey. That feels hard to believe.
Climate in the form of ice ages has been suggested as a cause for species loss, but the problem with that is so many of these animals made it through ice ages before, why should this past ice age be so special as to eliminate so many species?
But there are explanations. Nano-diamonds have been discovered, and it has been suggested that a Tunguska type asteroid exploded near a huge natural dam in Canada at the end of the ice age, unleashing a tidal wave of water, killing untold numbers of animals. The problem with this explanation is how does that explain the disappearance of megafauna in South America, and the much earlier wipe out in Australia?
It has been suggested a wave of fresh water came down to the Great Lakes and traveled east to the St. Lawrence instead of down the Mississippi. And that blast of fresh water overwhelmed the heavy salt water that goes down to the deep water conveyor, and that conveyor stopped, and weather changed dramatically, and that did a lot of the killing.
Work in biology has shown that large species are not often predated on, which calls into question why a large species like the mammoth and the mastodon disappeared at all. And especially, why would the short-faced bear, perhaps the largest mammal predator ever, disappear? Who would take it on?
These and other problems need to be solved, but at the end of it, it cannot be denied that with its clever stone tools, lighter spears, atlatls, the possible invention of bows and arrows, the use of fire, at the end of it sits the clever human, he'll mop up. But moreover, anything he feels is a challenge, he is prepared to take it on. And this is the essence of the Overkill Hypothesis of Paul Martin.
All of this should be sufficient proof of man's success as an invasive species. His success is astonishing, devastating. No other animal, so far as we know, has ever been this successful. He is a hunter without compare.
Meanwhile, back in Africa where man is not an invasive species...
The other part of the proof that man is an invasive species is okay, he invaded, but what happened where he developed, what happened in his native land? Humans evolved in Africa, but surprise, back there we still have a cornucopia of animals - hippopotamus, rhinoceros, lion, leopard, hyena, giraffe, camel, ostrich, elephant. Apparently, these animals understood to stay away from the bipedal ape. But on the other continents, they were completely unaware that this small, bipedal, apparently harmless animal, is really a killer.
Of course, even in Africa things have changed with the advent of farming. Wild Africa is disappearing. Farmers will not put up with pests, even if they are elephant-sized. So, all of these species are in trouble. Perhaps sample populations can be maintained in zoos. And at the very least you can save the DNA. You don't have to worry because they don't have cultures. There is no such thing as elephant culture, or is there?
Humans appear to have given absolutely no consideration to any other species (except possibly dogs who accompanied them on hunting expeditions) until now when we are suddenly worried about whether other species will disappear. And we also wonder a little bit about how the whole ecosystem works. We're a little worried about runaway green house gases, but probably not enough. We are so little concerned with other species, that it should be no big surprise that Stephen Hawking warned against alerting extra terrestrial species of our existence. If an invasive species treated us with anything like the disregard we have treated whole continents, we will be goners.
It does not appear, even now, that man understands his role in the ecosystem, because he does not appear to understand the ecosystem. Seemingly intelligent people like Elon Musk are still talking about increasing the population. But just in case, Musk wants to have a colony on Mars. He does not appear to have a clue about ecosystems. Even 5 million is a lot of humans. Because that small population of 5 million may have destroyed roughly 75% of large species on three continents.
But predators do have an important role, and not always sinister, and I believe that includes humans. We begin to understand a little about the ecosystem through the work of Robert T. Paine, who wrote about the concept of keystone species beginning in 1969. Keystone species are species that have an inordinate effect in a particular ecosystem. Some of the keystone species are organizers, like the beaver, grazers like the Wildebeest, pollinators like bees (now experiencing bee collapse syndrome). Predators have a role, too. African spotted dogs are a keystone species. Without a predator like this, the ruminants multiply like crazy with antelope and deer and kudu are everywhere devastating grasslands and forests. Without the starfish, mussel populations go out of control, and kelp forests disappear. Without wolves, elk will eat everything in sight, and you can see exactly what it didn't eat - everything above its head. New trees can't grow, they are eaten early on.
It seems that our economy, which is totally based on the growth of the human population, may need to be revamped completely. The question becomes something like: how much of the rain forest and the coral will need to be destroyed before humans come to understand their place in the ecosystem?
Perhaps it will take an act of imagination. If we imagine all other animals as slave populations, we may develop more compassion for them. That maybe consciousness is not a binary proposition, but a spectrum thing. Maybe other species do not have our capacity for introspection, but they are certainly conscious to the extent that they are aware of their limbs, their surroundings and feel pain.
Higher monetary values need to be placed somehow on population decline. And the thing is, you can tap unlimited amounts of energy with fusion, but how does that help solve our problems with human carbon-based ecology? Then you have deep thinkers like the investment adviser, Jeremy Grantham, who is wont to explain that there is an absolute limit to life - the amount of phosphate. Phosphate is critical to A-T-P which is the molecule that provides the cellular energy which powers the whole apparatus of life. There are large but not infinite deposits in Morocco.
But maybe we don't have to worry about the carbon-based world as we transition intelligence to our AI creations, which are not so much based on the carbon world, so far, but on silicon (which sits below carbon on the chemical chart).
You sense humans are the problem the instant you hear the words - habitat destruction. Other animals are capable of habitat destruction. Elephants can take to acacia trees to the extent of making them disappear. But they don't compare to a real estate developer and a plot of land. Giant parks like Yellowstone or Gorongosa, large as they are, are apparently not large enough for animals like elephants and giraffes and rhinoceros. Yellowstone needs to be linked to other parks to create a long park extending into Canada to give the Grizzly bear sufficient territory.
I have no idea of what might be the proper balance on the planet. It will always be in flux. We are only just learning about the importance of keystone species. The facts seem to suggest that even a few million people with stone tools are devastating enough. So, while modern man is a keystone species, it has moved right past that into a controlling species. Has this human species obtained enough wisdom so that even a hundred million, or a billion, can live in tune with the rest of the planet? How much of the land can safely be organized into farms?
Humans and Their Favorite Meals
Consider what the chart below might look like if humans had not advanced beyond Homo Erectus, an animal which did not have an outsized population. It is easy to see that humans have created large populations of animals which are favorite meal selections. We see large populations for cows, sheep, and pigs. (Not included are 33 billion chickens, which are not mammals.) What would the population of horses and donkeys and mules be if horses had not been used by humans for travel and donkeys used for farm work? Not to mention the 1.5 billion pets (dogs - 900 million, cats - 600 million). And what if you are not a favorite meal? Man hunted whales nearly to extinction for its oil for lighting, and buffalo (30 million before Europeans, now 400 thousand) were sometimes killed just to keep them off train tracks, and dolphins (and fish) have adversely been effected by the devastating human bottom trawling fishing techniques.
Without humans in the picture, there would be more elephants and whales and wolves. Think of 1800 when the human population was only 1 billion. In America, there was a vast wild west, mostly occupied by Indians and buffalo. The balance of species would be different all up and down this chart. And as economists would say, there would be multiplier effects: how would larger wolf populations affect deer and elk? It is hard to imagine a species not effected by human hunting, farming and fishing. Perhaps zoological archaeologists may be able to give us the numbers of species a million years ago when no Homo species was a threat. Perhaps they can be aided by climate archaeologists (think ice cores), who can tell us what the atmosphere looked like. We don't know. I sense that the population of modern humans is way out of whack with what the planet can cope with. But humans have done remarkable things - we've been able to plug a leak in the ozone, though it may take a lot more to stop the temperature of the planet to keep from increasing untenable levels, removing carbon dioxide. I sense that we have only begun to see how the climate change may affect things. During the Permian, the burning of coal in the Siberian traps increased the temperature by 5 degrees, but that was enough to warm up the oceans, and that freed up methane frozen at the bottom of oceans and in the permafrost added another 5 degrees, and this didn't take as long. 10 degrees was enough to eliminate 95% of life (of all kinds).
We have to remember that the planet is ever changing. To start out, it was a burning cinder. About 717 million years ago the planet was entirely encased in ice, and that continued for 5 million years. This I dredge up to remind us that the planet is always in flux, it is not static like Mars, for example. So far, anyway. So, I am not clear what our parameters should be.
If a super-predator with language was not multiplying like bacteria, there would be no discussion of biodiversity or habitat destruction. There would be no language to discuss it with, for one thing, and there would be no huge human population and its very large entourage to cause those things.
There is something odd about the chart below of mammal populations. Usually, predator populations are some smaller subset of the prey population, yet human population is almost twice the rest of all these other animal populations.
Humans have achieved great feats of intellectual prowess. Newton and gravity. Maxwell and electricity. Einstein and gravity again. Quantum Mechanics. Darwin's insights. Bach's music. Shakespeare's insights and language. Countless remarkable achievements. I am in awe of them. But it seems we are still learning our place in the scheme of things. We know now, for example, that the Sun does not orbit the Earth, a human-centric view of things. And maybe that is a good model for what I am talking about - man's place in the ecosystem. The Earth is a much smaller body moving around a much, much larger body, the Sun. It may not be possible to figure out exactly what man's role should be, but I think he can do a lot better than he is doing now.
Human birth may still be a miracle, because getting that huge head through the birth canal is very difficult, and enormously painful, but these days you can hardly claim that it is a rare thing. Not with 8 billion births. Not when human population is something like twice all of the other mammals on the chart.
What is the worst we are looking at in the way of climate consequences? I suspect it is something more like Venus than Mars, which has a runaway green house gas problem. Our planet is concerned with greenhouse gases, but this concern is tempered by politics. Some things are hard to prove in a system as large as the earth, and impossible to prove to a politician with a following
All I did was do Google searches on animals I thought would be over 50 kg., so I may have missed a few.
|
|
|
Mammal Populations |
|||
|
Megafauna (50
kg+) |
|||
|
Humans 2022 CE |
8,000,000,000 |
Favorite favorite |
|
|
Cows |
1,500,000,000 |
Favorite food |
|
|
Sheep |
1,000,000,000 |
Favorite food |
|
|
Goats |
1,000,000,000 |
Favorite food |
|
|
Pigs |
677,000,000 |
Favorite food |
|
|
Water Buffalo |
208,000,000 |
Favorite food |
|
|
Horses |
60,000,000 |
Useful for transport |
|
|
Kangaroos |
48,000,000 |
||
|
Donkeys |
40,000,000 |
Useful for farming |
|
|
Deer |
30,000,000 |
||
|
Antelope |
28,900,000 |
||
|
Mules |
10,000,000 |
Useful for farming |
|
|
Dolphins |
8,000,000 |
||
|
Kudu |
5,790,000 |
||
|
Caribou |
5,000,000 |
||
|
Humans 8000 BCE |
5,000,000 |
||
|
Monkeys |
1,500,000 |
||
|
Whales |
1,500,000 |
Oil useful for lighting |
|
|
Wildebeest |
1,500,000 |
||
|
Bears |
1,221,000 |
||
|
Elk |
1,000,000 |
||
|
Moose |
830,000 |
||
|
Zebras |
750,000 |
||
|
Elephants |
450,000 |
Ivory |
|
|
Bison |
440,000 |
Favorite food |
|
|
Leopards |
250,000 |
||
|
Chimpanzees |
218,000 |
||
|
Wolves |
225,000 |
Pest |
|
|
Hippopotamus |
122,500 |
Favorite sport kill |
|
|
Gorillas |
101,500 |
||
|
Giraffe |
69,000 |
||
|
Orangutans |
57,500 |
||
|
Hyenas |
37,000 |
||
|
Rhinoceros |
27,000 |
Ivory |
|
|
Lions |
20,000 |
Favorite sport kill |
|
|
Cheetahs |
6,750 |
||
|
Tigers |
4,500 |
Favorite sport kill |
|
|
4,636,019,750 |
Total Non-human Mammals |
||
|
12,385,000,000 |
Top 6, including humans |
||
|
12,636,019,750 |
Total Mammal Megafauna 50 kg/110 lbs |
||
|
251,019,750 |
Leftover after the Top 6 |
||
Birthrates of humans are slowing around the planet, but not enough to stop another billion people by 2037. But it will take a couple extra years to get there. Here is some astonishing data about human population growth.
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It is estimated that after the Lake Toba eruption of around 74,000 years ago, which was a massive supervolcano that may have caused a volcanic winter of 6 to 10 years, and a concomitant reduction of all animals in Africa, and that there may have been as few as 500 to 5,000 breeding pairs of humans.
So between 74,000 BCE and 8,000 BCE, it appears the population of humans increased dramatically from nearly zero to nearly 5 million people. And from 8,000 BCE to now, population increased dramatically again to 8 billion.
I do feel that base 10 numbers do not give a satisfactory sense of the actual effect of these numbers:
1 = H
10 = HHHHH
HHHHH
100 = HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHH
Base 10 minimizes the effect of the populations of animals, and especially humans. To summarize, the human population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion in roughly 200 years.
What was the population of proboscidians (elephants) like 10,000 years ago?
So, I wondered what would the population of other animals would be like without the influence of the human population, say 10,000 years ago, when the first glimmerings of farming were in the offing. So, I thought about elephants. How many proboscideans would there have been? The first estimate I found from World Wildlife was that in 1930 there were roughly 10 million elephants in Africa, though to be fair I also saw a figure of 5 million for 1900, but going back to 1500, it seems there might have been more than 25 million elephants in Africa. Just using that figure, one might assume that there were perhaps 25 million proboscideans (elephants, mammoths, mastodons) in Europe, and another 25 million in each of Asia, and North and South America, for a total number of perhaps 125 million proboscideans on the planet, and giving them a serious position on the list above. And if there were only 5 million humans as has been suggested, then that would mean there were 25 elephants for every human.
"Corn is as high as a elephant's eye" is the line from Oklahoma, but corn is a grass, and elephants eat grasses. So maybe there was more in his words than Oscar Hammerstein ever imagined there could be in his song - Oh What a Beautiful Morning! There were certainly mammoths and mastodons roaming around Oklahoma consuming corn. Remember, while we associate elephants with Africa, the largest proboscidean from 10,000 years ago was the Columbian mammoth which was 13 to 15 feet high (4 to 4.5 meters tall weighing in at 18,000 to 22,000 pounds (8,000 to 10,000 kg) was found exclusively in North America.
It could be that all along the ultimate predator of elephant life has been modern man. His stone points have been found at the site of mammoth kills, and interestingly, mammoths would have births every five years or so, but work has shown that births were occurring every four years, which suggests that they were seeing a lot of stress.
Farming has caused an unexceeded biomass of animal life
There is a good chance there has never been such a large mammal population, indeed, such a large biomass of animal life on this planet. I am suggesting that this vast population of humans, cows, goats, sheep and pigs could never be supported without organizing the land to be more productive, that is, farming. And, as far as we know, land has never been organized on this planet until 10,000 years ago. What animal farm today does not include livestock feed? And such a large population by itself, of course, adds to the carbon dioxide and methane gases. But that pales compared to the cleverness that brought about the industrial revolution, the burning of wood and coal for steam engines, which has added dramatically to those gases. The carbon footprint of all of the humans is roughly 56 billion tonnes of CO2. In the 1970's there was the book Future Shock, and there was ZPG, Zero Population Growth, back when the population was half of what it is today. I am not proposing anything like the Third Reich's final solution, but every less human means a reduced carbon dioxide problem. It's not rocket science. If there are less humans, there will be less dogs and cats, less chickens, less cows, sheep, goats, pigs, water buffalo. All of this will reduce the challenge to the environment and climate.
Whenever I bring this up, people ask me, how many people can the planet handle without a problem, and I don't have a good answer for that. Elon Musk doesn't see the problem, nor does the Wall Street Journal, which recently offered an opinion reminding us that there are plenty of resources and good replacements if shortages develop. Well, okay, we're in a democracy, every cockamamie idea can be uttered and considered. I would reduce the population to before the industrial revolution began, say when the population was one billion in 1800. In 1800 there were still vast undeveloped spaces like the American west. Like Africa when Stanley was looking for Livingstone. Like the Indonesia and Brazil before the clear-cutting. Even this, appears to be a nearly impossible task. Maybe it is impossible, and like the bread mold we will be condemned to eating every last piece of the bread. There is no stopping and thinking: maybe we should leave some of the bread to eat later.
And you say this is a horrible metaphor, because we can fix shortages per the WSJ, and Elon will say there are other planets to inhabit. Endless real estate, and if we occupy all the real estate in this solar system, there are others. We can become like the aliens of Independence Day. Going from solar system to solar system and occupying the habitable planets.
But really there are limits with respect to Earth. We are approaching these limits. Climate is telling us this. Maybe we can find some exotic, high tech solution for reducing carbon dioxide as we did for ozone leak. I hope so, but methane is melting all over the place, and that is an even worse greenhouse gas.
The Day the Earth Stood Still. Maybe we need an AI creature like Gort to prevent our propensity to overpopulate.
But here's the thing: if we have already reached the tipping point, we may not be aware of it. If we have poisoned the planet with chemicals and drugs that never existed 200 years ago, if we wipe out a species of plant or animal we require, if we have already set in motion a runaway heat cycle, how would we know? I don't think science is far enough advanced to tell us. Ask yourself, how many planets have scientists experimented with huge populations of humans, cows, goats, sheep and pigs? My impression is that we don't want to get near the tipping point, although the sexual impulse in humans is as strong as it is in other animals, and obviously, it is a force to be reckoned with.
I know that at least this is one cockamamie idea that deserves consideration that I have not seen addressed anywhere in the media, and that is the lack of any conversation of the subject of human inability to control its own population.
Useful videos and links:
Presented by Sean B. Carroll, featuring the work of Robert T. Paine, and others. Learn about the importance of keystone species.
Scientific American
Useful books:
Martin, Paul S., Twilight of the Mammoths
Martin, Paul S., and Richard G. Klein, Editors - Quaternary Extinctions
Ward, Peter, The End of Evolution - On Mass Extinctions and the Preservation of Biodiversity
The Need for a Pseudonym
Even in a country seen as country of law and order, the U.S. has gaping blind spots. One is the issue of guns. To put things in perspective, it only took one mass killing in Australia to enact gun laws. America regularly has mass killings, and nothing is done. So, apparently the body politic thinks mass shootings are okay.
Another blind spot in a discussion of the effect of humans on the planet would be the absolute conviction by religious groups that all human life is sacred and even a single cell, a zygote, must not be sacrificed, that it is murder, and that sacrifice of that zygote could cause great harm and imprisonment.
Many of these believers are Christians. I wonder how turn-and-present-the-other-cheek Jesus would feel about that. Jesus would not take a single life no matter how many zygotes were murdered. But somehow, his followers are okay with that. Jesus did not take any lives, he gave his life that others might be saved.
These things are crazy. Somehow a single zygote must be saved, but it's okay to lose 50 million people in a world war. I cannot hold these two thoughts in my head.
These people are considered "pro-life" people even though they are happy enough to sacrifice 36 million cows, 129 million hogs, 2.3 million sheep, and 500 million goats each year. So, I guess when they say they are "pro-life" they are really only mean pro-human life. Someone needs to explain that to the thinking people who have wondered about this expression, pro-life.
This article is not about these things, but this explains why I have adopted a pseudonym. There are a lot of people who deny a lot of facts in support of their pro-human life beliefs. They sing Onward Christian Soldiers, and they take up guns, even though I'm not sure that was the meaning of that hymn.
These folks don't believe there is any climate change. There is no bleaching of the coral, or if there is, humans didn't have anything to do with that bleaching. The hurricanes, droughts, flooding, the melting of the permafrost, the melting of the Arctic ice are all natural processes. To be fair, the era of scientific measurement is tiny, 200 years or less. So, there is no real comeback to the sceptics. The problem is, by the time we have that data, it could be game over.
Date of Original Publication: 2023 Mar 13
Date of Update: 2023 May 08
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