[ExI] Accelerando, The Spike, war and energy

[jameschoate at austin.rr.com]

Your comment about humans inventing gods as unique is presumptive and invalid. At this point in time we, either individually or as a race, don't know what other species are doing in their heads, regarding gods or other things.

And as to the rest of your thesis, an additional piece of datum,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

---- Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote: 

> I was reading The Spike again recently.  I can't think of anything
> Charles Stross missed that was not covered there.  It really isn't
> dated because most of the content was so far downstream.

> Much worse would be a sharp drop in temperature, something that we
> know has happened and don't know exactly why.
 
> Humans (along with every other animal I know about) have a habit of
> reproducing till they overrun the ability of the environment to feed
> them.
> 
> Unique to humans, they invent gods or haul old ones out of memetic
> storage as a "reason" to kill neighbors.  The process is mechanistic,
> switched on by gene built mental mechanisms that humans are not even
> aware of.  One of the more insightful commentaries on this point is
> dated over 900 years ago:
> 
> . . . the chronicler Robert the Monk has put into the mouth of Urban II:
> 
>     [...] this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the
> seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your
> large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes
> scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder
> one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by
> mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your
> quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and
> controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre;
> wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.
> [...] God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in
> arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your
> sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of
> Heaven.

> Exactly.  When a family is spending half its income on food, a
> doubling of food prices due to higher energy cost means the family
> starves.

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