Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms (2013)

Re:Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by... by nradov on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @12:55PM (#35716723)

If you believe that then I think you haven't spent much time out in nature. Some wild species populations boom and crash in chaotic ways even in areas that haven't been impacted much by humans. Nature is far from stable on any time scale longer than a year.

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Re:Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by... by HPsquared on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @03:03PM (#35718449)

Doesn't it all average out over time though? I suppose things like erosion do cause permanent changes but other than that?

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Re:Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by... by lproven on Thursday April 27, 2023 @05:32AM (#35725503)

ISTM like you haven't fully grasped the fractal nature of, well, nature.

At one scale, it's chaos. 1 or 2 scales up or down (in time or in space) it's stable. It's like that all the way up and all the way down.

Oh, and not only are the scale levels not just spacial or temporal but both, but the number of levels is itself non integer.

But the point is that even chaotic systems often display order if you find the right place or perspective to stand and look.

You can't say "it's not stable". Not ever. Rocks aren't stable over aeons. Galaxies aren't. Protons aren't if you wait long enough.

But it is often possible to measure the rates of change and of complexity and say, look, given greater levels of complexity, then lower rates of change will probably hold...

Even given a famine or a plague that's currently devastating one region.

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