meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

7 Meta Questions About Our Global Metabolism | Frankly #59

The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Science, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences

4.8552 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Recorded April 4 2024

 

Description

 

Based on this week's podcast episode with Geoffrey West, which covered how biological scaling applies to human economies, this week's Frankly is a reflection on what this might mean for the future of our societies. Throughout history and up to today, there are scaling patterns driving our social and infrastructural metabolism - potentially shedding light on some long debated questions about the limits of our ability to design our societies. Do we as humans have the agency to create different paths towards less resource consumption, or are we trapped within a previously hidden law of nature? Will the resource and waste limitations of our biosphere force us to live differently, regardless of our choices? More hopefully, can understanding we have a metabolism change our metabolism, and steer futures away from the current default?

 

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qb-9CMM6Ac

 

For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/59-7-meta-questions-about-our-global-metabolism

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Greetings. Hello, everyone. I'm just back from a trip. Frank and other dogs very happy to see me.

0:09.0

I was in a Bioners conference, found many new speakers for the podcast in the future. I wanted to quickly give my thoughts on the Jeffrey West podcast, which aired yesterday

0:24.1

on metabolism and the hidden laws of nature.

0:28.0

I hope everyone can watch that before they watch this, frankly, because I would like to

0:33.6

offer a brief summary of what Jeffrey said and also outlines seven key questions

0:41.5

that emanate for me from thinking about humans and societal metabolism. So real briefly,

0:51.5

Jeffrey outlined that Clybers law, which is that animals and ecosystems have their

1:01.0

energy use or their metabolism scale to the three-quarter power of their size, and that this

1:08.7

also applies to humans as individual animals, and that this also applies to humans as individual animals.

1:13.6

And that this three quarters is called a sublinear scaling because we get more efficient

1:21.6

as we get larger.

1:22.6

Like an elephant doesn't use 10,000 times the energy of something it's 10,000 times larger than,

1:30.0

but something less, approximately three quarters power. So we also discussed that when humans

1:40.0

meet each other and live in villages and towns and cities and countries, there is a suprilinear

1:47.1

scaling. The exponent is above one on the products and the innovation and the technology and

1:54.8

things like crime and patents and things like that. So the products of our social interaction, which is probably engendered by status and dopamine

2:10.1

and drive and incentives are something above one.

2:14.7

But what ends up happening is if you look at the total human, Frank, you want to get

2:20.3

down, if you look at the total human global economy, it also follows Cliber's law. And the GDP,

2:30.0

the energy use scales to the GDP to the three quarter power, which is freaking amazing that

2:38.0

our global economy is growing and the energy use is around the three quarter power, which

2:46.2

actually is demonstrably true.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nate Hagens, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nate Hagens and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.