About: On the Gaia/Medea debate   Sponge Permalink

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The Gaia hypothesis claims that ecosystems self-regulate and stabilize themselves. The discovery of ecosystem collapses caused simply by instabilities in ecological interaction, and that environmental changes in geological history disproves the idea that nature works to preserve an "optimum state", led to the creation of the Medea hypothesis, in which life destroys itself through maximum reproduction without limits (reference: The Medea hypothesis: When life destroys itself). And yet there is evidence that, although Medean events have happened, they are much rarer than they should be according to Malthusian theory (reference: It can be easily shown that Malthusian theory predicts ecosystem collapse in days at best and hours at worst when fast-breeding microbial (microscopic) life is taken

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  • On the Gaia/Medea debate
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  • The Gaia hypothesis claims that ecosystems self-regulate and stabilize themselves. The discovery of ecosystem collapses caused simply by instabilities in ecological interaction, and that environmental changes in geological history disproves the idea that nature works to preserve an "optimum state", led to the creation of the Medea hypothesis, in which life destroys itself through maximum reproduction without limits (reference: The Medea hypothesis: When life destroys itself). And yet there is evidence that, although Medean events have happened, they are much rarer than they should be according to Malthusian theory (reference: It can be easily shown that Malthusian theory predicts ecosystem collapse in days at best and hours at worst when fast-breeding microbial (microscopic) life is taken
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  • The Gaia hypothesis claims that ecosystems self-regulate and stabilize themselves. The discovery of ecosystem collapses caused simply by instabilities in ecological interaction, and that environmental changes in geological history disproves the idea that nature works to preserve an "optimum state", led to the creation of the Medea hypothesis, in which life destroys itself through maximum reproduction without limits (reference: The Medea hypothesis: When life destroys itself). And yet there is evidence that, although Medean events have happened, they are much rarer than they should be according to Malthusian theory (reference: It can be easily shown that Malthusian theory predicts ecosystem collapse in days at best and hours at worst when fast-breeding microbial (microscopic) life is taken into account, and even restricted to relatively fast-breeding animal life the collapse would come in less than a decade). So obviously there is something non-Medean going on, although it is not infallable. Add ImageThere is also empirical evidence that in most cases, bear males that were supposedly going to kill cubs actually loses interest and goes feeding elsewhere instead. The Gaia hypothesis appears to be supported by simple computer simulations of ecosystems, which stabilize themselves. But when the simulations are made more complex, they start collapsing incessantly and resembling the Medea hypothesis. But real life is so complex, far more so than any of the computer simulations, that theoretically no life whatsoever should be able to survive even a few years of the chaos. For example, predators overkilling their prey and completely exterminating some ecologically important species days before starving to death themselves. This is documented in the case of recently introduced organisms in new places. It have been claimed (by the Gaia hypothesis) that there should be a long-term stabilization, but the complex simulations (which agree with the Medea hypothesis) does not support any such stabilization in any way.
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