Biological scalability is the ability to support a larger, denser, and/or wealthier population in a given ecosystem.
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East Asia was probably the biggest early innovator biological scalability: pottery to protect stored food from vermin; alcoholic beverages (made from wild plants) and tea to avoid the need to drink village-polluted water. https://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/?page_id=247 …https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/why-europeans-drank-beer-and-asians-drank-tea/ …
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The same East Asian regions that innovated in biological scalability prior to agriculture also were the first to domesticate dogs. Dogs likely served as intruder alarms for early villages, making them more secure: an increase in social scalability.
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Life itself underwent revolutions that increased its scale. One of the earliest was when it evolved the ability to break the triply-bonded N2 to create the single-N-containing molecules needed to make all amino acids, and thus all proteins. https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2010/10/elements-evolution-and-nitrogen-crisis.html …
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@NickSzabo4 Did the horse serve a similar function? By increasing the availability of communication between distant villages, social scalability is increased... -
Yes, social scalability in the form of extent of the market and thus the division of labor (ht Adam Smith). Also biological scalability insofar as the resulting bigger ag markets improved ag division of labor thus ag productivity.
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Thanks. I’m assuming that increased diversity of foodstuffs (through trade and contact) as a result of the domesticated horse was also an increase in biological scalability, better diet-ability to withstand crop failures-crop rotation...
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nightsoil is also more "biologically scalable" than spraying crops with chemicals.
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Probably not. Nightsoil spreads disease.
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Chemicals spread disease but it is harder to measure the deleterious effects. It also doesnt take much to properly compost nightsoil and avoid "disease"
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Do you fancy yourself an agranariast nice? Any resources for me thanks
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Nick*
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I'm going to write a blogpost on "intelligence scalability" - taking a preexisting concept and giving it a new name.
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and probably provided an additional benefit- garbage disposal!
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