Scarcity - A New Theory of Everything

Nice Job. Well thought out and put into words.

S&F for ya OP.

Very nice thread. I see that could be a very possible theroy i would wright a book on that and publish it. never know maybe just maybe your theroy could end being the building blocks to unsolving a very large riddle who knows kinda like how star trek inspired a man to later in life create the MRI machine among many other things. i can say one thing weather its possible or not great thing about the human race is we can still dream and move forward towards a goal like that even if its impossible

reply to post by Xtraeme


Fantastic Post S&F!!!

one other idea to the original post in answering the question of what is the final scarcity that exists after humans are stage 4 and omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. The only scarcity that would remain that I could think of is the scarcity of experience, of having experienced the entire trip a second time. This would be impulse towards "hitting the reset button" and thus now experiencing it all a 2nd time..when you have done that only one scarcity shall remain (i.e. one thing in the universe not yet achieved by this omnipotent race), and that is having experienced the evolution and transcendence now a 3rd time..thus impetus for a reset and another renewal..then a 4th etc, mathematically fulfilling the one missing scarcity for eterntiy in an endless cycle.

reply to post by rufusdrak


Or you sit in chairs all day, staring at the walls and nothing else.

What a horrible fate. No purpose leads to what I can only call living death.

No thanks...

Excellent work OP. Very intriguing ideas. Ive thought about this lightly before, but not with the breadth and depth you have.

Its making me think about how this applies to life, and the scarcity of time that we have. Very deep stuff!

reply to post by ironbutterflyrusted


You do not seem to understand the purpose of philosophy. While it is true that philosophers talk about searching for truth or whatever, the best ones realize that whether philosophers agree depends upon what language they are speaking. Human experience certainly has similarities and our very ability to communicate is the act of expressing these similarities.

There are many people who suffer from the vices you describe, Ironbutterfly, but the best ones realize that there is a very distinct purpose and benefit to doing philosophiy: achieving clarity of thought. We express ourselves to each other, but we also express ourselves to ourselves. The philosopher thinks so that he can understand, not so that he can know. Understanding cannot be communicated. The doing which you describe is the act which immediately follows the thinking.

Global consensus is not an accurate method to judge the worth of philosophy.

Kudos OP, possibly one of the "best" threads I have ever seen in my time on ATS. As an Atheist, you have convinced me of the potential for "god" - not that I believe in one with any divinity, but your argument is strong and sound.

If I could give applause for this I certainly would and it would be the first time I've seen a thread I consider to be worth it.

So at the highest evolutionary point of our consciousness's existence we become omniscient and omnipresent. So reality is like a massive carnival ride which we constantly re-entering upon physical death. If there is a link between the infinite consciousness and one's own body, a person could manifest this consciousness and thus reality. I guess that's what you'd call life.

reply to post by PriamsPride


I quite agree...sorry to appear so brash with a subject that is indeed close to my own heart...I have been lost in metaphysics for a long time.I suppose it has taught me to seek out the most precise questions.

At this moment in time we need to stop thinking so much and trying to articulate our ideas on how to create a system that can take care of every possible eventuality and control it, realizing that we have already adequately covered the answers we need for the job in hand.

Math puts me to sleep

Scarcity theory's defined imperative;

If there is a void, fill it.

If there is an abundance, consume it.


Should be a new Law of Nature.

Great theory...but this has to be more than an idle day-dream now, isn't it ?

Okay..So one thing just comes to my mind- since your grand theory revolves (literally lol) around scarcity, what happens if your last exigency is that of nothingness? You know, it reminds me of Mckenna's novelty-theory...He was an ethnobotanic sociologist and by that I mean stoner. He argued that certain points of time bring about peaks of human innovation and that the intervals in which this events of innovation occur shorten over time, which is a way of mapping the singularity of human development (every 18 months your pc gets crappier by a degree of two to the power of months passed from a reference date divided by 18)
He said that the end of the mayans' calendar's current cycle would coincide with *every* human concept or idea occuring at once..A Singularity event so to say.
However (there's a discussion about this somewhere, a very collaborative and entertaining one) there should be one scarcity left inachieved and I don't know if this has found mention in your theory since I am too ..*limited* to grasp the hole extent of your argument and couldn't remember all of what I have tried to read so far.
I guess the point is- you have your equation which you base on the nature of scarcity as defined by Sartre, right? So you have your two parameters I think it was (exigency and good or whatever) and you map the ratio onto a plane as the sides of a triangle....(Einheitskreis is a funny word in german to describe this)
So your ratio of exigency and good if I'm not mistaken goes around 360 degrees...or otherwise two PI length for the history of the universe and then you explained when humans become omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent alas the very gods they imagined which is another way to say humanity reaches a technological singularity (see novelty theory) in which all natural exigency vanishes and only the psychological motors remain...So you detailed three stages as to how everything might carry on then, but you said I think in the thread about the physical god which you linked to that one state remains inachievable, which is basically the past because it is unalterable but which might also the point of "turning back the clock" to???? So what happens to nothingness? I mean you postulated "scarcity of something nececitates its existence" but how does this account for nothingness or non-existence? Would negating your postulation imply a state of non-existence of everything (the thread I mentioned way back explained this statement to be a metaphysical impossibility) alas nothingness reder itself abundant? I don't know wether that's even logical to say...I should better read Gödel, Escher, Bach again on this one!!! Wait, I haven't!!! Oh Gosh this is just way too much to think about...You do the math please!

But nevertheless....
Your thread is awesome!!! I've read quite a lot about tripping on various psychedelics but this is so truely inspirational, it is far beyond what people would usually be able to "open their minds" to, if you know what I'm saying.

A great as$-kissing kudos to you!

Reality, life, existence, all that we sense...is anti-apathy.

It is a ~push~ beyond the veil of 50%...

To do nothing is the opposite of existence...it is nothingness

To try, to attempt, to fill-the-void (original OP's idea)...is the experiment.

Perpetual motion is nothing more than life maintaining a mathematical balance above 50% in infinitely small balance...above 50%

the problem is overcoming the reality that scarcity is artificial. this forced scarcity allows a small group of powerful men to own and control this planet.

these men are now trying to convince us that water is scarce. theyre privatizing water now just so they can make it scarce. the most abundant resource on the planet and yet farms in california are drying up.

which leads to the other fake scarce resource, food.

and how do they do this ? the monetary system.

the solution, abundance from technology would free us. the world envisioned by Gene Roddenberry had no need for money because technology like replicators gave them abundance.

humans unfortunately cant even imagine a world of abundance and no money. and I dont see the elite pushing to educate us on that fact.

Great thread it shows what alot of people have been thinking but cant quite put into words. this shows pretty much the foundation of everything, and how everything exist and not one thing is absolute right and wrong. the only question is what next, there will always be that thing to overcome whether we become our own star systems- omniscient beings, to a free society, and how can we bring awareness up to the masses to wake up to the "realities" around us.

There seems to be some resemblances to Hegelian philosophy presented here (I apologies if in fact there are no similarities as I did not engage in anything resembling a careful comparison and contrasting between your philosophy and Hegel's; I'm just mentioning that given my weak understanding of Hegel and quick perusal of your essay I thought I recognized a resemblance).

Reading Hegel however never made a whole lot of sense to me as he presented such a strong emphasis on the role of society as a whole in being a part of some sort of inevitable historical progress to a higher synthesis.
I've always preferred and found more sensible the New England Transcendentalist movement (the Concord group) especially Thoreau. Their philosophy would focus more on personal responsibility in advancing the individual spiritually, morally and intellectually and if done by all the individuals of that society then that society would correspondingly advance as well.

I question Hegel's philosophy and possibly yours as maybe committing the naturalistic fallacy; that is confusing the way things are or will be with how things should be or should become. Just because without destroying ourselves we take as a given that we as a society inevitably move towards some omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent destination doesn't necessarily mean that would be a good thing that we should strive towards.

This does bring up the question, however, of is it possible to do a morally wrong act while knowing that it is wrong to do so? If one is omniscient then one is all knowing and if knowledge of morality is included here, then in order to commit a wrong act and be omniscient then one would be doing something knowing that it is morally wrong. Myself I believe that it is impossible to decide to do something that one believes is morally wrong.

However in your post you seem to be arguing that the inevitable progression in knowledge would be primarily in knowledge of how to manipulate the realm of matter and energy, not necessarily knowledge of how matter and energy should be manipulated. While there has been great advances in the knowledge of science and technology in the over 2600 years since the Pre-Socratic philosophers, I have not seen a corresponding advance in the knowledge of what we should do with that science and technology.

Additionally maybe there is the practical obstacle in the form of the suppression of technologies and knowledge necessary to move towards the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent end. After all much of the threads here on ATS are about how various secret societies and government bureaucracies allegedly keep secret very advanced forms of knowledge and technology from the rest of society.

The thing is, we don't live in a world of scarcity, we live in a world of overabundance.

With the wealth that has been developed by the first world, the people living in the first world have as their main problem, over indulgence.

reply to post by QtheQ


Well if you are aware of your own wrong-doing then conscience will make your day...(I guess you CAN comitt "wrong-doing" although you'd have to narrow that down as to what that is and the question is wether you'll feel good with it...Which probably is no, but then there's psychological motors as suppression of memories so you are not aware of your wrong-doing, maybe just like a nazi-officer would execute a dozen Tchechs and not have the empathy to realize even he himself wouldn't want to be at the other end of the gun) But it's a natural exigency so wouldn't it have to be expendable if you truly reach the state of creating Übermensch-like sentiences? Maybe it also turns out there's only one very last option to concider at the peak of a stage n society- so there would be no evil if people (or rather, whatever sentiences might supercede the universe by that time or maybe even do so now already, not taking just us humans into account) if people are left no choice..That means that choice lacks its counterpart/negation...Alas there would have to be one choice that encompasses everything, yet thus one outcome becomes inevitable, so maybe that already is a point of return to the ancient exigencies that you would seek for or its just a singularity (novelty)...That sorta sounds like the Matrix or biblical stories, when people opt for leaving heaven or enslavement..
Gosh what am I even talking about

[edit on 8/11/09 by thricearound]

When I was younger about 35 years ago, I was number one man working in a carpenter shop.
One day while I was whinning at my Mentor, the carpenter shop Boss/Guard, I said I need this, or that.
He then told me, you always need something, that thought has stayed with me all these years.
Sometimes you have to make do with what you have, but so it seems you always need something.

I later became a bricklayer, and much thought has gone in to, the level square, a good foundation, many of the things, the Christ had spoken of in reguard to a person.
A bricklayer laying brick, must be able to yell loud for, mud, brick, that is one of the test becoming a bricklayer, you need the materials.

Another interesting occurrance is like when your in the flow, and as need of things arise, they just seem to be there, like Macgyver.

Once all things have been done, nothing else to do, END OF RUN.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by googolplex]

Alright, finally have some time to reply to people's posts. Hopefully I can set aside a good chunk of the day to get to everyone's comments, though I'm sure some of the posts will require a bit more effort than others.

So please bear with me. This may end up being a somewhat slow process while I try to elucidate an appropriate response to the harder questions.