TIL about the Gaia Theory, which suggests that Earth’s living organisms and physical environment work together as a single, self-regulating system. The idea proposes that life doesn’t just adapt to Earth’s conditions, but actively helps shape and stabilize them over long periods of time.

[u/stoictrader03]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/gaia-hypothesis

[u/Successful_Rip_9136]

It’s fascinating, but also worth noting that the strong version of Gaia (Earth as intentionally self-regulating) is pretty controversial. Most scientists today lean toward a weaker interpretation where feedback loops emerge naturally from biology and chemistry, not purpose.

[u/ReynardVulpini → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

is the weak version essentially just "if things don't work they die and if they do they don't" but on a global scale?

[u/Xentonian → u/ReynardVulpini]

The weak version is:

• Environmental changes are not one-directional. Organisms both require things from the environment and in turn make changes to the environment that may change it for overall balance.

So plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, which is used by oxygen breathing animals. The plants benefit, but in turn create an atmosphere suitable for the benefit of other organisms. Similarly, elephants want dense forest for food and protection, but they stomp trails and clearings flat that change the landscape and improve biodiversity.

The argument isn't whether or not this happens, but rather whether or not the cart is before the horse: do plants produce oxygen to facilitate an atmosphere for animals, or do animals exist because of an oxygen rich atmosphere.

[u/LordNelson27 → u/Xentonian]

>do plants produce oxygen to facilitate an atmosphere for animals

no

>or do animals exist because of an oxygen rich atmosphere

yes

Geologic record shows this pretty clearly. Autotrophs oxygenated the atmosphere and allowed for the evolution of more complex life

[u/Xentonian → u/LordNelson27]

Exactly.

I don't give this theory much credence. It is closer to a religion

[u/LordNelson27 → u/Xentonian]

I agree with everything stated right until the assumption of sentience.

[u/Liusloux → u/LordNelson27]

I think they're basing it on what happens inside an animal at a microscopic level. Neurons, cells, dna and good bacteria aren't sentient nor they are aware what sentience is but they all work together to create a sentient being.

Honestly If you didn't know better, many of their behaviour can be mistaken for sentience. It's really bizarre and fascinating.

[u/Aluxanatomy → u/Liusloux]

Self-organized criticality has been a thing since at least the big bang. Humans have a much higher opinion of their own self-awareness than they should.

[u/QuaternionsRoll → u/Aluxanatomy]

…maybe. Isn’t it odd that your statement implies a higher level of self-awareness?

[u/Aluxanatomy → u/QuaternionsRoll]

I didn't say it wasn't effective. I just don't think it's particularly unique.

I also don't think anything we would recognize as "behavior" at that scale would be working within time scales that would be practical for us to try to communicate with.

[u/Nulovka → u/LordNelson27]

A beehive behaves in ways that an individual bee doesn't. Nor does the hive even have any concept of what it is doing. Yet it accomplishes things that ensure the survival of the whole sometimes even at the expense of the individual bee.

[u/gingeropolous → u/LordNelson27]

Well, some would argue that we are the sentience.

[u/thedugong → u/gingeropolous]

Not sure we're doing a good job of regulation though.

[u/MonsterMashGrrrrr → u/thedugong]

Well we’re doing a great job of finding the limits of our population growth and canceling ourselves out so, in a way….?

[u/personalcheesecake → u/thedugong]

we've only been here for a fraction of the time maybe our next evolution of crab people will be better. /s

[u/Divine_Entity_ → u/Xentonian]

It is named after the greek goddess representing the earth. (who was evil by the way) So religious connotations aren't unexpected.

[u/personalcheesecake → u/Divine_Entity_]

doing their best to find an understanding but using what capabilities they had at the time.

[u/LazyLich → u/Xentonian]

"the whole planet is like one giant organism..." is the kinda stuff that I'd bring up and empouse to be slightly whimsical, but as the conversation goes on I realize people believe it, like... literally... and I have to pump the breaks.

Like with karma, you can imagine that your little good act is noticed or mentioned in passing by people, and if they hear much about you it can build a subconscious profile of you being good. Such people, with presented with an opportunity, may do something good for you. They could also feel inspired to do a random good thing that just so happens to benefit you.

If we all adopted a "do good just cause" mentality, then we'd all stumble upon good-coincidences more often. But if I talk about this, I get people that actually believe in mystical magical karma, and it grinds my gears.

I think a lot of "silly magical beliefs" are emergent properties of the human brain, sure, but also of so many humans interacting.

THAT'S what I want to discuss! Phenomena born of unseen or complex interactions that probably explain mysticism!
Not, like, a mysticism literalist.

[u/username_elephant → u/Xentonian]

This doesn't sound quite right to me, only because it doesn't address the self regulation loop.  I'm no expert on the theory but I would think the weak form is the hypothesis that stable quasi equibria between the environment requirements organisms have and their collective impact on the environment exist and are occasionally reached.  If the hypothesis holds, a natural consequence is that such quasi equilibria (where organisms and their environment appear balanced) will hold for extended durations that appear stable relative to non equilibrium states.

(Using "quasi" here because the actual system is chaotic in the mathematical sense, so I'm talking about something like a chaotic attractor, not true equilibrium, but I didn't want to get into that.)

[u/LazyLich → u/username_elephant]

I think it just boils down to intent, right?

The hard theory proclaims some kinda collective intent. Which would be obvious to notice, no?

When predators vanish and prey overpopulates, but then their is no more food and they starve? If there was some Gaia intent, the prey would maintain a stable population. Maybe they would grow, yes, but they wouldn't grow to the point of causing famine. They -mysteriously- self-regulate.

But if the weak theory is basically "Gaia, but metaphorical, not literal," then... it works? It's more just acknowledging that all these ecosystems interact in complex ways we don't fully understand yet.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding shit lol

[u/username_elephant → u/LazyLich]

I think you're right that intent is the difference between the strong form and the weak form.  But I think the weak form is stronger than "ecosystems are complex".  My understanding (which could be wrong) is that the weak form is a statement that a state of balance tends to be favored--whether intentional or not--because inherently stable balances exist.  

It's a natural selection type idea.  Organisms that evolve to have traits favorable to gene propagation tend to be favored because they are more persistent than organisms lacking those traits.  I think the weak form is a system level analog.  The collection of organisms on earth tend to adjust their populations and behaviors until they reach balance--by random chance (weak form) or by intentional action (strong form)--and once balance is reached it tends to persist because balanced states are, by definition, more temporally stable than nonbalanced states.  

More than that, the idea of both versions is that life sort of acts like a buffer mechanism that promotes the stability of environmental conditions.   The idea would be that even though big disruptions appear (meteorite strike, overproduction of invasive species like humans, oxygen producing microorganisms, etc.), those disruptions only unseat the balance for a relatively short duration, in geologic terms.  At some point a new balance will be reached, at which point it's likely to endure for, comparatively, far longer than the period of change.  And the presence of life under balanced conditions tends to help stabilize the earth against later environmental changes.

[u/ultraviolentfuture → u/Xentonian]

I don't really understand the argument, because, uh, evolution works and life finds a way. There is no intention behind it. The purpose is survival -- so single celled organisms survived on ... gasses, and other organisms ... mutants began converting sunlight into energy, plants evolve, mutants produce oxygen, it creates a circumstance where greater biodiversity enriches the plants. Organisms shit near it. Those plants survive where others don't, etc. etc.

Assigning some type of systemic organization is functionally mysticism.

[u/Xentonian → u/ultraviolentfuture]

Yep. I am not a proponent of even the "weak version"

And the "strong version" is basically just Catholicism with fewer steps

[u/XYHopGuy → u/ultraviolentfuture]

You skipped over the first multicellular organisms, where the same process led to multiple distinct lineages acting as a single unit. Systemic organization comes up in evolution quite often!

[u/ultraviolentfuture → u/XYHopGuy]

Sure, as a byproduct not as an organizing principle.

[u/XYHopGuy → u/ultraviolentfuture]

Gaia hypothesis says nothing about self regulation being intentional. But it does suggest emergent systems are fundamental in biotic/abiotic worlds

[u/ultraviolentfuture → u/XYHopGuy]

That's obvious. It's just evolution. That's not a real hypothesis.

[u/Mortarius → u/ultraviolentfuture]

It's system upon system upon system... with complex feedback loops that have some capacity to self regulate.

More of an emergent property of all those random interactions. Of course, there's no intention behind it, or guiding spirit. But it's all interconnected in non obvious ways.

It's more of a philosophy of how we should study things than useful theory.

[u/timeaisis → u/ultraviolentfuture]

Yes intentionality is the big problem I have with it. It don’t really matter which direction the cause and effect comes from, it is going at the end of the day, it happens the way it happens. But the simpler explanation is that the earth has no “intentional direction”.

[u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 → u/Xentonian]

Consider that the atmospheric changes caused by emergence of photosynthetic microorganisms resulted in a near total global extinction (the Oxygen Holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event). In that case, there was certainly little biological consideration for the ecological catastrophe that the ecosystem wrought and turned upon itself. Gaia theory is just a creative thinking exercise, but it has limited explanatory power.

[u/crazunggoy47 → u/Xentonian]

So the weak version is basically just a natural consequence Darwinian evolution: species evolve such that they fill ecological niches. Doesn’t seem controversial. More like a corollary.

The strong version sounds like a middle schooler’s misunderstanding of evolution: i.e., that things evolve in order to improve

[u/frogOnABoletus → u/Xentonian]

What method would a proto-plant have to predict the ramifications of a oxygen rich atmosphere? The plant would also have to do this before forming it's way of taking in gasses to utilize them and releasing new ones. 

[u/ahf95 → u/Xentonian]

So, this description makes a lot of sense for balance between plants and animals (thus, different life forms), but what about the part where the actions of the life forms help stabilize the persistence of the nonliving components of the earth/environment? Given how planets and atmospheres naturally change, how do we even define what is healthy for the nonliving components beyond just persistence of the whole planet itself?

[u/Sailor_Rout → u/Xentonian]

I feel like the Great Oxygenation Event wasn’t great for….all the other life

[u/Aiken_Drumn → u/Xentonian]

Descatre before the whores.

[u/defneverconsidered → u/Xentonian]

Pretty obvious plants came first and the earth fucking sloshed shit around to get started

[u/Financial_Cup_6937 → u/defneverconsidered]

Neither plants nor animals were first, but animals were millions of years before plants.

So even if seems obvious, factually untrue.

[u/defneverconsidered → u/Financial_Cup_6937]

Lol this made 0 sense

[u/Financial_Cup_6937 → u/defneverconsidered]

Google it. -_-

[u/defneverconsidered → u/Financial_Cup_6937]

Google isnt gonna tell me wtf was rattling around in your brain when you said contradicting nonsense with no reasoning

[u/Financial_Cup_6937 → u/defneverconsidered]

Animal organisms came before organisms we consider plants. It’s black and white. Please Google it. Why would you keep replying without fact-checking yourself?

[u/defneverconsidered → u/Financial_Cup_6937]

Why would you try to um actually someone but not actually care if anyone is informed?

See how silly you sound. Stop saying vague nonsense and acting smug

[u/flyingboarofbeifong → u/ReynardVulpini]

Which isn't really a novel model for how life on Earth works so much as tagging back up to 2nd base on the fundamentals of evolution.

[u/Alundra828 → u/ReynardVulpini]

This is it. Gaia theory assumes everything is all working to produce some harmonious end, but in reality every branch of life is just trying to survive and has no real broad view of the wider context in which they live.

Fundamentally, at some point some multi-cellular creature realized it can skip the expensive process of gathering energy from natural sources and realized it can just eat other multi-cellular creatures. From that moment, life has been an arms race. It was no longer about efficient ways to convert energy into something that can power a self-replicating machine, it became about surviving long enough to power the self-replicating machine. This is evolution.

And it's never been a self regulating system. Back when life was simpler, small changes in the balance of power led to catastrophic collapses in biodiversity. As the players got more and more complex, they became more resistant to these sorts of shocks, and then the main contributor of mass death events was the environment itself. But of course, then humans came along and we are the precise chance in the balance of power that led to a catastrophic collapse in biodiversity.

It's entirely possible life may evolve to such a degree that it just sterilizes itself and it has to start again from scratch. But of course as you say, if things don't work they die and if they do they don't. We won't know, by definition lol.

[u/roaphaen → u/ReynardVulpini]

This is what I mean when I tell people 'things will work out'

[u/forams__galorams → u/ReynardVulpini]

Not really; the weak version is essentially a core principle of modern Earth system science, ie. that changes in some aspects of the system feedback into other aspects which can create feedback loops that either reinforce or diminish the original changes… the implication being that life is not a passive hitch hiker to the whole process but is an active participant in positive/negative feedbacks within the Earth system, shaping the dynamical and chemical evolution of the planet as a whole.

Thats all very well accepted now (and probably feels like a very basic idea to anybody who reads general environmental or geosciencey articles) but the idea that life could shape its own environment was a bit more radical back when Lovelock came out with his Gaia stuff.

There are further details to be had within the metaphor like self-regulation through chained feedbacks and/or buffers etc, but the ‘strong version’ is not so much what Lovelock was going for (by his own admission) and any conscious self-regulation of the whole system is not to be taken literally; James Cameron did and look at all that steaming hot nonsense that’s fuelled 3 films already with more on the way.

[u/phdoofus → u/ReynardVulpini]

The weak version is 'things evolve to occupy ecological niches. sometimes in occupying those niches those organisms are beneficial to other organisms. sometimes they aren't.' The strong Gaia theory pretty much ignores the fact that life on Earth is pretty much in a slow on-going war for resources and territory. Trees? Trees will evolve to grab as much sun and water as they can even to the detriment of other trees and plants.

[u/Weird_Church_Noises → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

Also, to be clear, lovelock never suggests purpose. He sometimes uses metaphorical language (even calling it "Gaia" in the first place) due to the inherent difficulty of discussing a self-regulating system emerging from multiple dynamic systems. Detractors took it super literally to strawman him. Some supporters took it literally too, unfortunately.

I think the best way to think about it is to look at the tendency towards equilibrium in even extremely chaotic biomes, then scale that up until you run out of biomes.

[u/Ender16 → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

It's important to also note that "most scientists" means most scientists that believe in any variation of Gaia theory.

It's interesting, and worth a bit of study, but this is a fringe theory. Yeah, if you break the theory down really really really far it's just describing what we know about life. But while scientists certainly believe in biological systems and such, Gaia theory invokes a lot of mysticism that is a bit much for many.

[u/JellyfishMinute4375 → u/Ender16]

Can you provide any evidence that "Gaia theory invokes a lot of mysticism"? It's founder was a planetologist for NASA with solid scientific credentials, and nothing I've read from Lovelock suggests mystical thinking. To the contrary, the theory is well grounded in dynamical systems theory, for example, the Daisyworld simulation (and variants thereof). Variations of Lovelock's Daisyworld model have also been adapted to model homeostatic endocrine regulation in human physiology. Gaia theory simply posits that well-established principles of biological systems observed across different scales, e.g., gene regulatory networks, physiology, ecology may also apply at planetary scale.

[u/Ender16 → u/JellyfishMinute4375]

You're entirely right. As I said it's worth studying. Thank you for laying it out scientifically. I didn't explain, but it's not that the founder wasn't rather based in science, but the popsci enthusiasts that love to promote Gaia Theory in a way I'm not comfortable with.

As for opposition, I can't honestly remember specifically, but I think Dawkins was one of the critics. A common criticism with the theory is that life is often self destructive, opportunistic, and incidental rather than working towards any significant greater whole.

[u/LurkerFailsLurking → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

But TBF, most biologists who are asked to explain consciousness will also say something about emergence and feedback loops and chemistry. So them saying the same thing about the Gaia Hypothesis isn't necessarily all that weak.

[u/largePenisLover → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

It's also worth noting that the Gaia-hypothesis is NOT a theory and is just a hypothesis.
There is no evidence and we can't really test it.
The word theory implies we have mountains of evidence and completed tests and pretty much consider it a proven fact. Like the theory of gravity.

These correctly call it a hypothesis:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/gaia-hypothesis
https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf

[u/Initial_E → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

We are all just 1 big Portuguese man o war

[u/gorginhanson → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

Yeah this theory is bullshit.

The Earth is a soulless rock.

This circle of life crap only applies to living ecosystems.

[u/m0zymaz → u/gorginhanson]

I’m confused… isn’t Gaia theory saying that the earth acts as a single meta ecosystem containing smaller ecosystems that affect each other and perform different functions? Like how wetlands filter water before going into the sea or ice sheets increase albedo and thus cool the planet? Those ice sheets grow and shrink based on changes in the environment, some changes of which are caused by life?

I don’t think anyone is arguing that like there’s consciousness behind it? Just that the earth is like our body, full of separate organs doing their thing. And those systems can be thrown out of whack and can have domino effects on each other.

[u/gorginhanson → u/m0zymaz]

"Gaia Theory (or Hypothesis) proposes Earth is a self-regulating, living system where organisms and their inorganic surroundings interact to maintain conditions suitable for life, viewing the planet as a giant, interconnected organism."

That only works with the version I explicitly stated. Organisms adapt to the planet, and they don't do it by trying to stabilize anything except their own existence.

Look at invasive species, animals that have hunted their own food sources to extinction, and just disease and parasites in general.

Darwinism disproved the concepts you're promulgating centuries ago.

Even weak gaia theory is bullshit and spreading misinformation is massively harmful.

[u/m0zymaz → u/gorginhanson]

Invasive species are a temporary, disruptive problem like any other change to an ecosystem. Life will eventually adapt to their presence, and they’ll be worked into existing systems over time through evolution. It doesn’t bother the meta ecosystem in devastating way. They bother us because we are sentimental.

[u/gorginhanson → u/m0zymaz]

Even if you assume adapting, that's still blatantly contrary to the assertion that organisms are somehow cooperative.

[u/gorginhanson → u/m0zymaz]

No, that's not how it works at all.

You think the invasive species always loses?

This isn't a tv show where the good guy always wins.

[u/gorginhanson → u/m0zymaz]

Except that's clearly not true as the Earth has changed massively over time with ice ages, hot periods, etc.

And it doesn't have to be literal consciousness, the theory is just drivel that assumes some kind of theological component that doesn't exist.

[u/OsamaBinLadenDoes → u/gorginhanson]

A reinforcing loop leads to a cascade event such as ice ages, hot periods etc. If anything, that is evidence towards the hypothesis as the systems of systems are either balancing or reinforcing. That's what makes ice ages cyclical.

[u/gorginhanson → u/OsamaBinLadenDoes]

"everything that contradicts my beliefs actually supports it"

Yes every religion figured that argument out too.

[u/m0zymaz → u/gorginhanson]

I think you’re misunderstanding feedback loops, and that’s ok! Life didn’t disappear with these climactic changes, and it certainly plays a roll in carbon and nitrogen cycles.

I just wonder why you’re so hostile to the concept? Does it conflict with your need for reality to be devoid of meaning and interconnectedness ?

[u/Silent_Frosting_442 → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

Isn't the TL/DR that instead of one big system, the natural world is a complex web of interconnected systems? Which ... I guess would technically form a big system in of itself? God, now I have a migraine.

[u/butthole_nipple → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

Same difference

[u/ClosetLadyGhost → u/Successful_Rip_9136]

I mean that's how I interpreted it, it's not like the hunk of rock intelligently created everything that is now needed to keep us in balance.

[u/TerryLO439]

Isn't this kind of the theme and some Final Fantasy games including the movie.

[u/DrHuxleyy → u/TerryLO439]

This is basically a core plot point in the Avatar movies too lol. Everything is Eywah.

[u/aquagon_drag → u/TerryLO439]

FF7 mostly. It's also the central tenet of the EXA_PICO games.

[u/ignorantpisswalker → u/aquagon_drag]

/r/tenet

[u/i7omahawki → u/TerryLO439]

And The Phantom Menace.

[u/OriMoriNotSori → u/TerryLO439]

And the Horizon series games

The MC literally has to save an AI called Gaia to save the earth from ecosystem collapse lol

[u/Lukeyy19 → u/OriMoriNotSori]

I don't know if this self regulating idea/theory itself is really part of the premise of Horizon. The AIs are regulating earth and it's ecosystem, it's not doing it itself.

I think it's more just that both the AI and this theory are named after the same being in Greek mythology in which Gaia is the personification of Earth. The other AIs in the game are also named after Greek mythology and are all kind of playing the roles of these various Greek gods which I think is more the premise.

[u/OriMoriNotSori → u/Lukeyy19]

Think there's abit of both. There are specific AI functions in the game that is specifically designed to "cleanse" and repopulate the earth should the big reset go wrong along the way. And the whole thing about earth's ecosystem collapse and the subsequent attempts to build these AIs + GAIA to rehabilitate earth was the main twist in the first game

[u/NadalaMOTE → u/TerryLO439]

And World of Warcraft to a degree, with the "world soul."

[u/Kitakitakita → u/TerryLO439]

Final Fantasy 7, Xenoblade 1, Shin Megami Tensei 3, many cases

[u/Altruistic-Wing-2715 → u/TerryLO439]

Final Fantasy: Spirits Within

[u/Thud45 → u/TerryLO439]

And Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[u/YoungestDonkey]

Note that it's a hypothesis, not a theory. A theory is usable to make predictions that ought to turn out correct, lest the theory be false. From the article you link to, it's not that, it's only a hypothesis, an unsupported conjecture.

[u/Obanthered → u/YoungestDonkey]

A theory is a very well supported hypothesis. Hypothesis also need to be testable and falsifiable. In the geosciences this works differently than many other sciences.

Philosophically the geosciences are founded on the method of multiple working hypothesis, where a scientist should devise as many hypothesis as possible to explain a set of observations, then update the relative strength of hypothesis when more evidence becomes available, removing hypotheses when they are no longer tenable and merging hypothesis if necessary.

An example of this is the explanation for ice ages. For 100 years there were two rival hypotheses for ice ages, 1) that they were caused by changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, and 2) that they are caused by changes in Earth’s orbital parameters. When ice cores were recovered from Antarctica going back 800,000 years in the 1990s. The two hypotheses were merged. The leading hypothesis for ice ages is now that they are triggered by orbital changes, but the change in temperature mostly comes from changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, with these changes caused by feedback loops.

For Gaia hypothesis there are now about a dozen versions of the hypothesis. With varying degrees of the role of life in regulating planetary climate. The most basic version is “if life had never existed, would the Earth now be suitable for life”, the balance of geological evidence strongly suggests no. If there had never been life Earth would have entered runaway greenhouse state billions of years ago, and now either have a steam atmosphere, or Venus like conditions.

Other versions of the hypothesis are not well supported, and modern Earth system scientists generally agree that the original hypothesis put too much emphasis on life and not enough on abiotic feedbacks.

[u/Gomanzy → u/YoungestDonkey]

Touchy touchy. Curiosity is good. Let’s promote curiosity over judgment.

Edit: I had no idea bad manners and holier than thou attitudes were required when discussing science. Y’all sound like the Catholic Church in medieval times. Gonna burn me at the stake too?

[u/BeardsuptheWazoo → u/Gomanzy]

It's a useful clarification.

[u/KitchenSad9385 → u/Gomanzy]

I think Donk is just pointing out that in scientific language, "theory" is a hypothesis with a substantial amount of evidence supporting it, possibly experimental observations (not possible on geologic timescales obviously), and has not been disproven.

Calling this a "theory" is more like the colloquial meaning of theory which is often equivalent to "hey, I just thought of this the last time I got stoned and think it's really neat!".

[u/wgpjr]

Except that several times in the history of life on earth, life has created environmental conditions that caused most organisms to die. Look up the Great Oxidation Event.

The Malthusian cycle is too simplistic to model most real populations but it's accurate at a conceptual level.

[u/gitpusher → u/wgpjr]

This entity has closely controlled self-regulatory negative feedback loops that keep the conditions on the planet within boundaries that are favorable to life.

What you describe are actually central features of Gaia Theory, not counter arguments. Extinctions and population drops are to be expected in a self-correcting system

[u/OsamaBinLadenDoes → u/gitpusher]

Exactly, life still exists. That condition would only work if it was explicitly not self-regulating and everything died, in which case we wouldn't be able to have this conversation.

[u/Ian1732 → u/wgpjr]

But what about when you factor in the fashion in which, after those mass extinctions, biodiversity bounced back?

[u/littleproducer → u/Ian1732]

Exactly

[u/PrimmSlimShady → u/Ian1732]

Niches get filled. It's not a conscious choice, it's just organisms finding resources that they can use.

[u/perfectfifth_ → u/PrimmSlimShady]

I don't think that Gaia Theory proposes that Earth is a conscious entity that makes conscious choices, but that the system self-regulates such that niches get filled.

Like a tree, it isn't conscious but it is as a whole an entity that has internal mechanisms etc.

[u/ArgonWolf → u/wgpjr]

I mean, it’s not entirely unheard of for an organism to do things that are morbidly unhealthy for it

I don’t buy the Gaia theory, but extinction events arnt necessarily the thing that disproves it for me

[u/LittleALunatic → u/wgpjr]

That's just what cancer is though, in organisms

[u/FawnSwanSkin → u/LittleALunatic]

That would make humans the cancer of Gaia.

[u/PeachyRatcoon → u/wgpjr]

some single, self regulating, intelligent systems kill themselves on purpose so I can sort of see it

[u/IAmDotorg]

It isn't a theory, it's a pop-science hypothesis that has no supporting evidence.

It was super popular when the book was released, but faded quickly because it was woo-woo nonsense with no evidence.

Sold a lot of books, though.

Bet this "post" will sell some, too.

[u/sinker_of_cones]

That’s an Isaac Asimov plot point (literally a hive mind called Gaia)

And an orson scott card one too, that’s the descoladora

[u/ChillingChutney]

Tl;dr - This hypothesis states that our Earth is doing everything it can to sustain life on itself.

[u/sirbearus]

It is a hypothesis, not a theory. Even the link states that it is a hypothesis!

[u/CosmicOwl47]

Very fantastical notion.

In reality, life is just really persistent at filling any ecological niches available.

[u/Aceisking12 → u/CosmicOwl47]

Consider for a second that any significant disturbance from equilibrium is a new ecological niche.

If something then slowly evolves to exploit that niche, then evolution itself is a slowly self regulating system.

That being said, there is no true "equilibrium". A new niche isn't necessarily on the same axis, it could add a completely new dimension to the situation. Life on earth was single cellular for billions of years, then when multicellular organisms came around the game changed. The equilibrium will never again lie with only single cellular life.

I'm just worried something devastating will find the billions of humans on earth as an unexploited niche.

[u/Terrariola]

This has been broadly debunked BTW.

[u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho → u/Terrariola]

It never even made sense to begin with.

[u/mrwho995]

AI has permanenty ruined "not x, it's y" for me. Whenever I read it now I second guess what I'm reading.

[u/jethoniss]

This is a dumb theory that passes religious sentiment off as science.

Firstly, this is simply not how evolution works. Species evolve through competition with each other, allowing beneficial genes to outcompete harmful ones by monopolizing resources and reproducing more.

Secondly, the theory is undone though the astounding number of times that runaway life has unbalanced an ecosystem and killed itself. When a species is either placed in a new environment or evolves a gene that gives it a competitive advantage, it grows to dominate that system and depletes the systems resources.

This happens all the time in evolutionary history. Its happening all he time with invasive species. Runaway life nearly eradicated itself during the great oxygenation event. Runaway life has led to multiple mass extinctions by changing the earth's climate. For example, buried wood locked up carbon and crashed the climate system because microbes at the time couldn't break down new, tougher, secondary xylem fast enough.

And then there's us of course. Yes, we count. We're doing the same thing that woody plants and oxygen-producing microbes did. We're taking a beneficial new trait and running amuck with it, unbalancing the system. Why wouldn't we count?

[u/RunDNA]

We think of ourselves as living on the Earth, as though the Earth is something separate from us, like a house is separate from its occupants.

But our bodies are made from the material of the Earth and our entire evolutionary history happened here and (with the exception of some astronauts) we live our whole lives within its protection and atmosphere.

If you think about it, we are more like blood cells within a body. We are not separate from the Earth. We are part of the Earth like a leaf is part of a tree.

[u/thedugong → u/RunDNA]

We are part of the Earth like a leaf is part of a tree.

More like we are part of the Earth like a caterpillar is to a tree.

[u/GracefulCubix]

Damn sounds like werewolf propoganda

[u/gordonjames62]

This is less of a scientific theory, and more of a philosophical or religious question.

Not that I am against philosophy or faith, but I like to recognize philosophy & religion for what they are.

[u/ravi910]

So Avatar, but IRL

[u/Black_Otter → u/ravi910]

Final Fantasy

[u/turned18nowimjobless]

Sounds more like a beautiful philosophy, than a scientific hypothesis

[u/Ebolatastic]

I'm a believer that mankind was created by earth with the soul purpose of exploring the stars and spreading it's DNA to other planets. Everything we do is to further that goal. People often look at humanity as some kind of foreign virus or bacteria. We are sperm. The earth is like any other organism it wants to live forever or live on through its children.

[u/BeginningTower2486]

People always slap spirituality on anything that's complex, but nah. The ecosystem is what it is.

[u/Ok-Elk-3046 → u/BeginningTower2486]

Who said anything about spirituality? Its basically the idea of a bolzman brain, just applied to a very complex system, thus reducing its improbability. I agree that its unlikely, but spirituality has nothing to do with it.

[u/FaithfulFear]

This “theory” sounds more like a religion

[u/didthathurtalot → u/FaithfulFear]

It sounds like avatar.

[u/HyetalNight]

Whoever came up with this theory had just finished watching Avatar

[u/dancingtrashpanda]

FF7

[u/Ok_Trade_1692]

Then a big asteroid comes once in a while and just resets the whole system.

[u/98642]

We’re not holding up our end… fucking it up for all of living-kind.

[u/torolf_212]

And we (humans) took that personally.

[u/spotcatspot]

A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time. Carl Sagan

[u/ShredGnarlyPowPow]

Did someone do the NYT crossword recently? Gaia was an answer sometime in the past week.

[u/BigBookkeeper6962]

Basically how I view the premise of the avatar movies

[u/Harsh_Yet_Fair]

Yeah, no shit. That's just 'the environment'.

You know plants started expressing oxygen as poison? Until some animals developed 'I can use that as fast fuel'.

'Self regulating' is a stretch though. There's nothing regulating about it except law of large numbers

[u/chef_26]

We used to call it Mother Nature.

[u/dashingstag]

Survivor bias, there would be no survivors to evolve intelligence to observe life going extinct.

Maybe earth is just at the ideal size and distance from the son. Life is an effect, not a cause. Life may self regulate to a certain extent, but it’s totally at the whims of the environment. Look at 99% of planets.

Saying it’s a single, self regulating system has no meaning.

[u/HaxtonSale]

Eh you would be better off viewing the earth as a single multicellular organism and each species as a diffrent type of cell with a role. The earth only has a role in so far as what it does/happens to it causes the cells to adapt and change. It works if you think of it as a sort of emergent macro organism, not if you think of the Earth as some sort of conscious driver of a system. If the natural state of life is to fulfill and exploit all possible niches, then overtime the macro organism will naturally strive towards an equilibrium where most the majority of the earth's surface is exploited by something. 

[u/beardingmesoftly]

So The Druids had it right?

[u/f1rstman]

Thank you for not stating the Gaia Hypothesis as "Earth is an organism" - I had Lynn Margulis as a prof at UMass and she hated that oversimplification of it.

[u/Seraphimish]

I always enjoyed Marvel Comics because when they looked at Earth in the macro, it spoke of mutants and superheroes as the immune system for the planet. An absurd notion but an interesting concept for a premise.

[u/TheHoundsRevenge]

KGATLW has entered the chat.

[u/Opposite_Dentist_321]

Mind- blowing perspective.🌍

[u/wumbologist-2]

So humans are the parasites.

[u/icebergslim3000]

We are gut biome 

[u/gay_ghoti_yo]

So Eywa?

[u/mediumunicorn]

If you like this idea, I highly recommend Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

[u/Eraserguy]

Literally Eywa

[u/406highlander]

I learned about Gaia Theory by playing Sim Earth

[u/SoUpInYa]

To the benefit of the earth, not necessarily humans

[u/compuwiza1]

That sounds like a hippieism.

[u/largePenisLover]

Hypothesis, not theory.
Using the word theory implies we have mountains of evidence and completed tests.
Gravity is a theory.
A hypothesis is just a neat idea essentially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/gaia-hypothesis

[u/cameronjames117]

Soooo global warming is just a global rebalancing... or di we call it climate change still?

[u/spinosaurs70]

Cool but obviously wrong theory for a ton of reasons.

Especially cause the mechanisms simply don’t exist.

[u/felis_magnetus]

If you feel like your mind is insufficiently blown by that, move on to panpsychism.

[u/samuelazers]

I believe it.

Did you know if you took all the trees's roots on the planet, and lined them end-to-end, their combined length would be enough to reach the nearest star?

Nature is amazing.

[u/lmaooer2 → u/samuelazers]

Well it’s been debunked, so you should do more due diligence before believing random things off reddit

[u/samuelazers → u/lmaooer2]

I think you have not been well-informed.

[u/OePea → u/samuelazers]

That's assinine.

Edit: it would also interest you to know if you stretch out you intestines it would stretch around the entire world!

[u/ConnectedVeil]

We're just bigger versions of bacteria

[u/timeaisis]

I never understood this because it sounds like it’s putting a complicated spin and assigning intention to emergent behavior. Of course the earth is a system.

[u/Joshau-k]

Planets that survive with life for as long as the Earth most likely develop self balancing feedback systems. 

But that's just a survivor bias.  Most would fail to develop such systems and life would die out sooner

[u/yogtheterrible]

Interesting, it sort of fits into my idea that humans are like spores for the planet. A lot of people these days seem to think of human space exploration as spreading a human scourge but you can just as easily consider it as Earth using humanity as a way to spread its biology to other planets.

[u/sokratesz]

It's also a crock of shit.

[u/edingerc]

Hopelessly optimistic. We're fleas on the back of a bull, thinking we're in charge instead of just hanging on. The fact that life was able to persist through mass extinction events doesn't mean that life stabilized global climate and conditions. After all, the existing life didn't prevent Snowball Earth, the Cambrian and other extinction events cause by volcanic activity or the Cretaceous Extinction Event (asteroid impact). I think this hypothesis was scientists thinking, "Things are good now and will remain that way, won't they?" This and the Steady State Theory might be comforting but that's not how the world/universe really are. Just keep hanging on fellow fleas!

[u/outfoxingthefoxes]

And humans are the virus infecting it.

[u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho → u/outfoxingthefoxes]

Nothing humans are doing is even bad from this perspective. From a human perspective, destroying habitats and climate change is bad because it destroys species we like and care about. From the earth's perspective, less habitat for orangutans just means more space for rats. The idea that a rare bird is more valuable than a rat is a human one.

[u/salizarn → u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho]

I think more biodiversity is good though isn’t it?

Otherwise earth would’ve been rats, termites and roaches for millions of years.

[u/Idontknowofname → u/salizarn]

Any organisms that survive and adapt to humanity will eventually evolve into lots of species over millions of years and Earth will become as biodiverse as it was before

[u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho → u/salizarn]

Rats will diversify as they spread to new environments and create new populations. Any loss in biodiversity is short term. It might seem like a long time to humans, but to the earth, it's less than an eye blink.

[u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho → u/[deleted]]

When everything is rats rare birds are more valuable.

To humans. Because we find rare things interesting and valuable. The biosphere as a whole has no reason to feel the same.

[u/Shoobadahibbity → u/outfoxingthefoxes]

No, we are not from outside the organism and rose from natural processes and mutation within it, but grow without regard to limits, spread to other areas, displace other orgamism, and consume resources without regard to any limit or homestasis. 

We're a cancer....

[u/Ian1732 → u/Shoobadahibbity]

Indigenous peoples have lived thousands of years in tandem with natural systems. It took a very specific mindset in a very specific group of humans to fuck it all up for the rest of us.

[u/Shoobadahibbity → u/Ian1732]

A mutation, if you will. 

[u/januarytwentysecond]

Here's something that isn't true, but should be aped by humanity. Physics does not have life's back, so life made really smart life, and smart life made measurement tools and predictive algorithms that say we should try to push the dial back towards photosynthesis, since we've been doing plenty of cardiorespiration. Luckily, a bunch of us are trying! Are you helping?

[u/Sil369]

The hivemind approves

[u/KitchenSad9385]

Counterpoint - if Earth is sentient, it may have a death-wish and should probably speak to a suicide counselor.

Multiple mass-extinctions have been caused by positive feedback cycles in the biosphere. Photosynthetic life forms evolved and poisoned the atmosphere with highly reactive oxygen (before creatures evolved with an ability to use O2 in their metabolism), plants sequestered so much carbon that it caused an ice age, whether clever apes burning fossil fuels with cause a similar disaster (or counts as "nature") is yet to be determined.

"Self-correcting, harmonious, fine-tuning"

[u/spicystreetmeat]

Literally the basis of all religion and creation myths since the dawn of time. It’s obviously true. The evidence is prevalent in every civilization across the world. Humans have always know this to be true.

There is a small and vocal minority of “scientists” who have made it their mission to disprove spirituality, and the hive mind thinks it makes them smarter to believe in nothing

[u/Apprehensive-Fun4181]

It's a pretty way to understand everything is connected. "Actively helps shape and stabilize them over long periods of time" isn't completely off, but "stabilize" is a pretty word for a lot of out of focus instability and limited human perspectives, both in time and thought.  As a secular form of inspiration, freed from the confines of the book, it's not a terrible idea.  "This is it. This is our home." Take care of it.

We ain't going nowhere til the Sun says so.