Comment by breuleux
9 hours ago
> if we disrupt the system, things will eventually go back to that equilibrium. And if we don't see it, we just needed to wait longer.
Even if that's true, quite a bit rides on how long "longer" is. If "longer" is a million years, that's not exactly good news.
But if you apply the logic that led to the conclusion of "natural equilibrium", truth of the matter is that we wouldn't be able to say if the waiting will be over before or after the heat death of the universe.
Even the "million years" is an overoptimistic view, and probably reflects the idea that the ecosystem was in some kind of messianic state of equilibrium before man arrived, which happened roughly in the last million years. But even that is broadly a fiction. Ecology is not a system, and it is not stable even without human intervention.
Yeah, it's a bit absurd on its face to speak of equilibrium in the context of evolution, which is basically a litany of innovations and equilibrium breaks. Nature regularly throws itself out of whack, like when cyanobacteria appeared I recall, and then when nature made us, obviously. Whatever equilibriums existed through time are rarely returned to once broken.