Is rubber part of the Great Filter? This thought occurred to me while reading Charles Mann’s “1493” about the biological exchange post Columbus.
Rubber was a major part of the industrial revolution (allowing insulation of electric lines, and is important in many industrial applications in preventing leaks) . Rubber only arose on a single continent for a small set of species. While synthetic rubber exists, for many purposes it isn’t as of high quality as natural rubber. Moreover, having the industrial infrastructure to make synthetic rubber would be extremely difficult without modern rubber. Thus, a civilization just like ours but without rubber might not have been able to go through the industrial revolution. This situation may also be relevant to Great Filter issues in our future: if civilization collapses and rubber becomes wiped out in the collapse, is this another potential barrier to returning to a functional civilization, especially if there’s less available coal and oil to make synthetic rubber easily?
Rubber doesn’t sound that important to me. The Wikipedia article includes all sorts of useful bits: it only went into European use in the late 1700s, at earliest, well after most datings of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions; most rubber is now synthesized from petroleum; many uses of insulation like transoceanic telegraphs used gutta-percha which is similar but not the same as rubber (and was superior to rubber for a long time); and much use is for motor-vehicle tires, which while a key part of modern civilization, does not seem necessary for cheap long-distance transportation of either goods or humans (consider railroads).
So rubber doesn’t look like a defeater. If it didn’t exist, we’d have more expensive goods, we’d have considerably different transportation systems, but we’d still have modern science, we’d still have modern industry, we’d still have cheap consumer goods and international trade, and so on and so forth.
Is rubber part of the Great Filter? This thought occurred to me while reading Charles Mann’s “1493” about the biological exchange post Columbus.
Rubber was a major part of the industrial revolution (allowing insulation of electric lines, and is important in many industrial applications in preventing leaks) . Rubber only arose on a single continent for a small set of species. While synthetic rubber exists, for many purposes it isn’t as of high quality as natural rubber. Moreover, having the industrial infrastructure to make synthetic rubber would be extremely difficult without modern rubber. Thus, a civilization just like ours but without rubber might not have been able to go through the industrial revolution. This situation may also be relevant to Great Filter issues in our future: if civilization collapses and rubber becomes wiped out in the collapse, is this another potential barrier to returning to a functional civilization, especially if there’s less available coal and oil to make synthetic rubber easily?
Rubber doesn’t sound that important to me. The Wikipedia article includes all sorts of useful bits: it only went into European use in the late 1700s, at earliest, well after most datings of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions; most rubber is now synthesized from petroleum; many uses of insulation like transoceanic telegraphs used gutta-percha which is similar but not the same as rubber (and was superior to rubber for a long time); and much use is for motor-vehicle tires, which while a key part of modern civilization, does not seem necessary for cheap long-distance transportation of either goods or humans (consider railroads).
So rubber doesn’t look like a defeater. If it didn’t exist, we’d have more expensive goods, we’d have considerably different transportation systems, but we’d still have modern science, we’d still have modern industry, we’d still have cheap consumer goods and international trade, and so on and so forth.
That’s a pretty convincing analysis that rubber isn’t an aspect of the Filter.