Image is captioned: “The dinosaurs didn’t “rule the Earth”, they were just alive. Stop giving them credit for administrative skills they almost certainly did not have.”

Image is an artist’s rendition of dinosaurs in a prehistoric scene

  • ummthatguy@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    They may not have ruled, but that’s only because the cave-MAN was keeping them down.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      9 months ago

      They take it in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of more-

  • PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    They literally had a tyrant lizard king. Like a giant, evil, apex predator Jim Morrison. This implies some government structure, but obviously could have predated the rise of bureaucracy.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Besides, it was really the ants who ruled the Earth. I mean, who do think ordered that ‘meteorite’ to kill the dinosaurs? We better watch out before they come for us.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      They’re too busy at war with each other, although they’re apparently beginning to develop pre-WWI era chains of alliances spanning across continents now, so maybe be on the lookout for ant sized landmines and mustard gas munitions.

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Dinosaur administrators: no point spending money on a space program, we need to solve our problems here on Earth first.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
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      9 months ago

      To be fair to the dinosaurs, even after the meteor, Earth was still the most habitable planet in the solar system

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    iguanodon on the left was my favourite childhood dinosaur, I don’t fucking know why I went with such a low key dinosaur but they are super cool

  • LSALH@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Hey man, we call senators and congressmen The Government, and they don’t do shit…

    Also humans. When it comes to resources we are trash administrators. We optimize for money instead of efficiency or any other useful characteristic.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      We optimize for money instead of efficiency

      The cheapest thing is the most efficient thing by definition, if you eliminate externalities and other market failures and think in the long term.

      The trouble is, we don’t do those things.

      • LSALH@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        You’re talking product manufacturing. I’m talking large scale planetary resource allocation. Broadly we allocate the most resources to people who can make the most money with then rather than people who can serve/help the most people or create the most benefit.

        If one guy says, “with all this delicious island water, I can sell it overseas and make lots of money to put mostly in the pockets of 3-5 individuals”, and the other guy says, “I can sell it and use that money to keep everyone on the island well fed and healthy, and save them all the time they would spend working for someone else to instead invent or research things that help all humans,” we all know who gets the seed money to start the new business.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          No, I’m talking about large scale planetary resource allocation too. Your own example proves my point:

          If one guy says, “with all this delicious island water, I can sell it overseas and make lots of money to put mostly in the pockets of 3-5 individuals”, and the other guy says, “I can sell it and use that money to keep everyone on the island well fed and healthy, and save them all the time they would spend working for someone else to instead invent or research things that help all humans,” we all know who gets the seed money to start the new business.

          The only thing that makes the first guy’s business model viable is if he isn’t made to pay for the externalized costs of taking away the island’s water. So don’t let him fucking get away with that, obviously!

            • LSALH@kbin.social
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              10 months ago

              I think I figured out the mismatch here. I believe you’re suggesting that the purpose of resources is to produce money, and the most efficient way to do that is to do as cheaply as possible. Not at all wrong.

              I’m saying though that the least efficient purpose human beings can have for Earth’s limited resources is changing them into money. Instead it strikes me as more efficient (in terms of largest net benefit where leaving then in the ground provides little benefit, and is therefore less efficient), to use resources for the purpose of extending all human lives, and the quality of those lives, so that each resource enables the largest number of humans possible to be able to have the highest chance of producing yet more benefits for humanity and the world.

              Put differently, generation of wealth to be mostly stored for only a handful of people is a poor use of resources. Instead, as much wealth as possible should be used to do the work of advancing all of human society. We just can’t seem to find a way to make that work, because greed overwhelms all efforts to do so.

    • Jorgelino@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Except dinosaurs are a huge clade with a ton of different species of animals in it.

      Saying birds are a type of dinosaur is more like saying humans are mammals, which is true.

    • PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Biologist here.

      This is incorrect. Via Wikipedia:

      Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs. Likewise, birds are considered reptiles in the modern cladistic sense of the term, and their closest living relatives are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans (whose members include Archaeopteryx) which first appeared during the Late Jurassic.

  • tygerprints@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Also, their arms were pretty short, so they weren’t the best at handwriting or typing skills. I doubt they’d made good Administrative assistants, except they have a tendency to eat anyone that stands in their way - so, they have that going for them.

  • NotMelon@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    As someone in this thread said, Ants are actually ruling the world. I mean how are they still alive after all this years?