You'll welcome to debate that with a biologist, it's not my specialty or interest
Isaac Send a noteboard - 20/08/2011 04:46:43 AM
Your logic here is compelling; educating and reforming self destructive species is a lot more reasonable and intelligent than genocide.
We're not self-destructive and nobody would need to 'teach us', just send a short signal. I really doubt 'self-destructive' can meaningfully describe any creature that clawed it's way up the evolutionary ladder anyway.
Our ability to adapt is still pretty impressive, but the last few hundred thousand years we've increasingly preferred to adapt our environment to us rather than the reverse. That's long been humanitys great strength, but it remains to be seen whether it "scales", as they say. From the perspective of the "adapt or die" axiom, refusing to adapt and demanding the environment do so is less than encouraging; it only works so long as one has the ability to adapt ones environment so it's survivable (at which humanity has generally excelled) without inadvertently changing it in a way that causes extinction. Meanwhile, the environment remains subject to uncontrollable changes from the outside while humanitys ability to adapt ourselves atrophies through disuse.
'Ability to adapt', 'atrophies from disuse', seriously? You know it doesn't really work that way right?
In terms of the evolutionary ladder itself, it's too soon to say whether homo sapiens is more than a curious anomaly; despite our accomplishments, a 200,000 year old species can't reasonably claim to be much more than freaks. In specific terms of our distinctive habit of surviving hostile environments by altering them rather than ourselves, our species has only been around 50,000 years. For evolution, on the level of geologic and biologic time, that's not a proven success, but a work in progress; if you want a testament to evolutionary strength and longevity, try the crocodiles that have been around 1000 times longer. 
It's an open secret human civilization in its current form is unsustainable; if we don't nuke ourselves, poison ourselves or unleash (or stumble upon) an extinction level pandemic, Peak Oil will radically alter our standard of living within a few decades. That's assuming, despite the growing mountain of evidence, that global warming is just a hoax cooked up by Neo-Luddites who just have some pathological hatred of technology (despite careers in highly technical disciplines) and it's not already too late to avoid the most catastrophic consequences. Frankly, I expect any day to start hearing that, yes, industry is finally accepting the factually supported view that man significantly contributes to global warming, just as it eventually admitted global warming is happening and eventually admitted that's doing significant harm. Then they'll just start telling us it's too late to do anything about it and we should all just sit back and enjoy the ride but, yes, that's a TAD self destructive.
It's an open secret human civilization in its current form is unsustainable; if we don't nuke ourselves, poison ourselves or unleash (or stumble upon) an extinction level pandemic, Peak Oil will radically alter our standard of living within a few decades. That's assuming, despite the growing mountain of evidence, that global warming is just a hoax cooked up by Neo-Luddites who just have some pathological hatred of technology (despite careers in highly technical disciplines) and it's not already too late to avoid the most catastrophic consequences. Frankly, I expect any day to start hearing that, yes, industry is finally accepting the factually supported view that man significantly contributes to global warming, just as it eventually admitted global warming is happening and eventually admitted that's doing significant harm. Then they'll just start telling us it's too late to do anything about it and we should all just sit back and enjoy the ride but, yes, that's a TAD self destructive.Uh that all kinda sounds neo-Luddite to me, and I'm pretty comfortable with the notion we could support 20+billion people in decent comfort without fossil fuels indefinitely
Yes, our current standard operating procedure is self destructive, and the fact we haven't managed to annihilate ourselves in the 50 millennia since we developed it doesn't change that. If we want to ride the evolutionary train to success (or at least survival) we'll have to get back on it first. I've heard it said that even an animal knows not to crap where it eats; that may be the best argument that human beings are no longer truly animals. An extraterrestrial species advanced enough for interstellar travel would have every reason to see human beings as an infestation of Earth, something wasting and destroying renewable resources they could better and indefinitely exploit in our absence. Whether or not we ever encounter such a species, our own survival depends on abandoning an adversarial relationship with our ecosystem and rediscovering a mutualistic one before we're all living in and off of Soylent Green while we wait for the planet to die.
I don't buy into millenarian 'man is evil' or destructive dogma. And that all sounded like neo-luddite gibberish to me. Absolute worst case scenario we cover most of the land in big green-tinted plastic tents. It take less then 10 barrels of oil to make enough plastic to cover an acre, which if we just diverted US oil usage would amount to a quarter million acres a day. or 400 sq mi or a 20x20 mile area. You can support a single person on considerably less than an acre of unheated greenhouse without fossil fuels and we do have tens of billions of acres of land. Hell you could make big hydroponic rafts and float them on the ocean. One regular complaint I hear from greenies is that people just won't listen to the facts but the wretched neo-luddites that make up most of that movement seem utterly deaf anytime someone says one of their apocalypse-causing problems is actually not that hard to address.
I'm not advocating Luddism, just perspective, the realization that bigger is no more INHERENTLY any better for commerce, industry or technology than for government.
More people, as long as you can maintain a decent standard of living, is better, personally I consider a good target number for a sustainable solar system population to be 10^20 or 100 Billion, Billion if we are limited to only the sun as a source of power and want to keep a classic food chain, and I'd kinda like to see the human pop get up to 100 billion within the next two or three centuries.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
If ever there was a reason to cut greenhouse gas emissions
- 19/08/2011 10:14:00 AM
864 Views
I've seen Start Trek, I know the real threat is you killing whales.
- 19/08/2011 10:34:08 AM
522 Views
I know 
- 19/08/2011 10:36:22 AM
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- 19/08/2011 10:36:22 AM
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You make a fair point
- 19/08/2011 11:22:53 AM
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There's so much wrong with that
- 19/08/2011 01:08:57 PM
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"They don't recycle; kill them all. " 
- 19/08/2011 07:11:15 PM
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- 19/08/2011 07:11:15 PM
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Very Space Hippy 
- 19/08/2011 10:39:10 PM
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- 19/08/2011 10:39:10 PM
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It's still debatable whether we've abandoned the evolutionary ladder.
- 19/08/2011 11:16:58 PM
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You'll welcome to debate that with a biologist, it's not my specialty or interest
- 20/08/2011 04:46:43 AM
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I've seen a lot of mainstream biologists suggest human evolution may be mostly mental now.
- 21/08/2011 11:32:48 AM
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Neither of us are biologists though and it's not really relveant anyway
- 21/08/2011 01:21:06 PM
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I'm not ignoring it, just wondering why over half the planet ignores it and lives in misery.
- 21/08/2011 01:55:53 PM
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If you have occassion to spend time in those places you'll know why
- 21/08/2011 02:38:44 PM
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How does literal mud huts as the norm respresent living standards rising "a lot".
- 22/08/2011 12:29:35 AM
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You seem to have cherry-picked what you wanted to hear out of my comments
- 22/08/2011 01:07:10 AM
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"It's a stability thing, not a Western greed thing" seemed to encapsulate your comments.
- 22/08/2011 03:10:17 PM
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Only if you really cherry pick them
- 23/08/2011 02:48:08 AM
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This seems to have descended into an insoluble partisan debate.
- 23/08/2011 07:43:07 PM
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*rudely butts in*
- 23/08/2011 04:38:33 AM
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American companies don't go to China SOLELY to screw the working class, no;that's largely incidental
- 25/08/2011 08:03:05 PM
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we should abdon the myth of the evolutionary ladder
- 20/08/2011 11:49:35 PM
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Probably; as discussed in Brams thread it should never be seen as predictive, let alone prophetic.
- 21/08/2011 11:55:09 AM
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Well, for this context I think the use is okay
- 21/08/2011 11:59:19 AM
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That's an interesting point about the NEED for fossil fuels as a stepping stone to advanced culture.
- 21/08/2011 12:33:59 PM
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Not a need, just an edge
- 21/08/2011 02:06:23 PM
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There's industrialization and then there's industrialization.
- 22/08/2011 12:53:35 AM
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If you were more familiar with engineering you'd not say something like that
- 22/08/2011 01:53:33 AM
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I dispute that industrialization is primarily about non-agricultural production.
- 22/08/2011 03:10:19 PM
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Well you can argue that with a dictionary I suppose
- 23/08/2011 03:50:52 AM
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I'm not above that, but the dictionary definitions I've found are disappointingly self-referential.
- 24/08/2011 02:25:21 AM
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That tends to be the case, it is a kinda vague term outside of specific context
- 24/08/2011 09:12:19 AM
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Tends to moot that part of the debate though.
- 26/08/2011 12:31:21 AM
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and we wonder why so many people ignore "scientist"
- 19/08/2011 01:17:38 PM
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Think it's better to ignore "reporters on a slow news day," to be honest *NM*
- 19/08/2011 02:38:23 PM
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Hypothetical aliens are perfectly wise
- 19/08/2011 06:24:13 PM
433 Views
You may be confusing aliens with God.
- 19/08/2011 07:08:01 PM
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- 19/08/2011 07:08:01 PM
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