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I've seen a lot of mainstream biologists suggest human evolution may be mostly mental now. Joel Send a noteboard - 21/08/2011 11:32:48 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?

Maybe not literally, but it's not hard to argue we're seeing that practical effect. If a human from a thousand (let alone ten or a hundred thousand) years ago saw his modern (especially Western) descendants he'd probably wonder what epidemic had made them all pallid, hairless and either scrawny or bloated. Most of us would be dead in a week if dropped in the wilderness environments where our forefathers thrived, and most who did survive would do so only because they've been taught how to improvise measures to insulate themselves from it. However great our adaptive ability might once have been, might even remain, we seldom have much environmental impetus to develop it, and so generally don't. Maybe a half century or so of climate controlled enviroments haven't destroyed Westerners adaptive abiltiy, but it has left it fairly stunted from disuse.
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.

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.

Maybe we could, but we're not even supporting a third that number in decent comfort WITH fossil fuels now, so it'll take more than a few blueprints and prototypes (some of which have existed for decades) to convince me they'll ever be more than that. Poverty, disease, hunger and ignorance are still the rule rather than the exception. To the debatable extent that's changing for the 40% of humanity in India and China the rising use of fossil fuels are indispensable. Another billion Africans have been hearing for nearly a century how science was bringing fertilizers, irrigation and mechanization that would turn the continent into a utopian Eden; instead warfare, genocide and disease continue threatening the very existence of whole nations, while even existing and desperately needed generic AIDS drugs remain unavailable. Things are pretty good in Western Europe and North America, though there are definite signs of strain on our existing systems, but elsewhere "decent comfort" is already in rather short supply even with the dubious benefits of fossil fuels.

The idea we will achieve that comfort for three times as many people without those fossil fuels sounds very good, but I see few indications we will even if we can (which is far from certain). Doing so depends on people who desire it but lack the means gaining the access to that means that currently only exists for those who have no desire for it. Western businesses are happy to manufacture the greenhouse homes you mention for anyone who can afford to buy them, bu that's the catch 22: Those who can afford them don't want them, and those who want them can't afford them. The current price of ten barrels of oil is ; the folks for whom that's not much money aren't looking for green tinted tents, and the ones who'd love one don't have $800 lying around waiting for an expense. Meanwhile, the fossil fuels are being depleted and likely altering in radical ways an environment to which we are no longer as skilled at adapting. Not that that's are only risk, of course; as I noted, we could still unleash a nuclear or biological Armageddon at any moment. Your faith in humanitys higher instincts is, to say the least, far greater than mine, but then, if I had much faith in humanitys self improvement I'd probably be Hindu. ;)
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.

Man's not inherently or wholly evil, but he is fallen, and it's important to remember that fact as well as its consequences. One of those consequences is that any idea that starts with "if we just diverted US oil usage" is a non-starter; if doing that were as simple as saying it a major US party wouldn't have been able to make cap and trade a campaign issue. If our achievement of good matched our capacity for good there'd probably be a lot more liberals and people wouldn't be so suspicious of concentrated accumulated power in huuman corporations OR human governments. It's been said that, "Just because that we can do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that we must do that thing" and unfortunately that cuts both ways; the possible and the probable do not always coincide, and in cases where that's regrettable mans moral failings are usually to blame. Setting aside the not insignificant technical challenges to your predictions, you won't convince me mans nobility will overcome his ignobility, because I've seen little evidence to that effect, and much to the contrary. Even when our innovation is motivated by decency or comfort (and the moral virtues of the latter are also debatable) the practical effect tends to be merely efficiency, which is no more inherently good or evil than man or his technology. Even in the industrialized democratic West, do people work less today than they did a hundred years ago, or just differently?
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.

"As long as you can maintain a decent standard of living" is a rather hefty qualifier; again, whether we're able to do that even with the six billion we've got is rather dubious. Before we talk about tripling the population, let alone increasing it orders of magnitude, we should achieve "decent comfort" for the two-thirds of the world without it today; until we do that for at least a majority of six billion promising to do it for a hundred quadrillion is just fantasy, whatever the time frame. IMHO, the best start toward that goal would be recognizing that economy of scale is subject to moral lapses as well as marginal returns and government far from unique in its vulnerability to bureaucracy and arbitrary power abuses of power. Perhaps there's a good reason all politics is local, and perhaps many other things should be equally local for the same very valid reason. I hate to keep playing the political card, but there's a reason for that, too: The only thing that separates government from any other human institution is that, particularly in the democratic West, the public can hold government accountable in ways that simply don't exist for the other institutions. If big government isn't an inherently positive thing even with that accountability, how can any other institution be so without it?
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This message last edited by Joel on 21/08/2011 at 12:14:53 PM
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You make a fair point - 19/08/2011 11:22:53 AM 444 Views
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It's the other other white meat. - 19/08/2011 07:13:19 PM 474 Views
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It's still debatable whether we've abandoned the evolutionary ladder. - 19/08/2011 11:16:58 PM 589 Views
You'll welcome to debate that with a biologist, it's not my specialty or interest - 20/08/2011 04:46:43 AM 545 Views
I've seen a lot of mainstream biologists suggest human evolution may be mostly mental now. - 21/08/2011 11:32:48 AM 562 Views
Neither of us are biologists though and it's not really relveant anyway - 21/08/2011 01:21:06 PM 504 Views
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 519 Views
If you have occassion to spend time in those places you'll know why - 21/08/2011 02:38:44 PM 450 Views
How does literal mud huts as the norm respresent living standards rising "a lot". - 22/08/2011 12:29:35 AM 570 Views
You seem to have cherry-picked what you wanted to hear out of my comments - 22/08/2011 01:07:10 AM 342 Views
"It's a stability thing, not a Western greed thing" seemed to encapsulate your comments. - 22/08/2011 03:10:17 PM 478 Views
Only if you really cherry pick them - 23/08/2011 02:48:08 AM 491 Views
This seems to have descended into an insoluble partisan debate. - 23/08/2011 07:43:07 PM 553 Views
You're the one who dragged it to that - 23/08/2011 08:10:03 PM 468 Views
Did I? - 25/08/2011 10:18:29 PM 460 Views
*rudely butts in* - 23/08/2011 04:38:33 AM 534 Views
we should abdon the myth of the evolutionary ladder - 20/08/2011 11:49:35 PM 383 Views
Well, for this context I think the use is okay - 21/08/2011 11:59:19 AM 463 Views
yes I was just jumping into the middle of the discussion. - 22/08/2011 03:03:49 PM 422 Views
and we wonder why so many people ignore "scientist" - 19/08/2011 01:17:38 PM 518 Views
Think it's better to ignore "reporters on a slow news day," to be honest *NM* - 19/08/2011 02:38:23 PM 191 Views
Or even acquire a sense of humour. *NM* - 19/08/2011 08:36:07 PM 213 Views
That was the City of Pearl series by Karen Traviss - 19/08/2011 02:04:51 PM 485 Views
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Hypothetical aliens are perfectly wise - 19/08/2011 06:24:13 PM 432 Views
You may be confusing aliens with God. - 19/08/2011 07:08:01 PM 457 Views
Not confused - 19/08/2011 11:41:56 PM 475 Views
It's a an amusing disconnect to watch. - 20/08/2011 12:25:00 AM 471 Views
Naturally. - 19/08/2011 08:36:28 PM 559 Views
So, basically, we're the poor white trash of the universe. - 19/08/2011 07:06:23 PM 518 Views

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