[ExI] why anger?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 26 February 2010 14:21, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>> ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> ...
>>
>>       * NEW SCIENTIST issue 2749.
>>       * 24 February 2010
>>
>> Honesty is the best policy for climate scientists
>>
>> FOR many environmentalists, all human influence on the planet is bad...
>
> Ja.  This attitude has made me uncomfortable for some time.  It seems to
> carry a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of evolution.  Humans
> evolved, so we are natural.  Our works are natural.  So if we create a world
> in which many or most species cannot survive, even accidentally, then that
> is as natural a process as the beaver creating a dam, flooding out and
> slaying the local endangered species, along with my brand new goddam pump
> house.
>
> If we alter our environment so that most species cannot survive but in which
> humans do just fine (being Africans only recently capable of moving away
> from the tropics) that represents an evolutionary process, and is natural.
> If we create an environment that (somehow) supports 100 billion humans but
> nothing else that does not directly support human life, is that not
> evolution?
>
> Does not that subset of environmentalism recognize that if humans manage to
> create a singularity and eventually transform all the metals of the solar
> system into an Mbrain or a bunch of Sbrains, this too is a natural product
> of evolution?  If we then send nanoprobes into the rest of the galaxy to
> turn other stars' metals into computronium, destroying all indigenous life
> there but facilitating the thinking of pure thought, is that not evolution
> in action?

To be strictly correct, those who oppose environment-altering
engineering have to change the language they use slightly to say that
that which nature created prior to the advent of technologically
capable humans is good and worth preserving.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou