[ExI] Evolving conservatism

[Eric Messick]

Rafal writes:
>### Wait, anthropogenic climate change killing humanity through an ice age,
>not through global warming? Did I understand you correctly?

Not quite.  Let me try again.

Keith was lamenting the lack of support for space based solar power.

He was looking for an explanation of the hostility he sometimes sees
to what looks to me like an obviously good idea.  How, he asks, did we
evolve into creatures with such reactions?

Rejecting potential solutions to problems which threaten your genes
does not seem like a good survival strategy.

There has been selection pressure in the other direction.  Being
conservative about accepting new ideas is adaptive because many new
ideas are worse than the old way of doing things, which has worked for
generations.

Past ice ages may have altered the balance.  If the stresses they
cause on populations are enough that the old ways no longer work, then
people who cling too tightly to the old ways will die out, and less
conservative people will be selected for.

We have constructed a world where everything changes much faster.
Being conservative in such an environment is less adaptive.
Conservative pressures not to develop new power sources may result in
a tragic die off. It may not be just the conservatives dying, though.

Perhaps such a die off would be analogous to what happened in past ice
ages.  Perhaps a slightly less conservative species will emerge.  In
any case, it would be an awfully high price to pay.

Is there a better way to get people to accept change?

-eric