[ExI] Evolving conservatism

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Sat Jan 11 19:08:52 UTC 2014


On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Eric Messick <eric at m056832107.syzygy.com>wrote:

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?
>

### Some of us evolved to see it's not an obviously good idea.
----------------

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

### Almost all potential solutions to threats have to be rejected. See
opportunity cost.

---------------

>
> 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.
>

### The timespans are incommensurate, climate change has no bearing on the
evolution of psychological traits, where pressures operating over much
shorter timespans are predominant. The reasons why primitive societies in
the EEA are conservative is because they are poor and many experiments are
expensive enough to cause death in days or weeks, not because of exposure
of ancestral populations to changing climate conditions over thousands of
years.

-----------------

>
> 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.
>

### Who are the "conservatives" doing the pressuring here? Do you mean the
people who want to strangle nuclear power plant development?
--------------------

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


### Don't suggest useless or actively destructive ideas?

Rafal
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