[ExI] Evolving conservatism

[Eric Messick]

Rafal writes:
> [about space based solar power]
>### Some of us evolved to see it's not an obviously good idea.

and later:

>> Is there a better way to get people to accept change?
>### Don't suggest useless or actively destructive ideas?

You seem to be saying here that SBSP is a useless or actively
destructive idea, and at least one which you are not convinced is
good.  I'd be curious to hear why you think it is not a good idea.

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

Yes, and some can be rejected without too much thought, while others
offer enough potential to be worth trying to work through any
problems.  Obviously different people will put different levels of
effort into particular areas, and this is good.

>> Past ice ages may have altered the balance. [...]
>
>### The timespans are incommensurate, climate change has no bearing on the
>evolution of psychological traits, where pressures operating over much
>shorter timespans are predominant. [...]

I don't think we can know that for sure.

I don't think there is anything particularly special about ice ages or
climate change in general.  It's just an example of changing
conditions which can affect the general difficulty of surviving,
perhaps giving an advantage to some group over another.

>> [...]
>> 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?

I would include them, yes.

Environmentalists are conservative about the environment.  I think
they would be against SBSP for one simple reason:  it would support
more humans on the planet.  I think they ignore that it would also
help get more humans *off* the planet.  I'm not sure exactly how they
would react to that prospect.

I'd also include Thorium reactors among the obviously good ideas (from
an engineering perspective) which seem to get little political
traction.  I do have a good explanation for why Thorium has
traditionally gotten little support:  we wanted bombs, and Thorium
reactors wouldn't help with that.  Now that we don't want as many
bombs, Thorium should be popular, but it isn't.  The status quo bias
that Anders brought up surely covers this, as well as the other things
we are talking about here.

-eric