[ExI] Limits of human modification

[John Clark]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:


>> ​>> ​
>> I'm saying that economic thinking is usually  mixed up with political
>> thinking and a individual's moral ideas. For example: child labor is a bad
>> thing therefore it could not have increased GNP in the 19th century, but
>> it's not necessarily so, one thing has nothing to do with the other.
>
>
> ​> ​
> That's not an example of economic thinking though.
>

​I agree that is not ​
economic thinking
​ but unfortunately that is the way that many economists think; the
widespread belief in fact X would lead to a political outcome that I don't
like therefore fact X can not be true.    ​


​> ​
> It's no different than how most people use evolutionary theory watered
> down to justify their pet beliefs. But people, especially non-experts do
> that with anything they can lay their hands on, no?
>

​Some sciences are more vulnerable to that than others. Like other people
string theorists have opinions on what a just society should be like but
they don't feel that their ideas about strings should conform with
morality, but that is often not the case with economists or social
scientists or even some Evolutionary biologists like Stephen Gould, Richard
Lewontin
​ and
Steven Rose

​ John K Clark​
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