[ExI] why anger?

[spike]

> ...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?

spike