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I feel like you didn't read what I wrote or the article: Life itself depends on sustainability. > If we look at sustainability from the perspective of "preserv

I feel like you didn't read what I wrote or the article: Life itself depends on sustainability. > If we look at sustainability from the perspective of "preserving human existence as long as possible", then the only long-term solution is expanding to other planets/solar systems. Or not have a system of infinite growth at all. > The language and tone used in the paper is not in the format "if we want to increase sustainability, this is what we should do" It's literally what the paper says. > "economic systems that exploit nature and humans" This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is economics also a bunch of value judgements now too?

logicchains 6y ago
>Life itself depends on sustainability. "Life" isn't a sentient being with values, people are. Humanity makes decisions based on some aggregate of the preferences of living humans. If most humans want to enjoy a good life now at the expense of the future environment, there's no objective standard to say they're wrong. It's a classic argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument , as noted by Sextus Empiricus, the founder of empiricism. There's no way to empirically justify a moral judgement. >Or not have a system of infinite growth at all. This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context. If your barber learns how to cut your hair twice as fast, that's economic growth. If the paperboy adopts a more efficient paper route to deliver papers faster, that's economic growth. If enough paperboys adopt more efficient routes, that shows up in GDP growth. >This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is economics also a bunch of value judgements now too? Yes of course it is. It's based on utilitarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism), basically the philosophy that there is some quantitative form of value that we should aim to maximise. That's why there are different schools of economics: they disagree on the foundations.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context. Nope, you're just ignoring the limits of optimization.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    We're so far away from those limits for them to be irrelevant to any practical considerations. Compared e.g. the performance per unit energy of the human brain to that of the best current CPU designs.

logicchains 6y ago

>Life itself depends on sustainability. "Life" isn't a sentient being with values, people are. Humanity makes decisions based on some aggregate of the preferences of living humans. If most humans want to enjoy a good life now at the expense of the future environment, there's no objective standard to say they're wrong. It's a classic argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument , as noted by Sextus Empiricus, the founder of empiricism. There's no way to empirically justify a moral judgement. >Or not have a system of infinite growth at all. This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context. If your barber learns how to cut your hair twice as fast, that's economic growth. If the paperboy adopts a more efficient paper route to deliver papers faster, that's economic growth. If enough paperboys adopt more efficient routes, that shows up in GDP growth. >This is also objectively measurable. They're talking about externalities. Is economics also a bunch of value judgements now too? Yes of course it is. It's based on utilitarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism), basically the philosophy that there is some quantitative form of value that we should aim to maximise. That's why there are different schools of economics: they disagree on the foundations.

guerrilla 6y ago
> This betrays a misunderstanding of what growth means in an economic context. Nope, you're just ignoring the limits of optimization.
- logicchains 6y ago
  We're so far away from those limits for them to be irrelevant to any practical considerations. Compared e.g. the performance per unit energy of the human brain to that of the best current CPU designs.