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> We think with our weak technologies and chemistries that we can play God. We can play God, do play God, and will continue play God. People used to think of e

> We think with our weak technologies and chemistries that we can play God. We can play God, do play God, and will continue play God. People used to think of electricity as the rage of an angry God. Now you're raging against progress on a device that harnesses lightning at a quantum scale in ways unthinkable even 50 years ago. Do you have no appreciation whatsoever for how much good it does to expand humanity's capabilities? Can you see only the downsides? The people complaining about technology and progress should propose actual fixes for the problems that appear instead of braying from the sidelines about how nobody should ever do anything.

titzer 5y ago
We live in a truly remarkable universe and Science is our best method of repeatable, measurable progress. But Science is a method in service of our desires, and incentives drive our economic systems. Science has been put in service of extracting maximum profit and maximum growth. One small part of that is efficiency in production. That efficiency has given rise to the broad material wealth that we enjoy today. But Science has not been put in service of understanding what is good for humans psychologically, spiritually, or even biologically. To the extent that it has, we are overwhelmed and outmatched by powerful economic forces in service of the profit motive. A profit motive that has locked us into dreams of perpetual exponential growth of a fundamental anti-biological system of roadways, electricity, and food production that has us first harvesting and then paving the biosphere for profit. And then we get comments like yours, thankfully and rightly downvoted. Comments trying to stir up more shouting and polarization and finger pointing. In pursuit of that cathartic polarization, your comment is really just support of an absurd, extremist viewpoint that must have as a starting point a staggering ignorance about what humanity is currently smashing to pieces in its pursuit of material wealth, coupled with a willful ignorance to reflect on it. The cost we exact on our planet is enormous.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > Science has been put in service of extracting maximum profit and maximum growth. One small part of that is efficiency in production. That efficiency has given rise to the broad material wealth that we enjoy today. But Science has not been put in service of understanding what is good for humans psychologically, spiritually, or even biologically What is profitable is what is good. That's the beautiful thing about markets and prices: they force people to be honest about their preferences. When someone pays money for something, that means that what he's getting in exchange is good for him. Who are you to argue otherwise? Why should your aesthetic ideals of humanity's future override the actual preferences of real people as expressed through their market behavior? This idea that we can distinguish what is right from what is profitable is moralistic arrogance. > anti-biological system of roadways, electricity, and food production When I say that a certain strain of environmentalist is anti-human, I'm talking about people who would write about roads and electricity as if they were grand mistakes and should be undone. That's absurd. People who think this way can never be allowed to have power. If they got it, they'd ruin billions of lives. > And then we get comments like yours, thankfully and rightly downvoted. If your ideas can be supported only by censoring those who disagree, your ideas are weak and deserve to fail. > The cost we exact on our planet is enormous. The planet is there for us. We have no obligation not to impose costs on "the planet" any more than we have an obligation not to inconvenience the air we breathe or the dirt we stand on. This idea that we need to trade off interests of "the planet" against those of people is absurd. Ecological preservation might be justified in some cases in the interest of people, but we are under no obligation whatsoever to negotiate with Gaia for human welfare.

titzer 5y ago

We live in a truly remarkable universe and Science is our best method of repeatable, measurable progress. But Science is a method in service of our desires, and incentives drive our economic systems. Science has been put in service of extracting maximum profit and maximum growth. One small part of that is efficiency in production. That efficiency has given rise to the broad material wealth that we enjoy today. But Science has not been put in service of understanding what is good for humans psychologically, spiritually, or even biologically. To the extent that it has, we are overwhelmed and outmatched by powerful economic forces in service of the profit motive. A profit motive that has locked us into dreams of perpetual exponential growth of a fundamental anti-biological system of roadways, electricity, and food production that has us first harvesting and then paving the biosphere for profit. And then we get comments like yours, thankfully and rightly downvoted. Comments trying to stir up more shouting and polarization and finger pointing. In pursuit of that cathartic polarization, your comment is really just support of an absurd, extremist viewpoint that must have as a starting point a staggering ignorance about what humanity is currently smashing to pieces in its pursuit of material wealth, coupled with a willful ignorance to reflect on it. The cost we exact on our planet is enormous.

quotemstr 5y ago
> Science has been put in service of extracting maximum profit and maximum growth. One small part of that is efficiency in production. That efficiency has given rise to the broad material wealth that we enjoy today. But Science has not been put in service of understanding what is good for humans psychologically, spiritually, or even biologically What is profitable is what is good. That's the beautiful thing about markets and prices: they force people to be honest about their preferences. When someone pays money for something, that means that what he's getting in exchange is good for him. Who are you to argue otherwise? Why should your aesthetic ideals of humanity's future override the actual preferences of real people as expressed through their market behavior? This idea that we can distinguish what is right from what is profitable is moralistic arrogance. > anti-biological system of roadways, electricity, and food production When I say that a certain strain of environmentalist is anti-human, I'm talking about people who would write about roads and electricity as if they were grand mistakes and should be undone. That's absurd. People who think this way can never be allowed to have power. If they got it, they'd ruin billions of lives. > And then we get comments like yours, thankfully and rightly downvoted. If your ideas can be supported only by censoring those who disagree, your ideas are weak and deserve to fail. > The cost we exact on our planet is enormous. The planet is there for us. We have no obligation not to impose costs on "the planet" any more than we have an obligation not to inconvenience the air we breathe or the dirt we stand on. This idea that we need to trade off interests of "the planet" against those of people is absurd. Ecological preservation might be justified in some cases in the interest of people, but we are under no obligation whatsoever to negotiate with Gaia for human welfare.