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> But mankind, as a whole, is a clippy optimizer already, albeit a manual one. Right now it is us that is destroying life around us, replacing rainforest with c
by slibhb 5y ago
> But mankind, as a whole, is a clippy optimizer already, albeit a manual one. Right now it is us that is destroying life around us, replacing rainforest with cattle farms and suburban developments. We are already working on farming robots to serve our goals. Does the lizard care if it is crushed by a farming robot's wheel or an AI tank's chain?
We already have a built-in solution for this problem: biophilia. People like nature. Once we stop being poor, preserving nature, living in natural environments with trees and animals becomes a high priority. The people "cutting down the rain forest" will stop once they're sufficiently comfortable to prioritize nature over avoiding privation just like the Europeans stopped.
We used to built boats out of wood, now we build them out of metal. There's no reason we can't replace technologies that conflict with our biophilia with those that don't.
- majormajor 5y agoThis hasn't worked for, say, burning fuels or polluting the world with plastic in developed countries yet. "Sufficiently comfortable" is a moving target.
- slibhb 5y agoSufficiently comfortable isn't a moving target. People have fixed needs. Sure, we desire to go beyond those needs, but we also desire a living, healthy environment with trees and animals. It's only when we don't meet our fixed needs that we deprioritize our biophilia. To make this very clear: rich people usually want a big house but they also want a big yard with nice plants. Many of them want it to be somewhat overgrown with "wildflower" beds, native bushes, honey bees and so on. This process is working itself out right now for fossil fuels. As we become aware of the damage technologies do, we rapidly transition to technologies that do less damage. This change takes generations but it's clearly underway. We also can't expect people who are experiencing privation to prioritize their biophilia over their survival. There's of course a danger in not transitioning fast enough. There's also a danger in transitioning too fast and killing lots of people in the process. Seems to me we're doing fairly well.
- kaba0 5y agoI am fairly sure that oil is not continuing to be sold to better the poor. And these “people” have been knowing about climate change since the 60s, and they deliberately lobbied for the silencing of it.
- slibhb 5y agoRegardless, if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, a lot of people would be miserable and die, and most of them would be poor.