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It's somewhat dangerous, agree, especially if it was to be a commonly held opinion. But it's likely just another folly that (it seems) mostly the rich and power

It's somewhat dangerous, agree, especially if it was to be a commonly held opinion. But it's likely just another folly that (it seems) mostly the rich and powerful use to fill their minds with delusions of grandeur, but one in a long row of such delusions. I doubt it will be of any real consequence except as an elitist project. That said, the article touches on the type of folly that this is: i.e. mixing the "goals" of the species with that of individuals, as if the trajectory of the species was like getting an education and a career. This leap is more common than we might imagine and I believe it is caused by an underestimated characteristic of the human mind: we take esoteric knowledge that has been presented to us by instruments of science and transpose these concepts onto familiar things: a planet is like an orange, the atomic system is like an apple with electrons like busy bees swirling round it, gravity is like a steel ball in a rubber net and so on. It gives us the impression that we know things when we (at least as amateurs) will likely miss out on essential properties that we have not yet grasped, because these things are so far removed from our everyday reality. It is the same with the concept "species" in this case. It is a largely scientific concept, for the individual it is only really relevant if the other person is possible to mate and get offspring with. That's the concept of species we have had as humans for millions of years, it's likely to continue to be so, and who knows where that will take us. It's really none of my business.

coldtea 3y ago
>But it's likely just another folly that (it seems) mostly the rich and powerful use Those are the ones can yield the most damage tho
andsoitis 3y ago
> we take esoteric knowledge that has been presented to us by instruments of science and transpose these concepts onto familiar things: a planet is like an orange, the atomic system is like an apple with electrons like busy bees swirling round it, gravity is like a steel ball in a rubber net and so on. It gives us the impression that we know things when we (at least as amateurs) will likely miss out on essential properties that we have not yet grasped, because these things are so far removed from our everyday reality. “Us” is misleading. I highly doubt that those who are thinking seriously about how to extend the species success in time and space (and taking actions that make a difference) think of atoms or earth in the way you describe.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Having spoken to a few of them, I doubt they think of those things any other way. Someone who is trying to think of the big picture necessarily has to abstract a few things. They know that a planet is not an orange, and can describe it in detail, but in the grand model of the big picture, a planet gets modeled with simplifications (to make reasoning possible) that reduce it to a big orange. Many people don't deeply interrogate these simplifications at all to understand whether they are correct.
  - dmix 3y ago
    Well you’d hope it’s not just an individual figuring this stuff how but a body of research and debate among many people which is honest and open enough to cut into assumptions and challenge them. Like all good science. Although I don’t know enough about longtermism to make a critique of their ideas.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      I don't think the debate is very open about assumptions, and this is not science, this is basically at the border of philosophy and religion. I personally think that a lot of long-terminist thinkers today have separate sets of simplifying assumptions (which they do not question), but come to some sort of negotiated compromise on what the future holds in order to fund projects, for example. This is the worst of all possible forms of discussion.
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  It seems clear that they take the concept of "species" (which scientifically is a fuzzy concept, and where each "species" is without any inherent goals as far as we can tell) and transpose it onto a much simpler concept, which can have goals much like individuals (hence the orange).

coldtea 3y ago

>But it's likely just another folly that (it seems) mostly the rich and powerful use Those are the ones can yield the most damage tho

andsoitis 3y ago

> we take esoteric knowledge that has been presented to us by instruments of science and transpose these concepts onto familiar things: a planet is like an orange, the atomic system is like an apple with electrons like busy bees swirling round it, gravity is like a steel ball in a rubber net and so on. It gives us the impression that we know things when we (at least as amateurs) will likely miss out on essential properties that we have not yet grasped, because these things are so far removed from our everyday reality. “Us” is misleading. I highly doubt that those who are thinking seriously about how to extend the species success in time and space (and taking actions that make a difference) think of atoms or earth in the way you describe.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
Having spoken to a few of them, I doubt they think of those things any other way. Someone who is trying to think of the big picture necessarily has to abstract a few things. They know that a planet is not an orange, and can describe it in detail, but in the grand model of the big picture, a planet gets modeled with simplifications (to make reasoning possible) that reduce it to a big orange. Many people don't deeply interrogate these simplifications at all to understand whether they are correct.
- dmix 3y ago
  Well you’d hope it’s not just an individual figuring this stuff how but a body of research and debate among many people which is honest and open enough to cut into assumptions and challenge them. Like all good science. Although I don’t know enough about longtermism to make a critique of their ideas.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    I don't think the debate is very open about assumptions, and this is not science, this is basically at the border of philosophy and religion. I personally think that a lot of long-terminist thinkers today have separate sets of simplifying assumptions (which they do not question), but come to some sort of negotiated compromise on what the future holds in order to fund projects, for example. This is the worst of all possible forms of discussion.
stareatgoats 3y ago
It seems clear that they take the concept of "species" (which scientifically is a fuzzy concept, and where each "species" is without any inherent goals as far as we can tell) and transpose it onto a much simpler concept, which can have goals much like individuals (hence the orange).