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It's not a great article but it's raising a real point. Andreessen's manifesto is bordering on the same error as free market fundamentalism (and other flavors

by slibhb 3y ago

It's not a great article but it's raising a real point. Andreessen's manifesto is bordering on the same error as free market fundamentalism (and other flavors of social darwinism) that views free markets as infallible. Markets are great at generating wealth but there's no reason to believe they can't lead us astray. FTX is an example of that. I think we should be 10-15% more optimistic about technology. And I agree that the source of a lot of environmentalism is unconscious anti-humanism. But there is such a thing as too much optimism, and it leads to stuff like "web3" and crypto nonsense.

mistrial9 3y ago
anti-humanism is a derogatory label pasted onto those speakers who argue for considering the entire ecosystem?
- slibhb 3y ago
  What I mean is that a substantial amount of environmentalism is just sublimated hatred of humanity. This leads to irrational beliefs and faulty predictions a la The Population Bomb or The Limits of Growth.
walleeee 3y ago
Any environmentalism worth its weight in words is consciously humanist, with the recognition that human life is not possible without nonhuman life. That is to say, humanist without the ideological blinders Andreessen wears. For humanism (for that matter, humankind) to remain viable in the long term it must outgrow adolescent notions of human self-sufficiency and supremacy
- slibhb 3y ago
  Okay -- so how do you respond to environmentalists who were completely and utterly wrong (e.g. Paul Erlich, The Club of Rome)? What I'm offering is a theory of why they were wrong: they have an unconscious hostility torward humanity which they channel into irrational, incorrect beliefs about the environment. There's a lot of this going around right now. Of course that doesn't mean that all environmentalism is similarly compromised. The desire to preserve ecosystems, to measure and limit the impact of industry on the environment is generally good.
  - adventured 3y ago
    It is worth keeping in mind that plenty of environmentalism over the past century has been specifically hostile to the existence of humanity. Either they don't care at best whether humanity continues to exist, or they view humanity as a blight (on a supposed innocent or pristine nature) that needs wiped out. It's not an uncommon view to see espoused today, and it gained traction over five decades ago in the environmentalist movement.
  - walleeee 3y ago
    I worry that though your theory may accurately describe some people, 1) it is nearly impossible to test, and 2) an equally parsimonious (and likely equally untestable) theory, it seems to me, is that uncertainty is uncomfortable. Misplaced certainty is a pervasive and unfortunate human proclivity, and this can easily motivate overconfident predictions. The problem, in my view, is that we see environmentalism as a corrective to industry; the former as a salve for the raw patches rubbed by the latter. This is upside down and inside out. Industry cannot exist without ecosystems and their services. Unless we place ecology before economy, economy will terminate itself and ecology both.
    - slibhb 3y ago
      Yeah, it's hard to test psychological theories. But all we really have to do is watch out for people who make dire predictions about the environment without substantial evidence. Sure, that's not perfect but it'll catch most of the offenders. > Unless we value ecology above economy, economy will terminate itself and ecology both. Doesn't every reasonable person "value ecology above economy"? Choose between A. rich + living in a desolate hellscape with no plants/animals and B. not rich + living in a nice green area with lots of nature nearby. Everyone is going with B! As soon as hunger and cold are no longer serious problems, every reasonable person starts to prioritize nature.
      - walleeee 3y ago
        The tragedy and irony is that even if every "reasonable person" wants the right things, with some combination of socio-technical inertia, incentive misalignment, power maximization, and ignorance, sprinkled with unreasonableness or malice or plain bad luck or what have you, we can still hit the rocks anyway. This is Moloch, or a wicked multi-polar trap, or the metacrisis, call it whatever you like. For a species in the thrall of an energy windfall of massive proportions, concurrent with an intelligence (if perhaps less a wisdom) explosion, it's the problem.

by slibhb 3y ago

mistrial9 3y ago

anti-humanism is a derogatory label pasted onto those speakers who argue for considering the entire ecosystem?

slibhb 3y ago
What I mean is that a substantial amount of environmentalism is just sublimated hatred of humanity. This leads to irrational beliefs and faulty predictions a la The Population Bomb or The Limits of Growth.

walleeee 3y ago

Any environmentalism worth its weight in words is consciously humanist, with the recognition that human life is not possible without nonhuman life. That is to say, humanist without the ideological blinders Andreessen wears. For humanism (for that matter, humankind) to remain viable in the long term it must outgrow adolescent notions of human self-sufficiency and supremacy

slibhb 3y ago
Okay -- so how do you respond to environmentalists who were completely and utterly wrong (e.g. Paul Erlich, The Club of Rome)? What I'm offering is a theory of why they were wrong: they have an unconscious hostility torward humanity which they channel into irrational, incorrect beliefs about the environment. There's a lot of this going around right now. Of course that doesn't mean that all environmentalism is similarly compromised. The desire to preserve ecosystems, to measure and limit the impact of industry on the environment is generally good.
- adventured 3y ago
  It is worth keeping in mind that plenty of environmentalism over the past century has been specifically hostile to the existence of humanity. Either they don't care at best whether humanity continues to exist, or they view humanity as a blight (on a supposed innocent or pristine nature) that needs wiped out. It's not an uncommon view to see espoused today, and it gained traction over five decades ago in the environmentalist movement.
- walleeee 3y ago
  I worry that though your theory may accurately describe some people, 1) it is nearly impossible to test, and 2) an equally parsimonious (and likely equally untestable) theory, it seems to me, is that uncertainty is uncomfortable. Misplaced certainty is a pervasive and unfortunate human proclivity, and this can easily motivate overconfident predictions. The problem, in my view, is that we see environmentalism as a corrective to industry; the former as a salve for the raw patches rubbed by the latter. This is upside down and inside out. Industry cannot exist without ecosystems and their services. Unless we place ecology before economy, economy will terminate itself and ecology both.
  - slibhb 3y ago
    Yeah, it's hard to test psychological theories. But all we really have to do is watch out for people who make dire predictions about the environment without substantial evidence. Sure, that's not perfect but it'll catch most of the offenders. > Unless we value ecology above economy, economy will terminate itself and ecology both. Doesn't every reasonable person "value ecology above economy"? Choose between A. rich + living in a desolate hellscape with no plants/animals and B. not rich + living in a nice green area with lots of nature nearby. Everyone is going with B! As soon as hunger and cold are no longer serious problems, every reasonable person starts to prioritize nature.
    - walleeee 3y ago
      The tragedy and irony is that even if every "reasonable person" wants the right things, with some combination of socio-technical inertia, incentive misalignment, power maximization, and ignorance, sprinkled with unreasonableness or malice or plain bad luck or what have you, we can still hit the rocks anyway. This is Moloch, or a wicked multi-polar trap, or the metacrisis, call it whatever you like. For a species in the thrall of an energy windfall of massive proportions, concurrent with an intelligence (if perhaps less a wisdom) explosion, it's the problem.