Re: Clueless Bio Futurists

From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Mon May 21 2001 - 08:08:14 MDT


Aleks Jakulin wrote:
> > The following futurist discussion seems completely
> > clueless to me. Humanity and its descendants will change
> > so fast that they will completely dominate changes in the
> > biosphere. Within a thousand years, there probably won't
> > be a substantial biosphere that we would recognize.
>
>To find clues, one must read the papers, not just the titles.
>One of the articles below states that it is useless to create small pockets of
>pristine "nature"
>... Even if all that might eventually be ditched, you do not want to ditch
>it before you already have better and working alternatives. Until then, the
>biosphere better be allowed to operate efficiently.

I agree that we are not yet ready to ditch the biosphere, and that
we should try to avoid it collapsing before we are ready. What I
think is clueless is trying to project the future of the biosphere
over the next few millions years. It'll be gone by then.

Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:07 MDT