At 11:24 AM 9/4/98 -0700, Hal wrote:
>Damien's question seems to be leading into the same old Liberatarian vs
>Statist argument which happens over and over and over again on the net
>until we are all thoroughly sick of it. Do we have to rehash it here?
That wasn't my intention. I had in the back of my mind the observation (by Anders?) that the most promising way to solve an anthropogenic global warming crisis would be to treat it as a technical issue rather than a moral one. (Reserving the possibility, in my view, that the technical issues might be modulated critically by moral choices made in the light of non-technical values.)
I hoped that the smart people here might have some interesting things to suggest about the various projectable paths from the current productive and distributive technologies (including economic policy theories) to a sheaf of likely outcomes as we move into an increasingly automated and then AI/assembler-driven economy. Robin's list of sub-topics might well be the way to start analysing the issues involved. Taking such a technical tack might help keep the discussion clear of intractable ideological disputes.
But the technical issues still require - in my view - an unflagging awareness that the components of the algorithms we're playing with are human beings, many of them unconscionably constrained and hurting already and likely to become more so as time passes. I want to find ways to help people live spiritually rich (you know what I mean), non-violent, non-self-destructive lives, if it's possible, in a world where many of them are going to be structurally excluded from the activities that traditionallly have given life meaning.
Damien Pollyanna Broderick