The "more is better" paradigm you are defending arose in an era when the powers available to human beings were modest in scale, in comparison to today, and what is coming. That era is over, and my honorable fellow members along with most of the rest of society, are still stuck there philosophically. — Jake

And you're not stuck in it? What is your lifestyle like? Is it eco friendly or reflect an ethic of scientific/technological economy? We know that you value the free exchange of information via the internet, and computerization in general (which is an existential AGI threat to humanity), if nothing else about your true values. Frankly, without knowing anything else about you we know that you’re a fucking hypocrite.

Or a million things. Or your neighbor might crash the ecosystem before any of that happens. What's your plan, do nothing and wait to see what happens? — Jake

What's your plan? Bitch about the need to limit technology in some vague way? How? It's not about that for you - or you'd be able to say how. It's about putting people down, about rubbing people's noses in it. That's what you're about.

Knowledge and technology could potentially equip (via biotech enhancement or whatever) our species to be effectively responsible enough to handle dangerous tech. — praxis

Yes, if technology was able to profoundly transform the human condition for the better, that might solve the problem. But who would be designing such a transformation? The imperfect human designers. What the evidence of history shows is that it's most likely the designers would use whatever this mystery power is to their own advantage.

Or, there would be good intentions that would somehow go wrong. You know, that's how we got in to the climate change mess. The industrial revolution was created with good intentions, but without enough information and maturity to anticipate all the consequences.

Whatever Karl means about "science as truth" or humans becoming supernatural, or whatever he means and I doubt he himself knows, that might work too, whatever it is.

As wonderful as all these dreamy notions are, the fact remains is that civilization is racing towards calamity today, and it is imperfect humans who will have to fix it. You guys don't wish to face this, and so you are escaping in to various futuristic fantasies.

Had science been adopted by the Church from 1630 - and pursued, and integrated into philosophy, politics, economics and society on an ongoing basis, individuals would be much more rational. — karl stone

[My emphasis]

Wow! How would this have come to pass, do you think? :chin:

More is inevitable! — karl stone

Then humans will be extinct within a century or so. :cry: Planetary resources are dwindling. Less is inevitable! You can't have more (say) fresh water if there is no more fresh water to be had. Or if not water then food, clothing, shelter, fuel (of whatever sort) ... or air. :chin: :fear:

My beef with you is - this is my thread, and thus far you haven't discussed my ideas at all. You keep putting the same idea forward again and again - and ignoring the massive flaws with it, which I've pointed out. Not least, that more is inevitable. — karl stone

We are on a helter-skelter. Jake is concerned about the pit filled with sharpened stakes that we reach when we get to the bottom, and you are observing - probably quite correctly - that we humans are just sliding on down, shouting "faster, faster!". Faster is inevitable! :chin: Yeah, right. :roll:

My arguments are a proposal. How to save the world is not some vague sentimental notion - it's a plan. A plan you haven't read, A plan Jake has glanced at, but not really understood. Imagine my frustration...

If your plan is based on "more is inevitable", it isn't a viable plan. We live in an environment with limited and dwindling resources. More is not an option. :chin:

If your plan is based on "more is inevitable", it isn't a viable plan. We live in an environment with limited and dwindling resources. More is not an option. — Pattern-chaser

Thanks for your remarks, but if you believe this:

You can't have more (say) fresh water if there is no more fresh water to be had. — Pattern-chaser

Then perhaps you have some reading to do before you do any writing. Google the word 'desalination' - and have a good old read! And thank you again for your interest. Goodbye.

As wonderful as all these dreamy notions are, the fact remains is that civilization is racing towards calamity today, and it is imperfect humans who will have to fix it. You guys don't wish to face this, and so you are escaping in to various futuristic fantasies. — Jake

You’re the one who started with the sci-fi story about my neighbor creating new life forms in his garage like a futuristic Frankenstein, and I pointed out how silly or unuseful such wild speculations are. Why are your stupid fantasies valid and ours not?

I’m pretty much convinced you’re trolling, at least for the most part, Jake, given the nonsense you’ve been spewing and your lack of concern for topic subject matter. This topic is titled “How to Save the World!” which in itself shows a recognition of the ‘calamity civilization is racing towards’ and an intention to confront the problem.

Well in case anyone is interested, the cost of desalination and the energy required may be about to drop significantly. https://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/beacons/breakthroughs/affordable-desalination/

You’re the one who started with the sci-fi story about my neighbor creating new life forms in his garage — praxis

I didn't invent this story. That's exactly what's going to happen if DNA manipulation continues on it's present course of rapidly getting easier and easier, cheaper and cheaper. It's just like what happened with computers. First they were primitive and expensive and only governments and big corporations had them. And now everybody has a computer or two in their pocket.

I asked you that question to try to get to the bottom line so we wouldn't have to waste even more time on all this endless blah, blah, blah.

But anyway, you're not even interested in the subject. You're just looking for somebody to argue with. I'm sure you'll find some takers, but I'm going to pass.

I didn't invent this story. That's exactly what's going to happen — Jake

It hasn’t happened yet but you didn’t invent the story. Truly remarkable nonsense.

It hasn’t happened yet but you didn’t invent the story. Truly remarkable nonsense. — praxis

See? This is what you're interested in, squabbling.

To disprove this, start your own thread on these subjects where you attempt to dive deeper in to these topics in a sustained manner.

Jake, try to be sensible. You invented a story about my neighbor creating new life forms in his garage and then claimed that it’s not a story you invented. You must realize how ridiculous that sounds.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mail-order-crispr-kits-allow-absolutely-anyone-to-hack-dna/

Jake, try to be sensible. You invented a story about my neighbor creating new life forms in his garage and then claimed that it’s not a story you invented. You must realize how ridiculous that sounds. — praxis

Please observe how you're completely ignoring the evidence I offered regarding the history of computing, so you can type the word "ridiculous" again.

Another example. When I first got in to web publishing in 1995 you had to be a kind of NASA scientist power nerd type person to create a website. I could charge people $75 just to upload some images to a web server. These days, your dog can create a web site for free in countless places.

This pattern has been repeated in too many different fields to list. As the technology matures it gets cheaper, easier and more widely available. Why you think the prospect of this happening in the DNA field is ridiculous is beyond me.

But go ahead, type the word ridiculous again Mr. Philosopher. I'd suggest trying all caps, bold and some exclamation points this time, so readers will know you're really trying hard to make a contribution to this subject.

Thanks for the link unenlightened, very relevant. Near the end of the article it reads....

Finally, what about the nightmare scenario: Is CRISPR so easy to use that we need to worry about biohackers—either accidentally or intentionally—creating dangerous pathogens? Carroll and others think that the danger of putting CRISPR in the hands of the average person is relatively low. “People have imagined scenarios where scientists could use CRISPR to generate a virulent pathogen, ” he says. “How big is the risk? It’s not zero, but it’s fairly small.” Gersbach agrees. “Right now, it’s difficult to imagine how it’d be dangerous in a real way,” he explains, “If you want to do harm, there are much easier and simpler ways than using this highly sophisticated genetic editing technique.”

Please note my bolding of the phrase "right now". Not that I know all that much about CRISPR, but I suspect that statement is probably true. Right now CRISPR is probably more trouble than it's worth for the bad guys to bother with. Right now.

How about twenty years from now? By then CRISPR will probably be obsolete, having been replaced by some other more powerful and accessible technology.

Ok, so the government will pass laws about the use of such technologies. The War On Drugs should give us some insight in to how well that will work. Laws mostly serve the purpose of keeping law abiding people from wandering in to areas that they probably don't want to be in anyway.

As example, if I wanted some heroin I'd have no idea where to buy it, because it's illegal. But millions of people who want to do heroin don't seem to be having much trouble finding it. What limits me is not really the law, but my lack of interest in heroin.

I envy heroin addicts. Their life has purpose. Wife, job, kids, house, car - what's the purpose in any of that if our existence is unsustainable? It's all just one big masturbation. It's pleasure, but without meaning. We are wanking ourselves to death. So, the purpose I adopted was to secure a sustainable future - and on paper, I succeeded. I write about it here, on the foremost philosophy forum listed by google - and yet only get replies from wankers.

I write about it here, on the foremost philosophy forum listed by google - and yet only get replies from wankers. — karl stone

Come now! You haven't gotten responses from wankers; you have gotten responses from reasonable thoughtful people who disagree with you. That doesn't make this discussion a circle jerk.

There is nothing "wrong" with your hydrogen plan, in itself. It's novel, sophisticated, probably do-able. The downside of the Stone Hydrogen Plan is this: we don't have the lead time to achieve this kind of solution before things get much worse.

The FIRST thing we have to do is sharply reduce CO2 production, and that means reducing consumption. We don't have something like 1 or 2 hundred years to do this; we have to start doing this immediately, and we must succeed at it or we're screwed.

While we reduce CO2 production and reduce consumption (all kinds) we need to immediately increase generation of electricity by solar, wind, and hydro. Even nuclear power takes too long to get up and running to be an immediate solution.

IF we make it, IF we reduce CO2 production and consumption sufficiently within 50 years, we will then have the opportunity to investigate long-term alternatives, like generating hydrogen at sea through solar power.

As a fuel, hydrogen is workable, but all new technologies require a substantial lead time. A rule of thumb is that it takes 50 years to invent, improve, and install major new technological systems. (Not 50 years to start, 50 years start to finish.) Industries can start preparing for hydrogen economy now, should that be a choice we want to make. The decision won't be made here, in any case. But thanks to our pig-headed short-sightedness, the planetary environment is in a crisis and the IMMEDIATE task is CO2 reduction, and that as much and as fast as is humanly possible.

I don't know who deals with issues like this in the UK, but in the US it would be the Department of Energy and industrial engineers who have the wherewithal to think about major technological implementation.

Actually, we don't need to worry about dark-minded terrorists working in gloomy basement labs to cook up something really really bad. It's as likely that bright, sunny laboratories in various countries -- Russia, China, NK, USA, etc. are already working on it, or already have cooked up the witch's brew.

And so has nature. Not to give anyone any ideas, but ebola would work just fine as a bio-terrorism agent. It's ready to go. There are various bird viruses (e.g. influenza) that can be capable killers. For that matter, just starting forest fires would be very harmful. Or importing novel plant diseases that our monocultures of corn are not resistant to. Or selling heroin and meth. So many ways...

You haven't gotten responses from wankers; — Bitter Crank

I think we probably are wankers. And blinkered.

Now I feel embarrassed. My neighbor is probably a terrorist as well.

Why you think the prospect of this happening in the DNA field is ridiculous is beyond me. — Jake

This is a misapprehension or misrepresentation. I wrote that claiming the story you contrived about my neighbor wasn’t a story you contrived was rediculous.

There is nothing "wrong" with your hydrogen plan, in itself. It's novel, sophisticated, probably do-able. The downside of the Stone Hydrogen Plan is this: we don't have the lead time to achieve this kind of solution before things get much worse. — Bitter Crank

We currently have the industrial capacity, the intelligence, the skills, and the capitalist economic scaffolding in place to implement the technology, something we cannot trust will be within reach subsequent to any conceivable 'catastrophe first' strategy. We must act proactively, and decisively now - while the capacity exists - or lose the opportunity that exists in sustainable markets of 10-12 billion consumers by 2100.

With a sufficiently methodical approach, this figure is entirely manageable. It begins with energy, and follows from water and hydrogen fuel - irrigation, fish farming, agriculture, jobs, ugg boots and iphones. It implies recycling be designed into production, right through to use and disposal - but the potential from a sustainable energy basis for civilization, is for a garden paradise of a world, where rivers run uphill. Imagine, if we had a free hand with the knowledge and technology we have, what could be achieved - and then ask yourself why that's not so.

It's not, as some might imagine that man is innately greedy. It's too shallow an explanation, not least because it doesn't explain civilization. If greed were man's primary motivation - which is not to say it's not a motive at all, but if it were dictatorial then civilization could not exist. In general we find that greed - insofar as it motivates man, is manifest in something productive, and in some sense worthwhile. Rather, I would focus on the needs of man, and how they might be met sustainably. I trust that if it can be shown to be both a rational and possible course - then the same motives dismissed as greed, will compel that course. If indeed, the world's energy needs can be met from a postage stamp of solar panels 350 miles square, on the letter that is the oceans to eternity, and we don't send that letter - we're an empty gesture.

When I first got in to web publishing in 1995 you had to be a kind of NASA scientist power nerd type person to create a website. I could charge people $75 just to upload some images to a web server. These days, your dog can create a web site for free in countless places. — Jake

Ah, I get it now, you’re anti-progress because you can’t keep pace with it and lost your livelihood. High end web developers still charge at least that much.

Change isn’t always comfortable, Jake, but it is inevitable.

We currently have the industrial capacity, the intelligence, the skills, and the capitalist economic scaffolding in place to implement the technology, something we cannot trust will be within reach subsequent to any conceivable 'catastrophe first' strategy. — karl stone

Your point above is a resting place. Society has to decide whether to commit, and to which technology. (Society as a whole isn't going to decide -- it's international finance that will decide.) "They" haven't decided to do much of anything, yet, so... we will all have to stay tuned.

We must act proactively, and decisively now - while the capacity exists - or lose the opportunity that exists in sustainable markets of 10-12 billion consumers by 2100. — karl stone

I can hardly wait for a world with 12 billion people.

No, I don't think it will happen but you are 100% right that we have to act proactively. We should be proactive immediately, like 30 years ago. I do not believe that technology and other human institutions can solve the food/water/energy problem by 2100 for 12 billion people. I find the idea rather like the plot of a science faction novel where human kind somehow manages to establish a footing elsewhere in the solar system or galaxy by 2200. At least in science fiction, one knows one is entering a 'created universe' which one either finds believable or not. If it isn't believable, the book will be tossed into the recycling bin.

I can reject abundance for 12 billion people without rejecting your solar hydrogen plant idea. They are not mutually dependent on each other.

You are as doggéd in your defense of the solar powered hydrogen plant as Schopenhauer1 is of anti-natalism. Doggéd persistence is much more of a virtue than it is a vice, but your abiding interest is likely to outrun other people's enthusiasm. At which point one should move on to another topic.

Ah, I get it now, you’re anti-progress because you can’t keep pace with it and lost your livelihood. — praxis

That's not at all the impression I obtained from Jake.

Conservativism in general seems to be based in fear of change and maintaining the status quo. Problem is that even if progress were somehow obstructed we are still on track for collapse of some kind, the way things are now being so unsustainable.

You are as doggéd in your defense of the solar powered hydrogen plant as Schopenhauer1 is of anti-natalism. Doggéd persistence is much more of a virtue than it is a vice, but your abiding interest is likely to outrun other people's enthusiasm. At which point one should move on to another topic. — Bitter Crank

I've thought about it, but anti-natalism is a misconceived approach in several ways; the most immediate that it is morally objectionable to construe the problem as the existence of people. Second is that it would require dictating women's reproductive rights. Third is the questions of ethnicity such an approach throws up. And then there are complex demographic effects one can hardly predict, but would need to take into account.

As for moving on to another topic, that would be another example of a futile attempt to hold back the tide. This is all I've thought about for years. All these ideas are public domain. It's not like I'm giving away state secrets. Nor is anything I've said twisted into a reason to hate or despair. So really, it's not my place to worry about other people's enthusiasm. Switch the channel if you don't like it - but I aim to succeed, and that's the perspective I'd be judged from.

Your point above is a resting place. Society has to decide whether to commit, and to which technology. (Society as a whole isn't going to decide -- it's international finance that will decide.) "They" haven't decided to do much of anything, yet, so... we will all have to stay tuned. — Bitter Crank

So you're saying my point is a resting place, I should move on to other issues, and:

I do not believe that technology and other human institutions can solve the food/water/energy problem by 2100 for 12 billion people. — Bitter Crank

I think otherwise. Seven tenths of the earth's surface is still as rich in metals as when the earth was new. There's no immediate resource bottleneck - given a willingness to develop resources, rather than simply exploit them to death. Shifting now to a renewable energy basis for civilization - we are very well situated, even anticipating significant climate consequences already, decisive proactive action could turn all to our advantage yet.

The ability to produce fresh water on a significant scale from renewable energy would solve a lot of problems as those effects manifest. And for that reason alone we should build it - if not so that fossil fuels would be forced to compete on an even playing field. If we can pump rivers of water inland, uphill - we can one day refill those depleted aquifers and empty inland seas at negligible cost. Just build the infrastructure, and set it going - if immediately to counter droughts, increasingly likely across larger parts of the planet - in future to repair environmental damage.

I cannot see that possibility slipping away and not give voice to it. I don't think I should stop talking about it. I'm quite prepared to be rude, to have people hate me, but I'm not trying to hurt anybody. Indeed, I went out of my way to devise a solution that seeks to account for vested interests in general - and doesn't require we do anything we don't already do in some respect.

Philosophically speaking, if one considers the occurrence of a scientific understanding of reality significant, then from that follows an authority, and a rationale for the application of technology. It's not rude to point out we could survive if we tried. We have to talk about it if there's any hope at all we might.