From: Aleks Jakulin (aleks.jakulin@campus.fri.uni-lj.si)
Date: Fri May 18 2001 - 11:51:56 MDT
> From: "Robin Hanson" <rhanson@gmu.edu>
> 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" -- but rather forget pristineness and rather make sure the
biosystems remain well-connected geographically, so that diversity is
maintained, and that reduces the chances of an ecologic collapses, and improves
the efficiency of natural evolution.
The biosphere is doing useful things in a slow but reliable way, perhaps
inventing new chloroplasts, antioxidants, and other useful chemicals and
chemical systems, which are produced in an efficient and self-replicating
manner. 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. Also, it's pointless wiping
out potentially useful species for idiotic reasons such as planting yet more
coffee/banana/coca plantations for the sole purpose that yet a few more morons
in the third world can buy BMW's.
Regards,
Aleks
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