From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 07:34:51 MDT
At 08:20 AM 7/26/01 -0500, Harvey wrote:
>major eco-engineering of the planet
>seem costlier than some pollution regulations, except that the costs are
>deferred from us/now to someone else later.
This is a major moral issue with me, because I don't feel equipped to
evaluate the matter. I don't know that *anyone* is. It does seem to follow
from current and expected exponentiating technology, probably running
through molecular nanotech and moderate AI, that it's more sensible to
postpone major expensive changes until later. Unless putting off the fixes
ruins the present and near-future so badly that those technological
advances get aborted.
As far as I can tell, this is *the* crucial conservation issue right now,
and for the next 40 or 50 years. The fact that almost nobody has even
*thought* of framing the matter in these terms makes it all the more
important that people like us think-tank it through and get some plausible
scenarios lined up. Gregory Benford and a very few others have taken some
steps in this direction, but their voices have been lost in the crowd.
(Obviously one needs to bracket the Singularity in any such discussion. If
the bloody technorapture arrives by 2013, the issue is moot. If it's not
due until 2060, but we can be certain it'll arrive by then, I'd say the
issue is still perhaps moot [although you can have a lot of water wars and
the like in six decades].)
Damien Broderick
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