Steve writes: ``I believe we live in the constant fog of "the evil you know", working like crazy to fix the problems that are in our face today, often caused precisely by the problems caused by our last round of "fixes", whilst being willfully ignorant of an evil we "could know" but choose not to apprehend.''
If an intelligent creature causes and observes a dangerous outcome from an experiment, they can avoid that situation in the future. In contrast, evolution will just keep killing until the danger is no longer relevant. Life on Earth got to where it is through suffering and ruthless competition. A problem with organized intelligent creatures is that they have other necessary goals, like maintaining power relative to other organizations. The consequences of their interventions in physical systems is not necessarily their primary concern, especially if they have reason to think there is manageable short-term risk. And what better way to keep an organization intact than to cause and fix the same problems! So my claim it is these other agendas amplify bad consequences, not that we ultimately act in ignorance. Anyone that doesn't act in ignorance is dealing with a trivial system. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
