James wrote:
> I reiterate: for people who axiomatically assert that "change=bad", it
You are setting up a stawman there. No one is arguing that all change is
bad. That is a ridiculous assertion. Almost as stupid as to state that all
change is good, which you Extropians believe. So the type of change
matters.
The type of 'bad'ness matters too. If a change is bad - your salary is
reduced - it might be bad for you but good for me because my taxes will be
reduced :-) Even if that does not happen it might be good for the British
economy. The invention of a new spinning jenny might be good because it
reduces the costs of clothing, but what about the poor spinners who lose
their employment and end up in the workhouse.
If you want a change with no downside, then you need no change. If you
want a change with no net downside, then you have to choose which units
you are going to use in order to do the subtraction. This is difficult if
exploiting a coal deposit means removing a mountain. How do you equate
the aesthetic eyesore with the commercial advantage. At present we do
the sum using money - pounds, dollars etc. Since aesthetics has no price
they lose out.
But if we use money, then we are entering the world of economics. There,
Adam Smith's invisible hand acts to optimise the system, though rather
imperfectly. Hence it easy to justify that we are optimised for the current
state from an economic POV, which is also the POV that is commonly
assumed.
> course, a certain amount of mental contortion is required to argue that
> it is only the anthropogenic changes that are bad, natural changes are
> benign. That doesn't stop some people...
Yet another strawman. Who is arguing that natural changes are benign?
Who has said that the effects of the Boxing Day tsunami were good? Who
is hoping for a return to another ice age? Who welcomes the landfall of a
hurricane? Well apart from Eli that is. There's always one!
Cheers, Alastair.
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