On Jul 29, 2:12 pm, "Michael Tobis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I thought I'd point out the discussion on climate change on DailyKos today:
>
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/28/214525/965
>
> I especially think the comment "even if it is the seventieth
> generation" is worth considering. I am inclined to say "especially if
> it is the seventieth generation". The longer your horizon, the more
> absurd our behavior looks, and the more obviously morality gets into a
> terrtible tangle with the idea of conventional economic thought as a
> sensible guide.
>
> Consider David Archer's argument that our current behaviort is likely
> to commit ourselves to a clathrate release a couple of millenia hence.
> Admittedly this is somewhat speculative, but consider for the purposes
> of argument that it were a certainty. Economic arguments would
> discount the hunderds of generations in the future replay of the
> Paleocene/Eocene cataclysm to maybe fortyseven dollars and eighteen
> cents. Do we have a moral right to weight the distant future against a
> more or less arbitrary contemporary measure of value?
>
> mt
A few notes on long-term predictions:
1. A few years back, Verner Vinge noted that he and other sci-fi
writers had noticed that everything becomes plausible around 2030 due
the possibility of an explosion of self-designing AI technnology. This
has started a movement centered around something called the
"technological singularity".
2. If you ask a technologist in IT or biology to make a prediction
about a concrete advance, they will evidence a ~5-year prediciton
horizon. That's my observation.
Of course, we need to plan beyond 5 years, city planning/
infrastructure tends to have a multi-decade threshold.
Anyway there is bit of a problem here...
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