From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2009-04-11T02:22:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

> Christophe Mckeon wrote:
>> It's life or death now, but the problem is that humans, even the  
>> smartest humans do not react to threats unless they are directly in  
>> front of them in plain view. We have our own evolutionary  
>> psychology to blame for this.
>> We need all the brains of the earth on this one.

Simple fact: it's always life and death. It has been since the first  
primordial cell ran smack bang into the second law of thermodynamics  
and was no more. Evolutionary theory is supposed to have given us a  
sense of perspective on this. Yes we all die, our cultures die, our  
species die and one day even our planet dies. But along the way the  
very struggle for survival offers new opportunities for our offspring  
to exploit changed conditions.

What has always worried me about the green movement is that instead of  
embracing environmental change for what it is, an intrinsic dynamic of  
the biosphere, they instead frame it as an enemy to be defeated. Such  
a war by its very nature cannot be won and each battle is a waste of  
resources that could better be channelled into learning to live with  
the changed conditions: the strategy nature itself adopts.

There is also an implicit assumption that humanity stands separate  
from nature when in actual fact all the traits we hate about our  
species are the consequence of the environmental conditions which  
faced our ancestors. If those prove to no longer be useful then I'm  
confident the same processes which encouraged them will curb them ;p

But I guess if there's one thing three decades of coding has taught  
me, it's that most people are petrified of change and will in leap  
through the most incredible hoops to avoid it...


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason