From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2009-04-14T03:48:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

On 13 Apr 2009, at 17:44, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> Eleanor McHugh wrote:
>> Robert, from where I'm sat the green movement desires to lock our  
>> ecosystem into some 'acceptable' state, effectively destroying the  
>> evolutionary pressures which give rise to new species and in the  
>> process defining boundaries within which human science, technology  
>> and culture should progress. I consider both goal and consequences  
>> to be immoral, driven by fear and ideology rather than any interest  
>> in the actual underlying dynamics of nature or the betterment of  
>> the human condition.
>
> And mass extinction is just nature's way of making room for more  
> species? Could be.

Perhaps the future is peopled by humanity's myriad descendants,  
adapted to every conceivable niche and as different from each other as  
one species of mammal is from another. Or it could be that the  
vertebrate experiment proves ultimately fruitless and the cockroaches  
drive the next great epoch.

> I will miss the frogs, though :/

Indeed. I'll miss frogs and tigers and whales and however many  
millions of species of beetles all disappear as a consequence of human  
behaviour just as I miss Sumer and Rome and the enigmatic builders of  
Skara Brae.

But to not let evolutionary changes happen is akin to refusing to ever  
move from our living room because we love our favourite armchair: it  
may well be the most comfortable armchair in the universe, but by  
restricting ourselves to it and not experiencing other rooms or the  
outside world we'd be condemning ourselves to a pale shadow of life.


Ellie

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