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DilGreen comments on Taking Ideas Seriously - Less Wrong
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JanetK:
Setting aside the more complex issue of climate change for the moment, I'd like to comment specifically on this part. Frankly, it has always seemed to me that alarmism of this sort is based on widespread popular false beliefs and ideological delusions, and that people here are simply too knowledgeable and rational to fall for it.
When it comes to the "loss of biodiversity," I have never seen any coherent argument why the extinction of various species that nobody cares about is such a bad thing. What exact disaster is supposed to befall us if various exotic and obscure animals and plants that nobody cares about are exterminated? If a particular species is useful for some concrete purpose, then someone with deep enough pockets can easily be found who will invest into breeding it for profit. If not, who cares?
Regarding the preservation of wild nature in general, it seems to me that the modern fashionable views are based on some awfully biased and ignorant assumptions. People nowadays imagine that wild nature is some delicate and vulnerable system that will collapse like a house of cards as soon as humans touch it. Whereas in reality, wild nature is not only extremely resilient, but also tends to grow and spread extremely fast, and humans in fact have to constantly invest huge amounts of labor just to prevent it from reconquering the spaces they have cleared up to build civilization.
I share the puzzlement of others here that after a post where bioterrorism, cryonics and molecular nanotechnology are listed as being serious ideas that need serious consideration - by implication, to the degree that they might significantly impact upon the shape of one's 'web of beliefs' - that the topics of climate change and mass extinction are given such short shrift, and in terms that, from my point of view, only barely pass muster in the context of a community ostensibly dedicated to increasing rationality and overcoming bias.
I find little rationality and enormous bias in phrases like; "... why the extinction of various species that nobody cares about is such a bad thing".
The ecosystem of the planet is the most complex sub-system of the universe of which we are aware - containing, as it does, among many only partially explored sub-systems, a little over 6 billion human brains.
Given that one defining characteristic of complex systems is that they cannot be adequately modelled without the use of computational resources which exceed the resources of the system itself [colloquially understood as the 'law of unintended consequences'], it seems manifestly irrational to be dismissive of the possible consequences of massive intervention in a system upon which all humans rely utterly for existence.
Whether or not one chooses to give credence to the Gaia hypothesis, it is indisputable that the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans are conditioned by the totality of the ecosystem; and that the climate is in turn conditioned largely by these.
Applying probabilistic thinking to the likely impact of bio-terrorism on the one hand, and climate change on the other, we might consider that, um, five people have died as a result of bioterrorism (the work, as it appears, of a single maverick and thus not even firmly to be categorised as terrorism) since the second world war, while climate change has arguably killed tens of thousands already in floods, droughts, and the like, and certainly threatens human habitat as low-lying islands are inundated as sea-levels rise.
Upon these considerations it would appear bizarre to consider expending any energy whatsoever upon bioterrorism before climate change.