RoR: Forum

Chilling read...the scary thing is I think this attitude is more prevalent than is typically suspected. Environmentalist have been claiming humans have been 'raping the earth' for decades. What do you do to a rapist? There is a lot of reason to think ecoterrorism is a bigger threat than islamic terrorism, at least the latter doesnt actually want to wipe out all human life. Ecoterrorists have already committed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage, frequently attacking new developments, burned out disease research labs, and in one case in France killed someone. Environmental terrorist organizations are all ready high on the FBI's watch list. This radicalism combined with the fact that as technology progresses fewer and fewer people will be able to kill more and more people with less and less expenditure or resources is the primary reason why I am an adamant supporter of the Lifeboat Foundation ... "Humanity's Insurance Policy" Our long term goal is to build self sustaining space stations to see humanity spread throughout the solar system and galaxy, mitigating the risks to humanity that will come from global catastrophe's, either natural or man-made.

www.lifeboat.com

Michael F Dickey

Post 1

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 8:31am

Haha...I saw "Dr. Doom" and was hoping for Marvel Comics, and found this asshole instead in the article. But either the scientists are reading too many comics, or the comic writers are reading too much pseudo-science:

Interesting about the Ebola virus method...Marvel has a "planet eater" named Galactus, a cosmic being once a man before the universe began in its current incarnation. His name was Galen, and he was a healer, and was transformed into Galactus, who brings balance to the universe by eating planets and destroying sentient life.

The reason I bring in comics is because Marvel is re-doing the character in its revision series THE ULTIMATES. This time, a scientific theory is used to explain Galactus, who is less anthropomorphic and more....viral. This time, Gah-Lak-Tus is a robotic entity using locust-like creatures that spread....EBOLA....to devour the worlds. The theory behind the story is the Fermi Paradox.

(Wikipedia)

"The Fermi Paradox is a physical paradox that was brought to light by a simple question posed by the physicist Enrico Fermi when speculating about the existence of technologically advanced civilizations within the observable universe, and exactly how common they would be.
The age of the universe and the vast number of stars in our galaxy alone suggest that extraterrestrial life should not be rare � an idea later supported by many estimates based on the Drake equation. However, Fermi is said (perhaps apocryphally) to have asked, "Where are they?" If there is a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy (the Milky Way) then why have we not seen any evidence, such as probes, spacecraft or radio transmissions?

And two theories as to why there is not more intelligent life in the universe are as follows:

...because it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself.

Technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves (via nuclear war, biological warfare, nanotechnological catastrophe, or in a Malthusian catastrophe after destroying their planet's ecosphere) before or shortly after developing radio or space flight technology. This general theme is explored in The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, which has as its central premise a civilization that overtaxes its resource base and cyclically self-destructs, but which tries to preserve its culture from one cycle to the next.
It would be anthropocentric to suggest that humanity is immune from such a fate. Therefore it is possible that we ourselves will not exist long enough to encounter alien life. Indeed, there are probabilistic arguments which suggest that our end may occur sooner rather than later.

...because it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others.

Science fiction authors have proposed another possible explanation � that someone, or something, is destroying intelligent life in the universe as fast as it is created. This theme can be found in novels such as Frederik Pohl's Heechee novels, Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels, Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space novels, Greg Bear's novel The Forge of God, Ian Douglas's series The Heritage Trilogy, K.A. Applegate's novel The Ellimist Chronicles and Jack McDevitt's novel The Engines of God. This explanation is also featured in Marvel Comics with the being Galactus.
If several intelligent species arise in a galaxy it is possible that some may view other civilizations as a threat, or as competition. It is possible that they may pursue a policy of violent extermination of other civilizations. Nor is this an unrealistic goal. The concept of self replicating spacecraft need not be limited to exploration or communication, but can be applied to aggression (see Berserker probe). Even if such a civilization were to fall, or go extinct, such machines could outlive their creators, destroying civilizations far into the future.

Post 2

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 8:48am

Also it is possible that we are the first of the intelligent technological advanced species to arise (or part of the first wave because of as of yet uknown cosmological variables) Also some people like to suggest that advanced intelligent alien life forms are fundamentally different that we might not recognize them.

The Fermi Paradox is one of the primary reasons why I support the Lifeboat project, of all the possible explanations for the observation 'where are they' the only one that requires action on our part to ensure our survivel is presuming that intelligent life tends to destroy itself. Personally I do not think it does, but I also don't think I'll get into a car accident everytime I hop in my car, yet I still put on my seat belt. I suspect we might be the only intelligent technologically advanced species yet to arise, or part of the first wave of them. But in case we are not, in this case better safe than sorry.

Michael F Dickey

Post 3

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 10:15am

We should call this mad scientist, Dr. Ebola ...

================
Figure 1. Dr. Eric R. Pianka and an unidentified woman from the University of Texas at Arlington following a recent speech before the Texas Academy of Science in which Pianka endorsed airborne Ebola as an efficient means for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population. Pianka received an enthusiastic and prolonged standing ovation.
================

And the final solution to this problem (of the philosophical bankruptcy in science) ...

================
If the professional community has lost its sense of moral outrage when one if their own openly calls for the slow and painful extermination of over 5 billion human beings, then it falls upon the amateur community to be the conscience of science.
================

Ed

Post 4

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 3:40pm

Where's The Torch when you really need him? "Flame On!"

Good article, Jeff.

LLAP
J:D

Post 5

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 4:42pm

Did you know this "rumor" was started by a creationist named Mims, against Pianka, the scientist?

I read this site called Panda's Thumb to get the news on science by scientists:

The wingnut echo chamber has recently gone insane over the idea that Eric Pianka, an distinguished and much-loved ecologist at UT, advocates mass genocide by ebola in order to bring down world population. The allegation was leveled by disgruntled creationist Forrest Mims, and rapidly spread to the blogosphere via places like Dembski’s blog (three posts!) and Telic Thoughts, and then went to the Drudge Report and caused a national media firestorm appearing in my local paper by Monday morning. I smelled a rat from the beginning, and now I have been proved right. KXAN News36 in Austin, TX, has just debunked the whole thing, and for good measure has posted a 20-minute unedited interview with Pianka which everyone must watch to realize the full depravity of what the wingnuts have done here. Pianka says several times that Mims is a “crazy kook” that “distorted and changed everything I said.” The death threats that have flooded Pianka and the Texas Academy of Sciences are also a nice touch.

Pianka is clearly an ecological alarmist, and his twin theses that (1) a population crash is coming and (2) a disease (not Ebola, says Pianka) will do it are both highly debatable (my own view is that population is leveling off as birthrates decline due to education, and that highly virulent diseases are more likely to burn themselves out than take out the majority of the population), but these are matters to debate scientifically. There is no way to get from that to saying, as Mims and hundreds of braindead, credulous moonbats did, that Pianka advocates genocide and that several hundred scientists at the Texas Academy of Sciences applauded him for it.

It’s too late at night for me to transcribe all of the worthy bits of the interview, but the most revealing part of the interview is at the end, when the (mostly clueless, by the way) reporter asks Pianka what he most wants the public to know about him. Pianka doesn’t talk about his own reputation or about the dastardly deeds of Forrest Mims — he talks about the importance of conservation and thinking ahead about the world we leave to our children! A real misanthrope, that Pianka.

If anyone sees any one of the various turkeys out there who freaked out over Pianka advocating genocide apologize and retract their statements, please post the link here. I suspect all we’re going to get is strained rationalizations, conspiracy theories that this is a coverup, and attempts to change the topic to the scientific questions.

PS: Oh yeah. Dembski helpfully reported Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security. Good job, Bill.

I'm jumping on no bandwagons here. Just because this guy is "much loved" does not follow that all scientists love him. We will fight him scientifically if he is abusing science. Just because the Panda's Thumb writers call this guy an alarmist, does not follow that *all* ecology PhDs are alarmists. He is not proposing what Mims blew out of proportion. Dembski of the IDiot camp is riding this all the way to "heaven"; the background to that is obviously that to cut down one scientist, they are cutting down *all* of science except their own "special brand" of science.

Just be careful of where the source of this sensationalism is coming from, i.e. from what mouths, and think of what their hidden agenda might be.

Post 6

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 7:01pm

If anyone wants to know how science fights science, this microbiologist/immunologist posted his critique of Dr. Pianka's argument:

Well it certainly seems like Dr. Pianka has managed to stick his foot firmly in the cow patties and now it's raining cow pats all over him! Everyone and their dog seems to have jumped on this issue and there is quite a large amount of drama going on among blogs, the news media and all sorts of other places.

Firstly, I'll link to this post on the Pandas Thumb that talks about the issue and this one on Pharyngula gives links to various people on the situation. Personally, I recommend reading various accounts for your-self and determining who is merely acting idiotically to blow this whole thing out of proportion. A lot has been said on the issue about what was and wasn't said by Dr. Pianka, with most combatants on the issue never actually hearing Pianka speak at the event. Now as some may realise if you've read my blog for a while, I tend to ignore these examples of spinning brown toilet paper in a bowl drama, as I don't know the full facts and would rather not comment on something I don’t know the full details on. Me being in New Zealand, it's somewhat predictable that I didn’t hear Dr. Pianka speak and I'm not about to pretend I did like some are. I will state that from the general comments I've read, it does seem the whole thing is being blown out of proportion by creationists like Forrest Mims and ID blogs (like Telic thoughts and Uncommon Descent) for propaganda purposes.

In any event, what quite frankly interests me more is the science behind what Dr. Pianka is claiming....

and he goes on to articulate about the argument itself and how likely the argument is from a virus' standpoint.

Post 7

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 7:54pm

Thank you, Jenna - that was an excellent summerization of the problem with Ebola, one which is much like what I read back when others were claiming much the same of a pandemic epidemic spreading from Africa. For all the increase in the spread of information, it seems that for those with agendas, info is not to be appreciated - especially if it runs counter to the agendas.

Post 8

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 11:14pm

Hi Jenna, thanks very much for the reality check. However it looks like this story isnt as simple as presented on Panda's thumb either.

I have read plenty of proment people advocating similiar ideas, and groups like the 'Voluntary Human Extinction movement' (http://www.vhemt.org/) are only small philosophical steps from active de-humanization of the earth, and the views allegedly expressed, or at least very similiar ones, by Dr. Pianka can be readily found at most local coffee shops. My comments about the environmentalist terrorist organizations are no less true either, reading any of the literature sponsored by ELF will remind anyone of Mims interpretation of Dr Piankas lecture.

See for example - http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/271

Which is really the point. Earth First!ers seek to destroy industrial civilization, if not humanity itself. Writing in the May 1987 issue of the Earth First! Journal under the pseudonym "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First! theorist Christopher Manes suggested that "if radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS." The author of an article in the November-December 2001 Earth First! Journal proclaimed that he was jealous of Osama bin Laden, and that the al Queda mastermind "is riding an unstoppable current of history." A speaker at Earth First!'s annual "Rendezvous" meeting once said that the "optimal human population" is zero. Dave Foreman describes the philosophy that motivates Earth First! in Confessions of an Eco-Warrior:
"An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual Grizzly Bear life. Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic."
"Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."
"An antipathy to 'progress' and 'technology.' We can accept the pejoratives of 'Luddite' and 'Neanderthal' with pride."
"There is no hope for reform of industrial empire."
"We humans have become a disease -- the Humanpox."

and

When FBI agents raided Kaczynski's Montana cabin in April 1996, they found copies of the Earth First! Journal, as well as an Earth First! affiliated publication called Live Wild or Die. This broadsheet, funded by Mike Roselle, included a now-famous "Eco-F*cker Hit List." At the top of the Hit List was the California Forestry Association. In the middle was a prominent cartoon about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Kaczynski sent dozens of mail bombs; three were fatal. He killed an employee of the California Forestry Association, and a Burson-Marsteller PR executive named Thomas Mosser. Kaczynski (mistakenly) believed that Burson-Marsteller was responsible for rehabilitating Exxon's public image after the 1989 Valdez oil spill. The source of that mistake? An essay in the Earth First! Journal, which the FBI says was one of Kaczynski's "favorite" periodicals.

See also quotes from prominent members of the Earth Liberation Front http://www.furcommission.com/debate/words6.htm and the Animal Liberation Front http://www.furcommission.com/debate/words4.htm Clearly Pianka's alleged statements are not so extraordinary. But going back to this controversy, it seems to hinge primarily on what was actually said at this lecture by Pianka. Many of the blogs you link suggest Pianka works through hyperbole and perhaps this speech was merely a polemic. If that was the case it is understandable that Mims might interpret it the way he did, and many of the blogs seem to indicate that. However none of them actually attended the lecture except for Mims, but this blogger - http://brenmccnnll.blogspot.com/2006/03/dr.html does claim to have attended and verifies many of the statements Mim claimed Pianka made and agreed with Pianka:

Dr. Pianka's talk at the TAS meeting was mostly of the problems humans are causing as we rapidly proliferate around the globe. While what he had to say is way too vast to remember it all, moreover to relay it here in this blog, the bulk of his talk was that he's waiting for the virus that will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population. In fact, his hope, if you can call it that, is that the ebola virus which attacks humans currently (but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the ebola virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne ebola virus that attacks humans. He's a radical thinker, that one! I mean, he's basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right.

Humans are far too populous. We've used up our resources, and we're destroying the Earth at an accelerated pace.

This blogger goes on, acknowledging he/she values insects more than humans and chastises science and technology for keeping his grand parents alive.

We now consider keeping the forest natural to save a species of catepillar more important that using that space for humans to live and till. And I'm in complete agreement with that. It's the harsh reality that many people alive right now should be dead. And even harsher to think that the world would be better off with them dead too. My grandparents, who I love dearly and am so incredibly thankful to know, are honestly being kept alive only through the technology that we have created via medicine. The same goes for the millions of other old folk alive and kicking and will continue to do so for another 5-10 years, using up more resources

I do not doubt these posts claims that Mims is a creationsit, however I was unable to find any statements or articles by Mim's indicating that, perhaps he was and that fueled his doomsday interpretation of Pianka's speech, but Pianka at the very least is spouting absurd things and for those things he deserves criticism. I am having a hard time finding anything suggesting the root of this blowout is a creationist trying to discredit an evolutionist, it seems more plausible that it is a man who happens to be a creationist appaled by some thing said by a man who happens to be an evolutionist.

When people can look to their loved ones, and even worse, to their own reflection and feel sad and guilty about their own existence, and eventually feel that toward everyone, one does not need to contemplate for very long the logical implications of such beliefs before getting a chill or two.

Michael F Dickey

Professor's population speeches unnerve some - He says he's issuing warning, but others see talk of pandemics as a threat. http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/5PIANKA.html

(Edited by Michael F Dickey on 4/05, 11:18pm)

Post 9

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 12:42am

Here's some doozies (from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/744607/posts ) ...

Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth. -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects . . . We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. -- David Foreman, Earth First!

I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First!

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First!

The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run. -- Economist editorial

We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity�s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight -- David Foreman, Founder of Earth First!

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. -- Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets...Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. -- David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. -- Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)

Post 10

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 12:45am

Which is why that microbiologist said Pianka put his foot in his own mouth. Pianka is responsible for what he said, although I can't find a transcript of the speech anywhere. As far as I know, either the eco-terrorists are hanging onto him or he's egging them on. Either way, here's EvoWiki (Wikipedia's Evolution encyclopedia) on Mims and his credibility.

Here's a blog on Mr. Hyperbole (Mims) meeting Mr. Doom (Pianka).

You throw those two together in the same room, where one has total victim mentality and one is paranoid, what do you get? Escalated freak out.

Yes, there are crazy eco-terrorists around. Yes, they suck. Yes, they have no idea about the difference between environmental science and environmentalism. Some are both; some are NOT. Pianka doesn't have a clean slate here either, as Mr. Microbiologist pointed out.

Either way, PZ Myers at Pharyngula has some good points:

1. I assure you that biologists do not have a secret plan to deliberately murder nine-tenths of the planet's human beings in order to make room for more bacteria. The suggestion is ludicrous and is little more than an absurd conspiracy theory.

2. There are, of course, cranks who do think it would be a good idea to kill billions. There is no reason to think that Pianka is one of them. Mims reports that his talk was "vigorously applauded", "cheered", and that dozens "mobbed" Pianka afterwards. A suggestion as heinous as the one Mims claimed was made would not be so warmly received. Are we really to believe that a large audience of biologists did not muster one question or complaint at the suggestion that billions should be killed?

PZ Myers also links to the website you mentioned. I did go look at it, and I can tell the difference between quoting Pianka and between that blogger totally taking off on Pianka and spinning her own sick web. Obviously, judging by the comments from others on her site, she's not exactly applauded for her conspiracy theory. A few actually said what I was going to say, "You be the first of that 90% to die. Go sacrifice yourself."

I prefer not to spin a conspiracy theory myself in response to all their conspiracy theories. I prefer keeping my head cool, not being freaked out by the eco-terrorists --- because, you know, they want you to freak out, so why give them any reaction at all?--- and at the same time not overreacting to something when there could be more to the story.

In fact, in response to PZ Myers' blog are two comments:

"I took Evolutionary Ecology from Dr. Pianka a few years ago. He'd frequently get sidetracked onto:

1. Cool Australian lizards.
2. His buffalo.
3. How much he disliked his neighbors who kept killing rattlesnakes.
4. How some horrible disease is going to wipe out huge chunks of the population any year now, and how pleased he will be when that happens.

So, yep, sounds like Dr. Pianka to me. The quotes in the article all sound pretty familiar."

and

PZ,

when I was at SUNY Stony Brook, Pianka gave a similar talk where he said the same offensive crap. What Tiger Spot said sounds right, except we got the 45 minute version. My recollection is that it didn't go over very well. He does know his lizards however.

My take? Two unfortunate people on some kind of weird trip in the same room at the wrong time.

OMG I totally had a Twelve Monkeys experience. Over and out.

Post 11

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 5:07am

Jenna, thanks for the critical thinking and the reality check.

Post 12

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 6:09am

A good article against anti-human ideas, from TCS:

Brains vs. Things, by James K. Glassman,

"One of my heroes is the late Julian Simon, the University of Maryland economist who challenged the conventional wisdom that the world was getting overpopulated and would soon run out of food and other critical resources.

"The best evidence of increasing demand and diminishing supply is, of course, higher prices, so to prove his point Simon in 1980 made a famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, who had been predicting catastrophic shortages.

"Ehrlich, a Stanford biologist, could pick any five metals he liked. If the 1990 price of the metals after inflation rose, then Ehrlich would win. In the event, each of the metals -- copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten -- fell in price, by an average of about 40 percent. Simon won.

""Simon's central point," wrote my colleague Ben Wattenberg in 1998, "was that natural resources are not finite in any serious way; they are created by the intellect of man, an always renewable resource." [...]"

Post 13

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 7:59am

The fact is we still do not know what Pianka said and as I noted above one person who claimed to have attended the session confirmed many of those sentiments. Also Jenna posted a statement from someone who said they were a student of Pianka, which also confirmed Pianka's attitude on the subject. Given the plethora of quotes now present indicating Pianka's philosophical attitude about human life on earth, it does not seem that Mims conclusions or interpretations were that far off. He may be a young earth creationist but unlike Pianka and like us, he apparently loves human life.

I do not think there is any conspiracy among biologists to wipe out human life on earth, the problem is there doesn�t need to be one. Clearly as the ideals of members of a population diverge there can be intelligent, motivated people who harbor these immense feelings of ill will toward humanity. Coupled with the fact that through the exponentially increasing trends in technology and information processing capabilities smaller and smaller numbers of people can kill larger and larger numbers of people with ever decreasing material costs, at some point in time one single motivated intelligence clever passionate person could wipe out a large number of people with limited resources. Consider Ted Kaczynski, now consider Ted Kaczynski with access to nanotechnology or advanced bio technology... See Robert Wrights (Author of Non-Zero, Logic and the Sum of Human Destiny) "A Real war on terror" for an excellent conceptual exploratory on this topic - http://www.slate.com/id/2070210/entry/2070211/ and Ray Kurzwiels online essay "The Law of Accelerating Returns" http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 for the role played by technological advancement.

Considering how much credit Rand admirers are ready to give single motivated passionate people to changing the world for the better perhaps we should give a little credence to the idea that the same people could accomplish the opposite. After all 19 people of limited resources but who were well motivated and intelligent killed more than 3,000 people.

Hopefully this will never be a real issue, as it is possible that our technology will allow us to continually progress with defensive and risk mitigation measures, and possibly outpace offensive ones. I certainly feel the current 'risk' associated with many viruses and bacteria are much more media hyperbole than real threats. But with some 60,000 nuclear war heads in the world, some as small as basketballs, the rapid growth of technology coinciding with individual empowerment and the nagging observation of Fermi's Paradox, perhaps we should not take matters pertaining to the continuation of the only known intelligent and technology advanced life in the universe lightly

Regards,

Michael F Dickey

(Edited by Michael F Dickey on 4/06, 8:05am)

Post 14

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 9:33am

Perhaps it is time to eradicate Earth First! and those who blatantly advocate and foment genocide, terrorism, and the like. It is coming close to a time when it will merely be an act of self-defense to do so.

Post 15

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 4:23pm

Basically, there are a couple of different ways to look at what Pianka meant. But I understand why people would often only look at it one way (he wants human extermination) rather than another (his purpose is to stir people up by saying radical crap that can be taken different ways). Obviously not everyone buys his line and it's apparent that many people take what he said differently. The responsibility goes to Pianka to clear it up.

In any case, this is the difference between types of thinking... I am not a linear thinker; I can think from different perspectives and gain different meanings from the same sentence. This is where it gets hard, where I have trouble explaining multiple ways of seeing when people often want to see only one way.

For me, this is not about eco-terrorism all by itself. Earth First sucks, but I'm pretty sure if Pianka is part of that, it will come up sooner or later. My posts are more about how something can be taken, overblown, hyped, and sensationalized and how human behavior might tends towards getting sucked into sensationalism without forcing themselves to step back and look at how "Dr. Doom" came about. I'm not defending Pianka; I'm attacking a path that people take that can only serve to demonize something prematurely, and sometimes needlessly. Hence, I am not going to relax on the view that Pianka is an ecology-alarmist, that he was verbally irresponsible; however I won't equate him to Earth First eco-terrorism until there is evidence. Otherwise from Twelve Monkeys one can go directly to Minority Report.

I don't take the continuation of the human race lightly; but at the same time one can drive one's self to hysteria by focusing on all the terrible and insane stuff in the world. I'm going to leave the conspiracy theories to the Lone Gunmen.

Post 16

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 9:30pm

Very well said, Jenna.

Ed

Post 17

Thursday, April 6, 2006 - 10:36pm

Regarding the Fermi Paradox, I am hopeful because of these self-evident observations:

Truth, morality and justice are objective - natural law.
There are no conflicts among rational beings. Irrational beings learn from the consequences of their action, as the human race has.

The strong do as they will and the weak suffer what they must. Intelligent guile is more economical than strength, and stupidity worse than weakness.

Utilitarian opportunism breeds distrust and treachery. Principled idealism breeds confidence, division of labor and long-term investment of physical and moral capital.

The history of humanity, the rise and fall of civilizations depict the limit-cycles resulting from an oscillating force-balance between human attitudes of hubris vs benevolence, human character of corruption vs honesty, moral strength and weakness.

Generations have there ups and downs, but in the long run things have gotten better, and I have no reason to suspect that after a few more decades of insanity and government-enabled catastrophy people will return to independence and reason.

Mims wrote many excellent books on electronics which I highly recommend. Once again, I fear atheists like Dr. Doom far more than theists like Mims.

Scott

Post 18

Friday, April 7, 2006 - 12:34am

Side note informatic (for the silent reader):
Here's a break-down on the Fermi Paradox (something mentioned above) ...

It's not only 'more likely than not' that life exists elsewhere in the universe, it's 'more likely than not' that 'advanced' life (relative to us) exists elsewhere in the universe. The paradox: Where are they (why aren't they here now, being so advanced, and all that)?

The potential fear of Fermi fanatics, is that advanced life could take over 'our' planet pretty swiftly -- though this is not a point in the same vein as the Paradox itself, which only asks why they're not here now. My shameless answer: advanced life forms would be Objectivists -- because Objectivism is, by definition, the "what is possible to rational, volitional beings" philosophy.

Noting our rationality, these beings would seek to enter into some kind of trade of value-for-value with us -- because rationality is something that is potentially limitless as a resource.

Ed
[I agree with Scott -- optimism is rational]

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/07, 12:36am)

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/07, 12:39am)

Post 19

Friday, April 7, 2006 - 6:48am