From: bkottmann@falcon.aamrl.wpafb.af.mil (Brett Kottmann)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: AIDS in Africa (was: environment and animals)
Date: 8 Apr 92 11:51:31 EST
Organization: Logicon Technical Services, Inc.

In article <40911767@hpindda.cup.hp.com>, alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Alan McGowen) writes:

>...[lots of "you can't fool mother nature" debate deleted...]

>>*All* pointing the wrong way? This is too sweeping to be correct.
>>While we have a number of ominous signs, there are at least a few
>>successes. 
> 
> Ozone depletion, global warming, and the extinction crisis are all
> products of technological and population expansion, and they certainly
> prove that technological growth doesn't *increase* our long-range
> chance of survival: it has up till now been *decreasing* it. It's useless

	I have to disagree with you.  Just as it is not *proof* that our
chances are increased, neither is it *proof* that it is decreased.

	I for one consider today's society, will all of it's problems and
fiobles, immensely superior to a plant-like existence.

> to say that it's supidity, not technology, that is responsible: technology
> is not separate from the fools or the wise who produce it and use it. 

	Ha!  This is why I disagree with you.  If I dig a hole and you fall in
it, will you hold the shovel responsible?

> It was very stupid to have invented the automobile, for example, but as
> a piece of technology it has been a great "success". If Moscny's fantasies

	I don't think it is stupid at all.  Today's society *depends* upon
transportation to feed, shelther, etc. itself.  You can counterargue that
today's society would not have developed without the auto, but I would
disagree.  Today's society would still be here, but constantly on the brink of
starvation.  Look at the xUSSR.  Technologically advanced enough to be a first
world nation, but without the transportation network necessary to feed itself.

> about metal Supermen should come to pass, perhaps it will have been
> equally stupid for us to have invented computers. But here at least we

	Perhaps we should just sit around in grass skirts and contemplate the
universe.

> still have choices ahead of us: we can refuse to allow the technology
> to be used in such a way. It is only the moral bankruptcy of our civilization
> that speaks in Mocsny's assumption that if the technology *can* evolve
> in that direction, it *must*. If we can be wise, then computer technology
> will be a benefit to the biosphere and to our species. 

	Lumping all non-technophobes into the same camp is not valid.

> 
> However, since AI -- even biologically based -- is a long ways off, we
> have more pressing problems to solve -- such as how to make a technological
> civilization survive the next century. Mocsny's continued appeal to 
> "Information Power" to make the problem vanish is almost as silly as the
> beanstalks and moving a billion people a year to orbit within 100 years.

	True, the number (via beanstalks or other method) will be more like 100
million.

> It's not clear at this point that people living in 2100 will have as much 
> technology as we do, and ensuring that they will requires us to make some
> choices in the next few decades that aren't going to be helped by genies
> out of technological bottles: choices like seriously curbing our population
> growth, seriously redressing major imbalences between developed and 
> developing countries, and so on. Much moral stamina will be needed to make
> these choices, and we do nothing to improve it by constant appeals to
> science fiction to save us.

	"Imbalences" are best cured by raising the rest of the world up to the
same technological level, and not be decreasing it.
	The solutions to today's problems will largely be technological,
despite green fiction horror stories to the contrary.

Brett---------------------------------------------------------------------------
____________The best thing about morning________________________________________
__________________________________is that it's over by noon.____________________
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From: alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Alan McGowen)
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 19:14:03 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: Genetic Variability (was: Re: biotechnica : was reversing techno d)
Organization: HP Information Networks, Cupertino, CA