Talk:Gaia philosophy/Archive 5

message: Lessons in misrepresentation
Good evening, class. Today we'll be covering the difficult subject of misrepresentation. When is a statement a misrepresentation, and when is it not? A vital topic, and you'll need to study this hard to get an "A" in your end of term wikiquette examinations!
Let's consider these scenarios:
* Alice: I don't like atheists.
* Bob: Alice wants atheists to burn in hell!
Here, Bob is misrepresenting Alice. Bad Bob! He is saying things about what Alice believes, when Alice doesn't believe them. Naughty Bob! However, let's now look at Charles and Danielle.
* Charles: I don't like atheists.
* Danielle: I don't like them either, but I don't think they should burn in hell.
Here, Danielle is not misrepresenting Charles, because she is talking about her beliefs, not his. Now, let's look at how the discussion could go on from here:
* Charles: I don't like atheists.
* Danielle: I don't like them either, but I don't think they should burn in hell.
* Charles: You are refuting a position I do not have! Stop misrepresenting me and attacking me for positions I do not hold! Cease the personal hatred and get over your obsession!
Not good. Charles has failed to assume good faith, and now the discussion will go off on a wild tangent as Danielle defends her words, mud will be slung, and we're doomed. But what would be a better approach?
* Charles: I don't like atheists.
* Danielle: I don't like them either, but I don't think they should burn in hell.
* Charles: I agree! Still, whether they should or not, I fear that they will.
* Danielle: Well, here we disagree - I don't think they will burn in hell - I think they will be forgiven.
* Charles: Hey, I agree again! You're right: they probably will be forgiven... but I do fear that maybe they won't. There's that risk there.
The key point is that if you're arguing with someone, and they say something that you agree with, seize on that agreement in a positive way, as something to build on, rather than taking it as a deliberate straw man attack. Even if someone has got the wrong end of the stick, chances are that it was accidental - text is very prone to misunderstandings.  Class dismissed - time for lunch! Martin 02:48, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: James Lovelock was not the first to come up with the idea of the planet as a self regulating, living organism. This hypothesis was first put forward by Gunther Wachsmuth in his book, "Etheric Formative Forces in the Cosmos, Earth and Man" published in 1932. Wachsmuth was Rudolph Steiner's secretary for many years. The book is out of print but a copy can be seen at the Lucis Trust library, 3,Whitehall Court, London, W1. James Lovelock is revered by some enviromentalists as a saint and Gunther Wachsmuth who came up with the original idea has been long forgotten.
out of Lovelock (see Talk:James Lovelock); who knows, maybe it belongs in here somewhere. But quite likely not ... William M. Connolley 11:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adventures in Wikiquette 

message: I felt that there should be at least a small reference to the use of Gaia philosophy in fiction circles, namely the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within If it is felt that such a reference is inappropriate to the nature of the article, it may be deleted.
[copied from Gaia Theory Caligari 87 08:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In his recent book (The Revenge of Gaia), Lovelock cites a future history novel (State of Fear) as an example of Forecasts for the Twenty-first Century ... The public is much more likely to be influenced by writers like Michael Crighton than they are by scientists.(p.48) --geoWIZard-Passports 20:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use in Fiction 

message: PLAYING WITH THE IDEA OF GAIA
Gaia, the Mother Earth, a global “symbiosis”, is the most beautiful possible world, a paradise upon Earth. How to reach it in practise?
The task of thinking is to affect as much toward good as possible in an as important question as possible. So what would be a better subject for an intellectual hobby than making the Gaia idea more realistical and finding roads which lead toward it in practise?
The birth of Gaia. During the evolution the safest choises survived, regardless of whetehr they were safe bacause of strenght, allegiancies or a lack of enemies. So those who allied survived better than those who didn’t. This lead to an evolution toward complex interconnected wholes: individuals consisting of many cells, packs ecosystems, maybe even larger wholes, Gaia, the whole biosphere as one complex interconnected cooperating whole, being the largest of them.
Gaia is a depated thought. It is true that allegiancies are useful, but does it happen in practise in a this big scale? And how to explain the existence of predators, doesn’t it prove against allegiancies?
I myself come tot hink of at least three ways in which living beings can ally despite the existence of predators: understanding, the sense of health and predators removing breaks in the harmony. So predators would be only one side of the reality and not the whole truth about the impossibility or possibility of allegiancies.
1) Predators. The role of predators would be to eat away the ill ones who break against the harmony and they would so repair the whole system toward balance and keep so the prey populations healthier and the world more paradiselike for the living. This role of predators would be partly automatic, a consequence of it being easier to catch ill prey, and partly a consequence of intentional striving for, because – cynically thought – a healthy prey population offers a sure source of food for the predators. A Gaia like hypothesis: Thus it might happen that the predators would be likely to eat away just the evil ones because their sense of health is lower than that of others, which could be reflected also in their ability to move and hide, if the functioning of an individual and of the oack form one intertwined whole, like is propable.
2) Understanding. My own experience about objective thinking tells that the human thinking ability is based to a very large extend to analogs to and from the sense of sight. So most animals have the basic building blocks of thinking ability. In addition they can discern betwenn a healthy and a broken via their sense of emphaty and via atmospheres. So one would imagine them being capable of understanding also large scale dangers with the helpo of analogies, by comparing to their own lives. This way the living beings could form Gaia, the global “symbiosis” also via their own understanding. So at least of there were no artificialities and no need to handle the artificialities by the help of trained thinking ( which too is easy to build upon analogies to nature landscapes) in addition to the instinctual understanding.
3) The sense of health. A way in which we at least form Gaia, the global “symbiosis”, is the foloowing: humans and animals share a common gesture language which makes it possible to communicate between species. Likeiwse the basic princples of functioning are the same for humans and animals. So even very different kinds of animals can serve as model of healthy kind of life to each other. This way our own health is intertwined with the health of our whole living environment.
A paradise in the beginning of time. There was a state of the world in the beginning, at the time before the artificialities bought by humans. Then the whole biosphere was ina state of complete naturality. But what was the state of naturality like? Was it a paradise and if it was, the why? How could one know?
A paradise means happy life. It does not mean the absence of death. It might be that aparadise demands the existence of death: the non-paradise like individuals have to be removed, the lost ones dropped away by the force of illnesses and predators. Suffering is not a part of a paradise. Still, there is a need for forces wh9ich guide the lost ones back to the healthy paradise like ways of life. So feelings can be seenas forces which guide toward a paradise. The best feelings: happiness and love, bind living beings to their correct places, to a paradise. In a state of complete naturality with healthy natural ways of living the world is filled with happiness and love.
So the Gaia paradise is the most victorious arrangement created by the evolution: there are all the living beings healthy and cooperating. Health gives best functioning and cooperation unifies all the forces to common use.
But is the Gaia paradise the most victorious arrangement even nowadays? What to do with the feects of all the artificialities?
The human functioning is still based on the ground created by the natural evolution: a healthy kind of life in the nature brings best functioning. This applies laos to thinking ability. The changes in our living environment have been so quick and jumb like that human haven’t had the time to adabt – and couldn’t have adbted, since the town environment doesn’t offer as much and same kinds of stimuli as the nature environment: count for example the number of technical kinds of details in a nature landscape and compare that to the same of a city landscape - how much better shape recognition ability and so a ground for the thinking ability the nature landscapes offer! Also the other functions of a human being long for the ground given by natural ways of living. For example the physical fitness is cruxial to the well being of most. So the Gaia paradise is the best choise also for an academical worker when watched from the point of view of working ability.
What about feelings, do they still guide right?
Feelings are always feelings about something: about things that are important to our functioning – for example feelings about the importance of feelings, in other words about the importance of to account factors which are important to our functioning. The social feelings and compassion help us to form allegiancies which is a benefical strategy when watched from the point of view of the evolution, also in the modern times. A solution according to emotions is the most benefical one and the Gaia paradise the most victorious arrangement even in the modern world.
Maybe this piece of understanding helps us to reach better living conditions and to protect nature.
These thoughts are my own, my own experience supports them.
This text can be found at the internet at www.paradisewins.net/Gaia.html Htervola 12:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ANOTHER GAIA THEORY - PLEASE ADD TO WIKIPEDIA  

message: Referencing section "Gaia in Biology and Science"
"Whether this sort of system is present on Earth is still open to debate. Some relatively simple homeostatic mechanisms are generally accepted. For example, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, plants are able to grow BETTER and thus remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere..."
"Better" or "bigger"? Increased surface area of the leaves captures more carbon to be later sequestered? But "better" seems like a bias against global warming. A belief that it is a good thing we are causing global warming, and should burn more fossil fuels. "If Earth has more CO2 there will be more food to support more people, so we should drive more cars."
I cast vote to change "better" to an objective, emotionless word not involving weaseals, or a bias for or against Gaia Philosophy.
76.90.74.10 (talk) 19:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "Better?!"

message: We've got at least three articles on this topic: this one, Gaia Movement and Gaian Greens. I don't know what the best solution is, but I'm just leaving those links there in case anybody wants to merge them. Might be a good idea. Robofish (talk) 18:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge possibilities 

message: It is true that geological studies show changes of the environment that contradicts the strong Gaia hypothesis of ecosystems working towards an optimum state. It is also true that there is evidence that ecosystems have collapsed from within. However, the frequency of such ecosystem collapses through geological history is many orders of magnitude lower than the extremely high frequency predicted by the Malthusian model of maximum reproduction. So evolution must be driven by something other than maximization of reproduction. The selfish gene model (the theoretical mechanism basis of the Medea hypothesis of life destroying itself) appears to be supported by simple computer simulations, but so does strong Gaia hypothesis. The strong Gaia hypothesis failed scale-up to more complex systems, and the missing frequency of Medean ecosystem collapses can be explained if the selfish gene model also fails scale-up to the greater complexity of real life because real life is too complex to be livable to such rigid, unselfcritical entities as the selfish gene model claims that living organisms are. In other words, the selfish gene model is based on the same methodological error as is the strong Gaia hypothesis. This is explained in greater detail on the pages "Moderating the Gaia/Medea debate" and "Self-organization" on Pure science Wiki, a wiki devoted to the scientific method unaffected by academic prestige obsession.95.209.61.52 (talk) 07:55, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Skewedness of the debate. 

message: I do not see that "Gaia Philosophy"(GP) adds anything to Wikipedia that is not already in the "Gaia Hypothesis"(GH) article. I will go through each section one by one:
Into: Basically redescribes the GH - ALL of this information is in the GH article and there is no description of why GP is in some way different
Predecessors to Gaia Theory: Again, simply dicusses the Gaia hypothesis and most (all?) of the discussion takes place in the History/Precedents section of GH
Range of Views: Draws heavily on the scientist James Kirchner's work - all about the Gaia Hypothesis and should be included in that section.Also, no references.
Gaia in Biology and Science: Clearly belongs in GH, and the content is already included there.
Gaia in Social Sciences: May have potential for new material here, but no references to Gaia in Social Science literature, and discusses "Gaia Philosophy" despite this term not being defined previously in the wiki article. Wooly and not worthy of inclusion.
Gaia in Politics: Seems merely to espouse the political prejudices of the author and mentions a few unnoteworthy politicians names without references or any justification of the significance of Gaia (never mind "Gaia Philosophy") in politics.
Gaia in Religion: Same as Gaia in politics - plus no references!
Semantic debate: If the debate is semantic, why is it here?  Why is it noteworthy?  Where is the discussion in the literature?
In Popular Culture: All references are to GH, not GP.
The main problem is that "Gaia Philosophy" has been given no justification as subject in its own right, and that it is distinct to Gaia Hypothesis. Virtually all the references are to mentions of the Gaia Hypothesis. I think the case needs to be made, or the article should in the main be deleted, with a few sections (possibly the Popular Culture section) being merged with Gaia Hypothesis.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atshal (talk • contribs) 15:31, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:AFDHOW KillerChihuahua?!? 15:21, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose article is deleted