Board index › Topical Discussion › Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

Frightening Quotes from Environmentalists (Pushback.com)

Page 5 of 5 [ 78 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Previous topic | Next topic

enrico_dandolo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Nov 2011
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Posts: 866

05 Oct 2012, 9:09 am

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
In this case, the point is that they are roughly comparable, for all we know.

My point was that brain capacity is not much of an indication.

Granted. However, it is often used as a rough sign of evolution rowards modern humans.

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
Well, your "We, humans, are obviously the best the world has borne" attitude may have led me to an inaccurate assumption.

But humans are obviously the best the world has borne. That's just a fact.

Why?

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
Finally, when species enter new environments, indigenous species sometimes die out. It doesn't make either of them more intelligent than the other, just more adapted.

True, but I think it can reasonably be taken as an indication of intelligence.

Adaptation and intelligence are different things.

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
I'll say it again, so you know it's my main point in this discussion: Why is symbolic art or any such criterion a proof of superiority?

Symbolic art indicates a capacity for symbolic thought. The capability for symbolic thought is a huge intellectual advance.

It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.



Ancalagon
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Dec 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,302

06 Oct 2012, 4:42 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?


_________________
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." --G. K. Chesterton


Oodain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,

07 Oct 2012, 12:27 am

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?


the concept of universal superioirty is and has always been fundementally flawed.

it presupposes a purpose and something to be superior at

since the only universal metric we have is survival and that one is fairly simple and doesnt really describe anything but itself that means we simply cant make a hierachy as such.


_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//

the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.


GGPViper
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Sep 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,880

07 Oct 2012, 7:38 am

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?


If someone drops a nuke nearby, being a member of MENSA is probably not going to help you.

Being this guy will (And I don't think he is very smart, but he is a serious badass)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 87
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

07 Oct 2012, 11:26 am

GGPViper wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?


If someone drops a nuke nearby, being a member of MENSA is probably not going to help you.

Being this guy will (And I don't think he is very smart, but he is a serious badass)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans


And if the one who dropped the Nuke was a member of Mensa he should have known better.

ruveyn



TM
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Feb 2012
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,122

07 Oct 2012, 12:40 pm

Ancalagon wrote:
AspieRogue wrote:
Sentient robots(read strong AI) whose electronic brains are far more capable than our own. And enrico_dandolo, when I speak of humans being "replaced", well, that's sort of a misnomer because what I'm talking about is machines that are both smarter than humans and ultimately hunt humans to extinction.

Well that's semi-plausible, at least. I have significant doubts about the practicality of strong AI. If it is possible, though, why would they hunt humans? An AI would not have the motive of a hunting instinct or a taste for meat.


"I'll hunt your men for sport, no metaphor" :P

I think the whole "an AI will just eventually kill off humans" thing is something for science fiction. However it tends to hinge on some form of self-preservation instinct being created in the AI or unintentional 100th degree consequences of core programming.

The first one would be akin to the Geth in mass effect attacking their creators because their creators tried to "shut them down" thus "killing" them.

The second would be more akin to the catalyst in Mass Effect being programmed to deal with the problem of synthetics always rebelling against their creators and killing them, and deciding "Hey, the best way is just to murder off all organic creatures that can make advanced AI".



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 87
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

07 Oct 2012, 12:44 pm

TM wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
AspieRogue wrote:
Sentient robots(read strong AI) whose electronic brains are far more capable than our own. And enrico_dandolo, when I speak of humans being "replaced", well, that's sort of a misnomer because what I'm talking about is machines that are both smarter than humans and ultimately hunt humans to extinction.

Well that's semi-plausible, at least. I have significant doubts about the practicality of strong AI. If it is possible, though, why would they hunt humans? An AI would not have the motive of a hunting instinct or a taste for meat.


"I'll hunt your men for sport, no metaphor" :P

I think the whole "an AI will just eventually kill off humans" thing is something for science fiction.


The solution is Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

ruveyn



enrico_dandolo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Nov 2011
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Posts: 866

08 Oct 2012, 12:29 am

Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?

Nothing is. There is no such thing as superiority.



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 87
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

08 Oct 2012, 4:55 am

enrico_dandolo wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?

Nothing is. There is no such thing as superiority.


Correct. There is only provisional adequacy which has enabled survival up to this point in time.

ruveyn



Tensu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,661
Location: Nixa, MO, USA

08 Oct 2012, 10:40 pm

Oodain wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?


the concept of universal superioirty is and has always been fundementally flawed.

it presupposes a purpose and something to be superior at

since the only universal metric we have is survival and that one is fairly simple and doesnt really describe anything but itself that means we simply cant make a hierachy as such.


Is survival really a universal metric?

I mean, if our species only lasts a couple more centuries, then destroys itself, those last humans, even though our species only would have existed for a very short period of time, would still consider themselves to be the greatest species ever to walk the face of Terra because we accomplished more in that time than any other species before us.

Now I'm not saying that the above, as a metric for superiority, is right, but can you really say it's wrong?



Vatnos
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 26 Sep 2012
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 119
Location: Chapel Hill, NC

08 Oct 2012, 10:56 pm

ruveyn wrote:
thomas81 wrote:
this sounds like the ramblings of the Primitivist movement or the Unabomber.


It is the dark underbelly of the environmentalist mindset. Scratch an environmentalist and you will find someone who hates the human race and wants it gone.

ruveyn


'Tis unfortunate that every positive political movement that has ever existed has also created a safe-space for a handful of radicals among radicals, who have no business calling themselves "progressive" but hang out among progressives and brew toxic genocidal ideologies like it's some kind of artisan profession.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) is where most of those quotes come from. Antinatalism is the name of the ideology they're talking about. It's like primitivism but taken even further: it's the idea that human life is immoral, sentience is immoral, preventing further sentience is the best course of action to take.

I'm not a big fan of this; in my view the Sun is going to expand and destroy all life on this planet anyway in 4 billion years. If any of it is to have any meaning, any beauty, it would require someone to be alive to remember that it was ever there. If humanity ever ends then all human suffering that has ever occurred will be pointless, will have achieved nothing.



Oodain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,

09 Oct 2012, 3:56 am

Tensu wrote:
Oodain wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
It may be a huge intellectual advance, but intelligence is not superiority.

Then what is?


the concept of universal superioirty is and has always been fundementally flawed.

it presupposes a purpose and something to be superior at

since the only universal metric we have is survival and that one is fairly simple and doesnt really describe anything but itself that means we simply cant make a hierachy as such.


Is survival really a universal metric?

I mean, if our species only lasts a couple more centuries, then destroys itself, those last humans, even though our species only would have existed for a very short period of time, would still consider themselves to be the greatest species ever to walk the face of Terra because we accomplished more in that time than any other species before us.

Now I'm not saying that the above, as a metric for superiority, is right, but can you really say it's wrong?


nope i cant, i wont and it is partly my point.

survival is the only think i could think of that all life had in common, at least for a while.


_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//

the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.


Vatnos
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 26 Sep 2012
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 119
Location: Chapel Hill, NC

09 Oct 2012, 10:01 am

Ancalagon wrote:
Replaced by what exactly? There is no more intelligent species on this planet; nothing even close to as smart as we are, really. Neanderthals may possibly have been in the same league, but that's far from certain, and they're extinct.


Clearly it will be Dolphins with prehensile thumbs.



Vexcalibur
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Jan 2008
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,398

10 Oct 2012, 1:47 pm

Quote:
"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."
—Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth”
concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)

You know, Straw man has a point! You do need a license to operate cars.


Quote:
"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
What's scary about this?



Quote:
"If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."

—Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth–Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22

Is this quote scary because it is probably right?

Quote:
"The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world."

—John Shuttleworth

I like the ironic last name.


Quote:
"What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

—Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)
It is a democrat senator, not an environmentalist. Although this is arguable, I don't find it scary. Global Warming turned out to be completely solid and fact anyway.

Quote:
"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs."

—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Do we?

Quote:
"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

Very Pragmatic, don't find it scary.


Quote:
"Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental."

—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

You know he is correct. Without context I can't tell if you are trying to imply that it is really what he wants. To me this all sounds like common rhetoric. And he wants us to feel guilty rather than to begin the destruction of humanity.


I got tired midway....

You know that you are quoting radical environmentalists. It is a straw man to attribute their ideas to everyone who cares about the environment. I could begin quoting Hitler and say "frightening quotes from conservative rightists".


_________________
.