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Saturday, January 30, 2010

Ethics Expert on Global Warming...

Mike Treder, Managing Director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology, notes that ALL those who disagree with him that Global Warming is going to kill billions unless we invest more in wind farms are either stupid or evil. One would think such a manichean understanding of a complex system would only be found in rural bars were everyone has a chain attached to their wallet. I prefer to be called evil.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:06 AM

    Like investment positions, do you think that relative status is the motivating factor for most environmental positions?

    For people who care entirely about relative status, is absolutism and overconfidence adaptive?

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  2. I think the key impetus for this rather shrill alarmism, is the idea that if the larger society is not run with some explicit direction, it will necessarily spin out of control. It's comforting to think some is guiding the ship, because most people have no intuition, or confidence, in the undirected steering of the marketplace. so, the latest cataclysm is global warming, but it is nukes, the ozone, the homeless, there's always something.

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