🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 18188@ide.com, cda@ide.com (Charlotte Allen) writes:
>In article <JMC.92Jun6191157@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>>
>>Moreover, there will be a technological discontinuity when our
>>descendants have to begin using silicates.  They are hard to handle
>>with present methods.  Our descendants will figure out how to do it.
>
>Yeah, don't worry about our current environmental problems, because our
>descendants, especially here in California where we're going to 
>provide them with such a wonderful education, will be so much smarter than
>we are that they'll be able to figure out how to clean up all the messes
>we're going to leave.
>
>Right John.
>
>At the rate we're going, our descendants will be lucky if they know how
>to do arithmetic.
>

It is interesting to reflect on the points made by Garrett Hardin in his
paper, "The Tragedy of the Commons", _Science_ 162 (Dec 13, 1968), 1243,
as they apply to the present social problems in the United States and
elsewhere in the world. Combine a high correlation between dysfunctional
parents and dysfunctional offspring with the fact that dysfunctionals
tend to have more offspring, and the underlying causes of many of those
social problems, as well as our larger population problem, becomes more
clear.

This is also one of the reasons we cannot be too confident that future
generations will be better able than we to cope their their problems,
unless they can do something to improve human nature itself.

---

jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141