🚀 go-pugleaf

In <l3j2ftINN3p8@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> jdr@starflight.Corp.Sun.COM (Jon Roland) writes:
>Complexity does not re-define physical law, but does affect the ability
>of human beings to apply it to situations about which they have to make
>decisions. The key qualifying phrase on "complex systems" in the above
>quoted paragraph is "of which we are a part". "We" is human beings in
>out present state of evolution. Not abstract heat engines. Not players in
>a game with perfect information and unlimited processing power. Not angels,
>and, more to the point, not all highly-skilled professionals equipped with
>an abundance of high-tech capital.

And further and further off into the ozone you go for 200 lines...

Nice debating tactic, there.  When someone shows that the
postulate underlaying your thesis is bunk, and invalidates
your entire chain of reasoning down to your conclusion, just
change the subject and hope nobody will notice.

However, the tactic is flawed.  It assumes people have no memory.

>In the final analysis, we do not disagree on the physics, but only on
>its implications for planning the conduct of human affairs. My point is
>that we don't get the kinds of life-support systems that the physics
>permit and dictate by only a series of small, short-term, unplanned and
>uncoordinated investments of capital or without making some funda-
>mental structural changes in the conduct of human affairs away from the
>present path of least resistance.

Another flawed premise (small, unplanned, uncoordinated actions cannot
lead to a sustainable system), leading to a faulty conclusion.  You
missed the fact that my *previous* counter-example, the biosphere,
developed by evolution, a set of unplanned mutations and adaptations
to fit local niches with no global organization.  Kind of like a
market economy, only millions of times slower...

Jonny, I'm doing everyone a favor here.  I'm directing followups
to this article OUT of sci.environment.  This means, among other
things, that I will not read them.  When you have the intellectual
integrity to do things like checking your assumptions for holes
(eg. habitats can lose things to the environment and thus "must
run down", but cannot take anything from the environment) before
posting 200 lines of mistakes based thereon, come back to sci.*.

Until then, I hope not to see you.
-- 
Russ Cage              wreck@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com  russ%rsi@sharkey.cc.umich.edu
  *  When Ford pays me for my opinions, THEN they can call them theirs. *

                           _Bad_ cop.  No donut.