Comment by radu_floricica | Hacker News Reader

Comment by radu_floricica | Hacker News Reader

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To be honest, I am disturbed by the philosophy in your post. That stopping a natural cataclysm has side-effects isn't really something to be surprised of. If you don't take it into consideration then you just made a mistake (and a stupid one at that).

But to turn that into a system of thought and to consider non-intervention to be the default - I don't see the logic in that.

> I think the best thing we could do is educate people that certain things are not and will never be in our control

Excuse me for wanting a cure for cancer. Yes, using a nuclear weapon is not the brightest idea in the book, but this doesn't mean the problem is unapproachable. A couple of directions that might be usable in the medium future:

- lowering the content of water in atmosphere in an area is something we can already do. Microparticles that facilitate rain are a pretty scalable method. This could be used to steer proto-hurricanes away from shore.

- large amounts of high-entropy energy are freely available in space.

But what I want to know is what good do you thing would do to "educate people that certain things are not and will never be in our control"?

But to turn that into a system of thought and to consider non-intervention to be the default - I don't see the logic in that.

Wrong interpretation. I am not saying we not intervene at all. I am saying that we understand our cure may, in some cases, be worse than the disease. And not out of respect for the planet, but out of a desire for our own continued survival. Curing cancer is one of those cases where I think the cure is better than the disease; there are issues of increasing population from people dying, but we've shown ingenuity there in the past (thanks, Normal Borlaug). Preventing tropical cyclones is one of those cases where I worry the cure is not better than the disease, at least until we find a cure for all the other implications of doing so.

It's a question of the best default. I think it's ok for people to try to change things, and let the checks and balances stop them when they go overboard.

From what I gather you try to stop people from even thinking about possible solutions, on the grounds that solutions may be worse then the disease. In some (most?) cases that's true, of course, but I still think it's better to have many ideas to chose from, even if most of them are useless and some are dangerous.

In the end I think it goes to how scientifically literate are the politicians. If they're smart enough not to implement stupid ideas then we're safe. If they're not... I think the problem is with the politicians, not with the ideas themselves.

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