Perhaps, except for sustaining and improving the technological civilization we have now, as well as all efforts to push against opposing values… that contains a lot of what humans do. (The rest is due to the fact that humans usually don’t really maximize anything systematically.)
And as I said, there is probably a margin where nature is optimal; we want clean water, air, resilience of food production, tourism etc. anyway. But that margin is finite and it becomes smaller as technological know-how increases.
Your position supports the argument that it could be a good thing—it is inadequate for supporting the argument that it will be a good thing.
You’re right; perhaps there will be e.g. more suffering than the whole thing is worth.
A “technological civilization” with enough resources can implement much better versions of all of these.
Yes, that’s why I’d expect the value of nature to decrease as technology progresses. If you look to science fiction, the Star Trek Federation certainly had no need for any untouched nature for any purpose other than sentimentality.
Relatively speaking, yes. We have invented and/or improved water filtration and desalination techniques, hydroponics, synthetic pharmaceuticals, and many technologies to capture, store and use energy without photosynthesis. We even replaced horses in transportation with automobiles.
It’s easy to imagine more efficient versions of many of these in the future. (I mentioned Star Trek because of its iconic production and energy technologies, especially the replicator.)
We also replaced a lot of nature, which tends to make the remaining nature more valuable, but this is relative.
That’s a fully general argument against anything existing in reality right now.
Perhaps, except for sustaining and improving the technological civilization we have now, as well as all efforts to push against opposing values… that contains a lot of what humans do. (The rest is due to the fact that humans usually don’t really maximize anything systematically.)
And as I said, there is probably a margin where nature is optimal; we want clean water, air, resilience of food production, tourism etc. anyway. But that margin is finite and it becomes smaller as technological know-how increases.
Your position supports the argument that it could be a good thing—it is inadequate for supporting the argument that it will be a good thing.
“All efforts”..? It’s pretty easy to get unreasonable here.
A “technological civilization” with enough resources can implement much better versions of all of these.
You’re right; perhaps there will be e.g. more suffering than the whole thing is worth.
Yes, that’s why I’d expect the value of nature to decrease as technology progresses. If you look to science fiction, the Star Trek Federation certainly had no need for any untouched nature for any purpose other than sentimentality.
That’s a bad place to look to, in this particular context :-)
So where would be a good place to look?
Reality.
For example, human technology has progressed a lot during the last century, for example. Has the value of nature decreased?
Relatively speaking, yes. We have invented and/or improved water filtration and desalination techniques, hydroponics, synthetic pharmaceuticals, and many technologies to capture, store and use energy without photosynthesis. We even replaced horses in transportation with automobiles.
It’s easy to imagine more efficient versions of many of these in the future. (I mentioned Star Trek because of its iconic production and energy technologies, especially the replicator.)
We also replaced a lot of nature, which tends to make the remaining nature more valuable, but this is relative.