Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Years ago when I worked on recycling -- automated equipment to do the separations -- the opposition was from those who wanted sacrifice. Our approach was cost effective and shown to work, but our opposition got a lot of laws passed with subsidies and container fees, etc. that shifted the economics in favor of our present multi-container recycling systems.

I never really understood the activities of automated recycling opponents and this discussion helps a lot. I was always arguing science, technology and economics and they were always winning the votes with emotional arguments.

Expand full comment
gwern's avatar

> # A downside to recreating extinct species with cloning is that it will let people bother even less about stopping extinctions.

Does this one look like a terrible example to anyone else? For every charismatic mammal or plant we clone, there's going to be hundreds of species that we haven't studied beyond a few quick notes, much less have preserved enough material to even think about creating a viable population.

Expand full comment
33 more comments...

No posts