TED Community » O'Neil Poree

More About Me

I'm passionate about

The desperate plight of our human species, specifically concerning its deadly effects on the earth's life systems. When a species gets excessively destyructive, correctives will assuredly arise.

An idea worth spreading

Our species will definitely destroy the stability of the ecosphere upon which our present existence depends. In consequence, we will pass through a bottleneck, just as happened some 180K years ago in Central Africa, where homo sapiens arose. Any survivors or successors, however, will have to contend with and overcome the residues of a hothouse earth. It will be hard for them, because so many food chains will have been eliminated. It is not at all beyond possibility that we will incur the fate of our sister planet, Venus, depending ypon our recalcitrance about utilizing all the organic fuels laid down in the previous hundreds of millenia.

People don't know that I'm good at

The presence, nature, and ultimate effects of positive feedback, in all types of cybernetics systems. These arise universally, in cases involving input-output events of all possible natures.

Comments

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• A comment on Conversation: The intellectual instability of our species

  Jan 15 2013: Just as "It takes a village ...", I think a little planning en mass could evoke useful suggestions about how we would protect the world if we have to start over and reinhabi it, particularly a damaged and sorely wounded version of what we have now.
  What should our rules for subsisting and coexisting with other species become in future?
  As groups we show plenty of complex examples of setting up formal rules to live by.

• A reply on Conversation: The intellectual instability of our species

  Jan 15 2013: By intellectual instability I do'nt wish to indicate deficiency so much as what you might think of as corruptibility, It isn't meant to refer to individuals, but is a comment on group behaviors. For example, the mad rush of China to achieve the same high level of consumeristic living standards, at the expense of the environment as is the most dangerous peaceful achievement of the developed world.
  Evolution will once more produce a handful of survivors at worst, I expect, after the climate hits its worst.
  I just want to debate trying to establish an intellectual outlook defining a better grade of steward of "the Creation" than we have been.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: The intellectual instability of our species

  Jan 15 2013: As I told Ms. d"Etienne, knowledge of a very special kind is the only issue I am attempting to sponsor. To Hades with those who intransigently seek, knowingly or otherwise, only to destroy.

• A reply on Conversation: The intellectual instability of our species

  Jan 15 2013: It's clear brainsize, per se, is not the answer. Establishing appropriate saving-type knowledge happens to be. The prophets who recommended "good stewardship of the Earth and its denizens " are the ones I want to be the philosophical fathers of our possible species successor-continuations.

• A reply on Conversation: The intellectual instability of our species

  Jan 15 2013: We are a group organism, as much or moreso than any other lifeform. I want to prejudice the philosophical bent of our successors in a stewardship notoin. It's a typical way we establish groups, harnessing our inborn religiosity to certain coherently related tasks.

• A reply on Conversation: The intellectual instability of our species

  Jan 15 2013: I think you couldn-n't be more wrong. There are many humans who are predominantly sane, if not eternally so. Some show us, their descendants, no particlyar flaws, others only slight or non-malign ones. I think being universally elements of various identifiable groups we are intellectually captivated, but not all groups qualify as "nuts", as far as I'm concerned.
  I wouldn't make that same claim about the ones in charge all over.

• A comment on Conversation: Do you believe that our future is bright, if yes, why and if not, why not?

  Sep 28 2012: I do not believe our future is bright. We humans, I feel, have overreached ourselves, and, in particular, have allowed our animality to lead us into an unsustainable overexploitation and overpopulation of our world with the corresponding irreversible destruction of that "miraculous" ecosphere which, first, produced us, and second, must sustain us. Meanwhile we entertain ourselves with fictions, like going to haven on other planets, or repairing this damaged planet-- the list is unending.TED seems to be biased in favor of possible fictional improvements of our prospects, i'm saddened to see.

• A comment on Conversation: Is our math wrong? Is it our assumption of zero, or absolute nothingness?

  Sep 28 2012: Casey, here I would not be willing to talk about any such applications. I leave that to people like Euler and his huge cohort of admirers.

• A reply on Conversation: TED is an unparalleled resource that just might be enlisted to tip the human future condition into, certainly, a more promising direction.

  Sep 28 2012: Casey, What I am suggesting here actually is that interested people (like you, too) apply their forward thinking to solving the world's problems.I do not intend to define those problems for them, I am saying: "Hope for the Best, but prepare against the Worst." That wise aphorism is from long ago, and I believe it will always be good advice in preparing for an unknown future.

• A reply on Conversation: Is our math wrong? Is it our assumption of zero, or absolute nothingness?

  Sep 27 2012: There is no explaining nonsense, and those who try are operatiing on pure ego with no intelligible support. I guess that implies that they are specializing in exactly nonsense, eh? My proposal for TED is tentatively classified under Applied Science. See if it is intelligible to you, could you? I think TED is a very rich resource to discuss public concerns. And make no mistake, Casey: I respect your humanity, and your lively questioning attitude towards reality; that quality is makes humanity the only hope for a livable future, so i want TED to enlist it; I just suggested a different thing to attempt than has been usual in the past.