source-book-ids:: 7247c32672a3d1095a1981c0a6f8c7abbffb4f3244613467d2616df3 icon:: đź“– title:: The Beginning of Infinity author:: David Deutsch type:: Book
- Spaceship Earth metaphor
- “The biosphere is a life-support system for humans.”
- Wrong because
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There is a life-support system in Oxfordshire today, but it was not provided by the biosphere. It has been built by humans. It consists of clothes, houses, farms, hospitals, an electrical grid, a sewage system and so on. Nearly the whole of the Earth’s biosphere in its primeval state was likewise incapable of keeping an unprotected human alive for long.
- See Production is not a given. It’s people doing work
- Principle of Mediocrity
- “There is nothing significant about humans”.
- Wrong because humans are universal explainers.