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Incommensurables cannot be compared.

Garrett Hardin

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Garrett Hardin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1915
Born: April 21
Died: 2003
Died: September 14
Biologist
Demographer
Ecologist
Statistician
University Teacher
Dallas
Texas
Garrett James Hardin
Garrett J. Hardin
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More quotes by Garrett Hardin

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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
Garrett Hardin
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.
Garrett Hardin
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The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.
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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.
Garrett Hardin
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Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
Garrett Hardin
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Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms skyhooks. Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.
Garrett Hardin
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
Garrett Hardin
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Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.
Garrett Hardin
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A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
Garrett Hardin
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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
Garrett Hardin
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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Garrett Hardin
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Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.
Garrett Hardin
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In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
Garrett Hardin
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Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
Garrett Hardin
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Garrett Hardin
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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
Garrett Hardin
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But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
Garrett Hardin
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To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.
Garrett Hardin