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A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.

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
May
Defined
Ideas
Requires
Little
Solutions
Demanding
Human
Morality
Techniques
Humans
Values
Sciences
Nothing
Natural
Technical
Way
Change
Solution
Littles
Technique

More quotes by 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?
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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.
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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
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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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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
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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.
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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.
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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.
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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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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
Garrett Hardin
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However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.
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We see only what we have names for.
Garrett Hardin
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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Garrett Hardin
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Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
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Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.
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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