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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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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
Accept
Accepting
Greatest
Uncritically
Least
Expert
Opinion
Experts
Another
Folly
Always
Statements
Seek

More quotes by 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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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.
Garrett Hardin
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
Garrett Hardin
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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
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People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.
Garrett Hardin
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We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
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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Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.
Garrett Hardin
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We see only what we have names for.
Garrett Hardin
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
Garrett Hardin
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Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.
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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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.
Garrett Hardin
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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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The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
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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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.
Garrett Hardin
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No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Garrett Hardin