Your Quote of the Day

[thatcrazycajun]

Arthur C. Clarke, Grand Master science fiction novelist, on whether humanity as a race exemplifies Darwinian "survival of the fittest":

"Perhaps a species that has accumulated four tons of explosives per capita has already demonstrated its biological unfitness beyond any further question."

--quoted in his book, Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography, Gollancz Press, 1989

Comments

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

But a species which has done that and not blown itself up has demonstrated its fittnes better than any other species. No other secies possess such a capacity for self-destruction -- without using it.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

As always, you make an excellent point; we may have the stupidity to have accumulated the explosives in the first place, but (so far, at least, praise God and knock wood) we have also had the wisdom—or at least the self-preservation instinct—not to use them to our own extinction. (It never ceases to amaze me that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over half a century later, are still the most recent instances of nuclear weapons actually being used in aggression.) Whether we are more fit because of the latter or less fit because of the former, I truly do not know; maybe it's a wash.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

A combination of rational self-interest and fear has managed to convince the various leaders that "I will not blow up the world... today".

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

One day at a time.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

As long as we are still here, we're passing the Darwin test.