5 ms·

It may be small consolation, that in the mid term, only humans can prevent meteor strikes from re-extincting everything on this planet. 99 percent of every spec

It may be small consolation, that in the mid term, only humans can prevent meteor strikes from re-extincting everything on this planet. 99 percent of every species that has ever existed is permanently extinct. That being said, I'd love to maintain or grow biodiversity, for it's where we will learn the most tricks to help ourselves in the mid term. Thus, if it helps humans a bit, in the long run, it could help all the life on this planet. Also, these guys are working on the problem https://rebelbio.co/sothic-bioscience-saving-human-lives-and-the-horseshoe-crab-with-artificial-blue-blood/ https://rebelbio.co/sothic-bioscience-saving-human-lives-and...

nkrisc 10y ago
But what does it matter? The only reason biodiversity is important is because it creates a better environment for all life on the planet, including us. There's no cosmic benefit to life existing on Earth, or at all. If humans weren't around to stop a meteor from wiping all life off the planet what would it matter?
- RichardHeart 10y ago
  Human consciousness is the most rare and important "thing" in the universe. We also invented "mattering." Thus, all things that matter, do so, because we're here. Nihilism is not only unproductive, it feels bad too. Upgrade to utilitarianism with a strong personal/local bias. Or, if you're a nice guy, utilitarianism in general.
  - ravenstine 10y ago
    Just because it feels bad to you(doesn't feel bad to me), that doesn't have any effect on the validity of that perspective. Of course human consciousness is important to humans, as you pointed out. Did we invent "mattering"? I guess that depends on if you can actually invent an idea, and if there is intelligent life elsewhere. Utilitarianism might be more useful at the societal level, but that still doesn't have any bearing on whether or not an individual position of nihilism is wrong. It might be a good idea that people have views that are incorrect about the environment that result in more biodiversity(though I would guess that biodiversity has diminishing returns), yet not attributing a mystical value to nature can prevent us from wasting our time and resources because our judgment is clouded. There's nothing unproductive about that.
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    I don't like to silo my views in any particular "ism." I live my life the best I can and do what I can to help others simply for the mere fact that I am here to do so and I like it. But I have no delusions about my place in the universe. Unlike you I do not ascribe any specialness to us.
- ravenstine 10y ago
  Exactly. Most concerns about the environment are really anthocentrism in digsuise.
- LordKano 10y ago
  There's no cosmic benefit to life existing on Earth, or at all. Well, maybe and only if you take the position that all life and/or suffering are irrelevant on a cosmic scale. If they are not irrelevant, then we can't know if there's any benefit to our continued existence. Will lessons that we learn here on this planet one day be used to alleviate the suffering of other sentient beings on another? We don't know but if that happens, I would argue that it was a benefit of us having lived.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I don't care about whether the rest of the universe benefits from Earth life or not. Earth life benefits from Earth life. And I'm part of the Earth life complex. So as a planet, we're going to construct durable spores and spray them out into the cosmos until that capability is destroyed. Then those spores will eventually contact other celestial bodies and activate as much Earth life as is possible in the environmental conditions there. That life will spread and evolve, possibly far enough to make its own durable spores in the future. Thus, life will eventually spread to every available niche in the galaxy. We do not know whether Earth life originated on Earth or from some other planet's probe, and it really doesn't matter. We still have to build the ships and launch them, or the information amassed by the millions of years of evolving Earth life will be lost with the destruction of Earth. That's nothing to the rest of the universe. But it's everything to us. My legacy as an individual organism is to reproduce fertile offspring. That's the biological imperative. If you never had grandchildren, you never really mattered to the current state of the planet. So what is that on a planet-wide scale? If you never build an offworld colony that will go on to build an offworld colony, nothing your planet did will ever matter.
Retric 10y ago
Meteor strikes are only an issue for a subset of relatively large multicellular organisms. The odds of anything 'sterilizing' the earth in the next billion years is basically zero. Further if we die put there is a good chance for another intelegent life form to replace us before the earth becomes uninhabitable even if we wiped out all multicellular life.
- sitkack 10y ago
  A meteor strike is actually better than the uncontrolled thermal runaway we are experiencing. At least a meteor threw biomatter into LEO so it could reseed the planet after a cataclysm. We will be Venus in no time.
  - E6300 10y ago
    How overdramatic.
prodmerc 10y ago
We most likely can't actually prevent a meteor strike. There's plans to do it, but nothing will be ready for another few decades. Even if we're lucky to detect it very early, we'd have to quickly create a delivery system for nuclear warheads all the way to the asteroid - ICBMs are not designed for orbit or escape. And then accurately rendezvous and detonate them. Just blowing an asteroid into smaller pieces is not acceptable. It's possible in theory, but I'm not sure it will work in practice.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  The probability that humans prevent a future planetary mass-extinction event from celestial impact, divided by the probability that horseshoe crabs prevent such an event is so large that it might as well be infinity. Horseshoe crabs don't even have a theoretical plan. They don't even have a Hollywood blockbuster movie about it. So from a planetary ecosystem perspective, every species on Earth not directly involved with humans or horseshoe crabs should prefer to force the horseshoe crabs to help the humans in some way whenever they are able to do so. Those species should also prefer that humans not make horseshoe crabs extinct, just in case that they might be the critical link in some "for lack of a nail" causality chain which prevents humans from preventing the mass-extinction event. It's very much like forbidding a brilliant researcher from doing his or her own cooking and laundry. You hire a less-brilliant assistant to take care of all mundane needs, so that the researcher is thinking about your important problem at peak efficiency. Besides that, the guaranteed-to-work plan for dealing with a massive meteor strike is to transplant additional copies of Earth's ecosystems to other planets. If you build a Mars colony, and ship enough seeds and embryos there, you have prevented the extinction event, even if you couldn't do anything about the meteor impact.
  - RugnirViking 10y ago
    Several of the concepts in this comment are very amusing to me :) Thanks
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
nickhalfasleep 10y ago
Considering that horseshoe crabs are older than dinosaurs, trees, and several large meteor impacts, I wager they will outlive us as well.

nkrisc 10y ago

But what does it matter? The only reason biodiversity is important is because it creates a better environment for all life on the planet, including us. There's no cosmic benefit to life existing on Earth, or at all. If humans weren't around to stop a meteor from wiping all life off the planet what would it matter?

RichardHeart 10y ago
Human consciousness is the most rare and important "thing" in the universe. We also invented "mattering." Thus, all things that matter, do so, because we're here. Nihilism is not only unproductive, it feels bad too. Upgrade to utilitarianism with a strong personal/local bias. Or, if you're a nice guy, utilitarianism in general.
- ravenstine 10y ago
  Just because it feels bad to you(doesn't feel bad to me), that doesn't have any effect on the validity of that perspective. Of course human consciousness is important to humans, as you pointed out. Did we invent "mattering"? I guess that depends on if you can actually invent an idea, and if there is intelligent life elsewhere. Utilitarianism might be more useful at the societal level, but that still doesn't have any bearing on whether or not an individual position of nihilism is wrong. It might be a good idea that people have views that are incorrect about the environment that result in more biodiversity(though I would guess that biodiversity has diminishing returns), yet not attributing a mystical value to nature can prevent us from wasting our time and resources because our judgment is clouded. There's nothing unproductive about that.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  I don't like to silo my views in any particular "ism." I live my life the best I can and do what I can to help others simply for the mere fact that I am here to do so and I like it. But I have no delusions about my place in the universe. Unlike you I do not ascribe any specialness to us.
ravenstine 10y ago
Exactly. Most concerns about the environment are really anthocentrism in digsuise.
LordKano 10y ago
There's no cosmic benefit to life existing on Earth, or at all. Well, maybe and only if you take the position that all life and/or suffering are irrelevant on a cosmic scale. If they are not irrelevant, then we can't know if there's any benefit to our continued existence. Will lessons that we learn here on this planet one day be used to alleviate the suffering of other sentient beings on another? We don't know but if that happens, I would argue that it was a benefit of us having lived.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I don't care about whether the rest of the universe benefits from Earth life or not. Earth life benefits from Earth life. And I'm part of the Earth life complex. So as a planet, we're going to construct durable spores and spray them out into the cosmos until that capability is destroyed. Then those spores will eventually contact other celestial bodies and activate as much Earth life as is possible in the environmental conditions there. That life will spread and evolve, possibly far enough to make its own durable spores in the future. Thus, life will eventually spread to every available niche in the galaxy. We do not know whether Earth life originated on Earth or from some other planet's probe, and it really doesn't matter. We still have to build the ships and launch them, or the information amassed by the millions of years of evolving Earth life will be lost with the destruction of Earth. That's nothing to the rest of the universe. But it's everything to us. My legacy as an individual organism is to reproduce fertile offspring. That's the biological imperative. If you never had grandchildren, you never really mattered to the current state of the planet. So what is that on a planet-wide scale? If you never build an offworld colony that will go on to build an offworld colony, nothing your planet did will ever matter.

Retric 10y ago

Meteor strikes are only an issue for a subset of relatively large multicellular organisms. The odds of anything 'sterilizing' the earth in the next billion years is basically zero. Further if we die put there is a good chance for another intelegent life form to replace us before the earth becomes uninhabitable even if we wiped out all multicellular life.

sitkack 10y ago
A meteor strike is actually better than the uncontrolled thermal runaway we are experiencing. At least a meteor threw biomatter into LEO so it could reseed the planet after a cataclysm. We will be Venus in no time.
- E6300 10y ago
  How overdramatic.

prodmerc 10y ago

We most likely can't actually prevent a meteor strike. There's plans to do it, but nothing will be ready for another few decades. Even if we're lucky to detect it very early, we'd have to quickly create a delivery system for nuclear warheads all the way to the asteroid - ICBMs are not designed for orbit or escape. And then accurately rendezvous and detonate them. Just blowing an asteroid into smaller pieces is not acceptable. It's possible in theory, but I'm not sure it will work in practice.

logfromblammo 10y ago
The probability that humans prevent a future planetary mass-extinction event from celestial impact, divided by the probability that horseshoe crabs prevent such an event is so large that it might as well be infinity. Horseshoe crabs don't even have a theoretical plan. They don't even have a Hollywood blockbuster movie about it. So from a planetary ecosystem perspective, every species on Earth not directly involved with humans or horseshoe crabs should prefer to force the horseshoe crabs to help the humans in some way whenever they are able to do so. Those species should also prefer that humans not make horseshoe crabs extinct, just in case that they might be the critical link in some "for lack of a nail" causality chain which prevents humans from preventing the mass-extinction event. It's very much like forbidding a brilliant researcher from doing his or her own cooking and laundry. You hire a less-brilliant assistant to take care of all mundane needs, so that the researcher is thinking about your important problem at peak efficiency. Besides that, the guaranteed-to-work plan for dealing with a massive meteor strike is to transplant additional copies of Earth's ecosystems to other planets. If you build a Mars colony, and ship enough seeds and embryos there, you have prevented the extinction event, even if you couldn't do anything about the meteor impact.
- RugnirViking 10y ago
  Several of the concepts in this comment are very amusing to me :) Thanks
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

nickhalfasleep 10y ago

Considering that horseshoe crabs are older than dinosaurs, trees, and several large meteor impacts, I wager they will outlive us as well.