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I'm excited to see what this does to the food chain. Will it collapse? Will it kill billions? Find out on the next episode of humans trying to manipulate everyt

• deleted 9y ago
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• jackhack 9y ago
  The last episode, where the honeybee population collapsed, left me on the edge of my seat. I can't wait to see what happens next. edit: Seriously, wouldn't it be best to solve existing problems with direct threat to food production than to go off tinkering with new ideas and unknown side-effects?
  • maxerickson 9y ago
    Note that honeybees are livestock. Their presence in the US is itself an example of manipulating the environment to our own ends.
• theptip 9y ago
  The problem with this argument is that it's throwing out some big numbers and bad outcomes, without making any attempt to quantify the likelihood of those outcomes. Without quantification, this position is basically unfalsifiable. Plus, there's a trivial contrapositive that is just as valid: "what if allowing mosquitoes to live causes an outbreak of a new disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes and kills billions?". Sure, that could also happen. As with total food-chain collapse from reduction of population of a non-keystone species, it seems very unlikely. Contrast that against the almost-certain probability that 0.5m will die next year (0.1 Holocausts per year, or one Holocaust per decade) from malaria. If we don't attach a probability to these outcomes there's no way of having any sort of meaningful conversation about them.