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You're giving nature too much credit. Nature doesn't try and balance life. Nature doesn't care- it throws asteroid impacts and supervolcanos and natural disaste

You're giving nature too much credit. Nature doesn't try and balance life. Nature doesn't care- it throws asteroid impacts and supervolcanos and natural disasters all over the place. Life just happens to be very very resilient and consistently able to jump back and fill new niches. Nature also "created" us - were a product of the universe like everything else. If we are destabilizing, so is nature. And most scientists do not assume they can blindly mess around. There was a whole section of this article related to ethics, they didn't let the fetus be born (which would definitely have been messing around). They're not trying to "do better" or control nature - they're just trying to understand what makes us tick. This is a mutation that already exists in humans. It might make us human. If anything, that makes nature the one that was blindly messing around.

grawprog 6y ago
I don't give it credit, like it's trying to gain balance, but functioning ecosystems do maintain a balance. Most of our climate problems have come from humans disrupting this. If you take any functioning healthy ecosystem on earth, one generally less tampered with by humans, you'll find from a microscopic, right up to a macroscopic level, the life in those ecosystems have adapted to function together. If you want to see some good examples of this, check out some terrarium channels on youtube, there's some really cool, perfectly balanced ones people have had going for years. The reason why we have so many ecological problems around the world is that humans have been constantly disrupting this. We introduce invasive species that dominate the landscape, cause extinctions and extirpations of native species and change the fundamental balance of the ecosystem. You're right, life does push through, but personally, I prefer the native songbirds and shrubs that are local to my area than a landscape full of Japanese knotweed and starlings. And so do most things, that first example likely has at least a dozen species of songbirds, a bunch of shrubs and herbacious plants. That second example has two species, maybe some rats or crows if your lucky. The thing is, ecosystems don't stand alone, they're all connected and the collapse of one leads to the collapse of the neighbouring ones and so forth. If you actually look through the published literature.on various ecosystems around the world, we have a very shallow level of knowledge. We don't understand fully the complex connections between everything and the research that does keep coming out keeps showing how much we've vastly underestimated how much our actions have impacted things. Even things like the ecosystems in our own body's. The microscopic organisms that have been found to even play a part in things such as our decision making and moods. The human body itself functions as an ecosystem, all our body systems, our cells, our organs, all function independently and cohesively to make everything that is you. The earth itself functions the same way. The ecosystems, and all life, including humans, are the cells and organs that make up all life on Earth. Altering life at a fundamental genetic level goes even further than how we alter ecosystems. Humans really don't understand the potential consequences to changes we make to the genetic code. We have a vague idea, but we really are.delving mostly blind into this. If we barely understand how life works on a macroscopic level, what makes us think we're ready to change it at an even lower level?
- hohloma 6y ago
  You’re missing survivorship bias - nature didn’t just create these balanced ecosystems, it creates anything that goes, and things that don’t work out just die. Humans ruining earth for themselves is just as natural, just that we might die as result. But life won’t - it’s much more resilient than just one species. Or several.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Following this line of logic you can justify anything. If I kill your entire family, that’s natural. Would you be ok with that? I think if you accept at all that there is suffering and there is beauty, then you shouldn’t hide behind “everything’s natural” and instead try and have a backbone and stick up for something more.
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      Why should I be "ok" with natural? Screw natural. Nature does a lot of terrible things. People dying in hurricanes or at the hands of murderers isn't OK because its "natural" - its just not OK. We have the intelligence to influence our environment (and that intelligence is also a result of nature). Trying to categorize natural vs unnatural (whatever that means) is a fools errand and not a productive one in my view, since my ethics aren't based on "it's ok because the volcano was natural"
      - ericffr 6y ago
        The problem with this line of thinking is that it might be a little short-sighted. Since we are intelligent, we should be careful. With great powers come great responsibility. If someone doesn't like hurricanes, they can move where there is none. When Earth will be 99% inhabitable (because of air pollution, soil degradation, lack of water), is the solution just to say "oh well", let's go to Mars?
        ninjanomnom 6y ago
        (I assume you meant uninhabitable) For the individual the answer is almost certainly yes. If we have the ability to survive elsewhere than earth and we have brought earth to the point that it is 99% uninhabitable then going someone else is probably the best choice. One could easily argue that our ability to consider our environment and make changes to our behavior accordingly is unnatural. Avoiding the above scenario is something we should be using our unnatural gifts to avoid. Arguments based on how natural something is is highly subjective and not really worthwhile imo. Replace natural with what we're actually trying to discuss: As a species we want a stable environment that requires the least effort to survive in. Individuals have additional traits they want from the environment but that's all subjective. Things that most people consider natural are usually things that have a large data set to demonstrate their stability.
camphero 6y ago
Don’t blame wanting to prove Planet of the Apes could be real (but not having the balls to do it) Nature’s fault. That stupidity is just human mad science.
erickj 6y ago
However in the exact same vane that "Nature doesn't care"... We as Humans should and DO care. We are not Nature, and thus these existential defining issues should at least give us some pause to debate and evaluate the moral quandaries and responsibilities that this level of engineering power wields.
- flatline 6y ago
  We are very much Nature. Possibly something independent of our own minds exist; we can never really know. Anything worth preserving, caring for, or caring about, is a product of the human mind. The meteor careening into the earth does not feel a moral quandary, but we do, and as such I agree that given our limited knowledge we should care. But we should also pay heed to how ignorant we are: we cannot possibly know how our present actions will play out in the future, the best we can do is try to be compassionate and take care of what we can. The rest is out of our control and hence our sphere of responsibility.
  - erickj 6y ago
    I'm not saying we aren't a product of Nature... I'm saying that the defining trait of man that sets us outside of our natural surroundings is our capability to use intellect, empathy, and morality to guide our decisions. This is not a tool that "Nature" has in its toolbox. Nature has, natural selection. The random smatterings of dice throws that takes place trillions of times per day over the course of billions of years. The equivalent of throwing paint against the wall for a millennia to eventually recreate a Picasso. This is not how humans work. Our efforts are efficient (at least more so than Nature's efforts), and when honed and optimized can be made into machines of frighteningly impressive efficiency. There is certainly a difference between the creative and destructive processes of Man vs Nature.
- cubano 6y ago
  How can you possibly even say "We are not Nature"? Of course we are Nature. We came to being the exact same way every other current living species did, thru natural selection. So then how can we be living, as you say, somehow outside this "Nature" you speak of? Hell, I know I may be in a small minority who says, by definition, nothing that we do is "wrong" because we are simply doing what our brains, which are 100% a product of this Nature, are telling us to do. Post-modernism is quick to tell us there are no absolute rights and wrongs...that only culture makes it so. So why then can some say that its immoral to create and study these creatures that our nature-created brains have led us to create?
bamboozled 6y ago
“You're giving nature too much credit.” What a statement.
senectus1 6y ago
I think also that "New Species" may also be a big leap. Its an enhanced mutant example at best...
- nkrisc 6y ago
  What is a species but a mutation of another one? Let's not forget most definitions of "species" are tenuous at best. The natural world is not so easily categorized.
  - Can_Not 6y ago
    "Species" vs a gene mutation is pretty well defined for mammals, it's usually obscure lifeforms like microscopic worms and bacteria where that term might be less useful.
mjgs 6y ago
As a human I feel that having morality is very important, but moving all that stuff aside for a second, the only thing in the end that really matters is whether we will cause our own extinction. Nature took a very long time to get us to where we are, it seems to me that playing with the biological building blocks at this level, relative to nature’s approach, has a very high risk of causing something catastrophic some time in the future. The IT professional in me would advise to continue no further until a reproducible backup/restore procedure was in place. I’m not sure how exactly that translates to biological systems though. Also I am currently available for hire :)
blablabla123 6y ago
> Nature doesn't try and balance life Actually it does. It's quite likely that this is neither the first universe nor the last. But it's certainly one of the more stable ones. > If anything, that makes nature the one that was blindly messing around. Quite hard to image that something even close to this has happened by pure coincidence - e.g. mutation - before.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  What we describe as balancing is an emergent property that we happen to agree with because our observation is biased in favor of the status quo.

grawprog 6y ago

I don't give it credit, like it's trying to gain balance, but functioning ecosystems do maintain a balance. Most of our climate problems have come from humans disrupting this. If you take any functioning healthy ecosystem on earth, one generally less tampered with by humans, you'll find from a microscopic, right up to a macroscopic level, the life in those ecosystems have adapted to function together. If you want to see some good examples of this, check out some terrarium channels on youtube, there's some really cool, perfectly balanced ones people have had going for years. The reason why we have so many ecological problems around the world is that humans have been constantly disrupting this. We introduce invasive species that dominate the landscape, cause extinctions and extirpations of native species and change the fundamental balance of the ecosystem. You're right, life does push through, but personally, I prefer the native songbirds and shrubs that are local to my area than a landscape full of Japanese knotweed and starlings. And so do most things, that first example likely has at least a dozen species of songbirds, a bunch of shrubs and herbacious plants. That second example has two species, maybe some rats or crows if your lucky. The thing is, ecosystems don't stand alone, they're all connected and the collapse of one leads to the collapse of the neighbouring ones and so forth. If you actually look through the published literature.on various ecosystems around the world, we have a very shallow level of knowledge. We don't understand fully the complex connections between everything and the research that does keep coming out keeps showing how much we've vastly underestimated how much our actions have impacted things. Even things like the ecosystems in our own body's. The microscopic organisms that have been found to even play a part in things such as our decision making and moods. The human body itself functions as an ecosystem, all our body systems, our cells, our organs, all function independently and cohesively to make everything that is you. The earth itself functions the same way. The ecosystems, and all life, including humans, are the cells and organs that make up all life on Earth. Altering life at a fundamental genetic level goes even further than how we alter ecosystems. Humans really don't understand the potential consequences to changes we make to the genetic code. We have a vague idea, but we really are.delving mostly blind into this. If we barely understand how life works on a macroscopic level, what makes us think we're ready to change it at an even lower level?

hohloma 6y ago
You’re missing survivorship bias - nature didn’t just create these balanced ecosystems, it creates anything that goes, and things that don’t work out just die. Humans ruining earth for themselves is just as natural, just that we might die as result. But life won’t - it’s much more resilient than just one species. Or several.
- nwienert 6y ago
  Following this line of logic you can justify anything. If I kill your entire family, that’s natural. Would you be ok with that? I think if you accept at all that there is suffering and there is beauty, then you shouldn’t hide behind “everything’s natural” and instead try and have a backbone and stick up for something more.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Why should I be "ok" with natural? Screw natural. Nature does a lot of terrible things. People dying in hurricanes or at the hands of murderers isn't OK because its "natural" - its just not OK. We have the intelligence to influence our environment (and that intelligence is also a result of nature). Trying to categorize natural vs unnatural (whatever that means) is a fools errand and not a productive one in my view, since my ethics aren't based on "it's ok because the volcano was natural"
    - ericffr 6y ago
      The problem with this line of thinking is that it might be a little short-sighted. Since we are intelligent, we should be careful. With great powers come great responsibility. If someone doesn't like hurricanes, they can move where there is none. When Earth will be 99% inhabitable (because of air pollution, soil degradation, lack of water), is the solution just to say "oh well", let's go to Mars?
      - ninjanomnom 6y ago
        (I assume you meant uninhabitable) For the individual the answer is almost certainly yes. If we have the ability to survive elsewhere than earth and we have brought earth to the point that it is 99% uninhabitable then going someone else is probably the best choice. One could easily argue that our ability to consider our environment and make changes to our behavior accordingly is unnatural. Avoiding the above scenario is something we should be using our unnatural gifts to avoid. Arguments based on how natural something is is highly subjective and not really worthwhile imo. Replace natural with what we're actually trying to discuss: As a species we want a stable environment that requires the least effort to survive in. Individuals have additional traits they want from the environment but that's all subjective. Things that most people consider natural are usually things that have a large data set to demonstrate their stability.

camphero 6y ago

Don’t blame wanting to prove Planet of the Apes could be real (but not having the balls to do it) Nature’s fault. That stupidity is just human mad science.

erickj 6y ago

However in the exact same vane that "Nature doesn't care"... We as Humans should and DO care. We are not Nature, and thus these existential defining issues should at least give us some pause to debate and evaluate the moral quandaries and responsibilities that this level of engineering power wields.

flatline 6y ago
We are very much Nature. Possibly something independent of our own minds exist; we can never really know. Anything worth preserving, caring for, or caring about, is a product of the human mind. The meteor careening into the earth does not feel a moral quandary, but we do, and as such I agree that given our limited knowledge we should care. But we should also pay heed to how ignorant we are: we cannot possibly know how our present actions will play out in the future, the best we can do is try to be compassionate and take care of what we can. The rest is out of our control and hence our sphere of responsibility.
- erickj 6y ago
  I'm not saying we aren't a product of Nature... I'm saying that the defining trait of man that sets us outside of our natural surroundings is our capability to use intellect, empathy, and morality to guide our decisions. This is not a tool that "Nature" has in its toolbox. Nature has, natural selection. The random smatterings of dice throws that takes place trillions of times per day over the course of billions of years. The equivalent of throwing paint against the wall for a millennia to eventually recreate a Picasso. This is not how humans work. Our efforts are efficient (at least more so than Nature's efforts), and when honed and optimized can be made into machines of frighteningly impressive efficiency. There is certainly a difference between the creative and destructive processes of Man vs Nature.
cubano 6y ago
How can you possibly even say "We are not Nature"? Of course we are Nature. We came to being the exact same way every other current living species did, thru natural selection. So then how can we be living, as you say, somehow outside this "Nature" you speak of? Hell, I know I may be in a small minority who says, by definition, nothing that we do is "wrong" because we are simply doing what our brains, which are 100% a product of this Nature, are telling us to do. Post-modernism is quick to tell us there are no absolute rights and wrongs...that only culture makes it so. So why then can some say that its immoral to create and study these creatures that our nature-created brains have led us to create?

bamboozled 6y ago

“You're giving nature too much credit.” What a statement.

senectus1 6y ago

I think also that "New Species" may also be a big leap. Its an enhanced mutant example at best...

nkrisc 6y ago
What is a species but a mutation of another one? Let's not forget most definitions of "species" are tenuous at best. The natural world is not so easily categorized.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  "Species" vs a gene mutation is pretty well defined for mammals, it's usually obscure lifeforms like microscopic worms and bacteria where that term might be less useful.

mjgs 6y ago

As a human I feel that having morality is very important, but moving all that stuff aside for a second, the only thing in the end that really matters is whether we will cause our own extinction. Nature took a very long time to get us to where we are, it seems to me that playing with the biological building blocks at this level, relative to nature’s approach, has a very high risk of causing something catastrophic some time in the future. The IT professional in me would advise to continue no further until a reproducible backup/restore procedure was in place. I’m not sure how exactly that translates to biological systems though. Also I am currently available for hire :)

blablabla123 6y ago

> Nature doesn't try and balance life Actually it does. It's quite likely that this is neither the first universe nor the last. But it's certainly one of the more stable ones. > If anything, that makes nature the one that was blindly messing around. Quite hard to image that something even close to this has happened by pure coincidence - e.g. mutation - before.

datavirtue 6y ago
What we describe as balancing is an emergent property that we happen to agree with because our observation is biased in favor of the status quo.