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> I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look like for an "advanced" species besides optimal? An advanced species would recognize the uniqueness

• OrbitRock 5y ago
  There’s a conservation goal that’s going around. 30 by 30. Or, 30% of the planet’s surface as protected areas by 2030. The Biden administration adopted it, but it’d be cool to see it as a global goal as well.
  • ThalesX 5y ago
    Wouldn't some weird interpretation of the Pareto Principle [0] mean that we should be using 20% of the available resources for 80% of our production goals?
• DeusExMachina 5y ago
  Would it? How do you know? You are just projecting what you think on this hypothetical advanced species. They might find, instead, that they don't need or care for any of that and just wipe it out faster.
  • abraae 5y ago
    Yep, that's my interpretation of "advanced". Yours could be one that retreats into hermetic shelters and plays Call of Duty between themselves all day long.
    • DeusExMachina 5y ago
      Mine isn't either of those, or any other variation. The point is that since you are not them, you can't know what they would do. Your "interpretation" is just making them after your self image, thinking that that is what it means to be "advanced".
      • nate_meurer 5y ago
        A more charitable interpretation is that an advanced civilization would be more likely to ensure it's own longevity and durability by engaging in serious, disciplined conservation of resources. Pretty simple observation, really.
        • timeslip1523 5y ago
          Why conserve when there are so many resources to acquire? Better to efficiently spend the available resources as quickly as possible to expand to space and start on the exponential growth. Unless your scale of 'conserving resources' involves putting out the stars to save their hydrogen for later use, you're doing it wrong.
        • princeb 5y ago
          the classic scifi trope of an advanced extraterrestrial race is one that is able to not merely ensure its existence but also develop and advance itself rapidly through aggressive intergalactic colonization and resource extraction.
        • DeusExMachina 5y ago
          Their resources don't have to be the same ones you need. They might have technology to produce everything they need and disregard any other ecosystem, especially ours. You are again just projecting what you/we need on them, like the parent comment.
  • Robotbeat 5y ago
    America actually does it with our fantastic National Parks system.
• bscphil 5y ago
  I agree, but your comment might be better served by giving reasons why. An advanced species that we can observe is, by definition, a successfully self-reproducing species. That is, a species that didn't die out in an early stage of its (social and technological) evolution. This means you have to ask (1) what steps did they take to avoid extinction, and (2) what social values allowed them to achieve those moves. The biggest threat we face as a species in the foreseeable future is the exhaustion of our natural resources. Ergo, it makes sense to reserve as much as we can for future generations to decide what to do with. Some argue that we should use them as fast as possible in order to blow past some (claimed) barrier to entirely technological reproduction (producing a self-sustaining system on the Moon, for example), but this strikes me as hasty. The difficulties of achieving this might be far more difficult than advocates imagine, and if so we're likely to hit resource exhaustion. That's before you even deal with the values. We don't have a lot of choice over those, but it's worth pointing out that many of our personal scruples are more compatible with collaborative than combative approaches to growth. The real moral challenge is whether the new frontier of growth (wealth acquisition) hits any wall before it destroys the environment.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• refurb 5y ago
  Are you saying humans aren’t a part of the “natural world”?