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And incremental organic evolution will happen after extinct animals are cloned, reintroduced into amenable habitats, and multiply for thousands of years.

ewmiller 5y ago
Thousands of years is a VERY optimistic estimate. In the meantime, that's quite a few human generations who will have to live in a relative wasteland (compared to peak biodiversity). And that's IF you're right and we can just industrialize ourselves out of this problem too. Consider me skeptical.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  On a biological timeline, it’s almost completely irrelevant. Humans spent tens of thousands of years in small tribal groups. I think we’ll be fine. Besides that, most people in cities already live in a biodiversity wasteland.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    So you're basically just arguing that technically humans will not go extinct, as long as there's at least two of them out there. Okay fine, that very well be the case, but I think most of us would prefer not to live or have children or grandchildren that live to suffer (and probably be one of the casualties of) a 99% or higher percent population decline, which would still be 76 million people at the current population count.
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      No, that isn’t what I wrote. Try again.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> incremental organic evolution will happen after extinct animals are cloned, reintroduced into amenable habitats, and multiply for thousands of years This is better than nothing. But species don't exist in a vacuum. Re-introducing an extinct species to a biome could be as jarring to its neighbors as its original elimination was. The most conservative path would be to cauterize the would and let the system heal, even if it takes a few million years. For an absurd example, consider the effect of introducing a large number of saber-toothed tigers to their original habitats.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Heal to what? The idea that there is a natural ecosystem is nonsense. Humans and other organisms have been changing the environment since the beginning of life. Life is a process, not a state.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Heal to what? The idea that there is a natural ecosystem is nonsense There isn't a stable state, but there are multiple equilibria. We can quantify the robustness of an ecosystem, its resilience to exogenous shocks. That makes certain states "better" than others. That resilience is low and decreasing. "Healing" means helping it increase. Re-introducing extinct species may or may not build a more robust and more productive biosphere.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    I think you're confusing ecosystem (which word itself implies process) with equilibrium. It's quite fair to say that there was an actual ecosystem at least until the establishment of writing, at which point state information became transmissible across time and space beyond the capacity of individual organisms or eusocial colonies. While you are correct that evolution would sooner or later take over, whether with assistance via cloning or blind luck if humans were to go extinct, you do need to consider the possibility that under some circumstances systems can collapse rather than bouncing back over a relatively short timeframe. Life would eventually re-establish itself, just as life persists in extremely arid desert conditions, but there's no guarantee it will do si n a timely fashion, and by timely here I mean on a timescale short enough for a human civilization to flourish in parallel with it.
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      I am just saying that the idea of returning to a natural equilibrium is nonsensical. We really just mean a form of nature that has a balance we find agreeable to human beings. Nothing more, nothing less. No human is okay with an equilibrium if it’s filled with killer wasps and sentient bears.

ewmiller 5y ago

Thousands of years is a VERY optimistic estimate. In the meantime, that's quite a few human generations who will have to live in a relative wasteland (compared to peak biodiversity). And that's IF you're right and we can just industrialize ourselves out of this problem too. Consider me skeptical.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
On a biological timeline, it’s almost completely irrelevant. Humans spent tens of thousands of years in small tribal groups. I think we’ll be fine. Besides that, most people in cities already live in a biodiversity wasteland.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  So you're basically just arguing that technically humans will not go extinct, as long as there's at least two of them out there. Okay fine, that very well be the case, but I think most of us would prefer not to live or have children or grandchildren that live to suffer (and probably be one of the casualties of) a 99% or higher percent population decline, which would still be 76 million people at the current population count.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    No, that isn’t what I wrote. Try again.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> incremental organic evolution will happen after extinct animals are cloned, reintroduced into amenable habitats, and multiply for thousands of years This is better than nothing. But species don't exist in a vacuum. Re-introducing an extinct species to a biome could be as jarring to its neighbors as its original elimination was. The most conservative path would be to cauterize the would and let the system heal, even if it takes a few million years. For an absurd example, consider the effect of introducing a large number of saber-toothed tigers to their original habitats.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
Heal to what? The idea that there is a natural ecosystem is nonsense. Humans and other organisms have been changing the environment since the beginning of life. Life is a process, not a state.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Heal to what? The idea that there is a natural ecosystem is nonsense There isn't a stable state, but there are multiple equilibria. We can quantify the robustness of an ecosystem, its resilience to exogenous shocks. That makes certain states "better" than others. That resilience is low and decreasing. "Healing" means helping it increase. Re-introducing extinct species may or may not build a more robust and more productive biosphere.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  I think you're confusing ecosystem (which word itself implies process) with equilibrium. It's quite fair to say that there was an actual ecosystem at least until the establishment of writing, at which point state information became transmissible across time and space beyond the capacity of individual organisms or eusocial colonies. While you are correct that evolution would sooner or later take over, whether with assistance via cloning or blind luck if humans were to go extinct, you do need to consider the possibility that under some circumstances systems can collapse rather than bouncing back over a relatively short timeframe. Life would eventually re-establish itself, just as life persists in extremely arid desert conditions, but there's no guarantee it will do si n a timely fashion, and by timely here I mean on a timescale short enough for a human civilization to flourish in parallel with it.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    I am just saying that the idea of returning to a natural equilibrium is nonsensical. We really just mean a form of nature that has a balance we find agreeable to human beings. Nothing more, nothing less. No human is okay with an equilibrium if it’s filled with killer wasps and sentient bears.