> But again this is about a single species. If you remove one random type of algae or plant it's not going to make a huge difference. Prochlorococcus single-ha

> But again this is about a single species. If you remove one random type of algae or plant it's not going to make a huge difference. Prochlorococcus single-handedly produces 20% of all oxygen on Earth.[1] > The impact they have, the breadth of skills, the monuments and constructs and art, the potential for what they can do in the future. Including spreading life through the solar system eventually, or things like that. I might be missing some parts, it's late. No, I mean what do you mean by important, fundamentally. Is this a judgement of the objective value of the lives of the individuals of that species? Is it just an assessment of their power? Is it putting arbitrary characteristics that species happens to posses on a pedestal while simultaneously and just as arbitrarily devaluing the unique characteristics of all other species? Are we starting from the bias that humans are more "important" (again, still unclear what that actually means) than all others, then working backwards and highlighting all the human characteristics as being evidence of that importance after the fact? If a species with giant claws ruled the world, do you think they might wax poetic about the great importance of giant claws, and how this is the one true metric by which the value of a life can be measured? Are giant claws, ability to produce art, or any other specific characteristic or capability in any way relevant to the question of whether or not a life has value? > I don't want to double down on this too hard. I just think most humans are in a pretty narrow band and this band is pretty far away from any other species. Well we're going to have to define the boundaries of this band, otherwise it doesn't seem to be based on anything concrete and seems more like circular reasoning that the boundaries of this band are those that exist within humans and therefore those humans are important because they exist within the boundaries of that band. [1] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html