4 ms·

You could kill all life on Earth, then there'd be no mass extinctions after that. You could put all animals in zoos and maintain their populations at a constant

You could kill all life on Earth, then there'd be no mass extinctions after that. You could put all animals in zoos and maintain their populations at a constant level but that's not a 100% guarantee. Best way would be to continue advancing human society so that we reach a state of such abundance that no one on Earth needs to put undue pressure on wild populations of animals while at the same time achieving a mastery of the natural world that would allow us to avert any major disasters that might befall the Earth such as asteroid impacts, coronal mass ejections, super volcanoes, gamma ray bursts, rogue black holes, and the death of the sun. Look sharp, we've got a lot of work ahead of us!

defaulter4once 4y ago
qwytw 4y ago
You're assuming that almost all of those wild animal species won't be extinct by that point?
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  I'm talking about future mass extinctions. The hard fact of life on Earth is that species die, we've had several mass extinctions (defined as >75% of species going extinct) but there is always a background extinction rate. That background rate is conservatively estimated to be 130 vertebrate species every 100 years. The reason people are saying we are at the beginning of another mass extinction event caused by human activity is because we have apparently accelerated that rate. I say we are at the beginning because as it stands about 1% to 2% of vertebrate animals that were present throughout human history have now gone extinct. We have a fair ways to go before we hit mass extinction levels but there are a significant number of species that are threatened or endangered. The confounding issue is that we are studying this problem and also have been mitigating it for at least 50 years if not longer if you count less organized attempts at conservation. Personally, I don't think we are going to continue to increase the rate of extinction as long as we continue to modernize the rest of the world. As people are lifted out of poverty they have more time to spend worrying about their environment and the animals that inhabit it. The best thing we can do is to make sure that no one on Earth lives in poverty that requires them to cut down and burn wood for fuel and heat, make sure they have fertilizer so they can get the best crop yields out of limited land without having to slash and burn wildlands, have access to refrigeration so they don't waste l3% or more of the food they grow, and have proper infrastructure so they can manage their waste water and garbage disposal without polluting natural water ways and the land surrounding urban centers.
aew4ytasghe5 4y ago
The road to hell was paved with good intentions.
butMebbe 4y ago
How do we know material abundance (I’m assuming that’s what you mean) “is the way”? Perhaps that’s not what you mean but it’s not an unreasonable way of describing contemporary zeitgeist. A material minimum to sustain biology and abundance of time for altered states of such resolution and variety produced through nascent regenerative medicinal therapies like bio electrics is way more interesting; hack realities fields directly versus build synthetic machines to upgrade forever? Sign me up. IMO more building of synthetic stuff to appear different and novel is the wrong path. It’s classical physics. It may reduce industrial consumption as the outputs are the uniform means of producing a variety of experiences not a literal variety of things necessitating bespoke assembly lines. But humans are so literal. Carry on with rockets because Star Trek. Few think “take pill, believe I’m Captain Kirk with Orion cadet for an hour.” Drugs are bad, mmmk.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  If you think there are very long term existential threats we can’t protect against without massive technological advances, or if there might be existential threats we don’t know about yet, you probably don’t want a relatively static society regardless of how internally stable and comfortable it seems to be. We probably need to up our game a lot to even be safe from existential threats we know about, like asteroid/comet impacts. And what about supernovae? And what about stuff that might be even less frequent that we don’t even know about? I guess what I’m saying is that optimizing for stability and comfort almost certainly is at odds with optimizing for longevity. Unless we eventually have some good reason to think that we’ve discovered all the long-term existential threats and are protected against them.
  - pmitow 4y ago
    Human civilization is only 6,000 years old. Worrying about supernovae and comets is really jumping the gun. Our biggest danger -- by many orders of magnitude -- is ourselves.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      Everything I said applies just as well to existential threats caused by humans!

defaulter4once 4y ago

qwytw 4y ago

You're assuming that almost all of those wild animal species won't be extinct by that point?

throwaway4aday 4y ago
I'm talking about future mass extinctions. The hard fact of life on Earth is that species die, we've had several mass extinctions (defined as >75% of species going extinct) but there is always a background extinction rate. That background rate is conservatively estimated to be 130 vertebrate species every 100 years. The reason people are saying we are at the beginning of another mass extinction event caused by human activity is because we have apparently accelerated that rate. I say we are at the beginning because as it stands about 1% to 2% of vertebrate animals that were present throughout human history have now gone extinct. We have a fair ways to go before we hit mass extinction levels but there are a significant number of species that are threatened or endangered. The confounding issue is that we are studying this problem and also have been mitigating it for at least 50 years if not longer if you count less organized attempts at conservation. Personally, I don't think we are going to continue to increase the rate of extinction as long as we continue to modernize the rest of the world. As people are lifted out of poverty they have more time to spend worrying about their environment and the animals that inhabit it. The best thing we can do is to make sure that no one on Earth lives in poverty that requires them to cut down and burn wood for fuel and heat, make sure they have fertilizer so they can get the best crop yields out of limited land without having to slash and burn wildlands, have access to refrigeration so they don't waste l3% or more of the food they grow, and have proper infrastructure so they can manage their waste water and garbage disposal without polluting natural water ways and the land surrounding urban centers.

aew4ytasghe5 4y ago

The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

butMebbe 4y ago

How do we know material abundance (I’m assuming that’s what you mean) “is the way”? Perhaps that’s not what you mean but it’s not an unreasonable way of describing contemporary zeitgeist. A material minimum to sustain biology and abundance of time for altered states of such resolution and variety produced through nascent regenerative medicinal therapies like bio electrics is way more interesting; hack realities fields directly versus build synthetic machines to upgrade forever? Sign me up. IMO more building of synthetic stuff to appear different and novel is the wrong path. It’s classical physics. It may reduce industrial consumption as the outputs are the uniform means of producing a variety of experiences not a literal variety of things necessitating bespoke assembly lines. But humans are so literal. Carry on with rockets because Star Trek. Few think “take pill, believe I’m Captain Kirk with Orion cadet for an hour.” Drugs are bad, mmmk.

tshaddox 4y ago
If you think there are very long term existential threats we can’t protect against without massive technological advances, or if there might be existential threats we don’t know about yet, you probably don’t want a relatively static society regardless of how internally stable and comfortable it seems to be. We probably need to up our game a lot to even be safe from existential threats we know about, like asteroid/comet impacts. And what about supernovae? And what about stuff that might be even less frequent that we don’t even know about? I guess what I’m saying is that optimizing for stability and comfort almost certainly is at odds with optimizing for longevity. Unless we eventually have some good reason to think that we’ve discovered all the long-term existential threats and are protected against them.
- pmitow 4y ago
  Human civilization is only 6,000 years old. Worrying about supernovae and comets is really jumping the gun. Our biggest danger -- by many orders of magnitude -- is ourselves.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Everything I said applies just as well to existential threats caused by humans!