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One of the ways in which I'm confident humanity won't do anything meaningful to stop the accelerating biosphere collapse is the fact that no influential billion

One of the ways in which I'm confident humanity won't do anything meaningful to stop the accelerating biosphere collapse is the fact that no influential billionaire nor UN organization is cataloguing high quality genomic information of animals-which-are-soon-to-die. If anyone who was anyone had any faith in future humans Doing Something about the worsening problems, even with speculative sufficiently-advanced technology, you'd think this would be happening. But no, not even the so-called charismatic megafauna [0] get backups. I assume there are a lot of practical concerns, like "these aren't seeds, how do we keep the data fresh" and "how many individuals do we practically need to stave off genetic bottlenecking". Barring sufficiently-advanced technology, I wonder if there's even a viable way to freeze mammalian tissue, eggs, anything, for Very Long Term storage; more germanely, I wonder if we can get there before the collapse. I'm therefore pinning my hopes on the mammoth burger enthusiasts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna

mym1990 4y ago
Why is the requirement for an Influential Billionaire to do cataloguing? And how do you definitively know that it is not happening under the radar?
- toss1 4y ago
  Because the influential billionaires have hogged all the resources, so if anyone can, and should, do something about it, it is them. They literally have more money than they can use in multiple lifetimes at any ordinary spending rate. The only useful thing to do is to return those resources to something productive.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  ...or UN organization, I believe I wrote. Because those are the two organizational forces that would have the wherewithal and resources to do this. Governments and corporations would never bother, for roughly the same reasons. I do not definitively know that it is not happening. But one also cannot definitively know that everything outside of one's field of view isn't the objects one's sense of object permanence expects but rather densely-packed Hitlers, as per the relevant SMBC [0]. I cannot allow myself the luxury of irrational hope, no matter how cool and Hollywood-filmy the idea of a secret saving-the-world agency might be. [0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3307 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3307
  - mym1990 4y ago
    I get the UN angle, but didn't understand why it has to be an influential billionaire...vs an uninfluential billionaire?
    - revolvingocelot 4y ago
      The "UN angle"? Seriously? OK, sure. Many "billionaires" are merely people with big business empires. There's a difference between net worth and liquid capital; the former wouldn't suffice to enact the big backup. And then there's the difference between those who chase an ever-rising number to slake some unquenchable thirst in their heads, and those who amass gigantic fortunes to enact some non-financial end. The former would never even think to try this idea, as trying to save chunks of the ending world has nothing to do with making more money. Or maybe it's merely a matter of focus -- the media hangs on the words of the likes of Gates and Musk, but Bloomberg burned half a billion to learn that you can't meme your way into political power (or perhaps just that you can't do it with an ad blitz). Anyway, I'm presuming that any individual billionaire who might be financially able to try something like this would likely also need the social capital of a Musk or Gates to overcome the boring, staid, actuarial reality that we don't have the knowledge, technology, or social capital to do something like this.
inkcapmushroom 4y ago
Even past the technical issues you describe, none of the animals preserved this way would be suited to the world you thrust them into. Their ecology they were adapted to would likely be gone, and to me it seems just as likely to cause damage to an ecosystem by arbitrarily reintroducing species into it. We frankly aren't smart enough about how the massively complex living systems around us work to even know which species would be useful to future restoration efforts.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  >none of the animals preserved this way would be suited to the world you thrust them into Oh please. Save the plants, too. Save the soil fungi that support them. Save the soil-chemistry and meteorological and geological data. Save the audio transcripts of the descendants of the indigenous people talking about what their grandparents said about the animals and plants and soil and weather. Look, the very concept is a heady cocktail of hopium and handwavium. The realistic bet seems to be, as I say above, on the absolute destruction of everything as we currently understand it. We, if I'm being honest, "frankly aren't smart enough" to stop global society becoming about Line Goes Up rather than human flourishing -- which has historically required the resources of the (collapsing!) biosphere to accomplish, and which, if adopted, would likely represent a sufficient condition for the strenuous (but not insurmountable) changes required to realistically survive.

mym1990 4y ago

Why is the requirement for an Influential Billionaire to do cataloguing? And how do you definitively know that it is not happening under the radar?

toss1 4y ago
Because the influential billionaires have hogged all the resources, so if anyone can, and should, do something about it, it is them. They literally have more money than they can use in multiple lifetimes at any ordinary spending rate. The only useful thing to do is to return those resources to something productive.
revolvingocelot 4y ago
...or UN organization, I believe I wrote. Because those are the two organizational forces that would have the wherewithal and resources to do this. Governments and corporations would never bother, for roughly the same reasons. I do not definitively know that it is not happening. But one also cannot definitively know that everything outside of one's field of view isn't the objects one's sense of object permanence expects but rather densely-packed Hitlers, as per the relevant SMBC [0]. I cannot allow myself the luxury of irrational hope, no matter how cool and Hollywood-filmy the idea of a secret saving-the-world agency might be. [0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3307 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3307
- mym1990 4y ago
  I get the UN angle, but didn't understand why it has to be an influential billionaire...vs an uninfluential billionaire?
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    The "UN angle"? Seriously? OK, sure. Many "billionaires" are merely people with big business empires. There's a difference between net worth and liquid capital; the former wouldn't suffice to enact the big backup. And then there's the difference between those who chase an ever-rising number to slake some unquenchable thirst in their heads, and those who amass gigantic fortunes to enact some non-financial end. The former would never even think to try this idea, as trying to save chunks of the ending world has nothing to do with making more money. Or maybe it's merely a matter of focus -- the media hangs on the words of the likes of Gates and Musk, but Bloomberg burned half a billion to learn that you can't meme your way into political power (or perhaps just that you can't do it with an ad blitz). Anyway, I'm presuming that any individual billionaire who might be financially able to try something like this would likely also need the social capital of a Musk or Gates to overcome the boring, staid, actuarial reality that we don't have the knowledge, technology, or social capital to do something like this.

inkcapmushroom 4y ago

Even past the technical issues you describe, none of the animals preserved this way would be suited to the world you thrust them into. Their ecology they were adapted to would likely be gone, and to me it seems just as likely to cause damage to an ecosystem by arbitrarily reintroducing species into it. We frankly aren't smart enough about how the massively complex living systems around us work to even know which species would be useful to future restoration efforts.

revolvingocelot 4y ago
>none of the animals preserved this way would be suited to the world you thrust them into Oh please. Save the plants, too. Save the soil fungi that support them. Save the soil-chemistry and meteorological and geological data. Save the audio transcripts of the descendants of the indigenous people talking about what their grandparents said about the animals and plants and soil and weather. Look, the very concept is a heady cocktail of hopium and handwavium. The realistic bet seems to be, as I say above, on the absolute destruction of everything as we currently understand it. We, if I'm being honest, "frankly aren't smart enough" to stop global society becoming about Line Goes Up rather than human flourishing -- which has historically required the resources of the (collapsing!) biosphere to accomplish, and which, if adopted, would likely represent a sufficient condition for the strenuous (but not insurmountable) changes required to realistically survive.