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Comment by ChristianGeek | Hacker News Reader

This is the saddest example of "natural" selection I've heard of.

Then I would say you haven't heard much. Natural selection is a horrific process whether or not humans are involved in it. By definition it implies the death and suffering of countless creatures so that a few are selected.

This is nothing. We're concerned about it because we like elephants, but as far as nature is concerned, there's nothing wrong with killing off ~75% of all species once in a blue moon. [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#List_of_extin...

I think the term natural selection is sort of a misnomer, makes it easy to misinterpret it as if many are let to die while few are selected. It just happens creatures that with certain traits are more adapted to survive and reproduce (not having tusks in this case), where as some other creatures are not and die. Hence those specific traits tend to be preserved in subsequent generations while the others just didn't survive to reproduce.

And, the extinction events, its not like nature is cruel and killed off most species. As you see in the list of extinctions, the reasons mostly are that the environment (or nature if you will), changed too drastically and quickly that most species couldn't adapt fast enough to survive.

>its not like nature is cruel and killed off most species

>the environment (or nature if you will), changed too drastically and quickly that most species couldn't adapt fast enough to survive.

These are not mutually exclusive. Mass starvation caused by environmental changes is a cruel kill off. I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is.

I would say you are a little too excited about the drama and morality of a statistical process, and it's occluding your understanding of what's actually going on.

That's a lot of emotional content to infer from a post with such a neutral tone. I'm also struggling to see evidence of occluded understanding.

I think the idea is that these events aren't catastrophic on an individual lifespan level. They're catastrophic in geological time.

Look at the holocene extinction event. It's been going on for over 10,000 years. It's only noticeable statistically, doesn't affect day-to-day life much if at all. Therefore it's not really cruel because for most species it's as benign as having a little too few babies to maintain the population.

It appears that, as expected, a young millennial is trying to blame this on human accelerated climate change. (not necessarily you, but someone in the above comment chain).

And yes, I agree that human accelerated climate change is causing faster extensions. However, I could care less. When does the new MacBook Pro refresh come out?

We could argue for a while whether it's "few" or not depending on which scale or species you're looking at, but that wasn't really the point. I'm not really even concerned with the death of a given species or organism in and of itself, but other people are.

It's a selection process that results in countless creatures suffering and dying over and over. Sometimes even the selected creatures are suffering immensely and dying shortly after reproducing.

The environment changed too drastically and killed off most species. Humans changed the environment too drastically and it killed off some species. I fail to see what is it that humans are introducing that is so novel. If anything, it just seems like we're tapping into an existing process. Or, I would say, we always were part of the existing process.

Should we promote the process? I do not think so. But talking about opposing or stopping nature is the direct opposite of the usual rhetoric one hears, which is often in the form of: "Humans are terrible and are driving these poor creatures extinct and messing up the environment, we are not paying respects to Mother Nature!"

Meanwhile "Mother Nature" is OK with flooding the entire atmosphere with a completely different gas and making it unlivable for anything that used to be there before.

Natural selection isn't "horrific", nature is.

Species who are "winning" at natural selection can also die in cruel circumstances. They just have to reproduce first.

Some Octupi guard their eggs until they hatch, and at the same time dying of starvation. Other species of insects have the young eat their parent(s) after being hatched.

I'm too lazy to look up the reference, but a similar thing has been happening with big horn sheep. Their horns are getting smaller as (legal) hunters have preferentially killed the rams with the largest horns.

EDIT: Here are a couple of links: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bighorn-sheep-shrinking-du... https://thegatewayonline.ca/2016/01/alberta-bighorn-sheep-ho...

Why sad? Why should elephants have tusks. Elephants perhaps evolved tusks because they were useful weapons and tools in the past, but for generations of elephants now the tusks are the reason they are killed. So, they are evolving without tusks to counter the biggest threat for their survival, humans.

It's sad that an species has to give up to a part of themselves because of human greed.

Only someone who has never seen an elephant use its tusks to rip apart a tree to get the food it needs to eat for the day could seriously ask that question.

Elephants evolved tusks because they need them. An elephant without tusks is at a serious disadvantage for all purposes apart from human predation.

I think it's the most exciting. I love seeing nature effectively defending itself.

only females lose them though

I wonder if it's possible to find even a rare mutation of a tusk-less male and manipulate things somehow. Or perhaps even if we do, for males tusks are really too much of a necessity for this to happen.

the article explains that males need them to fight

yeah but what if it's this or being hunted?

It is not defending, it is losing.

If we use these terms against nature at all. "The planet is fine. The people are fucked." (c)

Well, in the grand scheme of things, yes. Really, the most pragmatic argument for preserving the environment is saving ourselves. The universe doesn't care.

You need to subscribe to something like https://wtfevolution.tumblr.com/ then.

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