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matz1

The article wasn't very clear, how does extinction of one million species affect my well being?

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Ecosystems are all interconnected. As an example, see "How Wolves Changed Rivers":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448929

Now, imagine the impact of a million species being wiped from the earth.

There would be impact but if anything human are good with adapting and with technology. Is it impossible to image that these million species roles can be replaced with technology ?

This is an honest question: do you really see no issue in replacing bees with robo-bees? Do you really believe humanity can just technology our way out of every issue we face? What happens when the whole system collapses?

> do you really see no issue in replacing bees with robo-bees?

What issue do u see ?

Personally, I have a moral issue with it. Bees are living creatures. No amount of tech will ever replace the beauty of a living, breathing creature. This moral issue can be translated to any other creature that we are affecting. They depend on us to be good to them and treat them with the same respect we show any other creature, and we depend on them to sustain us and the planet as a whole.

I see, I personally don't have moral issue with it. I don't consider non-human well being as important.

Well, if anything the only time I concern about non-human well being is because it affecting human who care about them.

Thank you for sharing, while I disagree with you, I understand your viewpoint and I respect you for sharing it.

Ecological catastrophe?

Most of natural plants will not grow fruit and seeds. Plants will die and so will animals that depend on them.

If we are not able to organize our behaviour in a way that don't destroy the existing working system, why do you believe that we will able to accomplish, the arguable most difficult task, of creating a working system anew?

Sometime its easier to create a new system rather than modifying the current system.

Only when the system is very simple and well understood.

This is the most Silicon Valley response I could have hoped for.

Will you enjoy your life transporting pollen with a paintbrush? https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5193-De...

No, must it be paintbrush ? Is it crazy to think that human can't invent some kind of automation/technology to solve this ?

The simplest version would be a drone holding a paintbrush. Could do that now. China is one of the cheapest places to make suitable drones. Yet Chinese farmers are currently using paintbrushes.

I suspect that the reason is cost or just not good enough, but overtime it can be improve and price can go lower.

So at least for me, I don't see reason to not just let bee extinct.

Keep in mind that the cost to keep bee not extinct might be higher and higher.

>So at least for me, I don't see reason to not just let bee extinct.

Then I really can see no reason for you not to be forced to spend your entire life pollinating plants by hand with a paintbrush. And this goes even if there are still enough bees. We will let them watch you work while giving them little cups of honey.

>Then I really can see no reason for you not to be forced to spend your entire life pollinating plants by hand with a paintbrush

Like I mentioned before, if human can find better way to pollinating plants (better than paintbrush nor bees) then yeah no reason to do any of these.

Keeping in mind that keeping bee alive will also incur cost and sacrifice.

>Keeping in mind that keeping bee alive will also incur cost and sacrifice.

Do you live anywhere near an active volcano? I have been reading up on Maya culture and thanks to your comment I may have a plan to save the bees. It is unlikely to work I'd be the first to admit, however I think it could be worth a try.

If you inferring that you are going to throw me into active volcano, then I see few issue with that solution :

- I don't live near active volcano

- I am going to fight back

- Even, when I fail to fight back, you might be living the rest of your live in prison. Which I think it going to be suck.

Sorry, I probably went a bit far there.

I don't want to throw anyone into an active volcano, not even people who can't see the value of another creature beyond how it benefits themselves, though I must admit, that does increase the temptation.

It is good to know where the line is though. Evidently you can suggest enslaving someone for the amusement of bees and they don't even notice, but one little mention of sacrificing them for a volcano god and they take it seriously all of a sudden.

I didn't suggest enslaving someone. I favor automation to replace bee. Did I suggest sacrificing bee ? Yes

There's no sane response to this. I am veering back in favour of testing the volcano god theory.

Humans don’t need to invent some kind of bee like automation technology. We need to invent a way to not kill all the fucking bees!

True, we should be striving to create synthetic apples

As long as its as good or better than existing apples.

Have you heard of the food chain?

They majorly buried the lede in this article and species #536,112 is "human".

But referring from the title, human is not among the one million species.

As humans, we are dependent on our ecosystem for e.g. food production.

So a collapse of the ecosystem will lead to challenges for humans. You can't eat bitcoin once the bees are gone.

So bees are important, quick google search reveal the bee is important for pollination. So can't one of the solution be find alternative way for pollination. Maybe even robotic bees? With the advancement of robotic technology, its not far fetched to think that this is possible right ?

>quick google search reveal the bee is important for pollination.

I suspect that you might not be the best informed person out there.

Ok, can u elaborate ? you mention about bees. I response that bee might be able to be replaced by some other method.

Well, without being funny and I'm sorry for the implied insult but I just don't know any other way to really put this, however bees (and other insects) being pollinators is something generally learned by the end of primary school, at least round where I grew up. Having to google that information is a massive red flag.

edit - please don't let this dissuade you from googling information on basic subjects. But also be aware that if you find yourself doing so, then you know very little on the subject and cannot at all rely on intuition.

Unfortunately there is no other method to bee pollination which can operate at the same scales or the same price.

It's like talking about alternatives to soil: There are alternatives to soil, but you can't just quickly replace all of the Earth's vast food producing farms with a technology alternative without serious consequences, and if soil stopped working overnight, billions of people would die.

Bees aren't disappearing overnight, but they are disappearing worryingly quickly. If it carries on, losing bees is a very serious issue for our food supply.

So invent a mechanical bee, or just keep the bee's alive that we already have. Which one sounds easier?

Thats the question, its seem that the difficulty and cost of keeping bee alive is higher and higher, compare to inventing mechanical bee or using alternative method.

There are lots of steps that can/should be taken to keep alive the bees we have.

Make homes for native pollinators[0]

Stop using Neonicotinoids and other pesticides [1]

Find ways to stop stressing out honey bee's used for pollination[2]

[0]https://www.honeyflow.com/resources/blog/what-is-the-pollina...

[1]https://xerces.org/neonicotinoids-and-bees/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder#Possi...

Mankind will adapt to some extent and develop alternatives, e.g. hand pollination already happens in some cases now afaik.

There is even an entire group of technology optimists that e.g. think we might be able to break ground on another planet before the effects of us handling earth are realized.

In my opinion however, it will be tremendously hard to find working alternatives at the scale of feeding 8 billion people, across the entire world. I also expect that the effects will cause issues faster than we can adapt. As such it would be much better to prevent the issue as much as possible than to try and find working alternatives under time pressure. Once the effects start showing themselves and shortages become a reality, we will start seeing climate refugees, climate wars, etc etc.

But maybe we will succeed, maybe only 7.5 billion people die off and the rest can live another day up until the next mass extinction event.

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