Comment by jungletime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jungletime | Hacker News Reader

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Humans can have a beneficial impact on the environment too, by terraforming and making the land more productive.

There's some evidence that the Amazon mix of fruiting tree and nut species were selected for by humans.

"The Supposedly Pristine, Untouched Amazon Rainforest Was Actually Shaped By Humans"

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untou...

Since some people us this as political grounds for eugenics and population control. Such as one child policies, like China used to have. I think the proper way need to view ourselves, is as "gardeners" and caretakers. What we destroy in one area, we should rebuild in another, or make better.

For example, we could make connected "green corridors" that span the entire country, through which animals can migrate and live in. We have disrupted the migration paths of some species with out cities. But nothing says that we can't make it better by providing routes for these animals around our cities and farms.

May I kindly ask, why do you feel the need to jump out and defend the human species as also being good in the face of what is described in the article?

I am genuinely interested in understanding what motivates this reaction.

You are here, so obviously you feel "good" enough and worthy to exist. With population control its always the "others" need to be eliminated. No one wants to start with themselves. Its an extremely selfish position really. Its also not very logically viable, since those that feel the world is over populated and kill themselves, will just be selected out of the gene pool. Leaving only those that want to live, procreate and prosper behind.

Seems pretty natural, when information is provided, to offer another perspective. It's one of our core functions as human beings in a social construct.

I also think there's a tendency to anchor on what "is". Just because things are natural doesn't make them implicitly "good". And how does one define quality in the first place?

Put another way, what is the distinction between natural and artificial? Are humans not part of nature? And will "nature" not be here long after we've destroyed ourselves, if in fact we do?

Humanism is a fairly common value system.

> Humans can have a beneficial impact on the environment too

They can but they (mostly) do not. And the best way to have a beneficial impact on environment in the current situation would be "simply" to reduce its numbers. Unfortunately that's not so easy.

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