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Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

I was arguing with someone on the internet, and biodiversity became the arguing point. They ended up flat-out asking me why anyone should care about biodiversity.

It's such an ingrained assumption inside my head that everyone should understand the value of biodiversity that I couldn't even answer.

I grew up watching David Attenborough, David Suzuki, and Carl Sagan explaining the natural world.

I can't imagine how much poorer my life would be, if I hadn't grown up with that.

And I can't begin to imagine how to explain my world-view to someone who clearly didn't grow up with them... Other than to sit them down with all those fantastic series, and hope that they take hold in them.

I mean, like, start by watching "Queen of the Trees," and see how inter-connected all of that life is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM

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Some time ago I worked for a small company and one of the owners was a pretty nice guy, often talked of his mountain home and being near nature versus in the city. Then one day he mentioned that he had to change the oil in his sons ATV and always did that at the downhill slope of his properties edge. He would park the ATV over a small stream and empty the oil directly into the water.

Of course the staff were all furious at hearing this, which he seemed to enjoy. I asked the other owner if he was serious and he said he 100% was serious. So I approached the owner dumping the oil why he did this, why he didn't just empty the oil into a container, etc. Long/short he said it didn't effect him and couldn't care what any of us hippies though of the practice.

I would say that there is a fundamental difference in the way people are; they either view things in the long-term and strive to ensure the best for all of us. The other side of the coin are people that just want what's best for themselves and maybe their family. They don't care or want to believe such actions have long term effects on them directly.

...and worse, some of them relish the thought of tweaking those of us who do care.

It's not merely selfishness, it's sadism.

As one of those who do care, I think the charitable and more likely interpretation is that this behavior is a response to a lot of the self-righteousness that environmentalists have exhibited. I think if our messaging were more humble (i.e., do we really care about the environment, or is it just a moral issue that we can use to prop ourselves up and cut others down) we would encounter less of this kind of blow back. Moreover, this is all worsened by an increasingly divisive media and social media, so we need to be more careful than ever about our messaging and demeanor. This is just my humble opinion; I'm sure many will disagree.

Even if it was on private land that practice is likely illegal at the federal level, IIRC.

Doesn't sound like a nice guy.

Yeah I mention the nice guy part because it wasn't like he was a raving asshole day-in-day out. In fact he really was (outwardly anyway) a 'nice guy' pretty much always and didn't view his behavior as wrong at all (it was his 'property', etc).

Even guys that are seemingly nice have very odd beliefs. It really opened my eyes as to what to talk about at work, even if the topic didn't seem 'fringe' to me. Older dudes out west/here in Colorado in particular grew up with a sort of cavalier notion of what freedom and America means to them, and telling them what they can or cannot do on their own property is the heart of the matter.

I think in general people are wildly inconsistent in their beliefs and behaviors.

Most people believe crazy things, even those that don't tend to not behave in consistent alignment with what they believe to be true or good.

> do on their own property ...

Yea, but their property doesn't exist in a vacuum. They have neighbours and there's always downstream effects.

I'd say part of this attitude is an effect of rights becoming disconnected from responsibilities. Like, sure, one may "own" the land, but it better be well take care of, be a good steward. Not because there's immediate bad effects, but because those effects diffuse into the real non-human world.

If pollution increases downhill, property prices increase uphill. Our economy is part of the problem.

Negative externalities will exist in any economic system, and most developed countries have implemented regulations to reduce pollution.

Of course the staff were all furious at hearing this, which he seemed to enjoy.

There's a certain personality type that derives more pleasure from the loss of another than a gain of their own.

I hadn’t thought about it like this before, but that’s like a twisted version of Kahneman & Tversky’s “losses loom larger than gains.” I wonder if the psychological weighting mechanism is the same.

I think you'll find this paper very interesting, as it distinguishes between pessimistic loss aversion and sadistic loss infliction. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451

If my reading of that paper is fair, it suggests a third of people deliberately make choices that cause other people to suffer more than they do even if it increases their own suffering by a lesser amount. And that is terrifying.

Yep. It's had a rather negative impact on my outlook over the last few years, to put it mildly.

I think this explains the state of the world, and given the state of the world: why is this surprising to us.

I guess people tend to believe that everyone else is like them, including those of us that aren't sadistic. And if a full 33 percent are sadistic, is it something that even should or can be corrected?

Now that's terrifying.

However, it is much better to simply look at a flower and meditate on how amazing it is that it exists at all than ruminate on the facts of how cruel the world is.

This educational game has some useful insights. While the distribution of people may not be something that can be corrected or easily altered (one disturbing insight of that Science paper is that personality types seem to be firmly established even in early youth), sadistic policies can be made more costly and thus less effective, reducing the incentive to maintain and reproduce them.

https://ncase.me/trust/

Thanks, I’ll take a look.

"It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One’s Best Friend Must Fail"

Gore Vidal's vversion is well-known: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/

In a survival of the fittest this makes perfect sense

This isn't short term vs long term, it's city vs rural. If his mountain home is sufficiently low population density then everyone in the area could behave this way without causing meaningful harm. These ideas you have about the environment and the right way to behave are a cultural necessity because of the population density within cities.

What state is/was this? It sounds highly illegal and that person should be prosecuted. Make it have an impact by reporting them.

NY for example:

"Thus, for example, even a spill of a gallon of oil into a ditch is covered."

https://ag.ny.gov/environmental/oil-spill/oil-spills-homes-a...

California:

"California Penal Code 374.3 makes illegal dumping on public and private property punishable by a fine up to $10,000. Also, pursuant to Section 117555 of the California health and Safety Code, a person who dumps illegally is punishable by up to six months on jail."

https://pw.lacounty.gov/epd/illdump/penalty.cfm

Calcycle page on illegal dumping:

https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/illegaldump

Colorado, and yeah we all talked privately about reporting him. One of the more upset staff members filed a complaint, I don't know if anything came of it. We never heard anything if it did. This is about 15 or so years back now.

"Is curious, but to park in the limit of your property and watch the trouts going upstream is much more satisfactory since I know that you empty the oil directly in the water"

This is the only type of correct answers for those cases

Biodiversity is important because biology has been doing chemistry, physics, medicine, and neuroscience far longer than humans have. Many modern technologies exist only through studying nature. There's no need to love the splendor of nature to know that destroying a discovery before we know it exists is shooting ourselves in the foot.

I don't think we understand redundancy as well as we say we do. We have backups and alternatives within cultural and civil systems and we often try to cut them back.

Different organisms have come up with different solutions to the same problem, and because of that they can break in different situations. The 'service' they provide will be affected differently by an environmental shortage or excess. If twenty microbes are responsible for recycling organic matter and dust or drought or some chemical affects 10 of them, the others will expand to pick up some of the slack.

Indeed. Often the drive for efficiency is rooted in the desire to extract economic value that seems to be going unclaimed or wasted (in the present) without regard for structural utility (over time).

The risk is how long that takes. Sure, other microbes pick up the slack, but when? A hundred years? A thousand? Millions?

Oh I'm talking about existing populations. If you're talking about for instance, "what will eat all of this plastic?" then I agree with you. There is nothing, never has been, and we don't know when there will be something we can happily coexist with.

Great pitch! The flagship, IMO, is antibiotics. Any contenders?

crop disease resistance maybe? i sure do like eating.

A few that spring to mind, all plant blazed:

Aspirin occurs naturally in Willow bark; morphine and codeine from opium poppies; ephedrine and amphetamine is derived from Ephedra sinica (Ma Huang); quinine and it's derivatives from Cinchona calisaya; digoxin from foxglove (Digitalis lanata).

And botox from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and related species has medical uses primarily for muscle spasticity conditions and migraines.

Salicin occurs naturally in willow, not aspirin. It's a prodrug of salicylic acid, which has some anti-inflammatory effects.

Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. It's also a prodrug of salicylic acid, but it has additional anti-inflammatory and anti-thrombotic effects, because unlike salicylic acid itself, it can irreversibly inactivate COX enzymes (enzymes that synthesize compounds needed for inflammation and blood clotting) by acetylating them. It's also less irritating to the digestive system.

Paper would be my candidate. Being able to store huge amounts of information in thousands of books in a room transformed human societies much more than antibiotics did.

How the humans invented something so incredibly useful? Most probably after watching "useless" social wasps to mash bark to make its nests.

A stiff dose of LSD on a beautiful day away from a big city would probably do.

No, seriously -

We are destroying not just other species' natural habitats; those natural habitats are our own, that's where we evolved. In billions of years of natural history, we and our ancestors have led a "modern" way of life for a few thousand at most.

We're so adaptable that we can thrive in highly technologically altered environments as well; but I'm quite sure that anyone can experience the feeling of recognizing that those aren't truly home for us.

Every time I've tripped on LSD, I end up admiring the trees and nature. Shortly thereafter I am saddened by the society we live in which is so harmful to the very thing I admire.

Maybe we sneak some LSD into this covid vaccine.

Obviously you're trying to be funny. But nonconsensual drugging, especially with something as powerful and life altering as LSD can be, is as awful (to me and I assume other's familiar with it) as any other nonconsensual psychic change to someone's life. If you didn't know.

I too have had trouble answering that question for the same reason, regardless of whether its biodiversity or ethnic diversity or diversity of thought.

I've spent a lot of time trying to formulate my reasoning and unfortunately, the easiest explanation is the most clinical and least likely to inspire: diversity is necessary (but not sufficient) for long term survival of any nontrivial system - be it a species, civilization, tribe, or business. Dynamic environments driven by random events and emergent phenomenon like weather/climate, food chains, and sentient beings are going to be chaotic and unstable in the short term. Diversity allows better suited individuals to exploit the current environment while preserving a diverse minority contingent that is far more likely to be able to adapt to the next change in the environment without a catastrophic collapse of the system. Without that minority group, the medium to long term probability of survival for the whole is zero and without the majority, the minority group wouldn't survive long enough to make it the next environmental shift.

It's as close as you can get to an abstract natural law of complex systems. It applies to a company's talent pools and its ability to survive pivots or changing market conditions, an ideology's ability to survive the realities of geopolitics, a religion's ability to survive schisms and protests, and much more.

His underlying assumption that human life is the only life that has value is staggeringly self-centered and depressing.

The assumption could be that his life is the only life that has value, and damn other humans as well.

Could he hold the polar opposite assumption? That no life has value?

One thing to point out is that global pandemics don't just afflict human populations. Biodiversity within the agricultural crops we grow helps to protect them from being totally wiped out. The Irish potato famine was the result of a lack of biodiversity and an over reliance on a monocrop.

A current example would be the ubiquitous banana. The cavendish banana (the most common variety you'd encounter in your produce isle) is under attack globally and is at risk of being wiped out. And this isn't the first time that's happened. The banana your grandparents grew up with, the Gros Michel, while not extinct is no longer commercially viable.

>The Irish potato famine was the result of a lack of biodiversity and an over reliance on a monocrop.

Not so. Ireland was a net food exporter for the duration of the famine. The problem was political and economic.

I don't know anything about the subject, and I can't speak to the authority of this cite, but it contradicts your statements, and so I'd be curious about your response:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-202289...

Do you have a better source, which you think refutes their arguments?

I think the argument you cited is a bit of a strange one.

They are arguing that Ireland was not a net exporter of food because a large portion of Irish crop exports were oats, and oats are not food.

The supporting arguments are worse. For instance, they state that oats are usually for horses' consumption. Further, they state that the average farmer would not know how to prepare the oats for human consumption.

All this seems obviously false[1].

As a general point, the obvious point of comparison with Ireland would be the various states of 1840's germany, also heavily reliant on potatoes for sustenance. They also got the potato blight, but there was no great famine.

[1] they also give some figures, which I won't comment on.

Ireland was certainly producing plenty of other crops than potatoes but when I said they were lacking biodiversity I was specifically referencing the potato monoculture. The poor were overwhelmingly reliant on the potato and it was wiped out by a blight that could have been largely avoided with a broader diversity of potatoes being grown. Similarly there are plenty of banana varieties around the world, but the only one sold in grocery stores near me is being wiped out by blight. Imagine if something similar happened to corn or wheat. An aggressive blight on a main cultivar would be pretty devastating, even if there are still lots of heirloom varieties being grown in small quantities around the world.

Was there a potato monoculture? I just ask because, I thought crop monoculture was a relatively modern thing, and because a new disease (like p. blight) are usually pretty broad spectrum, and very capable of skipping between species.

Bananas are kind of a weird case for multicropping, because they are all sterile clones. So this makes them horribly susceptible to every disease under the sun.

There is a kinda cheesy quote from Dhalgren: 'You have confused the true and the real'. It is purposefully esoteric but I think the dichotomy between the two can account for many differing views, and why humans need to see the 'real' vs the truth they think they have gleaned from behind a screen or book.

Biodiversity makes life worth living. I want to be able to eat more than potatoes as the only vegetable, or see forests with all the different beautiful plants and trees instead of just desert.

So then this person would respond, "That's great. You and people like you should buy the land, and keep the diversity going. Why is that any of my concern?"

Apart from that person being an asshole this would actually be the right thing to do. Buy the land and give it to the nature. Deep Ecology foundation used to do just that.

You can't buy the oceans.

Our oceans are collapsing. Warming, acidifying, over-fished, pollution.

What are we supposed to do?

If you follow that line of thought far enough it leads to very dark places.

Does not seem like this person is arguing in good faith. Do they never go to aquariums, zoos, or a park? Do they never buy flowers for someone? Do they literally have soylent for every single meal? Do they live in a concrete box on a concrete block with all plastic furniture and clothes? There is a reason why far more people want to live in beautiful diverse places and not in the middle of the desert.

Do they not eat fruit? Drink wine? Drink craft beer?

"Avoiding single points of failure". Boom, engineer-speak.

I have observed that people who lack empathy have completely different world view than mine. Ever seen the most beautiful masterpiece on YouTube being disliked by some people? I think people disliking where majority likes are the ones lacking empathy. In your case, a person saying why biodiversity should matter probably lacks empathy as well which could also be the reason they never watched those documentaries in first place because why care?

The point is people see world differently because of some fundamental differences in genetics & childhood nurturing.

> people who lack empathy

What is your measure?

Your view on empathy seems all-or-nothing. I have empathy for nature and wildlife which is why I have little empathy for humans, cows, cats, etc.

E.g. Cats kill billions of small birds and mice a year (think what that does to owl populations). It’s shouldn’t be legal to let house cats roam freely outside.

think what that does to owl populations

Ok. If there was an abundance of food for the owls then we'd have many, many more owls, and they would kill billions of birds instead. We'd just be sacrificing cats for owls. Why is that better?

The burden of proof should probably be on the other side, here.

Why is it better to introduce hundreds of millions of bored free-range emotional-support predators into any given ecosystem than to not do this?

They are cute.

> sacrificing cats for owls. Why is that better?

Seems tone deaf to ask this in a thread about biodiversity and species extinction.

Because there are wayyyy more cats than owls. So we have more biodiversity.

> Ever seen the most beautiful masterpiece on YouTube being disliked by some people? I think people disliking where majority likes are the ones lacking empathy.

I do not follow. Are you saying that idiocentric tastes negatively correlate with empathy?

On second thought, what I said about YouTube is idiotic. But I think rest is true.

I love the idea of biodiversity, I love seeing the huge variety in nature. But for 99.9% of people would make zero difference their lives. except maybe crop extinction

I understand why I'm being downvoted. The point I'm arguing is " They ended up flat-out asking me why anyone should care about biodiversity." If you down vote me please write an note saying how biodiversity makes a difference to the life of the average person.

Exactly, the natural world, nature is disturbing and messy and it is hard to like it. I want conservation to the degree I want to breathe and eat so I do what I can to be green and invest in green tech.

I don't think my life would change materially if I was on a hypothetical space station with very good life support. I suspect the difference is an emotional connection?

We are currently on the only viable space station that we have or know of, Earth.

Until we have a better answer, we should work damn hard to keep this one running. And we don't know enough about how it works, so we should try preserve the current systems as well as we can.

I agree with you wholly on that, replacing current tech with green tech and conservation are our best chance at keeping our life support running.

Biodiversity is not about enjoying nature. It is key to the stability of how humanity currently lives on Earth.

The term to research for why biodiversity is useful in a utilitarian anthropocentric way is "Ecosystem Services".

The only way we know how to keep what we have is with biodiversity.

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