Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> Perhaps predators are needed to bring nature back into balance.

I don't really think this theme was sustained through the article, but it just starts off in the wrong spot. Nature isn't balanced in any meaningful sense. It lurches from one equilibrium to another in a haphazard way [0]. Equilibriums only appear because all the many unequilibriums die out, so by evolution everything rapidly reaches equilibrium.

Also this idea that humans are somehow above nature is not realistic. We are nature, in the same way everything else is. What we are doing is pushing the world to a new equilibrium. The history of everything will class us in the same pool of "sorta-terraforming" species as cyanobacteria. If we can make the world work without wolves, that is the new natural and there is no particular reason to believe there is some sort of cosmic doom awaiting us for our hubris.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio...

View on HN

The equilibrium with lower biodiversity is more fragile and less beneficial for us[0]. Having said that, we are _not_ nature. We make conscious decisions and so we should hold ourselves in a higher standard (both from a practical and moral perspective).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity#Human_health

Re-reading my comment I realize it sounds like low-key creationism BS which was not my intention.

If tomorrow we find proof that dolphins make conscious decisions, will they cease to be nature?

I suspect whether to draw the line to make 'nature' include or exclude humans is very similar to whether to include or exclude the observer in quantum mechanics.

Both perspectives are entirely reasonable, but they are useful in different circumstances.

Tomorrow? Of course animals make conscious decisions. This orangutan had, prior to implemention, made a conscious decision to build a hammock by tying a sheet to the cage bars.

https://roaring.earth/orangutan-builds-a-hammock/

The orangutan's ability to build a hammock does not change its responsibility towards its environment (as its ability to alter it is still very low). However, my ability to start a fire does come with significant responsibility.

Where do beavers and their damns land in your estimation?

If we plotted potential for environmental impact(Y) vs moral agency(X), beavers would be up and to the left, orangutans bottom right and humans up and to the right (beating both on both axis).

Yes to your link, no to “humans / conscious decision-making are not nature.” Moreover, morality is itself a naturally emergent phenomenon of evolution. Charles Darwin even proposed this, and we have found it to hold true again and again.

"morality is itself a naturally emergent phenomenon of evolution".

Sure, but now that we have this evolutionary mechanism we also have more responsibility than cyanobacteria (which is what my original comment was about).

Humans certainly are nature. In a very real sense, every part of us is "natural", and we are emergent properties of the natural world. Figs do not grow on thistles.

So what is not natural according to you?

Well, it's certainly hard to define. Just as any grocery store can slap an "all-natural" label on nearly any product, so too can we.

But my point here is more that we are not consciously-created products, at least not yet. For now, we're still the results of a "natural" evolutionary process.

The first definition of natural returned when I google the word is

> existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.

So when you are trying to say that what is caused by humans is natural too, then you are clearly contradicting the dictionary definition of the word. Which is what I was trying to draw your attention to when I asked the question.

Came here to write this, but you formulated it much clearer than I would have. Personally, I'd prefer a world with those animals. But that's an ideological (spiritual?) stance.

I recommend Adam Curtis' "All watched over by machines of loving grace" as an exploration of the theme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...

I'm not so sure, we are still largely natural creatures. We are more nature than machine, certainly. Air is far more important to me than electricity. Wolves serve an important role in the ecosystem, it is unclear to me that we can so easily survive without them.

I actually agree. The point is not that it would be easy, or desirable to have an engineered ecosystem without wolves. It wouldn't; the article makes the against it being easy, and I'm opinionating the point about it being desirable. :P

The point of my comment (and of Curtis' series) is that there is no magical "natural balance" that we could strive to return to. It just doesn't exist, and never has. However, and without wanting to make this into a flamewar: the concept of a natural order of things is very convenient for people in power, or even just people in comfortable, moderate luxury, to justify their privilege over others' misery.

The idea that there is a "sweet spot" for ecosystems that they return to was unfortunately firmly established in the mind of many while it was "scientific consensus" (scare quotes to indicate what a fraught concept that is).

While the idea was being popularized, the idea of natural balance was already being scientifically dismantled, but by then the "damage" was done, and now we get to still discuss this...

Ah yeah I totally agree with that. Our arguments are orthogonal to the point. I'm simply saying the ideal number of wolves is almost certainly more than zero. You seem to be arguing that there's no ideal number of wolves, which is reasonable. The ideal number could easily change over time as well. Before the industrial revolution wolves posed a larger threat than they do today, for example.

To further internalize your point, rather than talking about "ideal" wolves, which as you established is not a thing, I will think of it as the ideal change in wolves. That number could be positive or negative as a function of time and location.

I believe Lyme disease is a symptom of the wolf and bear populations getting driven into extinction. Deer populations prosper and tick spread also prospers along with them. Ticks multiply on deer. Mice and small bird populations also prosper. They're reservoir species for Lyme but I fail to see the connection to wolves. Most likely also a smaller predator species like weasel, polecat, stoat, ferret, mink and wild cat are also driven into extrinction along with wolves and bears because of deforestation and habitat fragmentation. It's really a very complex issue, but it kind of boils down to huge swaths of woods getting fragmented and cut down for agriculture, forestry, entertainment (ski resorts), residential use. Residential areas are also growing into the woods, triggering more interaction with big predators and driving them into extinction where they're not already extinct (Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe).

So what would you rather have? A few sheep gone missing or the lurking danger of a debilitating, potentially life threatening condition carried by an insect the size of a needle pin?

If one predator like wolves goes away, another predator like ticks picks up the slack.

Interestingly, parasites with complex lifecycles are good indicators of biodiversity in general, because they lodge in multiple different hosts across the different levels of the ecosystem.

Are ticks predators? Do they kill deer? Do they keep them away from areas where humans live?

Wolves hunt deer. Deer carry ticks. Ticks threaten humans.

Yup, ticks do kill deer and moose.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/ticks-ca...

But do they change the deer's behavior in beneficial ways like wolves?

Beneficial to whom? The deer certainly likes neither the wolf nor the tick.

And whether humans like wolves depends on whether eg we'd want to hunt deer for food.

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone they changed the behavior of deer in a way that went as far as reducing erosion and redirecting rivers.

Sure, ticks may kill deer and I guess you can call that a predator but not in the same way as a wolf. Ecosystems are incredibly fragile. The consequences of replacing one species with another are completely unpredictable.

Yes, agreed. They have different effects, things are complicated and hard to predict. And even hard to analyze after they happened.

I am saying that the changes in Yellowstone are pleasing to humans eg because we value diversity, but it's hard (or impossible) to make an absolute judgement call.

> If we can make the world work without wolves

This is a very big if and of great consequence to humans. We make conscious decisions but we are not omniscient.

There is indeed a cosmic doom awaiting us if we blindly follow our hubris. We can't know the consequences of life without wolves. Our ability to realize that and acknowledge what we do not know then override our instincts is what separates us from the cyanobacteria.

Conservation and biodiversity is about humans manipulating the environment away from a natural equilibrium to something better.

A desert is at equilibrium, if we plant stuff and water it, it's more diverse and ecologically better.

Often conservation requires active maintenance to keep the benefits. Usually this maintenance occured as a side effect of historical human activity (resource extraction, grazing, hunting, fire).

As humans do less interaction with the environment as they progress in cities they make nature less bio diverse paradoxically.

>> If we can make the world work without wolves, that is the new natural and there is no particular reason to believe there is some sort of cosmic doom awaiting us for our hubris.

Perhaps we can stake a claim to this when the modern civilization building, terra-forming human has existed for million years. Meanwhile natural processes have been at it for billions.

For the past 10.000 years we're living in unprecedented stable temperatures compared to millions of years. This zone is the foundation of human civilization rise and fall. Biodiversity will contribute to this stability, or is even the foundation. See latest Netflix documentary by David Attenborough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com