Hacker News Reader

This comment is a bit pithy for the reasons already mentioned and more. Humanity has never acted as one thing. There is no order to the activities required to turn things around for the world. Reintroducing a keystone species can draw more attention to an under appreciated ecosystem a la polar bear. conversely, it could make light of saving a species if we can simply reanimate it down the road. But again, there is room for all sorts of efforts. i doubt more tools and more species would be an overall detriment. i would love to see an ecosystem rev to full glory.

Guerilla biohackers releasing extinct keystone species into their original habitats would be a pretty dank cyberpunk future.

… just so they can go extinct again?

past and present in fact, is happening yet and is a really bad idea. Some things must not be left to script kiddies.

This is sort of happening in the U.K.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/13/maverick...

Except their natural habitats are disappearing quickly so guerilla biohackers better hurry up or they're gonna be left sitting with moas in their basements.

Wouldn't argue against it being pithy, and I don't dream we'd all unite to save the planet. What I do dream and hope for is we have less of a united force destroying the planet and a larger disunited force trying to actually save it.

i dream for it as well. but, again, “united” is only incidental, right?? of course, it’s not coincidental that people,individually, jumped on the great utility that fossil fuels provided. now we are looking for people to see the benefit to prevent something fairly unintuitive and intangible- it’s a big ask. there’s room for plenty of approaches but i would root for the ones that dances around “greater good” but, rather, work within the framework of human behavior for what it is. altruism is in the mix but probably can’t be relied upon to be the primary driver for where we need to get.

> What about protecting important old growth forests? They are a bastion of biodiversity and important for sequestering carbon but since the lumbar shortage drove up the price of wood the importance (not to mention the fact a majority of people don't want that lumber cut) we're going ahead anyways.

The price of lumber (i.e. a manufactured product) saw increased prices. The price for the “raw” logs has remained relatively stable.

Lastly have there been any serious plans to rollback forestry protections since the change of administration?

>what ever seems entertaining and marketable

Sadly, I think you're right. My first thought was that it would turn into exotic designer dogs and cats.

> In short, what would this be used for?

A stepping stone to inventing new species, or augmenting humans with super-human powers… duh!

... or perhaps do something about Climate Change?

The problem is that we don't get to make choices as a world or even as a species about what is overall best. As a race, we often devolve to individuals doing what seems best at the moment... much like the last of a pair of birds being brought together to mate.

> until humanity actually makes decisions based on what's best for the stability of the planet

This is the exact type of hubris that got us in the current downtrending situation. Humans are not capable of making and executing on such decisions.

Intelligent and capable people work on problems that are interesting to them. Anything else is forced labor.

Not sure what your point is, many of the most intelligent and capable people in the western world are working at Google and Facebook designing the best algorithms to make people click on ads.

I imagine it's not because it's the most interesting but because market demands force them into it. Far less resources are put towards solving the climate crisis...

Clearly that is the choice that most interests them. And some people choose global ecological health instead.

There are lots of people. Your complaint seems to amount to "no one should work on their own projects until the world is solved", which is not viable -- though it has been tried in the past, with great negative effects.

(Also, an aside: I think this criticism of G & FB is overwrought (and I'm 100% G&FB-free, personally). We see this snark get thrown around a lot, but almost no one in either corp works on the insidiousness++ version of ad targeting. The best&brightest at each definitely do not. They all profit from it of course, but the same can be said for all employees of large corps, to varying degrees.)

> Clearly that is the choice that most interests them.

I think our discussion won’t be productive as you don’t want to consider what conditions the market plays in forcing people’s choices.

That is my point though. You seem to be arguing for some externally-imposed direction of labor. That will fail.

If you are instead arguing that leaders should lead, and governments should invest in the future of their people, then that message is not coming through.

The biologists working on reviving extinct species are not the workers building solar plants.

> I imagine it's not because it's the most interesting but because market demands force them into it.

No one is forced into the jobs you're describing.

Market demands make those jobs more appealing to some. Appealing is interesting.