Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t understand why people are obsessed with extinction as some great evil - it’s as evil as the concept of death itself; killing something is evil (or is it not? Outside humans even this isn’t considered unnatural), but something dying naturally is not.

Clearly many animals have gone extinct because of humans (many memorable ones before humanity developed a sufficiently profound collective consciousness that could ponder about this), but I don’t see how there’s any moral, ethical or natural urge to repent and offer reparations for this. Species die, that’s the natural order of things for species in general and if this round of mass extinction is humanity induced then we should focus on reducing its scale instead of trying to go undo it as if that absolves us of anything.

This says nothing about the scientific ability to do this, anyway, which as this article points is mostly BS. My general experience is if you try to do something that doesn’t make full logical economical and moral sense, you end up with this charlatan group. Crypto is another example of the same.

> Species die, that’s the natural order of things for species in general…

When we say “natural” we’re already being anthropocentric by dividing reality between things that happen because of humans and everything else. You can’t hand wave away what’s occurred because of our behavior by point to the “natural order of things” when it explicitly isn’t.

As to why people are obsessed. It’s just a value judgement? You might as well asked why certain groups are obsessed with getting in orderly queues and other groups deal with lines as competition to get to the front.

If you value not killing off other species then undoing an extinction would most definitely absolve you of that sin. I can see how if you personally don’t care about extinctions you wouldn’t care about undoing them, but you need to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes to be able to understand the answer to your question.

> I don’t understand why people are obsessed with extinction as some great evil

It's because we care about our children and their children. Each extinction eliminates a species that our ancestors lived among or depended upon. Eventually, an extinction may fundamentally break a food chain that keeps our descendants alive.

Each extinction eliminates a species yes, but long term it opens up a niche for a new species to evolve into. As a biologist I don’t see any fundamental problem with this ebb and flow. We as a species haven’t exactly put down our foot on actual individual suffering so it just seems hypocritical to ascertain extra value to extinction, which outside of some vague concepts we have made up have no real ecological relevance anyway.

Maybe this can help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity_loss

In very short terms: lack of biodiversity makes the ecosystem brittle and susceptible to collapse with changing selective pressure.

I personally don't want to live in a bland, dead world.

To me its like climate change. The climate change, just like species go extinct. But humans are exasperating both processes in a ways that will ultimately make living on earth worse for future generations.

Species going extinct doesn't make the world deader.

"Bland" is a better argument. If one bird species spreads across the world and outcompetes 10 regional species, there will be just as many birds as before. There will be less regional variation though.

>Species going extinct doesn't make the world deader.

It depends on why the went extinct. If they went extinct because humans destroyed the habitat, rather than being out competed, then it's unlikely as much life or any life can just move in.

See the coral reefs or Klamath river

Agreed.

It won't be a dead world - but I sure hope everyone likes rats, cockroaches, and jellyfish - because these are the species that seem to be well adapted to living in environments where other animals have been driven out.

Don't forget humans in that list

Well there will be crabs as well because of carcinisation

The article also illustrates the problem of the gap between research and development.

We have a bunch of technologies mentioned that are perhaps out of the pure basic research stage, but need to be developed a bunch. Developing those can be done independently and in parallel, but is that happening? Trying to put them all together probably is premature as the article suggests, and yet this is the easiest way to raise money because it is catchy.

Extinction is the complete destruction of something that took millions of years to make. As much as it seems like people create the world they live in, they don't. We ingeniously assemble the world we live in out of the great diversity of material around us. It's better that we have wheat now than the world in which we didn't. It's better that we have tomatoes, corn, chickens, etc.. Without them, our lives would likely be more difficult and less pleasurable. Tomorrow's tomatoes and chickens may have been killed today partially out of greed, but mostly out of carelessness and lack of understanding.

> I don’t understand why people are obsessed with extinction as some great evil - it’s as evil as the concept of death itself;

If you characterize worrying about extinction as being obsessed, would you characterize worrying about death to be an obsession we should rid ourselves of? Why should I worry if people are dying, people always die, doesn't matter?

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