Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In response to a request for an ethical analysis of the question of whether the "human/natural" distinction has merit, you assumed that it does - in, again, a fashion demonstrating no knowledge of any research in animal behavior past about 1955 at the most generous possible outside - and then proceeded to give an analysis following solely from that outdated and frankly ignorant assumption. In consequence the analysis is entirely vacuous, and the effort that went into it wasted.

As a declaration of what you believe and a menu of justifications for same, it serves, but no one was asking for that. As a consideration of the question actually under discussion there is simply nothing here, and I don't see anything to suggest you have thus far even noticed the lack.

That is somewhat funny to me, I admit. It probably shouldn't be by now. The combination of overweening confidence in sound reasoning with total lack of care for valid premises is a common theme in online utilitarianism, but I think it's the shamelessness more than anything that gets me - like a Monty Python sketch that doesn't know it is one. A bad habit, I grant, but I think I still prefer it over that of not bothering first to find out what I know and what I don't.

I was in Jutland, in Northwest Denmark recently, and the backstory of that place is that a thousand years ago it was covered in thick pine forest. Medieval people cut the trees down for firewood and agriculture, which led to an ecological disaster from erosion that covered entire farms and villages in sand. Hundreds of years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, however, people started replanting forests and have had success in mitigating a lot of the erosion.

Now, knowing that the line between man and other animals is totally arbitrary, we should be fine to retell that story with beavers instead of people, right?

(I won't even get into how I flew there at 1000kph in a giant metal vehicle and carried a universal translator in my pocket, also neither of which were made by beavers.)

If beavers had done that, why wouldn't we tell that story with beavers? They certainly do on occasion damage a local ecology whose hydrology they've failed to entirely consider. Their scope is smaller than ours in that regard, I grant, but I've also seen spiders and wasps perform feats of engineering that many wouldn't credit. I don't see reason to think what qualifies a project as the respectable product of ingenuity is only its size or the species of those who pursued it.

Addressing the question at hand is an improvement, but arguing your case entirely from assertion and anecdote leaves considerable further scope. You claim the difference is of kind rather than degree. I can see some credible arguments for that claim. Can you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com