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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Sure; but so is pretty much anything we do with animals.

Is it worse than the cattle industry? Worse than re-introducing wolves to Yellowstone? Worse than engineering mosquitoes to be sterile? They all have their cost.

This cost is measured in African elephant abuse. A sound argument. The ecosystem argument, not so much as they also elaborate competently on.

Let's admit, the single reason to 'bring back' the Mammoth is, it's cool and a tremendous publicity scheme for ecological efforts. That alone, may be reason enough.

And, anything that brings in the dollars is going to happen. Argue all you want, about ecology and seed dispersal and other 'real' effects. The money a Mammoth park would bring, the imaginations stimulated and the youth inspired, could be worth it all on it's own.

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Arguably, the only good conservation involves removing all humans forever. Given how that’s not a workable or good idea (from a self-preservation perspective) everything else is open to interpretation.

(Not an argument for maximalist interpretations)

That also implies there is no loss from removing everything uniquely human from the world.

More fundamentally, what is the goal? What do we want to maximise?

Beauty.

Famously subjective.

Its the nearest neighbor to everyone's best interest and most interpretations are preservationist.

Well, is the world more beautiful with mammoths, or without?

They do have lovely strawberry blonde hair.

Paper clips

No, that's education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U#t=7m40s

Fantastic answer, and the only correct one I see

https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

Minimise entropy, maximise knowledge, kinship, time.

Maximize crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women.

Why are the humans the only bad species to be eliminated? Certainly there must be a few others that get in the way of our earthly Eden? Maybe mosquitoes? Maybe boa constrictors? Deer have a way of stripping a plot of land of trees and vegetation. Need I go on?

Indeed I would argue that this is the worst possible "conservation", since it eliminates the only thing that values conservation, human brains.

Exactly. "Conservation" is the wise use of resources, while "preservation" is the complete rewilding of those resources.

This looks like old anthropocentric philosophy. Add the concept of a divine Creator that gives human all of his wise willpower and you’ll have most chances to be published and applause in the XVIII century.

I think a lot of environmentalists do have a very anthropocentric view though - humans are viewed as a uniquely corrupting, malevolent force that's a blight on the natural balance of the world. But every other species would do the same, if they could. Our worst instincts are the ones that we share with all other life on this planet - to expand at the expense of everything else. To be selfish, and grow without limit.

Ironically one of the things that's unique to humans is our ability to feel guilty about our impact on the environment.

Humans are uniquely powerful in the history of life, which is almost functionally indistinguishable from "uniquely corrupting" in this context. I don't know if that's exactly a defense, but it's at least an understandable mistake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event#Hypothes...

Ok fine, unique except for maybe that one time.

Humans as a species don’t value conservation. Individual humans. The total removal of human beings is still the best form of conservation.

Conservation of what? Exact state of the ecosystem today? That goes until the next comet hits the Earth. And eventually all the life dies out when Earth core gets colder and volcanism ends. But with humans there is a chance to save and spread the life in general by moving to other planets, and using other yet unknown technologies.

Yes the remaining ecosystem we have left today. Earth core will colder in millions of years. The rate at which we’re making life in general except for a few strains that are useful for human consumption, will not last that long. And yes a comet could hit the earth any time and wipe out all life, but that also means it could happen before you moved to other planets by using unknown technologies.

A comet could wipe out all humans as well, but we don’t use that as an excuse to start wiping out other humans do we? Then why don’t those rules apply to the rest of the life we share this planet with?

When plane is crashing, one wouldn't suggest the pilot to jump off to make the plane lighter.

Same here, if life has any chance at all to survive long term, that chance is through humans.

Sadly we are not all powerful and some species will go extinct before being restored, but if humans are "removed" these species living a few more years on a doomed planet is not any better.

Moreover, saying that ultimate goal of nature conservation is removal of humans is simply counterproductive, it makes people ignore the nature conservation efforts as suicidal mental illness, while we are mindlessly wasting priceless library of useful genes and proteins that took billion years to develop.

Wouldn't it also be fair to point out that humans are part of the ecosystem, not outside of it?

From a purely ecological standpoint, removing us would be just as disruptive as removing any other dominant species. Like any apex predator, or really, any lifeforms, we're acting in ways that prioritize our own survival and propagation. Whether that's through agriculture, technology, or resource extraction, it's arguably just a continuation of what evolution has selected for in every species: survival, reproduction, expansion.

What I mean is that it's easy to moralize human impact as uniquely destructive, but in a systems view, isn’t this just another emergent behavior of a successful species? I wonder if the real issue is less about "humans vs nature" and more about how we can integrate long term thinking into a system that historically rewards short term gains.

I suppose evolution will have the last say, as it always does.

Why is the cattle industry in the same vein as reintroducing wolves?

"Things we do with animals"

You don't want to call the Mammoth effort 'ecological', then compare it to other such animal impacts we've engineered. Like cattle.

Let's admit, the single reason to 'bring back' the Mammoth is, it's cool and a tremendous publicity scheme for ecological efforts. That alone, may be reason enough.

Don't encourage them. Before we know it they will bring back dinosaurs ... some quote about "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

What is bad about engineering mosquitos to be sterile?

Lots of things eat them, so we're killing off a link in the food chain, would be the argument.

Possibly better than the alternatives. Like use of DDT. But everything seems to have a drawback.

Mosquitoes bring nutrients back down the food chain, making it a food graph instead of a food tree.

It's a silly argument IMO. There are so many mosquito species we don't care about, and so many other small insects that provide similar food, that eliminating the handful of species that literally kill humans would barely cause a blip in the food chain.

Not at all a silly argument. The human species is extremely bad at understanding the delicate balance the nature is in and extremely bad at estimating how much we know about nature. We don’t even know all the insect species that exist, yet we are comfortable telling others that they will find other similar food.

It’s the kind of confidence aliens would have observing humans eating lettuce and assuming we’d be fine with grazing grass if they take all the leafy vegetables away.

I think you're still missing the distinction between "all mosquitoes" and "harmful mosquitoes". I don't think anyone is serious about eliminating mosquitoes that don't feed on humans at all, for instance. What's being proposed is more analogous to aliens eliminating particular types of lettuce because they have a lethal allergy. We would in fact be fine in this scenario, precisely because there are still other kinds of lettuce and other leafy greens. We might not like it, but we would be fine. I get the impression that the kinds of animals that eat mosquitoes are less picky, more in the "if it fits in my face, om nom nom" end of the spectrum.

wait what's wrong with the wolves? rewilding via wolves seems to be good for everyone except ranchers?

From this article:

> Conservationists often claim that the reason to save charismatic species is that they are necessary for the sound functioning of the ecosystems that support humankind. Perhaps the most well-known of these stories is about the ecological changes wolves drove when they were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Through some 25 peer-reviewed papers, two ecologists claimed to demonstrate that the reappearance of wolves in Yellowstone changed the behavior of elk, causing them to spend less time browsing the saplings of trees near rivers. This led to a chain of cause and effect (a trophic cascade) that affected beavers, birds, and even the flow of the river. A YouTube video on the phenomenon called “How Wolves Change Rivers” has been viewed more than 45 million times.

> But other scientists were unable to replicate these findings—they discovered that the original statistics were flawed, and that human hunters likely contributed to elk population declines in Yellowstone.Ultimately, a 2019 review of the evidence by a team of researchers concluded that “the most robust science suggests trophic cascades are not evident in Yellowstone.”

yeah but that's just the benefits being overstated, not a downside that I can see?

and it it led to less required human hunting of elk or deer without any other effects I think that would still be beneficial in the future.

I'm one of those urban people with no interactions with wolves, which statistically means I agree with you.

Ranchers, however, are not the only ones against wolf reintroduction. Hunters want to shoot elk or deer, and see wolves as a threat to game species. Rural land owners don't want the government telling them what they can or cannot do on their own land (ie, shoot wolves). Some think it's a waste of money, for something which isn't that important.

If there were a tropic cascade as described, fewer people would think it's not worth it.

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