Honey, we shrunk the food -- really, really fast | Hacker News Reader

Honey, we shrunk the food -- really, really fast

sciam.com

18 pointschaostheory13 comments

Never underestimate the power of unintended consequences and faulty assumptions. Setting minimum size on fish caught, for example, is intended to protect the young and, hopefully, still virile individuals so that they can sustain the population.

Did you catch the faulty assumption? Small != Young (at least, not necessarily...)

They're pretty much all faulty assumptions since they're predicated on the notion that an animal outside of the food chain can do something to avoid affecting it. From farming wildlife to completely eliminating countless species on a daily basis... what the hell do people expect? Everything to magically work out?

We are a part of the global ecosystem only insofar as we are physically in it; we don't interact with the biological community the way any other creature does. Of course we're going to fuck it over. Hopefully I'll be dead before we've completely eliminated it.

As usual, we won't care until it's too late.

That will be the history of our human civilization, too obsessed about today, never being truly serious about our future generations.

All those years of trying to "be here now" seem to have back fired then?

Right, because hippies totally invented consumerism.

See also this Newsweek article, "It's Survival of the Weak and Scrawny", which is about hunting elk and other large game.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/177709

Quite alarming.

"Unlike, say, wolves or lions, which target the smallest, weakest members of a group", that too because we are equipped with artificial power. However I wonder why this phenomenon did not happen with herbivorous chain. I can't comment if rabbits and elephants would pick the smaller plants or the healthier ones. But it seems intuitive to pick the healthier ones here. May be that is why I am the evil human.

correction : it seems intuitive to pick the healthiest animal you can bring down with the least amount of energy. It costs predators energy to chase down game; when energy = 0 they don't just back up their rifles, go home and order take out - they die.

Edible plants for the most part rely on being eaten to spread their seeds, so if animals did, it wouldn't matter. Humans gathering wild berries on the other hand eat them and then "spread" their seeds into some chemical filled RV toilet.

Reverse Evolution?

No, just Evolution.

Generational change via selection is not the same thing as evolution.

Yes, that's exactly what it is.

edit: Evolution also includes genetic drift - random chance mutations not driven by selection. But the point is evolution is not synonymous with progress.

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