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Comment by nonethewiser | Hacker News Reader

This is a good distinction because its a common idea but its based on a conflation: human civilizationhealth and planet health. Planet health is hard to even think about apart from humans but the planet in no way “needs” us.

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It's a silly distinction. Unless we're wiped out by a virus or something similar, whatever ends us is likely to also take down a huge part of the biosphere as well - as is already happening.

"Burning something down" doesn't mean literally killing all life. But the unnecessary deaths of likely billions of animals in the long run should weigh enough to stop this nitpicking.

Same could be said about any of the many mass extinction events in earth history. Not that I’m in favor of setting the planet on fire, but if you zoom out far enough it’s clear earth would bounce back from even a nuclear war coupled with climate change and microplastics.

And that makes it somehow okay? You just don't care about billions of deaths?

Like, do you think I'd argue that any of the previous mass extinctions were good?

We might not be here without those mass extinction events. So yeah, they were good, fck the dinos.

I think the mere fact that they resulted in comments like yours proves they were objectively not good.

So why are you upset that it might disappear? Make your mind up

Not good but definitely inevitable. It’s sort of like a cache clearing mechanism for the sim.

The current mass extinction was in no way inevitable, it is caused by humans. We can still have an unknowably large impact on the number of lives lost. I don't know why we should pretend otherwise.

Sorry but how will a return to a hot climate kill all life? +2c and the earth dies? It's apocalyptic hysterical thinking

Why are you thoughtlessly spamming climate denier talking points? Nobody said anything about all life being killed.

> Like, do you think I'd argue that any of the previous mass extinctions were good

Without the most recent one, mammals and thus humans wouldn't have flourished... So yes. If you conversely care about those people dying, then you should be celebrating the comet that killed the dinosaurs

Could you explain why I "should" be celebrating that? There's no logical sequence leading from "caring about people & animals dying" to "one should think that previous mass extinctions were good".

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