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Comment by diurnalist | Hacker News Reader

Despite the efforts of many of centuries, we are still so ignorant of the vast variety of life that surrounds and supports us on this planet. We should have more humility about this, but we (collectively, as a species) do not.

Some will say that AI can solve this, as is the fashion. But so far the things people are interested in doing with the new potential for synthesizing and translating animal sounds does not inspire any confidence[0].

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-04/ai-s-next...

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Not to be combative, coming from genuine interest, I'd like to ask you why we should care? I study biology, and can think of a plethora of topics that we can study about human physiology that we don't understand and if we did would more directly lead to treatment of human diseases. That is not to say we need invest all resources towards this frontier but in the optimal scenario we must weight resource allocation to the potential usefulness of the discovery.

I don't think we have to understand the natural world to care about it. But I will go further haha: I think we _already_ prioritize human health and advancement above preserving anything about the natural world (unless we have identified that the preservation is advantageous for our own purposes.) And I reject this anthropocentric view, which is I suppose where we might differ :)

General knowledge is unpredictable. If you want to treat human diseases, explore the natural world, because a huge portion of the pharmacopea we have is in some way directly derived from general knowledge - the taxane family is derived from yew, sometimes when you explore easter island you find rapamycin, penicillin is a very old story of accidental primary research, it goes on and on. And many of the synthetics we have now are adaptations of an older drug with negative side effects to manage the side effects.

Hypothetically, in 100,000 years, if human activity has led to the death of everything not human on this planet and we ourselves are on the brink (effectively leading Earth to go back to square one) would you rather that, or humans end in 50,000 years but through conservation and study made way for other life on this planet that will eventually conquer space and some of the mysteries of the universe.

Obviously the timelines are insane but just as a thought experiment, I would suspect we would get different answers depending on who you ask, and thus the study, understanding and conservation of other life that shows a form of intelligence becomes much more important to some, whilst human preservation at the expense of all else is more important to others.

(I also recognise you aren't saying that by the way, but it's what came to mind when I read your comment. I personally think we have more than enough resources to do both. I'd also imagine we will learn more about ourselves and what's possible in medicine by studying other species.)

"usefulness" being the keyword here. I agree that the investment of resources goes towards the "usefulness" as in, there is a profit to be made here "usefulness" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

From a purely utilitariatic POV, understanding your environment helps avoiding mistakes that mess it up which then indirectly impacts you too since you depend on your environment. So, more understanding improves policy making.

Second, what people know is often valued more. If you can tell people about the environment then you can create a fascination and make them value their surroundings more, maybe causing them to think twice before dumping trash mindlessly in the forest or voting for the next guy who wants to expand fracking operations. And in order to tell them, you first need to understand it.

Third, it can give you material for creating useful tools or medicine which then improves lives, like vaccines or airplanes (which we wouldn't have without curiosity about birds).

Apart from that, it's empathy too. Animals can suffer and causing them suffering is usually against empathy people feel. More understanding helps with that. (It's not too long ago that the prevailing view of "that's just a fish, they don't feel anything, so I can eat them even though I'm vegetarian" was challenged and slowy overturned.)

And finally, beauty. Nature is just beautiful. Compared to a dead rock like mars, it's absolutely amazing what we have around us.

I hope these five reasons give you some perspective as a biology student.

I wonder, what made you choose that field of study?

Animals feel pain.

Let’s raise them humanely, kill them swiftly, and use they wholly letting nothing go to waste.

This is an entirely reasonable ethic.

Thanks for the response, I think these are some great points. I originally studied electrical computer engineering as that was the most interesting to me but by happenstance went on to work in a neurobiology lab and felt that I had the ability to contribute a different perspective/skill-set to the lab/field. Through research and witnessing human diseases, I now feel more strongly about contributing to understanding of human disease mechanisms.

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