Mosquitoes Are a Choice
worksinprogress.news
worksinprogress.news
Am I the only one who finds the hubris in this sentence chilling? Surely there's absolutely no way that we can be sure of the impact on the ecosystem of eradicating an entire species? And more so, surely we just can't be that confident of something like that when we have so little understanding of the complexities of most ecosystems mosquitos exist in.
The article has a tone of "we can't we wipe out mosquitos as fast as we should because of all this regulation slowing us down", but I can't help feel that's a good thing.
Even if it is somehow true that mosquitos don't play an important part in any ecosystems, surely it's a good thing that the mechanisms for wiping out an entire species are highly regulated, and can only be used if there's an extremely high bar of certainty.
We should know from global warming, that the cost of accidentally messing with nature systems can be really high, and we should tread carefully.
Edit: I know this is hacker news, and a lot of people are likely to be annoyed that I'm advocating for slowing down bio-tech developments. But I really think "care" is such an under-appreciated asset these days.
My parents continue to insist climate change is just a natural process that humans could never influence in the macro.
Large segments of the population are raised to ignore the evidence right in front of them. They are also taught it's important to vote according to their fantasy-based worldview. They boast in their stubbornness to resist what they see and hear to follow higher powers they feel in their 'hearts'.
I agree with you. But most people here care more about their convenience and have the money to offset the problems caused by what humans are doing, so they don't care at all. They're too addicted to feeding their own curiosity with shiny new tech that they've lost any empathy for the rest of the world.
Malaria still kills 600,000 people a year. A person who loses their child to malaria is not “inconvenienced”.
We know that the current ongoing cost of mosquito-borne disease is hundreds of millions of people being debilitated and hundreds of thousands of torturous deaths every year.
But when I look back to the article, I don't see that, I see:
> with minimal environmental cost.
Stated with absolute certainty. No need for experimentation, no need to proceed with caution just "its fine, get on board or you're part of the problem".
I can't tell what the writer is really thinking, and it's definitely possible I'm projecting behaviours I see elsewhere onto the article.
Either way, I really do think, now we have these kind of capabilities, we need to improve our understanding and caution using them, or else the side effects will risk being significantly worse than the positives.
Well, first, the post alludes that a number of experiments have been done already. Singapore is given as a relatively large example.
https://www.nea.gov.sg/corporate-functions/resources/researc...
But that's not really the important thing about the post. The important part is that it takes 15 years of systemic confusion for companies to even get to the point of being allowed to do the small trials to try to answer the question of ecological impact.
Even if it is somehow true that mosquitoes play an important part of some ecosystems, to me, it's worth the ecological damage to save the lives of millions of men, women and children in the future and prevent the suffering millions more.
Call me crazy if you want.
... both are luddite in nature one can sandbox a and b and observe what's up cool article I myself don't like the fuckers.