Hacker News Reader

Comment by DodgyEggplant | Hacker News Reader

These kind of arguments were used not only for the animals issue, but also among humans, to justify killing by the most monstrous regimes in history. Taking out any moral stand, and classifying these issues as a given "scientific" or "force of nature" phenomenon, is wrong. Very wrong. Living elephants are more important than ivory jewels. Although it's a possible (devastating) path, it's our duty to avoid consuming of the biosphere.

View on HN

I'm not trying to justify anything and if other people did, it's not my fault. I was merely questioning an assertion made in the article. It is not necessarily true that the current extinction is the only one caused by a particular species, and anyway it's almost certainly not the only one with a biotic cause.

> Either it is by releasing nefarious gazes in the atmosphere, or creating a Primate intelligent enough to rule and consume most of biosphere.

This sentence says that consuming the biosphere is natural as gas release. This colours a choice as an unavoidable step, and thus justify it. And this kind of logic was used by nations against other (as a side issue, disagree with other opinion is OK, downvote it - no. unless it's a Parimate evolution thing).

> This sentence says that consuming the biosphere is natural as gas release. This colours a choice as an unavoidable step, and thus justify it.

You don't even have to see it as a choice. I mean, even if we ignore the present and the future, thus avoiding any kind of moral issues, we can look at the past and see what Homo Sapiens has already done. It did provoke the extinction of a whole bunch of large mammals and insular birds, deforested extremely large areas and many other things. To a large degree, most of the impact of our species on nature is already done, so we should be able to look at it objectively, as if we were talking about an other species (to some extent we are, considering how different we are from say our Mammoth-hunting ancestors). And when we do, we should not let someone say that this was the only extinction to occur because of a biological species, because that is just not true.

You can't pretend to protect nature if you refuse to look at it for what it is.

Funny thing is that "these kind of arguments" are arguments enough — that is, be they true or false, they are logical. And the only argument from the opposing side is "this is wrong!". Which is not argument enough.

Sorry for the way I put it. The meaning was "argument without a moral stand". If moral is considered logic, they are false. If moral is not considered automatically as logic, then most of us faced, or will face, a situation where their choice will be based on moral, and thus not logic?

Let me replace the issue in its context. In the article it is written that the current extinction is the only one that is due to a singular species. I do believe this is pretty much wrong considering how likely it is that the biggest paleontological extinction event was due to an archaean genus (not a species, but pretty damn close).

If someone states that 2+2 = 5, should I shut up and not state that 2+2 = 4 in case some people give this fact some bad moral interpretation?

I would suggest a different context. If someone states that 2+2 = 5, and at the same time he/she states that somebody is bleeding to death nearby, now - than the 2+2=5 is the less important statement, if at all. But the real issue is that it's far from 2+2=5. Consuming the biosphere is not gas release. It is a moral choice that individuals, communities and nations can change daily.

> Consuming the biosphere is not gas release. It is a moral choice that individuals, communities and nations can change daily.

They can, but they don't. I don't understand your point. The choice you're talking about is being made. It's not because you don't like it that it doesn't exist. In any case what matters is what is actually done, not what could be done in an ideal world.

So to me the impact of methanosarcina on the environment is indeed comparable to the impact of Homo sapiens, in the sense that both are extinctions induced by biotic agents.

What is "moral"? I can ask 5 different people and get 5 different answers, unless they are all raised and properly brainwashed in the same cultural group.

Correct. When we speak of moral we assume that there are choices, and then you pick one. If there is no choice, there is no moral. The description of what happened to animals and wildlife (especially from the 20th century) as a deterministic force of nature, a.k.a gas release, can lead us to think that this is how evolution works, no choice, no moral. You can say "I support ivory jewels" or "I object ivory jewels". Both opinions are very different than saying "ivory jewels is a natural force of nature like gas release". The level of nature depletion by humans is, to some extent, a choice.

Not really. You can speak of moral only if you are one of these 5 people who made a "choice". And, in fact, only if you are talking to people, that support your choice. In other case your speaking of moral is nothing more than saying "I'm right because I think I'm right" which isn't really an argument.

So, to be able to think about the world more clearly the "neutral position" is invented. There's no moral, no good or bad, there's just stuff that happens, causes and effects. And from that point of view primate, making nuclear weapons and causing extinction of the species is no different from some bacteria, who filled atmosphere with metane.

But that, again, has nothing to do with what actual author of this thread was saying. So I'm saying it only to point out that your appeal to morality is invalid. And if you'd ask me, I don't want elephants to extinct, but that doesn't make neutral arguments bad. It might be my position that goes against neutral one, but speaking is not really of much value in that case.

That's my point. We are one of those 5 people. Daily. What we consume, eat, how we influence others, the agenda we vote for, is a choice. The bacteria has no such choice, we do. So we can, and should, take a moral stand. Always.

Choice is not black and white. Bacteria have a low amount of choice. Most humans have a fairly high choice compared to most animals. Among humans, some have more choice then others. We can pretend that morals are special and different, but they too are the product of some chemical machinery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com