linebaugh
Well-known member
cant believe I missed this. legendary suspended post
Environmental Collapse: when and how bad?
- Thread starter zhao
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sus
Well-known member
Yes this is the spirit, I'm a better person IRL you can bring me home to your friends and family I won't embarrass you I swear
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think "I would find it very sad" is a reasonable argument in itself. If you want a "practical argument" as to why extinction is bad, then why not extend that to any other event that someone might consider "sad"?
Could you give a "practical argument" why your parents should not be killed? They are, presumably, well beyond breeding age and are just uselessly consuming resources and producing waste at this point, right?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I let this go before, but I feel the need to inform you that no British person (or anyone else, that I know of) in history has ever called London "Londy".
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
sus
Well-known member
I think consciousness and conscious experience is the only end—a belief IMO that's intrinsic to progressive policy, and the particular progressive ideology I subscribe to. Shortening my parents' consciousness, or making the valence of conscious experience negative, would be a bummer, plus the fact that it'd lessen my own conscious experience, and impact their community poorly. (Since me mum's quite involved in prison programs, taking inmates distance running, and works with local parenting centers to assist single parents; me dad's is a teacher and quite a good one, gets voted favorite teacher by the student body often).
But if a species just happens not to exist anymore, I don't think this is any sadder than if it had never existed at all. "Existed" in quote marks—species are just sufficiently distinguished lineages of the same primitive life force. A branch on an enormous family tree. One branch disappears, another branch emerges, but it's all the same "thing," unless you can point to specific features of a particular species that give it moral relevance. It's like thinking there's something inherently bad about "plumber" disappearing as a profession, separate from the conscious suffering of out-of-work ex-plumbers.
If the disappearance of a species causes intrinsic psychic harm to people, that's a different story. But I don't think there's much serious intrinsic psychic harm that comes from a buncha random species that nobody's ever heard of disappearing, or a particularly famous white species of bear disappearing, and getting replaced by a slightly different kind of bear, or a different random set of species no one's ever heard of. Nature is constant flux and becoming. Nothing is sacred.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think it unequivocally causes psychic harm to people - or makes them sad, anyway, in everyday English. And there's still the point that you can never know which species will turn out to be the lynchpin of a particular ecosystem, which, once removed, could have pretty disastrous consequences for our food supplies.
Also, these species are much more likely to be among the obscure, "random" species that few non-specialists have ever heard of - small plants, fungi, invertebrates, etc. - than the charismatic megafauna (polar bears, tigers and so on) that people actually care about.
But really, to me, it's just self-evidently true that a world with polar bears and tigers in it is a richer world that one without those creatures.
Also, these species are much more likely to be among the obscure, "random" species that few non-specialists have ever heard of - small plants, fungi, invertebrates, etc. - than the charismatic megafauna (polar bears, tigers and so on) that people actually care about.
But really, to me, it's just self-evidently true that a world with polar bears and tigers in it is a richer world that one without those creatures.
sus
Well-known member
Yes but every species that goes extinct opens a niche for a new species. That's what I'm saying. There's nothing inherently sacred about "plumbing" as a profession and there's nothing sacred about "polar bear" as a species. This is just the way of the world. What replaces them may be equally interesting, in a formal intrinsic sort of way; all a polar bear has on its successor is our human sentimentality—a Hallmark card attachment, a series of Coca-Cola ads.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think that's fallacious thinking, though. New species don't just "appear" to occupy a niche left by an extinct species. A particular plant or animal might have spent millions of years becoming perfectly tuned to live in a certain ecosystem, but could be wiped out in a few decades. The number of extant species is certainly decreasing.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
version
Well-known member
I wasn't arguing that moral, ethical or emotional reasons aren't valid, just that I can't think of any reasons that don't fall into those categories.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Fair enough.
