Stephen Baxter’s novel ‘Evolution’ is worth a read if you think about stuff like this, putting us as we are now in some kind of context.

In the vastness of existence, if I kick you in the nuts, why does that actually matter?

I’m in the “it isn’t imperative” camp. Many species have come into existence and become extinct. Is the planet better or worse off because of that? I would say neither. This particular ball of rock is a great environment to support life and I would argue life is therefore inevitable. What form that takes (if any at all) is pretty unimportant – except possibly to the life forms if they think about such things.

 but like to spend a lot of time convincing ourselves otherwise.

You be/go mad not to.

since both good and bad are entirely human ideas, without humans there is no ‘better off’.

This is not factual. Other living things have evolved concepts of good/bad morals etc. It is a conceit of our species to continue with the lie that other lifeforms do not have fulfilled and precious lives/families, friends, etc. I use the word conceit because we have evolved the intelligence not only to have discovered this fact but to also ignore it and deny it.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but humans do not. Instead they multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for them to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern… a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, they are a plague.

I thought we were more guilty of anthropomorphisim when it comes to animal behaviour. Can you give any examples of which animals have concepts of morals? It sounds interesting.

Humans are like a parasitic infestation.

No, we’re not, we’re not very different from other social animals. We just invented the tools to do the same things that animals do but on a much larger scale.

But there seems to be a value judgement in the (incorrect) use of the word ‘parasite’ there. Parasites are bad, right, and therefore humans are bad, of course. Well, try telling that to a flea. Try explaining to a cuckoo (if it could talk and reason) that it’s entire way of life is evil.

As has been trotted out many times, there have been several mass extinctions long before human were around to blame. But if you consider humans as simply another natural phenomenon, then what’s the difference? You might say ‘ah, but humans are intelligent enough to know they are causing damage’ but whilst we are, we clearly aren’t intelligent enough to figure out how to stop doing it. And don’t forget the term ‘damage’ is subjective here and really only according to modern human values. 150 years ago most of humanity didn’t really give a shit. People thought it was just fine to kill all the bison or carrier pigeons.

And for all the (entirely human) doom and gloom, when you consider how appallingly we behaved just a few generations ago, we’re making some progress.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment;

No, they don’t. They are simply held in check by other forces. The animals themselves didn’t develop equilibrium out of a sound moral compass, it’s just natural selection that created it.

they multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for them to survive is to spread to another area.

Animals will do this. This happens all the time in nature. The only thing is that most of them don’t have the opportunity to move around to new places. If some freak waterspout had sucked zebra mussels out of wherever they were from in Asia and deposited them in the great lakes 100,000 years ago, they’d have damaged the ecosystem in the exact same way as they are doing so now, and humans would have arrived and gone ‘ah zebra mussels are native to the great lakes, and this is how the ecosystem works’.

All animals will eat, shag and reproduce until there’s no more food and they starve. The only difference here is that most of them don’t create internet forums where can agonise about it to each other.

Other living things have evolved concepts of good/bad morals etc

I’ve read about experiments with mammals that demonstrate that they have the concept of fair play, but that only applies to themselves and their immediate peers. I don’t think most are able to moralise about things happening on the other side of the world.

Other living things have evolved concepts of good/bad morals

Without wishing to derail things but, how can you prove something you can’t converse with has developed good bad in terms of a mortality as opposed to good bad in terms of survival.

Plants will not do some things which are bad for their survival, that doesn’t in anyway make them a moral being. (nor does it mean they’re not)

In order to know something or someone is making a moral choice you need to be able to interrogate that choice and know if it was consciously made to reduce harm/risk or because of a concept of good or bad.

It’s not like you can debate prisoners’ dimema or the trolley problem with a dolphin.

i’m fed up of all this climate change news..

yesterday the news said Kenya is in drought /running out of water, my initital thought is how has the population changed, a quick google and in 20 years the population has nearly doubled to 55m.

is it any wonder resources are running out.

is it any wonder resources are running out.

I don’t think water can run out
Well not from the planet.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but humans do not.

Last I looked humans are mammals? and anyway. Rats, mice elephants will all destroy their environments, and outside of mammals Carp will breed to unsustainable levels as will Locusts and the beetles that carry elm disease will eat live trees and infect forests. Crown of Thorns can easily kill off entire reefs if they overpopulate.

Try explaining to a cuckoo (if it could talk and reason) that it’s entire way of life is evil.

The wasp that Alien was based on Not only is that pretty evil, there’s another species of parasitic wasp that will infect the eggs of parasitic wasps and emerge from that larvae as it’s emerging from the host…

a quick google and in 20 years the population has nearly doubled to 55m

Yes, medicine and sanitation are really the big problem here. Without them we and “our” children would be much better off.

All animals will eat, shag and reproduce until there’s no more food and they starve. The only difference here is that most of them don’t create internet forums where can agonise about it to each other.

Exactly. And we are the same. Just on a vastly differnet scale and timeline.

Just about every other creature on earth will end thier life either by starving to death when they are no longer fit and healthy enough to aquire adequate food; or they will be ripped apart by a predator.

We continue to increase or population, with both birth rate and living longer, walking into a future that cant sustain us.
It wont be an extinction, but it will be a big cull. Whether its in 20 years or 2000 we have some control over, if we pulled our fingers out, because unlike any other animal, we have sufficient intelligence, planning and foresight to control ourselves if we tried.

The wasp that Alien was based on Not only is that pretty evil,

Pffft

I give you mind control wasps and zombie caterpillars.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/absurd-creature-week-glyptapanteles-wasp-caterpillar-bodyguard/amp

its imperative that the human race survives or noone will be around to accept delivery of the bike i ordered in may!!!!!!

i’m fed up of all this climate change news..

yesterday the news said Kenya is in drought /running out of water, my initital thought is how has the population changed, a quick google and in 20 years the population has nearly doubled to 55m.

is it any wonder resources are running out.

Whilst this is not quite the point you were trying to make, I do think population control is the nettle that everyone at cop 26 appears too frightened to grasp or even mention. It would be a shit ton easier to wean ourselves off our love of fossil fuels and to feed ourselves in sustainable ways if we could stop breeding quite so damn successfully. Net positive reproduction in the west where we really should know better by now should be a criminal offence and we should be doing our level best to sort out the infant health issues then educate in the developing world, aiming for a maximum of a stable global population and ideally a mild decline but significant. Won’t happen until we are bolloxed though, then it’ll happen at an impressive rate.

Life is a proof of concept. Started from nothing. Tootles along for billions of years. Comes up with bacteria and algae. The last half billion years for everything else. We are now perhaps midway through the sun’s life so there’s plenty of time. Climate has shaped the biodiversity on the planet. Major events such as volcanic and asteroid impact extinction events and plate tectonic shifts such as the formation of the Panama isthmus have ushered in distinct eras characterised by resetting the biodiversity of the planet. If we trigger a mass extinction event, even as far as killing ourselves as the dominant lifeform, we put the evolutionary dice back in the tumbler and cannot conceive what will fall out.

But we are at a point where we conceptualise our universe. As a species, we have accomplishments in knowledge and the application of knowledge as well as all the arts. We can conceive the possibilities of the future.

Our accomplishments beyond agriculture, dwellings, story telling and basic territorial war began with the industrial revolution – in barely 200 years we have transformed war into an undertaking where we can kill ourselves multiple times over and not even need a reason to start fighting, industry into a race to the bottom to generate worthless tat and economics into a dark art that serves our lizard overlords as the flip side to a scientific understanding of the mechanisms and powers that bind our universe together from the smallest to the largest scales.

All the things we have discovered generate possibilities for the future but we need a future that nurtures possibility. I feel a bit like a football supporter cheering “our” effort in getting to the final; I’ve not generated much possibility in my life. I’m a cog in the machine of a society that occasionally throws up an Einstein, a Mozart, a Shakespeare. That fate is true for most of us so we cherish family and have children and invest our hopes in our children and their children after them.

I think the answer to the question to why it is imperative for the human race to survive is because the human race is the vessel of our hopes and is beyond our imagination.

Aye, endoparasitoid Wasps are pretty **** up as a species, there are estimated to over 100,000 species of ichneumons including the ones you’re talking about. There’s something so weirdly wrong that it’s the creature Darwin suggested started him on the path of rejecting the idea of a benevolent God

 I do think population control is the nettle that everyone at cop 26 appears too frightened to grasp or even mention.

There’ much evidence to suggest it’s a bit of a myth though. In every country, as soon as girls get education, the birth rates plummet. Over-consuption is an issue, but too many people isn’t

Thanks molgrips and nick for pointing that out.

That Agent Smith was full of shit.

Over-consumption is an issue, but too many people isn’t

Not buying that – the two have to be inextricably linked. If there were 10 million less UK residents (and everyone consumed at their current rates) the UK’s net consumption would be 67/77th of our current consumption. If my neighbour had one less child the bin would be overflowing with single use plastics by 20% less. Then apply globally.

That Agent Smith was full of shit.

😂🤣

 If there were 10 million less UK residents (and everyone consumed at their current rates)

But if everyone “under-consumed” the equivalent of those 10M folks, then you’d achieve the same thing wouldn’t you?

But if everyone “under-consumed” the equivalent of those 10M folks, then you’d achieve the same thing wouldn’t you?

Why not do both? I’d imagine both is what is needed.

In addition the developing world population has every right to aspire the developed world population levels of consumption. Yes, lets wind ours down a bit but doing it with a few less folk is going going to be a shed load easier.

Without wishing to derail things but, how can you prove something you can’t converse with has developed good bad in terms of a mortality as opposed to good bad in terms of survival.

I think this was the study showing apes have a sense of fairness to which Molgrips was refering

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451566/
.
Also, can you prove that, for example, a dolphin doesn’t?
For far too long humans have thought we are special and the more we find out the less this becomes the case. Its not that one since humans were made in God’s image and put on the earth which was the centre of the universe.
In the last couple of centuries we moved on to the idea that the sun was at the centre, then was just one in a galaxy, and then that that galaxy was just one in billions, while at the same time discovering that we are more close related to chimps than mice are to rats.
Humans are nothing special. Just because we cannot yet understand how other animals think doesn’t make them any lesser, much as the white man not understanding Africans and thinking them inferior thought that gave him the right to enslave them, a whale is not inferior to a human, just different.

but doing it with a few less folk is going going to be a shed load easier.

I think the evidence suggests that the population will peak in 2064 and then decline rather quickly anyway. Like I said, everywhere you start to educate women/young girls (not in birth control, just a good general level of education) population rates plummet. We don’t really need do anything special or drastic about the amount of people, all we need to do is educate the ones we have now, and it’ll happen by itself.

Who is this Noone guy, previous posters keep going on about?

I think the evidence suggests that the population will peak in 2064 and then decline rather quickly anyway

Google Hans Rosling for some insight into that – he was fantastic at explaining population dynamics.

Stephen Baxter’s novel ‘Evolution’ is worth a read if you think about stuff like this, putting us as we are now in some kind of context.

The others in the series, Time, which as title suggests follows through to the end of time and the degradation of the last atom in the universe. Space, as title suggests follows the vastness of space and how mind blowingly massive it is. Both are well worth a read. I also seem to remember the main protagonist is essential an Elon Musk character? But written several years before space X was formed.

Double post.

but doing it with a few less folk is going going to be a shed load easier.

Nah, less people will simply consume more. Unless you’re deluded enough to think we’re at peak consumption?

Also, can you prove that, for example, a dolphin doesn’t?

Of course not, I even suggest it’s possible plants are in my post. My point is its absolutely impossible to tell one way or the other.

In regards to the OP anyhow, my suggestion would be that, at least so far as climate change goes, there’s no imperative for us to survive, it’s mainly the very longstanding need for people to feel like they can change things. We’d be having the same arguments about the sun dying or an asteroid collision. It’s not a need to survive its an abject terror of impotence.

No other speciaes would have so much information, and do so little with it…

I don’t agree. Give the information we have to sunflowers for example and I reckon they would do nowt.

🌻

@molgrips @dangeourbrain

but that only applies to themselves and their immediate peers.

In order to know something or someone is making a moral choice you need to be able to interrogate that choice and know if it was consciously made to reduce harm/risk or because of a concept of good or bad.

Other goalposts/golpost-widths and definitions are also available. We could for example go back and forth all year simply with the word ‘moral’ (or ‘right/wrong’)

My argument is simply with the statement that humans are the only creatures with a concept of ‘good and bad/right and wrong’, because we aren’t.

I of course agree that we humans additionally/distinctly (?) conceptualise and ponder extensively in the abstract (and personal).

Hello darkness my old friend

how can you prove something you can’t converse with has developed good bad in terms of a mortality as opposed to good bad in terms of survival.

I don’t understand the question. Rephrase please?

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium

Too much Disney (Lion King) not enough modern science 😉. It’s an enduring myth/anecdote nonetheless.

Procreation is our only purpose as a species. All the other stuff is just personal fulfilment. If we die fail as a species for whatever reason that’s quite sad, but insignificant from a univesal perspective.

Which is why I don’t get XR really. They seem to be a sensible bunch on the whole, but don’t appear to have an answer to whose extinction they are worried about.

We could for example go back and forth all year simply with the word ‘moral’ (or ‘right/wrong’)

The thread has almost made three pages without descending to navel gazing and semantics, the likelihood of four is very low. It’s godwin’s 2nd law [STW revision 2015]

Procreation is our only purpose as a species

A human is only a gene’s way of making another gene.

A human is only a gene’s way of making another gene.

It’s what life exists for.

Our destiny is to become extinct, you just have to look at the human race’s problem with addiction. Not just drugs, alchol and shite food but consumption, greed and consumerism. We cant keep ourselves in check even under authoritarian control we still seek excess.

I watch my “green/eco” friends fretting over COP and its outcomes as they jog off to Sainsburys in the Tesla, its all just mild procrastination… accept the inevitable, we as a species simply dont have the inclination or the will to fix this. The reality for the Western world is we might get a few floods some hot summers the odd bad winter but actually life will plod on unchanged for a very long time.

However the above is not the case for much of the rest of the world, thing is i actually think the vast majority of people in the West really dont give a **** about “other” people.

I’m alright Jack….

Points of reference for validation –
Brexit
Trump
Farage
UK overseas aid budget
New oil fields
Boris the liar
Immigrants
Drax power station