Comment by didericis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by didericis | Hacker News Reader

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I think an even more interesting question is to delve into what exactly “net bad” or “net good” even means. Relative to what?

I think we’ve been living in artificial environments for so long we’ve forgotten how much nature simply does not care and is not meant to be any particular way. It just is. Whether we are a part of the environment nature is adapting to is totally irrelevant from the perspective of other creatures, and we are both naive and solipsistic to think our notions of harm and no harm matter on an evolutionary timescale.

Dropping containers into the bottom of the ocean is bad for us. It conflicts with the pristine natural environment we envision and the natural order we have been adapted to and find interesting, beautiful and wish to protect, and it feels like bad stewardship of a garden we wish to cultivate.

That does not matter to nature. Different species within the ocean are in a constant battle for survival to adapt to anything and everything and containers are just another adaptational factor like any other.

I am worried by the number of people that seem to think nature will reciprocate if we are nice to it. We should strive to protect the environment and not change it drastically for our own reasons, not anthropomorphize and treat it like a substitute God that will reward us if we make the proper sacrifices to it.

This is a tangential rant not that related to what you’re saying, and I don’t know why a particular flavor of desire to protect nature as some kind of good in and of itself bothers me so much (which you may not hold in the manner that bothers me), but it does. I say that as someone who is currently bird watching while browsing hn by a marsh and loves evolutionary history and the study/protection of the natural world. I think maybe it’s because it diminishes where all of the stuff around us comes from and how we got here. Biological stuff is really, really, really old and been through environmental changes we can’t even imagine. I feel like a bunch of containers dropped in the ocean is like just another thing in a long, long, loooong history of all kinds of curve balls that contribute to the constant change that is the natural world.

> I am worried by the number of people that seem to think nature will reciprocate if we are nice to it.

Could you give an example of some of these people? I've never read that.

> nature simply does not care

It's philosophical and raises philosophical questions, but we can collect data on the practical outcomes. Plastic in the food supply, for example, isn't philosphical.

I think the best example of people who assume reciprocation are the types of tourists that walk up to and try to take pictures with wild animals. They assume as long as they’re nice the animal will be nice. On a larger scale, I think people tend to assume that bad natural events like fires, hurricanes, floods, etc relate to how we treat the planet, and that if we stop human activities, those things will become more manageable. I think a lot of people vastly underestimate how powerful and uncaring most natural forces are to a lot of what we do. Volcanoes have randomly erupted and emitted enough particulates to effectively cancel spring/summer. While we don’t want to use technology poorly and pollute our environment, the reason we have technology in the first place is to shape our environment to be less inhospitable to us than it is naturally.

> I think the best example of people who assume reciprocation are the types of tourists that walk up to and try to take pictures with wild animals. They assume as long as they’re nice the animal will be nice.

This is quite a stretch from befriending some mythical anthropomorphized 'Nature' to making nice with wild animals for photos. Animals actually do feel and act and respond, and it's actually true that animals will respond better to 'nice' behavior than aggressive behavior, though wild animals still are not reliable enough.

> I think people tend to assume that bad natural events like fires, hurricanes, floods, etc relate to how we treat the planet

They don't assume it, there is an enormous amount of evidence and clear scientific consensus going back decades that human activities cause climate change, and climate change results in some of the problems you describe. Other human activities also affect those things.

> the reason we have technology in the first place is to shape our environment to be less inhospitable to us than it is naturally

If you believe that, why don't you believe technology can also make our environment more inhospitable.

Again, it's all philosophy, and IMHO transparent. Do I really need to write all this to say the obvious? And when not philosophizing, what are you doing about our environment?

> And when not philosophizing, what are you doing about our environment?

I think you ought to re-read the posts you're replying to and stop trying to make an enemy of someone who, as far as I can tell, could well be doing as much about our environment as you are

That's a pretty accusatory comment for someone preaching listening!

I do believe technology can make our environment more inhospitable.

The best world is one with zero emissions and everyone having all their shipping/transportation, heating, air conditioning, farming, food preservation, and other energy needs met in full. The philosophizing becomes important when deciding between people’s ability to meet basic needs and environmental protection. I think it’s a mistake to think there’s an intrinsic good in trying to preserve nature as it is currently, as nature is agnostic and much more inhospitable without modern amenities. The good relates to all of the many benefits of the way the environment is now to us, including long term environmental effects relative to our survival and the continuation of all the beauty and learning opportunities that currently exist in the current form of our natural world.

I’m not sure where the hostility is coming from. My consumption is pretty low and I enjoy spending time in and learning about nature. I think the best and most practical thing we could be doing energy wise is building more nuclear salt reactors, which I advocate for fairly frequently. I am not arguing that we shouldn’t take care of the environment.

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