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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

We don't, and I don't bring up the following to excuse humanity for our destruction of other species, but it's still just an interesting philosophical point to consider. We're as much a part of the circle of life and evolution as all the organisms that came before us. I mean, you think we're bad for other species, just think about cyanobacteria, which in their thirst for energy polluted the atmosphere with an extremely toxic gas that caused one of Earth's major extinction events.

Of course, that gas was molecular oxygen, and eventually other organisms evolved aerobic respiration, and that toxic gas is now required by many of Earth's organisms to survive. Now, that change took a billion years or so, as opposed to humans doubling CO2 concentrations in a couple hundred years, but it's still interesting to think about the crazy history of life on Earth.

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We aren't the only species to cause the extinction of other species.

We are the only species that cares.

And we have technology enabling us to cause much more extinction. That is the difference.

I completely agree with you. We can mess it up, but at geological time scale, life will regenerate. Evolution is very robust. Although, we live at human timescale. It will be a pity for our sons and daughters…

My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was outlawed --- I worry that my children will live in a time when commercial fishing is outlawed.

That we are part of some circle of whatever does not make the consequences of our actions, and therefore our actions, any better. The cyanobacteria were bad; we have more of a choice.

Also, if we release gasses that kill and impoverish large portions of us, it won't help that it's 'natural'; it will make no difference at all.

> The cyanobacteria were bad

By which scales of justice?

Based on the scale of comparison between different living beings and their effects on other living beings.

I got news for you regarding every organism that kills organisms to eat.

GP clearly mentioned in their first paragraph that they aren't defending it by pointing out that it is natural. Assuming that they are is committing the is/ought fallacy.

No, but they said it's an interesting philosophical point to consider, because some bacteria did more damage than us. This isn't true (it's not an interesting point), because we're arguably the only species that know we're causing damage, and can choose not to do it.

I think it’s an interesting philosophical point to consider. In fact, I remember finding researching and writing a paper on this general question fascinating as a philosophy undergrad.

I don't think that's the interesting philosophical point. The interesting part is that out of such a devastating event emerged a much more diverse ecosystem that couldn't have existed otherwise.

The timescale is important though. It happened slowly enough that other forms of life could evolve and thrive. We're changing things and killing off species too quickly for evolution. If we screw up geoengineering it could be so fast that we wipe out everything (including ourselves). Maybe some extremophiles will survive at least.

> It happened slowly enough that other forms of life could evolve and thrive. We're changing things and killing off species too quickly for evolution.

That is quite definitely not how evolution works:

1. Other individual forms of life don't "evolve". Evolution only works by killing off large numbers of creatures, and only ones that have genes that differ by chance, and are more fit in whatever the new environment is, exist to pass their genes to the next generation.

2. There have been a number of significant extinction events that happened in the past that were much faster than whatever humans are doing now. I'm pretty sure the meteor that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs happened pretty quickly.

> Other individual forms of life don't "evolve".

Of course they do. Populations can evolve with successive generations without ever killing off large numbers of creatures. They simply do it slowly as conditions change and those with certain genes become advantaged over others and become more common. It's the "passing their genes to the next generation" which becomes a huge problem when everyone in the current generation dies or any creature that is born dies before it can reproduce.

> There have been a number of significant extinction events that happened in the past that were much faster than whatever humans are doing now.

But not faster than what we're capable of doing if we start geoengineering and it all goes wrong. The dinosaur killing meteor took a long time to kill off everything that it did (on a human timescale). How long exactly is uncertain but likely thousands of years to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. Time enough for a whole lot of generations. We might not have that long if we poison our atmosphere, destroy the ozone layer, or kill everything in the oceans.

> How long exactly is uncertain but likely thousands of years to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.

I don't know where you're getting this from. Everything I've read was that the large dinosaurs were killed off due to the effects of reduced sunlight in a few years. Here is an article that says it took 15 years: https://phys.org/news/2023-10-asteroid-year-winter-dinosaurs...

While the great oxidation event happened over a prolonged period of time, evidence points to a significant decrease in the size of the earth's biosphere over that time [1]. It's hard to say exactly what happened that early in the earth's history, but if we look at mass extinctions, they are by definition a rapid decrease in biodiversity where evolution fails to keep pace with extinction. If you graph the number of species over time, you see these periodic cliffs when mass extinctions occur [2].

The problem with climate change is not that humans will destroy life on this planet - it will recover from us, eventually - but we can make it much harder for us to live here and cause a lot of suffering and harm, and maybe even cause our own extinction.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6717284/ 2.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Phaneroz...

Do "we" really have a choice? As individuals, granted. But as a species, there is no mechanism to actually arrive at a decision which would result in a particular choice being made.

It's OK, for species wide compliance we have war.

* We can go to general, world wide conventional war. Just the amount of oil and environmental damage spent, producing machines (eg, airplanes, tanks, missiles, ships) would be astronomical

* Nuclear war would likely break out at some point, when someone is backed into a corner

* Biological warfare will likely be a component of any large scale future war. Naturally, mistakes will be made, and one favourite is destroying an enemy's food supplies.

So imagine crops or food animals targeted by disease, and it spreads to other lifeforms

My point is, I have been wondering that when things get very very visibly bad, when no one can rationalize away what is happening, when everything is falling apart due to global migration, land loss, loss of crop land, etc etc...

Will war then occur, with "pro environmental" nations working to prevent environmental damage of others? And then, of course, causing waaay more damage due to the war?

Because, well, humans.

You should write some dystopian books. You can see that, through democratic governance, we have managed many problems and crises. The problem is when people undermine democracy - either to grab power, or to act out on frustration and hopelessness.

Nothing is stopping us from solving these problems, except hopelessness.

> as a species, there is no mechanism to actually arrive at a decision which would result in a particular choice being made.

We make choices like that regularly, in fact. We're a social species and organize ourselves, make rules, make large scale decisions through government.

People love to indulge this odd fantasy of powerlessness - it's very convenient for those who want to make the decisions for everyone else.

Well I love the cyanobacteria because we wouldn't be here otherwise..

GP's point was that cyanobacteria were NOT "bad". They're a part of nature, how can that be bad? Good and bad are strictly human constructs, relating to human (primarily social) behaviour.

> They're a part of nature, how can that be bad?

How does that makes sense? Is nature necessarily good? Above moral judgment?

It's an excuse used by lots of people to do and allow lots of bad things.

Nature itself can be neither good nor bad. Is a black hole good or bad? Is DNA good or bad? Impossible to judge. It is what it is.

Aside from the absurdity of morally judging bacteria, they were arguably good.

While they genocided existing (almost exclusively single cell) organisms, by producing oxygen, they prepared conditions for orders of magnitude richer and more complex life than was possible before.

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