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Comment by bcjdjsndon | Hacker News Reader

> The earth is a system of many systems

As I've pointed out, these are arbitrary, they make it easier for humans to reason about the problem, but they don't exist. Purely in your head.

And even your Sahara example is bunk, there are like 10 states within it's borders somehow existing in a barren ecology

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You're reading past most of what I'm saying. I was speaking in relative terms and more or less said that literally. The Sahara in its current state is much more barren in terms of ecological diversity than it once was.

> The Sahara in its current state is much more barren in terms of ecological diversity than it once was.

Then answer me this... What would be an appropriate level of diversity?

you can't answer that question without also specifying who benefits from the diversity, and if it's "for humans" then the sahara currently doesn't contain enough to support the surrounding population on its own

additionally, humans are currently contributing to desertification in a way most other species can not

if your point is that "deserts would have existed anyway" that's fine, but it's still the collapse of a localized system due to external factors (in this case, a system collapse caused by earth's orbit/axial changes)

"What would be an appropriate level of diversity?"

> 3 in the Shannon index

The area to which you assign that index is arbitrary.

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