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Holocene Extinction

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Re: Holocene Extinction

#131

Post by jonnypotty »

jbay808 wrote: post #13
jonnypotty wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We _are_ nature and have no more control over our destiny than ants do.

This philosophy makes me wonder what concept you think is communicated by the word "control". In a sense you're not wrong, but in that same sense my thermostat has no control over the temperature of my house. If I believed that, I'd look for ways to reinterpret the word "control" to make it a useful concept again.

Human society is often imbued with a desision making powers that don't really exist. Why do we xxxx?! (insert damaging human behaviour here) people say, it makes no sense!

It makes intuitive sense to us that "humans" collectivley can and should make rational desisions, because we feel as thought we can do this individually. The reason we extrapolate this from 1 individual to many is because we don't see ourseleves or our society as a natural chaotic system, we see it as a rational desision making system that's broken and we're wrong.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#132

Post by rbg246 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #81
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no need to kill oneself. but making a start by not choosing the ego-project of procreation would already make a huge difference. if people really want to have children there are enough orphans out there and which would make the world better by raising them instead.

> making a start by not choosing the ego-project of procreation would already make a huge difference. In general, it is procreation that makes humans think about the long term. The truth is, no matter what you do, you will be dead in a hundred years. Wanting to leave the world a better place for your children and grand-children is a much more powerful motivator than abstract philosophical principle.

I wonder if this is the majority view? I hear it often but it's not something I feel (disclosure: I have one child).

I certainly think in terms of leaving the world better for all living things rather than for my children (although I guess they would benefit).

I personally feel shame that I am a part of the destruction of this world which in turn motivates me to want to make it better.

This is something that has grown as I have aged, I feel now that I'm older I can see things in the longer term and I can see how long it takes to make change and make it stick.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#133

Post by jbay808 »

jonnypotty wrote: post #131
jbay808 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This philosophy makes me wonder what concept you think is communicated by the word "control". In a sense you're not wrong, but in that same sense my thermostat has no control over the temperature of my house. If I believed that, I'd look for ways to reinterpret the word "control" to make it a useful concept again.

Human society is often imbued with a desision making powers that don't really exist. Why do we xxxx?! (insert damaging human behaviour here) people say, it makes no sense! It makes intuitive sense to us that "humans" collectivley can and should make rational desisions, because we feel as thought we can do this individually. The reason we extrapolate this from 1 individual to many is because we don't see ourseleves or…

Well, I'd say society is neither chaotic nor rational. It's trapped by game theory into predictable suboptimal outcomes.

But I think we still have much more control over our destiny than ants do, basically unless you grind down to the level of physical determinism where nothing has control over anything and we're all dancing to the tune of some Lagrangian.

To argue otherwise, I think you'd have to make the case that no individual or small group has ever hatched a successful plan to create social change. I'd point to the Montreal protocol as one of many counterexamples. We've also managed to, so far, not blow ourselves to smithereens with nuclear weapons, having limited ourselves to only one nuclear war so far.

Re: Holocene Extinction

#134

Post by belorn »

new2628 wrote: post #126
belorn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research into hunter gathering has major issues to the point where we can't really say much about their life. Most studies tries to find surviving hunter gathering that looks like they have not been influenced by non-hunter gatherers, but they are very few that still exist and those that do tend to be semi-hunter gathering rather that true hunter gathering, and they are useally located in very specific environments w…

Very interesting comment, do mention the book title. Since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, I'm curious what is the current view of the San people in the Kalahari. I read several books on them by members of the Marshall family, and I can see how these may be seen as romanticizing their subjects and not entirely objective, yet these books give a very compelling view, and are clearly based on first hand knowledge a…

For violence and its history, and meta analyzes, Behave - The biology of humans by Robert Sapolsky has several good chapters on the history of violence including that of hunter gatherers (chapter "Fractured bones* in particular).

Re: Holocene Extinction

#135

Post by [deleted] »

cheerlessbog wrote: post #11
mc32 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. If animals with intelligence didn’t exist there would still be nothing to keep an imbalanced species from taking over and wreaking destruction upon other species.

Yet billions of years in, until we arrived, there was no failure to be sustainable. We're the first species to potentially cause a global extinction event (arguably we already did)

[deleted]

Re: Holocene Extinction

#136

Post by billme »

backtracking wrote: post #84
almost_usual wrote: post #24

The Biomass of mammals on Earth is sobering. Livestock, mostly cattle and pigs (60%) Humans (36%) Wild animals (4%)

It shows the ability of humans to preserve and propagate animal species when there is an incentive to do so. No need to worry about cows going extinct.

Depends on how you define extinct; for example: how many bovine are there in the wild? Are domestic bovine genetically equivalent to prior wild bovine populations? Etc.
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