Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 398 posts

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#321

Post by philtechguy »

xg15 wrote: post #231
philtechguy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useful to note that system's thinking is such an outdated model of looking at the world. Basically modeling the world as a fancy mechanism, with mechanistic explanations about every aspects of the world. Very reductionist about organisms, nature, societies, etc.

Why is it outdated? Do you have any souces for that? What do you propose instead?

Well, one of the reasons is that a lot of systems theory was basically trying to apply notions, concepts and mathematical analysis from physics, firm management, and game theory to contexts where they just didn't apply: ideal rationality of agents, information flow diagrams, and even notions like equilibria. The notion of equilibrium in ecosystems, for example, came from the physics of gases in vacuum chambers, neither organisms or populations of organisms exhibit such tendencies. There are many more examples of why mechanistic explanations simply don't work for many phenomena in the philosophy of science. Weiner, Simon, and others were just trying to use the maths they knew to solve some bigger more complex problems and in the process ended up stretching the metaphor of the system a bit too far.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#322

Post by mkl »

Carioca wrote: post #261
masklinn wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. FWIW honeybees are not part of the native US…

As an example, passion fruit has to be pollinated by hand (with swabs or special gloves) even in most of its natural range (South America) because only certain species of Uruçu bees can be pollinate it, and they have become rare

The purple passion fruit commonly grown in New Zealand (not native) doesn't need manual pollination. Not sure what does it, though there are many introduced honey bees and bumblebees alongside some native pollinators like butterflies.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#323

Post by sjy »

dotancohen wrote: post #279
immmmmm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot agree more. If i could upvote twice i would. We are loosing biodiversity at a rate comparable to the last mass extinctions, we are loosing our "life support systems" as climate/biodiv. experts say, yet no one is concerned. This is beyond the worst i ever expected in my worst nightmares. And this is happening now. And no one says a world. No one even dare spending 5 minute reading the material. No one cares.…

> And no one says a world. No one even dare spending > 5 minute reading the material. No one cares. Recommend something that I can give to people that they can read in 5 minutes and be convinced.

I recommend Steffen et al, Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene (2018) [1]. You can’t read the whole thing in 5 minutes, but you can read the three figures and their captions, which say a lot, and it’s open access, peer reviewed and recent. Maybe your point is that the Earth system is too complicated to explain in 5 minutes, and that’s fair enough, but I do think the climate change policy debate would be a little more sensible if you were expected to spend at least 5 minutes reading this kind of literature before participating.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#324

Post by bmitc »

immmmmm wrote: post #243
honkycat wrote: post #156

I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…

I cannot agree more. If i could upvote twice i would. We are loosing biodiversity at a rate comparable to the last mass extinctions, we are loosing our "life support systems" as climate/biodiv. experts say, yet no one is concerned. This is beyond the worst i ever expected in my worst nightmares. And this is happening now. And no one says a world. No one even dare spending 5 minute reading the material. No one cares.…

We need to be teaching systems theory in high schools.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#325

Post by bmitc »

Sebb767 wrote: post #298
wyre wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The planets gonna be fine I see this line a lot but everyday humans are doing irreparable damage to ecosystems. Taking millions of years to heal from events is not ‘fine’.

But what is "heal"? There's no such thing as the "right" or "fine" ecosystem. In 100 years, I'm nearly 100% certain that this planet will still exist and something will live on it. His point was that we're killing ourself. An ecosystem and a planet will continue existing, the question is whether humans will exist on it.

I think an appropriate definition of the right ecosystem is the one that would be here without the vast narcissism of humans. Yes, humans are animals, but we have broken out of the natural balance of things and relished in that fact by destroying everything in our wake in the name of so-called progress.

I think it’s similar to how we view viruses.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#326

Post by loco5niner »

lostlogin wrote: post #59
petertodd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4 Interestingly, that video suggests that some beekeepers actually prefer the aggressive, "africanized", bees as they can be more productive than less aggressive bees in the right situation. But they're a public health hazard, so most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. This video also sugges…

> most beekeepers choose to euthanize more aggressive hives to deliberately breed calmer, safer, bees. I wander why they don’t just requeen?

Here's a good video from a master beekeeper who tried just that and ended up euthanizing the hive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ldpyIE5t4

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#327

Post by bmitc »

teawrecks wrote: post #253
honkycat wrote: post #156

I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…

The problem is that people think environmentalism is about preserving the environment. The planet's gonna be fine, it's humans who are gonna have a bad time.

> The planet's gonna be fine, it's humans who are gonna have a bad time.

This sentiment is too simplifying. Yes, the planet, as in a spinning celestial object with a molten core, solid surface with water, and an atmosphere will be fine, so to speak, but the vast amounts of flora and fauna will not and haven’t been. Some will make it, but I don’t define that as “fine”.

Many animal species, if they haven’t already gone extinct have been suffering deeply. Take a look at the southern resident orca population. We captured, killing many in the process, and enslaved them, all of which served to torture those enslaved and break up the matriarchal hierarchies that existed. This left new, untrained leaders in the population. Before then and since then, we have poisoned them and have completely decimated their food source. These are direct consequences of unneeded, self serving actions of humans. We also harass them sonically. This is a population that is already and has been having a “bad time”, and it’s likely the population will go extinct. The cause of all this is 100% humans. Now take this example and multiply it by the thousands if not millions of species also going extinct and having bad times. Humans and our technological development combined literally form an extinction event.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#328

Post by PsylentKnight »

milchek wrote: post #310
honkycat wrote: post #156

I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…

I completely agree with what you're saying here, but I'm going to just discuss one thing that you said: > "Nature is IRREPLACEABLE. Once it is dead it is dead forever." I don't think that's the case. I think you're giving humanity too much credit. If humanity kills itself from overpopulation and overconsumption, the earth will do just fine without us. Even if we harm it as badly as we did with something like the Cher…

I think this statement makes a point opposite what you intended:

> We've only really existed as a species for a tiny amount of time in the earths 4.5b year history

That's exactly the problem. We're causing massive changes on a much shorter timescale than evolution operates on. I think it's likely the global ecosystem will struggle to adapt.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#329

Post by masklinn »

jojobas wrote: post #318
masklinn wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. FWIW honeybees are not part of the native US…

Large scale agriculture was not part of native US ecosystem either.

I’m replying to a paragraph about ecosystems here not agriculture.

Re: Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest

#330

Post by gorgoiler »

honkycat wrote: post #156

I always find the anti-environmentalist position that pops up on HN interesting. For a technical audience, they are amazingly unaware of "Systems Thinking". Saying "MEH, there are other pollinators" is lazy thinking. Our ecosystem is a vast web of interconnections. You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. Furthermore: People use honey bees for honey (…

This is in no way a rebuttal to your points, but merely out of interest: how does pollination by honey bee work in countries where the hornets are endemic?
Post reply on HN