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

331–340 of 398 posts

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

#331

Post by thaumasiotes »

hinkley wrote: post #272
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…

Honey bees are naturalized here. They are part of the ecosystem, for better or worse. Insect populations have adapted around them. Taking them away now would be a disruption, especially if it were not planned out. For instance, if you were trying to reestablish some some native pollinator, reducing honey bee pressure might be part of that plan. Even possible a critical one. But just killing them and walking away? Tha…

> Insect populations have adapted around them.

Odds are, insect populations would also adapt to their disappearance.

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

#332

Post by thaumasiotes »

nend wrote: post #295
giantDinosaur wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not possible to domesticate other bee species? Surely a x200 increase in efficiency would be a major reason to domesticate orchard bees, right?

Orchard bees are domesticated and used as pollinators. They're solitary bees, which I'm guessing prevents usage for mass pollination of crops. That being said there are lots of animals that can't be domesticated. Zebras are the classic example, being very similar to domesticated horses but are much more aggressive and unpredictable.

> That being said there are lots of animals that can't be domesticated. Zebras are the classic example, being very similar to domesticated horses but are much more aggressive and unpredictable.

Interestingly, we have records of contemporary impressions of tarpans and aurochs, back when they weren't extinct. They tended to be described in terms like "absolutely untamable".

But of course they weren't.

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

#333

Post by jojobas »

masklinn wrote: post #329
jojobas wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

The honeybees have largely displaced many native bee species. It's not just agriculture that will suffer if honeybees disappear.

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

#334

Post by thaumasiotes »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #302
dotancohen wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We are living in an age where people outright deny the existence of a global pandemic because they don't like the inconvenience of their favorite bars being closed or having to wear a mask. There is no document in the universe of any length that will convince them.

> We are living in an age where people outright deny the existence of a global pandemic because they don't like the inconvenience

Well, no one I know, and no one they know, has been hurt by the coronavirus. And the list of people I know includes two people from Wuhan. If we went out a third degree, we would likely start to pick up victims.

On the other hand, I do personally know someone who was injured by the response; this person responded so badly to the lockdown that they had to be committed.

It's possible that the existence of a pandemic isn't what people are denying...

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

#335

Post by ganafagol »

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 (…

> And outside of economic and survival concerns: Nature is IRREPLACEABLE. Once it is dead it is dead forever. How could you honestly take this position? What do you find valuable? What do you find beautiful? What do you live for?

Mars, apparently.

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

#336

Post by ganafagol »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #331
hinkley wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honey bees are naturalized here. They are part of the ecosystem, for better or worse. Insect populations have adapted around them. Taking them away now would be a disruption, especially if it were not planned out. For instance, if you were trying to reestablish some some native pollinator, reducing honey bee pressure might be part of that plan. Even possible a critical one. But just killing them and walking away? Tha…

> Insect populations have adapted around them. Odds are, insect populations would also adapt to their disappearance.

Of course. But not necessarily in a way you'd like.

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

#337

Post by ganafagol »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #334
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are living in an age where people outright deny the existence of a global pandemic because they don't like the inconvenience of their favorite bars being closed or having to wear a mask. There is no document in the universe of any length that will convince them.

> We are living in an age where people outright deny the existence of a global pandemic because they don't like the inconvenience Well, no one I know, and no one they know, has been hurt by the coronavirus. And the list of people I know includes two people from Wuhan. If we went out a third degree, we would likely start to pick up victims. On the other hand, I do personally know someone who was injured by the respons…

> Well, no one I know, and no one they know, has been hurt by the coronavirus.

Don't worry, considering how things are going, that will change this winter.

Unless you are in New Zealand.

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

#338

Post by ganafagol »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #166
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 (…

> You cannot predict how one HUGELY important species being destroyed will affect the rest of our ecosystem. At risk of sounding like a prediction, we can confidently say the outcome is something awful. The ecosystem isn't built like a fault-tolerant network where one node goes out, but the network more or less still works. There is no redundancy. There are no enterprise-grade availability requirements.

Fault tolerance is a concept relative to a desired functional behavior. Relative to "everything should stay as-is", nature is not fault tolerant at all. But relative to "_something_ will keep existing and evolving" it is very fault tolerant. But that may not be the way we'd like.

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

#339

Post by ganafagol »

api wrote: post #263
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo, this is exactly what I was going to say. The Earth sure is fault-tolerant, we just might not enjoy what PIDs get the kill signal to repair the system.

Homo Sapiens would almost surely survive as a species. Humans are like cockroaches. It might be horribly nasty though, and definitely not something we should invite. I like Elon’s way of putting climate change: sure we may be wrong at least a bit, but is it wise to take our best habitable planet and dump a shitload of CO2 into the atmosphere and then just see what happens because YOLO?

If that's Elon's position then he must have a huge load of cognitive dissonance if he still thinks prioritizing colonization of Mars is a worthwile contribution.

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

#340

Post by chrisco255 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #302
dotancohen wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We are living in an age where people outright deny the existence of a global pandemic because they don't like the inconvenience of their favorite bars being closed or having to wear a mask. There is no document in the universe of any length that will convince them.

We're living in an age where people deny the existence of jurisdictions that have gone without arbitrary closings and they're doing just fine, if not better than many jurisdictions that have had harsh lockdowns. But no document in the universe of any length will convince them that population control is not the answer.
Post reply on HN