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Decline of Indian vultures

bbc.com

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Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#21

Post by tgv »

jauco wrote: post #15
sumedh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did those comments say, they are flagged now.

“Interesting, ”+ a summary of the article, both really similar.

I never paid much attention to it, but that style also pervades goodreads. But in that case, the style was there before LLMs. Many people seemed to think reviewing a book consists of writing a summary of the first chapters. It's the template you get taught for your first book reviews in secondary school, I guess, and it does work: such reviews (not only on goodreads) get upvoted. But why? Perhaps because it saves the upvoter the trouble of reading the book or article?

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#22

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

> The researchers also found that the effect was greatest in urban areas with large livestock populations where carcass dumps were common.

I think this is the real problem. Modern sanitation doesn’t depend on vultures. Having carcass dumps near population centers is going to cause problems even with vultures.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#23

Post by tgv »

jna_sh wrote: post #18
eminent101 wrote: post #11

>The authors estimated that between 2000 and 2005, the loss of vultures caused around 100,000 additional human deaths annually, resulting in more than $69bn (£53bn) per year in mortality damages or the economic costs associated with premature deaths. Isn't this a giant leap of faith to claim that the increase in the number of deaths must be caused by loss of vultures? Correlation is not causation! How did they rule o…

You’re reading a summary of a working paper published in a mainstream news outlet. The submitted article links through to the full 95 page paper that has the methodology https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/The-Soc...

The paper looks impressive; I'm going to read it further. But in the abstract they cautiously say "Our results suggest the functional extinction of vultures ... increased human mortality" (emphasis mine).

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#24

Post by jna_sh »

aurareturn wrote: post #2

Question: Did another animal take the role of the vultures? Nature is very efficient. If there opportunity, it seems like some animals might evolve to fill that role.

For an animal to evolve to fill this niche, the niche would have to convey some advantage that favours their survival and reproduction (i.e. natural selection). Aside from the fact that this isn’t actually a terribly efficient process and is subject to lots of random effects, the niche in its current form as influenced by human activity is clearly not conveying a survival benefit, or the vultures wouldn’t have declined. A member of another bird species deciding to take to scavenging trash heaps whilst happening to have a mutation that protects it from diclofenac (which is toxic to lesser degrees in other non-vulture birds) is not impossible, but unlikely, and could very well be a process that occurs at a timescale that is incompatible with the rate of continued change by humans.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#25

Post by jna_sh »

tgv wrote: post #23
jna_sh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re reading a summary of a working paper published in a mainstream news outlet. The submitted article links through to the full 95 page paper that has the methodology https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/The-Soc...

The paper looks impressive; I'm going to read it further. But in the abstract they cautiously say "Our results suggest the functional extinction of vultures ... increased human mortality" (emphasis mine).

Usage of “hedging” terms like this is normal practice in academic writing. For a variety of reasons, some social and political, some practical. The short explanation is that the current scientific process values humility.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#26

Post by 4ggr0 »

jauco wrote: post #13
4ggr0 wrote: post #8

It's fascinating and tragic how AI generated comments are obviously present in this comment section. Anyone else find it unsurprising that this happens? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41078496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41095522

Maybe to establish a ring of accounts that duck underneath the vote ring detection metrics and that you can then use to upvote people’s stories? (For a small fee of course) This attempt probably will be flagged by dang since you called it out, but given enough effort they may even construct bots that generate the proper curious discussion that we like here, and have a small (but lucrative) rounding error in voting be…

yeah, but this looks like a very poor attempt. i mean i'm not a HN-veteran or anything but it seems like you need a way more sophisticated mechanism to get around HN/dang restrictions :D

but you're right, if the bots get better, it will get harder. i actually wanted to respond to one of the comments to talk about the butterfly effect etc., but thought the comment seemed very artificial. then i saw the other comment which was almost an exact carbon-copy, just a bit shorter, by a different, new account.

so, i was almost baited by a bot to actually respond and waste my time.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#27

Post by gwervc »

grumple wrote: post #16
gala8y wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh... why... oh why... I will never understand such behavior. What are incentives here?

Gain reputation, use the account to manipulate us at a later time. HN is a high value target for the same regimes that use Reddit and other social media platforms to manipulate the US and Europe.

Interesting conspiracy theory, I'll now blame highly upvoted Rust stories as a Russian plot to make us lose time rewriting all our software.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#28

Post by [deleted] »

gala8y wrote: post #9
4ggr0 wrote: post #8

It's fascinating and tragic how AI generated comments are obviously present in this comment section. Anyone else find it unsurprising that this happens? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41078496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41095522

Oh... why... oh why... I will never understand such behavior. What are incentives here?

[deleted]

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#29

Post by mattmaroon »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

> The researchers also found that the effect was greatest in urban areas with large livestock populations where carcass dumps were common. I think this is the real problem. Modern sanitation doesn’t depend on vultures. Having carcass dumps near population centers is going to cause problems even with vultures.

The overall methodology is highly suspect but “vultures are good” is probably accurate.

Re: Decline of Indian vultures

#30

Post by account42 »

jna_sh wrote: post #24
aurareturn wrote: post #2

Question: Did another animal take the role of the vultures? Nature is very efficient. If there opportunity, it seems like some animals might evolve to fill that role.

For an animal to evolve to fill this niche, the niche would have to convey some advantage that favours their survival and reproduction (i.e. natural selection). Aside from the fact that this isn’t actually a terribly efficient process and is subject to lots of random effects, the niche in its current form as influenced by human activity is clearly not conveying a survival benefit, or the vultures wouldn’t have declin…

Other (especially non-avian) scavengers could have better reactions to the cattle drug that the article blames for poisioning the vultures and thus thrive when their competition is gone.
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