Re:Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, r...
by mlavin on Sunday November 15, 2020 @04:08PM
(#25104856)
It's an easy qualitative decision to consider a variety of species with pleasant calls and plants which coexist in their own niches better than swarms of one single species of bird and an aggressively invasive plant species which chokes out all other growth. Knotweed in particular is an absolute pox on the landscape in North America.
Re:Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, r...
by hutzlibu on Sunday November 15, 2020 @04:16PM
(#25104929)
Ok, I don't know of the specific case, it is just, that here in germany, the "invasive" species people complain about, I wittnes as a welcome variation. Brings in more color. The areas that do get dominated, will very likely balance it out with a different species, soon.
edit: had to translate it, but: we also have knotweed and people complain, but I actually like it. And I do not see it dominating, just a spot here and there, just like nettles.
Re:Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, r...
by ericffr on Sunday November 15, 2020 @05:02PM
(#25105347)
Not every weed moves as fast as a virus. It might take decades before we realize that some species have disappeared, and in their wake, others are going too, and we are left with a homogeneous ecosystem where a new virus will come and be even worse (like the wheat rust which decimated the single species of wheat growing in North America).
Obviously, Nature, being random, might cause destruction on its own (like when plants appeared and the high level of oxygen they produced killed earlier species), but this happens on millions of years. And sure, nothing prevents "Nature" from killing humans too. We are not more precious than any other species, from the Nature point of view.
Re:Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, r...
by hutzlibu on Sunday November 15, 2020 @05:19PM
(#25105481)
"we realize that some species have disappeared, and in their wake, others are going too, and we are left with a homogeneous ecosystem "
Species come and go all the time. Globalisation just made it a lot faster. So there will be imbalances and local system collapsing and temporary a dominating species etc., but alltogether the diversity of species will be increased, with fast global exchange. Because there are more candidates to fill a niche.
Local established ones still have a home bonus. Their DNA is adopted to the local climate and soil, unlike the invaders. They won't vanish anytime soon.
The thing really threatening diversity are monoculture fields with pesticides.
Don't you think, you feel that way, because you grew up with the native songbirds?
"If we barely understand how life works on a macroscopic level, what makes us think we're ready to change it at an even lower level? "
Like the other poster have said: nature does not plan in advance or makes ethical discussions. Nature just is and everything in it trys to adapt. Some prosper, some die out. Now with our technology we disrupted quite a bit, but why must we understand everything we do, when nature aparrently does not either?
With research like this, I am more worried, what things like this, does to us. To maybe get to the point, where new babys are created in a laboratory and the less successful experiments goes to the bin. All for Evolution.
Now I am grossed out by that thought. But from a philosophical point of view, I have to ask myself: "who defines that this is bad?"
Maybe this gets us to the stars, so life can spread, in case earth life gets vanished, by a big asteroid. So maybe it is ethical to do all we can, to get there? To preserve life itself? (humans are not at all adopted for space, radiation, zero g etc., so CRISPR?)
(well no, I don't think it is ethical to do by all means, but I do think ethics are subjective and the next generations might have different ethics)