To what end? Life on this planet has about a 1 billion year run way left since the sun will start to expand and eventually strip away Earth's atmosphere and finally swallow the planet whole. It's taken 3.7 billion years to get to this point and most of the "interesting" evolution has occurred in only the last 500 million years. So it is true that the next 500 million should be even more diverse.
However unless another intelligent life form develops the point is moot. No matter how smart a dolphin, or raven, or chimp, or octopus is... if it can't escape this rock then it's not much different from a bacteria colony that dies out when it's food source is exhausted.
Evolution is random. For all we know an even more intelligent form of life will develop than us humans but on the other hand it's possible that for the next billion years we are the only fluke in the evolutionary timeline and nothing else will develop.
Finally there's a third option that is within the grasp of humanity which is to say we can branch off Earth's tree of life and take it into space while leaving Earth to develop as it will.
For all I know a flowering plant will develop a brain and become sentient in the next 200 million years.
I guess they prefer to take an extreme Darwinian view. Since complexity is not the goal of life, merely a side-effect, there is no life on this planet that is more advanced than any other. Assuming a single abiogenesis event, all extant life has been evolving for approximately 3.8B years.
We may choose to think of brains, and our human brains in particular, as the bees-knees. Objectively, they are not though. Just one of many successful branches of the tree of life.
Consider that our brains are the only organ on the planet that is able to understand the concept of life, reason about itself and all other life around it, understand the concept of evolution, and even conceptualize time billion of years into the past and future.
Not all life on this planet has evolved even though it had the potential to do so.
If we attribute "advanced" as evolutionary steps rather than the inaction of simply existing then clearly we are more advanced than a bacteria. However I will concede your point for other multicellular life.
Here is where words like "narcissism" tend to land. It isn't personal against yourself, so please don't take offence. It is a philosophical viewpoint that is often stated, but appears to lack evidence. I don't have any counter evidence, but I strongly suspect it to be factually incorrect. And I believe the burden of proof is on those making this claim.
Further, even if we allow the above claim to pertain, this position makes the strong assertion that the very qualities that modern humans are uniquely superior in, are the very things that must be held uniquely special. To some of us, this just seems circular and too convenient.
Is it more likely that humans hold such characteristics to be the epitome of success because there is some objective model of success to which we alone conform (e.g. conceptualisation)? Or because it merely suits us to do so? I believe the latter, though you may disagree.
Feels like the brain might be a little biased when it thinks that the brain is the greatest form of life to ever be created :)
In that sense how is one configuration of motile matter any different from its potential successors?
We are not separate from nature and protecting the earth is only natural for a multicellular intelligent species like ourselves.
I just think we shouldn’t pretend that we’re being altruistic.
It could even result in funny situations where one of them encounters a clearly alien beings with totally different physiology, culture, appearance and language - only ot find they are just another branch of life originating from Earth. :-)
Other places where you can see this concept is the Orions Arm hard SF universe or the old Imperium Galactica RTS. :)
I'm unconvinced. We are firmly in the realm of thought experiments, of course, but I think all this would do is produce changes within local maxima, the reason being that even while adapting to new living conditions, evolution only has so much to "work with" from within the local maximum given by the existing human body.
In contrast, a mass extinction event looks closer to pushing a big reset button, radically shaking up existing lifeforms and giving other struggling species their chance at the limelight. Maybe even species that right now are microbes or invertebrates, but that -- should mankind, mammals and birds go extinct -- would evolve into dominant lifeforms, filling the vacated niches in the ecosystem.
Maybe the species which by our continuing existence we are potentially preventing from becoming dominant is the species that would have successfully colonized the solar system and beyond, instead of us. Not a variation of humans under new conditions, but a radically new species unrelated to us.
Well, whoever claims to care about doing "good" to Earth's ecosystem (as opposed to admitting it's only about mankind's survival) must necessarily care about this kind of arguments.
It's not a "philosophical new species", I can point to one species you really care about and which owes its existence to a mass extinction event (or maybe more than one): yours.
I completely see (and share) your reasoning. But I think it’s very anthropocentric.
There is nothing human-centric about life wanting to continue.
Horseshoe crabs haven't changed in 250 million years. What's your opinion on them "stopping the cycle"?
We people value our continuing existence, and I share that sentiment! But it's by definition an anthropocentric perspective.
But I think the point here is that we wouldn't be "doing good" necessarily by preventing a mass extinction; we would be definitely doing good to ourselves (no small thing) but for Earth's ecosystem? Debatable. Especially since we would possibly be preventing the spread of new species, since mass extinction events seem to have been so far useful tools in evolution's toolset.
I would wager than as soon as a technological civilization is born, it's morally reprehensible to let it go extinct, since it no longer is at the full whims of evolution. It's complex issue, so many people would wage otherwise, and only a jury might reach a conclusion. The case is moot when said civilization can avert extinction by their own hand, though.
I don't know about two technological civilizations in conflict, like sapiens and neanderthals. Would it be morally acceptable to let them go at each other, even if the fittest extinguishes the other?
I see the logic here. But why, though? And technology is everywhere in non-human nature. While I think our technology and civilization is unlike anything else here, it’s still on the spectrum of nature’s exercise of community and technology. Are we really that special?
I think this heads towards the whole “Prime Directive” line of reasoning.
P.S. Eloi > Morlocks, of course. ;)
There’s no logic there. Just a faith in “potential”.
It is arguable one way or the other whether civilizational humans have caused more happiness or more suffering for Earth (all of us lifeforms combined). So the only way to call such a thing “morally reprehensible” is if you assume that Civilization will eventually evolve into some awesome, fantastic, space-faring, all-needs-met, stewards of the near solar system fantasticness.
Maybe we're helping to build a universe, and we can do more in that regard than single-celled organisms, cockroaches, etc.?
https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_... (self-cite)
We won’t do it though because it’s unsatisfying to our narcissism. Imagine trying to sell the world on a trillion dollar project where we shoot loads of bio-goo out into the cosmos in thousands of directions, knowing it’ll take eons to maybe have an effect that’ll then take billions of years to produce a result we will never appreciate.
I think if we do any sort of proliferation of life, it’ll be of us, by us, for us.
It's funny to imagine that this might be not how life on Earth started.
That's a lot of new space for new lifeforms to specialize in.
But points to us for a world record pace speedrun on the downturn side of it. It’ll eventually bloom again once we’re done here.
Why do we monoculture if it will kill us long-term? Because it benefits us short-term. (And hey, maybe that gives us runway to solve the long-term problem).
There's a viral form of cancer which is wiping out the Tasmanian Devil right now, just because.
Nature and evolution has no plan and no morality, it has survivors and a balanced ecosystem is a cold war stalemate.
I think an existence bias is defensible. Take it as an axiom that suffering is bad and flourishing is good. I think its clear that the suffering of something that exists is worse than the lack of flourishing of something that doesn't exist but could. Value is something that conscious creatures do, and so value depends on existence. The states of something that can prefer its own states should be valued over the states of something that can't. Existing fish matter more than rocks and potential fish. So the organisms that exist, at least the sentient ones, should take preference.
> How would we feel if aliens stopped the mass extinction events that led to our existence?
This statement is just appealing to emotion and is commonly used in arguments against abortion or attempts to thought police. There is nothing provable or disprovable in your argument and this question is used to just try and bait people into an emotional response.
> Non-human life seems by and large indifferent to its long-term fate on this planet.
I would argue that self preservation is an innate characteristics of every plant and animal on this earth. Isn't a desire to live the basis for self preservation? Isn't it natural for a plant or animal to stop something from killing them if it impedes in their ability to survive? At a basic level plants compete for sunlight at the expense of other plants. If there was an cognitive leap in a plant or animal wouldn't it be natural for anything to protect their greater habitat? If that's narcissistic than I guess it's the most natural narcissism I can think of.
Your statement itself seems like a fallacy to me.
It makes sense to me that the comment you're replying to is emotional, because it's not meant to be a "proof" but an opinion, and it's valid to have emotional opinions; moreover, it was a reply to a comment which was in itself an emotional appeal!
Self-preservation is not innately good (or bad). Mass extinction events seem to have been good at giving rise to species that are now self-preserving; maybe a new mass extinction would give rise to even "better" species.
As a human, I'd rather we didn't go extinct. I'd rather mankind prospered and even spread out to more planets. But I'm ok with anthropocentric appeals to emotion :)
In this case I feel like the main point of the parent commenter was not a well formed opinion and as such the commenter was trying to appeal to emotion. I'm not trying to say they can't say something like what they said here. This is a perfect place to have a discussion.
> Self-preservation is not innately good (or bad)
I agree with you. The parent comment that I was responding to does not agree with this statement. That's clear when they say "what rubs me the wrong way", and referring to work done in the name of human preservation as narcissism.
Short of total sterilization, mass extinction events seem to be really good at creating space for new forms of life to develop. In a way, preventing them in the name of the non-human life here is just picking the incumbent over whatever comes next. How would we feel if aliens stopped the mass extinction events that led to our existence? I’m not sure there’s solid argument for why one is more deserving of existence than the other.
I think why this slightly rubs me the wrong way is it feels like an excuse to make us feel good. Non-human life seems by and large indifferent to its long-term fate on this planet. Let’s not pretend we do anything significant for non-human life that isn’t to our direct benefit.
Just my perspective. Not trying to say “no, you’re wrong!” Just, “I disagree.” I’m going to guess there’s an entire named branch of philosophy that explores this.