NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Success

Re:NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Suc... by the_af on Saturday January 14, 2023 @06:05PM (#34385014)

I don't think a non-anthropocentric perspective is consistent at all. Without humans to observe it, no form of life is inherently more valuable than the other. Simpler life forms are not less interesting than more complex ones. Mass extinction events leave room for the rise of new species, and they seem a natural event in the history of Earth's ecosystems.

We people value our continuing existence, and I share that sentiment! But it's by definition an anthropocentric perspective.

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Re:NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Suc... by usrusr on Saturday January 14, 2023 @07:59PM (#34385696)

By that yardstick, it would even be difficult to rationalize a preference of life over rocks. Yeah, we should embrace anthropocentrism and perhaps dedicate some care on not going too far with it.

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Re:NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Suc... by the_af on Monday January 16, 2023 @08:03AM (#34400161)

Yes, taken to an extreme it means life is not preferable to rocks. But because I'm human, I prefer life to rocks.

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.

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