[extropy-chat] cosmic silence

[Dan Clemmensen]

spike wrote:

>There is a possibility of course that CroMagnon hunted
>Neanderthalensis to extinction intentionally.  That 
>notion is reinforced by the National Geographic report 
>that certain African tribes despise and fear the Orangutan.
>  
>
I think that this is unlikely. The Orangutan is native to
Sumatra, not Africa.

>They seem to not fully grasp the notion that there is
>a great gap between human and orangutan.  (Perhaps they
>have a point there.)  Clearly the beast is a direct
>competitor for food, so those two species are natural
>enemies we might suppose.  They attempt to slay every 
>orangutan possible, which is making it very difficult to
>save the species from extinction.
>
>  
>
I think subsistence-level humans take this approach with any competitor.
It's not necessary to anthropormorphise a competitor to decide to
eliminate it. Apparently, modern-day commercial fishermen treated
dolphins the same way until fairly recently. If killing a dolphin can feed
my starving children, or let me harvest enough shrimp to make the next 
payment
on my shrimp boat and thereby avoid default (and keep my children from 
poverty)
then it a dead dolphin.

In general, people who can get close enough to an animal or plant to kill it
have a much deeper understanding of the species than arm-chair ecologists.
Unfortunately, those practical folks do not in general have the resources to
make evaluations on a larger scale.