[extropy-chat] Extinctions

[Martin Striz]

On 6/10/06, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 11:05:05AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > Besides, if we really want to have more species, it will be cheaper to
> > make them tomorrow than spending a lot of effort on saving them today.
>
> This sort of gambling of present things for hypothetical future
> capability is part of what strikes normal people as wild-eyed optimism
> and religiousness about the Singularity.  "It doesn't matter what we do
> now we'll fix it later."  "We can't fix it now."  "But we will be able
> to!  Trust us!"

Amen.

Hominids in the ancestral environment faced a high mortality rate.  At
no time was it worth planning more than a few years ahead.  So when
they came upon a bounty, they used it up.  Lottery winners spend their
millions in an average of 4 years.  We are notoriously bad planners in
the long term.

And that feature seems to be ripe even within the transhumanist
community.  Put it on the card, because *somebody* will come along to
pay the bill someday.

> Genetic engineering misses the point, anyway.  Yeah, we might be able to
> make something, but what?  It's not just the diversity, it's the
> *design*, and the encoded history of the Earth, in the diversity today;
> that wouldn't be possible to replicate.

A more specific argument is that ecosystems are robust but sensitive.
Rapid introduction of a single species can have profound consequences
as many equilibria shift.  Rapidly introducing many species in a
superficial attempt to the fix the mess you made could be devastating.

As always, the real world is hard.  Harder than it sounds on paper.

Martin