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Well this board has sat here empty for several days, so I figure I would light a fire to generate some activity, so here goes.

The hubris espoused by some environmentalists is limitless. Humans are masters of the universe and can bend nature to our will. First it was controlling the climate but has moved on to eliminating extinctions all together. Not only stopping new extinctions, but reversing old ones. Work is underway through cloning technology to bring back the DoDo bird and then on to the Woolly Mammoth. The scientists hope to eventually release a breeding population back in to the wild to restore the free ranging species nature intended. OK by me, but no Velociraptors please.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/31/106741...

Here is the headline from the linked article. I forgot this site doesn't do that automatically as some do.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/31/106741...

Biotechnology
A de-extinction company is trying to resurrect the dodo

Its plans to bring back the dodo, woolly mammoth, and Tasmanian tiger might never work out. But wouldn't it be cool if they did?

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...more at link 

We are crashing the climate. The data is pretty solid. Even the oil companies predicted it decades ago, but covered it up (profits, ya know).

De-extincting species? I don't really see the point. Kinda cool that we could do it, just from a technology standpoint. The trick would be getting enough diversity, and enough specimens, to create a viable breeding population. You can't just create two and let them go. Not enough genetic diversity, they would never survive.

I suspect reintroducing a species would disrupt the natural balance of things, especially if the species has been extinct for tens of thousands of years (whatever the time span). The reintroduction would likely lead to to things such as the spread of diseases humans may not have ever been exposed to, etc.

Perhaps the focus should be on preventing a species from going extinct in the first place (but I'm not sure if I completely agree with that either). If Mother Nature is behind the extinction of a species, I'm inclined to be "okay" with that and move on.

I tend to agree. But Mother Nature isn't behind a large number of extinctions. Humans are. And, arguably, human-caused climate change also is stressing some ecosystems.

I did once hear the argument that people are a part of nature, and so an extinctions is "natural". While strictly correct, I still see a difference.

And the irony is that if we disrupt enough ecosystems, we will endanger our own survival because we need those various ecosystems to provide what we need (e.g. oxygen, clean water, etc).

It is interesting to ask the question of how dominating humans are as a species if measured by our mass, compared the mass of all other mammals. Whilst humans alone weight less much than the animal slaves that we keep, and eat, when you combine humans and our livestock together the result is pretty horrendous. It turns out that humans and our livestock have blown out to 96% of the entire mammal mass on the planet. All the mammal wildlife combined together now only makes up a tiny 4% of all mammals (by mass).

It is only one way we are saturating the planet - or to put more accurate, have already saturatED - and in this case to the detriment of an enormous displaced former population of animals.

https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-25...

- Manlobbi

It is interesting to ask the question of how dominating humans are as a species if measured by our mass, compared the mass of all other mammals. Whilst humans alone weight less much than the animal slaves that we keep, and eat, when you combine humans and our livestock together the result is pretty horrendous. - Manlobbi

Here is an interesting table (scroll down a ways to see it). Humans are not even top five on the list in the bio mass scale.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/03...

It is interesting to ask the question of how dominating humans are as a species if measured by our mass, compared the mass of all other mammals.

Can you imagine living in a world where humans could not reason?

Our ability to do so, is a gift and a curse that just keeps on giving. Even though we have coexisted alongside other species for thousands of years, some might argue that humans are nothing less than an invasive species.

With our ability to reason comes languages, tools, technological advancements, science, medicine, population growth, wide spread species and resource manipulation...

Without it and you have primitive societies, emotion-driven actions, no complex governments or institutions. Starvation, sickness and death always at your doorstep. Population growth would not exist beyond what the bio ecosystem could support.

I wonder what AI technologies will conjure up and bring to the table after you and I are pushing up daisies in a 100 years from now? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they can't reason, right??? Or will they???

Thanatos

To be fair, he specified "mammals" in his post. If you include all life, ants exceed our biomass by a lot. For example. And they may be all that's left after the coming mass extinction. Ants and roaches can live on just about anything, just about anywhere.

To be fair, he specified "mammals" in his post. If you include all life, ants exceed our biomass by a lot. For example. And they may be all that's left after the coming mass extinction. Ants and roaches can live on just about anything, just about anywhere. - 1pg

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Yes, but mammalism is an outdated mindset. Mammalists just assume superiority even though they are a minority compared to insects, fish, and bacteria.

Humans are an invasive species? Isn't every species an invasive species when it is new?

The imposition of moral sentiment on descriptions of what happens in the world is endlessly entertaining. It is literally the raw material from which all drama is created!

One of the most interesting things to me about humans is our "evolution" is no longer primarily genetic. In genetic evolution, an imperfect copying mechanism (DNA for the most part) and a selection mechanism (survival) result in the refinement of DNA to produce results that look remarkably well engineered.

But humans now primarily evolve through memetic evolution. An imperfect copying mechanism (digital media combined with edits, false news, advertisements, click bait, and of course mediated through the human's mind) and a selection mechanism (primarily how much attention the audience (us) pays to things) result in the refinement of human ideas and the artifacts in which we record these, combined with drastic changes in human beahvior according to the dominating memes. Memetic evolution now dominates the competition between humans, on the scale of variation between competing human groups we are effectively genetically identical, all the competitve action is in our knowledge and beliefs. Technology is a memetic competition: who can build the most effective diplomatic/military corps, communists dabbling in capitalism or capitalists dabbling in socialism? Can we be defeated by memetic viral attacks which are one way of thinking of wokeness, racism, astrology, materialism, christianity, environmentalism, and other belief systems which change how we act?

What are our limits? I have heard it said that the human brain is the most complex system in the universe, but how many weeks away are we from having an AI which is more complex?

As to the question: will AI's ever be conscious, do you realize we have still not proved that humans are conscious? Most of us believe we are conscious (is it possible to be wrong in such a belief?), and using Occam's razor we assume other people are probably conscious too, but we have not come up with any kind of reliable test to check this, even until now!

The Turing test, which is really as popularly described to see how well a machine can fake being conscious, without reading at all on whether it is actually conscious, really REALLY misses the point. What if AI 'consciousness' is wildly different from human consciousness, as one might expect from an intelligence that is not a thin overlay on the emotional system the precursors of mammals started developing 100s of millions of years ago? What we need is a real test for consciousness, and we could test it on humans before checking our AI's with it, not a test for seeing how well humanity can be faked by a machine.

What are the chances the message above was written by Chatbot?

R:)

I have a science fiction image of the inverse relationship of the extinction of species with the growth of human populations.
What happens to all those sentient animals we have killed and continue to kill off? The great mystery, in an effort to maintain balance, rather than creating humans a la The Island of Doctor Moreau, "souls" migrate from the former to the latter.

Humans have become rather matter of fact about the whole process without really examining it.

What happens to all those sentient animals we have killed and continue to kill off? The great mystery, in an effort to maintain balance, rather than creating humans a la The Island of Doctor Moreau, "souls" migrate from the former to the latter.

Not sure what the science fiction part of this is.

I'd like to point out a few things about death.

1) Every sentient being "we" have ever killed was going to die eventually anyway. Why would you think something different happens depending on how they die?

2) As bloody as our hands might be, we don't hold a candle to nature. Look at your magnificent evolved body, and realize how many 100s of millions of sentient near-relatives of your had to die to get you here. Look at how strong your arms are and think of how many nearly-ancestors of your were slightly less strong, and lost the race to survive as a result. Look at how smart you are and think of your proto-ancestors who didn't quite make the grade when it came to evading death before reproducing? Every thing which is great about you was won at the price of killing off without leaving progeny your near-ancestors who didn't quite have it as good as you do.

Now THATS some science fiction story!

R:)

Yes, Ralph, the great mystery is many-faceted.

Well this board has sat here empty for several days, so I figure I would light a fire to generate some activity, so here goes.

The hubris espoused by some environmentalists is limitless. Humans are masters of the universe and can bend nature to our will.

I have to admit this is some Grade A trolling, but if that's what it takes to get a board started, I'm in.

'Humans are masters of the universe.'

As if. We're not even masters of our own planet. We're rarely even masters of our own geography; it was only the limits of technology and travel that kept separate tribes apart long enough to evolve different colors and features on the various continents. (I have hope that the vast distances of space will keep us away from other extra-terrestrial civilizations, otherwise I see even more war in our future.)

Since we really have no idea where we're going (Allegorical quote from The Truman Show: 'How Does It End'?') it doesn't seem that bringing back a dead species poses much risk. The planet, sometimes with our help, has killed off thousands of species (millions!) over time, and new ones grow to fill the niche left behind. It probably sounds cavalier, but one more species, big deal. It'll survive or it won't. Oh well.

I'm not sure why this subject came up on my boards, again, today, but I reread it and realize I was talking about a different aspect of death than you were:

"Every sentient being "we" have ever killed was going to die eventually anyway. Why would you think something different happens depending on how they die?"

I agree, every thing alive will one day die, but I was talking about entire species dying out, going extinct, their mass being replaced by humans.

Reminds me of the conservation of energy.

and reincarnation. and Soylent Green. and Karma.

If all the beings on this earth are human, would you care how any of them die?? Or yourself?

Thought experiments.

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