Re: Re: Re: Re: Have the rich and powerful lost their altruistic instincts?
It's due to our absurdly complicated communication systems, innate social aptitude, and the ability to communicate abstract ideas (language).
But it's also our altruistic punishment:
We find similar social shaming in Murders (crows) and in pods (dolphins) but not anywhere even close to what we see in humans. Humans are the extremes.
There's nothing to suggest that any species comes even as close to altruistic as humans....or as murderous.
Humans being the most extreme listings of altruism does no exclude other animals from displaying altruistic behaviors. Is that where your disagreement comes from?
I agree with your sentiments but humans are responsible for the current Mass Extinction Event (6). Known as the Holocene Extinction Event.
So ants do not even come close nor do giant asteroids, apparantly. There was one during the Permian–Triassic period that saw an MEE of 90% of life? I think? That one is worse than the current one.
I could be remembering these wrong but, yeah, humans are by far the most murderous killers.
Yes but the mass extinction event isn't an issue because of murderous intent. Species are being wiped out by negligent homicide, not premeditated murder. When I say that ants can match us or exceed us in the category of being murderous, it's actual murder I'm talking about.
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Last edited by darthgoober on Nov 28th, 2018 at 11:43 PM
Seriously, war, colonization, slavery, genocide... all the worst actions of humans are replicated by ants. Hell even the whole thing of wrecking the environment in a way that kills off other species can also be attributed to them.
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There's a problem with the theory in regards to how much faster species are dying off now... there's no real way to know if it's accurate. The estimates for the extinction rate during ancient times is based upon extrapolating the rate of disappearance of creatures in the fossil record, but we have no idea how many species existed that there's no record of. Even today we're still constantly finding new species of animals, do you really think there's any way scientists can accurately gauge how quickly new species appeared and disappeared thousands/millions of years ago? Of course they can't. Modern technology allows us to better find and identify new species as well as track their rate of death, we don't have anything close to a good way of doing that for species from 100,000 years ago.
What's more, IF we are in a new mass extinction event(it's not a universally agreed upon fact that we're in one) because of climate change and such, it can't all be placed at the feet of humanity. Even if volcanoes don't release as much co2 as human industry, they still release quite a bit. Natural sources(especially wetlands) contribute in a huge way to methane emissions(which are over 25 times more powerful per unit than co2), in fact only 60% of methane emissions are attributed to humans, and a large portion of our methane emissions are directly tied to the production of food. If we discount methane from food cultivation, methane from natural sources is actually higher than what is produced by humans. We're only responsible for 40% of Nitrous oxide emissions(which are 300 times more potent than comparable co2 emissions), 60% of them come from natural sources. Water vapor is the single biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect(between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds) and humans only directly impact water vapor levels on a localized level. We do contribute to the problem, but the problem isn't entirely dependent upon us.
Also, ants don't care if any individual member colonies of ants or termites they invade relocate to survive another day, they kill every one of them and then move on and look for another target to annihilate. And they don't care if the effects they have on the environment kills off other species, they reshape/destroy ecosystems to suit themselves and say f*ck everyone else.
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Last edited by darthgoober on Nov 29th, 2018 at 02:27 AM
Generally speaking, the more aware a creature is of its own mortality, the more extreme its compensatory behavior (for *good* or *evil*), ie, the more intense its quests for power to (unconsciously or not) minimize death terror.
With humans, as the song says, nobody does it better.
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Last edited by Mindship on Nov 29th, 2018 at 10:33 AM
I'm not taking an anti scientific position, I'm simply acknowledging a lack of hard evidence. I looked it up and they do in fact extrapolate the rate of death by the rate of disappearance by animals from the fossil record. But we can't assume that all other species of animal that were around at that time were dying at the same rate. Just imagine if there was a huge emp that basically knocked us back into the stone ages. Then 100,000 years in the future people assume that species they don't have any record of that are already extinct in our time became extinct at the same rate as rats or cats they found a couple of fossils for and don't die out for another 50,000 years... Isn't it fair to say that there estimates would be a little off? We have no real way of properly estimating the death rate of species that we don't even know ever existed. Fossilization is a relatively rare occurrence, we can't even be sure that the animals we only have one or two fossils of didn't die actually die out a long time after their disappearance from the record.
It's not like scientist are infallible they're as prone to making leaps of logic based on little evidence when they're under pressure.
If you'd like to present original research of your own to support this unscientific position, I'd read it. Have your findings, regarding this claim, been peer reviewed and published in a credible publication? How has the scientific community received your findings?
The thing is, I'm not claiming to know what rate they died out at... I have no estimate to give. But one doesn't have to have an answer of his own to spot that someone else doesn't have enough evidence to support a specific claim. I'm not the one making the positive assertion that there is a good way to estimate the death rate for the totality of animal kind thousands of years ago, because I don't believe there is one. It's one thing to put forth something and acknowledge that there's no way of knowing how accurately the estimate is because they're working with an extremely small sample size, but these people are putting it forth in a pretty definitive manner which is just wrong given the circumstances.
Think of it like this, pretty much all the poll takers said that Donald Trump had no chance of winning because they extrapolated results from a relatively small percentage of the relevant subjects... which is exactly what the scientist are doing by assuming that they can adequately estimate the extinction rate for animals that they have zero knowledge of based on the extremely small sample of animals which appear in the fossil record. We've cataloged far more modern day animals than we have extinct species through fossils and the best estimate goes that the totality of modern day species that still exist comprise only 1% of species that have ever existed. So in a best case scenario, we're using a very small fraction of 1% of all the animals ever to determine the death rates for the all the rest of the animals. The fact that it's the scientist's "best possible guess" in no way guarantees that it's actually a GOOD guess even if they know more about the subject than everyone else who currently lives. 2 or 3 thousand years ago the smartest and most qualified people in the world using all the available data/evidence at the time probably would have told you that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and everything else revolved around it... and their best guess would have been far from the truth.
Hell just imagine asking that kind of question to a biologist who's a strict adherent to the scientific method in regards to modern day species. If you happen to know one, just go up to him and ask him "Do you think you can give an accurate estimate of how many totally undiscovered species at the bottom of the ocean have went extinct in the last 50 years"... I can almost guarantee that his answer will be an unequivocal "No". Even if you can tell him the number of species that we've actually cataloged that live in the bottom of the ocean that that we've seen no trace of for 10 years, his answer is going to be that same.
I'm not being "unscientific" just by pointing out that they're not being scientific enough.
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Last edited by darthgoober on Nov 29th, 2018 at 09:09 PM
"There's a problem with the theory in regards to how much faster species are dying off now... there's no real way to know if it's accurate."
Since you've taken that position, you're asserting a position that is provable.
"If you'd like to present original research of your own to support this unscientific position, I'd read it. Have your findings, regarding this claim, been peer reviewed and published in a credible publication? How has the scientific community received your findings?"
Probabilisticly, you're not a paleoecologist or paleoclimatologist. You could be and I just don't know. If so, my bad. I would love to read your research. It would be highly controversial in those two communities, however.
I cannot engage with a person in a conversation is the premise relies on basic, uncontroversial science. If you can't even agree there, there's no point to having a conversation. I just throw those convos out as wastes of time.
Edit - You could just ask me to cite my points but you've been nice enough not to be a dick.
And here's part of the MEE that I was talking about, earlier:
"Isotopic evidence bearing on Late Triassic extinction events, Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, and implications for the duration and cause of the Triassic/Jurassic mass extinction" https://www.sciencedirect.com/scien...012821X04002857
I'm not questioning uncontroversial science, I'm question the logic they use to reach their conclusion. I can totally buy their general projections in regards to the extinction rate of animals that actually appear in the fossil record even though when you get right down to it the logic of assuming a lack of fossils conclusively proves when a species is extinct(just think about that, if a lack of fossils from the period proves a lack of existence during the period it would mean that no animal other than the ones we've found fossils of or that we've cataloged running around ever existed) seems a little questionable, and I believe there's been multiple ice ages and mass extinction events... I'm even open to the notion that that creatures are dying faster now than a long time ago, but when they start throwing out actual numbers in regards to creatures they don't even know existed it becomes a matter of the basic logic. It's not logical to assume knowledge of an extremely small percentage of a subject can be reasonably extrapolated to the entirety of the subject. Even they can't really agree on the increase, some say it's now 100 times higher, some say it's 1,000 times higher, at least one guy says it's 10,000 times higher... and these are people who totally agree with idea and what constitutes evidence. The reason they don't all agree on the increase is because there's not actually enough data available to figure it out.
There's data that exist in regards their being ice ages/hot periods/and meteors in the history of the planet, that's science and I bow to the scientists on it. There's data that exist in regards to mass extinction as far as to most animals dying out at various points in history, that's science and I bow to them on that too. But there's no actual data in regards to the true extinction rate of animals that we have no evidence of even existing. They're extrapolating using the fossil records based on the assumption that the extrapolations they used to calculate how many animals existed at back then in the first place, which is itself based up the extrapolation they use to estimate the number of animals that currently exist are all totally accurate when in fact, they don't have any direct evidence of anything other than the animals we've cataloged. Extrapolations can be nice and estimates can settle the mind, but when you start layering one upon the other... that's just not conclusive science.
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Last edited by darthgoober on Nov 30th, 2018 at 02:51 AM
Professor Nigel Stork from Griffith University, Australia notes that there's no evidence that the extinction rates are as high as what has been previously estimated...
And this article from Livescience flat out says "Species Extinction Rates Grossly Overestimated" and notes how wrong we've been in our estimations of extinction rates previously...
This kind of stuff combined with the fact that people who actually believe that species are dying faster than can't seem to agree on just how serious the problem is a pretty good indication that there's some serious problems with the way that the numbers are being calculated.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying that the actions humans take aren't bad for the environment or denying that we have both directly and indirectly caused the deaths of too many animals. Nor am I saying that we shouldn't do more to protect animals from us, all I'm saying is that there's no way of knowing if the claim that animal species are dying 100x faster now than ever before is even close to accurate because there's very little in the way of direct evidence.
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Last edited by darthgoober on Nov 30th, 2018 at 04:20 AM
You're upset about the 6th extinction event being a fact and are using those articles, which make very weak arguments and do not at all dispute the fact that humans are responsible for the current 6th extinction event, but just talk to humans not being as severe as estimated.
You understand that, right?
Feels that you've moved the goalposts.
The first article says it was overblown by 160%. So? And which rate? Rates vary from 1,000 to 10,000 (some research suggested just 100 times but newer research shows those old numbers were grossly underestimated) greater than background extinction rates. Does it really matter, at this point, to debate how terrible the Holocene Extinction Event is? Maybe 10,000 times is overblown. What if it's closer to the conservative 1,000 times? That's still extremely far faster than any other MEE in the previous 5 MEEs.
One articles cites a specific researcher. So? Perhaps his estimates are too high but there's far more paleoclimatological research out there besides that one researcher's estimate.
The position you're taking is that you don't like the fact that we are in an extreme MEE. All the evidence clearly indicates we are in one. And nothing you've brought up contradicts that. But you still don't want to believe in the current MEE.
Really, your position is you don't believe in the already long proven anthropogenic extinction. And the "evidence" you're using for this is a few commentators and researchers who believe it is not "Super absurdly extreme terrible anthropogenic extinction, it's only super absurdly extreme anthropogenic extinction! There's a big difference!" Yeah, okay.
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