Pthigrivi’s Moral Dilemma:

[Nuke]

2 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Nuke there is no might about it. Humanity is wiping out Earth. We are ourselves causing the 6th Great Extinction and its happening right here, right now, all around us.

The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity. The included extinctions span numerous families of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishand invertebrates. With widespread degradation of highly biodiverse habitats such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, or no one has yet discovered their extinction. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates. 

Please, do not just take me at my word. I urge you to read what I here link. It is just a start. We are destroying our planet. Its why I have no other obligation if given the choice @Pthigrivioffers us than to pull a modified Thanos and green button humanity away. But I will stop here lest I let passion carry me away. Well I think Ive been enough of a dark voice, off to watch Critical Role!

211408182022

we are not destroying the planet, we are destroying the thin film of goo on its surface layers. its important to be specific in science.  for the purposes of removing humans and have all their stuff blow up in unusual ways, i dont think its enough to destroy all life. you might clear out some niches or poison some water tables. but nature will over time correct them without human intervention. its true that we have possibly the largest impact on the environment since cyanobacteria, but for the purpose of the thought experiment that's not relevant. either button will have severe consequences to the biosphere of the planet, and in that reguard letting the humans live has the biggest effect. if removing humans, then by the time one of the surviving species makes their ascension to sapience, all traces of humanity would likely have been erased. most of our structures would have collapsed, any chemical polution would have likely cleaned itself up, and any nuclear products would be well past their half lives. they might find evidence of our existence in the solar system, like seeing the front bumper of a tesla roadster sticking out of a rubble pile. 

i also have a lot of doubts about the long term survivability of humans without any other life forms, baring the chicken algae. humans currently depend on a wide array of bioproducts to produce building materials and clothing, not that we dont have synthetic alternatives (perhaps the algae is really versatile). transitioning to those materials will take time, its likely large chunks of the population wouldn't be able to survive the first winter. im not sure our digestive systems will function without appropriate gut fauna. of course im interpreting erased as total removal, and not simply killing them and leaving the remains. tree is gone, not killed. what of other biological remains. will we be able to salvage dna from the things dead prior to the button pressing and bring those life forms back into existence? can i get a sample from the bacon in my fridge and re-animate the pig. perhaps dig up the remains of one beau f. cuddles and bring cats back (granted ones that puke on everything). what of fossil fuel, the long dead remains of plant life. do the aliens remove those as well?

[AlamoVampire]

@Nuke Our planet is not just the elements that make up its constituent parts. Our planet is everything on it. Everything. 

21 minutes ago, Nuke said:

its true that we have possibly the largest impact on the environment since cyanobacteria

There is no possibly. The fact is we, the human race in all our arrogance are killing this planet. 
 

 

24 minutes ago, Nuke said:

you might clear out some niches or poison some water tables. but nature will over time correct them without human intervention.

Sorry for quoting sections backwards. Nature cannot survive us. It is outmatched by us. Yes nature can be stunningly resilient but, we are doing catastrophic damage. I want to get on a soap box but I wont. Bottom line is: if nature is to survive, humanity either needs to be thanosed away or do the impossible. It would need to drop its current attitude (any ideology honestly that promotes wonton dominion over nature and each other) and come together and realize this rock does not care for us, but it needs us to get it together and respect it. If we cannot it is doomed, we are doomed. I am going to now walk away and leave a quote by a man smarter than I. 
 

It is our duty to safeguard Earth. If that means we must vanish as a whole and in an instant then thought experiment or no, then that is what we must do. For now, right this instant we, as far as we know, as far as we can PROVE, are on the one planet we KNOW with 100% certainty that harbors life. The enumerable plant and animal species on this pale blue dot must be safe guarded. Even against ourselves. No matter the price we must pay.

010608192022

[SunlitZelkova]

22 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, there is no time left for another attempt, and the human species is probably the first and the last endemic sapient species here.

I thought everyone was writing about speculative evolution in jest lol.

Indeed, this has been gone over in detail elsewhere and human level intelligence itself required a variety of factors we will likely never see again, thus human level intelligence re-occurring is extremely unlikely.

22 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also, one more dilemma for those who prefer the green button.

So, you are ready to die to allow another species replace you?

Then why not gift your home and all money to anyone right now?

As another said, not actually in a spaceship in Earth orbit being told to press one of two buttons or everything dies in 10 minutes.

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

What if human is the most moral, and they are much worse?

I would argue they would be just as bad. If I set rats loose in a fenced orchard, they aren't going to stop consuming until the orchard is completely dead, and then they all die, just as humans are doing to themselves now.

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The very fact of  being making choice and explaining it is telling.

The choice is certainly opinionated, I am wondering on what grounds one choice or the other can be called out as "wrong" or "immoral".

13 hours ago, tater said:

I'd say I'm human, I have human kids, I put them first.

I can imagine many trolley problems where countless lives (human, animal—doesn't matter) are on one track, and my kids are on the other... sucks to be on the countless lives track, that's where I send the trolley (note that I could be on the track with the countless other people, I still pull the lever).

Interesting (yet obvious I suppose), I didn't take such sentiments into account. I would classify this as instinct then rather than "opinionated choice".

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I guess the implication being the immediate fallout from our instantaneous demise is less catastrophic than our continued existence? I know we’re asking dangerous questions here but it’s certainly relevant. 

Most certainly (the effect would be miniscule). Going by the logic pop culture applies to what qualifies as a "world, life ending disaster", the world ended at least by the time of the K-Pg extinction event, and we are the freak post-apocalyptic mutants.

[Superfluous J]

The concept that Humans won't go extinct within a generation of being forced to eat only algae on a barren planet with no other life, astounds me.

[Pixophir]

In such a scenario the ocean has probably become sub- or anoxic (which it slowly does). Meaning no edible stuff at the shores, it is a smelly, probably poisonous mess. Atmospheric oxygen levels will be low because there are many sinks and only few  producers. Even lung breathers will have problems converting energy.

Existing or new conflicts aside, most individuals will just starve or die of thirst, gradually, as conditions worsen, not in a single generaion. But even if some groups survive in pockets somewhere, it needs a certain gene pool size for offspring that is not only functionally capable but also able to produce fertile offspring themselves. If distances are too large for genetic interchange, the groups will just disappear, individuals at younger age or when wounded, because there is no-one left to care for them.

Btw., what was once dubbed "bottleneck hypothesis" in the wake of the Toba eruption, which has always been controversial, has no place in modern palaeo anthropology.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Pixophir

[Admiral Fluffy]

If i press the red button, would the aliens be wiped out as well?

[tater]

The only reason to "safeguard Earth" is because we live here. I'm utterly unconcerned about Earth sans humans, hence the no thought required answer to the premise for me. You could reframe it with all the cockroaches and mosquitos facing instant extinction, vs just 10 humans picked at random (or one, honestly). Buh, bye, to the bugs.

There's obviously a point where I in fact choose to bump off some humans and save the critters—but my calculation would be based around what ends up with the best world—for humans. The best world for humans includes the natural world around us, obviously, but it necessarily includes humans, minus humans there is no reason to care if the Earth exists at all, because minus humans Earth is a dead-end regardless, everything here either lives until all life is extinguished on Earth, or unless a new intelligent species evolves post-human, and finds itself in the very same position we are (presumably the evil aliens come back and offer the same deal, right?).

The most likely candidates for using the next 5 billion years (until Sun = red giant) to evolve higher intelligence would presumably be our very closest relatives, the Great Apes. How long until we simply have Pan sapiens  (or Pongo, or Gorilla) reiterating what we have now?

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by tater

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

If i press the red button, would the aliens be wiped out as well?

Depends.

Spoiler

[tater]

Note that anyone who pushed the green button DID kill all the creatures, just in slow motion. The premise is about extinction, not the lives of individuals. As such, when the extinction happens doesn't matter, individual lives are infinitesimal periods compared to even the time remaining for the Earth to be habitable (much less the universe at large).

Red: Humans live, and can possibly still spread throughout the cosmos—and possibly resurrect some species murdered by the aliens (we grok DNA). End result: a nonzero chance of some life on Earth surviving past the expansion of the sun as it ages that will inevitably destroy life on Earth.

Green: All humans instantly killed, all animals killed anyway. Zero life ever escapes the inevitable destruction of Earth.

Red has some life possibly survive, green is complete extinction of all life on Earth.

Edited August 19, 2022 by tater

[kerbiloid]

Also the green buttoneers have killed almost all domesticated species immediately.

So, several years after, it wouldn't be a garden full  of fruits and flowers with happy cows, horses, pigs, and so on.

It would be a place of dull feral plants, feral wolves, and feral goats and hares.

And feral grass instead of the crops, so even mice and rats would be wild, ill, lousy, and feral.

No humans - no food for mosquitoes.

So, much less food for frogs and fishes.

[Pixophir]

Otoh, the biosphere will have a better chance to recover without humans and once the inertia already put into the system has worked off. That's why green. But this is all just a play of mind, around the corner someone is waiting offering a choice between red and blue, promising a return a to numbness or waking up in a possibly unpleasant reality ... :-)

Seriously, many have the "unpleasant reality" right now, suffering from 40-50°C (currently parts of Arabian peninsula, northwestern Africa, south eastern Asia) or loss of property (storm, fire, flood).

So, the green button for the rest of the world to have a chance. Sure, domesticated animals will disappear, but with few exceptions they were held to die anyway. But the biosphere may recover, in a different state of course.

[Pthigrivi]

8 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

If i press the red button, would the aliens be wiped out as well?

Yes, at least the ones within our solar system. Good question btw I haven't heard that one.

The question no one has asked is "If I press the green button do I die", probably because you've all correctly guessed--yes.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Yes, at least the ones within our solar system. Good question btw I haven't heard that one.

The question no one has asked is "If I press the green button do I die", probably because you've all correctly guessed--yes.

The real question is do I get to be killed by the thriving biosphere of the Earth?

[Nuke]

still not sold on another intelligent species not having time to evolve. you have about a billion years until the sun warms up and the earth becomes uninhabitable (the great boil off). evolution works on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. once an intelligent species evolves it can get to our level from its natural state in as little as 10k years. removal of humans causes a partial die off but opens new niches. evolution seems to supercharge after a die off as life finds way to find newly opened niches. 

i dont think the humans only scenario will play out for very long. we stand to lose a lot of our population in the first year, after that we will utterly depend on hyper industrialization which will further destroy a barren world. thats assuming we dont devolve into a bunch of cannibalistic tribes that hunt eachother to death. the chicken algae may also become a threat.

either button does a lot of damage, but i still think green  is the less destructive of the two. 

[Kerbart]

Red: putting all your eggs in one species-basket. A species that doesn't have a good track record of thinking about the long term future.

Green: basically a reset. Statistically, chances are something better comes out. It's hard to imagine that something worse will come out of it.

It's like a non-zero sum game.

[tater]

6 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Otoh, the biosphere will have a better chance to recover without humans and once the inertia already put into the system has worked off. That's why green. But this is all just a play of mind, around the corner someone is waiting offering a choice between red and blue, promising a return a to numbness or waking up in a possibly unpleasant reality ... :-)

They all die anyway, it's a time frame issue. 10 years from now? 100? 1 billion? At some point, they all without question become extinct. Some evolving to other species (the ones here now dying out), others (the horseshoe crab!) keep living as is until the sun becomes a red giant and they all die.

Unless a replacement life form like humans comes along (burning the oil made over geologic time from the long murdered humans ), all live is extinguished at that point, and the entire history of Earth was for nothing.

Alternately, something from Earth spreads into the cosmos.

[Pixophir]

Yep, quite generally life has no purpose, just like physics has no purpose and doesn't consider the fate neither of individuals nor of any groups. Evolution just happens.

Something spreading into the cosmos is highly hypothetical, there's up to now no indication of that happening, neither by natural means (panspermia) nor by technology (outside of films or defective camera sensors) or even as a planned action (directed panspermia -> not even wrong, one can make a pattern out of everything and the internet is an accomplice for spreading anything). But a lot of evidence that this happens on various occasions on earth, hypothetically and with some reasoning and applying some principles, in suitable pockets on other bodies, simply because the ingredients are found in many places, no need to spread them.

But this may lead a bit too far. The question asked for an individual opinion. Anyway, I'm obviously no fatalist and all is well :-)

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Pixophir

[SunlitZelkova]

17 hours ago, tater said:

Note that anyone who pushed the green button DID kill all the creatures, just in slow motion. The premise is about extinction, not the lives of individuals. As such, when the extinction happens doesn't matter, individual lives are infinitesimal periods compared to even the time remaining for the Earth to be habitable (much less the universe at large).

Red: Humans live, and can possibly still spread throughout the cosmos—and possibly resurrect some species murdered by the aliens (we grok DNA). End result: a nonzero chance of some life on Earth surviving past the expansion of the sun as it ages that will inevitably destroy life on Earth.

Green: All humans instantly killed, all animals killed anyway. Zero life ever escapes the inevitable destruction of Earth.

Red has some life possibly survive, green is complete extinction of all life on Earth.

This argument feels flawed.

If saving non-human life is pointless because they go extinct when Earth becomes uninhabitable, does that not make saving human life pointless because they go extinct when the universe ends (in the best case scenario you describe where they spread through space)?

Or do you consider interuniversal travel to be a potential thing?

7 hours ago, Nuke said:

still not sold on another intelligent species not having time to evolve. you have about a billion years until the sun warms up and the earth becomes uninhabitable (the great boil off). evolution works on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. once an intelligent species evolves it can get to our level from its natural state in as little as 10k years. removal of humans causes a partial die off but opens new niches. evolution seems to supercharge after a die off as life finds way to find newly opened niches. 

i dont think the humans only scenario will play out for very long. we stand to lose a lot of our population in the first year, after that we will utterly depend on hyper industrialization which will further destroy a barren world. thats assuming we dont devolve into a bunch of cannibalistic tribes that hunt eachother to death. the chicken algae may also become a threat.

either button does a lot of damage, but i still think green  is the less destructive of the two. 

I’m gonna share some notes I took via casual googling about this while conducting research for a story in which I considered having rodents evolve to have human level intelligence after humanity went extinct. Note- if anyone sees something wrong please correct me! 

”

1. An environmental stressor is required for it to develop. Primates had environmental issues [challenges] that “required” the development of management techniques and parrots had an environment that was being changed by climate change forcing them to develop skills

2. Technology use [intelligence] reflects natural behavior

3. Parrots and crows are a good candidate according to a researcher

4. Intelligence requires a large brain, and a large brain requires high levels of oxygen

“

Rodents walking on two legs and wearing suits, driving cars to work and typing on keyboards is completely out of the question. In fact, that’s not even what intelligence means.

A very interesting response I found regarding the question of whether “human level intelligence could evolve again” is that human level intelligence isn’t really a thing. Intelligence is merely a reflection of a species’ natural behavior. What suits humans does not necessarily suit another species. So expecting rodents to have to evolve to build fires to “have human level intelligence” is dumb, because that doesn’t correspond to how rodents behave- many burrow underground and thus don’t need fire to keep warm. The concept of fire denoting intelligence is forcing human behavior on species that don’t do what we do.

Further more, “intelligence” is relative. From the point of view of a shark, which has had tens of millions of more years to evolve than us, humans are rather unintelligent- look at how many people drown each year! And they do this while deliberately entering the water while sharks only beach by accident. So a species can be intelligent without appearing similar to humanity.

So then we come to the concept of space travel. What’s up with that? There is no tangible need to fly to space. Perhaps humanity would be more intelligent investing what it has into space in its problems on Earth over the decades since the 1920s. It could be argued that space travel is an expansion of our habitat, but for what? Fish don’t dream of putting on “Terrestrial Vehicular Activity Suits” and expanding on land, after all, they thrive in their limited environments. The concept of expanding into a habitat where can not even survive is… interesting, but does not seem to be well thought out*. It’s basically building a habitat on a lifeless rock or in the sky… but with no air. Remember, “intelligence” is a reflection of a species’ natural behavior. Land species are known to expand their range whenever possible, but expanding into somewhere they can’t actually survive seems like a rather inefficient use of time and resources**. But anyhow, my point in this paragraph is that space travel does not need to be the hallmark of an “intelligent” species. It reflects human behavior in that we try to expand our range wherever possible (perhaps most famously over the Bering Strait land bridge into the Americas), but considering other species it may not make sense to them to expand their range into the sky.

Now to that one might say “but the Earth will be destroyed eventually”, to that I say… so? The universe will be destroyed eventually but that doesn’t make the existence of humanity tragic, and neither would the destruction of the Earth make the existence of any other species tragic, even if it was “intelligent”***.

The gist of all of this is that a species can be “intelligent”, even by human standards, but not necessarily behave as we do, so expecting space travel to occur- or having it as a requirement for “intelligence”- is wrong. But assuming space travel is worthwhile for every “intelligent” species for some reason…

I have to wonder, can any species actually be fit for something like space travel? Primates happen to be built for the complex physical requirements (like… opposable thumbs) needed for construction of things like space ships. And operating their controls. If humans had the physiology of rodents or crows (or whatever your favorite for post-humanity intelligence), I invite you to ponder- could we still manufacture spacecraft and then operate them? Remember, “intelligence” is a reflection of a species’ natural behavior. Our opposable thumbs first appeared because we actually needed them to survive, and then got to the point where we can send text messages with them by chance. But will a crow or rodent need their own “opposable thumb” equivalent after humanity is gone?

Second, Earth’s oxygen content will need to get high again to start any species down the road to human level intelligence, in order for their brain to get bigger and more complex. Most climate modeling is focused on the next 100-maybe 500ish years, but what about millions? I genuinely do not know if this may happen again, but for the purposes of my story I decided the stars would likely not align again for humans, just as they have not (at least yet) for insects****.

On an offhand note, I would say this means the possibilities of extraterrestrial intelligence are high- they just don’t do space travel or nasty things like pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The problem is, the SETI people, who may not have much experience with things like evolutionary biology, are expecting humanity: alien edition every single time. It’s often recognized that aliens would likely look nothing like us, in response to questions about the possibilities of little green men, and thus I find it odd we (humanity/pop culture/SETI) simultaneously expect them to act like us.

*Space colonization is the product of philosophers and otherwise non-scientifically-influenced scientists, during a time when imperialism was regarded as a proper thing, among other terrible backwards things. I can’t help but think that these weren’t serious proposals for space habitation, but instead were basically taking ideas about colonization on Earth and pasting them onto space. The idea has been built upon since then by people picking it up as a product of their heroes and inspirations, but without examining the context in which it was created. If one explores somewhere, they tend to then colonize it, but I assume this was looking at the Moon, Mars, and so on and going “solid planetary body = we can survive there” rather than actually thinking the feasibility through. After all, we explore the sea all the time and I have yet to see widespread proposals for undersea colonization. The immense faith some place in the inevitably of space colonization also feels a bit like the irresponsible use of “but people thought *X innovator* couldn’t do it in their time” at times.

**It could be argued that the transition from aquatic to terrestrial life is an instance where “going to live somewhere you can’t live” has happened, but this was not on a scale comprehensible to humans. That was a “I dip my toe in the water unconsciously sometimes and ten million years later I have webbed feet” type deal, not “self sustaining Mars colony in 100 years!!11!!! LETS GO BRO1” thing.

***There are some who cast humanity potentially remaining on Earth as dumb: a societal level mental regression. But if we don’t consider people who accept death as “mentally regressive” (requiring people to kick and scream in agony at the end of their life to be “normal”) I don’t see why accepting extinction is “mentally regressive”. This seems more like a cultural trait passed down from manifest destiny rather than a sensible consideration of what scientifically constitutes “intelligence”.

****By insects I mean things like meganisoptera, not the tiny, rather lowly (in the food chain) things of today.

[tater]

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

If saving non-human life is pointless because they go extinct when Earth becomes uninhabitable, does that not make saving human life pointless because they go extinct when the universe ends (in the best case scenario you describe where they spread through space)?

Fair point. It depends on the time windows. For sure they go extinct in ~5B years, vs maybe Earth life going on longer than 5B years. Any chance of a second crack at evolution results in the same issue (any intelligent species has to go through an industrial phase, and this premise seems to say that "animals" doing things for animal purposes is "good" but smart animals doing things for their own purposes are "bad" and deserving of extinction. The evil aliens in this scenario don't accidentally kill species by being insufficiently concerned about their environment, they kill species out of malice, apparently. To me the moral question might become which outcome increases the chances of creating the ability to take out these murderous aliens.

[kerbiloid]

Quantum physics needs an observer to resolve the indeterminancies.

The only observer we know is a human.

No humans - no witnesses observers, no quantum physics.

Save the Universe, press the red!

[cubinator]

9 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Quantum physics needs an observer to resolve the indeterminancies.

The only observer we know is a human.

No humans - no witnesses observers, no quantum physics.

Save the Universe, press the red!

If you'd like a game where that is a correct interpretation of quantum physics, I'd recommend "Outer Wilds".

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

30 minutes ago, cubinator said:

If you'd like a game where that is a correct interpretation of quantum physics, I'd recommend "Outer Wilds".

Thank you! Looks excellent!

 

[Pixophir]

59 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Quantum physics needs an observer to resolve the indeterminancies.

This is a bit metaphysical, but anthropic principle kicks in long before any limits imposed by physics. Iow, there is no sense in physics (or the universe) requiring an observer, they don't. Ask a tree if it is aware of physics, even if it develops branches capable of withstanding gravity, it is not aware, and it won't answer, yet physics (and the universe) exist.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

Just now, Pixophir said:

Anthropic principle kicks in long before any limits imposed by physics

It's not an anthropic principle, it's an observer.

[DDE]

Red.

One, this has a chance of killing the aliens that have forced this choice on me. Only the ones that have come along to gawk, unfortunately, but that's a start.

Two, I'm inclined towards thermoethics, and thus absolutely willing to put humanity over the entire rest of the biosphere, by default. The idea of snuffing out a sentient species, especially where the probabilities of another one rising have been greatly diminished, even if by our own impact, is quite detestable.

Three, the development of an optimised biosphere without the presense of any pathogens or other such disruptors could yeild impressive and interesting results, and will be a good practice for any terraforming projects. I also believe we're almost within 'striking distance' of being able to preserve genetics for future recreation of extinct species.