Pthigrivi’s Moral Dilemma:

[Pthigrivi]

I bet orangutans would be chill. Actually the potential for an orangutan civilization is probably the best case to be made for green button.


 

[tater]

Post green button cute animals evolve into a technological civilization:

 

 

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

I bet orangutans would be chill. Actually the potential for an orangutan civilization is probably the best case to be made for green button.

Chimpanzees.

Of course they are very much like us.

When 1-2 males encounter another male chimp alone, they gesticulate and have sort of ritual combat over the territorial conflict. >2? They murder the other chimp, pretty much 100% of the time. The outcome is different if a female, but this is a family forum.

We're just largely hairless apes.

Cute whatever? animals evolving (pictured) might be the best case win, lol.

(midjourney is pretty fun)

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Humans are peaceful compared to most mammals or even primates. Modern humans order of magnitude more. How often had you got into fights outside of primary school? 
Yes we are idiotic lethal but we are not violent just very good at large scale organisations who gave us writing and therefor civilization but includes armies it has been ramping up as organisation became larger with regressions but after we started industrialized stuff got wild. Starting with stuff like ironclads and machine guns and going into stealth bombers and loitering munition. 

I say that is another great filter, how likely is that intelligent creature create large states. Say you rely on smell to differentiated friends from outsiders, it might be very hard to create nations who needed writing to keep track of stuff as all the others was outsiders even if all in your river wally spoke the same language and had the same gods. 
Yes it has large scale benefits as in large scale infrastructure projects and larger armies but it would be not internal trust so structures would not last. 

And you could easy get stuff way worse. We had lots of very horrible cultures in our history, at our point of view, all of them 
It could easy be much worse and no civilizations and they also kill off the other large animals but you farm but the tribal warfare goes on for thousands of years with even changing alliances, you get bronze and perhaps iron but no real writing as its no standards. 

 

I would think this is confirmation bias. Just because we don’t see the terrible things we do 99%, for many 100%, of the time, doesn’t mean they don’t happen.

In addition, large scale violent confrontation between humans (war) is still prevalent. I would say humans are just as violent as any other animal, we have just traded violent squabbles between individuals for group slaughter (for the most part…).

I agree that the ability to form large groups would be an important factor in developing a human-like society though.

[Pixophir]

1 hour ago, tater said:

They murder the other chimp, pretty much 100% of the time. [..] We're just largely hairless apes.

Let's put this into context, pls.:

Killings on rare occasions are specific to chimps. Not every time they see each other, they would not make it long in evolution then. It is discussed if this is an adaptation specific to them, or if this happens because of human pressure:

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-do-chimps-kill-each-other

Other apes are more peaceful. Concerning humans, well, that leaves science and goes in socio dynamics and some pretty strong opinions. Better stay out of that field Suffice to say that most humans are peaceful, and few of us here in the forum have the whole overview over >3 million years of varying human species on earth. From anthropology it seems that intraspecies violence comes with settlement and division of work, with only very few and disputed earlier cases.

Little if nothing can be deducted from a relation to other species. And modern human lineage is not only connected to chimps. A wide spectrum of behaviour is already in every individual, formed by the environment as well as experience.  As an example, domesticated, or even tamed animals exhibit a different behaviour than their wild colleagues. That is very obvious in guinea pigs, which can be pretty aggressive in the wild, but rather peaceful in a cage.

tl,dr, it is not that one-dimensional, or fatalistic to lay blame on our genes. There's always a choice. Peace.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Pixophir

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Killings on rare occasions are specific to chimps. Not every time they see each other, they would not make it long in evolution then. It is discussed if this is an adaptation specific to them, or if this happens because of human pressure:

From competing groups, not in the same troop.

[Pixophir]

Got some more reading on the subject of spectrum of behaviour, very recently published, easy to read, and open access, for anybody interested:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10764-022-00286-y

 

Edited August 25, 2022 by Pixophir

[Pthigrivi]

On the non-scientific scale of Primates I Have Personally Interacted With and How They Are All Basically Monsters Id put humans between chimps and macaques. Anyone who has seen macaques, especially in large numbers knows this is a pretty damning indictment. 
 

The chillest primates Ive met are Himalayan grey langurs. Id trust these dudes over us.
 

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_langur

Edited August 25, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[tater]

But do they build rockets?

(think I saw a relative of that species in the bamboo forest part of Nepal I was in decades ago)

[Pthigrivi]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

But do they build rockets?

Not yet! But one tried to share a fig with me once. I think they’re alright. 

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I bet orangutans would be chill. Actually the potential for an orangutan civilization is probably the best case to be made for green button.

5 hours ago, tater said:

Chimpanzees.

We have a lot of both among humans. Humans are just the best between them and use seat belts while driving a car. Attempt failed.

4 hours ago, Pixophir said:

why-do-chimps-kill-each-other

Cuz they can.

4 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Other apes are more peaceful.

Until they dislike your smile or look and treat them as a challenge.

Baboons don't need even that.

4 hours ago, Pixophir said:

That is very obvious in guinea pigs, which can be pretty aggressive in the wild, but rather peaceful in a cage.

They sit in the cage and dream to slice one's throat. 

But can't jump enough high.

4 hours ago, tater said:

From competing groups, not in the same troop.

Another football team, too.

53 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Id put humans between chimps and macaques

A pretty accurate classification. Either hysteric clowns, or grim monsters. Both killing for banana and throwing crap.

56 minutes ago, tater said:

But do they build rockets?

Depends on diet. They try.

Also, I believe they show a good Orion propulsion if hit them with a coconut in the colored pusher plate. But needs accuracy.

55 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

But one tried to share a fig with me once.

Check your pockets. Wallet, keys, credit cards. These beasts are pretty smart.

[darthgently]

I'd press the corbamite button that makes the aliens teleport back into Pthigrivi's twisted imagination.  Terrestrial life is depending us to save it from being swallowed by the Sun and without terrestrial life we have no purpose.  So given both of the above are under threat the only sane choice is to reject the choice and kill the aliens by tooth and claw if necessary

Edited September 13, 2022 by darthgently

[kerbiloid]

If there is one chance in googol that the solipsists are Solipsist is right. and the world exists only in their imagination, we just have to press the red button to save the Universe.

Edited September 14, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pthigrivi]

16 hours ago, darthgently said:

I'd press the corbamite button that makes the aliens teleport back into Pthigrivi's twisted imagination.  Terrestrial life is depending us to save it from being swallowed by the Sun and without terrestrial life we have no purpose.  So given both of the above are under threat the only sane choice is to reject the choice and kill the aliens by tooth and claw if necessary

Generally the idea behind a dilemma is that there are no good answers so people are forced to ask themselves hard questions about what really matters. At the moment humanity is causing one of the fastest and potentially more damaging mass extinctions in the history of the planet, and for some simple and many complicated reasons we don't seem able to stop ourselves. I think the idea that life as a whole might be better off just removing us now before we do more damage in the hope that a less voracious species with a more even-keeled temperament arises in the next 5-50 million years is not an unsupportable notion. Of course as others have pointed out there's no guarantee that it will happen again before the sun boils the oceans away, and another species may be just as bad or worse than we are. Given that eating synthetic algea underground is kind of where we're headed anyway, this dilemma is asking "are we worth it?"

Edited September 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Generally the idea behind a dilemma is that there are no good answers so people are forced to ask themselves hard questions about what really matters. At the moment humanity is causing one of the fastest and potentially more damaging mass extinctions in the history of the planet, and for some simple and many complicated reasons we don't seem able to stop ourselves. I think the idea that life as a whole might be better off just removing us now before we do more damage in the hope that a less voracious species with a more even-keeled temperament arises in the next 5-50 million years is not an unsupportable notion. Of course as others have pointed out there's no guarantee that it will happen again before the sun boils the oceans away, and another species may be just as bad or worse than we are. Given that eating synthetic algea underground is kind of where we're headed anyway, this dilemma is asking "are we worth it?"

Just to be crystal clear, I find zero plausible evidence or fact to persuade me to embrace species level nihilism.  I have come to the reluctant conclusion that many people simply project their own self disappointment outward to the entire human species.

There, I'm out of the closet as a non-nihilist, as unpopular as that is these days

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

At the moment humanity is causing one of the fastest and potentially more damaging mass extinctions in the history of the planet

Not even remotely true.  You have left out some very major events in the natural history of our planet

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

Just to be crystal clear, I find zero plausible evidence or fact to persuade me to embrace species level nihilism.  I have come to the reluctant conclusion that many people simply project their own self disappointment outward to the entire human species.

There, I'm out of the closet as a non-nihilist, as unpopular as that is these days

You misunderstand. Im not a nihilist, nor is this question nihilistic. The Heinz dilemma isn't saying the law doesn't matter or that lives don't matter, its asking which matters more. The question is if you had to choose, which do you care about more, humanity, or life on earth? I care a great deal about both, but which is actually more important? Life could certainly survive without us, and would almost certainly do much better without us in the short term. That would give life at least another 600 million years to take another few cracks at intelligent species that could get life to other planets before the sun starts boiling the oceans away. But as it is we're here and not likely to disappear instantly. We're on track for a least a 4 degree increase in global temperatures over the next few hundred years, and 8 degrees isn't impossible. We just aren't doing anything to prevent it at the moment, and I see basically zero chance that we'll make the kinds of radical, global changes necessary in the next few decades. Thats not to say we shouldn't try on a personal/local level to do everything possible to make things better, but on a geopolitical/sociological/economic level massive cooperative structural changes that require the privileged cut back on consumption are deeply unlikely. Of course global temperatures have risen to those levels before, notably in the Eocene, but never so rapidly. We may very well do more damage to life than the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, and whether we adapt or die off it'll take another 3-10 million years for biodiversity to recover. Thats kind of a lot to deal with personally, but I do think it puts the nature of our decisions and how we conduct ourselves in some focus. 

Edited September 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

But reality and these dilemma questions have nothing in common, therefore it is reasonable to perceive an editorial slant in what "options" one is limited to in the "dilemma". 

The dilemma is nearly always intended to promote an emotional response in a predetermined direction and has little to offer a reasoned dialog about real world issues.  

We should always strive to reduce our footprint given a cost/benefit analysis. But we must accept that not having a footprint at all is not an option.  And yet we both know that a certain swath of society will always find whatever footprint we have to be "too much" whether this is a defensible position or not. 

A reasonable discourse would involve a willingness to question whether this overly-conservative (with respect to footprint allowance) minority is correct or not based on first principles; not emotional pleas.  Until that is allowed, we are doomed to being frozen in anxiety spiraling toward not existing at all.

I don't think the Earth has enough time to generate another intelligent species.  We have to get it right this time.   Given we are currently at the tail end of an interglacial, I'm not certain we as a group are seeing the bigger picture with regards to temperature fluctuations

 

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

We should always strive to reduce our footprint given a cost/benefit analysis. But we must accept that not having a footprint at all is not an option.  And yet we both know that a certain swath of society will always find whatever footprint we have to be "too much" whether this is a defensible position or not. 

A reasonable discourse would involve a willingness to question whether this overly-conservative (with respect to footprint allowance) minority is correct or not based on first principles; not emotional pleas.  Until that is allowed, we are doomed to being frozen in anxiety spiraling toward not existing at all.

 I mean we can and most probably will continue to fiddle around the edges with EVs and pretending to recycle and no real reductions will be made. To actually stay under 2 degrees C we aught to have already started implementing a near complete overhaul of global manufacturing and the food supply, strict limits on sprawl and deforestation, and begun hard urbanization and a focus on fully sustainable energy, mass-transit, and construction. None of those things are likely to begin for decades. Nobody is going to give up their car so their grandchildren can have a slightly less horrific existence. The die is cast. 

 

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

I don't think the Earth has enough time to generate another intelligent species.  We have to get it right this time.   Given we are currently at the tail end of an interglacial, I'm not certain we as a group are seeing the bigger picture with regards to temperature fluctuations

Its easy to lose track of how deep time really is. Current estimates put runaway greenhouse and ocean evaporation at 600 million to 1 billion years from now. 600 million years ago multicellular life was just beginning to form. Life has plenty of time, and we aren’t probably that special. 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

To actually stay under 2 degrees C we aught to have already started implementing a near complete overhaul of global manufacturing and the food supply, strict limits on sprawl and deforestation, and begun hard urbanization and a focus on fully sustainable energy, mass-transit, and construction.

You have far more confidence than the researchers themselves have in their climate models.  Politicians have huge confidence in them.  Dig down and not so much the actual researchers.

 

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Its easy to lose track of how deep time really is. Current estimates put runaway greenhouse and ocean evaporation at 600 million to 1 billion years from now.

When is the solar system due to cross the galactic equatorial plane again?  I can't recall.  But I do remember that many cataclysmic events coincide with that.  Apparently there is a lot of debris in the galactic equatorial plane.

But we could get hit with a huge CME, or an asteroid at any time far short of the obvious model talking points.  Ice ages aren't random either

[Pthigrivi]

18 minutes ago, darthgently said:

But we could get hit with a huge CME, or an asteroid at any time far short of the obvious model talking points.  Ice ages aren't random either

I mean you’re not alone, but I don’t think you realize just how bad things actually are. Right now we are the comet.

“The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet);also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.”

 

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

17 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I mean you’re not alone, but I don’t think you realize just how bad things actually are. Right now we are the comet.

“The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet);also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.”

 

 

You have far more confidence that any human has a handle on what the "background extinction rate" much less the current extinction rate.   There has been a vast amount of misclassification of species into separate species, not to mention that we discover "new" species every week that have been around for some time. Extinction is real and happens even without human involvement. The biosphere is always in flux.

Basically, there is huge amount of hubris with regards to how much we actually know. 

I don't know how bad things may be, but I'm also humble enough to admit that I don't know how not bad they may be.

But that doesn't mean I stop thinking and only listen to people who say they do know.  I read their papers, I read the critiques of their methodology, I know enough to know they are mostly inflating their surety of knowledge while the politicians that use them as thick solid sources go well beyond the confidence level of the researchers typically.

These days I just look at who is getting rich by pushing whatever.  There is more explanatory power in doing that than any other theory currently.  Very sad

Edited September 15, 2022 by darthgently

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

These days I just look at who is getting rich by pushing whatever.  There is more explanatory power in doing that than any other theory currently.  Very sad

We may just be too far apart in our own understanding of what the basic reality is here, and I don't intend for this to become another climate change thread. The people who are getting rich are the people producing fuel and plastic and steel and food and everything else we consume by the millions of tons, by many, many orders of magnitude. This is not mysterious. I don't know how old you are but I've witnessed these changes and loss of species in my own life. So is everyone else on earth witnessing droughts, fires, more intense summers, milder winters like nothing anyone alive has ever seen. You may need a scientist to quantify exactly how bad things are and how bad things are likely to be within a few significant digits of accuracy, but you don't need a scientist to know that humans are actively gobbling up and burning the entire planet. That much is profoundly obvious.
 

Unfortunately what we’re seeing from a public knowledge standpoint is like one person saying “Gravity is 9.8m/s2” and another person saying “Its actually 9.807m/s2” and then another person saying “no but on the moon its 1.62m/s2”, only for the news media to give equal time to some git from We Sell Fake Anti-gravity Boots.com to tell viewers “See these scientists cant agree at all. How are we to know gravity even exists??”

Edited September 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Life could certainly survive without us, and would almost certainly do much better without us in the short term.

Most part of life would get extinct in short term. Except the rodents, boars, and wolves, of course.

Because they are either human-dependent domesticated forms, or survive in the nature reserves where the superpredators like wolves get killed,

7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

That would give life at least another 600 million years to take another few cracks at intelligent species

1. Why not give all your home and money to somebody else? What if he can use them better than you?

2. The geology and the astrophysics will not give even 300 My. The Earth will be hot, the oxygen will be high.

3. What if exactly the humans are the best the Earth could make?

7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

We're on track for a least a 4 degree increase in global temperatures over the next few hundred years, and 8 degrees isn't impossible.

The pre-emptive justice is a thing.

8 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

We just aren't doing anything to prevent it at the moment, and I see basically zero chance that we'll make the kinds of radical, global changes necessary in the next few decades.

Easily. A good global nuclear war, and the humanity will be very economical for several centuries, even if restores in decades.

8 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Thats not to say we shouldn't try on a personal/local level to do everything possible to make things better

On the personal level one can just save several dollars for corporations making money on him. You don't decide what plastic they will manufacture. You consume what they give.

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Current estimates put runaway greenhouse and ocean evaporation at 600 million to 1 billion years from now.

So, for bacterial life.

The high species will get extinct much sooner.

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

“The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate

Because the natural selection runs much faster under the sapient life pressure.

The nature is just tying up loose ends. Prosperous species rarly get extinct, mostly the too long living relicts and random evolutionary junk do, being replaced with modern models.

The roaches think we are monsters. We are monsters, and the roaches know it.

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

like one person saying “Gravity is 9.8m/s2” and another person saying “Its actually 9.807m/s2” and then another person saying “no but on the moon its 1.62m/s2”

We can measure and see who is closer to the result. We don't need to believe that we are guilty in having  9.80665 instead of 1.62.

[darthgently]

8 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

We may just be too far apart in our own understanding of what the basic reality is here, and I don't intend for this to become another climate change thread. The people who are getting rich are the people producing fuel and plastic and steel and food and everything else we consume by the millions of tons, by many, many orders of magnitude. This is not mysterious. I don't know how old you are but I've witnessed these changes and loss of species in my own life. So is everyone else on earth witnessing droughts, fires, more intense summers, milder winters like nothing anyone alive has ever seen. You may need a scientist to quantify exactly how bad things are and how bad things are likely to be within a few significant digits of accuracy, but you don't need a scientist to know that humans are actively gobbling up and burning the entire planet. That much is profoundly obvious.
 

Unfortunately what we’re seeing from a public knowledge standpoint is like one person saying “Gravity is 9.8m/s2” and another person saying “Its actually 9.807m/s2” and then another person saying “no but on the moon its 1.62m/s2”, only for the news media to give equal time to some git from We Sell Fake Anti-gravity Boots.com to tell viewers “See these scientists cant agree at all. How are we to know gravity even exists??”

I'm 60, and have seen so many reversals in predominating theories in science I've learned that while Science is humble in the long run it can be very self serving on the individual and cult/tribe level in the short run.  

[ColdJ]

Green: It is much kinder to the humans to simply blink out of existence with no pain than to be left to a horrible soul crushing mundane existence.

[darthgently]

9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The people who are getting rich are the people producing fuel and plastic and steel and food and everything else we consume by the

No doubt...15 years ago. But who is getting rich now? Are they intrinsically better? Why are they still flying around whimsically in private jets? Why do they still own several luxurious ocean-side properties each?  Why are they buying up oceanside properties at an increasing rate?  Ignoring repeating patterns is bad science