Human extinction

[Trying2Bopen]

Came across a news article online by Fox on “The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” (google “human extinction”, and “The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” for sources). First, I would love to hear opinions on this group, as it seems like a perfect example of natural selection in action (voluntary sterility anyone?).

Second, the article got me thinking a bit about what true human extinction would look like. From a paleontologists point of view, there are two types of extinction, a “true extinction” would be the one we often think of today, the bird species was extant, and then all the members of the bird species died out = extinct. But then there is something called pseudo-extinction, where species A evolves to be species B over time and in the fossil record it looks like species A went extinct.

So how do you think the tune will go at the end of our species (and it does have to end…)?

 

[Eos of the Eons]

I'd prefer that we all evolve into skeptics and scientists who were able to transverse the universe and populate other planets without current stupidities, but...

More likely, we'll all go extinct due to overpopulation/pollution/war/-you know basic stupidity.

I think that is why most folks related to the voluntary human extinction group are volunteering to go before they figure we cause the destruction of ALL life on the planet.

Thing is, this planet won't be here forever, and life IS doomed anyways, unless some life-form can get off this rock. We're the only animals who might some day, so we need to figure out how to stick around long enough to freakin do just that. Or does anyone think a plant spore will be the only life that manages to colonize somewhere after floating around the universe for a few millions years?

 

[Floyt]

It seems odd that these people evidently have put a lot of thought into their idea, and yet completely avoid the crucial basis of "Should we care about a healthy biosphere if we are not around anymore to value it?". It gets a short mention in the FAQ, but the answer is "yes, because it's beautiful and complex". Duh. Guess the whole thorny issue of existence/nonexistence of intrinsic value was a bit too difficult to tackle.

I guess chances at the moment are that we will show up in the fossil record as a "flash" extinction - here today, gone tomorrow, no descendants. Consider that this even applies if humanity slowly peters out over ten thousand years. The palaeontological record in most parts has awfully bad resolution.

An interesting take is Dougal Dixon's Man after Man (oh, it even has a Wikipedia entry...). More of an SF delight, but consequently done and lovely ideas.

 

[MosheJW]

I was wondering, why are humans any different then any other event that causes extinction? They say that humans are damaging the planet in an "unnatural" way, but why is evolving a brain any different then evolving anything else?

 

[cyborg]

Well of course we make the distinction because otherwise one must conclude by induction that all occurrences are natural and hence the term loses any descriptive power.

 

[Roboramma]

It seems odd that these people evidently have put a lot of thought into their idea, and yet completely avoid the crucial basis of "Should we care about a healthy biosphere if we are not around anymore to value it?". It gets a short mention in the FAQ, but the answer is "yes, because it's beautiful and complex". Duh. Guess the whole thorny issue of existence/nonexistence of intrinsic value was a bit too difficult to tackle.

I don't know, isn't that the same question as, "Should we care about anything that happens after we're dead?"
I won't be around to value my friends or family after I die, nor all the people that I could have harmed in life but chose not to. Nor all those I helped though helping them wasn't in my interests.
I still think there's value in them, though I won't be around to value them in the future, I can still place value on their future now.

Similarly, I value the continued existence of life on earth, even after I die.

One point I'd like to make is that whether something is temporally removed from you (for instance it will happen so far in the future that you'll be dead anyway and so won't know anything about it) or removed in some other way, doesn't really matter. If someone offered to sell me something and I knew they'd use the money I gave them to fund slave trading, even though I'd never come in to contact with the slaves nor face any personal repercussions from funding it, I still wouldn't want to give the guy my money.

The point is simply that while we may not be around in the future to care, we can still care about the future now.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Well of course we make the distinction because otherwise one must conclude by induction that all occurrences are natural and hence the term loses any descriptive power.

Which is the view I hold.

 

[Trying2Bopen]

It drives me crazy how people like VHEMT seem to think humans are the absolute worst thing that has ever happened on the face of the earth. I personally feel like they are all flattering themselves. I don’t think we will ever be able to top some of the worst things that have happened in Earth’s history. On that note, is it really necessary to wipe ourselves out, we may be annoying, perhaps mildly irritating, but from an earth history standpoint we are a hiccup.

 

[IXP]

They should just pray for a gamma ray burst that is close by.

 

[SimonD]

There are many ways that the human species could be wiped out

- Meteor. I think we all know what the result of one of this would be. It is estimated that the last big one that hit (65 000 000 years ago) caused a 5000 year blackout of the sun. While we may be able to survive the intial blast, I doubt we could last the 5000 years afterwood

- Another earth related disaster. One of the mass extinctions we have seen has been caused by massive volcanic activity

- Wiping ourselves out. I think this is going to be more likely caused by atomic weapons then by pollution. We are making progress on developing ways to neutralize a lot of pollutions using bateria and the such, so I think we may be able to get over that one. Though I did admit it will be to late for an number of speices on the planet

- the rapture sorry just had to but that one in - considering the number of christians we have have seen over the last couple of weeks

The end of the human speices does not mean the end of the world. "She" will continue on without us. All things must come to an end

As far as the "will another species evolve to challenge us" question goes; personally I think the only species that could possible wipe us out would be a bateria or virus or a similar organism. We tend to kill off anything that we see as a threat pretty quickly so I think that this is a more likley possibility

 

[Ben Tilly]

It drives me crazy how people like VHEMT seem to think humans are the absolute worst thing that has ever happened on the face of the earth. I personally feel like they are all flattering themselves. I don’t think we will ever be able to top some of the worst things that have happened in Earth’s history. On that note, is it really necessary to wipe ourselves out, we may be annoying, perhaps mildly irritating, but from an earth history standpoint we are a hiccup.

A hiccup maybe, but still a pretty big one.

For instance as our excess carbon dioxide gets absorbed in the oceans it will turn the water slightly acid. This doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that this means that most animals that produce shells won't be able to produce shells. Within the next century that is likely to trigger the biggest ocean die-off since the dinosaurs went extinct.

Sure, the world will continue to survive. But should intelligence re-evolve in a hundred million years, we'll still be clearly visible in the fossil record as a major event. All sorts of weird disturbances in various strata. A massive extinction. All sorts of species suddenly managed to travel over all sorts of previously impenetrable barriers. It would certainly stand out as a major event.

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Floyt]

The point is simply that while we may not be around in the future to care, we can still care about the future now.

Ye-es... that's the strange thing, we instinctively do - care about how things will be when we are gone, or how they are were they will be very unlikely to affect us. It's just how we FEEL, and it's worth wondering about, because it does not make much rational sense in most cases. I would think it becomes mandatory to think about the oddity of it in depth when you are in effect trying to base a suicide decision on it!
The literature on the intrinsic values question is a highly fascinating and often bluntly contradictory tangle (at least what I have seen in my brief excursion ). Couldn't blame these guys for shying away from it, but it seems to me they are not even aware there could be a controversy.

 

[Floyt]

For instance as our excess carbon dioxide gets absorbed in the oceans it will turn the water slightly acid. This doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that this means that most animals that produce shells won't be able to produce shells. Within the next century that is likely to trigger the biggest ocean die-off since the dinosaurs went extinct.

Interesting - hadn't heard about that yet. But wouldn't increased CO2 levels without concurrent increase in terrestric CO2 binding have occurred before? Say, increased volcanic activity, but global climate not fit for large increase in plant biomass? Have there been extinction events linked to this?

 

[Oldpossum]

A hiccup maybe, but still a pretty big one.

For instance as our excess carbon dioxide gets absorbed in the oceans it will turn the water slightly acid. This doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that this means that most animals that produce shells won't be able to produce shells. Within the next century that is likely to trigger the biggest ocean die-off since the dinosaurs went extinct.

Cheers,
Ben

Hmm.. One wonders how all those Shelled Mollusks, (for example, the Orthocone) that lived in the Silurian? (you know, the reign of the Sea Scorpions) age, mannaged to grow their shells, when the CO2 concentration of the air, and by equilibrium, the ocean, was considerably greater than what it is now. (at least 1.2% IIRC.)

 

[Ben Tilly]

Interesting - hadn't heard about that yet. But wouldn't increased CO2 levels without concurrent increase in terrestric CO2 binding have occurred before? Say, increased volcanic activity, but global climate not fit for large increase in plant biomass? Have there been extinction events linked to this?

Yes, there have been past extinction events that are tied to acidification. The article that I read indicated that there was an extinction event that is believed to be tied to acidification. (http://www.ucar.edu/communications/Final_acidification.pdf tells me that this event was the Paleocene/Ecocene Thermal Maximum about 55 million years ago.) And it is believed that there was another major acidification event 65 million years ago. (Of course a few other things were happening at the same time...)

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Ben Tilly]

Hmm.. One wonders how all those Shelled Mollusks, (for example, the Orthocone) that lived in the Silurian? (you know, the reign of the Sea Scorpions) age, mannaged to grow their shells, when the CO2 concentration of the air, and by equilibrium, the ocean, was considerably greater than what it is now. (at least 1.2% IIRC.)

As http://www.physorg.com/news11008.html points out, acidification does not matter much to shells made of silicate materials. It is only an issue for organisms with calcium carbonate shells. (A class which includes coral and plankton.) http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/spot_gcc.html has some more specific information, and http://www.ucar.edu/communications/Final_acidification.pdf has a lot of details, including the crucial point that the classes of animal which we are concerned about evolved after the Cretaceous.

There is also some research indicating that it is possible for animals to evolve to handle different levels of acidity. But there is no indication how quickly this evolution can happen or what extremes they can evolve to. But in any case, the timescales that are projected are very, very short on an evolutionary timescale. Even if animals could theoretically resolve resistance, they just may not have time to.

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Oldpossum]

Mollusc shells are made from Calcium Carbonate, not silicate.

 

[Ben Tilly]

Mollusc shells are made from Calcium Carbonate, not silicate.

Point.

I don't claim to be an expert, or even particularly well-informed, on this subject. If you read the articles that I linked and then do a little more searching on your own, you should know more than I do.

However from what I do know there are several major points that are worth noting:

1. Research demonstrates that shelled animals do not do well in acidic water.
2. Research shows that the oceans will turn acidic enough to be a problem. There is already enough CO2 in the atmosphere to do that.
3. Research indicates that ancestors (circa 100,000 years ago) of some current shelled animals had different tolerances for acidity than their modern descendents. It is not known how quickly this adaptation can happen, or what its limits are.
4. CO2 levels are but one factor affecting acidity levels. For instance if CO2 levels remain high then known buffering mechanisms will eventually reduce acidity. Unfortunately those mechanisms are far too slow to matter when CO2 levels spike suddenly as they are doing now.
5. I have absolutely no clue what ocean acidity was during the Silurian. I don't even know the major factors, let alone what they are estimated to have been.

Now you can choose to believe me or not. But if you wish to investigate the topic, I've already provided links to some good starting places.

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Roboramma]

Ye-es... that's the strange thing, we instinctively do - care about how things will be when we are gone, or how they are were they will be very unlikely to affect us. It's just how we FEEL, and it's worth wondering about, because it does not make much rational sense in most cases.

Do any of our basic feelings make much rational sense in the way that you mean?

Why should a mother care about her children? Or to take perhaps a better example and one recently brought up on this forum, why should people care about their pets?
Why should a man care if his wife is having sex with someone else, so long as she's being safe? Why do young men risk their lives for their country? Why should we care about any of the things we care about?

I don't know. But I don't think it's a major problem that we have to confront every time that we want to do something to protect those things. If a mother takes on two jobs to support her children, should we ask "What rational reason do you have to care about them?"
I don't think so. I think we should just say, "Obviously she cares about them, and given that, I can understand why she's doing what she's doing."

There's no way that I can see for us to deduce from first principles what we should care about. Luckily however, there are many things that we do care about. The question is, given that, what should we do?

I would think it becomes mandatory to think about the oddity of it in depth when you are in effect trying to base a suicide decision on it!
The literature on the intrinsic values question is a highly fascinating and often bluntly contradictory tangle (at least what I have seen in my brief excursion ). Couldn't blame these guys for shying away from it, but it seems to me they are not even aware there could be a controversy.

After saying all of the above, I will admit that I agree that it is a worthwhile issue to confont. I just don't see that it's any more important here than considering anyone else doing something for the sake of something that they care about.
In fact, I'll go so far as to suggest that you only think it's an important question in regards to this issue because you don't share their value system.

If a man jumps in a river, saves a drowning child, but dies in the process, we don't say, "Huh, he didn't even consider the question of why he should care about the life of a child that will only exist after he's dead." We call him brave, or a hero.

 

[Floyt]

Roboramma:

I'm certainly not advocating an exhaustive investigation of ultimate reasons every time I witness, or feel moved to do, something we'd consider decent/virtuous/altruistic. If I want to function in a society that has these values a basis of operation, that would seem an impractical move!
But the point is, the actions you describe have an obvious payoff. There's a payoff in the form of increased social standing (the rescue example), a social payoff - or increased chances for your descendants (the mother), a biological payoff. This is certainly not the reason in the minds of the people doing these things; they do it because it feels right. But they serve as an explanation of WHY they would feel right - the underlying, hardwired, largely unconscious motivation.

But when we care about something that can have no effect on us (like the fate of the biosphere long after we are gone), it seems to me that we have divorced the feeling of "that's the right thing to do" from any underlying reasons. The only payoff to be got here is that what is a kind of stimulatory bonus with these earlier examples, the feeling of having acted right. It's like sex with contraception in this regard: the icing on top of the action has become the reason to perform it. Obviously, that does nothing to diminish the perceived importance, neither with sex nor with "purely ethical" decisions. Which, as you say, is worthy of wonder and investigation.

I guess the reason why I think it is important in THIS special case is that this is practically a textbook example of an ethical decision that has been removed from its prime causes. I mean, you can't go much farther than entirely removing any possible recipient of a payoff from the game! It's like a constructed ethics test scenario. Putting this proposition out there and not picking up on this says to me that it didn't occur to them, so that for all the fluff around the particulars this must really be a worryingly half-baked notion.
Not that anyone here was running out to get sterilized after reading the site, I guess.

There's no way that I can see for us to deduce from first principles what we should care about. Luckily however, there are many things that we do care about. The question is, given that, what should we do?

A large gaggle of philosophers of Ethics would like to have a word with you! Actually, I can't see a way either, but deducing ethics from first principles has been a thriving academic industry since the first goose-quill was plucked. Videlicet, if it was easy, someone would have done it by now...

In fact, I'll go so far as to suggest that you only think it's an important question in regards to this issue because you don't share their value system.

Actually, I do, to a large extent. (It's why I'm doing my PhD in ecology at the moment) But I happen to be aware of the double-edged quality of my motivations, that is, I'm skeptical of them. As you see, I release the friction by shooting off about things I'm only marginally informed about, which is also a venerable academic tradition .

cheers
floyt