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No other complex organism has threatened the very existence of nearly every other complex organism.

That is our legacy.

If that makes us wonderfully superior, it's not a superiority that I, at least, am particularly proud of.

But others have other religious beliefs.

dohboi wrote:No other complex organism has threatened the very existence of nearly every other complex organism.

That is our legacy.

If that makes us wonderfully superior, it's not a superiority that I, at least, am particularly proud of.

But others have other religious beliefs.

Best be pragmatic about it, it's not like your opinion about reality matters. I made sure we thought this unpleasant thought because it's an accurate depiction of the situation we find ourselves in. Nuclear Armageddon has been minutes away for 5-6 decades.

Russia or the USA can destroy the world. China, France, or the UK can harm it grievously.

Kinda gives another whole dimension to whether the USA and Russia should get along or be rivals, does it not?

Think of those nukes as embodied energy. We can always cannibalise those warheads for enough power to run the USA or Russia for decades. The USA purchased 500 metric tonnes of weapons grade highly enriched uranium from the defunct USSR in 1993, and it has been furnishing about 10% of our grid electricity since then, and will continue to do so for another couple of decades.

KaiserJeep wrote:OK, now I'm getting confused. I know of no other sentient species in Earth's history. Enlighten me, please.

Homo sapiens is only one of several hominid species that became sentient, self aware and capable of abstract thought. African Grey Parrots, cetaceans, elephants and dogs to various degrees are on the evolutionary threshold of grasping language. In geological time any of these species can mature to a level of language and self awareness similar to humans. We are not this one and only exceptional species on planet earth. This is profound hubris on our part to think so. Our insignificance in the universe is less than a grain of sand when you pull back the lens and look at the vastness of time and space and we put much to much importance on to our species exceptionalism at this particular speck of time.

Are you not anthromorphizing a lifeless ball of dirt, a mere substrate that supports life, with the term "Mother Earth"?

It is much deeper than anthropomorphizing. You do not refer to your mothers womb as a sack of corpuscles do you? She is the giver of life, nurtured you, cared for you, became a foundation of reference that carried you through your whole existence. So is our planet earth and regarding her as the ultimate mother is not anthroporphism. It is holding her sacred and in reverence exactly as you do your own mother. You can regard our planet as a big rock with a molten core with a then veneer of life. I don't. The love I feel for my planet runs deep and I carry this with me every walking moment.
It is close to a religious orientation except I do not need to infuse this consciousness with an invisible man in the sky who says I have dominion over my fellow creatures.

KJ, our species has gotten all jazzed up over the past couple of hundred years with this idea that technology is this uni directional and accelerating trajectory taking us on a non stop journey to ever more bountiful wonders. This has infused your thinking which is why you project into space or see cyber hybridization or CRISPR miracles around the corner. Most of our species history was far more calm and relaxed around technology use which was by the way to enhance and enrich our tribal existence. Instead today we have reversed this in a temporary abberation where we live to enhance technology. In a few generations we will fall back to a slower rhythm. Why not be ahead of the curve and nurture and cultivate love and compassion to your fellow man instead of every day waking up, turning on your computer and tangling your brain with our current dilemma and how we have to escape? You have such very little time remaining before you fade into oblivion, the fate that awaits us all. Don't waste it. I am speaking directly to you but also to everyone reading this and reminding myself at the same time as I write this.

Last night I took 3 russian and 2 french canadian entomologists down to 1500 meters to a rock quarry where we set up black lights and mercury vapor lamps and sipped coffee and or vodka until 2am marveling at the myriad of insects that came into our light trap. Our planet's bio diversity is glorious and something to behold and honor and cherish.

Kaiser, Ibon is rightfully emphasizing that matters pertaining to us humans do not just revolve around technical/intellectual issues but moral/spiritual/emotional ones. In light of this would you not agree that we can evolve in a more benign manner? Because of Culture we have the potential to evolve relatively quickly on a more harmonious course consistent with noble sentiments and attitudes

If they want to come up here I figure I've got at least 5 species of black fly, each of which bites in a different way.

Liked your thoughts about Gia. What you say is very true, without Gia there is no us. We are a parasitic species, too stupid to preserve the host.

Re African Greys, ours died Christmas of 2015. If you listen, really listen, to most human conversation it is just a kind of reassuring murmmuring. Just checking in, making sure of our position in the pecking order. Self reassuring or sniping gossip to maintain position. The grey had that nailed. I've seen him have whole conversations with the Wife using my voice.

Honey, I need you help.
Sure.
Go around behind the heater.
OK.
See the broom.
Yes.
Bring it here.
Yup.

So I did.

The proof that African Grey is not as smart as you, is that he is on the inside of the cage and you are on the outside of it.

Cog wrote:The proof that African Grey is not as smart as you, is that he is on the inside of the cage and you are on the outside of it.

Cog, I can assure you that you are in a much more insidious cage than that African Grey Parrot. The cage that you can't see or refuse to acknowledge has stronger bars than any made of iron.

Just adding that I am not singling you out, we all to varying degrees deal with this cage. It is a byproduct of having the brains we have.

I never thought, much less claimed, that there were not other species ready to assume humankind's position atop the planetary food pyramid. I will point out however that our species has a unique strength and resilience that comes from being omnivorous. Carnivore and Herbivore species are at a disadvantage, they exist in at least a 1-on-1 pairing and co-dependancy. But come to think of it, the great whales are also omnivorous, consuming floating saltwater algae and plankton with equal abandon.

But I also made the point that global thermonuclear war is a potential game changer for all Earthly species. Now I would remind you that with the atmospheric wind currents like the jet stream, and the smaller tropical currents that cross the equator repeatedly, mean that once such a conflict occurs, we are all doomed. It may be the fierce nuclear Winter that brings arctic temperatures to Mt. Totumas and Hawaii, etc. It may be the persistent spread of intensely radioactive nucleotides that poisons all ecosystems everywhere, as did DDT once. Remember the lessons in that great film On The Beach (1959).

....and that great book from 1962:


Or it may be the new supermen enabled by CRISPR tech that grievously wound the ecosystem.

...because every coin has two sides, and most likely one side is as dark as the other is bright.


I'm going to make one final appeal to reason here. With 7.5 Billion or more human beings, the answer to our problems is at this point unknowable. The issue of whether or not reasonable solutions even exist is also uncertain. I'm not in fact locked into a binary solution set. I allow for an infinitude of outcomes between total worldwide disaster and a miraculous "knowledge virus" or "responsibility virus" that causes all humans to "wise up" and become concientious stewards of an already sick and dying ecology, and to reproduce only when they desire to do so.

Being a technocrat, I am indulging my innate belief in the powers of technology: The new and truly "wise men" may and probably will be cyborgs, part of a global network of interconnected human minds. Both CRISPR and Digital Electronics will enable such:

of course none of our opinion about it really matters. do you really think that such is some kind of great and scary revelation???

We are dropping the equivalent of about a half a million Hiroshima-obliterating atom bombs on the planet every day with our burning of fossil-death-fuels, so throwing nuclear annihilation into the mix isn't particularly impressive either.

what else ya got?

Cog wrote:The proof that African Grey is not as smart as you, is that he is on the inside of the cage and you are on the outside of it.

I never said he was a smart as me, just that he mastered much of what humans normally consider passing as "conversation."

Now I do think a species that can sustain large complex cities sustainably for millions of years would be a pretty smart critter.

Newfie wrote:
Now I do think a species that can sustain large complex cities sustainably for millions of years would be a pretty smart critter.

Reaching some stable steady state of self regulation of our population and consumption would make us an exceptional species. In fact, the true mastery of technology, which KJ and others believe is our hallmark, can only be achieved when we are able to reach this steady state.

This represents an integration of technology, culture and governance. It is actually very unfamiliar territory for our species simply because we never before on a global scale had to apply technology toward self regulation. It has been a 200 year ride of extraction and growth. We do not have cultural tools, economic tools nor governance that can balance personal freedoms with collective protection of the commons.

It is not a foregone conclusion that we will fail but it is by far uncertain if we will be able to pull it off. It wont happen without the help of external feedbacks.

We do not have cultural tools, economic tools nor governance that can balance personal freedoms with collective protection of the commons. ---
I think the first area where we as a species must and should focus is on the Economic sphere. This is crucial in so much as the other spheres of human concern can follow from the Economic. We obviously must totally negate the very idea of growth. The Economy should and must serve the needs of the people. Notice I said needs not wants. It must not rely on debt or lending. It must have provisions within the new economic system to account for the environment. The moderator Dave has some good ideas about it and he describes it as a asset based economy with minimal lending and then only based on true collateral ie. assets. Once the Economy can serve the needs of the people, it will attain a cultural recognition and pedestal so that the Culture will mirror the Economy in being about frugality, steady state, regenerative and needs oriented. To that end, the concept and issuance of money should be redefined to a more narrow sense and limited. All forms of barter will be common. So that is how I see it, a new Economic paradigm must lead the way.

Clever, yes we are. Sapien, no we are not.

Mother nature did just fine before we got here. We all make mistakes though and that is how mother nature plods along using geologic time as it's weapon.

I think the earth was plenty BEAUTIFUL before we got here and have no qualms whatsoever that we are eventually wiped out. Compare mother natures creations to our own creations and see which pale by comparison.

At one time I thought that our collapse will mean losing Mozart's symphonies and I thought that was so distressful. That's like confusing the disease with the cure.

Are we a noble creature? That is yet to be determined.

jedrider wrote:
Are we a noble creature? That is yet to be determined.

Think about it. All of the humanistic achievements, the music and art and religious texts, the high ideals of personal freedom and democracy, all of the technology, the mathematics, the astronomy, the physics, the taxonomy of flora and fauna, all of these achievements are now imperiled by our hubris that we need not yield to natural limits.

The very foundation that supports all of the above is now threatened to be undermined. Indeed, if we are a noble creature we are now being called to the task.

it is quite interesting to me that we tend to think of the earth as if it is somehow here to support us.
Many, many years ago a professor pointed out to my undergraduate class that if the earths history were compressed into the time span of a normal movie Man would not appear until the final 30 seconds of the credits.

We are insignificant, and might be characterized in geologic terms as a parasite in terms of earths history. Or just an insignificant experiment. The dinosaurs were here for tens of millions of years, sharks have been here for a hundreds of millions of years. We view ourselves as important because it is the only thing that keeps us going forward.

That being said I still have a few bottles of single malt and a few cases of small brewery beers that I need to address.

How about some more hubris to go with your single malt. We are not only the most advanced species on the planet, we are the only advanced species in the universe. This fact will perhaps make you depressed or it may make you quite proud of what we have accomplished.

Definition of fact
1
: a thing done: such as
a obsolete : feat
b : crime accessory after the fact
c archaic : action
2
archaic : performance, doing
3
: the quality of being actual : actuality a question of fact hinges on evidence
4
a : something that has actual existence space exploration is now a fact
b : an actual occurrence prove the fact of damage
5
: a piece of information presented as having objective reality These are the hard facts of the case.
in fact
: in truth He looks younger, but in fact, he is 60 years old.


Definition of opinion
1
a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter We asked them for their opinions about the new stadium.
b : approval, esteem I have no great opinion of his work.
2
a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge a person of rigid opinions
b : a generally held view news programs that shape public opinion
3
a : a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert My doctor says that I need an operation, but I'm going to get a second opinion.
b : the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based The article discusses the recent Supreme Court opinion.

Definition of hubris
: exaggerated pride or self-confidence

Ibon, you reminded me of nights spent in high rainforest, where trees are so big they have dry areas under them. Lighting a very small fire & laying back in the open. Once the critters in your vicinity so rudely interrupted by you showing up, catch their collective breath, part of what was going on, moves away. Part resumes as if you weren't there. Another part- assesses your position in the food chain. Leeches wont crawl through dust or salt. Mosquitoes find you, but get confused by the fire. Larger carnivorous insects & frogs gather to feast on confused mosquitoes. Snakes yum on frogs. Students of fungi say the species under your bed are preparing for your imminent death, reaching out in hope, every time you sleep, or even stand still for a few seconds. Sentience- it's all relative. I agree until we can get ourselves to honest objective planned degrowth before feedbacks overwhelm our capacity to control anything. Either way we are doing degrowth. A firm decadal 2 century wind down, could be done with minimal cruelty. Not planning it, might be a lot quicker, but will further devastate what little of nature is left.

@Newfie

I have seen no evidence that there exists any other beings in the universe with as much intelligence as humans. Furthermore, I have seen no evidence that even life exists anywhere else besides the planet Earth. Bring forth the facts of a contrary position.

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

(Not surprisingly in this case, this fallacy is formally known as "Argument From Ignorance" )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

For further discussion on the matter, though, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox