The whole human race - if it's our extinction or theirs, I'd rather it be ours

[kimera]

Numerous studies have shown that habitats in which there are greater diversity of species are far healthier than the ones which have limited numbers. Furthermore, if you want to be selfish, animals have a lot to offer humans. We can study them to learn about diseases, we can compare our closest relatives and learn what it means to be human, we can have companionship in ways which fellow humans can’t offer (I’d eventually get sick of my friends living with me but I don’t mind my pets always being around), and provide many other useful functions.

Because of this I am one of those people who would kill a junkie for the tigers in that hypothetical situation. I also support limits on human population and animal sanctuaries. I do this because that’s what you do in other situations where one species is causing the dramatic destruction of another. In Hawaii I worked to kill off species which were threatening the native ones. I do not harbor any illusions about the state of mother nature because “good” and “evil” are constructs which can only be applied to the human race. Does something have to be “good” or “not evil” for us to save it? So what if animals are inherently violent? At least they have an excuse. Should we not try to stop the destruction of chimpanzees because they hunt other animals as well as each other? I think this is one of the reasons why we should save them.

The ones who say that people like myself should kill ourselves or our family and friends make me laugh. That would make things worse because people would still go around killing animals. Instead, I work for alternatives. I donate money to funds that try to give the humans in the areas where the chimps live alternatives to killing chimps for money. I support population control (which normally comes anyway after education). When animals come into human lands and cause destruction then I support the killing of the animals. However, when people push into the animal’s space so far that the animals start harming human possessions or even humans themselves in order to stay alive I have no pity for those humans just as I don’t have any for those who build in geologically unsound areas.

Humans are smart so we can learn to live with minimum cleansing impacts on other species. If people refuse to do this then I have no problems with their destruction. However, I believe most people will realize the benefit of having a diverse ecology.

[Lemur866]

OK, we’ve got some confusion here.

The value of a particular animal versus the value of an animal species.

Whether ANYTHING has any value, ultimately.

The value of a human life in the abstract versus the value of MY human life, and the value of the lives of humans that I love.

It doesn’t matter if one tiger more or less survives. One individual tiger isn’t more valuable than any one invidividual human. Killing a tiger might be wasteful, but there’s a difference between killing one tiger and killing ALL tigers. A big difference.

Likewise, people die every day. Human lives are not infinately valuable, not even to the indivual humans who have those lives. I would give my life to save my daughter’s life. My life, to me, is worth less than her life. And every day I do things to risk my life…like drive a car, cross the street, go for hikes in forests where bears live, and so forth. People risk their lives for money and status, they risk their lives to help their friends and family. So treating human life as having infinite value is clearly falsified.

That said, we can’t expect people to voluntarily starve themselves to death to save a tiger, or shrug their shoulders if a tiger eats their child, even if we agree to ecological and economic polices that will inevitably result in a few people getting killed by tigers every year, and many people going hungry because tigers killed their livestock. It is not reasonable to expect the people actually affected by tigers to bear the entire cost without complaint.

So just because we deem it an acceptable trade for a couple dozen people to be killed by tigers every year in return for the continued existance of tigers, no one is going to volunteer to be one of those people. And if we expect people being killed by tigers to let themselves be killed out of altruism, well, we’re going to find out that it can’t possibly work. So we have to have some sort of incentive for people who live around tigers to tolerate their presence.

And here in the United States, people seem to be able to tolerate wolves and bears pretty well, because very few people are on the edge of starvation, and the people who wander around in the wilderness and get attacked by bears are generally there because they’re doing it for fun, not because they are subsistance farmers who have no choice. So, economic development so people don’t have to be subsistance farmers is an elementary way to change people’s attitude about tigers. Nobody with an IT job in Hyderabad is worried about getting killed by a tiger, or having their goats killed by a tiger.

So all this talk about how human life is either infinately valuable compared to animal life, or how human life is worth nothing compared to animal life is kind of stupid. It’s not like we are faced with a choice between exterminating the vast majority of animal species, or we’ll all die. We’re faced with a choice about what sort of world we’re going to live in. Is it going to be a world with tigers, or a world where tigers are exinct? Is it going to be a world where human life is cheap and disposable, or a world where human life is respected? Of course human life has no ultimate value to the universe, LIFE has no ultimate value to the universe, but so the fuck what?

I want to live because I want to live, I don’t need a reason to live. I HAVE the desire to live, and that’s simply because for the last billion years every single one of my ancestors has wanted to live, at least long enough to have at least one offspring, and because only those sorts of organisms survived to have offspring, I’m the same way. And I want my children to live. I don’t care that their just collections of walking chemical reactions, I want them to live and I’ll fight for their lives. And I expect most people feel the same way, and those that don’t want to live are going to remove themselves from this planet pretty soon one way or the other. so who cares what they want?

So. Expecting people to allow themselves to be killed isn’t going to work. But why should we go around extirminating tigers? It’s not like we have to kill tigers to survive, even subsistance farmers in India rarely find themselves in life or death (or even economically consequentially) confrontations with tigers. If the choice was between tiger extinction and human extinction then we’re going to have tiger extinction as long as we allow humans to make the choice.

But WE AREN’T FACING THAT CHOICE. Which is why discussions like this piss me off so much.

[Autolycus]

So, if you’re driving down a two lane street, a tiger in one lane, and a child in the other: which do you hit?

[What_Exit]

@Autolycus

So, if you’re driving down a two lane street, a tiger in one lane, and a child in the other: which do you hit?

I brake.

[What_Exit]

@Lemur866

But WE AREN’T FACING THAT CHOICE. Which is why discussions like this piss me off so much.

I agree, but most of us seem to be suggesting that we reduce or at least slow our population growth, not sacrifice those already alive. I know that is what I said.

Does that work better for you, or does it still piss you off?

Jim

[Lemur866]

Except, if you look at what’s actually happening, the world is no longer experiencing exponential human population growth.

And the rule of law, economic development, and liberal democracy are the best ways to continue that trend.

If you want to decrease population growth in the third world, the absolute best thing you could do would be to figure out ways to educate poor women. In fact, I’ll say this is the single best thing you could possibly do for the environment. Education for women human rights and gender equality in the third world.

This is not a zero-sum game. Economic development and human rights improve the environment and poverty-stricken dictatorships are horrible for the environment. We don’t face a choice between saving humans or saving the environment. We face a choice between saving humans and the environment on one hand, and enslaving humans and destroying the environment on the other.

[Liberal]

@What Exit?

You always confuse me a little. I take it you mean these current Neo-Con Republicans as Democrats are usually less Libertarian than Republicans? Or am I missing something?

I’m saying that a large part of the electorate — of any party affiliation — might be put off by the message that their lives are less important than those of endangered fish and tigers. I’m not saying the message is right or wrong (although I disagree with it). I’m saying that it will not be palatable to most voters, in my opinion. Therefore, wait until the voters have unseated the White House Republicans before dropping this sort of bomb on them. You don’t want Democratic candidates having to defend this kind of message right now.

[storyteller0910]

@featherlou

Some points of clarification: I’m not talking about the extinction of pretty animals like tigers (although I realize my examples in my OP could have led people to think that) - I’m talking about the extinctions of ALL living things - from the algae in the seas to elephants on the veldt.

When I say mass extinctions, I mean the massive amount of extinctions humans are responsible for directly or indirectly - the numbers of species of all kinds that we have wiped out. According to Wikipedia - {Bolding mine}

The inherent value of humans? Negligible, except possibly as food for large predators and fertilizer for plants, bacteria, molds and fungus after we die. All of our accomplishments mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, and a lot of them actually have a negative impact on the earth.

Animals don’t care about conservation of species and high-minded stuff like that. They aren’t capable of abstract thought. Humans are, though, so shouldn’t we be holding ourselves to a higher standard than just, “See, want, take?”

We don’t own the planet or anything on it; we are just animals with higher brain functions, too, but I think we have the capacity to look after other species (plant, animal, and other). Maybe we don’t. Maybe we’re kidding ourselves about how high our brain functions are, if we can’t seem to get the pretty obvious fact that if we lose all biodiversity on earth we lose the human race, too.

OK, I’m going to attempt buck the “you’re a poopyhead” trend that these threads seem to follow and address the points raised above. I may, however, do so incoherently, because while my point seems very clear to me, I’m not sure I can articulate it. I think it may actually boil down to two points:

You say, above, that in the grand scheme of things, nothing that we do or accomplish has any meaning. We’re fertilizer. I don’t agree with this, exactly, but for the purposes of this discussion, I will accept it. Let us stipulate that humans have no inherent worth. Does it not follow, then, that nothing, not tigers, not algae, not clams (mmmmm, clams), not dolphins, nothing, means anything in that grand scheme? That nothing has inherent worth? And if not, what matter if it disappears? You say some of our accomplishments have “negative” effects on the Earth, but I reject this based on your own premise. Define “negative” effects. How, in the grand scheme of things, is the Earth any worse off than when we arrived? Are there fewer species? Perhaps. So what? Give me a reason why this is a negative outside of its impact on living things like us,, which we have already agreed is meaningless. If global warming wipes out everything alive on Earth, if all the pretty tigers disappear, if there’s a new Ice Age or not a single tree left on the planet - none of these things are inherently “bad” in and of themselves; we perceive them as negatives, but so what? We don’t matter. So why should I care about the animals at all? My actions are meaningless in the grand scheme of things, so why not do what makes me happiest while I’m around, since the short-term joys I experience with, say, my daughter, far outweigh the joys that 6,000 tigers will ever give me? Accordingly, if her welfare conflicts with that of the tigers, why not choose hers?

Two - I think there are very few people in the world who have no care whatsoever about nonhuman animals. It’s not like this is a choice between “I think animals and humans have equal value and would kill a village in Africa to save a few tigers” and “Animals suck, man! Kill 'em all!” The vast majority of people, it would seem to me, favor preserving the health and welfare of animals as possible. But it seems like these threads always present arguments like, “we should show a little compassion,” as if people who value human life over animal life therefore support the ritual murder of helpless puppies for entertainment value. There’s a middle ground. One can think that any death is unfortunate, and any needless suffering doubly unfortunate, whether animal or human, while still preferring the death of an animal to that of a human, all other things being equal. I don’t think anyone is interested in pursuing a course aimed at “eliminating all biodiversity,” as you suggest in your post. We’re (or at least, I’m) just saying, “Best if they and we can live. But if it’s them or me, better me than them.”

And I think the fact that we can even make those judgments is a bit of an argument in favor of preferring human life to nonhuman animal life, even if only marginally. We are at least capable of considering how our actions affect the world in which we live, and in adjusting them. The tigers aren’t.

I think this was close to incoherent, but I gave it a shot and I’m going to post it so let’s see how it goes.

Oh, and you’re a poopyhead.

[What_Exit]

@Lemur866

Except, if you look at what’s actually happening, the world is no longer experiencing exponential human population growth.

And the rule of law, economic development, and liberal democracy are the best ways to continue that trend.

If you want to decrease population growth in the third world, the absolute best thing you could do would be to figure out ways to educate poor women. In fact, I’ll say this is the single best thing you could possibly do for the environment. Education for women human rights and gender equality in the third world.

This is not a zero-sum game. Economic development and human rights improve the environment and poverty-stricken dictatorships are horrible for the environment. We don’t face a choice between saving humans or saving the environment. We face a choice between saving humans and the environment on one hand, and enslaving humans and destroying the environment on the other.

Agreed with all but the first line. There are still far too many countries experiencing far too large of an increase. The net result is population is still climbing fast as better medicine and the Green (agricultural) Revolution are allowing so many more humans to enjoy longer, happier and more productive lives. The trick is to slow down reproduction through education as you so perfectly mentioned.

This is where some religions get in the way. However, it is not just poverty; part of it is the cycle of having kids young and having many kids. This gives poor couples little chance to improve their kid’s chances.

@Liberal

I’m saying that a large part of the electorate — of any party affiliation — might be put off by the message that their lives are less important than those of endangered fish and tigers. I’m not saying the message is right or wrong (although I disagree with it). I’m saying that it will not be palatable to most voters, in my opinion. Therefore, wait until the voters have unseated the White House Republicans before dropping this sort of bomb on them. You don’t want Democratic candidates having to defend this kind of message right now.

Thank you for clearing that up, perfectly sensible advice.

Jim

[enigm4tic]

damn, auto beat me to the child vs. Tiger thing.

But shouldn’t you hit the child since it’ll be fed to the tiger anyways?

On a serious note:
as pointed out above, there’s no reason to assume that the choice is humans vs. tigers. The two things simply aren’t mutually exclusive and there’s no reason we need to sacrifice one for the other. If it comes down to it: I say kill the tigers because I’m interested in self-survival and if you’re willing to feed yourself to the tigers be my guest, but assuming that position as a default for all humans is rather silly…

[lokij]

@Q.E.D.

True, but also consider that no other species has screwed up the planet to the extent that we have. And we’ve only just gotten started.

Oh, I don’t know… those pesky blue-green algae took a perfectly nice anaerobic atmosphere and fucked it totally up with nasty toxic, chemically reactive oxygen. The poor anaerobic bacteria have been relegated to the bowels of the earth and poorly canned foodstuffs ever since. Bunch a blue/green jerks is what I say.

[Lemur866]

Well, I think the inclusion of “world” and “exponential” make my first sentance true.

But global poplation growth should no longer be treated as a crisis, because it seems to me that the vast majority of proposals to curb population growth violate human rights on a grand scale, and my thesis is that protection of human rights is a neccesary (albeit not sufficient) condition for environmental protection.

A government that has the power to forcibly sterilize people without regards to their wishes is also a government that will have the power to make war and chop down forests and dump chemicals in the water without regards to the wishes of the people.

The advantage of human rights and education and gender equality as goals is that they’re worth doing even if they didn’t have any ecological effect.

And storyteller0910 is exactly right. If human life is meaningless, then animal and plant life is meaningless to. The argument that we should save the enviroment because human life is meaningless is completely illogical. If my life is meaningless, then who cares what I do…even if what I do is torture pandas to death. It means nothing, right?

[Dob]

Bottom line; If you wont starve to save a tiger, your Hitler.

[What_Exit]

@Lemur866

Well, I think the inclusion of “world” and “exponential” make my first sentance true.

But global poplation growth should no longer be treated as a crisis, because it seems to me that the vast majority of proposals to curb population growth violate human rights on a grand scale, and my thesis is that protection of human rights is a neccesary (albeit not sufficient) condition for environmental protection.

A government that has the power to forcibly sterilize people without regards to their wishes is also a government that will have the power to make war and chop down forests and dump chemicals in the water without regards to the wishes of the people.

The advantage of human rights and education and gender equality as goals is that they’re worth doing even if they didn’t have any ecological effect.

I already know we agree on the education portion, would you be in favor of free birth control?

Do you believe in uncontrolled capitolism? You can have a free and educated democracy that without regulation just goes whereever the laws are most lax and the labor is cheapest. I believe we need large world wide acts like the Clean Water, Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. These have done wonders for the US. We could use some sort of balanced and flexible Green House emissions reduction act.

And storyteller0910 is exactly right. If human life is meaningless, then animal and plant life is meaningless to. The argument that we should save the enviroment because human life is meaningless is completely illogical. If my life is meaningless, then who cares what I do…even if what I do is torture pandas to death. It means nothing, right?

The logic is sound, but I do not believe I said that human life is meaningless. In fact I do not buy that at all. So hopefully that was just directed to others.

I value human life and animal life.

Jim

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@What Exit?

I brake.

Just like a little girl.

[Epimetheus]

@storyteller0910

…snip…
I think this was close to incoherent, but I gave it a shot and I’m going to post it so let’s see how it goes.

I think you bring up some good points. I agree with much of what Lemur866 has to say too, and that I fall in the middle ground. I don’t propose going around needlessly killing animals, torturing them or using them for experiments. I just value human life more than theirs and our survival, IMO, trumps theirs.

I don’t think humans are infinitely valuable though. By any means. Every life isn’t sacred. I don’t want anybody thinking that I feel that way.

As for all things being meaningless… I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I concede that from many viewpoints it can seem that way. I guess if you take gods and possibilities out of the picture, all is meaningless.

[What_Exit]

@Biffy the Elephant Shrew

Just like a little girl.

I don’t get the joke, please let me in on it?

My answer was both the answer to the question and a metaphor for the problem being discussed. I believe we can preserve both Human and Animal rights and life.

Jim

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@What Exit?

I don’t get the joke, please let me in on it?

So if there’s a tiger in one lane with Blonde on Blonde on his car stereo, and a Doper who doesn’t recognize Dylan quotes in the other…

[What_Exit]

@Biffy the Elephant Shrew

So if there’s a tiger in one lane with Blonde on Blonde on his car stereo, and a Doper who doesn’t recognize Dylan quotes in the other…

Thank you.

[Lemur866]

Well, I’m not AGAINST free birth control, handing out baskets of condoms to villagers is probably a good idea. But free birth control is only a band-aid if third world women don’t have the economic and social power to choose for themselves to use birth control. And if they had that power, then you wouldn’t need free birth control, because women would chose it for themselves.

I think the evidence shows that most people, given the choice, prefer to control their fertility. Give women the economic and social ability to control their fertility and they’ll do so just about every time…certainly often enough to bring birth rates down to near replacement.