Sometimes I am alarmed that so few people are “species ethicists.” In a Darwinian sense, the chicken had won a genetic lottery by being tasty, horse by being fast, dog by being friendly. Discontinuing meat is ethically equivalent to species extinction.
I think a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland might be very interesting too but I don't want to live in one.
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biodiversity (i.e. species count) is often used as a proxy for ecological "health", which can mean all kinds of things but it seems really to be an aesthetic judgment more than anything.
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I agree, which is why I wrote https://twitter.com/Locus_of_Ctrl/status/971479857598160896 … One common justification for preserving wild species is that "what if our descendants find a particular species useful for some reason in the future -- the way we found cows and horses useful?"
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They could find it useful for very strange reasons not yet known to us -- for example modern medicine finds snake venom to be chemically "interesting" and useful.
End of conversation
New conversation -
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"Ecology" derives from 'οἶκος' (house) and, ultimately, environmentalism is (or should be) concerned about the world humans would like to live in.
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