So what do you draw from this?
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl
That I care about the ecological health of not just wild places but also human places and that species diversity is a good measure of wild ecosystem health and a poor measure of human ecosystem health
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Replying to @danlistensto @Locus_of_Ctrl
and since domesticated animals and farms are human ecosystems I do not care about a domesticated species going extinct if the health of the ecosystem they lived within is improved because of it
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Replying to @danlistensto
Okay. This doesn't avoid my utilitarian justification for environmentalism though -- our future descendants might find certain species (or breeds) useful. There already are extinct breeds of domesticated animals -- like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_White_Terrier …
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl
I didn't think we were debating whether or not environmentalism can be justified (it can be, in many different ways) the question is do we care about the loss of say, pigs, if a synthetic alternative becomes available. Lets just keep a few in a museum-zoo or something.
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Replying to @danlistensto
My original argument was that existence of species has a certain "moral worth" from the perspective of modern environmentalism (I didn't argue whether modern environmentalism is inherently justified or not -- I simply stated what seems to be the case).
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl @danlistensto
I then wondered why it is that domesticated animals (many of which have a staggering variety of unique breeds) are not given the same status by the very people who seem to support modern environmentalist ethics.
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl @danlistensto
When I try to think about why this is so, I can't escape the conclusion that there are two different "moral systems" at play here -- one of "city-dwellers" and another of "rural dwellers."
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl @danlistensto
Suppose synthetic meat becomes available *and* you also believe that farming is morally suspect. Then you don't need to feel "guilty" for putting many rural dwellers who rely on farming out of business! You don't need to subsidize them anymore etc...
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Replying to @Locus_of_Ctrl @danlistensto
I believe that almost *all* moral systems have traces of this kind of thing in them -- how do you justify something that previously would be morally unjustifiable -- in order to reap economic benefits for people whose "ecology" is similar to yours?
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yeah, these are the questions we need to be asking. no easy answers for this kind of thing.
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