Dagon, thank you for the reply! You’ve actually pointed out a lot of things which I didn’t think about. You’re right that I was only considering animals that have displayed some level of intelligence—dogs, dolphins, and the like. I did not consider animals that display colonial intelligence. I do hope such species are also considered which future humans make lists of non-human creatures to being along!
Your point about moral patients is interesting. I didn’t know that phrase, but it seems that all life on earth is a moral patient of humanity.
Climate Change certainly affects ants as it does other life. Why do you consider that climate change will not be an extinction level event after a point? “reducing the number of species by a bit” is certainly a worse hyperbole than mine.
Lastly, you seem very confident that some species will be brought along by future humans and “a larger number of species we’ll create or allow to come into being along the way”. What makes you say that? Could you please explain?
Aggregation is weird, when talking about morality. I don’t know what you mean by “all life on earth” or “of humanity” in this context. Which humans have what duty to exactly what? Are you concerned with biodiversity, biomass, variety or quantity of mammalian brains, or something else?
I expect that climate change will be an extinction event for many plant and animal species, and climate change or not, all individuals will die eventually. However, it won’t overall destroy all life on earth—we’ll engineer mitigations for large numbers of humans, and that will carry along with it large numbers of species and individual animals. It’ll be painful and expensive, but not permanent destruction of life.
Unless the rioting and civilizational fragility keeps us from mitigating it, and we nuke ourselves in the process. That could set things back a few tens of millions of years.
Dagon, thank you for the reply! You’ve actually pointed out a lot of things which I didn’t think about. You’re right that I was only considering animals that have displayed some level of intelligence—dogs, dolphins, and the like. I did not consider animals that display colonial intelligence. I do hope such species are also considered which future humans make lists of non-human creatures to being along!
Your point about moral patients is interesting. I didn’t know that phrase, but it seems that all life on earth is a moral patient of humanity.
Climate Change certainly affects ants as it does other life. Why do you consider that climate change will not be an extinction level event after a point? “reducing the number of species by a bit” is certainly a worse hyperbole than mine.
Lastly, you seem very confident that some species will be brought along by future humans and “a larger number of species we’ll create or allow to come into being along the way”. What makes you say that? Could you please explain?
Aggregation is weird, when talking about morality. I don’t know what you mean by “all life on earth” or “of humanity” in this context. Which humans have what duty to exactly what? Are you concerned with biodiversity, biomass, variety or quantity of mammalian brains, or something else?
I expect that climate change will be an extinction event for many plant and animal species, and climate change or not, all individuals will die eventually. However, it won’t overall destroy all life on earth—we’ll engineer mitigations for large numbers of humans, and that will carry along with it large numbers of species and individual animals. It’ll be painful and expensive, but not permanent destruction of life.
Unless the rioting and civilizational fragility keeps us from mitigating it, and we nuke ourselves in the process. That could set things back a few tens of millions of years.