Thread: Poor Wolves (Alaska)

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Humans are animals. Apes in fact. I'm rejecting the anthrocentric viewpoint that humans are somehow better than other animals or somehow endowed with rights that other animals lack. I see no mechanism for this to be the case and nobody has ever been able to justify it for me.

That is not what I said. I said that, since you are a human, you should value human life over other animal life, unless you are a misanthrope.

You're working with group selectionism here? That doesn't lead to a consistent theory. Evolution happens via selection of the individuals within a species, not the species itself. No organism behaves with regard to the well being of the whole species: only with regard to its own wellbeing and those that will statistically bear its own genes.

No, I mean that your statement was retarded so I countered with a dumbed-down explanation of something that goes like:

Shit interacting = Shit interacting. How you interpret it, is a completely different matter. You see wolf overpopuation as something natural that we should not 'interfere with' (Wait what? Interfere? I didn't think there was such a thing with your worldview!) and I see it as a problem that can be controlled to help balance the populations and keep the ecology of the area from becoming lopsided, or at least undesirable.

Certainly you belive in the preservation of rare species, don't you?

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

said that, since you are a human, you should value human life over other animal life, unless you are a misanthrope.

That's an assumption though. I'm asking you to justify it. Maybe I'm just an ananthrope.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

Shit interacting = Shit interacting. How you interpret it, is a completely different matter. You see wolf overpopuation as something natural that we should not 'interfere with' (Wait what? Interfere? I didn't think there was such a thing with your worldview!) and I see it as a problem that can be controlled to help balance the populations and keep the ecology of the area from becoming lopsided, or at least undesirable.

Certainly you belive in the preservation of rare species, don't you?

If it is a rare species, then why do we need to kill them off? I see the act of killing off wolves, genetically engineering crops and everything in existence as natural. It is a meaningless word. I don't think that it's bad per se to interfere in the process but I just don't like the aesthetics of slaughtering animals and not using them afterwards. It's crufty.

The argument that we are doing it for their good falls apart upon the observation that If they didn't have their shit already in balance, then they would have gone extinct long before we got on the scene. The wolves are just on an upswing, that will put pressure on the caribou and the most fit will survive past the downturn in the wolf population that will result from the caribou decreasing in numbers and then that will in turn place selection pressure on the wolves. A lot of the wolves will die off and and the caribou population will rebound. Evolution will happen. If one of the species goes extinct, no biggie: happens all the time. Something will take it's place.

We are randomizing evolution in this case by adding a new selection pressure to avoid people in helicopters. The whole thing is pretty stupid unless we have a good reason for it.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

That's an assumption though. I'm asking you to justify it. Maybe I'm just an ananthrope.

I am a human, therefore I value human life above other life. Of course I value my own life above all other, but that's something entirely different.