[hnnameblah365]

Until humans find something capable of the level of creation that humans deem higher order, then human logic is the only viable measurement?

This is a circular argument for anthropocentrism. It makes no attempt to define any of its qualifying characteristics from outside the human perspective.

To some, coral reefs, rainforests, and biodiversity are all a level of creation higher order than what humans can produce. Those things didn't need us to exist. In fact we ruin them. Not to mention other forms of created beauty humans haven't figured out how to ruin yet, such as sunsets or starry skies.

[Igelau]

> This is a circular argument for anthropocentrism. It makes no attempt to define any of its qualifying characteristics from outside the human perspective.

You won't be able to do this. Human minds will make human arguments. Even if you had a "higher order" perspective, human minds would only be able to comprehend it in their own terms. Definition? Perspective? These themselves are human notions.

> sunsets or starry skies

Happen thanks to our atmosphere, in a narrow wavelength of EM that precambrian critters found useful to eat each other with. Beauty is in the eye of the anthropocentric beholder.

The circularity is unavoidable. Like induction, you just have to be okay with it.

[Grimm1]

Sure, but I'd have to grant you anything other than the human perspective matters most first and you've already assumed it does where as I remain unconvinced. You made a pretty out there statement and I provided what is in all likely hood the common opinion.

I think the burden is on you here if you want people not to believe humans, of which I assume you and I are a part of, and our perspectives matter the most.

Until the coral reef learns to speak up and say, hey I'm putting my foot down. Humans and our choices determine it's continued existence. That alone makes our perspectives the most important if you want to continue having a coral reef, because it's our perspectives you'd need to be changing to keep it around.

We are for better or worse the arbiters around these parts.

[hnnameblah365]

I agree that most people are unquestioning anthropocentrists and that itself is fine. I disagree that it's the responsibility of everything else on the planet to meet us at the table. It should be humanity's job to close the communication gap. Consider it an act of benevolence if you must.

I don't view it as a deficiency in other species' ability to communicate. It's a deficiency in our ability to listen. The reefs are speaking up, they're literally laying their lives on the line and the 'body' count is communication to humans that we should stop. It's not just coral, we are in the middle of a mass extinction event. One that just so happens to correlate with the exponential growth of humanity.

I think it's fair for people to question direct participation in exponential population growth. More people for more people's sake is not a solution, it's a problem. Of course this leads to a lot of really bad ideas about population control. Its a hard problem to solve, but I argue it's the same class of hardness as getting people to change their behavior in the middle of a mass extinction that doesn't impact them with anything but second order effects.

[Grimm1]

We've been in a population decline for a while. | https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-29/global....

Quick edit: That article is just to backup my comment about population decline, I don't really agree with the article's opinion to ramp up births.

[dragonwriter]

That article is...wow.

> But as my colleague Robin Hanson has pointed out, dwindling populations create their own inexorable logic.

“have their own inexorable logic” seems to stand in for “cam be scaremongered via naive assumption that trends extend to infinity”.

> If the Japanese population shrinks by half, to 65 million or so, what’s to stop it from declining to 30 million? Or 20 million?

The same negative feedback pressure that is why the runaway growth that was the concern when people projected then-current trends forward ~50-60 years ago didn’t happen, either.

It’s much more plausible that global human population is approaching the horizontal asymptote of a logistic curve than that the slowing of global growth points to a shift to permanent population loss that would be an existential threat.

One obvious factor: strong non-family economic support systems are one of the strongest predictors of low natural population growth, but shrinking populations strain thlse systems, reducing their long-term viability. There are many more negative feedback mechanisms at work, too.

[hnnameblah365]

I didn't know, thank you for sharing!

> If you think the world is overpopulated and has serious environmental problems, you might welcome this news.

It me