Sure. To me, my daughter's life is worth more than yours, your family's and everyone else who reads HN. I accept that the inverse is true for you.
If I had to press a button to choose between my daughter or all the strangers on HN and their dogs, I would press it and wouldn't even blink.
If it were a stranger's daughter, though, I'd probably ask some questions about the daughter, and if I can't determine that there's something about her that would be worth a million strangers, she would have the same value as an average stranger, so I would opt to save a million strangers.
If I had to choose between a stranger and all dogs on Earth, I would ask some questions about the human, and, absent any red flags, I would choose the human, simply out of the need to preserve my own species, even if I think there's more than enough of us and having dogs around would probably make a lot of people's life better than that one person.
There's plenty of research showing what an ecological disaster dogs are (and other pets too, but dogs are the worst by a large margin for various reasons, including body size). Objectively speaking, if you had to choose between a stranger human and all the dogs on Earth, you'd be doing the planet a big favor by choosing to keep the human alive.
Of course, humans are an ecological disaster too, but a single human out of 8B is a drop in the ocean, and we're not comparing 1 human to 1 dog.
And honestly, I don't see how dogs make anyone's life "easier": they require more care and attention than a toddler, and it never stops until they die. People I know with dogs basically never travel or take any kind of vacation, because they can never leave their dog alone for more than ~8 hours at a time. Any kind of pet is truly a luxury, but dogs require a level of commitment and caretaking well above and beyond almost any other.
Citation for that research would be very interesting, as i've not seen that.
Part of the beauty of living with nonhumans is the invigoration of sharing understanding and cooperation across species.
I think this is normally called "A dog is a man's best friend." or something similar.
I suspect it holds across millenia because that cross species relation is at times more dependable and communicative than individuals of the same species often are capable of, and that's not sarcasm, I mean it's where that phrase comes from. And i say that as someone not averse to humans collaborating, just as someone who lives among many species.
>Part of the beauty of living with nonhumans is the invigoration of sharing understanding and cooperation across species.
I don't see this with dogs at all. People with dogs are basically slaves to the dogs; their entire life revolves around the dog. It's absolutely no different than having a small toddler, except that you can bring toddlers with you places. I don't see how it's healthy or productive to not be allowed to leave your home for more than 6 hours because your dog will destroy stuff or pee or poop if you're gone too long, you can never go on a vacation, everything in your daily life has to be planned around the dog. How this ever got normalized, I have no idea, but it wasn't like this a generation ago.
If I had to press a button to choose between my daughter or all the strangers on HN and their dogs, I would press it and wouldn't even blink.
If it were a stranger's daughter, though, I'd probably ask some questions about the daughter, and if I can't determine that there's something about her that would be worth a million strangers, she would have the same value as an average stranger, so I would opt to save a million strangers.
If I had to choose between a stranger and all dogs on Earth, I would ask some questions about the human, and, absent any red flags, I would choose the human, simply out of the need to preserve my own species, even if I think there's more than enough of us and having dogs around would probably make a lot of people's life better than that one person.