Sure, to paraphrasing a few contributions to this debate:sd5 wrote:Magma: absolutes...please explain
"What I say is definitely true and what you say is definitely wrong."
"I not only know the planet thinks, but I know how the planet thinks."
"Humanity is bad."
Absolutes. They're tricky buggers and require a lot of backing evidence to stop you looking like you're just repeating the last thing you watched on YouTube.
Good and Bad are the worst things to roll into such rigid belief structures because good and bad are almost entirely subjective concepts.... I imagine if we asked most dogs around the world whether they wanted human life to continue, they'd say yes... ask sharks, they'd likely say no... there is no absolute consensus on whether humanity is good or bad... and without producing a single shred of evidence to explain why, it's ridiculous to say there is. Of course, we can't communicate with animals well enough to do that... and we certainly can't communicate with plants or rocks well enough... I'm not sure where this confidence comes from. Where does it become "obvious"?
There seems to be a strong train of thought in this thread which thinks a lump of rock has feelings and opinions, but nobody has made the slightest bit of effort to explain how a lump of rock has feelings or opinions.
Hackman: Just noticed you asking about whether I've ever listened to the wind. I grew up in Somerset, I've only lived in London for 4 years. My childhood was spent listening to the wind... I love this planet and I want to save it. But I don't want to save it for the sake of making a lump of rock happy, I want to save it for US and for things that we enjoy sharing the planet with (almost every single species we currently have)... the planet existed for billions of years in a state unfit for humans and it will do that again, what we need to do is keep the climate as it has been for the last ten/twenty thousand years for as long as possible in order to keep it suitable for us. When it becomes unsuitable for us, we'll all die along with a lot of other species, some species will be fine (cockroaches, crocodiles and lots of other hardier species) and other lifeforms will evolve to make use of the new environment.
