What you say is true, but 'the 90s' is not really a good example, because biology evolves measurably over millennia rather than decades. It might be hundreds to millions of years between a certain bacteria evolving and then becoming extinct, but in the Anthropocene we have accelerated the evolution and extinction of species by multiple orders of magnitude.
For us to have killed a species of bacteria, discover that it's an important species for our health and then be trying to recreate it, all in less than a century, is too fast even for us. I am seriously concerned that we'll end up killing ourselves before our scientific, social and cultural knowledge starts to compensate for what can only be described as recklessness with just about everything we touch.
You and I are important as persons and want to do loads of things in our lifetimes, but maybe it is worth leaving some things to future generations so as not to overwhelm our own.
> I am seriously concerned that we'll end up killing ourselves before our scientific, social and cultural knowledge starts to compensate for what can only be described as recklessness with just about everything we touch.
Beautifully phrased. I arrived at the same view.
I also find it a plausible variation on [1] as an explanation of the Fermi paradox—natural intelligence learns to undermine its own environment before it realizes it (due to complexity), destroying itself.
> I also find it a plausible variation on [1] as an explanation of the Fermi paradox—natural intelligence learns to undermine its own environment before it realizes it (due to complexity), destroying itself.
Every species, even unintelligent ones, destroys its habitat if it's not kept in check somehow. Herbivores will multiply and eat all of the vegetation if not kept in check by predators, predators will multiply if there's an abundance of prey and eventually be kept in check by famine. The trouble with intelligence is we're able to work around these natural barriers and expand the scope of habitat destruction, which we're seeing with climate change.
> I also find it a plausible variation on [1] as an explanation of the Fermi paradox—natural intelligence learns to undermine its own environment before it realizes it (due to complexity), destroying itself.
With that in mind, I feel as if it's almost a moral imperative for humanity to try its best not to succumb to destruction like that - out of principle, the determination to win a universal game that no species has ever won.
Perhaps it might be even more poetic, albeit cruel, if it really is our destiny to destroy ourselves. To be cognizant of our biggest weakness as intelligent life, yet unable to deviate from the fatal course set out for us by nature would be the ultimate tragedy. I think the classical genre might be more hard-hitting without malevolent gods giving us an excuse for our failures.
One step further is to ask how many people will have thought, as you and I have, these very thoughts before either humanity destroys itself or surmounts and escapes the fetters of its recklessness? Or will we just be perpetually lucky and get close to, but never quite reach destruction?
> For us to have killed a species of bacteria, discover that it's an important species for our health and then be trying to recreate it, all in less than a century, is too fast even for us. I am seriously concerned that we'll end up killing ourselves before our scientific, social and cultural knowledge starts to compensate for what can only be described as recklessness with just about everything we touch.
I am not sure this is all that great example, considering that quite a few very deadly frequent diseases are neither deadly nor frequent anymore. Yes, we need to correct, but we the trade off was not all that bad, actually.
For us to have killed a species of bacteria, discover that it's an important species for our health and then be trying to recreate it, all in less than a century, is too fast even for us. I am seriously concerned that we'll end up killing ourselves before our scientific, social and cultural knowledge starts to compensate for what can only be described as recklessness with just about everything we touch.
You and I are important as persons and want to do loads of things in our lifetimes, but maybe it is worth leaving some things to future generations so as not to overwhelm our own.