"Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>In other words, loss of a species is like the loss of a library in the
>world
>of human information. At the very least, even if the information in the
>library is duplicated elsewhere, it becomes less accessible.
This whole argument, to me, devalues the members of species by reducing them
to strings of bits. It actually makes me more likely to argue "Screw the
spotted owl!" since I'm not convinced that the bits defining a particular
class of owl is particularly valuable outside of ecological engineering
(which is way beyond our capabilities at this level of detail) or aesthetic
appeal. It would make widespread destruction acceptable if we could capture
the genomic variation of all affected species and document their ecological
interactions such that we knew we could reconstruct it later.
Actually, in an Egan-esque way, that's just groovy. It's the information
that's the important thing. A simulated forest that captures every detail of
the real forest is just as good.
So really, we just need scanning tunelling microscopes attached to the front
of our bulldozers.
Joshua
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