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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27276 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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Experts: "Demagogues whipping up distrust in us is irrational, unfair and disruptive to progress."

Also experts: "We can now admit we made up an entire species 50 years ago in a bid to stop construction of a dam."

I oftentimes wonder just how much microfauna taxonomy is fake. Like, this particular decision had major historical consequences, but the average guy doing minnow or crawfish taxonomy can probably get away with classifying whatever he finds in some obscure South American tributary as a new species without anyone calling him out on it. Are there actually 30,000 species of scarab beetle out there? All of the ones I ever see look the same.

I remember reading once about a particular 'species' of fish that was only found in a specific pond. Basically, it was an inbred version of another species that got stuck by the pond losing its connection to a larger body of water. The author noncritically repeated the argument by the researcher that it was important to save this species.

y tho

It seems arbitrary that we get to decide that all species must be preserved as they are now. Extinction and speciation are integral to how evolution functions. How can we justify trying to preserve the animal kingdom in aspic? Especially when the preservation mostly takes the form of preventing us from building anything.

It seems arbitrary that we get to decide that all species must be preserved as they are now. Extinction and speciation are integral to how evolution functions. How can we justify trying to preserve the animal kingdom in aspic? Especially when the preservation mostly takes the form of preventing us from building anything.

It feels remarkably similar in some ways to First Nations: whatever land a given tribe/confederation occupied at the time of contact with Europeans becomes permanently and historically theirs--like a game of Civ ending at an arbitrary cutoff year, then that save state being imported to the expansion/sequel. Doesn't matter when a people took possession of a given tract of land, or who might have been there prior.

Is it permanently and historically theirs, or do you just mean that sometimes people will say that this is “X group” land historically and then go about their business as normal?

The latter. Although I'm still hoping someone/a tribe files a formal lawsuit based on a Land Acknowledgement, preferably incorporating the phrase "put up or shut up."

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