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   Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 30-Nov-2023 00:31:18 JST Dave Rahardja

   • Feoh
   • Prof. Sam Lawler
   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs @feoh @sundogplanets I’m not sure how one would measure “most amount of sustainable total life”. Humans seem to be a ridiculously effective predator, destroying other species at an alarming rate. The genes with the traits that begets most copies of itself over time will become dominant, right? Does that not mean potentially extinguishing other gene expressions, given a finite environment?

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     Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 30-Nov-2023 00:49:29 JST Dave Rahardja

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I’m not sure I follow. Instances of one species wiping out another happen all the time. Are they all temporary, statistical outliers? On a long enough time scale, sure. But on a long enough time scale, all life is temporary, equilibrium or no, so I don’t see how evolution optimizes for one versus the other. Evolution may have long periods of stasis followed by bursts of extinctions and rapid competition, but after those rapid periods, a new equilibrium occurs, with different dominant actors. To call one state “favored” over another, I think is incomplete.

     But what do I know, I’m not an expert on the subject.