Math Is Fun Forum

bobby, you're still missing the point.  In this thought experiment (which started out as species but very quickly became the entire world), we are trying to eliminate all life.

It's a game, and nothing more.  Have you never played a game where you had to kill other people?  Same idea, not real.

Edit: And I would like to correct one misconception.  Cyanobacteria are responsible for producing the majority of the Earth's oxygen, not plants.  Indeed, it was cyanobacteria which changed primordial earth from it's harsh atmosphere where aerobic bacteria thrived into the oxygen rich atmosphere we have today.

Certainly it would be the "finale".  But there is plenty of destruction we could do before hand.  For example, build a massive city in some resource rich country like US, Russia, or China.  This could be a base of operations, and it's sole purpose would be (1) to keep the population alive (i.e. food, water, etc) and (2) produce nukes, jets, and other weapons of destruction.

But instead of sending all the nukes at once, we could instead just do an area at a time.  The great thing about radiation is that nothing will be able to grow there for 100 years or so.  Any plants that do try to reemerge will be killed, any seeds that attempt to lie dormant likewise.  Now there is an awful lot of life underground (deep underground) that won't be immediately effected.  I'm thinking along the lines of bacteria.  But even that should be killed off by radiation, no?

So how many nukes would it take to cover all the earth?

In the meantime, we could be thinking of other ways too.  Is it possible to mass produce bromine, or some other extremely toxic chemicals?  How much DDT would it take to eliminate life in the ocean?

Thanks for checking the numbers identity.

It's worse than that (for the person who wants to kill everything ).  There is evidence to suggest that at one point in time the entire surface of the Earth was covered in ice.  It has been hypothesized that life survived this time period in the water near the equator where the ice was thin enough to let the sun light through.  I would imagine that life would also have survived in deep ocean vents, if it was there at that time.  I don't really recall, I'd have to do some research on it.

Life can be rather... stubborn.

You seem to be under the impression that to be dominant, you must be dominant for all of time.  Of course this is false, the dominant species changes from time to time.  What we're asking is what is the dominant species now.  And we are around now, so whether or not we'll be here in the distant future has nothing to do with the question.

Ugh, I've repeatedly said that whether or not we can kill a species of our choice has nothing to do with dominance.  You have not contested this, so I must assume you agree with it.  Yet you continue bringing up nuclear weapons.

As for survivability, yes it is hard to imagine a dominant species that was poor at surviving.  But you're saying survivability implies dominance when really, it's dominance implies survivability.

...for fun...  It's a thought game, nothing more.

No, it isn't.  Control is to be able to change your environment (including the creatures that live in it) to your liking.  Again, absolutely control is not needed, and is indeed ridiculous.  Control does not mean you can do anything that you want, only the things that you need.

I would like some statistics to back this up, but I feel fairly confident that in developed nations, there are vastly more deaths due to nonnatural causes (guns, drowning, cars) and cancer and heart disease, than due to viruses and bacterial.

Ignoring cancer and heart disease, we kill ourselves more than viruses and bacteria do.

Edit: A prion is not alive.

Exactly what position do you think it is I'm taking?  Surely not that humans should try to dominate the planet as much as possible.

No, it's not.  That's a way to define "survivability".  The two concepts are entirely different.

This is a reply to this post

Please explain what "living a long time" has to do with dominance, i.e. control of the planet.

When I want to burn down the earth, why do people continue to think that cities will be around?  Frustrating... anyways, we have another thread now for that question.

That is nowhere near as fun. 

No one is forcing you to read this topic Tigeree... or at least I hope.

You seem to be letting emotion get the best of you.  Remember, that domination would be a bad thing is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not we have dominated the planet.

But back to the main point... I believe we have changed the earth to the way we wanted it.  Nice beaches were eroding so the corps of engineers changed the way waves flowed to prevent this (which was probably a bad idea).  We needed a way to move our army around the country so we built a vast interstate system.  It was a bit too cold in here so we emitted vast amounts of CO2 to heat the place up. 

If you accept that humans could burn all vegetation, then mice and bees are out.  Indeed, burning all vegetation would (I believe) kill all warm blooded animals, and then E. coli would go as well.

I never said we would survive.

Huh?

Is an expression of our attitude of domination?  Still not making much sense, at least over here.

Who cares about cost?  We're going to end the world!  And storage is entirely feasible.  I believe there is enough material, but that would require some researching (which I don't particularly want to do over such a silly hypothetical).

bobby, control does not mean absolute control.  Just because your car will eventually be junked and you will eventually die does not mean you don't have control over your vehicle when you're driving it.  Just because you can't make it do a flip doesn't mean you don't have control.

Just because we can not kill off a species doesn't mean we don't have control.  Just because we will eventually die off does not mean we don't have control now.  Again, you are talking about absolute control.  If that's your definition of dominance, then the discussion becomes trivial and unnecessary.

Why?

Yes, but that magnitude is important.  Nothing else even comes close to what humans do to change this earth.

Humans acting upon a concept can be bad, yes.  It sounded before like you were talking about something else, and as you did not say "yes, that's what I meant" to my question, I think this still may be the case...

Huh?

Again, I want to state that the following has no impact on dominance whatsoever.  But we can kill insects simply by burning all vegetation.  It's being done in the rain forest right now, just imagine if we had everyone trying to do it.  With enough time and determination I feel confident we could eliminate the little buggers.

Control.  Remember control does not mean you need to have the ability to do everything.  For example, we may control a prisoner, but this does not imply we can make him commit suicide.

If you had to pick one species that was in control of the earth, what would it be?

bobbym:

I do not want to go down the road of debating what effect detonating 24,000 nukes (and remember, we could create millions more) will have on the earth.  Too many unknowns, and far too speculative.

I stand by the point that we can wipe out virtually any species we wanted to, but I realize now that this is not important to the issue of dominance.  It does not matter whether or not we can wipe out species.  Even if we couldn't, it does not affect any claims against dominance.

The point I was making is the power that humans have.  As you are comparing this to a gopher, you seem to have missed the point.  Being able to change the earth as much as nature does is a very powerful thing, and it demonstrates the control we have over this earth.  No species, and indeed the sum of all other species, even comes close.

This has absolutely nothing to do with dominance.  Dominance does not mean "can not be wiped out or killed off".

Rhetoric refers to the use of colorful language in assisting one's argument.  Saying things like "we have covered the world in asphalt" and "putrefied air and water" are vast over exaggerations, to the point where you are attempting to use language to sway your audience.  "We build too many roads" and "humans produce pollution in unreasonable quantities" would have made your argument become trivial.  Still not entirely sure what that argument is though...

Please explain how a concept can be bad.  Perhaps you meant that humans achieving dominance is a bad thing?

Humans.  And you do it everyday that you turn on a light or sit in air conditioning.

If we destroy the entire earth, these go along with it.

It's not that we're mobile.  It's that we move earth.  We move earth just about as much as nature does.  Again, no other species even comes remotely close, or even remotely close to that.

That's a whole lot of rhetoric, and for what I'm not entirely sure.  You don't seem to be arguing against my point, only saying that "humans are bad", something entirely not involved with this discussion.