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[MetalSlimeHunt]

If sapient life is what matters, than the health of Earth's life is dramatically more important than humanity specifically. Earth has produced at least one sapient species, and in the likelihood that we exterminate ourselves instead of reaching the stars we ought to ensure we do not damage Earth in a way that it cannot produce another sapient species to take a shot at it. This could be the only lifebearing planet to create sapient creatures in the entire universe! Ergo, caring for life and especially for nonsapient megafauna is important.

Hard anthropocentrism doesn't work in a secular worldview. Humans specifically have little special about us once you assess the value of sapience separately, unless one thinks God exists and endorses us specifically.

[Mathel]

Defining sapience just off of humans is problematic to me, especially if you're using that as a hard cutoff, below which you literally don't care about their suffering at all. What makes us special? There's nothing in particular, we just happen to have quite large brains and developed a lot of things as a result. There's no reason to believe that we're the most intelligent possible animal, or that anything below us is fundamentally different.

I firmly believe in "humanity first". I believe the ultimate goal of humanity is to first put as much of Earth's nature under control (don't destroy it), then spread to other planets and colonize them, then repeat. Caring much about nonsapients kind of goes in the way of that. We are the most advanced animal on Earth, thus we are superior to every other Earth species.

I actually have a similar philosophy.

Because if we try to limit ourselves to not harming sapients. Partly because we can't just arbitrarily decide something is or is not sapient. We would need to have a way to truly communicate with them, or prove the impossibility of it to know for sure. For example, it is possible that wolves are. They might have culture. We would just not know it.

So adhering to the "no hurting sapients" rule would harm humans. A lot. What if mice are sapient? But they are also actively harmful.
Flies probably are not sapient, but ant colonies could be.
To truly obey such a rule, we would have to refrain from harming anything that we do not know for sure is not sapient. Otherwise we could be harming a sapient creature for what it is.

So yes, we should care about two things:
A) Do not harm and prevent harm to those we care about.
B) Do not do unnescessary harm to anyone else.

(And because of The Golden Rule, harming humans for short term gain is usually harmful to us as well, be it from legal punishment, or setting a bad precedens.)

[Egan_BW]

I firmly believe in "humanity first". I believe the ultimate goal of humanity is to first put as much of Earth's nature under control (don't destroy it), then spread to other planets and colonize them, then repeat. Caring much about nonsapients kind of goes in the way of that. We are the most advanced animal on Earth, thus we are superior to every other Earth species.

But you didn't say "humans" earlier, you said "sapients". It's a little easier to defend only caring about humans, you just gotta point out that humans is us, and we like us. Or maybe say that your book says god made animals to be machines which are deliciously consumed by his real creation or something.
I still hate either perspective though.

Edit: am I having a stroke or is Egan making some really good points?

Look, he made a veiled insult! How nice~

[MaxTheFox]

If sapient life is what matters, than the health of Earth's life is dramatically more important than humanity specifically. Earth has produced at least one sapient species, and in the likelihood that we exterminate ourselves instead of reaching the stars we ought to ensure we do not damage Earth in a way that it cannot produce another sapient species to take a shot at it. This could be the only lifebearing planet to create sapient creatures in the entire universe! Ergo, caring for life and especially for nonsapient megafauna is important.

Hard anthropocentrism doesn't work in a secular worldview. Humans specifically have little special about us once you assess the value of sapience separately, unless one thinks God exists and endorses us specifically.

Yes, damaging the environment just for funsies or whatever is idiotic. Plus many nonsapient species are useful to humanity. I mostly agree with you (preventing making Earth uninhabitable so if we all die someone else might rise), except for...

This could be the only lifebearing planet to create sapient creatures in the entire universe!

With how incomprehensibly large the Universe is... this doesn't seem particularly likely to be true.

I firmly believe in "humanity first". I believe the ultimate goal of humanity is to first put as much of Earth's nature under control (don't destroy it), then spread to other planets and colonize them, then repeat. Caring much about nonsapients kind of goes in the way of that. We are the most advanced animal on Earth, thus we are superior to every other Earth species.

But you didn't say "humans" earlier, you said "sapients". It's a little easier to defend only caring about humans, you just gotta point out that humans is us, and we like us. Or maybe say that your book says god made animals to be machines which are deliciously consumed by his real creation or something.
I still hate either perspective though.

Humans are the only species we *know* to be fully sapient (though there are other candidates), this is why I said that instead of "sapience first". If we found aliens then we should treat them basically the same as humans.

[ChairmanPoo]

Pedantic ramblings
Musings of vague concepts
Boredom soon follows

[MaxTheFox]

Honestly even the most heated debates here are somewhat intelligent. Unlike many other forums where it descends to calling the other side idiots and/or Nazis...

[Egan_BW]

Can those really be called debates?

[ChairmanPoo]

Tempers burn as suns
Hot words run across the web
Godwin soon ensues

[Rolan7]

X or Y or Z
One is true but which is it?
Back pats all around.

[Egan_BW]

For sure it's Y, because it's in the middle~

[Moddan]

In this day and age centrists are not allowed though. So it's either X or Z.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

this is literally the era of centrist politics what

[Egan_BW]

and that's why we're angry at them :p

[scriver]

If this is the age of centrist politics then why do people and parties keep sliding towards extremes? The age of the centrist is over. The time of orcs have begun!

[pisskop]

i feel like the word centrist is being used in different contexts most of the time, and is being defined differently.

There is nothing centrist about most of american politics.  Being a centrist within a party is still drifting significantly right or left compared to 20-30 years ago.