As a biologist, in year 1 you learn why the world is not overgrown with bacteria that double every 30 mins. Restrictions. From there follow niches, evolution through natural selection on population levels working on existing variation and more slowly on new variation. Evolutionary arms races, etc.

Anyway, the question: "Why is there no Darwinian devil?" Is a nice starter for starting to understand the enormous variation found in our biosphere. Of course, we are as close to a Darwinian devil as any species ever came because we make our own niche by tearing other's down. Resistance is futile. Of course, tearing other's down will also tear our own niche down because they are all connected, at least, our old niche is. Can we build a new one fast enough? Or should we stop tearing our niche down?

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hham a day ago | parent [-]

Agree. Humans are atypically successful because we don't simply adapt to existing environments... we actively "transform" (destroy) environments to suit ourselves.

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corroclaro a day ago | parent [-]

I have a feeling that's possibly just a property of life itself, reshaping its environment to maximize its ability to continue. Even simple one cell organisms cluster together to form biofilms to better survive in their niche.

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TheOtherHobbes a day ago | parent | next [-]

It's a question of degree. Humans are uniquely adaptable, but only on small/medium scales.

We don't have the evolutionary intelligence to manage a planetary ecosystem without destroying it through overconsumption.

Intelligence is partly about scope. The smarter you are, the wider your predictive horizon.

Humans are semi-smart - good at small/medium problems, not smart enough to understand, build and maintain very complex multimodal systems with many moving parts.

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geraldwhen a day ago | parent [-]

Citation needed? Everything seems fine currently.

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bobson381 a day ago | parent | next [-]

See Tainter's work on the collapse of complex systems, and watch this nice video from B. Sid Smith. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8

	▲	schiffern a day ago \| parent [-]
		See also Donella Meadows (Limits to Growth) on sustainable systems.[0] News of the book's debunking was greatly exaggerated[1] of course. Drink every time you hear "and notice how on the graph, everything looks great right before the end!" [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhSpzQhvFS8 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits...

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t0mpr1c3 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

+1.5°C

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drinkinghorn a day ago | parent | prev [-]

We are literally and figuratively shitting where we eat on a global scale.

Ecosystems we dependon for survival are shrinking, becoming I hospitable to life or straight up disappearing.

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titzer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Humans are the only species I know of that goes out of its way to eradicate other species they find annoying, particularly without understanding said species' role in the ecosystem. And we're definitely the only species that has an economic system that rewards superorganisms that accidentally poison the entire ecosystem and then lie about it.

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teekert a day ago | parent [-]

If you watch something like "Life on our planet", there have been species that basically hunted the seas empty of their food sources and then died out, so we're not that unique in that respect, but we are extremely efficient about it.

	▲	bobson381 a day ago \| parent [-]
		bc we accessed oil