The "Abolitionists" want to genetically create a cruelty free world

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

The motivation is clear ans Silver Stag wrote it. They want to apply "civilized" human ideals that even "civilized" humans cannot adhere to (end of violence and cruelty, love happiness and rainbows with unicorns) to the natural world.

Did you notice the description of Eywa-like distributed intelligence systems? Powerful, though perhaps not completely human-level AI is apparently part of the premise.

I assume they are motivated by that false idea that evolution and progress has a goal and a direction toward something "more advanced" - that they have to improve the imprefection of life according to how they define that imperfection.

More likely, they are entirely aware of this lack of goal - and bypass it, by replacing the randomly evolved lifeforms with life that is, objectively, designed to survive better than that which is currently existing.

Yesterday there was a show on TV about transhumanism and the lot - they boasted about all the things that will be possible to be done soon. So if they are true, technically this would seem just beyond grasp. I think there are certainly many people who would like to see this happening if it was possible. Thinking of all the vegans out there...

If significantly transhuman intelligence comes into play, you are about to lose the game, because intelligence is literally the key to doing everything else. If any sort of bootstrapping or feedback-loop intelligence appears on the scene, you might as well bow down and start worshipping. There's not a lot else you can do, and nothing you could do would matter.

... which just makes clear that some people just did not get any of the messages from Avatar that the natural world and the culture of indigenous peoples have a value of their own and that it is not all just about utilitarianism and efficiency.

But how do we decide what culture is valuable, and which is not?

And don't say that all culture is equally valuable; it's clearly not. If it were, you'd positively support assimilating all the natives in the world into the 21st century hivemind. After all, the cultural and artistic output via the Internet is vastly larger, both in absolute terms and in proportion, than any other culture in history, perhaps by orders of magnitude.

Originally Posted by Human No More

At the risk of misunderstanding him as I have before, I think Clarke was pointing out the flaw in your reasoning - that they want to change Earth as part of preserving it rather than simply replacing it, which doesn't actually seem to be the case, and as such, they should be given no more credence than flat-earthers or the 'zeitgeist' group.

I was trying to prompt a justification of why nature as it stands is automatically better than some other hypothetical nature-like construct. The apparent implicit one is, "Because it's traditional", but that would be fallacious, and so I'm sure it's not the one aurora is using.