Re: Stop It!!


Mike Vandeman wrote:
> On 4 Dec 2005 05:51:04 -0800, pbowles@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> .> Sure, but that doesn't require proving everything myself. I can defer to
> .> existing research for that.
> .
> .It requires formulating an argument for your position that's persuasive
> .enough to convince the people you're aiming it at, and objective enough
> .in its approach to avoid suspicions of bias.
>
> I wonder why 6 conferences full of scientists didn't question my premises, but
> you do?

I don't know anything about those conferences or those invited, but
from your apparently vague idea of what ecology was before I pointed
you to Begon et al, I'm guessing they weren't ecologists. Being a
scientist doesn't make someone omniescent and there's a lot less
intercourse between disciplines than there ought to be - the effects of
soil erosion on wildlife relate to ecology, and there's no particular
reason that the people at those conferences would be aware that it
hadn't been investigated in this context. After all, when giving a talk
at a conference you aren't expected to reference every claim in the way
you would in a published paper.

What's more, in my admittedly limited experience of conferences, people
tend not to heckle the speaker and usually focus on what's being
investigated when questions are called for - asking for clarifications
about that person's research or making further suggestions, not
preparing a critique of the initial basis for the work.

> .> But that's irrelevant! Energy loss is a surrogate for harm, used to demonstrate
> .> that mountain bikers are more harmful than hikers, NOT that either one causes
> .> "significant harm", as you would say. If you weren't so bigoted and pigheaded,
> .> you would have figured that out. But it's more important to you to prove me
> .> wrong, tahn to be honest.
> .
> .Energy loss can only be used as a surrogate for harm if it can be shown
> .that it is, in fact, a suitable surrogate measure - and that requires
> .answering the questions I pose on the issue. If the animal is not, in
> .fact, harmed by the energy loss because it has sufficient reserves to
> .survive or can replenish its stores, then clearly energy loss is not a
> .suitable surrogate for harm because no harm has taken place.
>
> Regardless of whether the animal can replenish the loss, it is still a loss, and
> therefore harmful.

Defining 'harm' so loosely trivialises it to the point of making it a
worthless measure - something can be "harmed" even if it hasn't been
damaged. Take the money example - I certainly wouldn't say that giving
money I could replenish would be harmful. It wouldn't disadvantage me
if I had it to spare or could replenish it before I next need it. At
worst it would be an inconvenience. I'm not defining "harm" as
"inconvenience" - it just makes a mockery of using the term.

> .> Yes, but only by YOUR definition, which you claim is the ONLY way to define
> .> harm. As a matter of fact, Webster has a much more widely accepted definition of
> .> harm, which I and the rest of the world use ("physical or mental damage"). You
> .> are in your own world, and insisting that your way is the only way is simply
> .> arrogant -- a word that defines you.
> .
> .As you are no doubt aware from your past studies, the scientific usage
> .of a word is not necessarily the same as the common usage. If you
> .genuinely want to influence anybody, you have to use the same measure
> .that the people you're targeting are using, who in the case of people
> .responsible for controlling recreational access to protected areas will
> .be land managers. These people are interested in what effects different
> .forms of recreation have on populations; they won't be swayed by the
> .claim that a deer suffers mental anguish from the passage of mountain
> .bikers.
>
> Fopr some reason it seems important to you to put word in my mouth. I have never
> said anything about deer anguish.

Not the point; I used that example (as I used such examples as beetle
squashing) to illustrate how minor a thing fleeing from a bike (or in
the case of a beetle being squashed by it) is from the point of view of
the very people you aim to convince, and that's precisely why you won't
convince them.

> .> .> Oh, yeah? You PRESUME that harm isn't demonstrated till population decline is
> .> .> proven. That is pure IDEOLOGY. You are reasoning in circular fashion, because
> .> .> you DEFINE harm as "population decline".
> .> .
> .> .How is defining something in any way circular? Yes, I do presume that
> .> .harm isn't demonstrated until it has been proven - that is, in fact, a
> .> .tautology, and I do tend to assume that tautologies are true rather by
> .> .definition.
> .>
> .> Are you PRETENDING not to be able to read? I say something, and then you proceed
> .> to misquote it. Let me say it again: You PRESUME that harm isn't demonstrated
> .> till population decline is proven.
> .
> .And given the definition of harm as population decline
>
> That's YOUR definition, not mine, or most people's.

And if I'm defining it that way, how can I possibly be accused of
circularity for making arguments based on my definition?

> . That is pure IDEOLOGY. You are reasoning in
> .> circular fashion, because you DEFINE harm as "population decline". You can't say
> .> that population decline = harm, and then claim that population decline PROVES
> .> harm! That is circular reasoning. Surely you can understand logic?????
> .
> .Yes, I can, and I see that it's failed you here. Where did I ever make
> .the claim that population decline proves harm? I never have. I've
> .stated that population decline *is* harm. I've stated that failure to
> .demonstrate population decline is a failure to demonstrate harm,
> .because the two are synonymous.
>
> Only in your mind.

In the context of my argument, given how I've defined harm. It's no
more circular for me to argue based on my definition of the term than
it is for you to argue based on your definition of the term.

Even other biologists don't agree with you -- biologists who
> talk about loss of genetic diversity, for example.

I've already covered this in the past - loss of genetic diversity only
becomes relevant at small population sizes; research cited in Begon et
al's 4th Edition (which was carried out in 1998, so won't be in the
earlier editions) indicates that this effect could cease to contribute
to extinction risk at a population size as low as 500, though they
recommend efforts to maintain populations at least an order of
magnitude greater than this.

> .> .I mean, leave the area in the sense of becoming locally extinct, that
> .> .they emigrate because the habitat is no longer suitable for their
> .> .survival. So, yes, essentially permanently. A group of animals leaving
> .> .a foraging site temporarily isn't a population leaving an area - the
> .> .population encompasses all the animals in that species throughout that
> .> .habitat patch.
> .>
> .> So causing them to move temporarily, even a whole day, you don't consider
> .> harmful, even though everybody else in the world can see that it's harmful....
> .
> .No, I consider it a disturbance. I'd even consider it an undesirable
> .disturbance. However, animals can be disturbed without being harmed,
> .and without the sort of evidence that Wisdom et al demand to establish
> .whether it is harmful to the population, I wouldn't feel justified as a
> .conservationist in devoting limited resources to eliminate that
> .disturbance.
>
> That's a different issue from whether it's harmful. You don't decide what's
> harmful!

No, but if I'm allocating funds I'd like to do so in a way that
mitigates the most severe forms of harm and to do that I need a measure
of harm I can work with and one that's likely to reflect a genuine
problem that needs addressing.

If anyone does, it's the organisms themselves. If they resist the
> disturbance, or feel bad about it (appropriately measured, e.g. hormonally)
>
> .> You are in yoru own world....
> .
> .It's called the real one. Should I give you directions?
>
> Very funny, but false. You live in a very narrow discipline of questionable
> value. You even insist on everyone using "scientific terminology".

The serious point I'm making is that I'm approaching the issue from a
pragmatic perspective, the one that's necessary in the real world. My
view is that of someone who has to work with clearly defined terms in
order to be sure I'm speaking the same language as those I'm trying to
convince to fund my objectives, such as affording greater protection to
an area, and who needs to be able to demonstrate a problem based on
those terms. Anything else is simply research for the sake of research.
Purely pragmatically, no one is going to put up the resources to
regulate a ban on mountain bikers based on the deaths of individual
animals or their personal sense of ethics - the world doesn't work that
way. The reason land managers and developers use ecologists as
consultants on wildlife issues is because ecologists are able to
identify and quantify potential causes of harm and disturbance in a
standardised way - they can say "this action is causing the population
of species X to decline" or "this conservation measure will reduce the
chance that species Y will become extinct in 50-100 years". Expressing
moral outrage at individual deaths doesn't have the same impact
(whether you feel it should or not), and counting the bodies is of no
use if you have no idea how large the population is to start with and
how many casualties it can sustain before going into decline. Arguing
about the speculative effects of genetic diversity loss will not only
lose them at the first hurdle, but provides no way of giving an
estimate as to how actions will impact the population, or how much it
will benefit from ceasing the disturbance.

> .> BS. That's only in YOUR mind. You miss the point that beavers are doing what
> .> they are meant to do, but humans are under a system of ethics that has
> .> implications for our logging practices.
> .
> .Aha, so this is it at last. The issue here is an ethical one, rather
> .than a scientific one? In fact, i completely agree and you'll no doubt
> .be pleased to know that I regard it as unethical to run over small
> .mammals in the name of recreation. But ethics isn't a science and can't
> .be dressed up in scientific language.
>
> Of course. But you don't understand ethics, because you confound animal behavior
> with human behavior.

I understand ethics very well; in fact I even studied moral philosophy
for three years. However, I'm approaching this discussion from a
scientific standpoint rather than an ethical one, not least for the
reason I gave above that ethics doesn't hold much sway in the pragmatic
world of practical conservation. There are sound scientific reasons to
limit environmental damage and sound ethical reasons for doing so, but
you run into trouble when you try to conflate the two.

> Though if you approach carefully and quietly you can get
> .remarkably close, sometimes even when the animal is looking directly at
> .you so long as you don't appear threatening. Are those animals simply
> .more friendly towards humans, do you suppose, or do you think maybe
> .they react more to sudden sounds and movements than identifying the
> .object as "human = enemy"?
>
> Stop putting words in my mouth. You keep twisting what I say, to try to make it
> sound ridiculous.

I'm paraphrasing, and it does sound ridiculous. But that's because it's
a paraphrase that's implied by what you say, which suggests you ought
to be more careful if you mean something else.

> .If I were to write a literature review including your paper I would say
> .something along the lines of "Vandeman criticises previous works for
> .failing to take account of factors such as the greater distances
> .travelled by mountain bikers compared with hikers. However, his
> .criticisms implicitly assume that the relevant variable is the extent
> .of soil erosion/wildlife fear responses per individual cyclist compared
> .with the individual hiker, when a more relevant measure may be the
> .total impact of hikers compared with that of cyclists".
>
> Why? People aren't responsible for others' behavior, only their own. You have to
> measure impacts per person. That's the basis for our form of government
> (ideally).

Government doesn't arise through scientific principles. Individual
responsibility isn't a scientific concept. Again you're into the realm
of ethics in which science has no sway. Science is not a tool for
regulating behaviour. The soil is just as eroded if two mountain bikers
use the path as it is if one mountain biker uses it twice; the deer run
as far whether or not the biker who scares them once is the same one
who does it next time. Science is concerned merely with cause and
effect and how they relate to one another; the bikes go past, the soil
gets eroded, the deer flee. It doesn't care who rides the bike any more
that it cares about the identity of the individual deer that flee. It
simply wants to quantify the effect on wildlife the disturbance is
having, and that relies on the level of disturbance which itself
relates to the number of bikers.

> Moreover you
> .made the claim that the impact on wildlife was greater, which as I've
> .pointed out is more than you can extrapolate from these data.
>
> I wasn't referring to ALL species, just the ones tested. But when you have a
> large sample of species, you CAN conclude that.

That's not the problem with your extrapolation - the problem is that
the measures used, soil erosion and flight distance, haven't been shown
to be surrogates for any non-trivial form of harm in these systems, and
so you aren't justified in using them as such to draw your conclusion.

> .> Value is something that's apportioned, not
> .> .something inherent. Human lives have value because we value them - we
> .> .value our own, we value those of people we care about. Animal lives
> .> .have value too because we care about them - because there are humans
> .> .who do walk past the beetle and think "that's sad, a poor dead beetle",
> .> .because we enjoy wildlife as something to view, to photograph, and
> .> .habitats as nice scenery.
> .>
> .> So animals only have value because HUMANS value them? There's your arrogance
> .> again!
> .
> .So who, or what, else are they valuable to?
>
> More than just humans.

How do we know this, to throw your question back at you?

> . And I guess that if YOU don't value a particular species, then it has
> .no
> .> value? If life has value (most of the world thinks it does), then ALL life has
> .> value. You can't make distinctions.
> .
> .We routinely make distinctions. We don't particularly value the
> .bacterium responsible for bubonic plague, for instance, or the malaria
> .parasite.
>
> There you go again, assuming that only humans are the judge of value. Did you
> learn that in your classes?

It's a simple empirical point - we do make value judgments, and we do
want to get rid of the malaria parasite. No assumptions are necessary;
humans do judge value and act accordingly.

> .> or those of other animals. They just exist. Many
> .> .appear to have rudimentary forms of consciousness, but none but the
> .> .highest of the higher primates exhibit self-consciousness,
> .>
> .> You really have no way of knowing that. It is nothing but arrogance to make such
> .> a claim.
> .
> .Consciousness has, as I mentioned in a past post, been subjected to
> .numerous tests in its different aspects. Tests with mirrors and dots of
> .paint indicate that chimpanzees and most humans associate the object in
> .the mirror with themselves, indicating an ability to think of
> .themselves as "selves". Human toddlers, gorillas and other primates are
> .unable to make this connection. Cuttlefish and many dogs react to
> .themselves in mirrors as though facing a rival of the same species.
>
> That has to do with mirrors, not self. Chimps can't speak English, but can
> understand it to some extent.

Not to the extent of being able to understand "This is a mirror. The
chimp in the mirror is you - get it?" The experiments weren't about
telling the animals what to do and 'failing' those who didn't work it
out because their language skills weren't good enough. The experiments
with toddlers are especially revealing; a toddler shown a mirror will,
like a chimp, move her hand to brush off a spot of paint she sees in
her reflection. But when asked by the experimenter what the mirror
image is doing she will say things along the lines of "Amy is wiping
paint off her face" - she intuitively knows the image is of her, but is
seemingly unable to internalise it as relating to her in the first
person. There was a very interesting Scientific American on the whole
subject of consciousness a few years ago.

> .Tests of heart rate suggest that reptiles are able to feel agitation
> .when handled; frogs exhibit no such ability.
>
> That has nothing to do with whether they are agitated. It's an artifact of the
> experimental design.

Why would an artefact of the experimental design produce these
different results for these organisms? We know, I believe, that heart
rate quickens with agitation in humans, and I wouldn't be surprised if
it's been studied in the more expressive mammals whose feelings we can
gauge as well.

> Tests on frogs which I
> .regard as *highly* unethical have shown that they lack the ability to
> .feel pain, and simply respond to movement. And so on.
>
> Interesting, but I don't know what that has to do with consciousness.

The ability to feel pain as a sensation is clearly a product of
consciousness - and one that frogs have been shown to lack in this
ghastly experiment.

> .> and that
> .> .extremely limited. None have the ability to see something dead and
> .> .relate it to something that will happen to them 'personally' in the
> .> .future.
> .>
> .> You really have no way of knowing that. It is nothing but arrogance to make such
> .> a claim.
> .
> .Here's a good way of testing it: If not taught about death, do humans
> .recognise it as something that might happen to them? The answer seems
> .to be a fairly evident "no" - in fact parents often make an effort to
> .avoid telling young children about the concept if a family member
> .apparently mysteriously disappears and never returns. Death is outside
> .the experience of anyone alive on a personal level; we don't even
> .really comprehend it when we know the concept because we can't imagine
> .what it's like not to exist. How is any animal without the social and
> .linguistic background to communicate abstract concepts going to develop
> .any understanding that they will one day resemble the group member's
> .carcass they were just examining? Language is a prerequisite for
> .abstract thought, and no other animal possesses it. Therefore they
> .simply cannot form abstract concepts.
>
> Abstract thought is only ONE way to define knowledge. Intuition often indicates
> knowledge that is not abstract.

Death is an abstract concept, not an intuitive one, so this seems
hardly relevant.

> .> Stop
> .> .anthropomorphising animals: very few animals exhibit awareness of death
> .> .among members of their species (chimpanzees, hippos, whales and
> .> .elephants - none commonly found in North American deserts)
> .>
> .> When did I ever say they did? Putting words in my mouth again? That is really
> .> getting tiresome. You are arguing with yourself, not me.
> .
> .You've already implied that animals value their lives.
>
> That is not "anthropomorphising". Jane Goodall has shown that what was once
> thought to be restricted to humans is NOT.

Quite. She's shown it, in the specific case of tool use. No one has
shown that animals' flight responses are more than an instinctive fear
reaction, and it isn't scientific to assume otherwise until contrary
evidence is presented.

> As I mentioned in an earlier post,
> .other people don't see genetic diversity. Most genes don't code for
> .visible physiological differences. The popular, and also generally used
> .ecological, definition of biodiversity relates to the number of species
> .found in a given area, and reduction in diversity at this level only
> .comes about through extinction.
>
> You should be able to value genetic diversity within species -- at least if you
> weren't wedded to the "ecologist" role.

Oh, it is valued - indeed ecologists recognise "Evolutionarily
Significant Units" as populations of a species which exhibit genetic
sequences not found in other populations of that species, precisely
because these do represent diversity and may also be evolutionary
novelties. Yet that too comes down to genetic diversity at the
population level (in fact it has to - saying an individual is
genetically diverse is nonsense), as determined by the rrelative
proportions of different alleles in that population, and not in terms
of the make-up of specific individuals.

> .> .> Search for the word "odd": "whether the odd animal or plant dies here and there?
> .> .> That's not my concern and it isn't of ecological interest".
> .> .
> .> .Where is any claim about life's significance here? I made a point about
> .> .the *ecological* importance of particular individual organisms, no
> .> .comment at all about life per se.
> .>
> .> We are talking about death, and you are saying it's not of "*ecological*
> .> importance".
> .
> .Individually, it isn't - mortality rates are, as are birth and
> .maturation rates.
>
> That's only because ecologists deliberately IGNORE it. Like your textbook.

Just as we "deliberately IGNORE" the creation and death of individual
cells within animals' bodies - it's not relevant at these scales and
for these purposes. And since the purpose of ecology is to study
populations and higher levels of organisation, the fact that the deaths
of specific individuals aren't relevant to the fates of those
populations is an important one in this context.

> .> Not true. An animal killed by another aniimal isn't an ethical issue. An amimal
> .> killed by a HUMAN is.
> .
> .So here we go again, this is at its roots an ethical issue. In other
> .words, the issue is more how it affects the human than how it affects
> .the animal - how it impacts on our sense of ethics and our feelings
> .about how to treat other animals. Which, as worthy as it is, isn't
> .really a topic for a science newsgroup, as I pointed out at the start.
>
> But you are making ethical judgments ("individuals aren't important") and
> calling them "science".

As already demonstrated by my reference to the textbook as well as my
pointing to principles of population regulation (such as that, while
recruitment > mortality, populations will be unaffected by individual
deaths), the significance or otherwise of individuals is in this
context a scientific assessment - they aren't important in the sense
that they aren't important to the units of scientific study. That isn't
a value judgment as to whether or not individuals are important in a
non-scientific sense. There's no contradiction in me regarding my life
as an important entity in ethical terms and as a scientific irrelevance
(save for the contribution it makes to said science, of course).

> the
> .interplay of birth and mortality rates in population trends and so
> .forth. In the same way you won't find an astronomy textbook revealing
> .that stars are hot, though you'll likely find discussions of the
> .relative temperatures of different classes of star; it's a
> .characteristic of the subject matter that's implicit in the discipline.
> .It's simple observation that populations survive despite having their
> .members regularly eaten or otherwise killed.
>
> So what? Survival isn't the only value.

Yet the basis for your claim that genetic diversity is important, other
than "valuing diversity for its own sake", was that it enables species
to better-survive, for instance by adapting to climate change. What is
that value if not survival?

Philip Bowles

.