fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

there is too the recent propulsion to prolific status, courtesy coal, oil, and gas, all those carbonaceous lifeforms of past, compressed, humans variously burn to do, well, mostly everything. Many humans are reaching out to the sun, still it’s a dirty business making the things for that.

the sun’s not completely innocent, it’s been pumping the thermodynamics here locally on earth for ~4.5 billion years, giving rise to life, on a bad day you might think it a menace.

so, to acceptable expressions of the high functioning predator, the next turn in cultural evolution, the trip to artificial hamburgers made from grain or whatever, immortal machine intelligence/AI, and voluntary extinction.

distractions for the predator, while denuding the planet, even if it’s just the complete loss of nature outside what minds do.

I present entertainment. It’s a type of zoo.

it’s a new territory you can roam free in, getting a feed, possibly already are. Anything and everything are fair game.

there was a time amusements happened by accident, part of some physical activity more associated with the necessities of life. A moment to visit the child in you, quite healthy.

somewhere it became an industry, presumably in response to lives being so tedious, from a lack of entertainments no doubt.

anyway here you are, the predator in the new landscape, a landscape provided just for you, all.

You may be referring to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
I heard it’s finder (not founder) interviewed on the wireless yesterday.

Peak Warming Man said:

You may be referring to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
I heard it’s finder (not founder) interviewed on the wireless yesterday.

He (I’m guessing on gender here) doesn’t believe in leading by example then?

transition said:

fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

I don’t believe that humans are top of the food chain

Arts said:

transition said:

fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

I don’t believe that humans are top of the food chain

I would say blackholes are.

Oh, I thought this was about something else…………….

monkey skipper said:

Arts said:

transition said:

fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

I don’t believe that humans are top of the food chain

I would say blackholes are.

nah, entropy. maybe.

• “Ecologists rank species by their diets using a metric called the trophic level. Plants, which produce their own food, are given a rank of 1. Herbivores, which eat only plants, are ranked 2. The fiercest of meat-loving predators, such as killer whales, rank at 5.5.”
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexberezow/2013/12/03/humans-arent-at-the-top-of-the-food-chain/#11f1b543386d

• On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the score of a primary producer (a plant) and 5 being a pure apex predator (a animal that only eats meat and has few or no predators of its own, like a tiger, crocodile or boa constrictor), they found that based on diet, humans score a 2.21—roughly equal to an anchovy or pig. Their findings confirm common sense: We’re omnivores, eating a mix of plants and animals, rather than top-level predators that only consume meat.
  Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/where-do-humans-really-rank-on-the-food-chain-180948053

• An apex predator, also known as an alpha predator or top predator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, with no natural predators.

Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning that they occupy the highest trophic levels. Food chains are often far shorter on land, usually limited to being secondary consumers – for example, wolves prey mostly upon large herbivores (primary consumers), which eat plants (primary producers). The apex predator concept is applied in wildlife management, conservation and ecotourism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_predator

Sharks very occasionally eat people but people very often eat sharks, so yes, we’re at the top of the food chain.

Bubblecar said:

Sharks very occasionally eat people but people very often eat sharks, so yes, we’re at the top of the food chain.

I don’t think we have the same definition… we might be near, or at, the top of the assisted predator chain… but not without our assistance tools…

Arts said:

Bubblecar said:

Sharks very occasionally eat people but people very often eat sharks, so yes, we’re at the top of the food chain.

I don’t think we have the same definition… we might be near, or at, the top of the assisted predator chain… but not without our assistance tools…

Yes but it’s in our nature to make such tools.

Put it this way, rival predators that eat food sources desired by humans, and sometimes eat humans, are becoming rarer all the time and many of the surviving examples exist merely because we’re deliberately conserving them in parks and reserves, or with hunting and fishing bans and quotas etc.

Bubblecar said:

Put it this way, rival predators that eat food sources desired by humans, and sometimes eat humans, are becoming rarer all the time and many of the surviving examples exist merely because we’re deliberately conserving them in parks and reserves, or with hunting and fishing bans and quotas etc.

so we agree that human are near the top of the predator chain.. not the food chain

The Rev Dodgson said:

Peak Warming Man said:

You may be referring to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
I heard it’s finder (not founder) interviewed on the wireless yesterday.

He (I’m guessing on gender here) doesn’t believe in leading by example then?

VHEMT does not advocate suicide, murder, or population control.
Rather their tenant is the conscious choice to not procreate,
thus bringing about inevitable gradual extinction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement

>so, to acceptable expressions of the high functioning predator, the next turn in cultural evolution, the trip to artificial hamburgers made from grain or whatever, immortal machine intelligence/AI, and voluntary extinction.<

I would hope humans eventually evolve beyond our basic needs as animals (and many of the associated programmed desires) and discover much more creative reasons for bothering to exist.

There are probably all kinds of exciting cognitive adventures out there that we can’t yet even imagine.

Bubblecar said:

>so, to acceptable expressions of the high functioning predator, the next turn in cultural evolution, the trip to artificial hamburgers made from grain or whatever, immortal machine intelligence/AI, and voluntary extinction.<

I would hope humans eventually evolve beyond our basic needs as animals (and many of the associated programmed desires) and discover much more creative reasons for bothering to exist.

There are probably all kinds of exciting cognitive adventures out there that we can’t yet even imagine.

I reckon we’d be in trouble if we couldn’t imagine bothering to exist.

roughbarked said:

I reckon we’d be in trouble if we couldn’t imagine bothering to exist.

I find myself quite often imagining not bothering to exist. It’s something we all have to prepare for.

> fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

Mosquito eats people.

But more to the point, human beings are just a host for memes. What we grandly call “intelligence” is just one of these memes battling for dominance. “Entertainment” is another such meme.

Which meme will win, intelligence, entertainment, or a different meme?

Bubblecar said:

roughbarked said:

I reckon we’d be in trouble if we couldn’t imagine bothering to exist.

I find myself quite often imagining not bothering to exist. It’s something we all have to prepare for.

It is something we have no idea about. Though some people plan another existence.

Arts said:

transition said:

fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

I don’t believe that humans are top of the food chain

a species that can remove other species, largely sterilize large areas, then decide what grows there, is at the top of the food chain.

but that’s not really what the OP is about. It’s more about social and cultural forces that transform and steer the predator into something else, the idea of an honest predator given those forces, and otherwise the distortions.

food chain is a loop
“top” is false

SCIENCE said:

food chain is a loop
“top” is false

if you take the informal meaning, then add growing food etc, along with there being a hierarchy, it seems fit.

transition said:

Arts said:

transition said:

fairly safe to say humans qualify, top of the food chain.

I don’t believe that humans are top of the food chain

a species that can remove other species, largely sterilize large areas, then decide what grows there, is at the top of the food chain.

but that’s not really what the OP is about. It’s more about social and cultural forces that transform and steer the predator into something else, the idea of an honest predator given those forces, and otherwise the distortions.

Most humans are still driven by the most basic of desires just like everything else.
We are the dominant life form on the planet as in we can dominant everything else (viruses, disease, not sure something could come along and kill many of us off) but by shear mass we aren’t dominant. We might be high functioning but I bet we could go extinct far easier than many other life forms and unlikely we’d evolve again from scratch

Cymek said:

I bet we could go extinct far easier than many other life forms and unlikely we’d evolve again from scratch

Aye. Plants like long-lived trees probably have evolutionary armour to survive drastic climate change. IIRC tree genomes are usually larger than animal genomes which might be evidence of past evolutionary adaptations.

>Most humans are still driven by the most basic of desires just like everything else.

Not convinced. What’s the closest thing less conscious lifeforms have that equates with the word just as you used it there.

It’s like when I approach my sheep and she didn’t see me til I was close and it spooks her, then quickly she resolves it’s just transition, friend, part of my mob. I’m around regular, feed her, and haven’t tried to eat her. I might though oneday eat her, for the moment i’m keeping that from her, and are glad of her limited consciousness.

Her initial flight response is in fact more appropriate.

You can add just and merely to the arsenal of deceits humans employ, dissemblance or whatever, call them devices.

You’re probably think WTF that’s weird shit, and it is.

humans are many things, diverse nurturers for example, high-functioning nurturers, to indulge generalizations about the species for a moment.

part-predator, which may be essential to the nurturer. A kinder proposition, perhaps truer.

hunting need not be for the next feed, food, and mostly isn’t, but there remains the question of what to feed on for the over-satiated.

casual diversions, distractions, hunger transformed, the work of the sound of hands in chip packets of those near on the sofa after you’ve had yours. Or the greatest rock song ever, that left you feeling like where to now.

it’s probably possible to hijack the predator, in such a way as to (incline it) to go around the paradox of that being an aspect of the nurturer. Perhaps an essential paradox to be negotiated for conscience.

that raises the question of the honest predator, how humans fair.