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thaumaturgy • today at 4:34 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Okay, but we aren't talking about the eradication of all mosquitos. Approximately 10% of known mosquito species are potential carriers of human disease (https://entomologytoday.org/2022/07/26/less-than-10-percent-...), and discussions about eradication efforts generally revolve around just the Anopheles genus.

There's an excellent book on the impact of the mosquito on humanity, and a brief overview of some of that subject here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/how-mosquitoes.... These species of mosquito are and have been one of the most significant threats to human health for all of our existence.

I don't think argument-from-ignorance should be more convincing here than it would be on any other subject. There is some debate among researchers, sure, but published biologists have been making arguments in favor of eradication for over 20 years (https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/opinion/a-bug-s-death.htm...). If someone is being intellectually honest in objecting to this on the grounds of the fragility of ecosystems, then they must also be an equally loud voice against the use and manufacture of glyphosate. That one chemical alone is already having a far greater impact on insect populations, yet you can buy it at your local hardware stores.

So yeah, I genuinely don't understand the reasoning here. It feels like a dumber version of the trolley problem, where a perceived inaction that has far larger negative consequences is preferable to an action with more limited ones -- except in this case, it's not even right to describe our current impacts on ecosystems as "inaction".

I suspect that if an article were published tomorrow that found that, through some previously-unknown mechanism, the expected rise in global temperatures over the next 10 years would have a side-effect of killing all mosquito populations, that article wouldn't even make the front page of HN. Nobody much would care, aside from those few recurring voices mourning our future.

More cynically, I also suspect that since the worst impacts on human health are occurring in tropical populations, westerners find it much easier to argue in favor of protecting this particular pest.


Replies

estearum • today at 4:39 PM

Do you think animals pick their food source based on whether humans have taxonomized them under a similar heading, like "mosquito?"

Would an alien species contemplating the eradication of wheat be correct to think "that won't hurt Homo sapiens much, wheat makes up <1% of our taxonomic category 'things that grow in dirt!'?

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