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If you could remove one animal from existence, what would it be? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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My go is for the Buzzard, it would sure as hell make desert trips and heat waves seem a lot less worrying and paranoiac.

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[–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

"One animal" could easily mean an individual animal. This makes things tricky. Ruling out humans (because that's no fun), how can a single animal's disappearance affect anything?

Well, I don't think it can. The biggest effects would happen if you remove an individual from a critically endangered species, but I don't see anything good coming from that. For just about all other species, it would be like a drop in the ocean.

So, given that I probably can't make the world meaningfully better, I'll aim smaller. I'll remove a dog that shits in the street without its owner picking it up, causing innocent people to step in it.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Mathematically, assuming perfect knowledge about the future (if we can remove an animal, we might as well see the future):

    Define S_0 = the number of piles of dog shit I will step on in the rest of my life assuming no dog has been removed.

    Given dog d, define S(d) = the number of piles of dog shit I will step on in the rest of my life assuming dog d is removed right now.

    Select d_1 = argmin{S(d}}. (If there's a tie, just pick one arbitrarily or use a tie-breaking metric)

    If S(d_1) < S_0, then remove d_1.

    If S(d_1) = S_0, then there is no improvement over baseline - maybe whichever dog I could remove just gets replaced with another dog. In this case, I could still remove d_1 if the tie-breaking metric did find an improvement, otherwise see next case.

    If S(d_1) > S_0, then no matter what dog I try to remove, somehow I end up stepping on more piles of shit in my life?! Ugh. Remove the nearest ant or something.

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