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Greg WF's avatar

Parasites in nature don’t tend to kill their host from my understanding, as it is not good to kill your gravy train.

These creeps being human, and therefore an aberration, and outside of nature, have no instinct to preserve the creature (us) they feed off of. They are destroying us, so they can rule the wasteland. WTF is wrong with them?

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Bruce Lawrence's avatar

In the long term, biological parasites coevolve with their hosts to minimize danger to the host. But with the speed of human cultural change in today's world, evolution can't keep up with the innovations.

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Greg WF's avatar

New technologies are kinda like a jar full of marbles. Blue (lots of them in the jar) are positive without major negative impacts. We’ve pulled a lot of those out in 10,000 years. Grey are positive, but with severe negative impacts possible. Splitting the atom say. And then there are the 2, or 3 red marbles. Those are straight up extinction level bad.

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Josh Berry's avatar

Not sure this is accurate? Heart worms are the easy counter example.

I think it is true that parasites in nature tend to have shorter lives than what they are parasitic to?

Edit: Probably some meta commentary here about how long it has been since many humans have had parasites?

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Matt Gibson's avatar

You've got RFK in charge of your country's health policies now. Your question regarding many humans having parasites might have an answer close to home in the next few years.

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Josh Berry's avatar

Yeah, that is what I meant about the metal commentary. Frightening.

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Tammy Mackinnon's avatar

Depends if you kill your host

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Josh Berry's avatar

That is the question, though? I think it is fairly common for parasites to kill their host.

Granted, I think I'm probably taking a slow death as still a kill. Such that I'm probably slightly off on definitions, here?

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Greg WF's avatar

All ya gotta do is live long enough to pass on your genes. After that, the host can drop dead,or linger on. Doesn’t really matter.

You’re correct, look at humans. We are the most deadly creatures to ever walk the planet. We are ruthless predators with the power of gods, and we are deadly parasites. We are destroying our host environment rather effectively. With our yummy nuclear weapons, we could wipe the Northern Hemisphere clean. With the exception of some hardy cannibals/scavengers.

It’s a cruel world baby! So, so very cruel, when you see it for what it is.

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