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Done did the survey!
For starters, you cannot say "mosquitoes" - as others have pointed out, there are ~3500 separate mosquito species, only ~100 bite humans, and only several dozen transmit disease.
I don't see any reason to only target those that transmit diseases. Target ones that are simply annoying because they string the average person, gives everyone a clear reason to support the proposal. There are also people with allergies or who simply don't heal the stinged area very well.
Also, I don't think country-level eradication plans (even for a single species) have the slightest chance of working long-term due to persistent re-invasion risk.
If you have to continue paying a few million each year to keep the mosquito population near zero that's no problem for any industrialized country if there's public will.
Narrowness is a virtue here, and this level of biological imprecision could alienate potential allies who will take you as reckless and uninformed.
Don't worry as far as biological imprecision goes. I don't invest the kind of effort required for being precise for a LW post to explore the idea but I would certainly invest the necessary effort if I wrote an actual petition and tried to make it viral.
I also made a choice against immediately crossposting to the effective altruism board or other venues to be able to iterate based on feedback.
(A related point is that the most promising interventions for eradication (like the sterile insect technique) are species specific, so it makes sense to start with the highest-priority target. Because [complex chain of reasoning to fill in later], I think aedes albopictus is likely the best bet.)
According to the map on Wikipedia we don't have any aedes albopictus in Germany but 4 neighboring countries have them. That means that it's not a valid target for German activism. Otherwise do you disagree with that map?
I don't see any reason to only target those that transmit diseases. Target ones that are simply annoying because they string the average person, gives everyone a clear reason to support the proposal.
This is a good point - in fact, a distinction is usually drawn between "nuisance" and "disease vector" mosquito control (they can involve very different operations), and I've heard very knowledgeable people say that the only way to maintain public support for a control program is if there's a strong nuisance component. You may be right on this, but note that I never contended otherwise (albopictus is both an efficient disease vector and a major nuisance).
If you have to continue paying a few million each year to keep the mosquito population near zero that's no problem for any industrialized country if there's public will.
Oh sure, but that's not eradication! There are lots of mosquito population suppression programs around the world, many paid for with public funds (particularly in areas with lots of outdoor tourism and a strong local business influence in municipal politics). Programs like this work at even vastly sub-country spatial scales, but as you say you need to keep doing them year in year out. Part of the beauty of eradication is no longer needing ongoing investment.
Don't worry as far as biological imprecision goes. [...] I would certainly invest the necessary effort [...]
Good!
According to the map on Wikipedia we don't have any aedes albopictus in Germany but 4 neighboring countries have them. That means that it's not a valid target for German activism. Otherwise do you disagree with that map?
Well, species distribution maps are notoriously tricky to get right, but suppose it's right. The beauty of albopictus as a target is it's a highly invasive species, happy to set up shop anywhere a little pot of water with some organic residue can be found (and perhaps an annual mean temperature >11C, though I'm not convinced by the data on this). I would imagine Germany is at risk of invasion, which is an awesome opportunity for activism - (almost) no one minds local eradication of an invasive species!
I'm also very cautious about manipulating our complex environment without really understanding what is going on. But in this case, after careful reading of the post (where it is explicitly mentioned to keep healthy mosquitoe populations in the lab until sure) and Wikipedia I tend to agree that this would reduce human suffering without noticable environmental impact. Apparently there even have been studies to the effect:
Studies have shown that this process has been very effective in preventing sleeping sickness in people who live in the area.
I still upvote your post because you do name a few points that are all not addressed by the article. And there could be more which are plausibly problematic.
Sleeping sickness is transmitted by the Tsetse fly, which is not a mosquito. Even ignoring this I'm unsure what the effect on sleeping sickness has to do with environmental impact - this is the target effect of the program, no?
In response to
Fighting Mosquitos
(Please take this as constructive, as I very much want to see the global eradication of biting mosquitoes occur.)
I think this specific proposal (an online petition/Facebook activism) is naive and likely counter-productive. I feel like I should be docked several thousand Initiative Points for saying this, but please don't do as you propose.
For starters, you cannot say "mosquitoes" - as others have pointed out, there are ~3500 separate mosquito species, only ~100 bite humans, and only several dozen transmit disease. Narrowness is a virtue here, and this level of biological imprecision could alienate potential allies who will take you as reckless and uninformed.
(A related point is that the most promising interventions for eradication (like the sterile insect technique) are species specific, so it makes sense to start with the highest-priority target. Because [complex chain of reasoning to fill in later], I think aedes albopictus is likely the best bet.)
Also, I don't think country-level eradication plans (even for a single species) have the slightest chance of working long-term due to persistent re-invasion risk. A continent- or hemisphere-scale plan would be required, which comes with the commensurate coordination problems, and is much less likely to be aided by petition.
Additionally, don't underestimate the potential for politicization of such a program. Raising it to the level of public awareness without a good communication plan is premature.
Finally, many folks have entirely reasonable concerns about downstream effects that really do deserve sober analysis. I think it's likely that effects on other species or ecosystem stability will be negligible (or at least worth the cost), but that's an empirical question that deserves serious attention. As someone else pointed out, this is probably the key objection to overcome, so you might want to invest some effort in alleviating it upfront.
(All that said, it's awesome that you're thinking about this seriously. The eradication proposal is sort of my favourite idea ever, so please PM me if you'd like to discuss it further offline.)
In response to
LessWrong as social catalyst
I made a good friend via LW private messaging. Together we started the Ottawa LW meetup group.
If having children is in the plan, I will comment that having kids has been much more Schellingy than getting married was, and any life-changes I didn't have solidly cemented before having kids damned sure weren't going to be made after having them.
One thing I'm glad I did was make a habit of trying to write fiction a few times a week before the kids came along - basically, selfishly carve out some me-time - because now I'm still able to maintain this habit with two babies.
I'm experiencing this now (with about six months still on the clock). Anything you wish you'd implemented pre-kids?
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FWIW, in my estimation your special-snowflake-nature is somewhere between "more than slightly, less than somewhat" and "potential world-beater". Those are wide limits, but they exclude zero.
Ooh ooh, do mine!