Which is also a reason we should stop destroying the environment. There is a wealth of knowledge out there we have yet to acquire. If you ran a deep-learning algorithm using an entire planet for 3 billion years, the results would be considered invaluable. Well what is natural selection and evolution but that?
If in a sci-fi novel an alien handed a character their 'magic rock' (iPhone) and they smelted it for its gold content rather than reverse-engineered it's wireless charging, communication, and computation capabilities you would scream at the character for being horribly short-sighted. Such a waste of sophisticated technology laid right in front of them for such little temporary gain.
Why can't we do both . At least smelting until we have enough energy to reverse engineer and then keep smelting space rocks. I think that's actually what we are doing, birds eye view.
Once a species is gone it is gone. Lots and lots of species disappear now and many of them we are not even aware about, let alone any DNA samples taken or research done (e.g. burn down rainforest). So you can't "have both".
> If you ran a deep-learning algorithm using an entire planet for 3 billion years, the results would be considered invaluable. Well what is natural selection and evolution but that?