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“How many species has humanity driven extinct?” by Raemon


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Does anyone know, like, a reasonable lower bound on number of species humanity has driven extinct?

I've seen crazy high numbers that (last I checked) seemed to be an extrapolation by people with an ideological ax to grind. (Based on how much habitat we've destroyed, and assuming some number of species per unit-area). ChatGPT suggested "900" as the lower bound based on some snippet they found from "International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)", but looking into it was a enough work I thought I might toss it to the LessWrong folk and see if anyone could get a more confident answer.

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First published:

August 2nd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vWqtvLDYyJDHq7roe/how-many-species-has-humanity-driven-extinct

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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