6 ms·

Humans were once an endangered species

33 points by soundsop 17y ago

hga 17y ago
The Earth is a rather hostile place when you use a megayear scale. Paleontologists and geologists have also found a variety of events (e.g, megacaldera such as Yellowstone cutting loose, meteor impacts) that are correlated with mass extinctions. We shouldn't tarry in establishing self-sustaining habitats off the Earth.
- ugh 17y ago
  Hostile for species and classes, maybe (and I’m quite sure no individual survived a megayear yet), still not hostile for life in general :)
  - eru 17y ago
    I do not know. Although the current form of life has been around for quite a while --- who knows how many attempts have failed before that?
    - ugh 17y ago
      It seems to be that life has been around ever since the earth cooled enough to have liquid water. So there isn’t all that much time for other kinds of life. There might be many failed attempts of replicators that nearly made it (in fact, that seems highly probable) but considering how early it started it seems to be pretty easy to keep it running once it’s going.
      - eru 17y ago
        Of course there may also be a survivorship bias involved: Imagine that life dies out easily, but does not get re-started when it has died out once. Our observation would be the same.
- kiba 17y ago
  Is there an organization who is carrying out the necessary task of establishing off-world colonies for humanity? If so, what is the website and how can individuals help? It is one thing to posit a need, but quite another to do it.
  - ajju 17y ago
    A large number of private space companies (eg masten space) are working on building cheaper spacecrafts. That is the first step. Once we have a way to reach potential off-world colonies more cheaply (and thus conduct more extensive research, create a commercial payoff for creating one etc), establishing one will be a real possibility.
  - billswift 17y ago
    Sylvia Engdahl's Space Subsite, http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space.htm http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space.htm , is a good place to start. She has several essays plus links to organizations.
jrockway 17y ago
Don't worry, I'm sure we'll eventually kill ourselves off.
- paulshort 17y ago
  After millions of years of being forced to use our wits to survive combined with periods of inbreeding (resulting in a relatively narrow genome), humans are now a super-race of genetic mutants ahead of our time on the evolutionary scale. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if being too smart for our own good contributed to our demise. Edit: By "inbreeding" I mean - if the human population were reduced to a few thousand breeding individuals, and those individuals were also spreading or migrating into different areas of Africa, the middle East, Europe, etc. at the same time, that would mean much smaller groups of people who breed within their "community." It may have been thousands or tens of thousands of years before those different communities met up with each other and combined genetic material again.
  - ramchip 17y ago
    Wouldn't inbreeding cause the opposite of a super-race? Inheriting different genes from both parents can prevent a lot of problems; for example the fact that women have two copies of the X chromosome makes them a lot less likely to be color blind. Having a uniform gene pool means that people would end up with similar genes and be more likely to have diseases. I'm not sure if/why recombining after a long period of isolation and mutation would be better than staying together and just sharing mutations gradually. It's an interesting question though, there's problem some research paper somewhere that could tell us...
- RevRal 17y ago
  The question persists, and deserves serious attention. But I am confident that we won't end up killing ourselves. If humans weren't at the cusp of intelligence, and still possessed all this technology, then I would be worried. However, we are on the verge of real intelligence. If evolution can be called a form of intelligence, then we are meta-intelligence. It feels as natural as the path of a meandering stream that we've taken up the responsibilities of evolution. We will spawn a new intelligence. The singularity is near (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near). Granted, a scenario where a lot of humans humans die off is a real threat. A Malthusian catastrophe brings us down to one billion, perhaps. Right now it feels like we're in high school, cramming for the final exam in an all-out one-nighter. I just don't think it is possible to fail the exam.
tokenadult 17y ago
The brotherhood of humankind is more than just a metaphor--it's a reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor
ramchip 17y ago
Nitpick: volcanoes cause 'volcanic winters', not 'nuclear winters'.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
we've been through the eye of the needle several times already. we just had (still have?) the nuclear one. we have what is IMO the biggest one coming up: AI.

33 points by soundsop 17y ago

hga 17y ago

The Earth is a rather hostile place when you use a megayear scale. Paleontologists and geologists have also found a variety of events (e.g, megacaldera such as Yellowstone cutting loose, meteor impacts) that are correlated with mass extinctions. We shouldn't tarry in establishing self-sustaining habitats off the Earth.

ugh 17y ago
Hostile for species and classes, maybe (and I’m quite sure no individual survived a megayear yet), still not hostile for life in general :)
- eru 17y ago
  I do not know. Although the current form of life has been around for quite a while --- who knows how many attempts have failed before that?
  - ugh 17y ago
    It seems to be that life has been around ever since the earth cooled enough to have liquid water. So there isn’t all that much time for other kinds of life. There might be many failed attempts of replicators that nearly made it (in fact, that seems highly probable) but considering how early it started it seems to be pretty easy to keep it running once it’s going.
    - eru 17y ago
      Of course there may also be a survivorship bias involved: Imagine that life dies out easily, but does not get re-started when it has died out once. Our observation would be the same.
kiba 17y ago
Is there an organization who is carrying out the necessary task of establishing off-world colonies for humanity? If so, what is the website and how can individuals help? It is one thing to posit a need, but quite another to do it.
- ajju 17y ago
  A large number of private space companies (eg masten space) are working on building cheaper spacecrafts. That is the first step. Once we have a way to reach potential off-world colonies more cheaply (and thus conduct more extensive research, create a commercial payoff for creating one etc), establishing one will be a real possibility.
- billswift 17y ago
  Sylvia Engdahl's Space Subsite, http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space.htm http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space.htm , is a good place to start. She has several essays plus links to organizations.

jrockway 17y ago

Don't worry, I'm sure we'll eventually kill ourselves off.

paulshort 17y ago
After millions of years of being forced to use our wits to survive combined with periods of inbreeding (resulting in a relatively narrow genome), humans are now a super-race of genetic mutants ahead of our time on the evolutionary scale. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if being too smart for our own good contributed to our demise. Edit: By "inbreeding" I mean - if the human population were reduced to a few thousand breeding individuals, and those individuals were also spreading or migrating into different areas of Africa, the middle East, Europe, etc. at the same time, that would mean much smaller groups of people who breed within their "community." It may have been thousands or tens of thousands of years before those different communities met up with each other and combined genetic material again.
- ramchip 17y ago
  Wouldn't inbreeding cause the opposite of a super-race? Inheriting different genes from both parents can prevent a lot of problems; for example the fact that women have two copies of the X chromosome makes them a lot less likely to be color blind. Having a uniform gene pool means that people would end up with similar genes and be more likely to have diseases. I'm not sure if/why recombining after a long period of isolation and mutation would be better than staying together and just sharing mutations gradually. It's an interesting question though, there's problem some research paper somewhere that could tell us...
RevRal 17y ago
The question persists, and deserves serious attention. But I am confident that we won't end up killing ourselves. If humans weren't at the cusp of intelligence, and still possessed all this technology, then I would be worried. However, we are on the verge of real intelligence. If evolution can be called a form of intelligence, then we are meta-intelligence. It feels as natural as the path of a meandering stream that we've taken up the responsibilities of evolution. We will spawn a new intelligence. The singularity is near (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near). Granted, a scenario where a lot of humans humans die off is a real threat. A Malthusian catastrophe brings us down to one billion, perhaps. Right now it feels like we're in high school, cramming for the final exam in an all-out one-nighter. I just don't think it is possible to fail the exam.

tokenadult 17y ago

The brotherhood of humankind is more than just a metaphor--it's a reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor

ramchip 17y ago

Nitpick: volcanoes cause 'volcanic winters', not 'nuclear winters'.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

we've been through the eye of the needle several times already. we just had (still have?) the nuclear one. we have what is IMO the biggest one coming up: AI.