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The Earth has already swept it's region of the solar system clean with prior collisions causing the mass extinctions. There are not an infinite amount of aster

The Earth has already swept it's region of the solar system clean with prior collisions causing the mass extinctions. There are not an infinite amount of asteroids, and in large time frames you can reduce their numbers. Therefore, we have a large hit once a century. Large, but largely inconsequential (The Earth is empty. Try this: Pick random coordinates and look them up on a map. Repeat. How long before you end up w/ 10 km of an inhabited area?) Theories are infinite, funds are not. This is an ineffective solution (we can only deflect small and well predicted orbits) to an unlikely problem: mass extinction from asteroids hasn't happened in a very long time (millions of years) -> Bayesian inference -> very low probability of occurring soon. It will happen. But in a millions years Compare that with the plethora of reasons we might die out in the next 10, 20, or 100 years.

nguoi 7y ago
The last mass extinction event caused by an asteroid was probably only about 66 Mya, about 1% of the Earth's lifetime.
- ehgshgshg 7y ago
  So very rare. Mass extinctions, from your number, appear to be a once in a 132 Mya event. [0] Humans have been on Earth 0.1 Mya, 0.2Mya; statistically we'll be around for a total of 0.2 to 0.4 Mya in total. [0][1] Therefore, there is a 1-330 chance of the two time lines overlapping. [0] Assuming the present time is random, I believe the best estimate of event frequency is that we're in the middle of two occurrences; hence the doubling. [1]I'm being generous here. I don't think we have 0.2 Mya left in us, primarily because for the first time in history we have the ability to kill ourselves off. Therefore the assumption that out present in at a random position of the human experience used in [0] is invalid. Since we probably only have 100 years left, that's a 1-1E6 possibility facing us.

nguoi 7y ago

The last mass extinction event caused by an asteroid was probably only about 66 Mya, about 1% of the Earth's lifetime.

ehgshgshg 7y ago
So very rare. Mass extinctions, from your number, appear to be a once in a 132 Mya event. [0] Humans have been on Earth 0.1 Mya, 0.2Mya; statistically we'll be around for a total of 0.2 to 0.4 Mya in total. [0][1] Therefore, there is a 1-330 chance of the two time lines overlapping. [0] Assuming the present time is random, I believe the best estimate of event frequency is that we're in the middle of two occurrences; hence the doubling. [1]I'm being generous here. I don't think we have 0.2 Mya left in us, primarily because for the first time in history we have the ability to kill ourselves off. Therefore the assumption that out present in at a random position of the human experience used in [0] is invalid. Since we probably only have 100 years left, that's a 1-1E6 possibility facing us.