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Major extinction events have historically paved the way for new and interesting forms of life, including humans.
by resu_nimda 7y ago
Major extinction events have historically paved the way for new and interesting forms of life, including humans.
- yters 7y agoWhat if humans are a unique higher lifeform that will never be matched in the history of the universe?
- jessaustin 7y agoThat seems really unlikely. That is, it's like the reciprocal of the Drake equation, multiplied by some additional infinitesimal factors.
- yters 7y agoSeems highly likely given how fantastically different we are from all other known life forms, especially in our mental ability.
- philwelch 7y agoIf you assume humans are not unique in the universe, you're immediately confronted with the Fermi paradox. If the universe is filled with sapient life, wouldn't some of that sapient life be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us--a tiny amount of time on the astronomical timescale, but more than enough for them to be observable in some way? Ultimately we're left with the unsatisfying task of speculating without evidence, at least for now.
- jessaustin 7y agoIt could be that life at our current level is more observable to life at our current level than more advanced life would be. The "Dark Forest" hypothesis from 三体 would be one explanation, but even that isn't required. It could be that advanced life can better meet its needs via technology that we can't sense. That was certainly plausible before we could broadcast over the electromagnetic field, which wasn't so long ago. Perhaps it is still plausible, because we're still missing out on something important.
- r00fus 7y agoWith sapience enters ego...
- macintux 7y agoBut easy access to energy is gone. This is Earth’s last chance to bootstrap to the stars.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- filoleg 7y agoI never thought of it this way, but after reading your comment, this realization definitely hit me pretty hard.
- pc86 7y agoWell, they're wrong, so...
- fosk 7y agoThat's not true: given enough time decomposing organic material will create new oil reserves, while all the metals excavated are still right here on the surface of the Earth used every day by us (cars, phones, ...) and ready to re-enter the surface once we are done using them.
- state_less 7y agoI'm not sure I follow. How is it gone? We have fusion (solar) and fission. And we may find out how to more directly harness energy as we progress. I think our access to energy is limited by our lack of knowledge. I agree though, we should get out on some new space vessels soon to buy some insurance and project ourselves into the far future.
- macintux 7y agoIf we go extinct, the next intelligent species (if there is one) won’t have the easy reserves we used to get started. You can’t jump directly from fire to fusion.
- 7y ago