> Given how large the universe is, I'd bet there's a good chance that scientists, engineers, and enterprising people will find ways to make all these dire predi

> Given how large the universe is, I'd bet there's a good chance that scientists, engineers, and enterprising people will find ways to make all these dire predictions wrong. I want to be optimistic, but a couple of things are worth noting. First, is that civilization has fallen back before. It's definitely possible for systems, knowledge and progress built over the centuries to fall apart and it has happened before. There's the bronze-age collapse: ancient cities were destroyed, trade routes were lost, literacy declined and in general there was a big cultural decline— not in one civilization but thought all the "known world" at the time. Fast-forward to the end of the Hellenistic/Roman periods— there was a decline there too leading up to, during and after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Huge advances were made during that era in astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, architecture, art, etc. Alexandrian engineers were designing steam-powered automata in the centuries BCE [1], but like a lot of other classical knowledge this was lost sometime before the Dark Ages. The Renaissance was about new developments, but also largely about re-discovering what was developed in the Hellenistic/Roman periods. We can assume modern times are different because we have more advanced technology, better political systems, different ideologies and more experience, but our challenges are also bigger. We've made it past challenges that would've destroyed civilizations in the past: droughts, wars, turmoil, etc. But we've never faced global climate change, for example. Second— the fact that we've been able to invent our way out of possible crisis before doesn't mean this will keep being the case. The number of things that are possible in this universe is large, but not limitless— the universe still has its laws. For example: Moores law. We know there's a limit there because of how small atoms are. We will have to figure out other ways to make processing faster and more efficient, because once we reach the physical limit, there's little we can do. We've been able to figure out ways to scale agriculture, reduce our dependence in one resource by switching to another, etc. but there's no certainty that this will always be the case. It's very much possible that at some point either the physical limits to technological development will catch up to us, or we won't be able to figure out the next big breakthrough in time. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_robots#Automata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_robots#Automata [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Forecasts_and_roadmaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Forecasts_and_ro...