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All this effort to avoid the collapse of human civilization seems misplaced. Protecting humanity from calamity is only necessary if humanity serves a purpose. W

All this effort to avoid the collapse of human civilization seems misplaced. Protecting humanity from calamity is only necessary if humanity serves a purpose. Would you back up computer data that is of no use to anyone? Of course not. The fact that something exists does not justify going to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. Uniqueness does not make something useful or worth preserving, either. As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a reason to think that humanity should be any different?

BobbyJo 5y ago
On that same scale, your life is insignificant, but you try to preserve that no?. Do you have kids? Family? Their lives are also insignificant in the same way. If you're invested in your own life, or the lives of loved ones, but not in the lives of your fellow man, you're not enlightened to our insignificance, you're selfish. I want the next generation to have the opportunities I've had, if not more, and I'm sure they'll want the same for the next. Given that, it only makes sense to try and preserve a future for humans in general.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
  I don’t see how this is a rational response to the question that the commenter posited. It’s all assumptions on top of assumptions about his/her personhood. What do you mean by “preservation” here—is it just attending to our most basic physiological needs? Is doing that really even an active choice? What about the things that we do for our loved ones—is that on the same scale as trying to preserve our species from mass extinction? What if the commenter contributes to charity or puts out excellent work which improves people’s lives—does that not count as caring for the lives of one’s fellow man?
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    > What do you mean by “preservation” here Preserve, as in, to maintain. Like, not let it disappear. That should be obvious from the context, so I have a hard time believing this was a good faith attempt at poking holes in what I said. > Is doing that really even an active choice? Mostly no, but only because choosing not to preserve your own life is such a startlingly rare occurrence we don't really think of it as an option. How is chosing to preserve humanity as a whole not a similar 'non-choice' in that case? > What about the things that we do for our loved ones—is that on the same scale as trying to preserve our species from mass extinction? It doesn't need to be on the same scale to be driven by the same factors. > What if the commenter contributes to charity or puts out excellent work which improves people’s lives—does that not count as caring for the lives of one’s fellow man? It certainly would, and would make the cognitive dissonance of thinking humanity is itself not worth preserving pretty stark. > I don’t see how this is a rational response to the question that the commenter posited. I am likewise confused how you thought any of this was a rational rebuttal to my own statements.
yodsanklai 5y ago
It's just survival instinct that is built in our DNA. It operates at the species level too, probably to a lesser extent, since we don't seem equipped to prevent the collapse. But overall, this is how I make peace with my mind with the announced decline. On the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, and we're bound to disappear anyway. So maybe Bill Gates is right: having fun burning as much fuel as possible with his jet and super yacht while it lasts, and hoping that something comes up from innovation.
adventured 5y ago
> The fact that something exists does not justify going to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. The flaw in your premise is that you're dropping context on the individual. If you pretend humans are a mere non-thinking, non-individual collective, then what you're saying is correct. That's false. Each person will strive to exist, to persist, for their own reasons (with each life being different, literally; with each reasoning pathway being unique, literally). > As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a reason to think that humanity should be any different? That something ceases to exist, that it expires, doesn't automatically determine whether it has value. By your premise all entities have no value. That I exist and place value on at least one entity acts to prove you wrong (ie you're wrong). > Uniqueness does not make something useful or worth preserving, either. You've got the premise entirely formulated incorrectly. I'm not asking your permission to exist. I'm not asking to be granted value by you. I exist. I decide if my life has value, you do not (more precisely: your input has essentially zero value in that calculation; my input has enormous consequence/value in the calculation). I decide how great of a value to place on my existence. I decide if I think my life is useful, in other words, and whether it's worth preserving - your input is not necessary and is in fact meaningless. I decide with my own reasoning what purpose my life has, what value my life has, and can change my thinking on the matter at any time I see fit; my thinking on the matter is the extreme primary, and by comparison your thinking on the matter is irrelevant. That is to say, it doesn't matter what you think, when it comes to whether you think my existence is worth preserving or of value. This is a simple demonstration of how you dropped context on value determination as it pertains to the fact that humans are individual actors. That should all be quite easy to grasp. Yeah, but why does that matter? It matters because Elon Musk is an individual and has decided to go to Mars. How do you plan to stop him and his SpaceX party of happy Mars bound radicals? You can't, most likely - they're acting on their individual value systems, aligning with other like-minded persons, to achieve something greater than they could accomplish alone. They have decided their goal matters, that it is has value, they're not waiting for the permission of 7.8 billion other people to go; they're not waiting for a billion other people to tell them that what they're doing has value, that their existence matters, they're going regardless of what most people think: they decide if what they're doing with their lives has value or not (and yes, of course, there are some very powerful forces that could potentially stop them, such as the US Government; some amount of permission is usually required for such a considerable undertaking when operating within a society; although to be clear, the government still doesn't dictate whether their goals have value, those people can still value their goals even if denied permission by the government to pursue them).
awb 5y ago
Well some of us think we serve a purpose and that’s as good as we’ll probably get because there is no absolute truth or definitive objective to measure against. Even you posting a comment shows some purpose. In that sense humanity is worth saving to preserve your comment / thought process alone. Or, if we save humanity as a reminder to ourselves and others that our humanity exists absent of any purpose, that sounds like plenty of purpose to me.
marcusverus 5y ago
Imagine the cosmos without a single solitary observer. Populated with automata which simply act out their genetic instructions, never seeing beyond the next meal or the next opportunity to couple. Imagine the cosmos without one single sentient being that could look up at the sky and think, "Wow!". It would be a shame for all of this to go on, just existing, unappreciated. The cosmos deserves to be loved.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  So you’re saying is this is all about to become Conway’s Game of Life without an observer? Interesting thought.
slibhb 5y ago
> As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a reason to think that humanity should be any different? It's not a question of living forever. It's a question of living as long as possible. Individuals certainly try to do that. I think your post is playing a game. You think your life has value. Claiming otherwise is meaningless verbiage unless you, um, follow through. It's difficult (maybe impossible) to rationally ground that belief but that doesn't stop us from holding it.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
  Just because you think that humans aren’t special doesn’t mean that you should commit suicide, though. I’m personally not against humans reaching for the stars, heck I think we should do everything we can to succeed in that, but for the purposes of acquiring knowledge and not first and foremost self-preservation. I mean, if we’re disagreeing with this comment because we think we are special and have the moral obligation to survive, there’s a ton of work that we need to and can do here on Earth before trying to settle in another planet, right? If we can think of terraforming Mars, heck we should be able to stop all kinds of pollution right now, but that’s not even the kind of rhetoric that I’m seeing here in HN.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    > Just because you think that humans aren’t special doesn’t mean that you should commit suicide, though. No but it implies there's nothing wrong with suicide. > If we can think of terraforming Mars, heck we should be able to stop all kinds of pollution right now, but that’s not even the kind of rhetoric that I’m seeing here in HN. Really? I see it all over HN. Lots of posters are very concerned about global warming and pollution and those posts are often highly upvoted. But I don't think we have to choose between colonizing Mars and treating the Earth better. We can do both. (Well I'm not optimistic about the Mars colony but I certainly think we should try).
    - rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
      Acknowledging the fact that everything perishes, including humans, because we are not special, does not imply that there is nothing wrong with suicide (though I’d like to see you successfully argue that point—but that’s a separate discussion). You’re making a huge leap here. I mean, sure, we can do both, but I do maintain that since, right now, the only success that we can guarantee from exploring space with our current tools is to gather knowledge, anybody who genuinely believes and is committed to the idea that we have a moral obligation to prolong the life of our species should be trying to save Earth right now.
addingnumbers 5y ago
This sounds like bare nihilism to me. Why do anything, if nothing matters?
WhompingWindows 5y ago
You believe there's nothing worth preserving in human civilization, that's there no purpose to anything humanity does? I'd argue we are biological beings with consciousness, we have the capability of experiencing wonderful things. As our ancestors did before us, isn't on us to keep the ball rolling, to allow future descendants to experience the joys of life and thought?
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
  Trace up our ancestry far enough and you’ll realize that the earliest humans didn’t mean to bear us to experience the joys of life and thought but, really, they were just performing their natural, animalistic urges to hump each other.
  - WhompingWindows 5y ago
    It's not procreation that's our sole purpose on Earth, however. Yes, Darwinian evolution posits that ability to procreate successfully shaped every species. However, I'd argue due to our consciousness, our ability to generate culture via language and history and tradition, our ability to manipulate the environment via tools and learning, these move beyond Darwinian evolution. Our culture and language and toolsets are extremely powerful and wonderful collective objects that are worth preserving and cultivating evermore. Just ask yourself, wouldn't it be a shame if there was no one around to listen to Beethoven or Mozart, to look at Monet or Van Gogh Paintings, or to appreciate the sound of poetry or the movement of a dancer? I think denying that humans are social beings in a massive social network is easy, that way nothing we do really "matters" to the universe, even though it matters intensely to other humans.
    - rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
      To whom would it be a shame that no one is around to listen to the likes of Beethoven and Mozart when your premise is, exactly, that no one is around?
    - ModernMech 5y ago
toss1 5y ago
Of course we all expire at some point, individually and collectively. However, we almost all make efforts to push that point as far into the future as possible (the main exception being when doom is near and assured, and only increasing misery is foreseen on the way). So, why would we not try to extend the expiration date, individually and collectively? It's a big universe, so much to explore!
gooseus 5y ago
The human mind is the most complex and entropy-reducing machine the Universe has ever produced (to our knowledge). If you look around the rest of the Universe you may find thing of interest and beauty, but those concepts of "interesting" and "beautiful" are entirely constructs of that human mind. The only way anything in the Universe is "beautiful" or "interesting" is because minds exist which can appreciate other parts of the Universe as such. Protecting humanity isn't about protecting individuals or anything specific, it's about preserving a process that can make new and interesting things happen in the Universe. One of the most interesting things that humans can do is conceptualize something like "purpose", just like "beauty" one could make the case that the Universe has no purpose without an intelligence embedded inside which can articulate one and that we are in the process of deciding a Purpose for the Universe through our philosophical/theological discussions.

BobbyJo 5y ago

On that same scale, your life is insignificant, but you try to preserve that no?. Do you have kids? Family? Their lives are also insignificant in the same way. If you're invested in your own life, or the lives of loved ones, but not in the lives of your fellow man, you're not enlightened to our insignificance, you're selfish. I want the next generation to have the opportunities I've had, if not more, and I'm sure they'll want the same for the next. Given that, it only makes sense to try and preserve a future for humans in general.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
I don’t see how this is a rational response to the question that the commenter posited. It’s all assumptions on top of assumptions about his/her personhood. What do you mean by “preservation” here—is it just attending to our most basic physiological needs? Is doing that really even an active choice? What about the things that we do for our loved ones—is that on the same scale as trying to preserve our species from mass extinction? What if the commenter contributes to charity or puts out excellent work which improves people’s lives—does that not count as caring for the lives of one’s fellow man?
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  > What do you mean by “preservation” here Preserve, as in, to maintain. Like, not let it disappear. That should be obvious from the context, so I have a hard time believing this was a good faith attempt at poking holes in what I said. > Is doing that really even an active choice? Mostly no, but only because choosing not to preserve your own life is such a startlingly rare occurrence we don't really think of it as an option. How is chosing to preserve humanity as a whole not a similar 'non-choice' in that case? > What about the things that we do for our loved ones—is that on the same scale as trying to preserve our species from mass extinction? It doesn't need to be on the same scale to be driven by the same factors. > What if the commenter contributes to charity or puts out excellent work which improves people’s lives—does that not count as caring for the lives of one’s fellow man? It certainly would, and would make the cognitive dissonance of thinking humanity is itself not worth preserving pretty stark. > I don’t see how this is a rational response to the question that the commenter posited. I am likewise confused how you thought any of this was a rational rebuttal to my own statements.

yodsanklai 5y ago

It's just survival instinct that is built in our DNA. It operates at the species level too, probably to a lesser extent, since we don't seem equipped to prevent the collapse. But overall, this is how I make peace with my mind with the announced decline. On the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, and we're bound to disappear anyway. So maybe Bill Gates is right: having fun burning as much fuel as possible with his jet and super yacht while it lasts, and hoping that something comes up from innovation.

adventured 5y ago

> The fact that something exists does not justify going to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. The flaw in your premise is that you're dropping context on the individual. If you pretend humans are a mere non-thinking, non-individual collective, then what you're saying is correct. That's false. Each person will strive to exist, to persist, for their own reasons (with each life being different, literally; with each reasoning pathway being unique, literally). > As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a reason to think that humanity should be any different? That something ceases to exist, that it expires, doesn't automatically determine whether it has value. By your premise all entities have no value. That I exist and place value on at least one entity acts to prove you wrong (ie you're wrong). > Uniqueness does not make something useful or worth preserving, either. You've got the premise entirely formulated incorrectly. I'm not asking your permission to exist. I'm not asking to be granted value by you. I exist. I decide if my life has value, you do not (more precisely: your input has essentially zero value in that calculation; my input has enormous consequence/value in the calculation). I decide how great of a value to place on my existence. I decide if I think my life is useful, in other words, and whether it's worth preserving - your input is not necessary and is in fact meaningless. I decide with my own reasoning what purpose my life has, what value my life has, and can change my thinking on the matter at any time I see fit; my thinking on the matter is the extreme primary, and by comparison your thinking on the matter is irrelevant. That is to say, it doesn't matter what you think, when it comes to whether you think my existence is worth preserving or of value. This is a simple demonstration of how you dropped context on value determination as it pertains to the fact that humans are individual actors. That should all be quite easy to grasp. Yeah, but why does that matter? It matters because Elon Musk is an individual and has decided to go to Mars. How do you plan to stop him and his SpaceX party of happy Mars bound radicals? You can't, most likely - they're acting on their individual value systems, aligning with other like-minded persons, to achieve something greater than they could accomplish alone. They have decided their goal matters, that it is has value, they're not waiting for the permission of 7.8 billion other people to go; they're not waiting for a billion other people to tell them that what they're doing has value, that their existence matters, they're going regardless of what most people think: they decide if what they're doing with their lives has value or not (and yes, of course, there are some very powerful forces that could potentially stop them, such as the US Government; some amount of permission is usually required for such a considerable undertaking when operating within a society; although to be clear, the government still doesn't dictate whether their goals have value, those people can still value their goals even if denied permission by the government to pursue them).

awb 5y ago

Well some of us think we serve a purpose and that’s as good as we’ll probably get because there is no absolute truth or definitive objective to measure against. Even you posting a comment shows some purpose. In that sense humanity is worth saving to preserve your comment / thought process alone. Or, if we save humanity as a reminder to ourselves and others that our humanity exists absent of any purpose, that sounds like plenty of purpose to me.

marcusverus 5y ago

Imagine the cosmos without a single solitary observer. Populated with automata which simply act out their genetic instructions, never seeing beyond the next meal or the next opportunity to couple. Imagine the cosmos without one single sentient being that could look up at the sky and think, "Wow!". It would be a shame for all of this to go on, just existing, unappreciated. The cosmos deserves to be loved.

cableshaft 5y ago
So you’re saying is this is all about to become Conway’s Game of Life without an observer? Interesting thought.

slibhb 5y ago

> As individuals, we all expire at some point. Is there a reason to think that humanity should be any different? It's not a question of living forever. It's a question of living as long as possible. Individuals certainly try to do that. I think your post is playing a game. You think your life has value. Claiming otherwise is meaningless verbiage unless you, um, follow through. It's difficult (maybe impossible) to rationally ground that belief but that doesn't stop us from holding it.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
Just because you think that humans aren’t special doesn’t mean that you should commit suicide, though. I’m personally not against humans reaching for the stars, heck I think we should do everything we can to succeed in that, but for the purposes of acquiring knowledge and not first and foremost self-preservation. I mean, if we’re disagreeing with this comment because we think we are special and have the moral obligation to survive, there’s a ton of work that we need to and can do here on Earth before trying to settle in another planet, right? If we can think of terraforming Mars, heck we should be able to stop all kinds of pollution right now, but that’s not even the kind of rhetoric that I’m seeing here in HN.
- slibhb 5y ago
  > Just because you think that humans aren’t special doesn’t mean that you should commit suicide, though. No but it implies there's nothing wrong with suicide. > If we can think of terraforming Mars, heck we should be able to stop all kinds of pollution right now, but that’s not even the kind of rhetoric that I’m seeing here in HN. Really? I see it all over HN. Lots of posters are very concerned about global warming and pollution and those posts are often highly upvoted. But I don't think we have to choose between colonizing Mars and treating the Earth better. We can do both. (Well I'm not optimistic about the Mars colony but I certainly think we should try).
  - rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
    Acknowledging the fact that everything perishes, including humans, because we are not special, does not imply that there is nothing wrong with suicide (though I’d like to see you successfully argue that point—but that’s a separate discussion). You’re making a huge leap here. I mean, sure, we can do both, but I do maintain that since, right now, the only success that we can guarantee from exploring space with our current tools is to gather knowledge, anybody who genuinely believes and is committed to the idea that we have a moral obligation to prolong the life of our species should be trying to save Earth right now.

addingnumbers 5y ago

This sounds like bare nihilism to me. Why do anything, if nothing matters?

WhompingWindows 5y ago

You believe there's nothing worth preserving in human civilization, that's there no purpose to anything humanity does? I'd argue we are biological beings with consciousness, we have the capability of experiencing wonderful things. As our ancestors did before us, isn't on us to keep the ball rolling, to allow future descendants to experience the joys of life and thought?

rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
Trace up our ancestry far enough and you’ll realize that the earliest humans didn’t mean to bear us to experience the joys of life and thought but, really, they were just performing their natural, animalistic urges to hump each other.
- WhompingWindows 5y ago
  It's not procreation that's our sole purpose on Earth, however. Yes, Darwinian evolution posits that ability to procreate successfully shaped every species. However, I'd argue due to our consciousness, our ability to generate culture via language and history and tradition, our ability to manipulate the environment via tools and learning, these move beyond Darwinian evolution. Our culture and language and toolsets are extremely powerful and wonderful collective objects that are worth preserving and cultivating evermore. Just ask yourself, wouldn't it be a shame if there was no one around to listen to Beethoven or Mozart, to look at Monet or Van Gogh Paintings, or to appreciate the sound of poetry or the movement of a dancer? I think denying that humans are social beings in a massive social network is easy, that way nothing we do really "matters" to the universe, even though it matters intensely to other humans.
  - rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
    To whom would it be a shame that no one is around to listen to the likes of Beethoven and Mozart when your premise is, exactly, that no one is around?
  - ModernMech 5y ago

toss1 5y ago

Of course we all expire at some point, individually and collectively. However, we almost all make efforts to push that point as far into the future as possible (the main exception being when doom is near and assured, and only increasing misery is foreseen on the way). So, why would we not try to extend the expiration date, individually and collectively? It's a big universe, so much to explore!

gooseus 5y ago

The human mind is the most complex and entropy-reducing machine the Universe has ever produced (to our knowledge). If you look around the rest of the Universe you may find thing of interest and beauty, but those concepts of "interesting" and "beautiful" are entirely constructs of that human mind. The only way anything in the Universe is "beautiful" or "interesting" is because minds exist which can appreciate other parts of the Universe as such. Protecting humanity isn't about protecting individuals or anything specific, it's about preserving a process that can make new and interesting things happen in the Universe. One of the most interesting things that humans can do is conceptualize something like "purpose", just like "beauty" one could make the case that the Universe has no purpose without an intelligence embedded inside which can articulate one and that we are in the process of deciding a Purpose for the Universe through our philosophical/theological discussions.