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Unless we have already passed it. Thats a possibility right?

echelon 5y ago
Only in the bad sense, as we're still subject to the dangers of nuclear annihilation, cosmic disaster, vulnerable world hypothesis, etc. at pretty much every moment. We could have already exhausted all of the easy to obtain energy and resources, and that would make growth very hard to sustain at a level where we can expend extra effort on space exploration. Imagine an alien civilization that didn't have a Carboniferous period where energy was just left sitting around and accumulating for future use. Now imagine us exhausting it before we expand beyond our planet. That's the worry. Will we be able to tap into renewables in a way that sustains growth? Maybe. We're not there yet, though.
- alcover 5y ago
  I hear many minerals and fuels are past/near peaking. Recycling and thriftness will ease the descent a bit but I share your urgency. We have to go full-bore on space and nuclear.
marcosdumay 5y ago
That's the most plausible alternative by many orders of magnitude. In fact, the filters on our past are things with odds of survival that we estimate by counting orders of magnitude. At the same time, you will have a hard time getting estimates of survival lower than 1% for the known filters on our future. Unless there is something really surprising with space travel, we are past the Great Filter.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I think you have this precisely backwards? When humanity was scattered across the globe and unable to do any large scale geo-engineering or deliberately induce fission or fusion, we were largely incapable of dying by our own sword, so the only things that could eliminate the species are things that essentially would wipe out all medium-sized mammalian life on earth. Meteor strikes, absurdly large solar flares, a planetoid crashing into the moon, whatever. Now we still have basically all of those -- because realistically we're still not at the point where we have anywhere to colonize and survive long term without a living earth, even if we had the tech to try -- but we also have the ways in which we can eliminate ourselves, like causing our own climate crisis (which we are gleefully doing right now) or nuclear annihilation.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    There was a paper here on HN recently that estimated the odds of abiogenesis. OF course they are not certain, but his best guess was around 10^-100 for the Earth. Now tell me, what odds do you place on humanity killing itself before we learn to live in space?
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      I guess I think you're underestimating the scale of the problem of independently living in space? In theory we already know how to just live in space -- people live on the ISS, and before that on Mir, for decently long amounts of time. But if we kill earth before we've fully worked out how to terraform somewhere for permanent living without restocking from a living planet, of which we know of only one for sure, that might extend human living for like.. 50 years or something but certainly not a million. I think we're realistically a long long long way away from that, and most of the ways in which we might "kill the earth" will have a negative impact on our ability to achieve it to begin with. And again, the odds of a planet-killing asteroid hitting the earth haven't changed materially in probably like a few million years. We're no less vulnerable to that than we were 20k years ago. So I don't see why you think we're less vulnerable now just because we've managed to throw some tin cans in orbit.
      - marcosdumay 5y ago
        How much is "a long time away"? Is a thousand years enough? An almost planet killing asteroid hits us every 50 million years or so. Thus the probability of one not hitting us in a thousand years is around 99.99%. Certainly you are not proposing the great filter has a 99.99% survival rate? So talking about asteroids is absolutely a non-starter. For comparison, I was talking about a filter with survival rates of around 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% (more a few zeros, but who is counting?). What odds you place on a nuclear war?
        dharma1 5y ago
        It’s also a possibility that no matter what the timeframe, it’s simply not feasible for biological humans to live outside the Earth independently. It’s worth a shot, but it’s also worth acknowledging it may never work despite our best efforts.

Only in the bad sense, as we're still subject to the dangers of nuclear annihilation, cosmic disaster, vulnerable world hypothesis, etc. at pretty much every moment. We could have already exhausted all of the easy to obtain energy and resources, and that would make growth very hard to sustain at a level where we can expend extra effort on space exploration. Imagine an alien civilization that didn't have a Carboniferous period where energy was just left sitting around and accumulating for future use. Now imagine us exhausting it before we expand beyond our planet. That's the worry. Will we be able to tap into renewables in a way that sustains growth? Maybe. We're not there yet, though.

alcover 5y ago
I hear many minerals and fuels are past/near peaking. Recycling and thriftness will ease the descent a bit but I share your urgency. We have to go full-bore on space and nuclear.

marcosdumay 5y ago

That's the most plausible alternative by many orders of magnitude. In fact, the filters on our past are things with odds of survival that we estimate by counting orders of magnitude. At the same time, you will have a hard time getting estimates of survival lower than 1% for the known filters on our future. Unless there is something really surprising with space travel, we are past the Great Filter.

stormbrew 5y ago
I think you have this precisely backwards? When humanity was scattered across the globe and unable to do any large scale geo-engineering or deliberately induce fission or fusion, we were largely incapable of dying by our own sword, so the only things that could eliminate the species are things that essentially would wipe out all medium-sized mammalian life on earth. Meteor strikes, absurdly large solar flares, a planetoid crashing into the moon, whatever. Now we still have basically all of those -- because realistically we're still not at the point where we have anywhere to colonize and survive long term without a living earth, even if we had the tech to try -- but we also have the ways in which we can eliminate ourselves, like causing our own climate crisis (which we are gleefully doing right now) or nuclear annihilation.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  There was a paper here on HN recently that estimated the odds of abiogenesis. OF course they are not certain, but his best guess was around 10^-100 for the Earth. Now tell me, what odds do you place on humanity killing itself before we learn to live in space?
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    I guess I think you're underestimating the scale of the problem of independently living in space? In theory we already know how to just live in space -- people live on the ISS, and before that on Mir, for decently long amounts of time. But if we kill earth before we've fully worked out how to terraform somewhere for permanent living without restocking from a living planet, of which we know of only one for sure, that might extend human living for like.. 50 years or something but certainly not a million. I think we're realistically a long long long way away from that, and most of the ways in which we might "kill the earth" will have a negative impact on our ability to achieve it to begin with. And again, the odds of a planet-killing asteroid hitting the earth haven't changed materially in probably like a few million years. We're no less vulnerable to that than we were 20k years ago. So I don't see why you think we're less vulnerable now just because we've managed to throw some tin cans in orbit.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      How much is "a long time away"? Is a thousand years enough? An almost planet killing asteroid hits us every 50 million years or so. Thus the probability of one not hitting us in a thousand years is around 99.99%. Certainly you are not proposing the great filter has a 99.99% survival rate? So talking about asteroids is absolutely a non-starter. For comparison, I was talking about a filter with survival rates of around 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% (more a few zeros, but who is counting?). What odds you place on a nuclear war?
      - dharma1 5y ago
        It’s also a possibility that no matter what the timeframe, it’s simply not feasible for biological humans to live outside the Earth independently. It’s worth a shot, but it’s also worth acknowledging it may never work despite our best efforts.