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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

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.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      I feel like you're going around in some odd circles here. I'm not really super interested in trying to guess the odds of things we don't know about or things that have never (to our knowledge) happened, which makes me pretty skeptical of any concept built on the fermi paradox to be honest. Too many unknown unknowns. Your assertion is that the things that face us now are somehow less likely to destroy our species than the things we faced before, thus the "great filter" must be behind us. Ignoring for a moment that we certainly don't even know all the potential species-killing events we potentially face (ie. unknown unknowns), I haven't seen you explain why any of the ones we have faced are less of a problem now, or why any of the ones we face now are less dangerous than the ones we faced before. You just assert it as true and then when pressed try to haggle on some percentages you seem to have pulled out your ass.

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.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    I feel like you're going around in some odd circles here. I'm not really super interested in trying to guess the odds of things we don't know about or things that have never (to our knowledge) happened, which makes me pretty skeptical of any concept built on the fermi paradox to be honest. Too many unknown unknowns. Your assertion is that the things that face us now are somehow less likely to destroy our species than the things we faced before, thus the "great filter" must be behind us. Ignoring for a moment that we certainly don't even know all the potential species-killing events we potentially face (ie. unknown unknowns), I haven't seen you explain why any of the ones we have faced are less of a problem now, or why any of the ones we face now are less dangerous than the ones we faced before. You just assert it as true and then when pressed try to haggle on some percentages you seem to have pulled out your ass.