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2 Points: 1. We do not have advanced AI. We have LLMs. They're not intelligent, not creative, and are never going to be. I'm with you on the other things, thou

2 Points: 1. We do not have advanced AI. We have LLMs. They're not intelligent, not creative, and are never going to be. I'm with you on the other things, though. 2. The planet will not be destroyed by anything we do. H. sap. might go extinct along with many, many other species, but give the biospehere a couple of million years and it will all bounce back, sans humans. I've been living/trialing the path you suggest in your last paragraph for 30 years. Sadly it's not gone viral. AMA. ;)

vouaobrasil 3y ago
Well, by "advanced AI", I did not mean truly intelligent AI of course. I meant sufficiently advanced to disrupt society to an extent that will make it worse that it was without it. Advanced as in "advanced weapon", not "smart". Yes, it is true that the planet won't be destroyed, that is a good point. Only we might, like you said. Though, if many other species go extinct, it is sort of like destruction in a way, even though it isn't total. Feel free to reach out through the contact info in my profile if you want to collaborate.
cduzz 3y ago
The biosphere may well bounce back but it may take an absurdly long time to sequester carbon back into the ground. The first time it happened, as I understand, there simply wasn't a huge amount of oxygen in the air, so things didn't burn and having megatons of carbon rich organic material lying around wasn't likely to catch fire and jump back into the air. Now, if I leave a bunch of organic material lying around it'll catch fire and go right back into the air. I'm not sure how long that'll take to change, or what impact that has on future life here on earth, but we've got 2 examples of earthish planets that don't support life right next door.
- fellowmartian 3y ago
  Why would Gaia try to sequester carbon back into the ground? It’s useful to her (but not to us).
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Why would carbon need to go back into the ground? It’s really good for plant life in general and only bad for humans who want the earth to remain in the same state it was in 1700 indefinitely.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Our industrial revolution benefited immensely from large amounts of carbon buried in the ground where we could fairly easily get to it. A follow-up species in a few million years might struggle to bootstrap theirs.
    - fellowmartian 3y ago
      There will be no follow-up species besides those we evolve into and/or create. We're going to inherit the observable universe to ourselves. Even if we go through a couple of apocalypses on the road to it, it's really hard to imagine a scenario where ALL humans die, so it's much more economic to rebuild a civilization from remaining humans than evolve intelligence again.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        That's a whole bunch of unearned certainty, but the same point applies to a post-apocalyptic resurgence of humanity; the second industrial revolution is going to be missing the readily accessible coal and oil that drove the first one along.
        fellowmartian 3y ago
        We're from different memeplexes, but both of our assumptions are equally unearned. But if we're talking about a second industrial revolution it won't be like the first one, because: - There will be more carbon in the air, hence more wood to chop and burn - There will books lying around describing how to leapfrog many steps I don't think it'd take 10000 years again to restore civilization the second time around.
- sampo 3y ago
  > The first time it happened, as I understand, there simply wasn't a huge amount of oxygen in the air When cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) originally cleaned out Earth's CO2 atmosphere and produced O2, I don't know where the C went. To bedrock as calcium carbonates (CaCO3)? But the carbon that humankind has released into atmosphere by burning coal and oil, was sequestered by plants during the Carboniferous+Permian periods (360 to 250 million years ago). These were large, vascular plants. Not too much different form plants today. And the atmospheric oxygen was already at about current levels. But your idea might hold in a different context: There is a theory that 360My ago plants invented lignin, to make their stems more rigid and woody. And then it took time before fungi were able to invent enzymes that are able to digest lignin. So maybe the the large burial of biomass carbon in Carboniferous could not happen again, with out modern fungi being able to decompose wood. And there is another theory, that as Carboniferous+Permian periods were during an ice age, the low sea levels allowed for large areas of swampy lowland vegetation. Where vegetation sequestered carbon, and wet swampy soil allowed the carbon to get slowly buried, because microbes cannot as easily decompose biomass in wet, anaerobic conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation
- sandworm101 3y ago
  >> Now, if I leave a bunch of organic material lying around it'll catch fire and go right back into the air. Only an issue for the 1/3 of our planet that is dry. By volume/mass, most organic material eventually falls into the deep ocean, a place where fire isn't much of an issue.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

Well, by "advanced AI", I did not mean truly intelligent AI of course. I meant sufficiently advanced to disrupt society to an extent that will make it worse that it was without it. Advanced as in "advanced weapon", not "smart". Yes, it is true that the planet won't be destroyed, that is a good point. Only we might, like you said. Though, if many other species go extinct, it is sort of like destruction in a way, even though it isn't total. Feel free to reach out through the contact info in my profile if you want to collaborate.

cduzz 3y ago

The biosphere may well bounce back but it may take an absurdly long time to sequester carbon back into the ground. The first time it happened, as I understand, there simply wasn't a huge amount of oxygen in the air, so things didn't burn and having megatons of carbon rich organic material lying around wasn't likely to catch fire and jump back into the air. Now, if I leave a bunch of organic material lying around it'll catch fire and go right back into the air. I'm not sure how long that'll take to change, or what impact that has on future life here on earth, but we've got 2 examples of earthish planets that don't support life right next door.

fellowmartian 3y ago
Why would Gaia try to sequester carbon back into the ground? It’s useful to her (but not to us).
edgyquant 3y ago
Why would carbon need to go back into the ground? It’s really good for plant life in general and only bad for humans who want the earth to remain in the same state it was in 1700 indefinitely.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Our industrial revolution benefited immensely from large amounts of carbon buried in the ground where we could fairly easily get to it. A follow-up species in a few million years might struggle to bootstrap theirs.
  - fellowmartian 3y ago
    There will be no follow-up species besides those we evolve into and/or create. We're going to inherit the observable universe to ourselves. Even if we go through a couple of apocalypses on the road to it, it's really hard to imagine a scenario where ALL humans die, so it's much more economic to rebuild a civilization from remaining humans than evolve intelligence again.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      That's a whole bunch of unearned certainty, but the same point applies to a post-apocalyptic resurgence of humanity; the second industrial revolution is going to be missing the readily accessible coal and oil that drove the first one along.
      - fellowmartian 3y ago
        We're from different memeplexes, but both of our assumptions are equally unearned. But if we're talking about a second industrial revolution it won't be like the first one, because: - There will be more carbon in the air, hence more wood to chop and burn - There will books lying around describing how to leapfrog many steps I don't think it'd take 10000 years again to restore civilization the second time around.
sampo 3y ago
> The first time it happened, as I understand, there simply wasn't a huge amount of oxygen in the air When cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) originally cleaned out Earth's CO2 atmosphere and produced O2, I don't know where the C went. To bedrock as calcium carbonates (CaCO3)? But the carbon that humankind has released into atmosphere by burning coal and oil, was sequestered by plants during the Carboniferous+Permian periods (360 to 250 million years ago). These were large, vascular plants. Not too much different form plants today. And the atmospheric oxygen was already at about current levels. But your idea might hold in a different context: There is a theory that 360My ago plants invented lignin, to make their stems more rigid and woody. And then it took time before fungi were able to invent enzymes that are able to digest lignin. So maybe the the large burial of biomass carbon in Carboniferous could not happen again, with out modern fungi being able to decompose wood. And there is another theory, that as Carboniferous+Permian periods were during an ice age, the low sea levels allowed for large areas of swampy lowland vegetation. Where vegetation sequestered carbon, and wet swampy soil allowed the carbon to get slowly buried, because microbes cannot as easily decompose biomass in wet, anaerobic conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation
sandworm101 3y ago
>> Now, if I leave a bunch of organic material lying around it'll catch fire and go right back into the air. Only an issue for the 1/3 of our planet that is dry. By volume/mass, most organic material eventually falls into the deep ocean, a place where fire isn't much of an issue.