4 ms·
Why would we go extinct? We will transform earth to our needs and when the time is right we expand to space. Maybe not with our current biological body, but som
by holoduke 3y ago
Why would we go extinct?
We will transform earth to our needs and when the time is right we expand to space. Maybe not with our current biological body, but something different.
- Qem 3y ago> Why would we go extinct? We will transform earth to our needs and when the time is right we expand to space. At present, we are transforming Earth to our short term needs, but against our long term needs. The timescales don't match, because expanding to space should take several centuries, but we are risking wrecking the planet after only two centuries of industrial civilization, roughly. So it's wise to be afraid of extinction.
- edgyquant 3y agoThis is just not true. We are changing the earth in ways that is killing existing life but we are not threatening the existence of life or humanity as a whole. No matter what happens humans will adapt and life will evolve to fill new niches.
- NateEag 3y agoFull extinction seems unlikely, yeah. Reverting to low-tech after civilizational collapse... that one seems far too plausible to me. And we've used up loads of the easily-accessed coal and oil. industrial revolution 2.0 may not actually be feasible.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoI can't see how you're so confident. As we continue to haphazardly destabilizing the climate and the environment there could be catastrophic tipping points that we're currently unaware of.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoLife survived through much worse climate changes and ecological destabilizations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_... While what is happenings is extremely bad for our perception of what life is like, life itself has been through much worse.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoThat's such a callous and ghoulish attitude to me. Human consciousness and civilization are nature's greatest achievement. We should not let it be extinguished. Nature will not be able to recreate it, at least not on this planet.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI’m not saying it’s good or bad, I’m saying life will survive us. I’m not particularly eager to see humanity extinguished or the world reset into another age. But if it happens, life won’t be gone from the universe even if there’s only life here on earth. Nature might, who knows? And maybe we are just “programmed” to feel our own importance, and thats perhaps necessary but not sufficient to save us.
- austinjp 3y agoI would genuinely enjoy reading published science that supports your proposition. I've not seen much, if any.
- irrational 3y agoWe probably won’t go extinct. But the population will probably strongly plummet and we may lose the ability to go to space. If someone told me we would be back to subsistence level existence in 100 years, I would not be surprised.
- adrianN 3y agoArguably we currently don't have the ability to go "to space" for any meaningful definition of "space". We barely set foot on Luna a couple of times and since then only went a couple hundred kilometers up. We haven't even reached another planet, we have one (or is it two?) probes barely in interstellar space, no ambition to reach another star at all.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoNeed at least 1B to make space faring economic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]