5 ms·
In 250M years we have probably killed ourselves 249,9M years ago anyway. But in the unlikely scenario that we have not, we probably can fix both tectonic plate
by xlance 3y ago
In 250M years we have probably killed ourselves 249,9M years ago anyway.
But in the unlikely scenario that we have not, we probably can fix both tectonic plate movement and/or suns energy output with 250M years of technological progress.
- alex_young 3y agoGiven that our ancestors 65 MYA were very small rodent like creatures, I suspect any of “us” will be completely unrecognizable to the modern us.
- jmprspret 3y agoWe don't evolve anymore. Natural selection doesn't happen anymore. Only way for that to happen would be interplanetary travel (particles and radiation in space affecting DNA for one, space colonies slowly changing over many generations to suit other planet's conditions more likely).
- bowsamic 3y agoThe only thing that makes human selection unnatural is that we like to define ourselves as above nature
- m463 3y ago> We don't evolve anymore. Natural selection doesn't happen anymore. I think we do. IVF, cloning and more. People choose to live in safe or risky places. etc...
- alex_young 3y agoDo you really believe that? Sexual selection is a thing of the past?
- Ancalagon 3y agoNatural selection sure, artificial though, definitely. Women (on average) have preferences for taller guys (on average), where do you think the average height of people are headed? Artificial selection. Most reproduction is monogamous in modern society. Artificial selection. I don't mean to offend anyone with those examples by the way, apologies if I did. I also realize the irony that those examples might be opposing forces for the same phenotype I'm referencing.
- alex_young 3y agoArtificial selection refers to our selective breeding of non-humans. The examples you mentioned are natural selection.
- CaptArmchair 3y agoSapiens has only been around for 300k years. Writing and, arguably, civilization is only 5.000 years old. If you subtract 5k from 300k, you still have about 300k left. If you subtract 300k from 10 million years, you still have about 10 million years left. The point here is that we are notoriously bad at gauging how big numbers are. We are also bad at intuitively gauging how fast/slow evolution moves. We are very much still evolving and adapting to our surroundings. It's just that the big changes only become visible way beyond the horizon of a future we are able to conceive.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y agoIn our resource-abundant modern world, you should expect genes that cause people to want kids to do very well. Fertility is low in most developed countries, but that masks particular sub-populations that are growing at a rapid rate. See this article for instance: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-amish-268e3d0de87 https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-... Similarly, expect future generations to be full of people who just can't stand wearing a condom during sex.
- leoedin 3y agoAnecdotally, it was my more risk taking and carefree friends that had kids first. I can see why - with just a little effort it's very easy not to have kids in the modern world, and the cost-benefit analysis for children is pretty bad. What that means for the future of humanity, I don't know.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y agoIt's not necessarily that simple though. Maybe if you have an unplanned child early, you realize that thing about the cost-benefit analysis being bad, stop having kids, and reproduce at below replacement. Here is one paper I found on correlates of reproductive success in the US, from 2005 though: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/48563240/Sex_Status_and_Reproductive_Success_in_t20160904-27587-1hnam22-libre.pdf?1473004332=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DSex_status_and_reproductive_success_in_t.pdf&Expires=1695712199&Signature=AGSiqMiVTw~-gSjBx9LW7CJ8fRfQXZk1DewawtpRQoPn~qSqu0YpMaQu2Rs1p-on6GL26F7QdFdtZ5ESBLogXZf14lRt8DJ7xemKOkpCBq12OXNVWzMDVMga-HDPhN1ahbtkGnQcazHg2UGfugHPcHla0nlm3l2CJg6G0DyFDnmfdrY~UrVzLLXep10QJAIH7uzfqqwYxX-L9zorUsUisJrIjpcU7STYdxffX6QBNQ098G2fsHKQ8TLK4z5pHHT8WKkxjPRNeNTrSuIs5vZRoev8nCr7O~OWRvA1JrahJoz1vNWzFea~-9xE-H2Fnj7A4~9No5YCkBMIqMDzIarzlQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/48563240/Sex_Status_an...
- shepherdjerred 3y agoJust because we have defined ourselves outside of the term "natural" _doesn't_ mean we aren't evolving like any other species does.
- kergonath 3y ago> We don't evolve anymore. Natural selection doesn't happen anymore. Of course we do. Why would we not? Evolution is just a fact of life. For it to stop happening, we’d need all humans to have strictly the same number of children who live long enough to have children themselves. As soon as you have something affecting fertility rates, you have selection pressure. > particles and radiation in space affecting DNA for one What makes you think this does not happen on Earth? Radiation is everywhere. So is chemistry: there are more ways to alter DNA. On top of that, DNA has intrinsic mechanisms for mutation, in the form of transcription errors. Mutations happen all the time.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoWell, evolution doesn't happen nearly as much based on disease resistance, now that we have antibiotics. It doesn't happen nearly as much based on ability to survive famine, now that we have modern agriculture. It doesn't happen nearly so much based on ability to survive childbirth, now that we have hospitals. And so on. That may have been their point.
- olalonde 3y agoI believe we are at a juncture in human history where technological progress is so fast that it will eclipse any natural evolution that would normally occur. On a 250-million-year scale, we're nearing breakthroughs in halting aging, manipulating DNA on demand, printing body parts, and potentially even achieving mind uploading. Natural selection will soon have run its course for our species. We will keep evolving but it won't be driven by random DNA replication errors: it will be driven by technology and culture. I agree however that "they" will be completely unrecognizable to the modern us.
- alex_young 3y agoWritten language popped up around 5 thousand years ago. https://www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from/ https://www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from/ Human language was invented ~100 KYA. 50 KYA we were painting pictures of mammoths on cave walls. Before that we were a population of ~200 for many tens of thousands of years in Africa. Our earliest upright ancestors lived around 3 MYA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus) 65 MYA the dinosaurs dominated our world and our ancestors were small rodent like animals. It’s very hard to imagine that anything we do will stop evolution for hundreds of millions of years in the future.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- olalonde 3y agoIf 65M years of random DNA mutations caused small rodents to evolve to homo sapiens, what do you think 65M years of human technology can do? Hint: technology progresses a lot faster than natural evolution. Think about how much of an impact evolution had on us in the last 1000 years vs how much technology did. We will probably become capable of editing DNA within a few generations. Death by aging will become a relic of the past. And I'm talking about what will happen within a few generations, not 250M years. In 250M years, DNA-based life will probably be mentioned in museums.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
- Grimblewald 3y agoDifference is rodent ancestor had to adapt to its environment. We haven't had to adapt to shit in millennia, that's the whole point of tech - to remove the discomfort of selective pressure.
- andyp-kw 3y agoI'd like to think that we'll be interplanetary by then. Heck, it would be nice to terraform Mars before then.
- xlance 3y ago250 million years is an unimaginably long period, during which we would either be deceased or far beyond the boundaries of our solar system. Using the technological advancements of the past 100 years as an indicator, we will have terraformed Mars long before then.
- iancmceachern 3y agoSo long and thanks for all the fish!
- aziaziazi 3y ago> Astronomers expect that our sun will grow steadily brighter and, in about 7.6 billion years, may engulf the Earth Any proposition on how “fixing” sun energy output will gratify my intellectual curiosity.
- willio58 3y agoHave you heard about Dyson spheres? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere Yes it sounds crazy but think 250 million years down the line
- xlance 3y agoExactly. Or we will alter the Earth's orbit so that less of the energy reaches us.
- kergonath 3y agoThere are serious physical issues about Dyson spheres. Things like constellations of satellites orbiting a star are much more practical solutions than a solid sphere.
- aziaziazi 3y agoIn my understanding Dyson spheres harvests energy but won’t stop stars expansion. Though peer commenter xlance propose to use that energy to changes earth orbit, which address the goal. But as far as I know building a Dyson sphere would also require a quantity of material resources that we don’t have on earth. Some options to get those: A. energy to mass, but we don’t know if that’s even theoretically achievable. Also it probably would require a Dyson sphere itself to have enough energy. B. convert other abundant elements (O, Si, Fe…) into required elements using known atomic reactions. But harvesting that much elements from earth could transform it in a state that does not worth the pain to try “saving” it.