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And a few more billion to figure out where to go next after the heat death of the universe. I think we have more urgent problems. I very much doubt humanity w

And a few more billion to figure out where to go next after the heat death of the universe. I think we have more urgent problems. I very much doubt humanity will be around in a few million years time. We will have died out, or evolved significantly, or altered ourselves. In a billion years there will be nothing even remotely resembling us.

sandworm101 2y ago
It isn't "we" as in humanity. It is "we" as in all life on earth. The bears and the whales will have to do something too, they just don't know it yet.
- amelius 2y ago
  They will have evolved strong cognitive skills by then.
  - gapan 2y ago
    Except evolution does not work that way. It does not optimize for cognitive skills improvement. Not necessarily at least. Different traits may be more important for different species.
oceanplexian 2y ago
A billion actually seems weirdly tangible. I can imagine a billion dollars or a billion bits. Working with computers we deal with units of a billion pretty often. I also know how long a year is and as I get older they feel pretty short. Obviously we won’t personally be around to see it but it does feel like the clock is ticking.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gffrd 2y ago
  Let me see if I can un-tangible that for you … Let's say you live to be 97—quite old!! 1 Billion years is … 10,309,278 of those 97-year lifetimes, if strung end-to-end.
  - chgs 2y ago
    So the combined lifetime of people in a large city.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- roywiggins 2y ago
  One reference point is that about billion years ago the Earth had just invented multicellular life.
Nevermark 2y ago
Exactly. Barring a major disaster, by 2100 we will have a vibrant Earth + off-Earth resource ecosystem via machines/AI. And mastered the ability to adapt food production and our bodies to off earth environments. Compounding acceleration by science, tech & econ has anlready initiated the trend toward fully-designed, post-biology, post-evolution life. Time is now hyper-deflationary. Every succeeding year is worth more than the preceding one. A multi-system economy is only thousands of years away. A galactic civilization, a few hundreds of thousands. The earth & sun won’t look much different by the time we are sending probes, perhaps with warp drives, to other galaxies.
- icedchai 2y ago
  2100 seems highly optimistic. We haven't landed a person on the moon in over 50 years. Space travel is really, really hard, and you're talking about sending probes light years away...
  - simonh 2y ago
    Imagine that for the first 50 years of aviation all airplanes had been single use, and then in the 1960s someone figured out how to make them reusable. Thats what’s happening with space flight. The next 75 years are going to be interesting. I do think 2100 is a stretch, space is hard, but we’ll likely have all the basic elements of that proved out by then.
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      I think the biological difficulties of human space travel, and its unprofitably so far, have given us a very poor perspective on how fast thing progress from here. Old bottlenecks are evaporating. Reusable systems, cheaper faster rocket production, & the loss of dependency on traditional pilots are just three profound bottlenecks we have passed in the last few years. Machines are getting smarter (not even talking about general AI) and smaller, launch costs are collapsing, demand for resources accelerating, and systems for refueling, communication, etc. are bifurcating. The last & only BIG bottleneck left now, is simple recognition of relative economic profitability. Just as there has been an explosion of satellites, there will be an explosion of resource extraction the moment it becomes relative net profitable, on a forward predictive basis. (I.e. shareholder returns for demonstrated viability relentlessly accelerate investment, long before positive cash flow is required.) Human lunar & Martian bases are just a distraction, however intriguing and likely. They are not a brake on the Solar System resource economic loop, any more than the continued inefficiencies of biologically manned orbital stations held back the explosion of communication satellites.

sandworm101 2y ago

It isn't "we" as in humanity. It is "we" as in all life on earth. The bears and the whales will have to do something too, they just don't know it yet.

amelius 2y ago
They will have evolved strong cognitive skills by then.
- gapan 2y ago
  Except evolution does not work that way. It does not optimize for cognitive skills improvement. Not necessarily at least. Different traits may be more important for different species.

oceanplexian 2y ago

A billion actually seems weirdly tangible. I can imagine a billion dollars or a billion bits. Working with computers we deal with units of a billion pretty often. I also know how long a year is and as I get older they feel pretty short. Obviously we won’t personally be around to see it but it does feel like the clock is ticking.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gffrd 2y ago
Let me see if I can un-tangible that for you … Let's say you live to be 97—quite old!! 1 Billion years is … 10,309,278 of those 97-year lifetimes, if strung end-to-end.
- chgs 2y ago
  So the combined lifetime of people in a large city.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
roywiggins 2y ago
One reference point is that about billion years ago the Earth had just invented multicellular life.

Nevermark 2y ago

Exactly. Barring a major disaster, by 2100 we will have a vibrant Earth + off-Earth resource ecosystem via machines/AI. And mastered the ability to adapt food production and our bodies to off earth environments. Compounding acceleration by science, tech & econ has anlready initiated the trend toward fully-designed, post-biology, post-evolution life. Time is now hyper-deflationary. Every succeeding year is worth more than the preceding one. A multi-system economy is only thousands of years away. A galactic civilization, a few hundreds of thousands. The earth & sun won’t look much different by the time we are sending probes, perhaps with warp drives, to other galaxies.

icedchai 2y ago
2100 seems highly optimistic. We haven't landed a person on the moon in over 50 years. Space travel is really, really hard, and you're talking about sending probes light years away...
- simonh 2y ago
  Imagine that for the first 50 years of aviation all airplanes had been single use, and then in the 1960s someone figured out how to make them reusable. Thats what’s happening with space flight. The next 75 years are going to be interesting. I do think 2100 is a stretch, space is hard, but we’ll likely have all the basic elements of that proved out by then.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    I think the biological difficulties of human space travel, and its unprofitably so far, have given us a very poor perspective on how fast thing progress from here. Old bottlenecks are evaporating. Reusable systems, cheaper faster rocket production, & the loss of dependency on traditional pilots are just three profound bottlenecks we have passed in the last few years. Machines are getting smarter (not even talking about general AI) and smaller, launch costs are collapsing, demand for resources accelerating, and systems for refueling, communication, etc. are bifurcating. The last & only BIG bottleneck left now, is simple recognition of relative economic profitability. Just as there has been an explosion of satellites, there will be an explosion of resource extraction the moment it becomes relative net profitable, on a forward predictive basis. (I.e. shareholder returns for demonstrated viability relentlessly accelerate investment, long before positive cash flow is required.) Human lunar & Martian bases are just a distraction, however intriguing and likely. They are not a brake on the Solar System resource economic loop, any more than the continued inefficiencies of biologically manned orbital stations held back the explosion of communication satellites.