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> perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-( aliens will likely find us the same way we find dinosaurs but proba

> perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-( aliens will likely find us the same way we find dinosaurs but probably no one will find us. 1000 years from now things will be very different but i suspect humans will still exist. imo we as a species have very little chance of living 1M years, tho.

deleted 2y ago
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eru 2y ago
Change is perhaps accelerating, especially since the invention of agriculture, writing and more recently the Industrial Revolution. Eg nowadays almost everyone has the 'modern overbite', ie the top front teeth extend in front of the bottom front teeth. See eg https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2013/did-forks-really-give-modern-humans-an-overbite https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2013/did-forks-real... The article explicitly blames forks, but people in Song China had a modern overbite long before Europeans invented forks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overbite#Changing_human_dentition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overbite#Changing_human_dentit... and https://petermorwood.tumblr.com/post/181554755777/deadcatwithaflamethrower-amemait https://petermorwood.tumblr.com/post/181554755777/deadcatwit...
Mistletoe 2y ago
What could we do to increase our chances of lasting 1M years? I think it’s a useful thought experiment for thinking about what we could change to increase our chances. I do disagree with you though and think humans are like cockroaches now and there is a 0% chance of exterminating every last one of us and that’s a good thing. Nature had its chance at several bottlenecks in the past and failed. >One of the greatest human bottlenecks occurred between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago, when the human population was reduced to about 1,280 breeding individuals for 117,000 years. This bottleneck may have brought human ancestors close to extinction. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487
- leeoniya 2y ago
  > What could we do to increase our chances of lasting 1M years? honestly? get the population down. this means less consumption on an industrial scale and letting vital ecosystems recover. i can't imagine a good way of voluntarily cutting the pop by 50% and keeping it flat afterwards, but famine would do it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

eru 2y ago

Change is perhaps accelerating, especially since the invention of agriculture, writing and more recently the Industrial Revolution. Eg nowadays almost everyone has the 'modern overbite', ie the top front teeth extend in front of the bottom front teeth. See eg https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2013/did-forks-really-give-modern-humans-an-overbite https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2013/did-forks-real... The article explicitly blames forks, but people in Song China had a modern overbite long before Europeans invented forks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overbite#Changing_human_dentition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overbite#Changing_human_dentit... and https://petermorwood.tumblr.com/post/181554755777/deadcatwithaflamethrower-amemait https://petermorwood.tumblr.com/post/181554755777/deadcatwit...

Mistletoe 2y ago

What could we do to increase our chances of lasting 1M years? I think it’s a useful thought experiment for thinking about what we could change to increase our chances. I do disagree with you though and think humans are like cockroaches now and there is a 0% chance of exterminating every last one of us and that’s a good thing. Nature had its chance at several bottlenecks in the past and failed. >One of the greatest human bottlenecks occurred between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago, when the human population was reduced to about 1,280 breeding individuals for 117,000 years. This bottleneck may have brought human ancestors close to extinction. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

leeoniya 2y ago
> What could we do to increase our chances of lasting 1M years? honestly? get the population down. this means less consumption on an industrial scale and letting vital ecosystems recover. i can't imagine a good way of voluntarily cutting the pop by 50% and keeping it flat afterwards, but famine would do it.