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There is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.
by im3w1l 3mo ago
There is a pretty significant chance that ours will be a starfaring civilization and that our children will reshape the very heavens.
- blightful 3mo agoVery doubtful when you really dig into what is involved. We probably will never make it out of the solar system. To another star is a pipe dream. We will wreck our planet soon enough and the likely outcome is our species will go extinct. This will probably happen in the next few thousand years or sooner.
- Bender 3mo agoI think the planet will do just fine without us but we will likely hit one of many great filters long before we colonize anything outside of Earth. The list of dumb things we do as a civilization are too long to list on HN. I am honestly very surprised we still exist and can still reproduce.
- none2585 3mo agoThis is my position as well - people say we need to do things for the planet. Planet will be just fine - it's us who will suffer and honestly it's for the best. Just end this shit
- bogota 3mo ago[dead]
- kibwen 3mo agoIf by "children" you mean self-replicating viral robot swarms, then maybe. Nothing biologically descended from humans will ever leave the heliosphere in any form that could be considered living.
- excalibur 3mo agoOur kids can't change a tire.
- eth0up 3mo agoOh come on man. That's just because they know we should be hovering by now ;)
- samplatt 3mo agoMy ex wife's parents couldn't change a tire. I had to do it for them, once.
- juggert8 3mo agoBoomer moment. That's your fault for not teaching them.
- foobar1962 3mo agoYou're off a generation. The boomer's kids have kids.
- dylan604 3mo agoThe boomers have great grand kids, so off by two generations.
- toast0 3mo agoMy kid is in drivers ed, and part of the curriculum is changing a tire with a parent (class is mostly on zoom). I don't know how many of the kids are going to retain the knowledge. That said, what good is changing a tire, when there's no tire to change.
- yongjik 3mo agoSounds fine to me. Why would you need tires in interstellar space?
- 7bit 3mo agoOkay Boomer
- stouset 3mo agoI suppose zero is a pretty significant number. Without new physics that isn’t even remotely visible on the horizon and that utterly contradicts most of what we believe to be true, this isn’t going to happen. Robotic AI probes sent to other star systems to send back telemetry? Sure, fine. Flesh bags sent to self-replicate on terraformed worlds out in the stars? Not a whisper of a microscopic chance.
- WalterBright 3mo agoIf you can sent probes to other star systems, you can include with it information of the DNA of life forms and a device to create terran life.
- joquarky 3mo agoIt takes far more than DNA to recreate a human.
- drannex 3mo agoimportant part: "and a device to create terran life". @WalterBright, I've always preferred the idea that to explore the stars the only chance we have at doing so is by bio-growing humans (cloned?), and somehow uploading and downloading a current humans consciousness into the form. basically 'seeding the universe' since we would just start sending little seeds of human life everywhere. :-)
- stouset 3mo ago> "and a device to create terran life“ … and all the devices and nutrition necessary to sustain that Terran life until it can become self sufficient—without the help of preexisting humans to teach them or impart physical skills—on a rock with either no life, inhospitable life, or nutritionally incompatible life. You might as well call that device a magic wand.
- WalterBright 3mo ago
- altmanaltman 3mo agoEven if you colonize the entire solar system or even the entire galaxy, you will still be insignificant in terms of the universe. Also there is a pretty significant chance we destroy ourselves before any of that happens.