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I think that a chance of getting things like material post-scarcity, age reversal, possibly even biological immortality... might be worth a 10% chance of human

I think that a chance of getting things like material post-scarcity, age reversal, possibly even biological immortality... might be worth a 10% chance of human extinction. I mean, we already know more or less how things are going to go without super-intelligence. Disease, pain, suffering, everyone dying by age 120 or so, more struggle for bread, more wars about things that seem very important in the moment but won't be interesting to anyone other than history buffs 100 years from now, more love affairs that feel intensely personal but are basically the same as billions of other love affairs that people have had, etc. Maybe it makes sense to take a risk.

OroPla 22d ago
I'm not sure if everyone is aware, but humanity is heading for extinction either way. My guess is that like with death most people just choose to not think about it. We don't even have to wait for the heat death of the universe. Our sun will eventually die and when that happens Earth will be shredded to tiny bits and pieces. That's about five billion years into the future, but humanity will be long extinct before that happens. The species that is around for the longest that we know of is only about 200 million years old (Triops cancriformis). For mammals it's even less with about 130 million years, but that one is already extinct (Multituberculata). Everything has a lifespan, including species, this planet, the sun and the universe. But nevermind these far off events. It's been a while since I checked, but the same way the Earth moves around the sun, the sun and our entire solar system are moving, too. And based on records found if you dig deep into the Earth and analyze the dirt it seems that about every I don't remember how many thousand years we move through a part of the universe with a lot of rocks. It's called an extinction event, but humanity has barely survived it at least once. Imagine not one, but a few thousand asteroids hitting the Earth. Per hour. For a couple of weeks straight. Seems like we came up with a few names for that. Like Ragnarok, Armageddon, Apocalypse, ...
Scea91 21d ago
It feels there is a bit of contradiction in your post. You posit love, struggle and basically the current human experience as meaningless and yet you pitch biological immortality. How would we spend this immortality? Seems good to have this sorted out before gambling everything on it.
webdood90 21d ago
> Maybe it makes sense to take a risk. Holy shit, society needs to eat people like this. We're all being driven off a cliff by insanely naive tech bros. We're all being impacted by the decisions of a few people. World altering stuff, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. I can only observe these crazy comments from HN and wait for it all to fall apart. It's maddening.

OroPla 22d ago

I'm not sure if everyone is aware, but humanity is heading for extinction either way. My guess is that like with death most people just choose to not think about it. We don't even have to wait for the heat death of the universe. Our sun will eventually die and when that happens Earth will be shredded to tiny bits and pieces. That's about five billion years into the future, but humanity will be long extinct before that happens. The species that is around for the longest that we know of is only about 200 million years old (Triops cancriformis). For mammals it's even less with about 130 million years, but that one is already extinct (Multituberculata). Everything has a lifespan, including species, this planet, the sun and the universe. But nevermind these far off events. It's been a while since I checked, but the same way the Earth moves around the sun, the sun and our entire solar system are moving, too. And based on records found if you dig deep into the Earth and analyze the dirt it seems that about every I don't remember how many thousand years we move through a part of the universe with a lot of rocks. It's called an extinction event, but humanity has barely survived it at least once. Imagine not one, but a few thousand asteroids hitting the Earth. Per hour. For a couple of weeks straight. Seems like we came up with a few names for that. Like Ragnarok, Armageddon, Apocalypse, ...

Scea91 21d ago

It feels there is a bit of contradiction in your post. You posit love, struggle and basically the current human experience as meaningless and yet you pitch biological immortality. How would we spend this immortality? Seems good to have this sorted out before gambling everything on it.

webdood90 21d ago

> Maybe it makes sense to take a risk. Holy shit, society needs to eat people like this. We're all being driven off a cliff by insanely naive tech bros. We're all being impacted by the decisions of a few people. World altering stuff, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. I can only observe these crazy comments from HN and wait for it all to fall apart. It's maddening.