In this essay, the author states, pretty far down, that
I am wildly curious as to how an event such as human extinction (or pssibly just mass mutation, given the caveat “in its present form”) could ever be predicted, even within a span of millions of years. From the last sentence, it can be inferred that Gott was simply comparing us to other mammals, and saying we’d probably live about as long as they do.
But is that in any way a correct assumption? After all, we are the only species that is self-aware enough to influence it’s own surroundings on massive scale. I should think this would have a tremendous affect on our chances for long-term survival.
Other animals which have become extinct, like the dinosaurs, usually did so because of climate changes of some type. These were either huge cataclysms that wiped out entire landmasses, or miniscule things that just killed off the only plant that some animal ate.
But aren’t we humans immune to almost every such possibility? Granted, a meteor a mile across might wipe out 99.9% of humanity, but that still leaves about six million people alive. That’s a pretty fair number.
Not only that, but we have the ability to survive in some fashion on almost any terrain or climate. Should a second Ice Age sweep the Earth, making agriculture as we now know it impossible, we could still grow food using hydroponics and nuclear power. Should a deadly disease strike, humanity is spread so widely across the globe that I submit it is impossible for ANY disease to kill more than a fraction of the world population.
So given all that, is there any concievable natural occurence that threatens our survival as a species?
This site is hilarious, although I’ll give them some credit for putting forth arguments that at least seem logical. I especially love the “Why Breed?” table. As a suggested alternative to the feeling of “wanting someone to take care of me in my old age,” they suggest “Save money and prepare for retirement. Be nice to people so they will visit you in the home.”
Maybe it’s all the recent Matrix Reloaded threads, but I wonder if we’d even recognize ourselves after a million years or so – sci-fi having taught me all that it has.
Although I have written a lot of internet fantasy about geneticallymodifiedhumans,I am personally not too keen to see it happen in my lifetime- however just because I find it distasteful, that does not mean that everyone everywhere will reject it- and inheritable genetic modification will mean the end of good old Darwinian evolution and probably the end of Homo sapiens sapiens.
Mind you, with luck a few might survive, and will then be subject to normal genetic drift… even the coelocanth has evolved over the seventy million years it disappeared from the fossil record.
If we’re ignoring cataclysm, I think I agree with the OP. But I think we also need to ignore the possibility of self-destruction. I realise the Cold War is over, but nuclear weapons are still in existence and theoretically, could be used to wipe out the whole of mankind.
Just my two cents - not pretending to be an authority on the subject or nothin’.
**
Is it even possible for the human race to go extinct WITHOUT some sort of cataclysm?**
Yes. And it will if it doesn’t remain dynamic?
However…soical evolution has overtaken biological evolution and will likely become the greatest invention of evolution since the invention of death. The evolution of social structures is today the imperative instrument of species survival and the jury is still out as to it’s inherent ability to ward off extinction.
And of course, whether mankind has a manifest destiny is the real crux.
Truthfully, I think it’s obvious that we are in far greater danger of a genuine nuclear war now than at any other time in history. When nations that have real incentives to use these weapons on each other (like Pakistan - India, China - Taiwan, Israel - take your pick) are facing off all over Asia and the Middle East, a state of unprecedented and probably intractable instability has set in. It’s probably just a matter of time until someone pushes the button.
But there’s another side to this. The weapons developed by these nations are crude, low-yield devices, almost never atached to modern delivery systems. It’s questionable if these devices could even cause as many casualties as a protracted conventional war.
Truthfully, I think it’s obvious that we are in far greater danger of a genuine nuclear war now than at any other time in history. When nations that have real incentives to use these weapons on each other (like Pakistan - India, China - Taiwan, Israel - take your pick) are facing off all over Asia and the Middle East, a state of unprecedented and probably intractable instability has set in. It’s probably just a matter of time until someone pushes the button.
But there’s another side to this. The weapons developed by these nations are crude, low-yield devices, almost never atached to modern delivery systems. It’s questionable if these devices could even cause as many casualties as a protracted conventional war.
Not only that, but the small size and localized nature of the nations and conflicts involved (relatively speaking, in the case of China and India) will tend to limit the level of damage. After all, the old U.S.S.R and the United States together covered something like 20% of the Earths land mass. By necessity, both nations therefore developed enough nuclear capability to destroy the other completely. This is not the case for countries like North Korea and Iran. these countries simply don’t have the resources to develop huge missile fleets or nuclear missile submarines. They are content to merely make noise to demonstrate they have a bomb and would probably use it on someone.
I guess my point is, the most likely scenarios for nuclear war actually happening are the ones least likely to invoke world destruction.
Well, 7.8 million years seems like a very, very long time to me. It seems to me that the human race is currently advancing in an unstable fashion. The increasing concentration of power in the hands of individuals is making the world more chaotic. A kid with a computer can shut down a major E-commerce site, which would be the equivalent of shutting down a few hundred retail stores all at once. Terrorists are gaining access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
In the meantime, countries like China are continuing very advanced biological weapons programs. Nanotechnology is in the wings. Genetic engineering is commonplace.
I’m not a luddite by any means. On the contrary, I’m an advocate for a dynamic society that embraces new visions and technology. But I still recognize that we could wind up doing a lot of very bad things to ourselves in a relatively short period of time. How about a strain of SARS that is airborne, can live on surfaces for days, has an incubation period of two months with the host being infectious for most of that time, and a fatality rate of 80%? What would that do to the human population?
The figure you quote is based on the length of time the human species has existed, and extrapolating from that, assuming that we are randomly distributed somewhere along the length of total human existence.
You can actually take the argument further, but apply it on the level of individual human lives. You assume that out of the total amount of humans that have existed and will ever exist, you are placed at random. Combining this with what we know about population levels in the past you can make estimates of how likely it is mankind is going to exist in the future.
Using this argument, you can say it is unlikely that the future population of mankind will either stay the same as now, or increase. In both cases it would be more likely you would be born in the future than now. Actually the most likely possibility, (given the past) is that we exist in the most populous era of humanity, and that there will soon be a large population crash.
So this argument implies that the current human population will be around a lot less than 5,100 to 7.8 million years…
