I read once that the average lifespan of a species is 3 million years. H. sapiens is an unusual species for its intelligence and ability to manipulate the environment, but I assume we cannot cheat death forever, any more than an individual organism of our species can. At some point in the future, either 1) our descendants will mutate and evolve into one or more species as distinct from us as we are from H. erectus, and their descendants in turn will resemble us less and less, or 2) all our descendants will die off without leaving any more offspring. Let’s limit the discussion to the time period when life is possible, i.e., before the heat death of the universe or the re-compaction of all matter into pre-Big-Bang form.
Which of these two possibilities do you prefer?
My instinctive choice is that our descendants evolve rather than die out. If we choose to value existence as good (and most of us do; I think that’s demonstrated by the fact that most of us don’t commit suicide), then we should prefer existence in an altered state to the utter lack of existence.
But what if our descendants lacked intelligence? Many individual humans would rather die than live as vegetables; viz. all the living wills that order the doctors to pull the plug rather than continue life support if the patient is brain-dead. Would you rather pull the plug on our whole species if you knew our descendants would be as mindless as an amoeba? What if our descendants’ intelligence declined to that of a fish? A crocodile? A field mouse?
I think I would still prefer that our desendants evolve, even into something unintelligent, rather than go extinct. If for no other reason, our descendants might evolve intelligence again over the eons.
But what if our descendants split into two branches, one as intelligent or more than H. sapiens, but doomed to extinction within 3 million years, the other no more intelligent than a macaw, but capable of spawning descendants for as long as the Earth’s biosphere endures? And what if they competed for the same resources such that only one could continue? In that case, I’d be very strongly tempted to root for the Doomed Smart Descendants rather than the Prolific Dumb Descendants.
I’d be happiest to imagine that we will evolve into something else, even if much less conscious or clever than we are now.
>Many individual humans would rather die than live as vegetables; viz. all the living wills that order the doctors to pull the plug rather than continue life support if the patient is brain-dead. Would you rather pull the plug on our whole species if you knew our descendants would be as mindless as an amoeba?
This is a very telling question, I think. My living will orders the plug pulled if the likely alternative is a brain-dead, vegetative state. But, it’s not that I mind the prospect of experiencing that existence. In fact I don’t think I would! I wouldn’t know! My objection would be to going on for years, decades even, as a burden and an ugly substitute for whatever I had been, to my friends and family. I think keeping an uninhabited body (so to speak) alive is an enormous and ghoulish project that can bring nobody any joy, that can only bring sadness or revulsion or guilt or aprehension.
But seeing an earthworm at work, or a sea anemone, or a plasmodium, isn’t sad at all. They are being what they grew to be and needn’t disappoint anybody at all. Likewise our proposed descendents a million or more generations hence.
Over such spans of time, I can’t work up much desire to care one way or the other: it’s not going to matter to any of the next several thousand generations.
In the shorter term, only the total extinction option is a possibility, and I’d prefer to avoid it.
Interestingly enough, I read an article not to long ago that some researchers say humans may indeed split off into two branches; one dumb, the other smart.
I’d be curious to see how the smart overlords would treat the dumb underlings.
Pfft. Presumably a breeding population of each can be maintained.
But yeah, preserving humanity’s bio-evolutionary future is more important than humanity’s present forms (physical & cultural).
I would go further. The bio-evolutionary potential of the whole planet is the actual future to watch. Humanity is a part of that evolution, but not the whole. I would try to keep all species populations that could evolve useful contributions to future societies going. That means not only potential intelligent species (all large mammals have obvious potential here) but species that offer interesting & useful resources (everything from wood varieties to ivory to blister bug ointment). A Homo sapiens extinction may actually be less damaging to future terrestrial civilization than a multiple megafauna extinction claiming the elephants & some of the artiodactyla.