How are humans going to become extinct?
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Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#2A much better and more in-depth article along the same lines:
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/ross-andersen-human-...
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#3Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals, species.
Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been extinct. Almost double, in fact.
Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000 years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#4Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals, species. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been extinct. Almost double, in fact. Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000 years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.
Disagree about the "should". Why would we not want to survive indefinitely? And when it comes to species, humans are clear outliers. I'm not sure how well one can extrapolate human future from what happened to the dinosaurs.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#5Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals, species. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been extinct. Almost double, in fact. Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000 years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.
Disagree about the "should". Why would we not want to survive indefinitely? And when it comes to species, humans are clear outliers. I'm not sure how well one can extrapolate human future from what happened to the dinosaurs.
Perhaps OP is being a bit more philosophical. Not suggesting that it is a failure of will or a straw poll of our future direction but instead because we are/arent worthy of continuing...?
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#6I find it strange that they seem to rule out asteroid impacts as a threat just because it is unlikely to happen within this century. They are unlikely to happen in any century but still do happen from time to time on a universe-scale timeline, and have been responsible for mass-extinction events in the past.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#7Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals, species. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been extinct. Almost double, in fact. Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000 years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.
Dinosaurs are a rather large group of animals (and you can join primitive birds with more "reptilian" dinosaurs, but I digress...) and humans are a subspecies (homo sapiens sapiens), comparing dinosaurs' extinction with human's extinction its almost like comparing mammals extinction with white shark extinction.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#8Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals, species. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been extinct. Almost double, in fact. Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000 years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.
I agree. Though the questions will remain as how it will end and when it will end.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#9I find it strange that they seem to rule out asteroid impacts as a threat just because it is unlikely to happen within this century. They are unlikely to happen in any century but still do happen from time to time on a universe-scale timeline, and have been responsible for mass-extinction events in the past.
I think asteroid impacts only start to be statistically significant over timespans of millions of years. Humanity only lived a few 100k years.
Do you think we have millions of years to go?
Also, if we would indeed remain millions of years, and assuming continuous progress, I don't think an asteroid impact is a threat to that advanced human society, it's a simple matter or deflecting it/mining it until it's empty.
And in fact, forget about the deflecting and mining, that is maybe relevant in 10000 years. But in millions years, if we make it that long, I think human society will exist out of parts of civilization, technology, machine and mind floating around everywhere in the galaxy, spreading out at some rate. What does a single asteroid in some solar system even matter to that at all??
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#10I find it strange that they seem to rule out asteroid impacts as a threat just because it is unlikely to happen within this century. They are unlikely to happen in any century but still do happen from time to time on a universe-scale timeline, and have been responsible for mass-extinction events in the past.
The time window from today until we can handle any asteroid threat is most likely small, given no other civilization ending catastrophy takes place. I would be very surprised if we can't redirect incoming asteroids in 500 years.