21–30 of 62 posts
The disastrous effects of exponential growth will be our demise.
I blame the economists. They had to drop out of their math degree because they couldn't understand exponential functions... surprise surprise now we have earth-destruction level superpowers trying desperately to keep up an economy based on unsustainable exponential growth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an interesting issue. At what point will our descendants feel that they are different enough from us through natural or guided (by science) evolution?
At what point did we determine we were substantially different than apes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans will most definitely be the cause of human extinction on planet Earth. I would put my money on Homo sapiens not making it another million years on the surface of the planet.
Homo sapiens reached anatomical modernity about 200,000 years ago and began to exhibit behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. I suspect that our descendants 1,000,000 years from now wouldn't consider themselves Homo sapiens- primitive, brutish creatures. (Consider how we feel about our ancestors from as recently as 50,000 years ago.)
Or a few thousand years ago for that matter.
I think the social landscape with look and feel a lot different in the next 100 years.
The article talks about disasters that could eliminate humanity, but I wonder if humanity is more likely to become extinct in the sense of no longer being "homo sapiens." For example, through a technological singularity or even just through accumulated gene therapy over generations.
When Bostrom and others talk about humanity, they usually mean humanity and its extremely advanced descendants. They expect some value drift. Robin Hanson puts it rather succinctly in http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/steps-up-the-ladder.ht... : Of course we should also wonder what we may become as we rise. We are no longer the foragers who began this climb, nor the farmers who climbed just a few floors below, an…
A quote: " ... international policymakers must pay serious attention to the reality of species-obliterating risks." Are these people all completely ignorant of evolution and science? No matter what happens in the future, one or another species-obliterating risk is a certainty. Here's why: 1. Our species has existed for about 200,000 years. 2. On that basis, and given our present knowledge of biology and evolution by…
Mostly. Talk to your local mayor, deputy, senator, etc and you will see that these people live in worlds very different from ours.
The article talks about disasters that could eliminate humanity, but I wonder if humanity is more likely to become extinct in the sense of no longer being "homo sapiens." For example, through a technological singularity or even just through accumulated gene therapy over generations.
When Bostrom and others talk about humanity, they usually mean humanity and its extremely advanced descendants. They expect some value drift. Robin Hanson puts it rather succinctly in http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/steps-up-the-ladder.ht... : Of course we should also wonder what we may become as we rise. We are no longer the foragers who began this climb, nor the farmers who climbed just a few floors below, an…
And that is that evolution is not necessarily a progression from less to more advanced, from less intelligent to more intelligent, or for that matter, from less anything to more anything.
Evolution is not a plan with a goal, it is a blind algorithm that chooses survivors, regardless of the survivors' traits, with the single requirement that they are the fittest for the environment in which they find themselves.
This talk about steps up the ladder and extremely advanced descendants is scientifically ignorant and a New Age fantasy. We are as likely to be replaced by cockroaches as by superbeings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Homo sapiens reached anatomical modernity about 200,000 years ago and began to exhibit behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. I suspect that our descendants 1,000,000 years from now wouldn't consider themselves Homo sapiens- primitive, brutish creatures. (Consider how we feel about our ancestors from as recently as 50,000 years ago.)
> Consider how we feel about our ancestors from as recently as 50,000 years ago. Or a few thousand years ago for that matter. I think the social landscape with look and feel a lot different in the next 100 years.
Actually we can relate very well with the concerns of people from a few thousands years ago. Writings from ancient Rome, from ancient Greece are still very contemporary in many, many ways.
Global thermonuclear war is still the #1 risk for destroying civilization and having a good chance of killing every human on the planet.
Global thermonuclear war is still the #1 risk for destroying civilization and having a good chance of killing every human on the planet.
A quote: " ... international policymakers must pay serious attention to the reality of species-obliterating risks." Are these people all completely ignorant of evolution and science? No matter what happens in the future, one or another species-obliterating risk is a certainty. Here's why: 1. Our species has existed for about 200,000 years. 2. On that basis, and given our present knowledge of biology and evolution by…
Our planet needs to create at least one offspring with a good chance of sprouting a fresh batch of DNA based life on another planet before we send ourselves back into the stone age. If we don't, there are only so many shots left for us to become a space faring civilization again. If our species can't get off this planet. We may die as surly as an ant colony in the middle of the desert. DNA based life on this planet w…
I hate to break this to you, but evolution isn't about humans or dolphins or spacefarers, it's about genes -- evolution is genes replicating, using organisms as vessels.
In answer to the old question about which came first, the chicken or the egg, an evolutionary scientist answers, "a chicken is an egg's way to make another egg."
Also, at a more mundane level, by the time our descendants are scattered across all the local star systems, they will be so different from us that we won't recognize them or feel any special kinship.
But on reading your post to the end, I see you're probably kidding. Oh, well.