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How are humans going to become extinct?

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Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#31

Post by lutusp »

sentientmachine wrote: post #29
Zigurd wrote: post #14

Global thermonuclear war is still the #1 risk for destroying civilization and having a good chance of killing every human on the planet.

Even then it would probably not end our species. Even if every country had nuclear weapons and simultaneously vaporized every square inch of land surface (very unlikely), there would be a few carnival cruises and people who escaped to underground bunkers to hold out for enough years to repopulate some place later. It would be 99% losses, but the tough ones would survive. It may take a few thousand years to get back t…

> Even then it would probably not end our species. Even if every country had nuclear weapons and simultaneously vaporized every square inch of land surface (very unlikely), there would be a few carnival cruises and people who escaped to underground bunkers to hold out for enough years to repopulate some place later.

This is very, very likely, and there's even concrete evidence, based on the fact that the human race was nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, but recovered.

70,000 years ago a huge volcanic eruption with global consequences called the "Toba event" reduced the human population to somewhere between 3,000 - 10,000 people. We know this by analysis of our DNA, which carries a lot of information that can be used to assess our genetic history. That record shows that a severe genetic bottleneck took place 70,000 years ago, and geographic evidence shows a corresponding massive volcanic event thought to be responsible. More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#32

Post by sentientmachine »

lutusp wrote: post #30
sentientmachine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. 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…

I believe that all life on this planet came from elsewhere in the universe. And only the life forms that can quickly reproduce and spread to other planets get to live on. Our meta species has not yet reached the time where we explode and spread our genetic material all over like a dandelion in the wind. Intelligent life on this planet is still inside the proverbial egg, and we are maybe 300 years from hatching.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#33

Post by salmonellaeater »

ilaksh wrote: post #11

I feel a medium-term or maybe even short-term threat (in the next 10-30 years) not of extinction necessarily but of becoming completely irrelevant. People like to jump to the conclusion that artificial super-intelligence will want to eliminate humans. I don't think that is a foregone conclusion at all. However, if (when) super-intelligent artificial general intelligence "arrives", that pretty much makes normal unaugm…

Even an AI with innocuous goals will destroy humanity[1]. It would have to have explicitly pro-human goals in order to be anywhere near 'safe.'

[1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#34

Post by lutusp »

sentientmachine wrote: post #32
lutusp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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…

I believe that all life on this planet came from elsewhere in the universe. And only the life forms that can quickly reproduce and spread to other planets get to live on. Our meta species has not yet reached the time where we explode and spread our genetic material all over like a dandelion in the wind. Intelligent life on this planet is still inside the proverbial egg, and we are maybe 300 years from hatching.

> I believe that all life on this planet came from elsewhere in the universe.

One can argue that this is uncontroversial on the ground that life's precursors came from elsewhere. The only debate is what level of complexity is meant by "came from elsewhere".

> And only the life forms that can quickly reproduce and spread to other planets get to live on.

There's another, more likely explanation -- that life in some form naturally arises if the conditions are right, and there doesn't need to be a connection with another life-supporting environment. This isn't proven yet, it's just likely.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#35

Post by edavison1 »

lutusp wrote: post #15

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…

Eh. I dunno whether I am just optimistic, but let's try to remember that certainty isn't part of the scientific vocabulary; almost by definition science never seeks to provide a final answer on any subject and remains open to further inquiry/falsifiability.

So. I believe one of the reasons humankind is so awesome is that we have the capacity to be more than just a note in your natural symphony; we are constantly changing, creating and inventing— and I think it's entirely up to us whether we continue to flourish. Not to get all mystical, but perhaps in time the notion that we are 'the reason the music exists' will not seem super far-fetched. I guess I just think that human consciousness is so unique and cool that it is worth going to great lengths to preserve it, and to hell with what's considered 'natural'.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#36

Post by ggreer »

lutusp wrote: post #26
ggreer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Okay, hold on a minute. When you say, "humanity and its extremely advanced descendants", when you link to an article containing the phrase "steps up the ladder", when you quote someone saying, "we should also wonder what we may become as we rise " [emphasis added], you're overlooking something basic about evolutionary theory that everyone needs to understand. And that is that evolution is not necessarily a progressio…

1. I was explaining the position of Bostrom, Hanson, and others. I do not completely agree with them.

2. I think you have misinterpreted their position. Bostrom and Hanson know quite a bit about evolution. They know that evolution is undirected and would eventually result in an organism we wouldn't recognize, let alone value. But they both think that we are entering a time in which we will no longer be bound by evolution. They think that humanity will soon be able to engineer minds, allowing us to improve their raw abilities while having them retain many of our own values.

On this point, I do agree with them. Evolution hill-climbs, so it gets stuck in local maxima and can't search the entire solution space. We're already building lots of stuff that could never evolve: radio, wheels, impellers, turbines, lasers, etc. In billions of years, evolution hasn't figured out a way to send signals faster than 0.000001c (300m/sec). That's how fast sound waves and nerve signals travel. As optimization processes go, it really is quite terrible. If we want to make better minds in any reasonable time-frame, we'll need to engineer them ourselves.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#37

Post by spingsprong »

lutusp wrote: post #15

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…

"1. Our species has existed for about 200,000 years.

2. On that basis, and given our present knowledge of biology and evolution by natural selection, it's reasonable to assume that, within another 200,000 years, we will have been replaced by another species who either successfully competed with us, or into whom we simply evolved over time. "

When our species had existed for around 5 years, does that mean it was reasonable to assume that within another 5 years, we will have been replaced by another species?

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#38

Post by lutusp »

ggreer wrote: post #36
lutusp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, hold on a minute. When you say, "humanity and its extremely advanced descendants", when you link to an article containing the phrase "steps up the ladder", when you quote someone saying, "we should also wonder what we may become as we rise " [emphasis added], you're overlooking something basic about evolutionary theory that everyone needs to understand. And that is that evolution is not necessarily a progressio…

1. I was explaining the position of Bostrom, Hanson, and others. I do not completely agree with them. 2. I think you have misinterpreted their position. Bostrom and Hanson know quite a bit about evolution. They know that evolution is undirected and would eventually result in an organism we wouldn't recognize, let alone value. But they both think that we are entering a time in which we will no longer be bound by evolu…

> I think you have misinterpreted their position.

I understand it perfectly -- they're either as ignorant as their followers, or they're exploiting public ignorance.

> Bostrom and Hanson know quite a bit about evolution.

They either know nothing about evolution, or they're deliberately misleading their readers. Contrary to their writing, natural selection is not a race to the top, because it's not a race to any particular objective.

> But they both think that we are entering a time in which we no longer be bound by evolution.

Apart from revealing their inability to grasp evolutionary theory, this is an ignorant New Age fantasy. We will always be bound by natural selection, even when we actively participate in the process.

> They think that humanity will soon be able to engineer minds, allowing us to improve their raw abilities while having them retain many of our own values.

But that's also evolution. To argue that people meddling with genetics isn't evolution is to misunderstand evolution's scope.

> Evolution hill-climbs ...

You really need to stop thinking about natural selection as though it's a race to the top of the hill. This idea contradicts both evolutionary theory and copious observational evidence.

> We're already building lots of stuff that could never evolve [emphasis added]: radio, wheels, impellers, turbines, lasers, etc.

All these things exist in nature, even including the lasers, all of which evolved in nature:

http://laserstars.org/summary.html

Bacteria use wheel- and axle-based electric motors to propel themselves through their environments:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22489/

All your examples have similar pre-existing embodiments in nature. And they all evolved.

> If we want to make better minds in any reasonable time-frame, we'll need to engineer them ourselves.

People doing engineering is an example of natural selection. There is nothing in the sequence of human events that isn't an example of evolution by natural selection.

All this talk about moving beyond evolution fails to grasp how evolution works in our lives. Even A/B testing of Web pages is an example of natural selection.

To summarize, these people you're quoting are simply pandering to low public taste -- they're either broadcasting their own ignorance or exploiting the ignorance of the public. Evolution doesn't work they way they claim, and their writing is a scientific laughingstock.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#39

Post by kamaal »

ProAm wrote: post #6
ggreer wrote: post #2

To summarize: At this point, humanity is its own greatest extinction risk. If we don't destroy ourselves in the next century, we will almost certainly inherit the stars. For a much deeper treatment of this subject, I recommend Global Catastrophic Risks , edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Ćirković. The overarching point is straightforward (see the paragraph above), but the details of each threat are interesting on thei…

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.

A million years is too far. Even if it doesn't happen by then, we are going to run out of energy, get killed by super bugs or hit by a asteroid.

The threat of human driven human extinction is more on the lines of a mutually assured destruction, weaponized nanotechnology or genetic engineering, irreversible climate conditions, over population of the planet etc.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

#40

Post by kamaal »

spingsprong wrote: post #37
lutusp wrote: post #15

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…

"1. Our species has existed for about 200,000 years. 2. On that basis, and given our present knowledge of biology and evolution by natural selection, it's reasonable to assume that, within another 200,000 years, we will have been replaced by another species who either successfully competed with us, or into whom we simply evolved over time. " When our species had existed for around 5 years, does that mean it was reaso…

That arguments sounds like a classic religious argument against evolution. 'If we came from the monkeys, why aren't currently monkey's turning into humans' like argument.

The answer is evolution is more like a fork/branch than modifications on the trunk. Mutations happen all the time, every cancer victim, is a victim of mutation. But when the gene begins to spread and take root rapidly, at some point we get that gene dominant among a species.

A lot will happen over the next 200,000 years. We will likely change in major ways.

But if you were to take this whole singularity thing seriously we may not even need all that. By 2045 you can live on eternally on the cloud.

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