How are humans going to become extinct?

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Mar 03, 2014, 10:40 PM UTC

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…

This is the most ridiculous comment here. You are literally arguing against the premise of preventing the destruction of the world. Screw that, I don't want to die, I don't want humanity to die, and I know few people who do.

Nothing is going to replace humanity if we kill ourselves first. Gradual evolution isn't want these people are talking about anyways, and there is no reason evolution is inevitable. Soon we will have the technology to control DNA however we want.

Post by Houshalter » Mon, Mar 03, 2014, 10:48 PM UTC

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) That's not entirely true. Evolution is an optimization process and tends to produce more fit individuals over time. Intelligence is a great example of a trait that improved over time because of evolution.

2) No one is claiming that in the first place. The quote is about the evolution of culture and technology, not biological evolution.

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?

Re: How are humans going to become extinct?