How are humans going to become extinct?
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Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#2To 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 their own.
1. http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom...
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#3The 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.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#4The 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.
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?
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#5The 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.
I wonder if in the case of a technological singularity would you be able to tell that the original species was human? That is to say if we're at the point that we are augmenting our brains to that degree will the difference between a human/dolphin/great ape brain as a base be dwarfed by the technological layers on top of it?
That's getting a bit speculative as a question though. It was more of a thought on how much/how little we might need to change to even constitute not being human.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#6To 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.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#7The disastrous effects of exponential growth will be our demise.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#8The 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.
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#9To 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.
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.)
Re: How are humans going to become extinct?
#10The disastrous effects of exponential growth will be our demise.
Baseless extrapolation will be you demise.