Human Extinction -

[DNJACK]

I have heard many people here saying that humans are going to go extinct in the next few centuries. I see no reason why to think that this will occur and I think that such fatalism is unproductive and may very well create a self fulfilling prophecy if a large portion of the population starts to believe it. Some people will question whether humanity deserves to live or not and my response is that they should think about how cruel it is to starve a small child, multiply that by over a billion and you get human extinction, as well as questioning whether there even needs to be a justification for human survival in the first place as justification is a human concept that may not apply to the existence of humanity itself

 

[Dirt McGirt]

I think the instant we start colonizing other planets humanity will stick around indefinitely.

The only guanteed way we'll be wiped out completely with no way to stop it is with a big enough asteroid. We've spread and thrived in the hottest and coldest environments on Earth thousands of years ago. Now with all we have? Forget about it.

 

[The Shadow]

People think a lot of things. I don't think it's a productive or healthy way to think, either.

Anthropologically, humans adapt. We build shelters and develop tools that allow us to survive different environments, and we've been pretty good at this for a long time. I see no reason why this would stop, especially if, as @Dirt McGirt said, we spread to other planets. It would not surprise me at all if genetic modifications for for higher/lower gravity worlds and the like would be in our future.

 

[swiv]

I think the instant we start colonizing other planets humanity will stick around indefinitely.

The only guanteed way we'll be wiped out completely with no way to stop it is with a big enough asteroid. We've spread and thrived in the hottest and coldest environments on Earth thousands of years ago. Now with all we have? Forget about it.

But what if the world's top minds came together to engineer a more perfect being, that ended up genociding us or putting us in zoos? Also I'm gonna leave this here:

http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_3/01_en.htm

 

[Dirt McGirt]

But what if the world's top minds came together to engineer a more perfect being, that ended up genociding us or putting us in zoos? Also I'm gonna leave this here:

http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_3/01_en.htm

Even in that case we would still have remote tribes that still just be chilling.

And I would put my bet on us spreading out across different planets before something like that came along

 

[Ghostapplesause]

But what if the world's top minds came together to engineer a more perfect being, that ended up genociding us or putting us in zoos? Also I'm gonna leave this here:

http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_3/01_en.htm

Human genetic engineering is banned worldwide so I do not think this future will come to pass. The Man after Man book is really cool to look at but it downplays technology and Artifical Intelligence.

 

[Save the Loli]

It will be coming within a few centuries, but only because we don't need to be biological anymore, we'd rather just live inside a computer all day.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Human genetic engineering is banned worldwide so I do not think this future will come to pass. The Man after Man book is really cool to look at but it downplays technology and Artifical Intelligence.

It's actually just a regular scifi/horror book that uses a textbook format. When will people realize this?

 

[The Shadow]

It will be coming within a few centuries, but only because we don't need to be biological anymore, we'd rather just live inside a computer all day.

Is this the Superior Future that Film Robert promised us?

 

[BoingBoingBoi]

the population is supposed to level off by 2060 i think at around 10 billion, based on population growth projections. some say 11, some say 8. (for example, https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/scien...our-reasons-global-population-will-level-soon )

climate change will probably cause a few dozen holocausts' worth of death. (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...ccords-are-starting-to-look-like-fantasy.html)

there will be food shortages eventually, but wealthy countries will probably make out alright. the developing world esp along the equator, the middle east, africa, and central/south america will get the short stick. donny boy's wall is actually a pretty reasonable long-term solution to the coming migrant crisis.

nuclear war would probably make things worse though.

i posted this the other day but this guy's talk is really, really informative:

 

[Slap47]

I think the instant we start colonizing other planets humanity will stick around indefinitely.

At that point, humans will evolve into different species due the years needed to traverse between different planets.

 

[Un Platano]

At that point, humans will evolve into different species due the years needed to traverse between different planets.

Unless people are for some reason using methods that take them dozens of thousands of years to get anywhere, there's not nearly enough time for that to happen. Plenty of cultures have lived in isolation for very long periods of time and they're still very much human, like the Sentinelese people. It's not like people would head off in a space ship bound for an exoplanet in 100,000 years. If our technology were on that level, they just wouldn't go.

 

[Save the Loli]

Is this the Superior Future that Film Robert promised us?

Moon wheat ain't getting us there.

Unless people are for some reason using methods that take them dozens of thousands of years to get anywhere, there's not nearly enough time for that to happen. Plenty of cultures have lived in isolation for very long periods of time and they're still very much human, like the Sentinelese people. It's not like people would head off in a space ship bound for an exoplanet in 100,000 years. If our technology were on that level, they just wouldn't go.

Converting a space colony capable of holding hundreds of thousands of people into a space ship which can safely go up to 10-20% the speed of light is easy. If that colony/ship is mostly empty when you leave then the colony can "grow" the population en route to wherever and the ship could go on forever if part of the colonists stayed behind. A lot of people would sign up for that journey, beats living in a normal space colony in the boring solar system when you and your descendents can go colonize the other side of the galaxy.

But we don't have to evolve into new species since we have genetic engineering where if we select a certain type of human, like the same thing around now just more physically and mentally capable, we'd be immune to natural mutations which over time cause evolution.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Human genetic engineering is banned worldwide so I do not think this future will come to pass. The Man after Man book is really cool to look at but it downplays technology and Artifical Intelligence.

Yeah and weaponizing space is illegal too, doesn't stop governments from having plans to knock out communications satellites. As soon as something is useful, people will do it. International law is meaningless.

 

[Ghostapplesause]

Yeah and weaponizing space is illegal too, doesn't stop governments from having plans to knock out communications satellites. As soon as something is useful, people will do it. International law is meaningless.

Anti-satellite weaponry was never banned.

 

[jakefromstatefarm007]

Human extinction would cause short term suffering. Everyone would suffer up to that event then all suffering would cease since there are no humans left. Humans living on would continue suffering indefinitely.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Anti-satellite weaponry was never banned.

Not by the UN but we had a treaty with the Soviets over it IIRC.

 

[Arctic]

I think the instant we start colonizing other planets humanity will stick around indefinitely.

The only guanteed way we'll be wiped out completely with no way to stop it is with a big enough asteroid. We've spread and thrived in the hottest and coldest environments on Earth thousands of years ago. Now with all we have? Forget about it.

At that point, humans will evolve into different species due the years needed to traverse between different planets.

Stop watching Star Trek lol, there's 0 chance that space humanity will ever seriously settle on other planets. Every other planet (and moon) in the solar system is either completely uninhabitable even in the most generous sense of the term (Venus, Mercury), a clump of gas (Jupiter, Saturn) or possibly habitable if we expend more than half of the earth's resources trying to painstakingly construct the right atmosphere (Europa, Mars). Don't even think about traveling to other stars, even the nearest solar system is more than 25 trillion miles away.

The usual counterargument here is "Well, back in the day people thought deep ocean navigation was impossible too!" which is insufficient in my opinion because deep ocean navigation doesn't require us to literally break the laws of physics to make it work. For better or worse, we are stuck here.

Spoiler

 

[Dirt McGirt]

Stop watching Star Trek lol, there's 0 chance that space humanity will ever seriously settle on other planets. Every other planet (and moon) in the solar system is either completely uninhabitable even in the most generous sense of the term (Venus, Mercury), a clump of gas (Jupiter, Saturn) or possibly habitable if we expend more than half of the earth's resources trying to painstakingly construct the right atmosphere (Europa, Mars). Don't even think about traveling to other stars, even the nearest solar system is more than 25 trillion miles away.

The usual counterargument here is "Well, back in the day people thought deep ocean navigation was impossible too!" which is insufficient in my opinion because deep ocean navigation doesn't require us to literally break the laws of physics to make it work. For better or worse, we are stuck here.

Spoiler

View attachment 415696

We wouldn't have to even change atmospheres or anything to start Mars or even a moon colony. It would just take the development of stations/compounds that we can build there that people could survive in and go outside when need be with suits and a shit ton of cash to actually build and populate it.

Am I saying that's gonna happen soon? No, it is fairly possible within my life time.

 

[Piss Clam]

Everyone posting here will be dead long before the end of the world.