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Comment by Florin_Andrei | Hacker News Reader

One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc.

Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

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To be fair to us we are only just barely sentient.

In evolutionary terms we have literally only just managed to build a technological society. Therefore it stands to reason we only recently evolved sufficient intelligence to do so. Otherwise we'd have done it sooner. In the grand scheme of things we're on the very lowest bottom level of the sentience hierarchy.

That's fair, but it'll be sad to see our species added to the dustbin of history after squandering such a great opportunity to move from planetary to stellar civilization.

If there happen to be any other sentient species watching us, I can only assume they spend most of the time face-palming, head-shaking and eye-rolling.

> I can only assume they spend most of the time face-palming, head-shaking and eye-rolling

Or they see us as a natural phenomenon following similar patterns to other fledgling civilizations. We don't roll our eyes when a pathogen is so virulent it kills its host before it propagates.

Maybe there aren't any. Maybe all sentient species self-destruct when they discover and start developing technology but don't understand all the implications. There's a theory along these lines that explains why we've never found any signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

Yes. I actually subscribe to the idea that local maxima at a lower level if sentience is much more common.

We'd probably still be a dinosaur-populated planet if not for a random asteroid.

In my humble opinion, antinatalism contributes much to it. Smartest people I know are strictly antinatalist, and it makes sense. What's the point of keeping a specie alive? The very product of universe's RNG? Life is mostly suffering as it is, inter-stellar life would probably be even worse.

I'm personally not invested in the environment-preservation fight at all.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I find antinatalist views to be small-minded, selfish and cowardly. In a vast universe of dead matter which tends toward equilibrium and decay there exists a process that tends toward complexity and order.

Life exists in this universe, it's a part it's nature and so is consciousness. Whether by design or by some random chance, it is self-evident that it exists. Not only that, you can find it adapted to the extremes of every environment it encounters.

Suffering is the engine of adaptation and everything we consider valuable has only come about through the immense suffering and sacrifice of those that have lived.

We, as conscious life, are the only known species which have the possibility to adapt to an environment outside of Earth. I believe, without any external spiritual input, that our responsibility is quite clear.

How much suffering is a function of the zero-sum game that is played in our (mostly) closed environment? Yes, expanding into space may increase the overall number of individuals suffering, but isn't it really suffering per capita that should be the measure?

Suffering isn't to be ignored and I believe seeking to reduce when possible is admirable and morally right... but to abdicate our responsibility to the process of life and allow it halt (which it will eventually on this planet)? Simply because some people feel bad about things sometimes? No, I'm not buying it for a second.

Yes, I agree, you are an idiot. "We" don't have responsibility to the process of life, it's your animal programming overriding all logic and rationality with stupid rhetoric like entropy vs complexity and other such mindless crap.

Meh, obviously you're not the "we" I'm referring to... We appreciate your dedication to not propagating yourself, enjoy the rest of your time.

> we're on the very lowest bottom level of the sentience hierarchy

I don't have proof of this, but I think most creatures have some amount of awareness, progressively decreasing as you descend the great chain of central nervous system complexity. Probably decreasing quickly at first, from humans to primates to regular mammals, and more slowly afterwards, until asymptotically vanishing into virtual nothingness as there's no complex nervous system to speak of anymore.

Perhaps we're at the bottom of the interval of what could be called truly self-aware consciousness, as opposed to, I don't know, maybe somnolent or lethargic or dimly awake consciousness. With that I would agree.

Which of course automatically raises the question: why should the ascending arc stop here? And what do the next levels look like? Probably impossible for us to imagine even in principle, but still.

Considering that research shows that every human existed today is descended from a small group that survived the Ice Age in Madagascar, I wouldn't call it a flaw. More like a self-regulating system that adjusts to behaviors where every independent actor is out for themselves.

I'm reminded of Stephenson's Seveneves.

my first thought as well

I would have never imagined that a book about the utter obliteration of the world could be so hopeful.

Indeed. I'd say more, but spoilers.

I'm a licensed HAM radio operator, but I'm too young to have gone through the Morse era. One of the things that book did for me was kindling my interest in learning to transmit and receive Morse.

I mean, you never know when you might need it, right? :)

I'm a Ham too and I'm wondering if it might be a good time to assemble a crystal radio - no power needed.

I recently read D.O.D.O., and I'm convinced that it's in the same literary world as Anathem and Seveneves. I won't say more, but do read D.O.D.O., if you've otherwise liked Stephenson's work.

> Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

Compared to what? I think you should be happy with what you've got, because it's the best we've ever seen. I'm happier with a species that could burn out, than one that could do no wrong. If there was a problem, yo, we'll solve it.

Compared to the freaking brink of annihilation that we walk to every time there's an opportunity to do so.

It's a prisoner's dilemma type problem. Unless you can get everybody to agree then the rational thing to do is to use as much carbon as you can to stay ahead of the other guys.

> the rational thing

Perhaps that indicates that reason itself has some hardcoded fundamental limits.

The hard limit is just that the ones who survive survive. And the reasonable people die. The reasonable are those who don't consume more resources than their environment provides.

It's not a prisoner's dilemma at all. There are plenty of humans trying to change, and several countries. Herein lies the problem with game theory - it reduces human behaviour to absurdly simplistic levels.

> Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

I think that was meant to point to the individuals, not the species as a whole and that's exactly what causes this problem. But we're working on the hive mind as we speak.

Have we ever done something that requires global agreement?

CFC ban?

The Montreal Protocol was a successful international treaty to protect the Ozone Layer, so there is some precedence for countries coming together to protect our environment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol

Approximately all nations, the Nuclear test ban treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban...)

I kind of disagree with this one. The number is high, but a bunch of countries haven't signed it (As of 2016, eight Annex 2 states have not ratified the treaty: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed but not ratified the Treaty; India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed it.) [[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban...

CFC global ban in the 90s - http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/this-week-in-history...

True, but there was a ready substitute. When have we ever had a global agreement that required real sacrifice?

Oh yes.

Smallpox, eradication of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication

This isn't a flaw in the species. It's a consequence of game theory and evolution and would likely be found in any species that was a product of evolution.

Yes, this is one of the explanations of the Fermi paradox.

I was discussing that with a friend once and I argued that a more intelligent species might fare worse in these matters. It would more rapidly and aggressively exploit its environment due to higher intelligence and would therefore run a greater risk of triggering catastrophic environmental events.

The problem is that there is no game theoretic advantage in cooperating to reduce CO2 unless everyone cooperates. If one large player (e.g. USA or China) or many small players do not cooperate then the incentive flips and it's actually in everyone's best interest to defect. If catastrophic climate change is going to happen anyway then you are better off burning as much CO2 as you want to build up your economy so you have a better chance of mitigating the damage. It's basically a variation on the prisoner's dilemma scenario.

I guess someone didn't like hearing what you said, but you're absolutely right. Global agreements are coordination problems; there's an incentive to violate them, discretely at least. And there's a cost to genuinely comply with the agreement while others are clandestinely violating it.

It took me a couple seconds to realize how utterly pessimistic that statement is.

Perhaps a singular consciousness could evolve that wouldn't have the inherent game theoretical problems that groups of conscious individuals have.

A colony species would also be free from these problems, they look remarkably like a singular consciousness from the outside.

At the moment we're a tribal species that builds colonies, we just haven't evolved to fit into them yet.

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