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Comment by chadwittman | Hacker News Reader

Read more about the Great Filter, it's probable it's ahead of us.

is it _probable_?

AFA we know we've been insanely lucky up to this point (as earthling life we went past multiple mass extinctions, we got multi-cellular life, multiple brains iterations, a society which still didn't wipe itself out etc)

What makes it more likely for the filter to be ahead of us rather than behind us?

Is it more likely that I’m immortal or that I simply have thus far avoided things that would have killed me?

You know that most people are not immortal, but if you had no prior about the mortality of mankind it would be reasonable to expect you're immortal.

Few people expect to die at any specific day, they just know they will die at some point because mortality is a given.

Modern civilization is extremely dependent on fossil fuels. We've already passed peak conventional oil production, and we're now surviving on EXTRAORDINARY technical means of enhanced oil recovery.

If we can't make the complete transition to renewables in the next thirty years, it's game over for a VERY long time. Future civilizations won't enjoy the benefit of Spindletop. Cheap energy sources won't be available near the surface of the crust for another > 50 million years.

We won't go extinct, but it will be the 18th century for a very long time and nobody will leave this rock during that time.

The Great Filter is right here, in front of us, in our lifetimes.

> Cheap energy sources won't be available near the surface of the crust for another > 50 million years.

Wrong. We already have one: nuclear energy.

That's a good point. It's pretty easy to construct and maintain fission reactors without fossil fuels. I bet enriching uranium was a snap in the 18th century, too. It will be even easier even getting to the enrichment phase in the future, with accessible ores about 30% as rich as they were when the nuclear age began.

Looking forward to the fleet of electric concrete trucks carrying electrically-manufactured concrete loaded with batteries that were produced with lithium carbonate dug out of the ground by electric excavation rigs.

All of this construction work will also not be disrupted by any social unrest resulting from 3 billion people starving to death because the Haber process no longer has enough cheap feedstock to sustain modern agricultural processes.

Thanks for educating me.

Your snark is misplaced. All of the issues you raise apply to any source of energy, including "renewables". The difference is, "renewables" (a) are not controllable, and (b) don't have nearly enough capacity to support a global civilization. And if you're worried about social unrest, by far the best way to ensure it is to refuse to make use of an obvious source of plentiful energy to help maintain and improve people's standard of living, and instead insist on keeping billions of people in poverty in order to satisfy your ideological preconceptions.

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