Ask HN: What is humankind’s best case scenario? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is humankind’s best case scenario?

4 pointsdesertraven8 comments

Best case scenario for what? Survival? In the long run we will die out. If we manage to get into space sustainably (a very big if), we may last longer, but will eventually die out as well (space colonies, due to the vast scales of distance, will probably diverge from current humanity as well if they last any appreciable length of time, which is unlikely).

The universe has a time limit, and our expiration date will precede that by a very large margin.

I suppose the question is a subjective one. I mostly agree with your points, though I wonder if you think the path we take to our inevitable demise is of any consequence? Trying to skirt nihilism here.

On a personal level, I have some pretty strong beliefs about what I feel we /should/ be doing, but I don't expect to ever have the influence to change anything (and I don't really want to have to try, either). I'll let society do as it pleases, and live as well as I'm comfortable with in the meanwhile. It's a somewhat nihilistic attitude, but I'm an atheist anarchist antinatalist, so I guess the shoe fits.

May I ask the basis of what we /should/ be doing?

I’m not very knowledgeable on nihilism as a philosophy, though I’m surprised it can coexist with a care for society at all?

I wouldn't say nihilism is a philosophy, more the emergent result of holding the values that I do. My evolutionary path has been voluntarily cut off, so I have the freedom not to care about humanity's fate, I don't hold religious beliefs and was not trained in them, so I don't have a "spiritual" or moral perspective to uphold, I don't believe authority is positive for humanity, so I don't care about law or country.

From a pragmatic viewpoint, none of my views about what we should be doing is possible: Reducing the population and shrinking it's footprint to allow other life to thrive and evolve, abandoning the notion of nations, and especially armies and war, doing away with the idea of ownership of land, which leads to the dispossessed being little better than slaves, automating as much as possible and promoting subsistence in favor of productivity... I could go on further, but it would get redundant.

Why would you think that something doesn't matter just because it is impermanent?

Best case scenario: get replaced by the artificial like humanoids of Charlie Stross' book "Neptune's Brood". At least those humans could survive space travel and move life away from a single planet, which will be consumed when the sun goes red giant in a couple of billion years.

We are the Borg?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com