Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct | Hacker News Reader

Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct

scientificamerican.com

38 pointssharkweek23 comments

This is a load of drivel. Population growth is leveling off because it takes a few generations for cultural behaviors to adapt to the fact that infant mortality magically disappeared in an evolutionary blink of an eye. Humans have plenty of genetic diversity, the critical population (the number where genetic variation increases due to random mutations faster than it is lost to inbreeding) for humans is something like 500 individuals. Even if it were a concern, we are uniquely capable to artificially increase variation through genetic engineering and selective breeding if it ever came to that. Rapid genetic collapse is simply an absurd notion. And indeed, human tool use makes us able to adapt to any other changes in our environment faster than evolution could possibly process.

At this point in time, the only thing that could wipe out humans and their descendants would be a global catastrophe comparable to previous mass extinction events where virtually everyone would be killed nearly instantaneously and any survivors could not group up to recover. Is such an event possible? Yes. Imminent? Not at all. Humans will not last forever, nothing does, but there isn't a species on earth I'd bet on to outlast us.

> Humans will not last forever, nothing does, but there isn't a species on earth I'd bet on to outlast us.

My money is on Jellyfish, cockroaches, and whole families of bacteria.

Okay yeah bacteria, but cockroaches are just a trope. Why jellyfish? That’s piqued my interest.

As the ocean acidifies jellyfish may be the last complex life left in them.

Cockroaches' prosperity relies on human's.

but they can survive without us, just be less prosperous.

Reminds me of the painting, ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’.

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

This is a silly article. Humans will be around until the next comet strike, the question is in what kind of conditions we'll be living until then. The degradation of the biosphere and our declining quality of life is real so it's better to focus on those issues instead of worrying about extinction. Global warming and increasing automation are much more clear and pertinent threats than our eventual extinction.

>Humans will be around until the next comet strike

Not necessarily. For all we know, we might evolve into a different species over the next million years. Either way, though, extinction is just part of the natural process for any species, and not something we should worry about for ourselves. As you said, we are much better off considering how to improve biological conditions and quality of life than worrying about the eventual end of H. sapiens.

My default assumption is that there are plenty of people and there will be plenty of people for a long time. The only real threat to our survival is our own stupidity, greed, and avarice.

And even that might not be enough to put our species into an early grave!

It's certainly a pernicious failure mode.

And it was only a matter of time before the arrogant comments came out. I would not be so sure of humanaty's ability to avoid extinction if we continue on the path we've charted.

What's arrogant about what I wrote?

Your arrogance is in the timescale your assumption operates in and not seeing the interdependence between man, nature, and unknowns.

This is incredibly arrogant. I'm not using the word in the pejorative sense (I'm not calling you names), but in one that's better described as hubris.

Awful lot of assumptions you're making there. One might even say it's arrogant and hubristic.

fair. I may have been intending to reply to another comment, on second read. Sorry about singling yours out.

Your assumption that humans will be reasonable enough to not kill themselves, in the name of profit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421577

My intuition regarding genetic diversity, is that we already have more than sufficient technology and knowledge to develop "cures" for problems caused by lack of genetic diversity. Biotech's rapid advancements seem ready to tackle new problems in this space, only waiting for the moral justification to do so.

In light of automation, if the number of people decrease, the quality of life should maintain or increase per person (to the extent that QOL can be based on renewables), which should reach a natural equilibrium on the birth rate.

I'd hypothesize the biggest actual non-MAD danger to our species is too late a response to biodiversity, leading to "unpreventable" ecosystem collapse.

I mean, the entire universe will cease to be at some point, so, yeah...

Human will find a way to migrate to another universe in next few billion years.

Scientific American is doomed to go out of business.

Clickbait is eternal though.

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