Hacker News Reader

Man, wouldn't it suck if it turned out the only place in that vastness that supported sentient life was Earth and we fucked it up?

View on HN

It wouldn’t, because then there wouldn’t be anyone who it would suck for.

It would be sucking in a metaphorical vacuum.

Ugh. Apologies :)

It could suck plenty for our descendants, while any remained.

Well, life also sucked plenty for our ancestors (including the dinosaurs being hit by an asteroid and whatnot), so from a big-picture perspective that isn’t a very convincing objection. I guess you could construct scenarios where we fuck it up in a way that causes more suckage for sentient beings in the future then there was ever in the past, but that’d be moving goalposts.

Chicxulub was a minor hiccup as disasters go. Wholesale ecocide, down to the mantle, is on the table.

It is wholly possible that life was well on its way before the strike that produced the moon re-melted the whole planet down to constituent elements.

Definitely. But it won't matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com