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Comment by towaway15463 | Hacker News Reader

We’re doomed if we don’t spread out. Staying on earth guarantees destruction by asteroid, super volcano, coronal mass ejection, war, disease, ecological collapse, etc. Settling the solar system is a bit better but still subject to rogue brown dwarfs or black holes, gamma ray bursts, variability of Sol its eventual death. Even settling our local group of stars could end badly with a big enough super nova. Every year we delay expanding into the universe is another light year of distance we may never get back.

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> We’re doomed

Yup. We're doomed, because we're an evolving species. In a few hundred thousand years we'll be very different - perhaps our overweight brains will have shrunk, and we'll no longer be curious about silly things like the origin or final fate of the Universe.

"Spreading out" is more likely to happen to fungus and bacteria spores, than bipedal mammals.

> In a few hundred thousand years we'll be very different..

And thanks to the magic of epigenetic regulation, I'd say we'll be pretty different in 600 years.

We are following the path of the social insects, becoming more drone-like, docile, and specialized.

Also more humane and selfless.

Also more childlike.

Eloi-esque.

Obesity rates and cultural milieu suggest that it's not just Eloi-esque, unfortunately. But I think you nailed the general trend.

Not really. The Eloi seem to be like wealthy students - young, good teeth, straight blonde hair, nice duds, no job they have to do. There doesn't appear to be any significant evolution that could have affected them since the present. Only the Morlocks appear to have changed; there are no contemporary humans that are remotely like Morlocks.

Dammit, this is scifi from 100 years ago; it doesn't throw any light on the future of humanity. I'm going to butt out, because I think this is OT.

science fiction from 100 years ago, based on the author's observations of the switch from agrarian to urban/mechanized life (i.e. the start of the the epigenetic shift I referred to) matches biological realities revealed over the last few decades (thank you E O Wilson) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson

doesn't throw any light? Perhaps, thought of course that would depend on what spectrum of light one was sensitive to.

I, for one, have a hard time seeing ultraviolet. Unlike my friends the bees.

"Mellavora" - is that honey-eater, in some language?

> Yup. We're doomed, because we're an evolving species. In a few hundred thousand years we'll be very different - perhaps our overweight brains will have shrunk, and we'll no longer be curious about silly things like the origin or final fate of the Universe.

You might enjoy Vonnegut's Galapagos, if you've not read it. It's a quick and easy read like most of his books.

> Galapagos

Yes, I read it. There's a twist in the tail that nobody should spoil.

I haven't yet encountered anything by Vonnegut that I didn't enjoy reading. I want to re-read Breakfast of Champions. My first encounter was Slaughterhouse 5, followed closely by Cat's Cradle.

So it goes.

> I haven't yet encountered anything by Vonnegut that I didn't enjoy reading.

Attempted Slapstick or Happy Birthday, Wanda June? :-)

Or most of the posthumously-released material, for that matter.

But yeah, his batting average was pretty damn high.

> We’re doomed

That depends on how you define "we".

If you define "we" as "homo sapiens", or even "biological creatures evolved (and therefore specialized) for survival on earth" then you are almost certainly correct. And such a "we" is almost certainly doomed even if "we" do spread out because a "we" defined as organisms specialized for survival on earth cannot survive anywhere except some place that is very similar to earth. This is true by definition. This does not necessarily mean that "we" have to find other earths. "We" can engineer earth-like environments. But that is a lot of work.

You can make the problem a lot easier simply by redefining what you mean by "we". If by "we" you mean "systems that think in a manner akin to what we (humans) do" that dramatically expands the scope of possible solutions. Being biological is (almost certainly) not a pre-requisite to thinking. By redefining "we" in this way we open the door to solving the problem by sending robots or even just raw information out into the universe. That is still a significant challenge of course, but it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to keep bags of water and meat alive (to say nothing of mentally competent) in interstellar space.

I’m always amazed when people seem to miss the obvious answer. Robots won’t get us there. Digitizing consciousness won’t either. We already have perfectly good nanotechnology capable of adapting to any environment. It’s staring us in the face, literally when you look in a mirror. DNA and proteins are how you do nanotechnology right. Add to that a guiding consciousness so we don’t have to wait millions of years for the slow search algorithm of evolution to find the answer and there’s nothing we can’t do. Our biggest task is reverse engineering the machine and learning to control it but given the tools we have now I believe we can master it within this century.

Interstellar distances at sub light speed are no obstacle if you have complete control over your biology/lifespan/metabolism. Just bring a big enough pile of enriched uranium, water and biomass and you’re good to go for hundreds of years.

Yes we do still need mechanical and electrical machines where they are more efficient but biology can provide for the lion’s share of our needs once it is under our control.

I disagree. The Earth will end, but not in the timelines they provide. In a million years it is unlikely we won't have the technology to hold the sun back from expansion. All we need are orbiting superconducting supermagnets to hold back the sun, tame volcanos, hold back cosmic radiation, etc. Asteroids would be nothing but mining prospects to humans in 1 000 000 AD.

I disagree. Forget about sun, the strongest weapons we have are microscopic even at the geological scale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSjratvNGmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUREX8aFbMs

You're not telling me anything I don't already know. The strongest weapons we have /right now/ have no implications for what we will have in the future. A million years is a lot of time. Long live the Earth! We cannot conceive of how we will contain the suns expansion, just like cavemen could not conceive any of our technological advancements mundane to us.

One would think in a million years if we have that sort of technology, we would no longer be dependent on Earth for humans survival. Whether we would colonize other planets and make them habitable through terraform or build our own planets at that point.

One could imagine an "Earth 2.0" that we can move around the solar system, positioning it perfectly for the right weather.

When you can tune the fusion of the sun using advanced particle physics and as of yet undiscovered branches of science, you don't need to move planets.

That would probably destroy the solar system. Without the moon, the earth would just exit the solar system. Increasing the mass of earth by mining too much asteroids would cause the earth to fall into the sun. It’s a quite delicate balance.

Excuse me, what? Maybe if you somehow added enough energy to immediately jettison the moon from Earth’s orbit or steered every asteroid in the solar system into the surface of the Earth. This is just nonsense otherwise. Any future mega projects can easily account for orbital mechanics, it’s just physics not magic.

The mass of the moon is “not that much” on a solar scale. The comment was about adding another planet and moving it around the solar system to “adjust the thermostat.” We can’t even get a rocket off the ground without blowing it up sometimes… I have little faith that we can move a whole freakin planet around without killing everyone.

The key challenge is getting to 1000000AD intact as a civilization. For that to happen we need to get our collective asses to Mars in the next 50 years and then continue to develop space habitats and colonies on other bodies at a steady clip from there on out. If we stay put something will get us whether it’s nuclear war or just plain apathy.

I'm all for spreading out but prudent stellar husbandry[1] is another potential solution to the problem.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting.

We're all going to be gone at some point regardless. We shouldn't make the effort to spread out if it's going to make the average person's life worse over the course of humanity's existence.

The continued existence of humanity and life in general is a good in itself. Besides that, why would you think that space exploration and colonization would reduce living standards?

The continued existence of humanity is only a good to the degree that it brings good. The continued existence of a species of psychic vampires that draw sustenance from causing pain to other conscious beings would very much not be a good in itself, and with habit and environment destruction and worker subjugation/disenfranchisement our species causes in the name of unfettered capitalism we're not so far off from that.

Big goals take sacrifice and hard work. Any cosmic human diaspora would require sacrificing earthly abundance and leisure, and the colonists wouldn't be having a good time either, so the main beneficiaries would be the billionaires and politicians that could wave their dicks around about how they're responsible for sending man to the stars.

Plenty of people choose sacrifice, hard work and discomfort because they find more fulfillment in it than idle leisure. Those who wish to remain behind can stay put, just don’t stand in the way.

Except that moonshots on the level of stellar diaspora require that sort of sacrifice from an entire society. If the 5% of the population that actually gave a shit about the idea of humans in the stars could do it by themselves I'd say go for it, but if it's going to happen they'll have to con people who will get nothing out of it into going along, which is obviously problematic.

It may only be 5% of people that care about space exploration by itself but a lot more will care if we’re lucky enough to only get a house sized impactor as a warning shot. At that size there’s a hope that there would only be severe property damage and no loss of life.

Chelyabinsk should have been that wake up call but most people don’t think about it deeply enough to realize how much worse it can be.

If we’re unlucky then the first big impact we experience will be our last.

>We’re doomed if we don’t spread out.

And we're doomed if we do. Ultimately, the universe will experience heat death and everything will cease to be.

Have a wonderful weekend, everybody! :D

If that’s the limiting factor then it gives us a heck of a lot of time to work on the answer.

Asimov knows the answer!

Of course we’re doomed, on a long enough timeline our only fate is extinction. The only question is how long it will take to reach that point, it’s not a matter of “if”.

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