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Comment by zeroonetwothree | Hacker News Reader

If by “worked out ok” you mean where life on earth is reduced to little more than weeds and it takes millions of years for the complex ecosystems that support humanity to reemerge, then yeah, it worked out just fine. We would definitely go extinct after a long period of decline and suffering, but let’s not worry about that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Effects_and_r...

On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

On a long enough timeline the survival rate for the earth approach 1.

"Do we need to stop something called a 'mass extinction'" is certainly a take.

Just like a fire is part of a forest's ecosystem it's possible that a mass extinction is part of the Earth's natural lifecycle and is beneficial in the very very long term

Are we happy, however, with anything that's beneficial to Earth's long term natural cycle if it happens to come with our own potential / likely extinction? (or at least a very heavy hit to the lifestyle to which we've become accustomed).

I care about the environment insomuch as it's upon what our very lives depend as opposed to the environment in and of itself. It's my enjoyment of the environment and the wonder of its variation that is something valuable to lose, but it's loss is also an existential threat to, basically, me and all those I care about in the universe.

> I care about the environment insomuch as it's upon what our very lives depend

I never thought I'd see a real-life version of the legendary Churchill quote.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-prepositi...

It didn't start that way, but I feel that attempts at profundity require adherence to such rules, and so I edited it thusly.

> I care about the environment insomuch as it's upon what our very lives depend as opposed to the environment in and of itself.

I mean, sure, but that’s largely what got us into this mess.

So recognizing that periodic fire is part of the natural cycle is one thing, and purposely igniting every tree you come across is quite another.

Life on Earth probably has one (~maybe two) very very long terms left before Sun vapes it all. Also, since all under-your-feet fossils and minerals are basically depleted, the chance for another technological civilization after ours is vanishingly small.

I don't really care about the other later phases of Earth's natural lifecycle - I kinda like this one. So much so, that I'm going to be investing in the other ones at all.

Now if only that was the kind of short term thinking humans were afflicted with.

Sure, if “humanity disappears from the universe” is an acceptable outcome.

Not to mention the potential for long, painful decline for humans alive at the end.

I don't think the long painful decline for humans at the end is an avoidable thing.

Eventually there will only be iron stars around in the universe, and it will be exceedingly difficult to increase the entropy of the universe with them

By that point, any remaining people likely won’t be recognizably human, so I’m not overly concerned about that. Plus, that’s billions of years off.

Climate damage that begins to kill off my great-grand kids (probably through water wars or similar), who I could conceivably see born, is a very real possibility.

Depends on how you define ok. If you define "ok" as "life will continue on the planet", then yes, it will work out ok... if you define it as "humans will survive" then we can't be so sure.

I guess it depends on if your definition of "intelligence" includes a basic self-preservation clause.

The dinosaur equivalent of zeroonetwothree would disagree if he hadn't suffocated on sulphur-laden air a few years back.

Without other planets to examine, we have no way of knowing whether this is survivorship bias.

Is life truly that tenacious or are we incredibly lucky? Perhaps best not to tempt fate if the latter.

No, let's get rid of humanity.

Let’s transition to renewables and sustainability instead.

Well, there is the slight matter of how we weren't around for the previous N mass extinctions. I would say the possibility of us, or at least our civilization, going extinct warrants action.

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