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Comment by ralph84 | Hacker News Reader

Humanity is a blip in Earth's history. We'll be a historical curiosity to whatever comes next just like the dinosaurs are to us.

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I think people just say this to make themselves feel better about the dire situation we're in. Whatever works, but it's not quite true in my opinion. The dinosaurs weren't just a "blip" to us.

If you're talking about deep time, sure, but I'm referring to actual human historical timescales of a few tens to a few hundreds of years.

History will forget effectively all of us, so that’s comforting.

I hope some record of us stays so whoever comes next would be able to learn from our stupidity.

Yeah, and eternal shame is all we deserve.

I started reading history hoping to learn how to avoid the mistakes of the past, and instead came to the conclusion that history inexorably repeats itself, over a cycle just long enough for the current generation to forget the last event. (I'm trying to indicate similar kinds of mistakes in judgment, the details are always different of course.)

> I started reading history hoping to learn how to avoid the mistakes of the past

It's a noble pursuit, but the key part for you is that you _wanted_ to avoid those mistakes and put forth an effort to learn how to. The necessity, in order to truly avoid them, is that enough individuals collectively desire and pursue that. It's why (good) public education is so important for the long term health of societies.

And who knows, maybe the dinosaurs were burping so much they were also starting a global warming.

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