How are humans going to become extinct? | Hacker News Reader

How are humans going to become extinct?

bbc.co.uk

20 pointsdraegtun23 comments

A much better and more in-depth article along the same lines:

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/ross-andersen-human-...

I find it strange that they seem to rule out asteroid impacts as a threat just because it is unlikely to happen within this century. They are unlikely to happen in any century but still do happen from time to time on a universe-scale timeline, and have been responsible for mass-extinction events in the past.

I think asteroid impacts only start to be statistically significant over timespans of millions of years. Humanity only lived a few 100k years.

Do you think we have millions of years to go?

Also, if we would indeed remain millions of years, and assuming continuous progress, I don't think an asteroid impact is a threat to that advanced human society, it's a simple matter or deflecting it/mining it until it's empty.

And in fact, forget about the deflecting and mining, that is maybe relevant in 10000 years. But in millions years, if we make it that long, I think human society will exist out of parts of civilization, technology, machine and mind floating around everywhere in the galaxy, spreading out at some rate. What does a single asteroid in some solar system even matter to that at all??

The time window from today until we can handle any asteroid threat is most likely small, given no other civilization ending catastrophy takes place. I would be very surprised if we can't redirect incoming asteroids in 500 years.

It's very hard to kill every single human with an asteroid. It should be a really huge, planet-busting asteroid. A planetoid, really.

Those are rare. And even if you have 1000 humans surviving, it didn't happen.

What helps humans over dinosaurs: humans can live in extreme conditions (dinosaurs are very picky), and humans can conserve food outside of their bodies and live on it for a long time.

Humans are small and adaptable, dinosaurs are large and very fragile, as all big animals are.

Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals, species.

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been extinct. Almost double, in fact.

Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000 years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.

Disagree about the "should". Why would we not want to survive indefinitely? And when it comes to species, humans are clear outliers. I'm not sure how well one can extrapolate human future from what happened to the dinosaurs.

Perhaps OP is being a bit more philosophical. Not suggesting that it is a failure of will or a straw poll of our future direction but instead because we are/arent worthy of continuing...?

> humans are clear outliers

In what sense are humans outliers?

Dinosaurs are a rather large group of animals (and you can join primitive birds with more "reptilian" dinosaurs, but I digress...) and humans are a subspecies (homo sapiens sapiens), comparing dinosaurs' extinction with human's extinction its almost like comparing mammals extinction with white shark extinction.

That's a parochical view, valid only in the context of the classificatory scheme to which you allude and which we find useful in certain respects at present. To use Nassim Taleb's metaphor, humans have turned out to be evolutionary black swans.

I agree. Though the questions will remain as how it will end and when it will end.

Well, space colonization does open up the possibility for surviving maybe a few billion years. Maybe we can even reverse entropy and survive indefinately (que the Isaac Asimov novell).

My take: Humanity will survive for a good long time, but it turns out that the laws of physics means there's no practical way to leave our solar system. We die out once the Sun extinguishes.

I'd like to be proven wrong.

If we put the financial resources behind it, we (meaning: a very few of us) could leave the solar system right now. It's just that we lack the technology to do it right, with minimal risk and a lot of comfort. This is an engineering problem which we could solve, but choose not to. Putting together a generation ship to leave the system would probably succeed, but it would also utterly consume all our resources. The reason for this is that we choose to suck at space. For all our achievements in other areas, our space program is basically still in the sixties.

The main thing that is missing which would allow for us to even colonize the solar system, and potentially other star systems, is a good way to get lots of energy, such as nuclear fusion. There is nothing physically preventing us from developing a fusion reactor, we just haven't done it yet. Leaving the solar system will get even easier once we master the process of changing the substrate our minds run on from biological matter to something more appropriate, but again, this is not strictly required.

FTL travel is not really needed for us to colonize the galaxy either. It would be nice to have, but at this point it's just beyond our means to think about it. The other stuff isn't, though.

Yes, the Wikipedia lists a couple of technologically feasible options of leaving our solar system [1], some of which date back to the fifties. Using for example nuclear pulse propulsion we could reach Alpha Centauri in about 150 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Proposed_m...

Energy is possibly the biggest barrier towards future space colonization. It is entirely possible that we discover some new source of energy that allows us to:

1. Send a sustainable human population out of the solar system;

2. Travel to an inhabitable planet which may be millions of light-years away;

3. Geo-engineer that planet to the extent that it can self-sustain a moderate human population.

None of these steps is trivial. The pessimistic side of me thinks that we may actually never overcome any of these challenges.

My view: we will leave our solar system, but not as lumps of meat.

e.g. Greg Egan's Diaspora or Accelerando by Charlie Stross.

Hmm, interesting.

I was going to go with our hard-deadline for life on earth, 800 million to 1 billion years in the future the sun will have baked us so hot there's no liquid water left.

But you're probably more accurate. It's entirely conceivable that by then the increased solar output and our own tech advances will have made it possible to take up residence in other places in the solar system, which may even have become slightly more habitable by then due to the increased solar radiation. Hmmm.

That's possible too. But eventually, even the universe will succumb to entropy. I guess it's just a question of whether we die out in the solar system, or in some other star system.

>>but it turns out that the laws of physics means there's no practical way to leave our solar system.

Note that at one point of time, laws of physics said lighter than air flying machines were impossible.

Yet here we are, we have the airplane.

The problem is we don't know physics completely to say if something is impossible.

shoe shops.

One man lives to reach the end. One man lives to experience the change.

Everyone is so concerned with survival and living in bubble, but yet accepting seasons, sun rising and leaves falling. Yet they fail to realize that the biggest fear for them is change, nothing else.

I must fight something I do not accept and I am fine with something i am familiar with.

Not too sure if this thinking will change soon. Or changing this thinking would mean end to humanity.

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