>> What? There is no "factual basis" for my saying "chances are"?
> Correct. Exactly.
Honest to God. A statement of probability is not a fact, it is an estimate. You aren't even familiar with the terminology.
> Claims about probability still require factual support ...
False -- they require evidentiary support. A probability estimate requires a basis for making the estimate, which I provided. If you had any understanding of either science or statistics, you would be familiar with what I'm talking about.
Here's the evidence:
1. There are no species that were present on Earth a billion years ago that are still present in the same form, i.e. able to interbreed with their forebears.
2. There are few species that meet the above requirements from 100 million years ago.
3. There are a handful of species that meet the above requirements from 10 million years ago.
4. Modern humans have existed only for 200,000 years.
5. Using the simplest statistical methods, accessible to an average college student, we can write a distribution that takes into account the fact that modern humans didn't exist 200,000 years ago and extrapolate into the future, showing that our likelihood for existing as the same species we are now, 200,000 years in the future, is very small. This is a statement about probability and likelihood, areas with which you are clearly unfamiliar.
6. On the above basis, the probability that modern humans will exist as the same species a billion years from now is zero.
7. On that basis, the probability that modern humans will witness the sun enveloping the earth five billion years from now is also zero.
If you can't understand the above argument, by all means keep your ignorance to yourself.
> There may be a reasonable basis for that conclusion, but if there is, you haven't presented it, so it would be inaccurate to claim that you have successfully made that point, even if it is a point that could have been succesfully made.
Look -- go back to the philosophy department, where contentless arguments like yours, arguments indistinguishable from two children negating each other, are welcome.
In your fantasy, modern humans, which didn't exist 200,000 years ago, have some chance to be present to worry about the sun absorbing the earth five billion years from now. And you think my probabilistic estimates are doubtful. The burden of evidence is yours, not mine.
EDIT: Yes, people, don't bother to read the argument, the evidence, just click the downvote button. Live up to my expectations.