Re: Hawkins suggests human race to continue for another million years

On 25 Apr, 22:18, Tim Tyler <seemy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alpha wrote:
On Apr 25, 9:23 am, Tim Tyler <seemy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It is huge, has enormous resource reserves, and a long
expected lifespan - almost everything is about as good
as could reasonably be expected. If (heaven forbid!)
we /do/ manage to screw up somehow during embryonic
development, it won't be due to adverse external circumstances.

....the external circumstances/environment changes radically over
longer periods, wiping out gaggles of species or curtailing their
population/growth. In the case of homo sapiens, a good set of
volcanic eruptions (changing weather to an extreme and thence food
production worldwide), a huge asteroid hit (ditto), a virus etc., can
all play havoc with our future. In geologic time, we are but nats on
a mouse's ass and "Earth" could not care less whether we live or die
en masse.

Sure. But our descendants are not likely to be confined to
the earth for much longer - so the only potentially fatal
accidents are:

* ones that happen soon;
* ones that can spread rapidly;

I'm inclined to assign meteorite strikes, alien invasions
physics disasters, and deadly viruses - and most of the
other stuff on:

http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html

...a low probability: so I think we - or our machine
descendants - are likely to make it at least as far
as starting a galactic civilisation.

That site fails to address properly the resource depletion hazard,
IMO.
Our modern technological society is dependent on non-renewable
resources which are quickly running out, and if this problem is solved
very soon the world technological development might stall or even
reverse for thousands of years to come.

If we don't, IMO the chances are high that that will
be because we screwed up - rather than, say, a big
meteorite strike or an alien invasion.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@xxxxxxxxxxx Remove lock to reply.

.