Our views of human extinction have changed over the millennia. Here are the ten best in more-or-less chronological order.
- Wrath of God. Wickedness of man causes God to destroy us. Reasons for hope: In Christian theology, anyway, God promised never to do it again after the whole Noah affair.
- Mayan calendar. December 2012 marked the end of a bʼakʼtun—a 5,126 year cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar—and with it the end of humanity. Reasons for hope: Experts say the whole thing is bosh even as mythology. Anyway, we're still around. 2012 came and went and all we got was a bad movie out of it. We should be safe until at least AD 7138.
- Revelation. A perennial favorite. Jesus returns, sinners suffer, and the faithful ascend to heaven. Reasons for hope: Nobody's ever been able to pin down a date for this.
- Alien invasion. HG Wells popularized it first, and since then this has taken every conceivable form, from a surprising thirst for our water to blasting Earth in order to clear space for a hyperspatial express route. Reasons for hope: Drake's equation and the Fermi Paradox.
- Nuclear apocalypse. This one shot up the charts in August 1945. Reasons for hope: None, really. On the other hand, even a real barn burner of a nuclear war isn't likely to kill every last human. It would be a big setback, but that's all.
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- Asteroid. If a big asteroid could kill off the dinosaurs, it could certainly kill us. Reasons for hope: This is a very rare event and it would be decidedly unlucky for it to happen during our lifetimes. Plus we're developing defenses that should be ready to go in no more than a few hundred years.
- Virus. An engineered virus spreads like wildfire thanks to modern technology and kills off the human race. Reasons for hope: It's harder than it sounds! Kill people too effectively and the virus burns itself out before infecting everyone. Slow things down and too many people escape. It's tricky.
- Climate change. This has become increasingly popular since climate change is, after all, a real thing. Reasons for hope: Homeostasis.
- Artificial intelligence. This is absolutely state-of-the-art in doomsday scenarios. Theories vary from the classic (computers just don't like us) to the lunatic (chess computers will go nuts and destroy the solar system in order to acquire the raw material for ever-better chess playing). Reasons for hope: We will probably merge with the computers soon and then it will be us on the rampage.
- Kevin's corollary. A favorite among the cognoscenti. AI continues to improve rapidly, remaining benign but ultimately becoming far superior to ordinary human intelligence. When that happens there's no longer any point in learning or doing anything since computers can do it all better. Humans become jaded and morose and eventually give up on all activity, including sex. Our computers are able to extend our lifespans considerably, but eventually the last of us dies quietly out of sheer boredom. Reasons for hope: None, unless you have a rosier view of human nature than I do. If so, please look around.
Happy New Year!
Since you've already made a H2G2 reference: There is a counter-argument to #9 and the dangers of artificial intelligence. Apparently on one planet the robots did not DIS-like their creators. Rather, they LIKED them! Arthur Dent's response: "Ghastly!"And since Arthur himself showed up in a vision, throwing the cup at the Nutrimatic macine, the population realized that they did not have to stand for this robotic affection and, instead, rounded up the robots. So I guess the danger could go the opposite direction.
BTW-I'm a purist. I rely on Douglas Adams' original BBC episodes, which I managed to sneak past customs years ago. The books are okay, but the timing of the actors in these episodes is just exquisite.
My buddy's mother makes $50 per hour working on the computer (Personal Computer). She hasn’t had a job for a long, yet this month she earned $11,500 by working just on her computer for 9 hours every day.
Read this article for more details.. https://payathome.blogspot.com/
The real purists are into the radio show, which is even better than the TV show.
Holy Zarquan singing fish! I totally forgot about the BBC *TV* show! Of course I ended up with the CD's from the original radio series. You are right: much, much better. What can I say but, "Belgium, man! Belgium!"
As an atheist I am immediately of the hook for two of those. I am much more worried about global disasters that don't end the world but cause unimaginable amounts of suffering.
And there's a higher probability of some high body count event hitting us than the complete extinction of humanity.
There is a difference between the end of civilization as we know it and extinction.
And instead of a virus affecting humans, I'd be more afraid of a blight affecting food crops.
It would be highly unlikely the same pathogen would infect all of our food crops.
"2012 came and went and all we got was a bad movie out of it."
Oh please. We got endless bad movies on that topic. Browse the lower depths of free streaming for examples.
"all we got was a bad movie"?
No, there was also a pretty good dark beer from the Stevens Point brewery, with a cool label that incorporated that Mayan calendar disk. I still have the t shirt.
Please Please Please not #3!!!!
A handful of folks get uplifted.
The Evangelicals who thought they were going up are mad as hell and take it out on. us normies.
How did supervolcanoes not make the top ten?
Yeah, don't drill into Yellowstone...just sayin'
Could a supervolcano wipe out all humanity? It's in the category of "high body count, causes lots of suffering, but overall survivable for humanity as a whole"
I thought it was a contest between fire and ice … ?
Either one is great,
And would suffice.
Seems like you are leaning toward a frosty ending .
Read H.G. Wells' Time Machine for a refinement of Kevin's Corollary... basically the machines handle everything and after a few millennia without the negative stimuli needed to keep our brains sharp we devolve into mindless sheep.
Or maybe social status becomes entirely a function of video game success and we spend our entire childhoods studying and honing the skills required to top those leaderboards.
Or maybe we end up permanently plugged into a metaverse that's indistinguishable from reality while the machines feed our bodies and wipe our butts. The goal of the game is to evolve humanity until it can create the next metaverse to live in.
Wait, are we in a video game right now?! An endless onion of metaverses supporting metaverses?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!
Maybe Musk thinks Wall-E was a documentary from the future?
...after a few millennia without the negative stimuli needed to keep our brains sharp we devolve into mindless sheep.
Millennia? You spent any time on Twitter lately? I'd say we're already 2/3rds there.
Many years ago I took a college level class on Japanese History and Culture. It was sort of an overview type class. The teacher was Japanese. One of the things she taught was that there is a Buddhist sect in Japan that believes the end of the world already happened. Sometime in the 1600’s if I remember correctly. I asked her how they account for the fact that we are still here? She said “When you cut a rose, what happens?” Then she said “Do you thing things are getting better or worse?”
So, maybe they’re right and it’s just a matter of time before things get so bad the Earth just becomes uninhabitable. Seems to me that some people are happy to accelerate things.
Climate change is not an extinction level threat. In the worst case, much land close to sea level will be flooded and areas of the world where the temperatures already routinely reach life-threatening levels could become uninhabitable without reliable air conditioning. Changes in rainfall patterns could result in serious water shortages in some areas that presently produce a lot of food. In short, many people could drown, starve, or die of heat stroke.
On the flip side, changes in rainfall patterns are very hard to predict but there is a strong possibility that rainfall could increase in some areas that are presently too dry to be useful for farming. Large areas of Canada and Russia could become enough warmer to become farm land.
Homo sapiens is extremely adaptable. Worst case climate change could result in a significant reduction in the total human population, but there would be lots of survivors and lots of livable land left for them to live on.
One thing that helps is that our agricultural production is so incredibly productive that we could realistically switch to a more diversified production designed to mitigate damage from natural disasters and not suffer much of a rise in costs or reduction in food availability.
We could also store a lot more food for emergencies. China stores enough wheat for a one year's supply for the entire country - the US could easily do the same, or store it for multiple years.
The tricky thing there is that warming alone won't give you a useful topsoil to worth with in terms of agriculture.
Obviously, simply adding rain won't turn every desert into productive farmland. However, there is quite a bit of land that could be productive farmland if it had more water, or was a bit warmer. In both Canada and Russia, the northern limit of practical farming is determined by climate rather than by soil quality.
You are assuming there are no unanticipated or underestimated positive feedback modes. Release of CO2 from drying peat bogs and massive release of methane from the melting of deep ocean hydrates are just two possibilities that come to mind. For an idea about how bad things could become, check out today’s weather forecast for Venus: cloudy with a temperature of 900 degree F and a light sulfuric acid rain. Question is: do we feel lucky?
I seriously doubt we're going to turn into Venus, but an environmental catastrophe similar to the Permian extinction could be in the cards.
The Earth cannot be like Venus for a couple of reasons. First is that Venus is enough closer to the sun that it receives about twice as much solar insolation as Earth. Second, Earth does not have the composition to duplicate, or come close to duplicating, Venus's atmosphere. Even in the worst of worst cases, Earth is not going to have 90 atmospheres partial pressure of CO2 or anywhere close to it.
Venus used to not have an atmosphere close to duplicating Venus's atmosphere. Don't know that I draw a lot of comfort from knowing the worst case will be less than 900 degrees F and 90 atmospheres partial pressure of CO2.
The possibility of the Earth turning into Venus is de minimis*. We're farther from the sun, rotate on the Earth's much faster (Venus' "day" is longer than it's year) and we have a large satellite stabilizing our rotation and our axial tilt. We've also been through "hothouse Earth" eras when the temperatures were much warmer, and "snowball Earth" eras when they were much colder. Life still endured.
* Eventually the sun will become hot enough where the biosphere will be destroyed and the oceans will evaporate away, but that's a very long way off in the far future.
Well… as JS Bach said once (BWV 82)
I have now enough, I have now my Savior, the hope of the faithful
Within my desiring embrace now enfolded; I have now enough!
On him have I gazed, My faith now hath Jesus impressed on my heart;
I would now, today yet, with gladness Make hence my departure.
Ending Annus horribilis 2022 with Beethoven 6, 7, and 9. Wagner’s Tannhauser overture, Mussorgsky’s pictures at an exhibition and, if I can can stay awake for 2023 Camille Saint-Saëns 3rd symphony.
The only way 2023 is better is if someone kills TFG. Let us pray… O god please let someone shoot dead that no good evil bastard. 🙏
It’s a shame there is no god… only trumpist devils and Russians. Go figure.
i concluded a long time ago that alien invasion is not gonna happen. Simple reason: any alien race with sufficiently advanced technology to reach us would have long since mastered the technology of birth control, meaning they'd have no need for our living space, and would also have the tech to make anything they want without needing any resources from Earth. If they visit us at all, they'll be motivated by scientific curiosity and will probably conceal their presence to avoid contaminating their data.
I think alien life has figured out that the moment some of them leave their own planet, they start evolving away from their cousins back home. They have a philosophical aversion to off-planet speciation (why breed a race of aliens who know where you live?), so they stick close to home.
Agreed, particularly the "Prime Directive" argument. Which implies that these UFO sightings are not actually alien spacecraft. (But they could be natural phenomena of a sort we don't yet understand.)
Trying to guess what an advanced culture that can travel space will think is a little bit arrogant. To get an idea, try to think what would somebody living 1000 years ago would succeed to guess about what we think now.
We actually have literature from "1,000 years ago." They're pretty much just like us, although with different societal trappings.
ReallY?
They thought that keeping slaves is abominable behaiour?
That women should be equal to men?
etc.
They had completely different morals values than ours, and completely different views in many other respects.
I agree that 1,000 years ago is not that different than now. (Compared to hypothetical salient civilizations.). But, technology and civilization had advance exponentially over the last century that it’s hard to compare the next thousand years with the last thousand years.
8. Barring some unforeseen thing, climate change probably won't do us in - it will just make the environment a bit more unstable and unpleasant, and probably cost us in mitigation (although that cost might be swamped by society overall getting much richer).
I think it's temporary, though. Eventually we'll do geoengineering and mass air capture of CO2, and that will basically let us get the climate we want. I'm more pessimistic on ecosystem preservation - there's a good chance we lose a lot of what's left of the rainforests, for example.
10. In that world, "human nature" is going to be a pretty malleable thing in light of far greater machine augmentation and genetic modification. I don't think future people will get "bored" unless they choose to let themselves be so - they might be able to suppress boredom and happily do the same routines over and over again.
What I actually think will happen is that we'll figure out how to do radical life extension or immortality, and then that plus far greater AI/robotics means we'll see a major off-world expansion as entrenched power structures channel people outwards to mitigate some of the pressure to relinquish power and privilege on Earth (which will tend to undermine said power over time, but that's in the long term).
At some point, probably many millennia from now, we're also going to have a new ice age.
Re: God promised never to do it again...
Not quite: "And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." Genesis 9:11 KJV
So God promised never to do it again...by flood.
As I recall, the next time would be fire.
That's exactly the way my Adventist second grade teacher interpreted it. Even as a second grader I sensed promising we would burn next time instead drowning was a strange way of expressing contrition, even for God.
#10 will be hard on people mid-career when AI replaces all jobs, but the generations that come after will be fine. AI has been better than humans at chess for a while, but trying to beat other humans at chess is as meaningful as it's ever been. Maybe everything will become like that. Blogging won't be about adding new ideas to the world, it will be winning blogging contests against other human bloggers. Sounds terrible to me, but the future generations of bloggers probably won't mind if that's what they're used to.
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
"A certain learned constructor built the New Machines, devices so excellent that they could work quite independently, without supervision. And that was the beginning of the catastrophe. When the New Machines appeared in the factories, hordes of Drudgelings lost their jobs; and, receiving no salary, they faced starvation ..."
"Excuse me, Phool," I asked, "but what became of the profits the factories made?"
"The profits," he replied, "went to the rightful owners, of course. Now, then, as I was saying, the threat of annihilation hung. . ."
"But what are you saying, worthy Phool!" I cried. "All that had to be done was to make the factories common property, and the New Machines would have become a blessing to you!"
The minute I said this the Phool trembled, blinked his ten eyes nervously, and cupped his ears to ascertain whether any of his companions milling about the stairs had overheard my remark.
"By the Ten Noses of the Phoo, I implore you, O stranger, do not utter such vile heresy, which attacks the very foundation of our freedom! Our supreme law, the principle of Civic Initiative, states that no one can be compelled, constrained, or even coaxed to do what he does not wish. Who, then, would dare expropriate the Eminents’ factories, it being their will to enjoy possession of same? That would be the most horrible violation of liberty imaginable. Now, then, to continue, the New Machines produced an abundance of extremely cheap goods and excellent food, but the Drudgelings bought nothing, for they had not the wherewithal. . . "
"But, my dear Phool!" I cried. "Surely you do not claim that the Drudgelings did this voluntarily? Where was your liberty, your civic freedom?!"
"Ah, worthy stranger," sighed the Phool, "the laws were still observed, but they say only that the citizen is free to do whatever he wants with his property and money; they do not say where he is to obtain them. No one oppressed the Drudgelings, no one forced them to do anything; they were completely free and could do what they pleased, yet instead of rejoicing at such freedom they died off like flies."
- Stanislaw Lem 'The Twenty-fourth Voyage'
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- #
Well before computers could play competitive chess, I read an article in Scientific American that speculated about the future of the game, when computers would beat grandmasters. All of the authors’ scenarios were wrong, as they never supposed that humans would continue playing against each other. I thought at the time that that was the most likely outcome, just as horse racing continues to be a popular sport, long after we stopped racing locomotives against horses, once locomotives were sure to be the winners.
#10: I think Kevin has on overly rosy view of AI, whatever he thinks about human beings. At any rate this scenario is nothing to worry about for all of us who are alive now.
Another point: Maybe we should not focus on the end of the world so much as on the end of the world we know. For example: Climate change may trigger migration of a magnitude not seen since the end of the Roman Empire. How will our politics survive that if it can't even withstand the moderate immigration we face now? This sort of doomsday is quite likely not far into the future.
#5 Nuclear apocalypse would be more than a big setback. A hundred years hence we'd be at the level of beeswax candles and bear grease on wooden wagon wheels and unlikely to ever progress beyond that. Modern technology (even a #2 pencil) depends on a deep industrial base. High pressure lithium grease for machines? The remaining oil fields are out of reach without the supporting technology. Digital archives? Unrecoverable. Once we fall over the edge there's likely no way back up.
You'd be surprised. Your local public library probably has quite a lot of scientific and technical information in durable book form, available for your community to access if needed. University libraries have even more. It would take a while, but we could redevelop lost technology given sufficient time. (Also, there is still some oil that is easy to reach, it just comes out of the ground at very slow flow rates.)
Even larger effect than preserved knowledge is the knowledge that there is advanced technology that can be achieved. In the past people didn't realize how far technology can go, and therefore put less effort in it.
When asked that very question, Feynman (yes that Feynman) replied that the most salient feature of the physical world is that it is made of discrete bits of matter that attract each other at large distances and likewise repel at short distances.
#5 Nuclear apocalypse would be more than a big setback.
I rather think Kevin's (very dark) humor has done gone over your head.
You're assuming that the whole world would get hit with nukes. A nuclear war would feature exchanges between combatant nations, and yes would cause radiological consequences far from the ground zeros, and climatic consequences everywhere. But it would not destroy the infrastructure people would need to rebuild everywhere. Much of it would survive even in combatant nations outside the blast and fire zones.
Re: #10
One alternative is to start by assuming that it's a sufficiently accurate reflection of reality, then seek evidence that confirms and defends the assumption while denying, dismissing, and/or ignoring conflicting evidence, although that would be cryptozoology: the study of a mythical species.
The alternative is to start with three hypotheses: H1 predicts that objective evidence will confirm #10 , H2 predicts that objective evidence will refute #10, and H0, the 'null' hypothesis, predicts that objective evidence will turn out to be inconclusive. Then you follow the evidence while subjecting all 3 hypotheses to an equal measure of rigorous skepticism. That would be science.
5. Nuclear apocalypse.
Ok, so you don't believe the scenario painted by 'On the Beach'? Neville Shute would have been so disappointed. So would a lot of Melbourners.
7. Virus. An engineered virus spreads like wildfire ... Kill people too effectively and the virus burns itself out before infecting everyone.
Ooh, just like myxamatosis and the rabbits ! And now calicivirus.
Heh. I thought that the most modern, most hip apocalypse is that someone shuts down the simulation. Now, at what level our simulation is (Atomic? Brains in a jar?) is a matter of vigorous debate among these ne'er do wells who should have more important things to do, so I'll say that the simulation, if that is really what we experience as reality, is at the sub Plank level of distance, time, and energy.
I'm a cautious optimist. I believe that humans will solve all the external environmental problems and will keep finding ways to make life easier and better for other humans.
Therefore, I'm going with Disaster Scenario #10, because:
The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the ‘Rats of NIMH'.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh
Here's another way,
it could all turn into Russian television,
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1609719192596381696
Russia is truly the gangsters paradise.
Number 3 is a good thing, no? We don’t want to avoid it. As Catholics, me, President Biden, and Speaker Pelosi all look forward to that day. It’s literally in our creed that we say every Sunday.
“…I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
-Nicen Creed
Great
My buddy's mother makes $50 per hour working on the computer (Personal Computer). She hasn’t had a job for a long, yet this month she earned $11,500 by working just on her computer for 9 hours every day.
Read this article for more details..
#1 Spoken like an ignorant atheist. God promised never to destroy the world again--with water.
Fire next time.
One las quick comment: In the Spring of 2020 (yes, *that* Spring!), I was helping teach a college course entitled "End of the World: Perspectives from Science, Religion, and Popular Culture." One major onclusion we all came to was that the "End of the World" is never really about the end of the "world." It is always--always--about the end of "us." The thing that needs to be accounted for whenever dealing with EoW talk is the definition of "us." Species? Living things? Religious group? Nation? Non-zombie life? It was incredibly revealing that in each case, that definition of "us" and "not us" was a main function of the literature. Everything else flowed from the framing of that question.
If we go there is no point in anything that comes after. we are the pinnacle of known life.