I found this essay about differing viewpoints on where Homo sapiens is headed to be very interesting.
Pay walled, but I gotta say, I’ve not seen any reason why we deserve to go on. We are a parasite on the planet destroying everything as we go until there is nothing left.
Disable JS on the page and you can view the article in full.
Edit: I took a screenshot of the page and uploaded it to imgur.
It’s only become as big of an issue now due to our own influence. Fertiliser runoff being a huge contributor.
What swnt meant were the precambrian cyanobacteria in the ancient anaerobic world that started producing oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis. Oxygen was toxic to all then existing organisms. The cyanobacteria were so successful that they managed to poison the whole world, which later lead to the evolution of oxygen breathing organisms like us, but at that time, it was a global catastrophe.
The funny thing is its what all life does, but it means despite our cognitive abilities we are really proving we are nothing more than any other animal. All we would have needed to do is act on what we know rather than what we want and we would not be here.
While that may be true, I’ve not seen a bunch of orangutans bulldoze entire cities and push their inhabitants populations to extinction. We’re not comparable with any animal due to the sheer destructive power we have.
well yeah. I meant any life that achieved our level of power. We just broke the barrier but did not become any better to deal with it.
I need to switch but what do I do about the hundreds of open tabs on chrome? (on my phone that is)
Recently dealt with this. Save all your tabs as bookmarks, then import to Firefox. Open all bookmarks. Delete chrome.
Sorry, not my intention to post a paywall link, I use a browser that deletes all cookies every time I close it so these sites usually work for me with a “you have X free articles left” banner at the bottom.
I can understand your point given the state of things, but I think the point always deserves a caveat, which is that the parasitism and destruction isn’t equally distributed. The majority of people on earth consume at a relatively sustainable rate, and there’s no reason they deserve to be wiped out. Unfortunately they’re increasingly forced to rely on the destructive minority for their basic needs.
Personally, I think humans are the most interesting and important thing going on in this solar system, let alone planet. Actually, I think it would be a pretty tough argument to suggest anything else…
100% sincere. I guess it’s trendy to say things like “humans are parasites”, certainly the concept of “humans as a virus” has been explored in fiction often enough. But if we’re being perfectly honest, humans are simply amazing and what we’ve already achieved is monumental and incredibly meaningful. In fact, it’s the very definition of meaningful, because it’s intelligent life that creates “meaning” in the first place.
The techno-gazillionaires who are fused with AI can live for eternity without the rest of us while they celebrate the success of their enshittified libertarian accelerationist utopia.
Um…sorta? A rudimentary AI simulation of them will live until power ceases, but that will be a separate entity than the flesh and blood gazillionaire who commissioned the AI to represent him.
On the other hand, it does intersect with the transporter paradox: When you beam down to the planet, is it the same you or just a clone with all your memories that is convincingly you even to itself? And if that’s the case, when you go into delta sleep and then wake again (at which point all your cognizant functions reboot) is the waking you the same person as the you who went to bed the night before?
If there’s any possibility that it isn’t then the gazillionaire AI zombie may be good enough.
Didn’t read cuz of paywall but anyone interested in this topic should look into antinatalism.
The thing is, we assuredly have a lot of great filters between who we are now and Q-continuum or whatever enlightened existence we imagine as a goal.
We obviously have some tragedy of the commons problems, and fail to regard everyone in our civilizations of hundred of millions as fellow and equal human beings. Either we figure out how to overcome these sociological problems, or we die out. Depletion of resources, warfare-driven holocaust and contamination by pollution are some of the less exciting filters, but they’re recurring.
I suppose if we try some geoengineering and it leads to disaster then we can say we killed ourselves by big science experiment. Though black holes or strangelets would have been cooler.
A “disparate group of thinkers” also known as defeatists.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=i9o8ZyOVWUo
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