alternatively, hype behind the species is very much overblown. Take an objective look at any of the species that exist in our shadow like rats, sparrows and crows. Our expectations for these species is essentially nil, but that they have managed to not only survive but also thrive in our shadow is no small achievement.
Crows are amazing, in that they’ve been considered a major pest but they’re also too smart for most attempts to make them go away. I imagine crows have a pretty accurate perception of our value. We make more food than we need, and as such are easy to farm and steal from.
It’s just that people expect humanity to be more than that. There’s a hyperfixation on edge cases, things we’ve only done a few times like going to the moon. We as a species can’t even figure out atomic power, and we’ve had the tech for 70 years for that. We’re still burning coal, despite it poisoning our atmosphere.
humans are both literally and figuratively being choked by their own ambition. If we focused on things that would actually move us forward as a species like nutrition or higher productivity, 10 years from now you’d be amazed where we could be. But that’s the hype, we know conceptually such a thing is possible, but motivationally it just isn’t happening.
TLDR; our primitive brains are still too entranced with the internal combustion engine to ever get around to actual improvements
The problem with comparing humans & animals is we fall into the anthropocentric perspective of how a species is supposed to prove its worth. To make a fair comparison, you’d have to look at the planet as a single machine and gauge each species as different specialized parts.
Every plant, animal and microbe has a useful purpose EXCEPT the human. Even so called ‘pests’ like flies rats serve critical functions in the ecological balance. Humans serve no purpose but to destroy (unless that’s part of “god’s plan”). We pat ourselves on the back for building heaps of stone and steel that rise to the sky but what does that do for planet earth? Nothing, pure ego. Humans are shit. Humans are quite literally below worms–because ironically worms are the most important species on the planet for tilling the soil and making plant life possible. Humans? We kill. That’s all we do, we kill and we fuck. *slow clap*
yet another compelling case why the human species should just instantly be ended. what i want is a giant “fireball” / solar flare / whatever you call it, to come from the sun and instantly obliterate us all. Over in a literal flash. The. End. Memento Mori.
I actually had high hopes for covid. Imagine that, a disease that wipes out only humans while leaving the rest of the planet to heal in peace. The problem with fireballs or nukes is, even though they’ll do the job wonderfully, it wipes out all the forests & peaceful critters who had nothing to do with our crimes. (Another reason why I reject the Bible’s flood story). So I vote for a nice clean virus that wipes out the 23-chromosomers. Bambi & thumper & the Giving Tree can carry on as they were… Hey it could happen, maybe covid was just a trial run.
well, fire would actually be pretty ideal in terms of biology, there’s plenty of animals and plants well adapted to survive wildfire, which often burns hotter than human made firestorms. BTW, did you know that there was an entire section of climatology about firestorms? that’s so cool. Well, not literally.
but what I originally started writing to say, before I got sidetracked by fire, is that the future of biological threat IS our most likely source of the demise of our species. The reason is that many of the tools that would make up a bioweapons lab are open source. Anyone with an internet connection can gather the tools to build a super virus, and getting samples isn’t that hard either.
but I return to my cynical attitude towards species collapse; you can kill most humans, but killing them all is really hard. Suppose you had the super bug, infection means death, and humans are relatively unguarded against that kind of threat…. BUT, covid was a wake up call, and the highly paranoid will have put together some defences
The likely end of the species in such a scenario is lack of genetic diversity. You don’t need to kill all humans to kill humanity, but you need to kill all but a few thousand…. or 10s of thousands if either impractically distributed or unfortunately interrelated.
I remember a documentary I was watching about the practical threat of nukes, and there was a general who made this comment, I think he was supposed to be out of touch, but it stuck with me;
“Bombing could effectively wipe out every major city, but there are humans who don’t live in cities. Yes, it would be tragic, but humanity would march on. The effectiveness of bombing mainly hits infrastructure and industrial capacity”
Even the worst fallout would be escapable, because humans start planning for a threat as soon as they know about it. We are the cockroaches of the universe, easily squished but surprisingly prolific and resiliant. Also gross… and undoubtedly carrying parasites and diseases.
eternaldarkness7/8/2023 - 12:32 am
if there was a global disaster, say WW3 or superbug or whatever- even if it kills 99% of the population, at 7.888B currently, that still leaves 78,880,000. Or 78.88M. Which is still a fuckton of humans. Species will still survive.
What kills us in the end is whatever kills 99.99% of humans (788,800 humans left in the world). That’s a tall order. According to “experts,” humans should go extinct in about 7.8M years. But that goes against other models that say mammal species typically last only 1M years. So where TF does 7.8M years come from? Or 1M? Or I guess these “experts” best guesses are so off from each other. A difference of 6.8M years.
eternaldarkness7/8/2023 - 12:36 am
googling “how long do species live?” – yields 1.0M years
googling “extinction rate of humans” – yields 7.8M years
thebends7/8/2023 - 3:15 am
Yup humans are annoyingly resilient. I have no idea how the “experts” come up with these predictions because they have no model to study from. There has never been a species so entrenched, so widespread and so fucking arrogantly attached to life & spawning babies as the human. Did the duck billed platypus invent fertility clinics? Or industries dedicated to extending its lifespan? Hospitals to keep it alive even after its gone braindead? Religions and laws banning the means of suicide? Nope, the duck billed platypus and all extinct species went gentle into that goodnight, relative to the human who is obsessed with immortality and spreading itself. If a virus could think, it would have our attitude.
And you can’t predict how a mass like that will behave. A thinking virus. Dear lord we’re fucked.
eternaldarkness7/8/2023 - 4:38 am
oh don’t worry, homo sapiens will eventually perish, as do ALL species at SOME point. the question is WHEN, and WHAT takes us out?
eternaldarkness7/8/2023 - 4:43 am
What is the likely case?
1- Humans invent some deadly fucking disease that wipes us out. Covid was a “trial” run.
2- WWIII and we nuke ourselves to oblivion
3- We destroy/pollute our environment so much that humans can no longer viably exist.
4- We stupidly invent AI without safeguards and AI eventually takes us over, using us as their energy source and host.
5- What usually occurs is that a superior species comes around and wipes us out. That’s what we, homo sapiens, did to our predecessors. O_o
thebends7/8/2023 - 9:36 am
I like #5. Payback. But more likely I’ll put my money on #1. Especially in the post-covid era you know all the military labs are scrambling to study & improve on the ‘trial run’.
I also think there’s a lotta potential for #4 Death by AI. Heck, even before we started calling it AI, we’ve been putting our most critical infrastructure under computer control. One glitch and all the airplanes crash. Or the trains derail. Or the missiles launch. afaik none of these systems are under AI control but we’ve had enough accidents & near misses under normal software.
I’m sure nothing can kill all of us, there will always be a few who survive because thats what our species does: adapt, conquer, survive, spread. But maybe if our numbers weren’t so bloody high, maybe if there were just 1 Million humans for the whole planet, people wouldn’t suck so bad.
11 comments
alternatively, hype behind the species is very much overblown. Take an objective look at any of the species that exist in our shadow like rats, sparrows and crows. Our expectations for these species is essentially nil, but that they have managed to not only survive but also thrive in our shadow is no small achievement.
Crows are amazing, in that they’ve been considered a major pest but they’re also too smart for most attempts to make them go away. I imagine crows have a pretty accurate perception of our value. We make more food than we need, and as such are easy to farm and steal from.
It’s just that people expect humanity to be more than that. There’s a hyperfixation on edge cases, things we’ve only done a few times like going to the moon. We as a species can’t even figure out atomic power, and we’ve had the tech for 70 years for that. We’re still burning coal, despite it poisoning our atmosphere.
humans are both literally and figuratively being choked by their own ambition. If we focused on things that would actually move us forward as a species like nutrition or higher productivity, 10 years from now you’d be amazed where we could be. But that’s the hype, we know conceptually such a thing is possible, but motivationally it just isn’t happening.
TLDR; our primitive brains are still too entranced with the internal combustion engine to ever get around to actual improvements
The problem with comparing humans & animals is we fall into the anthropocentric perspective of how a species is supposed to prove its worth. To make a fair comparison, you’d have to look at the planet as a single machine and gauge each species as different specialized parts.
Every plant, animal and microbe has a useful purpose EXCEPT the human. Even so called ‘pests’ like flies rats serve critical functions in the ecological balance. Humans serve no purpose but to destroy (unless that’s part of “god’s plan”). We pat ourselves on the back for building heaps of stone and steel that rise to the sky but what does that do for planet earth? Nothing, pure ego. Humans are shit. Humans are quite literally below worms–because ironically worms are the most important species on the planet for tilling the soil and making plant life possible. Humans? We kill. That’s all we do, we kill and we fuck. *slow clap*
yet another compelling case why the human species should just instantly be ended. what i want is a giant “fireball” / solar flare / whatever you call it, to come from the sun and instantly obliterate us all. Over in a literal flash. The. End. Memento Mori.
I actually had high hopes for covid. Imagine that, a disease that wipes out only humans while leaving the rest of the planet to heal in peace. The problem with fireballs or nukes is, even though they’ll do the job wonderfully, it wipes out all the forests & peaceful critters who had nothing to do with our crimes. (Another reason why I reject the Bible’s flood story). So I vote for a nice clean virus that wipes out the 23-chromosomers. Bambi & thumper & the Giving Tree can carry on as they were… Hey it could happen, maybe covid was just a trial run.
well, fire would actually be pretty ideal in terms of biology, there’s plenty of animals and plants well adapted to survive wildfire, which often burns hotter than human made firestorms. BTW, did you know that there was an entire section of climatology about firestorms? that’s so cool. Well, not literally.
but what I originally started writing to say, before I got sidetracked by fire, is that the future of biological threat IS our most likely source of the demise of our species. The reason is that many of the tools that would make up a bioweapons lab are open source. Anyone with an internet connection can gather the tools to build a super virus, and getting samples isn’t that hard either.
but I return to my cynical attitude towards species collapse; you can kill most humans, but killing them all is really hard. Suppose you had the super bug, infection means death, and humans are relatively unguarded against that kind of threat…. BUT, covid was a wake up call, and the highly paranoid will have put together some defences
The likely end of the species in such a scenario is lack of genetic diversity. You don’t need to kill all humans to kill humanity, but you need to kill all but a few thousand…. or 10s of thousands if either impractically distributed or unfortunately interrelated.
I remember a documentary I was watching about the practical threat of nukes, and there was a general who made this comment, I think he was supposed to be out of touch, but it stuck with me;
“Bombing could effectively wipe out every major city, but there are humans who don’t live in cities. Yes, it would be tragic, but humanity would march on. The effectiveness of bombing mainly hits infrastructure and industrial capacity”
Even the worst fallout would be escapable, because humans start planning for a threat as soon as they know about it. We are the cockroaches of the universe, easily squished but surprisingly prolific and resiliant. Also gross… and undoubtedly carrying parasites and diseases.
if there was a global disaster, say WW3 or superbug or whatever- even if it kills 99% of the population, at 7.888B currently, that still leaves 78,880,000. Or 78.88M. Which is still a fuckton of humans. Species will still survive.
What kills us in the end is whatever kills 99.99% of humans (788,800 humans left in the world). That’s a tall order. According to “experts,” humans should go extinct in about 7.8M years. But that goes against other models that say mammal species typically last only 1M years. So where TF does 7.8M years come from? Or 1M? Or I guess these “experts” best guesses are so off from each other. A difference of 6.8M years.
googling “how long do species live?” – yields 1.0M years
googling “extinction rate of humans” – yields 7.8M years
Yup humans are annoyingly resilient. I have no idea how the “experts” come up with these predictions because they have no model to study from. There has never been a species so entrenched, so widespread and so fucking arrogantly attached to life & spawning babies as the human. Did the duck billed platypus invent fertility clinics? Or industries dedicated to extending its lifespan? Hospitals to keep it alive even after its gone braindead? Religions and laws banning the means of suicide? Nope, the duck billed platypus and all extinct species went gentle into that goodnight, relative to the human who is obsessed with immortality and spreading itself. If a virus could think, it would have our attitude.
And you can’t predict how a mass like that will behave. A thinking virus. Dear lord we’re fucked.
oh don’t worry, homo sapiens will eventually perish, as do ALL species at SOME point. the question is WHEN, and WHAT takes us out?
What is the likely case?
1- Humans invent some deadly fucking disease that wipes us out. Covid was a “trial” run.
2- WWIII and we nuke ourselves to oblivion
3- We destroy/pollute our environment so much that humans can no longer viably exist.
4- We stupidly invent AI without safeguards and AI eventually takes us over, using us as their energy source and host.
5- What usually occurs is that a superior species comes around and wipes us out. That’s what we, homo sapiens, did to our predecessors. O_o
I like #5. Payback. But more likely I’ll put my money on #1. Especially in the post-covid era you know all the military labs are scrambling to study & improve on the ‘trial run’.
I also think there’s a lotta potential for #4 Death by AI. Heck, even before we started calling it AI, we’ve been putting our most critical infrastructure under computer control. One glitch and all the airplanes crash. Or the trains derail. Or the missiles launch. afaik none of these systems are under AI control but we’ve had enough accidents & near misses under normal software.
I’m sure nothing can kill all of us, there will always be a few who survive because thats what our species does: adapt, conquer, survive, spread. But maybe if our numbers weren’t so bloody high, maybe if there were just 1 Million humans for the whole planet, people wouldn’t suck so bad.