(May 20, 2016 at 4:59 pm)abaris Wrote:(May 20, 2016 at 4:56 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: For that matter, the jury is still out -- in terms of evolutionary fitness -- on human-grade intelligence. We might prove to be yet another evolutionary dead end: unable to collectively overcome our emotional 'wiring' and therefore too smart for our own good.
Of course we will be gone at some point. Does anyone think, we will survive the estimated 4 billion years until the sun quits?
My point is that we could be gone much more quickly than seems to be the average for species -- whether through wiping ourselves out with nuclear weapons, degrading our envirionment to the point that it becomes largely uninhabitable, or at the 'hands' of some virus or bacteria that we either "intelligently designed" or that evolved in some kind of biological arms race faster than our ability to deal with it medically.
No, of course I don't think we'll be around until the sun quits.