Have we failed as a species?

[Anomalocaris]

We actually haven't failed as a species, because under the laws of nature and natural selection, failure would be extinction. As long as we survive, we have succeeded.

And not even a million years being homo sapiens sapiens is sufficient to come to that judgment? We have clocked off about 0.75 percent of the time dinosaurs roamed the land. I wouldn't call that a success yet looking at the big picture.

Dinosaurs died out in a mass extinction. We are causing a mass extinction. We may not be more successful than the dinosaurs, but we are certainly more nihilistic. That's got to count for something.

[Rev. Rye]

Really, the way I see it, I live in a society where the distinction between fact and fiction does not really matter, normative behaviors seem to exist only so we can ostracise people who break them, the human population grows by one billion every twelve years, and we have a knack of always finding a way to fuck up any way we create to make our lives better. The world is being dominated by two forces who have no problem whatsoever with destroying the world, themselves included, and lots of people are worrying that Beyonce's being snubbed at the Grammys even though she's currently the most awarded female solo artist in history.

I understand that people have a way of trying to rise above the big problems, but I also can't help but notice they'll always find some way to make matters worse. Norman Borlaug saves over a billion (with a B) lives with new, genetically modified, crops, and the organic movement crops up as a sizable backlash to it. The Internet gave us ways for millions of people to talk with each other from different continents, but it's played a crucial role in the revival of mainstream racism, as fringe elements fester and give birth to a new monstrosity with orange hair and made it the most powerful person in the world. And I can guaran-goddam-tee that, somewhere along the line, the technology that allows Tesla to power our cars with pure electricity will somehow turn out to have been hurting us all along.

Really, at this point, there can be no question that we've failed as a species, and I'd be legitimately surprised if anything short of a population bottleneck, even something like that literal-killer app in Kingsman, can give us anything more than a temporary reprieve.






We're only gonna die from our own arrogance, that's why we might as well take our time.

[Whateverist]

Re OP: Absolutely.

Exhibit one: Trump's election. Perhaps Americans are an exceptionally bad sample but I think it says volumes about our fallings as a species
.

[Jehanne]

You're probably right, although, some animals (some reptiles, I think), have largely maintained their form over a 100 million years or more.  I have read that the sperm count among men is falling, and so, we may be forced to resort to cloning someday, or, have a human race that is perhaps all women if the Y chromosome should disappear???

More here:

https://phys.org/news/2014-11-sex-genes-...e-men.html

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Bold mine
There is a Schrodinger's cat meets dyson shpere joke to be made here, I just don't have the energy to refine it well enough for a good punchline.

A specie of primates, a flask of Christianity, and a evangelist preacher are sealed in a dyson sphere.   If an internal monitor detects the preacher preaching, the flask is shattered, killing the primates....

Sorry, that joke only works for spherical primates in a vacuum.

Boru

[vorlon13]

More here:

https://phys.org/news/2014-11-sex-genes-...e-men.html

Do you really want to rub my nose in that?

[Jehanne]

More here:

https://phys.org/news/2014-11-sex-genes-...e-men.html

Do you really want to rub my nose in that?

There's nothing to rub; the evidences in the article come from the peer-reviewed scientific literature.  My post was meant to be completely serious.

[vorlon13]

I have a phobia about low quality sperm

[Anomalocaris]

A specie of primates, a flask of Christianity, and a evangelist preacher are sealed in a dyson sphere.   If an internal monitor detects the preacher preaching, the flask is shattered, killing the primates....

Sorry, that joke only works for spherical primates in a vacuum.

Boru

It also works for primates in a spherical vacuum.

[Fireball]

Nope. We're still every bit as cooperatively vicious as nature has formed us. If we only end up living on the poles of the planet (assuming that we don't get out before the relative intelligence of our peers gets so low that we can't even figure out how to get away), we'll still survive for many millenia. I'm not giving up on Homo Sap. We're too vicious to go away anytime soon. Also, we are way more adaptable than dinosaurs. You ever see one wearing a mink coat? Nope, thought not.