What are our chances of survival for a long time?

[Anomalocaris]

only cockroaches will rule in the end! 

So you have hope for humanity then.  

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Every species of Homo before HSS is gone, so we are likely to follow.

Maybe we are special

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I think the odds are against us, but there's some hope. I would certainly love to have a way to see how it all turns out.

Why do you think there is hope?

Seriously, I think once we reach a state of technology we have now, it seems unlikely we will ever completely lose it.   The ability of technology to facilitate the survive of a moderate number of humans is enormous.    On the other hand, the capacity of technology to propagate discord, accentuate conflict and inflict disasters is also enormous.


So I think it is reasonable to suppose there will be one or more events in our future that would be cataclysmic to mankind, cause the collapse of most of infrastructure and kill off a large portion of the population, perhaps even knocking us down to just a small percentage of peak population.    The cataclysm could be natural, like an asteroid, man made, like a nuclear war, or a combination of the two.    

But I think even in extremis, our remaining technology will enable a portion of humanity to survive.


So I think future will be far less happy than optimists might imagine, but we will prove far more difficult to eradicate than pessimistic think. 

My hunch is we are here at least for hundreds of thousands more years.

[ignoramus]

Chuck, what about the option of alien invasion!
Maybe the remaining humans will eventually get used to being anal probed 3 times a day.

[Rev. Rye]

The longer, more philosophic version:




The more succinct, musical version:




"We're only gonna die for our own arrogance, so we might as well take our time."

I'm looking at the reports that claim that there's a small window of time before we can change things (whether 12 years or 18 months), and, short of Thanos' Snap, I cannot see a single way out that's actually likely to be put into place. And honestly, seeing everything from The Trump Regime to some of the obnoxious kids I have to deal with at work, I get more and more okay with that outcome every day.

[Macoleco]

Global warming and nuclear war won’t kill us all. It will just partially destroy organized civilization. It will put us behind a few hundred years, but we will rise again.

[Anomalocaris]

Global warming and nuclear war won’t kill us all. It will just partially destroy organized civilization. It will put us behind a few hundred years, but we will rise again.

I suspect global warming or nuclear war won’t set us back So much as slow the progress of scientific and civilizational development hereon afterwards.

So after these events we will lag increasingly far behind compared to where would have been without them.   The period of decelerated development afterwards might last many decades to centuries before our progress resume their normal rate.   The deficit caused by the stagnation will probably remain and never be fully made up.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Every species of Homo before HSS is gone, so we are likely to follow.

Except discovery over the last 20 years suggest a case can be made that there never were any other species of homo.


The homo genus continuously existed a single specie with multiple interbreeding populations.   The selection amongst the different populations, the interbreeding, and genetic drift  caused the range of phenotypes to change over time


So populations of homo may have come and gone, but no specie went extinct.

Source?

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Many branches of homo are have gone extinct.

[Mister Agenda]

I think the odds are against us, but there's some hope. I would certainly love to have a way to see how it all turns out.

Why do you think there is hope?

There's always hope, Macoleco. If we're still around in a million years, we won't be the same species, but at least we'll still have surviving descendants. Our record has been muddling through the middle between best and worst case scenarios. We're going to have to weather some very tough times due to climate change (aware of pun but it's not the point) that we have failed to take sufficient action on in time, but it's not an extinction event for humans, nor will it end scientific and technological progress, and that could kill us all off, or it could save us. Hundreds of millions, even billions of us could die and our species would still be going strong.

The main source of resistance to climate change action is cost, and as it gets worse, we'll have no choice but to start paying those costs. It will be way more expensive than if we had acted sooner, but even the USA will do the right thing after it's tried everything else. I think our biggest near-term existential risk is an attempt at climate change mitigation gone wrong. But we could lose 99% of our population and still bounce back.

Our species will be the last large mammals to go in the last big extinction. Hopefully this one isn't it and we'll be around for the big asteroid hit or whatever is coming. I've been hearing our doom is just around the corner my whole life, I'm not giving up hope now.

But it doesn't look good.

[LastPoet]

Death comes for us all. And its a good thing.

[Anomalocaris]

Why do you think there is hope?

There's always hope, Macoleco. If we're still around in a million years, we won't be the same species, but at least we'll still have surviving descendants. Our record has been muddling through the middle between best and worst case scenarios. We're going to have to weather some very tough times due to climate change (aware of pun but it's not the point) that we have failed to take sufficient action on in time, but it's not an extinction event for humans, nor will it end scientific and technological progress, and that could kill us all off, or it could save us. Hundreds of millions, even billions of us could die and our species would still be going strong.

The main source of resistance to climate change action is cost, and as it gets worse, we'll have no choice but to start paying those costs. It will be way more expensive than if we had acted sooner, but even the USA will do the right thing after it's tried everything else. I think our biggest near-term existential risk is an attempt at climate change mitigation gone wrong. But we could lose 99% of our population and still bounce back.

Our species will be the last large mammals to go in the last big extinction. Hopefully this one isn't it and we'll be around for the big asteroid hit or whatever is coming. I've been hearing our doom is just around the corner my whole life, I'm not giving up hope now.

But it doesn't look good.

The main source of resistance to climate change action is not cost.    It is cold calculation by those who command wealth and capital that they can easily mitigate the consequences of climate change on their own wealth and capital, and their chances are good they will come through largely unscathed.    So they are loath to contribute the mitigating of the consequences of climate change on others who do not have the resources to weather climate change and come through largely unscathed.



This is the reason why there is such irreconcilable gap in the propaganda put out by both sides:

The side which believe there should be a collective responsibility to tackle collective problems, particularly when those who do not stand to suffer gained their wealth and security through means which directly contributed to the risk and suffering faced by others,  realizes the right wing does not share any such morality.   So it is necessary to exaggerate the consequences of unmitigated climate change until it seems everyone stand to directly llose a lot.   Only then can the right wing well off be persuaded to chip in, as this side's morality stipulates they should.


The side that believes it is a free for all and those who have should be under no obligation to help those who have not, knows something like French revolution might ensue if their moral point of view is made clear to every have not.   So they must defend their unwillingness to help on some basis other than "well it's your problem cuz I will be lounging in my personal tropical island".   Hence they defend their unwillingness to contribute to the mitigating of the risk and alliviatring the suffering of others by shouting down the very fact that there is indeed risk and suffer to others that results directly from how they have gained their own wealth and capital in the first place, and pretend all is well so there is no need to share.


It is generally a rule that behind every noble sounding principle there is subterfuge.

The irony with many humans is we always think morality will work better on other people than it has worked on us.

[Fake Messiah]

Global warming and nuclear war won’t kill us all. It will just partially destroy organized civilization. It will put us behind a few hundred years, but we will rise again.

And what about garbage?



What, that won't even scathe us?